Well, it's that ime of year again, folks. They're doling out those little gold statues and here are my picks for the winners:
Best Director: Ang Lee
Best Film: Brokeback Mountain
Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman
Best Supporting Actor: Paul Giamatti
Best Actress: Keira Knightley
Best Supporting Actress: Rachel Weisz
Cinematography: Brokeback Mountain
Best Documentary: March of the Penguins
Best Foreign Film: Paradise Now
Best Visual Effects: King Kong
I usually get these picks almost perfectly each year, but I think there might be a surprise with Reese Witherspoon this year. We'll see!
He's probably listening to the hilariously funny Ricky Gervais podcast and can't get away. Actually, the news got to me second-hand (then first hand) that he's not going to be directing King Lear at the Marin Shakespeare Company show this summer. This is obviously a blow for many actors who'd planned on auditioning for the show just to work with the Artistic Associate and get a taste of what working with Peter Hall or the Royal Shakespeare Company is really like (albeit second-hand). Rob & I did a reading of Troilus and Cressida when he was in town last summer and he's just a generally sharp guy and fun to shoot-the-shit with.
The alternative reason for me personally to join the cast of King Lear is to work with master Shakespearean Barry Kraft. Barry has been around, but mostly up at the Ashland Shakespeare Festival for many years where he served also as dramaturg. Barry is going to play the title role and I'm sure will be brilliant.
The director I'd love to work with is John Barton. Since that will likely never happen due to his general "supreme-ness" (and that I don't live in the UK), I'll settle for Rob Clare. Word is that he'll be back from the UK just before the premiere to work with the cast and help out in any way he can. Groovy.
So with my Powerbook sound problem, I'd been waiting and waiting to hear from Apple after tech support promised to call me with an answer from engineering. Meanwhile, they released the 10.4.5 update and this apparently resolved the problem so I was thinking that they weren't going to bother. About a week past the day they promised to call, the support guy called and said that the updater should resolve the problem (I haven't done much testing to verify this). Better late than never, right?
I cancelled my NetFlix account a year or so ago because it just took them so long to get movies out to me. I have over 500 DVDs which I've purchased over the years and there are some I haven't even seen yet (the ones my wife bought)..so I should be watching those anyway. But watching a movie is kinda like deciding what you want for dinner– you're usually in the mood for something specific.
I'd been catergorized as a "heavy user" at NetFlix, which I didn't know about at the time. I got it when the deliveries started to slow down and more and more DVDs were a "Very long wait." Finally, I just got tired of the bullshit and cancelled it. Little did I know that someone had filed a class-action lawsuit against NetFlix during that same time period which challenged their promise of "unlimited" monthly rentals. Since then, NetFlix has changed their TOS so they can ass-rape you any time they want.
Some guy did a test on 2 NetFlix accounts to see if his theory was correct. These were DVDs going to the same house and ordered at the same time but using 2 different accounts.
http://www.dvd-rent-test.dreamhost.com/
Obviously, it confirms that they "throttle" users who return their movies promptly after watching them.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=netflix+throttling
http://www.geocities.com/netflixthrottle/index.html
Who knows? Maybe the USPS is getting the reacharound?
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4371593,00.html
I recently purchased a brand new Powerbook 17" a few months ago and the sound has been giving me trouble ever since. Every once in a while the audio skips and echoes. The first time I called Apple Support about it, they were obnoxious; like they are most of the time. The first tier of support is a joke. I called about a video problem with my previous Powerbook and the guy kept insisting that I needed to "update my NVIDIA video card drivers" on a Powerbook which had an ATI video card. Then he tried to convince me that if a kbase article didn't exist for a problem, then the problem didn't exist. Oh, geeeez...
Back to my audio problem: in looking on Apple's Support Forum, I saw that I wasn't alone with this issue by a long shot. The numbers have been growing and luckily some guy recorded the problem (since it can't be reproduced on-demand), which I think helped a lot. Another support call to Apple and they point me to a kbase article (which I'd already seen) and say that this problem exists when two or more audio applications are running at the same time. Are you kidding me? The solution is to use only one audio application at a time? This is absurd because the stuttering sound happens when I only have ONE application open at a time...and technically Safari is not an "audio application."
The thing that ticks off most people is Apple's unwillingness to admit anything officially. It took a third support call to get transferred to a Product Specialist, who (more or less) admitted the issue and that the engineers were working on it. He is going to call me back in the next day or so to let me know what the resolution is. I'm not optimistic about this, considering the track record so far, but we'll see.
It's interesting to see how Apple gets such high marks for customer service and support year after year. About 80-90% of the times I've called over the years (which is pretty rare), they always assume I'm a complete moron. While I'm sure that 90% of their calls are from the mid-western housewives who just got their first Mac and are trying to connect their camera to iPhoto, I clearly do not fall into that demographic, especially since I can tell them in detail the troubleshooting steps I've already performed the moment I get them on the phone. But this never helps and they make me repeat them anyway.
What they don't know is that I'm only pretending to go through the troubleshooting steps while they're on the phone...just to pacify them. I just make myself a cup of coffee and do other things while I'm "rebooting," etc. It's just such a waste of time.
The new OS X update is likely coming out next week and it's questionable if it contains the solution... Meanwhile, users have started a petition called "Powerbook Defect" and it's over 1000 names already.
http://www.powerbookdefect.info
Yep, I'll admit it. It's been over a month since my last "confession" (here on my blog). Why? Well, I've been drowning in work. In all the years I've been in the ad business, I've always had a slowdown around the holidays and then things pick up in late January or February. Not this year. No way. Straight on through the new year and beyond. If my blog dedication in 2006 ends up being like 2005, then I'll have to rethink this home page.
It's also "audition season." Yep, it's that time of year during which Shakespearean actors like myself audition over and over for the summer festivals. I'd really like to do King Lear at Marin Shakespeare Festival this summer and there's a few shows over at the California Shakespeare Festival they seem to want me for. We'll see what happens.