I recently went to go see 30 Days of Night. 30 Days of Night is based off a Steve Niles comic of the same name. My exposure to Steve Niles has been minimal at best. I recently picked up his Simon Dark #1 and enjoyed it but that’s about as much as I’ve read. I picked up the 30 Days of Night TPB a few months ago but never got around to reading it. With the movie coming out, I decided to sit down and read it beforehand.

30 Days of Night’s concept is genius. Vampires invade a town in Alaska that is in darkness for 30 days straight. Simple but brilliant. Unfortunately, the graphic novel fails to execute the idea with success. The store is plagued with pacing and other issues. The art is beautiful but at times its so abstract, its hard to follow what’s actually going on. There is also this odd subplot of a guy from New Orleans going to the town to get proof that Vampires exist. He gets there and dies in one panel. It did nothing to further the plot and I still have no idea why this was in there. The biggest problem with the book is its pacing. When I finished the book, the first words out of my mouth was “That’s it?â€?. The book left more like 30 Hours of Night. There is no sense of time and everything that happens feels like it happens in a very short amount of time. I didn’t hate the book but with everything you hear about it, I expected it to be at least good.

The movie adaption is based on the book’s plot for the most part. As with any book to movie adaption, parts are changed to fit the movie medium. I went to see the movie opening night with my girlfriend who’s into horror movies and she loved it. Me, not so much. I thought the movie was boring. I couldn’t wait for the movie to just get to the end. Like the graphic novel, I didn’t hate it but I didn’t like it. Plagued by the same pacing issues of the book and the lack of suspense, the movie was just a gory snoozefest. There were also a few plot changes from the book that made no sense. The first is they broke up Eben and Stella. Ok, that in itself doesn’t bother me but they never mention why they are broken up. If they had been together still, the movie would not have changed a single bit. Thankful they removed the New Orleans vampire hunter storyline as it was useless in the graphic novel and would have certainly been even more useless here. My biggest problem was again the pacing. They made it seem like the vampires sat on the roofs for 29 days in the freezing cold just waiting while the survivors moved from place to place every week or so. I didn’t care about the survivors, they were mostly nameless extras waiting to get mauled by a vampire and that’s what happened most of the time. There was one guy, Vampire Hunter Hadgid, that you actually felt a connection to but his anti-climatic death was just a kick in the balls.

Not everything in the movie was bad though. I loved the art direction of the movie. There were some great scene in the movie and it really felt cold and dark the whole time. They movie was actually gory enough to make be cringe at a few scenes too. It’s too bad the story and pacing made it fall short. There were just too many WTF moments in the movie for me. Um, little girl shows up after 29 days like its time for Dora the Explorer and lunch? What?! or how about Eben basically committing suicide for no reason. He went to save Stella from a fiery death and the truck never blows up. All he needed to do was wait 10 more minutes for the sun to come up. Huh?

Bandwagon, the iTunes backup program, has finally released their version of software that supports backup to an FTP server. They have had a version that supported Amazon’s S3 service for a couple months now but now you can backup to any FTP server including another computer on your local network. I tested it last night by backing up my iTunes music to a Buffalo Linkstation I have on my LAN. The 40 gigs of data took about 2 hours to backup so speed was good. I’m probably going to try a backup to my Dreamhost site soon but thats going to take some time. Everything worked great except the app was always at 100% CPU usage when it was running. The program is in beta so bugs are expected. For a first release tho, it offers a great way to backup your iTunes library locally or offsite.

Also they are offering a free 6 months to any blogger who posts about the release. Just make a post, not unlike this one, and post a trackback to the post on their blog and you will get a code good for a 6 months free.

I’ll get right to it and say I’m not sure if I liked it. I didn’t love it but I didn’t hate it either. The two things that ruined it for me were the campy parts and Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane. This felt like more of Sam Raimi doing a Spider-Man movie than a Spider-Man movie directed by Sam Raimi. Anyone who has seen a Sam Raimi movie knows what I’m talking about.

The Good
I loved the Sandman in this. Thomas Haden Church did a brilliant job as the Sandman. He did a great job of bringing emotion to the character. The CGI effects that brought the Sandman to life were mind blowing. These were some of the best effects I’ve ever seen in a movie before.

Eric Forman as Venom?! That was my first reaction but I got to give it to him, he nailed it. I loved Topher Grace as Eddie Brock, tho it was weird hearing him speak as Venom.

Bruce Campbell. Nuff’ Said.

I loved Gwen Stacy in this movie. I one of those people that think Peter Parker would be better off in a world with Gwen Stacy than Mary Jane. My feelings are just amplified in Spider-Man 3. They should have killed off Mary Jane in the beginning and had Peter hook up with Gwen. Much better movie by 10 fold if that happened for me.

The Bad
I hated Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane in this. Didn’t care for her in the first one, was much better in the 2nd and I downright want her dead in 3. I could not see why they would be together in this movie. She cheats on him, she lies to him, doesn’t trust him, is jealous of him. Why they were in a relationship at all is a mystery. The Gwen Stacy scenes were so must better and would have loved to see a lot more Gwen and a hell of a lot less Mary Jane. I really hope shes off the next movie.

This movie is really weird in its comedic aspect. It was a lot of cheese and not a lot of wit. Spider-Man is all about the witty, smart-ass one liners and those are devoid in the movie. Instead we get a campy look at Spider-Man via Sam Raimi. Its one redeeming quality is that the campiness is felt throughout the movie and doesn’t veer from the path. I have to say Spider-Man 3 is what it is. For me in a movie with the emotional look at the Sandman and a terrifying look at revenge and hatred in Venom, the campy backdrop just feels out of place.

Unfortunately it seems that Marvel falls apart at number 3 with their franchises. First with X-Men 3 and now with Spider-Man 3. I don’t think either are bad movies, just missed potential. I think Spider-Man just fell into doing a lot of things OK instead of doing one thing good.

I got to finally see Pan’s Labyrinth over the weekend. Wow. Absolutely Brilliant.

First off, this is NOT a kids movie by any means and it definitely earned its R rating. Even using the word “dark fairy tale” to describe it leaves out something. Something like gothic horror feels more appropriate. While there are obviously some fantasy scenes, they feel so real and connected its hard to not take every part of this movie seriously. The movie is in spanish so its subtitled, and while some people are put off by foreign language films, I think it actually added to the film.

I’m not going to get into the plot of the movie because I think this is a movie you need to go out and see for yourself. Its only open in select cities right now but starting this Friday it will be released in a limited nationwide cities, then more theaters will be added on January 26th.

[Watch the Trailer in HD]

January – started using Mac OS X

February – built dedicated computer to run Mac OS X on

March – Starting using iTunes to manager my media

April – stopped using Bloglines, switched from Exchange to Google Mail and Google Calendar, bought a Jimi wallet

May – switched Layout, Skype is free for the rest of the year, started a new job, Macbook’s released, went to grand opening of Apple 5th Ave store, bought my Macbook

June – joined valleyshwag, MC360 released for XBMC, bought a Nintendo DS Lite, canceled my Final Fantasy XI account after 3 years

July – switched to Flock, Macbook got hit with discoloration, started running using the Nike+iPod kit, Macbook Random Reboots started

August – switched from del.icio.us to Shadows, started using OpenDNS, got hard to find Trauma Center and Phoenix Wright for the DS, new mc chris and Evanescence albums, bought the Timbuk2 blogger bag

September – started new full-time job, fall TV season starts, bought a Xbox360 after Guitar Hero 2 is announced with new controller, canceled my Myspace account

October – got tickets for macworld 2007, Xbox360 troubles, 300 trailer, Macbook RSS fixed, bought my first Blackberry, my Xbox360 has its own blog

November – interviewed for MacNewsWorld, Gears of War, Guitar Hero II and Elite Beat Agents all released on same day, turned 28, XBL Video Marketplace released, subscribed to Netflix and Gamefly, bought an HD DVD

December – Geekdrome dead, started reading comics again, finally found out what all the hype about Battlestar Galactica, Veronica Mars and Greys Anatomy was all about

Gearing up here for the holidays. Tomorrow is my last day off before Christmas and I plan on getting all my shopping done. Other than that, I’ve been on a major media rush for the past month.

I’ve started watching alot of TV shows. Finally started watching Battlestar Galactica, Veronica Mars, and Grey’s Anatomy. All which are better than the hype and I suggest you check them out in case your haven’t yet.

Recently subscribed to Netflix and been loving it. There HD-DVD selection is about as good as it gets and Blockbuster is giving away free rentals in exchange for the Netflix flaps you usually toss out. So its safe to say I’ve been getting my movie on lately too.

In addition to Netflix, I signed up for Gamefly too tho my experience has been no where as good as with Netflix. I’m currently playing Marvel Ultimate Alliance and its really fun so far. A must get for any Marvel Comics fan.

Speaking of Marvel, thanks to Geekdrome, god rest its soul, I’ve gotten back into reading comics. I’ve been stockpiling them for almost 2 years but could never find a good “in” to start. Enter Civil War, it seemed like the perfect story arc to jump back in. Major story arc and most major comic titles are involved, the perfect time start. I got alot of catching up to do before I’m current but its been a great story so far. I’m also reading all the titles involved so it will be a couple weeks until I’m caught up. I started with Road to Civil War and I’m about 30 issues in with about 35 left.

Hope everyone has a Happy Holiday.

Let do alittle experiment.

V for Vendetta HD DVD was in my Netflix queue and went into “Processing” at about 10:30 am today. At about the same time, I was checking out the new Video Marketplace on my 360 and one of the (only) HD movies they offer is V for Vendetta. I rented it from the Marketplace for $6 and it started to download. I tried to cancel my Netflix queue but it was too later as it was already in Processing. So both are on there way. Lets see which one makes it first.

Update 1:
At around 6pm tonight, I was around 7% for the download and V for Vendetta had already shipped from Netflix with an arrival date of 11/24.

Update 2:
Checked my download at 1am and my download has stopped. Not sure how long its been. There is no Active Download nor any movies in my Video section. So I’ve restarted my download.

Update 3:
Download died once again at around 3am last night. Restarted at about 3:45am. Woke up at 11am to find it had stopped again. Restarted right away. Currently at 3%. Download restarted at 0% at the 3am for whatever reason. No mail today due to Thanksgiving holiday.

Update 4:
Came home from Thanksgiving at around 2pm today to find I was logged out of Xbox Live and my download has stopped one again. Restarted download as soon as I logged back in. Download is currently at 8%. Mail came today but no Netflix packs. The race is still on.

Update 5:
Just got home from work at 2:44am and the download is still going. Woohoo! Maybe they are finally fixing the bandwidth issues at MS. File is only 27% tho. Mail should be here in about 8 hours.

I don’t have cable nor do I want it but there are things I want to watch. To fill this need, a mixture of iTunes, Netflix and bittorrent gets the job done. So when Microsoft announced TV and Movies would be coming to Xbox360, I couldn’t help be excited. Right now I need to hookup my laptop to my TV to watch iTunes shows and movies or my own stuff using Frontrow. While it works, its less than ideal.

Strike 1: 360 isn’t equipped to handle HD content.

The biggest thing that got me excited was Microsoft would be offering HD content unlike iTunes or even bittorrent for that matter. My only HD fix right now is through HD DVDs on Netflix. With all HD content, the first problem is storage space. The Xbox360 has a 20gig HDD and only 13G is useable. That equals 2 HD Movies or 6 HD TV shows at the most. That would be ok if you could pull the content off and stream it using the 360′s new found Video Streaming but alas you can’t. I would settle for be able to connect a external USB HDD and having MS format it with screwy encrypted DRM’d filesystem just to be able to use it as extra storage.

Strike 2: Lacking Content

I was all about the CW and adult swim shows as iTunes does not carry them. The only shows I watch that I cannot get from iTunes are Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Robot Chicken, Veronica Mars and Smallville. Well, 3 of those are available from day 1 on the Video Marketplace. ALL RIGHT! Not so fast. While they are available, only the First Season’s on each of them are and there aren’t even in HD. Utterly useless. And thats not all, most shows and Movies are not in HD. Only a handful of each.

Actually content is weak with todays launch and hopefully it will continue to grow. With with the exception of V for Vendetta, not one movie is current and roughly 1/3 of all the TV shows are cartoons.

Strike 3: Pricing

Pricing isn’t horrible but $6 for a 24hr HD movie rental is little steep. For a penny less, you can get a 30d ay rental from Netflix. TV shows are on par with iTunes but as with iTunes, you pay the same price for a 15 mins episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force as you do for a 60 min CSI episode. I’m not upset about the pricing but I would have loved to see $1 TV show rentals and Movie purchase’s. I’m more likely to re-watch a movie than a TV show.

And for the record, MS Points suck. 480 points = $6?! huh? Ho much is 262 points? I don’t know either but I do know $6 is $6.

Closing thoughts

I bought an episode of CSI Season 7 and V for Vendetta today. Right now its been 6 hours since I purchased them and CSI is only 19% complete and V for Vendetta hasn’t even started. Obviously this is because everyone is hammering the servers but even when TV Shows and Movies launched on iTunes, I never had this problem. V for Vendetta HD DVD shipped from Netflix today. It will be interesting to see which one i get right.

Another problem I you can’t stream while you download. I’m going to have to wait until the full movie downloads before I can watch V for Vendetta. Even iTunes lets you stream.

I do like the fact you can download the SD version of HD content for free. Score one for Microsoft.