I believe it's one of the best vampire movies. Core plot remains the same, with some elements changed. Especially the ones dealing with the "father," which was a nice surprise. The details of how he came to be with Eli, or Abby in the remake (both can be a boy's name I found) and why. It's not touched on in the Swedish film, but added in the American. I can tell you it's not the same reason why he is with her in the novel. I think it is as good, if not better than the original movie. They are remarkably similar.
What I felt what was unrealistic about it was its Black characters. They're scared and helpless, they do not speak up, nor defend themselves. A quote from Isaac Saney on To Kill a Mockingbird to sum up what I mean: I've done a bit of searching and and found that Roger Ebert's review of the movie shares this view. I encourage all to read it.
Interesting premise, but I lost interest as reading. I have never read the book, but I love the movie Let the Right One In and it's American remake, Let Me In. I watched them both within the same week using Netflix. Both are such good movies, I can't choose between them. I plan on reading the book eventually. Another novel that made it to the big screen, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. I haven't read the novel, but it's movie ranks among one of my favorites. I hear it's audiobook version makes for a wonderful audio performance.
Mockingbird is so popular because of its supposed anti-racist message. I think people are scared to respond to it negatively. That or people are oblivious to the fact that the book is totally unrealistic.
I haven't read the book or seen the movie in years, but I remember hating them. Not because it was some boring school assignment, I hated the novel and movie themselves. Tom Robinson, and other Black characters are plot devices, nothing more. Their only purpose is to glorify the hero Atticus. After the verdict in the courtroom scene, it's so strange, all the Blacks stand, and quietly stare at Atticus, honoring him for what he has done. They should be outraged! Insist the innocence of Tom! Storm the courtroom! But no. Only one race is the hero of this story, and that race is White.
Updated tool: link In this guide, I will describe how to rip the pre-rendered videos from the Kingdom Hearts II PS2 disc. There are already a few KH2 FMV ripping guides on the Internet, but I aim for this one to be detailed, complete, and simple to do. Many steps involve the command line. If you are unfamiliar with it, scripts provided by me will take out most of the hassle of needing to know what each command-line program does and how to use it. Prerequisites include that you have administrator access to a fairly modern Windows or Linux computer, about 3 GB of free hard drive space, a working sound card, a disc drive that can read PS2 discs, and a copy of KH2. Extracting on Mac's OS X should also be possible, but won't be coverd here as I do not own, nor have access to one. All required programs are available for free. I have bundled the scripts and required programs in a 7-Zip and Tar archive. Here is the list of programs needed for this guide: Cygwin, a collection of ported GNU tools which are needed to run my scripts, only specific utilites needed are included in the 7-Zip file (this program is not needed if on a Linux computer, GNU tools come standard on Linux); PSS_demux, used to separate video and audio data from the PSS files (Windows only, but runs on Wine with Visual C++ 6 libraries); MPlayer, used to convert the audio file into something a little more format-friendly for encoding (Linux users can install MPlayer using their package manager). Download the scripts and tools: Windows: kh2fmv.7z 7.2 MB Linux: kh2fmv.tar.gz 46.5 KB Scripts have been tested on Ubuntu 10.10, Windows 2000, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. All Windows systems were emulated virtually, but they should work on native installs as well. Step one: Extracting the PSS files PSS stands for PlayStation Stream. These files contain the video and audio data for the FMVs. Insert your KH2 disc into your computer's disc drive. An ISO file can be used in place of an actual disc. In Linux, open a terminal window and run kh2fmv.sh. This script will work with KH2 NTSC-J, NTSC-U, PAL, and Final Mix. The script will check if a KH2 disc is in a disc drive, if not, it will ask where an ISO image file of KH2 is, if found, it will start extracting the PSS files from it. You can also provide ISO location as an argument: In Windows, this is very much the same. Open a command prompt by executing the console.bat file. As you may have noticed, it extracts ena.pss first, which is the ending and also the largest FMV in KH2, so please be patient if you are on a slow computer. After the script is done, you should have 11 PSS files, or 12 if ripping from Final Mix. Step two: Demux the PSS files using PSS_demux PSS_demux is included in both the 7-Zip and Tar archives. You can execute PSS_demux by typing PSS_demux.exe into the command prompt and pressing enter, Linux users will first have to give it executable permissions. Drag the PSS files you wish to convert into the new window that appears. PSS_demux should then create a M2V and DAT file for each PSS file. Step three: Append the missing header information to the DAT files & convert them into WAVE The DATs are ATRAC3 audio files with header information missing. Headers are data at the start of a file that tells the OS what type of file it is. To get programs to be able to correctly read the DATs, we need to append the ATRAC3 header information to them. Then, we're going to convert the audio files into something more compatible. To bypass the need to install an ATRAC3 codec, we're going to use the movie player MPlayer. MPlayer has native support for ATRAC3, and has audio file output functionality. Linux users can install MPlayer though their package manager. The 7-Zip file will have the MPlayer executable for Windows users. Running the dat2wav.bat (Windows) or dat2wav.sh (Linux) script will automate this otherwise complicated step for you. Conclusion You should now have playable video and audio files for each FMV. The next thing to do would be to encode and mux the video and audio. I will not explain how, as I believe that would merit its own separate guide. RipBot264 is a Windows application that I've used before that tries to simplify encoding. It should be noted that KH2 FMVs have a display aspect ratio of 16:10 (pixel aspect, 11:10), non-standard for MPEG2, M2V files are flagged as having an aspect of 4:3 instead. Keep this in mind when re-encoding the videos. The only reason I can think of to not re-encode the videos is if you're using the videos for editing and want the maximum quality possible. Just remember to resize the videos within your video editing software before rendering. If you want to just watch the videos on your computer right now, you can use MPlayer. Next up is Re:CoM. EDIT: I've found that someone has already made tools available that automates KH2 ripping, it's very similar to mine. You can check it out here.
My current desktop. Wallpaper is one of the Ubuntu 11.04 defaults. Conky configuration can be found here.
I listen to some NPR radio/podcasts. One in particular that I've been listening to recently is GeekSpeak. Very informative and fun to listen to at the same time.
I use both Chrome\Chromium and Firefox. Chrome really is faster than anything else I've tried. I'm learning JavaScript programming, and there's a real noticeable difference in performance when I run my scripts in Chrome than other browsers. Developer tools that come default in Chrome are really helpful. The upcoming Netflix plugin will finally let Linux users such as myself watch Netflix on our computers (I'm currently only able to stream Netflix through a borrowed Wii). Firefox is so customizable and plugin rich, it's hard to leave it for something else, which is why I still use it everyday. Plugins as well as the default features such as being able to toggle which toolbars are shown, change placement, visibility and size of icons, tab grouping, and the web console are the reasons why I use Firefox as my main browser. I have also tried Opera for the fist time a couple months ago. Although it has many features, such as Opera's portal homepage which I think is awesome, I kind of felt most of it was bloatware. A couple of my favorite websites simply won't render at all, not incorrectly. Sometimes I would get crashes that seem random, and some websites would annoyingly suggest that I update to a more recent/better browser. I was dissatisfied with Opera after about a week of use, but I haven't given up on it. I will probably download and install it again to give it another try next time they update their release. I only use Linux at home so no Internet Explorer or Safari for me.
For removing temporary files on Windows, I recommended the free program CCleaner. A quote from thier site: It's been over a year since I last used CCleaner, because I no longer run Windows at home. But I remember having great results with this program. Another suggestion is using a disk usage analyzer. Using one will let you easily find which directories take up the most space on your hard drive. Attached is an example of one that I ran on my computer. I believe there's one that's similar for Windows called WinDirStat. View attachment 26156
Fansubbers, AMV makers, even Glee clubs and the like really should beware. How are we supposed to show appreciation for the things we love when there's that looming possibility of getting arrested?
It doesn't matter what a court ruling says, abortions would still be done even if it was illegal to do in all cases. I'm a vegetarian, and if a court decision was made today to forbid the consumption of all animal-derived products, I would not support it. This type of ruling is a threat to our traditional freedom to choose how we live our lives. So no, I will not be wearing white.
Same question was asked several months ago in this thread: KH-Vids.net Reserve Cutscene Archive & Video Request Thread Original question: Answer: You can also download my own encode of the KH2 opening here: http://streamstock.net/media/kingdomhearts2/wmv/fm/opn.wmv
Actually, I've recently updated the images again. I've only done KH2 so far but KH1 will also be added. Higher quality, as always. ZIP files contain all previously posted images for KH2, and more have been added. Images have been resized to be aspect ratio correct, but you can also download them in their native resolutions. Prescaled Native
Yeah, if having one baby is good, why not two? Three? Four? And it goes on until you use up every single egg. It's the donation argument, where someone says, if giving one hundred dollars to charity is good, why not two hundred... I believe death is defined when a person loses brain function. So I believe life begins when brain function begins. We're all preventing someone from existing, every single moment we're not having sex with the opposite gender.
I like knowing that there isn't a cutscene after I die in a game. That way I wouldn't have to let myself be killed just to see what happens. But I do agree that adding extras like that would make it more interesting.
I'm finding it hard to respect your beliefs even though I think your actually a decent person. I for one can still enjoy life believing that there might not be a god, or something else out there. That there might not be a point to anything. The different things we tell ourselves to give our lives meaning, all delusions. Yet we happily embrace them. If being spiritual works for you, I guess I'm okay with that. I'm no different. I live my life trying to make a difference, no matter how small. Even while knowing that it might not matter in the end. Re-watching The Matrix Reloaded, I came upon this quote, "Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness."
Yeah, really no point in debating it here. It's obvious that man has been wronged, but the law wont change if people don't do something about it.
Mammoth tusk. Yeah I know, but I think it sounds like ivory.
I've had to deal with a death in the family recently as well. Even though death doesn't sadden me much, it does sadden me when I see other people crying for their dead loved ones. Just try not to upset them in this time of mourning.
