HighChaparral's comments

HighChaparral | 2 months ago | on: Nike's Crisis and the Economics of Brand Decay

Not a single mention of the word fashion. Here in the UK, Adidas Sambas (and similar models like Gazelles and Spezials) have been everywhere for the last couple of years, particularly amongst women and girls, who often have two or more pairs, making the most of the huge number of colours - sorry, “colourways” - available. This is purely for daily wear, btw, rather than athletic/gym use.

HighChaparral | 2 months ago | on: Terrence Malick's Disciples

I’m a huge Malick fan and agree that The New World is his masterpiece. I still remember seeing it in the cinema 20 years ago and almost levitating out of there. Just a beautiful piece of work. I’m glad there’s just about room for Malick somewhere in the film industry.

HighChaparral | 1 year ago | on: Why is Warner Bros. Discovery putting old movies on YouTube?

It’s Zaslav-era WB so there’s probably some kind of weird tqx write-off happening, or some contractual agreement that they’re living up to in the cheapest way possible.

Some good stuff on there - shout out to The Mission, which includes one of Morricone’s greatest scores.

HighChaparral | 1 year ago | on: Sony ends production of Blu-ray Disc, recordable MiniDisc, and MiniDV media

I think Sony only have one plant left (in Austria) pressing physical discs.

Vantiva (formerly Technicolor) are the biggest players but have just announced they’re unloading their Supply Chain Services division, which includes their disc-pressing plants, to private equity.

Blu-Ray (both HD and 4K) is obviously a niche product now but there are numerous boutique labels doing great licensing work. It feels in a healthier place than it did a couple of years ago when the streaming wars were at their height.

It’s a bit like a return to the Laserdisc days of the 80s/90s. Most people were happy to rent VHS tapes (read: streaming today) but there were enough connoisseurs, techies and collectors around to keep the premium physical media format of its day alive and kicking.

HighChaparral | 1 year ago | on: The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained

The chain makes more sense as being one tenth of a furlong (as still used in horse racing in the US, Great Britain and Ireland!), which is of course one eighth of a mile.

Also, an acre is one furlong long by one chain wide.

Not coincidentally, a cricket pitch is one chain long.

My education was almost all in the metric system but a decent knowledge of the imperial system still makes the world a bit easier to understand.

HighChaparral | 2 years ago | on: Robbie Robertson has died

I just love this. Scorsese’s camera moves - the way he swoops in behind Mavis and then slowly comes back around her as she starts to soar. The way he lights up Danko for the start of his solo bit. It’s just a beautifully put together document of a great performance. It was shot separately on a soundstage, making it essentially an early music video, and a great one at that. That Robertson and Scorsese were still working together right to the end just makes it all the more poignant and wondrous.

HighChaparral | 3 years ago | on: Doom the Way It Was Meant to Be Played – v1.1 Multi-Monitor [video]

I use it daily and say each letter - everyone else I work with says Sequel.

This all stems from when I originally learnt it 20 odd years ago and read something on the web that proclaimed S-Q-L was correct, and "Sequel" referred specifically to the Microsoft implementation.

(The irony is not lost on me that having started working with MySQL, then Oracle, I've now ended up working daily with SQL Server and so I'm wrong by my own definition, which I probably took as gospel erroneously in the first place!)

HighChaparral | 3 years ago | on: Doom the Way It Was Meant to Be Played – v1.1 Multi-Monitor [video]

I got really worried when he pronounced AUTOEXEC as AUTO-E-X-E-C. I realised it's one of those things I rarely, if ever, heard said out loud and so this weird panic came over me that maybe I was saying it wrong all this time.

Luckily, later in the video, he called it AUTO-EXEC (as in an executive). Panic over.

Great video, however you pronounce it.

HighChaparral | 3 years ago | on: 'Terminator' 1 and 2 Save Their Reveals for the Right Time

Cameron has had plenty of opportunities and never has. There was something of a controversy when the DVD was re-released with a new Dolby Digital surround track and the original mono was left off. A lot of people felt very strongly about how those guns sounded.

HighChaparral | 3 years ago | on: Are film critics losing sync with audiences?

This was my reaction to the article also - the base assumption that the relatively tiny group of audience members who rate films on imdb are statistically representative of the audience at large needs to be proven first.

HighChaparral | 4 years ago | on: Magritte’s Prophetic Surrealism

It never ceases to amaze me that in this day and age the owner of The Son of Man is not publicly known. I wonder if the owner displays it in their home for their own pleasure, or has it locked up in a super secure vault somewhere.
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