A few more quickies from movies seen this week.  There may be (mild) spoilers in these reviews ….

Star Trek Into Darkness.  I’m what you’d call a mid level Trekkie, I guess. I watched the original series when it originally aired. (I had to go down to a neighbor’s apartment in order to watch it in color and I think that’s what finally got my dad to buy a color TV.) An old friend of mine wrote The Trouble With Tribbles (among many other things). I’ve probably watched all those episodes a dozen times each and I’ve watched all the movies too. But I never got hooked on any of the other TV series – and that includes TNG.  On the other hand, J.J. Abrams admitted last week on The Daily Show that he used to hate Star Trek, but that he loves it now. (duh)

I like what he’s done here in bringing back the spirit of the original series, the discussion of morals and obligations – because the original series was basically a fancied-up western with lots of pop philosophy.  So Abrams pays proper respect here. Thumbs up.  And Benedict Cumberbatch makes a great villain – though I would have preferred more time watching him talk instead of watching CGI versions of him doing CGI stunts.

But frankly speaking, once I realized that the whole film was essentially a homage (or rip-off, depending on who you ask) to Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan, I started getting numb.  Does Abrams stand it on its head? Is it a deconstruction, much like a chef doing molecular cuisine deconstructs a popular dish so that it’s barely recognizable while tasting the same? Is it sacrilege?  One thing it is is hopelessly predictable in the second half, which is a letdown considering how it kept me guessing in the first half.  Also, the 3D is so unnecessary here that I found myself removing my 3D glasses for long stretches and not missing anything aside from the Chinese subtitles being blurry.

Overall, I suppose it’s a strong enough entry in the series.  My gf, who doesn’t remember Wrath of Khan (I’m pretty sure I made her sit through it at some point) completely loved it, even though all the bits that referred back to that movie went right past her.

Side Effects. Speaking of movies that start out as one film and end as a completely different film, there’s this from Steven Soderbergh.  He claims it’s his last film (not including his Liberace film, which will air on cable instead of theatrically).  If that’s really the case, he’s going out on a high note, quitting at the top of his game.

Soderbergh has always zig zagged between different genres and as this one proceeds, you think it’s going to be an expose of the pharmaceutical industry from the man whose films include Traffic, Contagion and Erin Brockovich.  But midway through, it switches gears to become film noir.  The plot is complicated and doesn’t entirely make sense, but firm direction, excellent pacing, and a strong cast led by Rooney Mara (who truly establishes herself here), Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones means this is an enjoyable ride.

Jack Reacher.  It’s difficult to remember now, but back in the 90s, Tom Cruise turned in one solid performance after another and it always looked as if he was just one film away from finally getting an Oscar. But it seems that in the last decade or so, he’s given up that quest and become a boring action star who can only open a film that has the words Mission and Impossible in the title. I think Oblivion (an expensive live action/CGI remake of Wall-E apparently) tanked.

But I didn’t watch this because of Cruise. I watched it because it was written (adapted from a popular detective series) and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. He wrote The Usual Suspects and wrote and directed The Way of the Gun, a very nasty little film that I truly love.  Based on Jack Reacher, it would seem that McQuarrie has also given up.

They try to position Jack Reacher as some sort of mystical all powerful anti-hero when in fact he’s a sad loner who is good at solving crimes but has no human relationships and spends much of the film blabbing on and on about how that’s a good thing.

Because it’s A Tom Cruise Film, at least he can bring in a good supporting cast – and in this case the uber-villain is played by none other than Werner Herzog! Robert Duvall is in it too and Rosamund Pike looks quite nice. But in the end, Jack Reacher is eminently forgettable.

Parker. Since 1998′s Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Jason Statham has turned into the most consistently entertaining B movie action star in western cinema – by that I mean that I don’t recall ever seeing his films open at #1 (or even #5) in the US but I’m sure they’re consistent money earners in home video. Parker seems to be an attempt at moving him to some sort of A list status but it falls short.

Most obviously, it attempts to do this by upping the game on co-stars.  Jennifer Lopez gets to remind us that she was quite a decent actress before she turned her thin voice to singing. Nick Nolte, Patti LuPone, Bobby Cannavale and Michael Chiklis also show up – the latter two sadly given roles they could have done in their sleep.

Also along for the ride is director Taylor Hackford. If you don’t recognize the name, he’s the man behind 80s hits An Officer and a Gentleman and Against All Odds. His last good film was the biopic of Ray Charles. This is of a somewhat lesser nature.

It’s really disappointing almost from the start, when in the midst of a robbery Statham starts spouting his philosophy and it’s nothing we haven’t heard in 100 other movies. Why does Hackford allow the film to crawl to a halt for a speech that’s so utterly banal?  Meanwhile Lopez is not the love interest in the film, despite what you might think or what the poster might suggest. She’s a rather pathetic loser with very tight abs for a woman of her age – apparently she’s not going to get fully in character if it contrasts with her public image.

Oh well, it’s still entertaining, definitely better than anything Stallone or Willis is churning out these days. But he can do better.

Oh, when we went to see Star Trek at the Shatin UA last night, I saw this poster:

It would be nice to think that HK films are trying to get back to the wild and wacky comedies that were in such great abundance in the 80s and 90s. But I’m not overly optimistic.

The English language is alive and well in Hong Kong.

… an accident occurred involving 2 persons who were smokers and another 2 smokers who were non-smokers …

… and the if similar accidents come to the notice of this department,we will recommed to the liqueur licensing board ….

I had a feeling I could find this entire film on Youtube and, proven right, I wanted to share it with you.  The film is called Get Crazy, it’s from 1983, and it may not be the Godfather or 8-1/2 but it’s a movie I’ve always loved and I think a lot of you will love it too.

Basically, it’s a bunch of people who came out of the Roger Corman school of filmmaking doing a tribute to the Fillmore. Director Allan Arkush (Hollywood Boulevard, Rock & Roll High School and a ton of TV stuff) was, I believe, an usher at the Fillmore East, so this is one rock and roll movie where they got things right.

I think if i just tell you who is in it and who they play, that should be enough to whet your appetite. Malcolm McDowell plays Reggie Wanker, obviously modeled after Mick Jagger.  Lou Reed plays Auden, clearly modeled on Bob Dylan. Howard Kaylan (Turtles, Flo & Eddie) is Captain Trips, who seems a lot like Jerry Garcia. And then there’s Allen Garfield, Daniel Stern, Miles Chapin, Ed Begley Jr., Lee Ving, John Densmore, Robert Picardo, Bobby Sherman, Fabian, Franklin Ajaye, Mary Woronov & Paul Bartel, Dick Miller, Clint Howard, Coati Mundi.

But most important of all, this was a movie about rock & roll made by people who truly love rock & roll, and back when it was made, there weren’t that many of these.  It’s low budget, a bit dated and creaky now, but well worth your time, especially if you can see it for free.

Seems like embedding the video here isn’t working so here’s the link.  Hit it up, sit back and enjoy!

To me, Christopher Guest is a Comedy God. This is Spinal Tap, Waiting For Guffman, Best in Show,  A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration – Guest’s brand of improvisational comedy, the “mockumentary” – well, I’ve loved his work ever since he was one of the writers and cast of National Lampoon’s Lemmings (which I saw live) in the early 70s.

If you haven’t already heard, he’s now directing and co-writing a new TV series called Family Tree. The first episode aired on HBO over the weekend. The basic premise is that Tom Chadwick is an out-of-work just-dumped-by-his-girlfriend 30 year old who inherits a chest full of crap from his recently deceased great aunt. He realizes that the items in the chest provide clues to his family history and, with nothing better to do, starts investigating them.  This being a Christopher Guest comedy, you’ve probably already guessed (sorry) that Chadwick will encounter a motley collection of oddball characters along his journey. There’s his father, a failed inventor – rather an old premise but nicely played here by Michael McKean – and his sister, who does a ventriloquism thing with a stuffed monkey that’s funnier than it probably sounds.

The lead in the series is played by Chris O’Dowd, who you’ll recognize from This is 40, Bridesmaids and others.  The writing is a collaboration between Guest and British actor Jim Piddock, who has a nice small role in the first episode.  I see that Fred Willard is going to be in two episodes and I can’t wait for those.

It’s hard to judge a sitcom from just a single episode, but for the most part this seems promising. My only problem? Guest’s work has been so influential, especially when you think about Larry David and Ricky Gervais.  Maybe it’s because of all of the British accents here (the show is set in London – btw Guest, though born in the U.S., was a member of the House of Lords until the system changed in 1999) but I kept thinking about The Office and Extras as I was watching this. This happens – you influence others and they in turn influence you.  And some of the humor seems a bit easy – the ventriloquism jokes, the failed inventions.

But I’ve always liked O’Dowd, I’ve always loved Guest, and I’m willing to continue watching this show to see where it goes.

HSBC is in the process of mailing out new ATM cards with some sort of smart chip embedded in them. They’re making a big deal about this. And alongside that they’re making a big deal about how, for your protection, before you travel overseas you need to activate your foreign overseas withdrawal ability.  If you don’t register for this, if you’re travelling outside of Hong Kong, your ATM card won’t work.  All well and good so far.

But there’s one thing they’re not publicizing, something I saw no mention of from HSBC.  Their cards no longer work on the Plus system. Plus, owned by Visa, is the largest network for ATMs around the world. If your card has the Plus symbol on it – as HSBC’s cards used to have – you can find a compatible ATM in just about any city in the world – more than 1 million ATMs in 170 countries.

But HSBC is no longer sending out cards on the Plus network. Their new cards are on the UnionPay network, a banking network owned by the People’s Bank of China. While UnionPay says they’re available in more than 140 countries, the network of banks that are on this network is far smaller.

I never noticed this. I got the new card from HSBC, made sure my name and account number were correct and then started using it. After reading about this, I looked again and sure enough, no Plus symbol, only symbols for UnionPay and EPS.

The SCMP reports that someone who visited Australia said the cards only worked in HSBC, Citibank and National Bank ATMs. What’s even worse is that many ATMs around the world have yet to be upgraded to recognize the chip on the card, meaning that even if you can find a UnionPay ATM, your card still might not work. And they won’t work at all in HSBC in Argentina, Brazil, France, Greece, Malta, New Zealand, Panama and Turkey.

The SCMP says, “An industry source said HSBC put the networks out to tender and decided which one to use based on the best deal.”

That’s right, the best deal for HSBC, regardless of what it meant to their customers. Because HSBC doesn’t give a shit about their customers.

Note that my desktop PC runs 64-bit Windows 7.  This tip may or may not be useful for people running Macs.

My C: drive is a solid state drive.  The suckers are expensive compared to traditional drives and come in much smaller sizes.  Mine is 224 gigabytes.

I’ve got things set up so that only programs go on that drive.  I’ve moved my Documents folder over to my E: drive so when I’m saving files, by default they’ll go there instead of on C.  Some programs save data to the C:/Users/xxx folder without asking, and with many you don’t have the option to choose another drive. Lazy programming, I call it.

Anyway, I noticed today that my C: drive was running out of space. I do have a lot of programs installed but even so, I didn’t think I possibly have 210 gigs worth of programs sitting there.  I searched through the drive manually (I know there are programs to help with this but I don’t have any).

What did I find?  The back-ups for all of my various iOS devices were eating up more than 80 gigabytes of the 224 gig drive.  And that was including back-ups for devices I had long since sold off.  iTunes doesn’t know you’ve sold something off and no longer need the back-up; you have to manually delete the back-up yourself.

You’ll find the folder in YourName/AppData/Roaming/Apple Computer/MobileSync. iTunes won’t let you move the back-up to another drive and the individual backup folders have “helpful” names like b0d32fecd8d1fb3c8c4efb152f1dc243a2f27798.  At least they have timestamps on them, so I figured I could safely delete the old ones.

I have 4 active iOS devices – my gf and I each have an iPhone and an iPad.  Fortunately iTunes doesn’t back up everything – that would have destroyed my hard disk.  Even so, the back-up for my 128 gig iPad (which has about 80 gigs of stuff on it at the moment) takes up 20 gigs.  On the other hand, the back-up of my gf’s 64 gig iPhone took just 600 meg.

I now have just 4 back-up folders there, one for each device, each device newly backed up in the past hour.  The total file size has gone down from over 80 gigs to 33; more than 45 gigs of space freed up.

I could “archive” these to another drive and then “restore” them if and when needed.  But then every time I go to sync, (which I do almost daily) iTunes will think there’s no backup at all and do a new one and the deleting/archive process takes a little bit of time. I’ve recovered enough space on my C: drive for now, so I’ll let them remain. I’ve got 65 gig free now – also because the last time I created a new Lightroom catalog I wasn’t paying attention and that ended up on my C drive, but that was easy enough to fix.

So anyway, if you’ve ever sold off an iPhone or iPad, find the backup folder and see how much space you can recover this way.

Even though I’ve had no service from PCCW since February 9th.  Even though I’ve called them and spoken to numerous “managers,” even though I’ve complained multiple times to the Communications Authority, even though Emily Lau’s office has written multiple letters to PCCW on my behalf … PCCW is still charging me for 2 land lines I don’t have.

Iron Man 3 – Marvel’s movies have pretty pretty consistently entertaining once they figured out the formula and Iron Man 3 is no exception.  One reason I figured in advance I’d enjoy this was because it was directed and co-written by Shane Black.  I might try to put together an argument that Martin Riggs (the detective portrayed by Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon series that Black wrote) was an influence on RDJ’s Tony Stark. It is only Black’s 2nd film as a director but he’s better on managing the geography of action scenes (except the final one) than Jon Favreau (I could never figure out Favreau doing this kind of film). He’s also done something very smart here – separating RDJ from his iron suit for a large chunk of the film.

That being said, Robert Downey Jr. seemed curiously disengaged and displayed markedly lower energy than in the previous two films. Fortunately the slack is taken up by Ben Kingsley, who was extremely funny as The Mandarin.  (Is that a spoiler? Sorry.)  And the CGI effects that made Gwyneth Paltrow look consistently sexy and desirable were also remarkable. However, paying the extra to see this in 3D turned out to be a waste of money – I can think of no other 3D film I’ve seen where the technology meant less than it did here.

That’s the best thing we saw in the past week or two. Here are some lesser time killers.

Gangster Squad – How could a gangster movie starring Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Nick Nolte and Emma Stone be so horrible?  Especially coming from Warner Bros, the studio that created the greatest gangster films of the 30s and 40s? Start with a totally inept script that has far less narrative drive than would appear on the surface. Add in a mis-matched director – Ruben Fleischer. This is just his 3rd film after a terrific Zombieland and a meh 30 Minutes or Less. The icing on this shitty cake is the laughable make-up job someone did on Penn.

This movie wants to be The Untouchables. The script follows essentially the same story line with the same character types (though different cops and gangsters) and there were many moments during the film when I wanted to simply turn it off and put on De Palma’s Untouchables to remind myself of how films like this should be done. If Fleischer at least had the balls to rip anyone off for a decent action sequence, the way De Palma recycled the entire Odessa Steps sequence for his film, it might have been less of a snooze.

Movie 43 – Dig the cast – Dennis Quaid, Greg Kinnear, Common, Seth MacFarlane, Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Liev Schreiber, Naomi Watts, Anna Faris, Chris Pratt, J.B. Smoove, Kieran Culkin, Emma Stone, Richard Gere, Kate Bosworth, Jack McBrayer, Aasif Mandvi, Justin Long, Jason Sudeikis, Uma Thurman, Bobby Cannvale, Kristen Bell, John Hodgman, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Grace Moretz, Patrick Warburton, Gerard Butler, Seann William Scott, Johnny Knoxville, Halle Berry, Stephen Merchant, Terrence Howard, Elizabeth Banks, Josh Duhamel … and many more. Yet this is one of the lowest rated movies of all time on Rotten Tomatoes, scoring just 4%.  Is it really that bad? Yes.

It’s a series of short sketches a la Kentucky Fried Movie. I think this was the brainchild of Peter Farrelly, who appeared to want to make an entire movie out of jokes lower than the semen-in-Cameron-Diaz’s hair bit in There’s Something About Mary. So these are all really low brow, to put it kindly, sketches about sex. Hugh Jackman’s testicles hang underneath his chin. Anna Faris wants her lover to poop all over her while having sex. Robin goes speed dating and gets interrupted by Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. Two idiots torture a foul-mouthed leprechaun. Am I making it seem good? Sorry.

There are, it should be noted, two completely different edits of the film. The theatrical version features a producer pitching various story ideas around Hollywood. An alternate cut has a nerd kid searching the internet for a mythical film of the same title. The thirteen directors credited (including Brett Ratner, Farrelly, Griffen Dunne, Bob Odenkirk) should have their DGA cards taken away from them.

Parental Guidance and The Guilt Trip – Two Jewish family films with big star power try very hard not to show they’re Jewish. In one grandparents Billy Crystal and Better Midler teach their grandchildren lessons about life. In the other, mother and son Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen take a cross-country road trip under the slimmest of pretexts.  And you know what? Maybe I’m mellowing in my old age, but neither of them sucked. Neither would be worth a second viewing either.

It never fails. Thursday night, exactly one minute after I boarded the bus to Tai Po, I got the SMS alert from SmarTone that I could go to the Wanchai shop to pick up the Samsung Galaxy S4. Later I got an email with all sorts of instructions about how I could go to the store, get a ticket, and then they’d notify me 30 minutes before my ticket number would be called – obviously to help deal with the massive numbers of people they expected to be lining up outside the shop to collect the latest marvelous electronic dingus.

I spent the evening second guessing myself.

Do I really need a second phone dedicated to business? “Need” is relative but it would make my life easier.

And should it be the Samsung or the HTC One? That night I came across a few more reviews of The One, all of them claiming it was so much better than the S4. But based on what, exactly?  Its looks. End of story. Aluminum instead of plastic. The S4 has the faster processor, more intriguing software, possibly a better screen and camera, accepts cards to expand storage, you can pop off the back.

So Friday at noon I went to the SmarTone shop in Wanchai expecting massive lines. Instead there were 3 staff standing around looking bored. Even so, it took almost 30 minutes for the deal to be done. It’s a new contract and new number and SmarTone also makes you choose a package of crapware and I was stumped trying to figure out which of the options would annoy me the least.

But finally, done, the Samsung Galaxy S4 was mine.  The screen is gorgeous. 1080p resolution.  The camera is disappointing – images seemed kind of flat and bland, though I haven’t spent any time trying to figure out all the various software options for photo processing they include there, except for the one that lets you take a picture with the front and back cameras simultaneously. I presume some clever people will come up with some fun stuff based on this but for me it’s just a gimmick.

Next I added on the apps I knew I’d need – stuff like Dropbox and Evernote. Then it appeared that even though the phone was brand spanking new, half the apps there had updates available.

Then I spent a very long time indeed getting rid of all the crapware that SmarTone puts on the phone – an app to get the latest golf scores?

Next I’m going to have to find a better email app. I get a torrent of emails at work – somewhere between 300 and 500 a day and only about 20 are actually for me. Our email at work is hosted by Gmail and we use Outlook on our desktop – I may not be a fan of Outlook but at least I can create all sorts of rules (more than 50 at last count) to sort through and prioritize all the gunk coming in. I need something on my phone that will let me do the same. Any recommendations?

After one day, I appreciate the customizability of Android, but I find some aspects of it annoying. The 5 or 6 page “home screen” that’s different from the 5 or 6 page screens of apps installed.  And all the confirmations!!!!  Even I’d go to make a call, even though I pressed the phone icon, it then asked if I wanted to use the phone or use Skype, and then asked if I wanted to do it that time or every time, then there was some warning screen or other, and finally I got to make the call.

Simply put, for all its power, Android is not as intuitive or easy to use as iOS.  There will be a learning curve.

Finally, I noticed that this sucker runs HOT. I mean really hot.  I mean if I don’t put the screen to sleep and put this in my pocket, it’s burn-a-hole-in-your-leg hot after a few minutes.

I do like it, I suppose. I think it’s come a long way since the Galaxy S2 that I had for two weeks and hated.  I’ll spend more time trying to figure it out and get the screens set up the way I like.

Probably more to come later.  Until then, recommendations on Android email clients and any other programs you think are must-haves gratefully appreciated.

Call me crazy, call me nuts, but when I run across an interesting video on Youtube, I’ll download it in MP4 format and toss it onto my iPad for later viewing. Such was the case with this wonderful BBC 4 Arena documentary on Brian Eno that was done in 2010.

If you’re an Eno fan, this is really essential viewing. In one hour it manages to cover most facets of his career, more time spent on his ambient and experimental music but with plenty of nods to Roxy Music and a bit of time spend on his producing efforts with Coldplay and U2.  You get to see him working in his (I think home) studio, hear him discuss his thought processes and influences, it’s really a pretty complete profile.

Midway through, he mentions that one of his favorite productions of all time is Giorgio Moroder’s work on Donna Summer’s “State of Independence.”  (He likes the sound of the robotic sequencers against her voice.) I never even knew she covered this. I flipped over to Spotify and had the song streaming in a matter of seconds.

Although … I really love Moodswings’ version with Chrissie Hynde, which I think is the original (too lazy to check). Spotify had the single version of that but it didn’t have any of their albums because suddenly I got really in the mood for an extremely guilty pleasure, Moodswings’ Live at Leeds album, which basically sounds like 100 people randomly hitting percussion instruments for 36 minutes or so, with a bit of a dub or some tape loops tossed in here and there. It’s an all time favorite. Please don’t tell anyone.

Having completed the documentary, I then wanted to hear some classic Eno stuff. I brought up Spotify on my iPad and it found Eno and when I clicked on his name, that little wheel just kept spinning, minutes on end.

So I took out my iPhone and did the same search on Spotify and the search results came up instantly (and both my iPhone and iPad were on the desk next to each other, both on the 3 network) but not quite right. Search on his name and you find him but then it says there’s nothing available. Butthen click on albums and you get a list of almost every album he’s done and in a few seconds I was listening to Another Green World, which mostly streamed pretty smoothly with just a couple of buffering pauses in 30 minutes.

At home, my Spotify boat seems to have run aground. Spotify is refusing to work on my desktop Windows PC.  It worked for awhile but then a few days ago it came up and said it was offline and couldn’t get online.  So I followed instructions and did a clean reinstall.  Following that, it doesn’t come up at all.  I get “error 101″ which means it is likely being blocked by my firewall, but I checked and saw it was one of the allowed programs there.

Hmmm. Even though it worked in the past, I next tried disabling my anti-virus software. Nope.  And I’ve got a few different VPN programs installed so I deleted those. Nope. Their tech support is telling me to make all sorts of entries in my router, which makes little sense because at home, on WiFi and not on cellular, my iPhone has no trouble reaching Spotify through that same router.  So the answer clearly lies within my PC but all tech support keeps telling me to do is to do a clean reinstall.

I can live with that – I’ll probably use this mostly for mobile purposes. I wanted to use it on my desktop primarily to get links and build playlists to share here, which I now cannot do – at least temporarily. No idea why the same search on my iPhone and iPad, on the same network and right next to each other, would work on one device and not the other.

Anyway, watch the Eno documentary.  I really loved it.  Here’s a link in case you’re not seeing the player which should have been embedded above.