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The Life of P

Day Watch dawns

The release of a trailer for Day Watch (that’s Dnevnoi Dozor to the Russian speakers amongst you) is reason enough for a post itself. It’s over a year and a half since I dragged a motley crew of willing and unwilling victims to see the first instalment of the epic Russian Night Watch trilogy, and although I think it was far from perfect, consider my appetite truly whetted. Although there are clear Hollywood sensibilities (and rumour was they would bankroll the third film) it is nice to see it retains the gritty Russian base with stylistic flourishes that made the original so enthralling. It is not beautiful in the immediate sense, but as you fall under its spell its sheer power makes it a joy to watch. It also featured the most creative use of subtitles I have seen, working them into the scene as they slide behind objects or dissolve ethereally. If you have not yet seen Night Watch, do be sure to grab the DVD before Day Watch arrives.

More interesting, anyway, than a new one for Pirates of the Caribbean. At World’s End looks like — well — exactly like the last two actually. Whilst I’m still keen on seeing the conclusion to last summer’s rambunctious adventure romp, I can’t help but feel the format is wearing a little thing. Trilogy fatigue is difficult to overcome — more of the same is forgettable (Alien 3) while a last ditch soporific attempt to attach deeper meaning to the affair tends to be hideous (The Matrix Revolutions). Upping the ante Return of the King style is a rare achievement, and evening maintaining the same level of energy is hard (Return of the Jedi). Perhaps things would bode better if it were called Return of the Sparrow

Xbox 360 EliteRumours abound regarding the supposed preparation of the black Xbox 360 Elite which boasts a 120GB hard drive for all your media needs and an HDMI output. So for existing Xbox owners the question is whether it is worth upgrading. The short answer is probably not. On medium sized TVs the difference between component cables and HDMI is probably not noticeable enough to warrant the expense unless you are using the Xbox as your primary media player with the attached HD-DVD add-on. The 120GB hard drive will be available as a separate purchase and is really the way to go. I suspect they will also run quieter with the new hardware. So that leaves the colour, which may or may not be in limited quantities. The truth is that although the black looks cool, white probably matches everything else you own — your Wii, your DS, your (shudder) iPod. Unless you’re a Sony fan, of course, but then what are you doing looking at 360’s?

8 Comments

  1. Alien was a Quadrilogy wasn’t it? Or was it a Quint/Pentology?

    Day Watch looks fun 😀 The book’s just come out I think as well (read the books if you haven’t, they make so much more sense than the films do!)

  2. With “Return of the Sparrow” you’re not by any chance thinking of that little birdie you bred in Pinatas? :p

  3. Night Watch was good although I did fall asleep after about 20 mins. To be fair I had drunk a lot before hand and keeping up with the subtitles was hard. Looking forward to pirates 3 although Shrek 3…eh?…EH? It does seem like this year is the year of the trilogy. We’ve got Pirates 3, Spiderman 3, Shrek 3, Resident Evil 3, 300…….

  4. Even 120Gb seems a little small these days. With hard disk prices so low, why don’t they offer a huge version, as relative disk cost is nothing. 120Gb online £32, 320Gb £52. Are the hard disks user-upgradeable?

    If the hard drive is intended for downloading media from Xbox Live then if you’ve paid for the stuff you’re going to want to keep it. A regular customer will fill even 120Gb quite quickly. Add HD content into the mix and even 320Gb won’t hold much.

  5. I agree that even 120GB is on the small side for fully functional media storage, but you are restricted to using MS hard drives. I wonder whether they will be forced in future to support USB external hard drives (the ports are already there, after all).

    From a gaming perspective, 120GB is great, providing more than enough for trailers, demos and additional content (game demos average around 1-1.2GB these days). Then using the box as a media centre I would be streaming videos from my PC so from that perspective it ought to suit me fine.

  6. I demand a new blog Priyan, it’s been a week almost!

  7. Surely Russian speakers would have trouble speaking the Roman alphabet?

  8. Heheh, fair point. Though given that they’re here in the first place I assume they aren’t struggling too much!

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"Civilization now depends on self-deception. Perhaps it always has."

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