Realizer (app)

Here’s a new way to design layout for iOS app (or fool your friends into thinking you have your own app). Check out Realizer at http://realizerapp.com/.

You create an account (id/pw) and you can create a mock up of an app.

You can add screens (320×480 images) and add ‘links’ – select what image to go to when it’s tapped (drop down list).

I made one for b5 in about 5 minutes including creating an account, capturing the images from the site and edits, etc.

Then you download the app, log in and tap the name of your app in the list.

The first page shows up. The ‘link’ on that page is the image and ‘Enter’ text which, when tapped, loads the second page (an image of the About Us from this site).

Pretty easy – I’d post the id/pw I used so you could get the app and see it for yourself, but I don’t trust you rascals. Check it out and see if you can do some April Fool’s jokes on people that you created your own app! Post details in the comments.

I plan on using this for my clients (brainwashinc.com – iOS development) when applicable along w/ mockapp.com which I have recommended to clients ever since I heard of it… I can’t remember – a while back.

They’ve got some room to grow with it in adding landscape support, animation for the navigation would be nice, auto-scaling images would be helpful, etc. but it’s quick, easy and does the job (I see it as a quick view into what your app will look like). I’d also like a ‘viewer’ option – allow others to view the output w/o needing the id/pw.

I give it 4 babbles:

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Limitless

Tony reviewed Limitless the other day and though he gave it a 3 out of 5, it actually motivated me to see the movie. I didn’t know much about it before and it sounded pretty interesting. Certainly an interesting question: what would someone do w/ limitless mental abilities?

I really liked the tone and feel of the movie – they used the devices well to shift the perception when the mental abilities kicked in. I like Bradley Cooper despite being a ‘pretty boy’ – I think he doesn’t take the ‘gimme roles’ that he probably could get to fan the flames of ego. And he’s not afraid to have fun in his roles.

As a story, it’s fun, interesting, takes you ‘down the rabbit hole’ a bit in the sense of what this can lead to good and bad.

As a morality tale, it takes a traditional approach of ultimate power corrupts ultimately for the most part. He’s not a ‘bad guy’ clearly so he’s somewhat sympathetic, but he’s not a ‘good guy’ either. Anti-hero? Everyman? General example of how people, generally selfish, would use these powers for personal gain and self-satisfaction?

So I think it’s a good telling of a somewhat classic tale directed well w/ little getting in the way of the story and the enjoyment. It didn’t help that my expectations were a bit low.

I give it 4 Babbles

RiffTrax: The Boy in the Plastic Bubble

If you aren’t familiar w/ RiffTrax, it’s the MST3K guys riffing on movies. You can buy and download the audio and play it while watching the movie.
In some cases, you can also get the DVD image and burn that to watch. That’s the case for The Boy in the Plastic Bubble.
They let John Travolta have it though his acting and this movie in general is a pretty easy target. I saw this movie when I was a kid and remembered certain key parts (horse jump, suit battery) so it was a little nostalgic watching it. However, it would have been too painful (not in an emotional way, but in a “cleanse my eyes” way) w/o rifftrax. Thanks guys.
They’ve got some new ones out for Inception and Highlander – two great ones. Made greater??? We’ll see.
If you’ve enjoyed any rifftrax, let us know which ones.
I give TBITPB 3 babbles

3D Movies

I’m becoming less and less a fan of the new 3D movie flood. The first one I saw was Avatar and I really liked it. I think the next one was “Despicable Me” which was pretty cool too. After that, I don’t remember too many.

What made me start to dislike them was when I took my family to see one and got his with $3/person b/c unfortunately that showing was in 3D.

The last one was “Voyage of the Dawn Treader.” Again, an unfortunate showtime meant 3D. About halfway into the movie I remembered “Oh, yeah, this in 3D.” But then I noticed that I cdn’t tell if anything was coming out at me. I took the glasses off and the picture was practically in focus.

I felt like it was all a gimmick – let’s put in some obligatory ‘coming atcha’ things in the beginning then we’ll just phone it in and rake in $3. And get them to give us the glasses back too! In the name of ‘recycling’!!!

I feel duped.

Now if I was able to bring in my old glasses and avoid the $3, at least then I wdn’t feel cheated. Isn’t that recycling in an even better way?

So these days we avoid 3D.

Catfish

I wanted to see this movie, but wasn’t sure if it was an interesting, creepy story or another “Blair Witch.” It’s neither.

It starts by introducing you to Yaniv Schulman. He’s a photographer in New York who had a picture published and a little girl sent him a painting of it from Michigan. Yaniv’s brother and a friend decide to start documenting the relationship with video. Over time, Yaniv gets many more paintings and develops a friendship w/ the girl, her mom and big sister.

Yaniv and the older sister, Megan, form a relationship via email, facebook, phone, etc. but it becomes difficult when they try to meet face to face.

SPOILERS BELOW!!!

During a trip, Megan sends Yaniv several cover songs she says she recorded but in looking for the origin of the songs, he finds the exact same recording online. DA-DA-DAAAAAHN!

Yaniv, his brother and their friend decide to drive out and surprise them w/ a visit to finally meet everyone in person.

As soon as they get there, things don’t seem right. However, it’s not the creepy “someone’s getting killed Deliverance style” that the trailer leads you to believe. That part of the movie isn’t really anything and lasts a couple minutes… nothing happens there.

The people don’t look like their pictures, the little girls doesn’t seem to really paint… what’s going on!?!?!

Well, they soon figure out that the mom is really behind it all. She’s constructed a fantasy world complete w/ people, their facebook accounts (which is great for a history so she cd keep it all straight), separate phones, etc. Slowly the truth comes out and it’s really just an escape of a fairly sad life that’s gone too far.

It’s a very interesting view into life and I wonder if this type of thing happens more often than we think – it’s just they happened to be videoing this time.

I hope from this movie some people can realize people are only human, we all need things that keep us sane, give us meaning, companionship, a break from stresses of life, etc. But also that we can’t let things go too far – this story ended fairly well, but it hurt some people and could have been really damaging.

I think they did a good job making the film and handled the situation pretty maturely. I have to wonder how Vince and other people semi-related to the film (the real people in the pictures used on facebook, etc.) handled the end result.

In the end, it’s an interesting look at life and some specific lives and the dangers of letting things get out of hand.

3 of 5 Babbles

the room

This movie is terrible… just as we expected. And we loved it! It’s being shown at midnight in various places and has all of the audience participation to make it a great “Rocky Horror Picture Show” alternative. So it’s getting a good cult following as put forth in this EW article. Though there is some question as to the horribleness being intentional or not…

Wiseau insists he always intended The Room to be partly comedic, and that the movie’s perceived faults — including the out-of-focus scenes — are deliberate. ”Let’s assume we did everything perfect way,” he hypothesizes. ”You will be asking this question? No, no.” However, another anonymous cast member has no doubt that Wiseau is merely making the best of an extremely bad job: ”I don’t have anything to say about Tommy as a person. He is a nice guy. But he is full of s—. He was trying to put together a drama. It was basically his stage to show off his acting ability.”

I believe it was not intentional – if it was, the the guy is a genius which is just as hard to believe.

So how do you enjoy it? How can it be fun to watch at home? Well, Netflix has it so get that. While you wait for it to arrive in the mail, get the Rifftrax for it. Brought to you by the great minds behind MST3K w/ all the awesome wit and punch!

WARNING: There are some ‘love’ scenes w/nudity and are just plain painful to watch.

The movie gets 1 Babble

But the fun/Rifftrax gets 5 Babbles

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Through the awesomeness of Netflix ‘watch instant’ I watched “Exit Through the Gift Shop” a Banksy film.

A bit of a ‘freeform’ documentary, it follows a lot of famous street-artists around doing their thing. The basis is Thierry Guetta, a vintage clothing store owner and all around do-whatever kinda guy, pretty much video tapes everything he does.

He visits family in France and follows his cousin, Space Invader, out putting up his art around the town. Of course Thierry is videoing the whole thing. It evolves into following more and more artists around. Thierry makes everyone think (or they just assume) he’s making a documentary.

But he never even watches the tapes – they just all go into boxes and boxes… and boxes and boxes full of tapes.

Eventually he starts following Banksy around and gets caught. He holds solid and Banksy then completely trusts him. He eventually does create a film… that’s completely unwatchable. And at Banksy’s suggestion, Thierry becomes a street artist, but he starts at the top. He has a showing and hypes it up with quotes from Banksy and other famous artists.

At the show (and even before), Thierry’s “work” sells for thousands of dollars and he sells over a million dollars with of “art.” Perception is reality. I have to wonder what those people think about the work now that they’ve seen the movie???

It seems the most he contributed to the actual artwork was splattering some paint on the finished product produced by hired artists. He directed them and what he pulled off is amazing, but it prompts the question: what is art? And what is valuable?

Thierry got immediate street value by borrowing on the reputation of others. Does that make it art or is it “fake?”

Anyway, it’s a fun film to watch and brings up a lot of questions about value in art and what art really is: the idea, the execution, the perception? I’d say Thierry’s “art” what his pulling it all off (not that it was a scam… completely. I’m sure he’d say it wasn’t.).

I give it 3.5 Babbles

The Tourist – with a secret key to watching this movie

I went to this movie with fairly low expectations. The critics didn’t like it (review by Roger Ebert of the The Tourist). So… I LOVED IT! The critics missed it. Ebert got it right that it’s a Audrey Heburn/Cary Grant, but he missed the rest.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Having read the books, this was one of my favorites. I love the characters, especially Reepicheep. Unfortunately, these can’t be fully captured in a movie time-span. I’d say they did about as good of a job as you can do – as they have with the other movies as well.

However, there’s something missing. I can’t put my finger on it, but it feels somehow shallow. Maybe because it needs to be somewhat kid-friendly (no blood in sword/axe battles) or maybe because of the condensed format. Maybe it’s the age-old problem of book-to-screen adaptation. Not sure.
The books feel patient. The story’s steep in Narnia reality. The movies don’t feel rushed, but that tone is mostly lost.

Will Poulter was spot on as Eustace – super annoying. The highlight of the book, to me, was Aslan and Eustace as a dragon. The movie treatment of that was good, but probably could not capture my imagination of the scene. Again, tough to adapt something describing pain like that.

Overall, this is a good movie and so far my favorite. They did many things right and while I want to judge it on it’s own merits, I can’t help but have expectations from the book (and my imagination). Since I feel I’ve beaten that horse sufficiently, I want to make sure to point out that the movie is really good. While the acting, effects, pace, etc. are all right on, it only suffers from the limitations of the medium. I’d be curious to hear from someone who hadn’t read the books.

I give it 3.5 Babbles

Little Fokkers

Perversion, adultery, drug abuse, distrust, deception, promiscuity and a title that unapologetically sounds like cussing – ah, the holidays. Despite having a star-studded cast, mostly of these big names had small roles. Dustin Hoffman originally wasn’t going to be in the film and all but Stiller and De Niro hardly contribute. Owen Wilson and Jessica Alba’s roles are vital, but mostly due to plot and not screen time.

Once again the drive of the plot is Jack’s distrust of Greg – imagine that. Not since Shrek has a sequel revamped the same plot so much. Only this time, so much is put into setting up the misunderstanding that little is left for comedy… well, at least they way this was written.

There are a few humorous parts but they are short lived and few and mostly passing comments and such.

More than that though, the tone of the movie, while being a comedy, felt forced and overridden by depressing themes (no, I wasn’t in a bad mood when seeing this movie). It’s just when I think about various scenes, I think about how this guy was cheating on his wife, that person is apart from their spouse, this kid is blah and Jack, once again, is causing such problems in a good marriage. It’s suppose to be funny, but it wasn’t. It was just… he’s being a jerk. If I’m being too harsh on the movie or taking it too seriously, I have to blame the movie.

Another odd element was the whole “new house” and Harvey Keitel as Randy Weir the home remodel foreman. It was an odd cameo/role – small, strange character, didn’t really add much but had a large presence in his scenes. I wondered if it was going somewhere or just random.

Again, the whole “new house” aspect seemed weird – was it all just a long path to get to have the kids’ party at Kevin’s? It seemed like a really forced device for various parts. Of course, it played an intricate role in ending the movie in a opening for another movie.

I liked the first movie and really liked the second. The cast is great, the relationship are awesome and the dynamics pulled it all together. But this movie fell flat in all those areas.

I give it 2 out of 5 Babbles

The Santa Clause

For kids, “The Santa Clause” is a story about believing in Santa. For adults, we all know it’s an epic, existential battle between science and faith, between philosophy and belief, between Neal the Doctor and Charlie the “Sport.”
The story begins with a company Christmas party – the irony is thick pitting the modern sales reports against Christmas Eve to the point of an adulterous Santa. Oh, yes, modern man comes out swinging for the fences.
But childhood strikes back with a young Charlie being read “Twas the Night Before Christmas” and his questioning of “Rose Suchak Ladder” as if to hint to us all to see things as a child. Childlike faith.
Santa, reindeer, the suit and some present deliveries later they wake up back at home with the adult in denial and the child in heaven (not literally, no spoiler, he didn’t die). This device of Scott Calvin becoming Santa is just a necessity of the true story. Enter the Doctor.
Until now, we’ve only seen Neal as a minor role. In the shadows, controlling with his puppet master ways – tapping his watch. Modern man can be distracted from just about anything if he’s told time is running out. Neal is clever.

The climax of the battle comes in a debate directly between Charlie and Neal over the existence of Santa. Charlie explains the breakdown in the time continuum that occurs when Santa is in the sleigh, how not everyone celebrates Christmas (thus dispelling the argument that Santa has to visit every boy and girl in the world) and ultimately how faith plays a role (e.g., have you ever seen a million dollars?) – just because you haven’t seen something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Personally, I’ve never seen George Washington, King Henry VIII nor Julius Caesar. Nor have my friends.
SPOILER ALERT
As the story continues, we find out the true disease of the Doctor and why he’s trying to infect others: betrayal. He wanted a certain gift as a child and when he didn’t get it, he not only denied his faith, he made it his life’s work to infect others.
Here’s where the storytellers shine. Neal’s faith isn’t restored by the receiving of the wanton gift. No. His guard seems to lower for just an instant and in that moment he simply looks into Santa’s eyes. These eyes that care. These eyes no longer of Scott Calvin his foe. No longer Scott Calvin former lover of his wife. No longer Scott Calvin the man. But Santa’s eyes. And in that reflective gaze through which his own soul is revealed. He believes.
Then and only then, he receives his gift. Belief is a prerequisite. Believe and then receive. Now the Doctor is a child.
Peace.
Merry Christmas.

I give it 3 out of 5 Babbles:

Tangled

You probably know the story from the trailer and you can tell the animation is great. The storytelling is awesome and the plot construction, voice acting, etc. – it’s all great. But what is the core? What is the lesson learned?
I had a chance to sit down with the infamous Mother Gothel and talk about how she sees the story and what the implications of this movie are.