It’s known to most that the Harry Potter novel and movie series is beloved by a great many in the world, and there is little that can change popular opinion one way or the other. As the final installment of an 8 film epic saga, fans and naysayers alike have long ago determined if they will watch this momentous occasion or not.

As a fan of the series myself, it’s hard to find fault in a film series so deeply ingrained into our culture for such a long time. Possibly considered the new Star Wars of the next generation, Harry Potter has sparked the imaginations of millions of young minds, thrusting them into the world of fantasy literature while simultaneously returning those of us who are older back into our youthful wonder of yesterday.

Breakneck speed

In The Deathly Hallows Part 2, David Yates spends zero time handholding the audience to remind them of what has transpired over the last ten years. There is no periods of reflection or review of the past, but rather a quick glimpse from the end of the previous part before the film takes off at with unrelenting speed towards an epic climax to not only the film, but the series as a whole.

By utilizing a two part film to cover the final hefty novel, Yates allows for a cleaner quicker second part unrestrained by the buildup and teen angst of the first film. At 130 minutes, there was never a moment of slowdown in the film and Yates makes ample use of both well placed dialog and climatic confrontations between the forces of Voldemort and the young defenders of Hogwarts.

Gritty War Film

Yates also holds little back in terms of action during the short war, with heavy casualties on both sides. The film demonstrates the horrors of a magic based battleground akin to the most tense of modern war films and contains many images of beloved characters falling in battle. Like the series as a whole, it maintains a tone that in the dark times, we all must grow and learn to defend ourselves amidst the terrors that attack us, all the while knowing that we must lean on those we love especially when some fall in the field of battle.

Deathly Hallows Part 2 is definitively an ending of an era. Fortunately, unlike a certain other fantasy series, this series ends with a whimsical epilogue that is quick and sincere. At 19 hours total running time over 8 films, it is a bittersweet but welcome end to a saga that has in a way, redefined our thoughts on film making and what it means to build a film franchise.

Final Score: 9 of 10

X-Men First Class is Matthew Vaughn’s (Stardust, Kick-Ass, Snatch) film that tackles the movie franchise that arguably, has fallen off of favor in the last few films. Fortunately for the fans, Vaughn does not push the film into a sensationalist drudge of action and flash, but rather carefully constructs an origin story (while wholly different from the comic series) that is accessible to both new and old fans and related to the previous film cannon.

Is this a 60s thriller or a typical comic movie?

X-Men First Class is an origin story that discusses the formation of the X-Men team and goes into depth the relationship between Charles Xavier and Erik Eisenhardt, also know as Magneto.

The opening shots recreate and expands upon the same opening shots from the original X-Men movie from the Auschwitz concentration camp where Erik reveals his powers in a vain attempt to save them. (Obviously the child actor used for the scene is different as 10 years has passed since the original). From there we cut to a similarly young Xavier finding a young Raven ‘Mystique’ Darkholme stealing food. In typical form, Xavier of course offers Raven his household and they continue to grow up as close friends.

Where the film takes it’s truly dark tone is when we return to Auschwitz to find the true nature of Erik’s power, fueled by the anger and hatred towards Sebastian Shaw, the administrator of the program which exploited Erik for his powers.

From there, the movie moves quickly to the differences between Xavier and Erik’s lives as they reach adulthood. Xavier uses is telepathic abilities to become charmingly successful while Erik hunts down the various members of the Nazi program of his childhood. Their meeting and turbulent friendship comes at the hands of the CIA though as they have caught wind of the existence of mutants and starts a program to collect and monitor them.

From here, we gain a number of cameos and references for fans, including the initial creation of Cerebro and the Blackbird by Dr. McCoy, the growing relationship between Erik and Xavier, the formation of Xavier’s school, and even a cameo by a certain fan favorite character, who in typical fashion, sneers off the young Erik and Xavier’s attempt to recruit him.

The movie itself spends the vast majority of its time on the origins and formation of the X-Men team, and despite it’s hefty 2 hours 11 minutes length, it flows fairly quickly and maintains audience interest though the entire film. Though the entire film, Michael Vaughn encases the entire film with the undertone of the dangers and reactions to intolerance, a subject that the X-Man series pivots around as a whole.

This undertone manifests itself as a 1960s era Bond film full of espionage thrills and a final climax of a narrowly averted World War Three during the high of the Cold War. It’s a much more interesting balance of character and action as opposed to Singer’s originals and the mindless Wolverine movie.

X-Men is a team, and they all have voices

Unlike Singer’s originals, X-Men First Class actually builds characters that have both depth and intrigue despite the sheer volume of players. While there is obvious emphasis on the headliners, Xavier and Erik, Vaughn includes huge amounts of screen time towards the environments of Mystique and Dr. McCoy to build their characters and provide sorely missed backstory as to what shaped their paths in life. The Mystique of the future, in Singer’s series, always felt like a mere ploy for ticket sales, while Vaughn’s Mystique (well played by the lovely Gist Weather TextSee this Gist Weather IconSee this Gist,
create an image geeklet that points to the image.

Feel free to browse the date documentation for formatting tips via man date.

Calendar

The list of future appointments I use involves a number of different scripts.

The core of the system relies on my use of Google Calendar which stores the entirety of my life. From there, I import my calendars into iCal using the built in Google Calendar import, which imports my primary calendar. In order to pull in my Facebook events, I also setup an iCal subscription to the events feed (click on See all Events in Facebook and click on “Export Events at the bottom for the iCal URL).

Granted, for simplicity, I could have used iCal URLS for both. I had already set up my system to use the built in Google WebDav emulation, and it allows me to pull in all calendars I have attached to Google Calendar. The issue lies in how I display the data. Due to the way iCal works, it does not make those Delegate calendars (calendars shared with me but now owned by me) available to the API, but iCal subscribed calendars to work.

Now that I have my calendars setup, I can use a great command line tool called icalBuddy. icalBuddy allows me to access iCal from the command line, and print out event data to the terminal. Like the date command above, I use this to print my calendar onto my screen with the following command line.

/usr/local/bin/icalBuddy -b "" -li 6 -npn -nc -iep 
  "title,datetime" -ps "| : |" -po "datetime,title" 
  -df "%RD" -eed -n eventsToday+5

Now this command is a bit daunting, but it is fairly simple to understand if you go though the documentation for icalBuddy. Basically, it’s formatted to have no bullet for each item, uses relative date terms, and only displays the title of the event.

Simply create another script geeklet and use the above command (after installing icalBuddy) to mimic my setup.

Where’d you find the wallpaper?

The wallpaper I use is actually something I made following this great guide on digital bokeh effects in Photoshop. Using the guide as a model, I created the my own version of it, and I’ll do a writeup of how I did it later this week. The guide, while useful, isn’t the clearest of things to follow, but it’ll get you started if you are interested in doing it yourself.

I guess in an effort to hold myself publicly shamed accountable for my failures and successes, I’ll post my list of goals I resolve to accomplish in 2011.

The List

1. Write more, 1000 words/week up to 2000 words/week by end of the year
   • At least 1 article a week on personal blog
   • At least 2 episode reviews a week on my TV Blog
   • At least 2 articles a week on Apple Corps Dallas
   • Create a new Warcraft blog
   • Try writing weekly recaps of Tech stories
2. Drink more water.
   • Glass in morning, evening, night
   • Tea, juice supplement
3. Run a Half Marathon
   • 3 session a week training
   • 5K by Summer
   • 10K by Fall
   • Half-Marathon in Winter
4. Go completely paperless
   • Buy iPad2
   • Get feed scanner
   • Scan everything I can into PDFs and import to Dropbox or Evernote
   • Scan the music library, all 12,000(?) sheets worth, for indexing and access via iPad
5. Relearn a lot of my piano repertoire (yes my specialization was 20th century music)
   • Prelude in c-sharp Minor – Rachmaninoff
   • Moonlight Sonata – Beethoven
   • Hungarian Rapshody – Lizst
   • Deux Arabesques – Debussy
   • Clair de Lune – Debussy
   • La Plus que Lente – Debussy
   • Rêverie – Debussy
6. Become a top tier West Coast Swing DJ
   • Play more gigs
   • Expand music library
   • Continue expanding popularity in community
7. Learn Ruby on Rails and Mobile Development
   • Write an iPhone and iPad app for fun
   • Write an Android App
   • Write an Windows Phone 7 App
   • Create a new gas tracking application
   • Create an event attendance tracking app
   • Create TV review/checkin service
   • Create inventory management system and sell it to someone
8. Do more podcasting
   • New tech roundtable
   • Record Fr. Tom’s Sunday homilies
9. Sleep earlier
   • Don’t write blog posts after 3am
10. Trick Genuinely impress some Girl into dating me
    • Attend more events
    • Be less nerdy more charming

With that said, let’s delve into the features of the Mac App store and take a look at what it can do for you.

Super Clean Interface

Like the iTunes iOS store, the Mac App store is laid out in a very clean and organized manner, with the New and Noteworthy applications visible right away and a rotating banner of the staff featured apps at the top.

The application feels just like the iOS counterpart, and users should be able to easily find their way around.

In the Top Charts view, you will find a listing of the Top paid, free, and grossing applications in a simple to view setup.

The Category view, you can see the various categories available as well as the top three applications in each. This is a great boon for applications that can work their way into the top three, as it will likely be very hard to unseat them.

Clicking on a category brings up that category’s page, which includes listings for the most popular paid and free apps of the category.

The purchased tab simply lists the applications you have purchased. I would assume this will allow for you to easily reinstall applications and install applications across multiple machines using the same Apple ID.

The updates tab, I assume, will simply list all of the applications that have updates and allow you to one click update them all, similar to the iOS store.

Reservations

The biggest reservation I have is not the fact that the App Store will drive all developers to use it. Having a centralized application repository is not a new concept (see the UNIX models for example).

The big reservation I have is the fact that in order to be included in the Mac App Store, developers must comply to what I consider overreaching guidelines about application design. A good case study of this is Evernote.

To great fanfare, Evernote has shown they’ve gotten a huge influx of new users via the App Store. Their user base is going at the tune of 1800% higher than normal right now. Obviously, this is a great boon for the company.

On the other hand, Evernote has had to change or remove functionality in order to comply with Apple guidelines. They note the changes on their blog, but the immediately noticeable ones are “Global print PDF to Evernote” is disabled, and the removal of the option to join the Evernote beta tracks.

Evernote does note that the App Store will allow for easy upgrades (which I never found to be difficult to begin with), and they will provide the normal download packages as well.

Final Thoughts

In the end, like it or not, the Mac App Store is here, and will definitely provide a lot of benefits to developers. Time will tell if their guidelines though, put a damper on innovation and creativity. If we remember back to the early days of the iOS store, their application guidelines were much more draconian than they are today, so hopefully Apple and the developers will come to an agreeable middle ground of regulation that will allow the most innovative applications to shine.

Fortunately, the difference between the iOS and Mac App stores is that unlike the iOS devices, Macs can continue to run any application they want outside of the store, at least for the time being.

Gone are the personal tabs at the top of the page, and it seems they’ve completely done away with the application boxes, a feature few seldom used at all. Personal information is hidden away as a list of highlights at the top and via the info navigation link on the left.

Photos of you are placed up top, which I think is a little odd since I know what I look like. On the other hand, when viewing another person’s profile, you can see their photos up top which is actually handy.

Facebook has taken away the status message box and sidebar information boxes though, which I do lament. In order to update your status, you need to click the status button on the share bar, which is an odd step backwards I think. It seems as if Facebook is trying to de-emphasis the posting of statuses and sharing in general in my opinion, which is counter intuitive to their social sharing goals.

Overall though, I think it’s a good look, and would be even better if they put the quick status/sharing box back onto the profile and home pages

Today, Netflix announced the official release of the iPhone version of their already excellent iPad app. Of course I immediately downloaded it and put it on my iPhone 4 to test it out.

While I don’t have much experience with the iPad version (as I don’t have an iPad), the look and feel is very similar to the iPad version, while obviously being more streamlined for the smaller iPhone screen.

The playback controls are very simple. Just a pause button, a 30 sec rewind button, and a fill screen/fit to screen button.

Video quality is stellar

The video quality under WiFi is amazing on my iPhone 4. Obviously looking at the following screenshots will not do it justice on a normal screen as the pixel density on an iPhone 4 is roughly doubled.

The difference between fill screen and fit to screen isn’t even that big.

The one downside I think is that since Apple has not released any type of iPhone 4 to HDMI adapter, using the iPhone as a streaming device for a television is only possible via a lousy VGA connection with the iPad adapter.

3G Netflix on the go (if you hate your battery)

Below you will find a 3G screenshot which looks very similar to the WiFi versions. I’m not sure of that’s due to my craptacular internet connection or the fact that Netflix only feeds a limited feed to the iPhone. In any case, the app definitely takes advantage of the high density screen on the iPhone 4 to provide a crisp and vibrant picture.

Download Unedited Screenshots

Iron Man 2 marks the opening of the 2010 Summer blockbuster series, and it opens it with quite the bang. There is plenty available to enjoy for fans and non fans alike, but for a lot of the film, there’s a sense “sequel-itis” that many 2nd films suffer from.

It’s another sequel storyline

Iron Man 2 starts immediately as Iron Man 1 ended, with Tony Stark revealing to the world that he is in fact Iron Man. Soon afterwards, we find Stark in the middle of a Congressional Senate hearing as the US Government attempts to confiscate the Iron Man suit classifying it as a weapon. It’s no question that the same egomaniacal Tony Stark from the last movie is back in full force, taking credit for “privatizing world peace” and making a general mockery of the Senate.

Unfortunately, this is where the fun starts to die off, as we find ourselves following Stark around as he realizes his own technology that keeps him alive also is poisoning him. Unless he finds a solution to his palladium poisoning, he will soon die an agonizing death. We find Stark falling into a depressed and desperate cycle of brooding as he contemplates his own mortality.

It’s the common motif that many sequels have where the main protagonist, upon solving their great initial conflict, find themselves without direction and motivation. Stark, like many protagonists of the like, have to discover who they want to be. Do they want to be a hero, or do they want to fall into obscurity? Iron Man 2 unfortunately spends much of the film wrestling this question with Stark taking more and more extreme risks cumulating into a dangerous confrontation with his best friend Colonel Rhodes.

While these confrontations allow for plenty of action sequences, I feel like the whole concept of a tired angst ridden hero looking for meaning has itself become a bit tired. Tony Stark’s greatest enemy in the entire film is not Whiplash, but rather himself. I think the biggest issue is that we never become emotionally invested in Stark’s distress. Despite all the turmoil internally, Stark’s egomania turns the audience off to feeling sorry for him and in the end we have to wonder to ourselves do we really care what happens to him?

Despite the moments of self doubt that bring the film to a slow stand still, Iron Man 2 manages to fill in the gaps between character development with great scenes of action and a bit of Tony Stark ego, sarcasm, and humor. Fortunately, and thankfully, the plot itself is fairly consistent, and I didn’t feel like there like there were many inane outliers of logic. The only jarring plot point is while Stark was under house arrest by SHIELD, where was his guardian when he left to visit Pepper at Stark Industries? Didn’t he threaten to taser him to the ground if he attempted to leave?

Toys and tech I wish I had

Visually, Iron Man 2 is definitely feat for the eyes. Unlike some other sequels who just want to capitalize on the drug that is CGI, Iron Man 2 recalls up comfortable, and believable glimpses into the near future of where technology will be. Even the action sequences, while fast moving, do not contain the visual and needless clutter that can easily confuse a viewer trying to take in the entire visual frame. Unfortunately, I just feel like that the final action sequence was much too short overall. The final battle lasted a mere few minutes and was finished in a quick, nearly anti-climatic moment. Would I have made the sequence longer myself? Perhaps not. It stands well enough on it’s own, but a part of me was hoping for a bit more confrontation considering the intense lead up to the fight.

Like it’s predecessor, Iron Man 2 teases the audience with technology that is not in the realm of science fiction, but rather the realm of science “can be soon.” From the transparent “Stark Phone” that could wirelessly hack into televisions to the Microsoft Surface “coffee table” to the revisited and heavily expanded holographic lab, there are plenty of things for industrial designers and engineers alike to drool over and attempt to bring into fruition. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 8 years since we saw the technology of Minority Report, the gold standard of futuristic computing interfaces, but in that time, we’ve accomplished a lot of that capability, especially in the fields of multi touch interfaces.

I have no doubt that companies like LG, HTC, and even Apple are already hard at work to develop a transparent phone like what we saw in Iron Man 2. I personally am a fan of his multi monitor setup constructed out of transparent transistors, creating a panel that is mostly transparent when unpowered, but vibrant and touch capable when in use.

Yes, there are more Marvel movies. I know.

It’s hard to discuss Iron Man 2 without discussing the plentiful references to Marvel’s upcoming movie lines. If you are a hard core Marvel Avengers fan, you will definitely enjoy looking for all of the various references and hints to their upcoming titles. Some of the references were very obviously thrown into your face, but some of them were much more subtle and in the background. Of course you will want to stay till the end for a quick glimpse into the next film.

Mmm…

On a final note, I have to comment on the fact that, while I might be biased, Black Widow easily steals every scene she is in. I sadly found myself more or less completely overlooking my critical view of the film (to the point where I pretty much stop paying attention completely) whenever Scarlett Johansson was on screen.

I really wished they utilized her more in the film giving her more than one action sequence. There have been rumblings of making a Black Widow spinoff, and I sincerely hope that they do (while being cautious of a repeated “Electra” disaster).

Final Verdict

Overall, I have to give Iron Man 2 good verdict. While it doesn’t have the pizzaz and fun factor of the first film, it has enough for fans to satisfy them until next year’s releases of Thor (May 2011) and Captain America (July 2011).

Final score. 3.5 out of 5 (An extra 0.5 for Scarlett Johansson)