Last night I had the great pleasure of joining Sal and Joe from Cinema Under The Stairs along with Simon and Simon, two other CUTS regulars, to get all nerdy and spoileriffic on the first CUTS movie review podcast.

And what else were we going to talk about but Avengers: Endgame. Listen to us dissect scenes, answer questions like does the Soul Stone have warranty period, and generally take a huge deep dive into all things Endgame. Obviously, it's full of spoilers from the beginning. If you haven't seen Endgame yet, do so, then come back.

(It's around 130Mb, so make sure you're on a fast and uncapped connection)

Some of the things I mentioned in the podcast (also full of spoilers):

• Metafilter Fanfare spoiler post and discussion.
• The Empire Magazine Podcast featuring the Russo Brothers.
• Rob Leane's article Avengers: Endgame: Celebrating the Unsung Savior of the World.

We had a huge amount of fun doing this, and we've talked about doing some more. So subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll see you soon.

Bryan Boyer built an e-ink device powered by a Raspberry Pi that displays films at 24fph (frames per hour).

Brian explains:

Films are vain creatures that typically demand a dark room, full attention, and eager eyeballs ready to accept light beamed from the screen or projector to your visual cortex. VSMP inverts all of that. It is impossible to “watch” in a traditional way because it’s too slow. In a staring contest with VSMP you will always lose. It can be noticed, glanced-at, or even inspected, but not watched.

As a self-confessed film nerd I love this idea:

Can a film be consumed at the speed of reading a book? Yes, just as a car city can be enjoyed on foot. Slowing things down to an extreme measure creates room for appreciation of the object, as in Brasília, but the prolonged duration also starts to shift the relationship between object, viewer, and context. A film watched at 1/3,600th of the original speed is not a very slow movie, it’s a hazy timepiece. A Very Slow Movie Player (VSMP) doesn’t tell you the time; it helps you see yourself against the smear of time.

I am so very very excited right now!

In a Metafilter discussion about video nasties in 80s Britain, Wolfdog innocently comments:

This is a pretty awesome plot summary “Waldemar Daninsky goes to Tibet to look for proof that the yeti exists. He gets captured by two vampire women who turn him into a werewolf. Waldemar's friends are then kidnapped by a witch, and later, he fights a yeti.” I think what catches my eye there is that “later, he fights a yeti” could be appended to many films' descriptions, entirely to their benefit.

…and then the fun begins (that last one is my particular favourite).

I have a feeling that this is a search term worth keeping an eye on over the next few days.

Why am I still welling-up at the end of The Amber Spyglass even though it's the fifth time I've read it and I know exactly what's going to happen? The Iron Giant and Grave Of The Fireflies have exactly the same affect, and I've lost count of how many times I've seen them.

Damn.

Tonight is going to be a double bill of M*A*S*H and Gosford Park.

After all the speculation over the past few days it's finally happened.

The two companies will continue to operate independently, Google said as it announced the news on Monday.

Damn, there go all the “GooTube” and “Yoogle” mashup parodies then.

Update: Interesting commentary about the deal at Read/Write Web:

There is a LOT of talk about the deal, but for me it's significant as a watershed moment for the Web and online video. If Google is willing to spend $1.65B on the leading online video company, then they must believe that for both YouTube and the online video industry as a whole - there is a lot more growth to come.

Hmmmmmm... good idea this is, join in I will.... yeeesss...

Cathy and myself have just finished watching Episodes I to VI over the weekend. First two on Friday night, middle two last night, you get the picture.

Some quick observations now I've finally seen all six in a row:

• The back-story really breathes new life into the original trilogy, having the history of the characters to refer to makes such a big difference (god I'm such a geek)
• The original trilogy is a much smaller, character driven story
• Palpatine is a devious shit, but you have to admire his cunning
• The Episode III to IV transition works really well story and character wise, but the 70's model work is really jarring after coming from the CG battles of the prequel. It's especially noticeable during the first attack on the Death Star
• ...but in saying that, the space battle in Return of the Jedi still rocks
• You know there's going to be a new box set at some point, and I bet my Boba Fett Pez dispenser that there will further tinkering from George to make the segue between trilogies a little more seamless.
• In the big scheme of things Jar-Jar isn't that annoying, he can be filtered, but jesus his sense of humour is crap. He's just not funny
• After seeing serious, solemn Yoda in the prequels, his behaviour when he first appears in Empire makes him look like he's gone bat-shit loopy. Trust me, watch it when he first meets Luke, he's acting like an insane man
• These words are not in the OSX spell-checker: Jedi, Yoda, Boba Fett
• ... they are now, I may need to talk more about them and the red squiggly lines were annoying me
• R2-D2 swears a lot
• The re-mastered trilogy are really dark compared to the prequels. I don't know if this is due to the re-mastering process or just the difference between film and digital, but they look very underexposed
• Cathy went "awww" when the Ewoks got shot. She needs help
• Ewan McGregor really nailed Alec Guinness. I find myself stroking my chin when I'm thinking now, in an Obi-Wan style. This is not good
• It works, I loved it

Doing it all again at christmas, woohoo!