Ehh to both Hollywood and weather

[altivo]

So the promise of a dry week to follow Friday's deluge and wind has already been broken. It's been raining on and off this afternoon, and the next few days are once again filled with "chance of thunderstorms." Water in the pastures is again deeper than the top of my rubber boots, and I think deeper than it was at its peak earlier this spring. I can

Comments

[keeganfox]

Well, I'm glad it's not just me that finds 90% of theaters astoundingly loud. I've done a lot of loud things, but they usually involve some flavor of hearing protection, and I'm probably going to add "going to the movies" to that list. I wonder if they're hoping the Fletcher-Munson curve will try and make it sound "better"? I'm fairly sensitive to excessive bass anyways. Gives me a headache after just a few seconds, but it's odd that no one else seems to notice or care.

[altivo]

Most people suffer from hearing loss and attention deficit, I've decided. All you have to do is observe them screaming into their cell phones, shouting to one another when the distance between them is just two or three feet, or where they set the volume level on their car radios or television sets.

Unfortunately, hearing loss due to environmental factors escalates as people try to compensate for it by increasing the volume level.

[keeganfox]

They do that at work! Dash 60 (gas turbine generator, you've got an idea of how loud that would be) is running, and it's using the bleed air (noisy) to drive an air conditioning unit (also predictably loud), and instead of just giving up on hearing their "music"*, they'll turn that all the way up. Making it even louder doesn't help, you still can barely hear it (good thing) but it's even noisier still.

*"Music" being some sort of death metal grind core something with the singer screaming incoherent lyrics, or maybe just is gargling gravel. Awful, no talent crap. Coming from a guy who likes Def Leppard, Hammerfall, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, and Nightwish...

[altivo]

Hee! Keegan, you're a fox after my own heart. And you sound like me, though I never liked rock music much beyond the Beatles era.

[ungulata]

I haven't noticed the sound being too loud here in the Great White North... maybe we have a kindlier, gentler sound system.

The Trek film is getting a 9 out of ten rating here, which should translate into an outstanding movie. I saw it a week ago Saturday... It was worth admission in an uncrowded theater, but only just. The doomsday plot with the mad bald villain was déjà vu all over again. I bought the 'new timeline' aspect but the over-the-top exaggerations of personas of the core cast rankled as did stuff like why carry so much red-matter and why was so little water dumped with Scotty from the emergency hatch? Oh well, with a new time-line, they can remake the whole Star Trek universe pretty much any way they please.

[altivo]

maybe we have a kindlier, gentler sound system.

Or maybe you have theatres that are not managed by kids barely out of their teens, whose evaluation of a film is based on how loud the explosions were and whether it had "great effects" (whatever that means.)

Myself, I'd rather see something resembling a credible plot and some acting that is both believable and appropriate. This film had neither.

Hollywood makes whatever sells, of course. The fault for the general crappy level of today's film output lies with the audiences who continue to flock to see the garbage, no matter how bad it is, as long as it has lots of explosions and chase scenes.

[keeganfox]

"audiences who continue to flock to see the garbage, no matter how bad it is, as long as it has lots of explosions and chase scenes." So that explains Quantum of Solace?
Worst. Bond. Film. Ever.

[altivo]

That one I can't offer an opinion about, since I didn't and won't see it. Bond consisting of nothing but violence, sex, explosions, and chase scenes anyway, I couldn't see the point of any of them.

[dakhun]

We're in agreement on our assessment of "Star Trek".

The sad thing is that, if you think about it for a few minutes, you could easily think of ways to have almost exactly the same story played out, but without any time travel, and without any time paradoxes with every single Star Trek movie and series that there have been. That's just poor writing that they insisted on making it a time travel movie rather than a good sci-fi movie. And the '90210' portrayal of the young crew sure didn't help.

[altivo]

I liked the idea of showing us the younger versions of the original officers.

I think I was most bothered by having them all be rule breaking rebels, cheaters, liars, brawlers and thieves. Great message to be sending to kids, Hollywood. Really great job.

[cabcat]

You're sending that rain here aren't you!! It's been raining for ages here now, and I'm getting tired of it :P

The house is getting damp.

[altivo]

*innocent*

You did ask me to send rain there, remember? I'd have sent more, but my transporter is malfunctioning again.

[cabcat]

Did you also send fog, we had the biggest white out I've ever seen yesterday.
I could barely see buildings next to the one I work in from the windows.

[altivo]

Nope, no fog to send. We get that in winter and spring. It's freaking hot summer here now.

[farhoug]

This whole audio and music thing is a bit silly... On radio, it's been compressed to death, with just a bit of leeway given to commercials so those can be played even louder.

Movies on the other hand have beyond-real-life dynamics, especially something like DVDs with the DTS encoding. Speech is all quiet, making you turn up the volume to hear it, until the first explosion when the small loudspeakers try to jump through the wall. Much fun when you're trying to watch a movie in an apartment building like mine.

My next home theater setup will include a 5.1-channel compressor/limiter... maybe I could loan one from the radio stations. =)

[altivo]

Surely you could put your education to work and design and build your own audio compresser, wuffy? I'll lend you a slide rule...

[farhoug]

I could go whack the audio engineers with that slide rule, maybe they'd learn something... But that's hardly a proper use for one. ^^;