At World’s End

As I mentioned in my previous post, we watched Pirates of the Caribbean: at World’s End this weekend during our trip to Scranton. The following is my amateur “review” of the film.

Let me start about by saying that I had high hopes for this incarnation of the Pirates series. I was hoping that we would get past the unnecessarily-long-sword-fight-on-a-moving-wheel type scenes that we saw in Dead Man’s Chest. Thankfully, for the most part, these types of scenes were avoided.

I also knew that a lot had to happen during this film, due to all the plots that had to be wrapped up. Will wanted to save his father. The crew wanted to retrieve Jack from the Pirate “underworld.” Will wants to win back Elizabeth. Jack wants to capture Davey Jones’ heart. And the list goes on.

I thought the movie started a little slowly. There was the scene of the pirate associates being executed at the command of Lord Beckett, followed by a lengthy scene that takes the crew of the Black Pearl to Singapore, which leads to the introduction of the first of many new characters in the film.

I won’t spill too many details for those of you who might be reading who haven’t seen the film yet, but suffice it to say there is a lot of backstabbing and apparent side switching that goes on throughout the film. So much so that it can get a little confusing at times.  Unfortunately it gave me the feeling that they were trying to tie up too many plots at one time. Maybe not, but it felt a little frantic at points.

One of the biggest oddities was that of the multiple Jack Sparrow characters that came as a result of apparent hallucinations Jack had while spending time in Davey Jones’ Locker. Our first introduction to Jack comes during one of these hallucinations. The characters seemed a little weird and out of place, but they would have been fine with me, except for one gigantic issue.

Later in the movie, when Jack is being held in a cell, we see two other Jacks occupying the cell with him. These Jacks looked absolutely terrible. The lighting didn’t match the rest of  the scene, and the characters looked awfully grainy. I’m sure that millions upon millions of dollars were spent on this movie, and it seems that a little more could have been spent on making these characters seem a little more realistic.

I guess that’s it for my rants. I want to see the film again, because I think it will make more sense and be more enjoyable. Also, I have heard that there is a scene after the ending credits that we missed the other day.

On another note, if you ever get the chance to see a digital movie, by all means, take it! This was a digital screening that we went to, and it was amazing. Even Danielle, who can never see the difference in high definition TVs noticed the difference right away. It was evident from the very first trailer we saw up until the end of the film. The picture quality was so crisp and vibrant – not a bit washed out at all. Those little annoying specks and black flecks that you notice on normal movie screens were completely nonexistent. It was wonderful.

The Electric City

This weekend we took a road trip with our good friends, to the Electric City, better known as Scranton, PA.

After arriving in Scranton late Friday night, we went out for some wings before heading back to our luxurious accomodations for the weekend – the Scranton Econo Lodge.

Saturday brought shopping at the outlet malls at Montage Mountain, a great lunch at one of those old-time 50’s cafes, a matinee viewing of Pirates of the Caribbean 3: at World’s End, more shopping at the Steamtown mall, and dinner at a Texas Longhorn.

Sunday found us back in Mansfield, attending a Little Leage game, and then spending some quality time at Tanglewood Campground with our “adopted family.”

It was so great to just get away. Away from work, and stress, and the hustle and bustle of our ever-increasingly schedule.  It helps you to recharge, and helps to remind you of the important things in life – God, family, and friends. It’s funny how spending just a little time away can help you readjust your outlook on life and remember that those things that seem so overwhelming important during the course of the week aren’t all THAT importan in the grander scheme of things.

More in my next blog on Pirates 3.

No Closure

For some of our favorite T.V. shows this season, it seems there is no closure.

It all started with the season finale of The Office tonight, where a lot happened, but little closure took place. Michael didn’t get the job at Corporate, he and Jan got back together, Jim left Karen in New York City, and then rushed back to Pam, and asked her out on a dinner date for later that evening. And the episode and season ended.

Then we have Scrubs, where the season (and almost the entire series) ended with JD and Elliot in a familiar on again off again role. However this time it’s a little more serious, since JD is having a son, and Elliot is about to get married. From what little I’ve seen of the Scrubs fan base online, had the series ended with tonight’s episode, there would have probably been some sort of nerd rioting in the streets.

And finally we have CSI: Las Vegas. Tonight’s season finale dealt with the “miniature killer” who has been popping up here and there throughout the season. We finally got to see who this killer was tonight, and how her final “creation” dealt with the death of Sarah Sidle, who (according to Grissom) is the only person he ever loved. Of course, the episode ended with Sarah trapped under a car in the desert in a rain storm.

I’m sure when we watch the finale of 24, there will be some sort of cliffhanger that won’t get answered until next season also. Plus there will be lots of different subplots that I’m sure won’t get addressed in the two-hour finale.

Hollywood producers, here’s a tip. You can wrap up story lines at the end of the season. And guess what? People will come back to watch more next season – trust me. There doesn’t always have to be something that doesn’t get wrapped up as some sort of teaser to keep us tuned in next season. Really, there doesn’t. I understand why you do it, but it doesn’t need to be done ALL the time.

At least American Idol won’t have any cliffhangers…

Change Title Display in WordPress

For those of you who use WordPress and want to learn how to change your titles, read on. This is definitely a techie post.

I was reading Search Engine Journal today and there was an old post that discussed reccommended WordPress Search Engine Optimization Plugins.

One of the suggestions was to put the title of your post first in the HTML <title> of your page, and then to have your Blog name displayed. I believe be default WordPress shows the title of the blog first (i.e. define: Jared Barden) and then the title of the individual post.

No problem, I thought. I logged in to my account, clicked the Presentation tab, selected the Theme Editor for my current theme, and went to the header.php file, which is where most of your header information for your post (the HTML , etc.) is located. I made some minor code changes, and everything was working, except that there was a » before the title of my post. A Google search for the wp_title() function, and a couple of forum posts later, I found at that this is the default behavior of the wp_title() function. To change this behavior, simple pass an empty string ( ” ) to the function, like so – wp_title('');.

Moral of the story – if you’re trying to do something when it comes to blogging or coding, do a Google search first. Chances are someone out there has experienced the same problem you have, and hopefully they have been nice enough to document how they conquered said problem.

Mozy on Over

If you’re looking for a place to backup some of your important files online, then head on over to Mozy.

Mozy lets you sign up for a free account with 2 GB worth of storage, which, while it might not sound like a lot, should be enough to back up at least SOME of your important files.

I signed up for an account, downloaded the Mac application, installed, and within minutes I was backing up my email (something I’ve been thinking about doing for a while).

I don’t know how often I’ll use Mozy, but it definitely seems like a handy utility.

Blog Redesign

So, as I was trolling my RSS feeds the other day, I came across this really cool site.

The site in question is Wordpress Theme Generator.  The site lets you automatically create themes (in case you hadn’t already guessed) for your WordPress-powered site. The best thing is that it does all the heavy lifting for you – creating the CSS files and assorted PHP files that are required for a WordPress theme. Save your theme, and it creates a ZIP file that just needs to be opened, and then the theme can be uploaded to the site.

I don’t know if I’ve stated this on this blog before or not, but I don’t consider myself a graphically talented person, so this site was a huge help to me.

I’d love to know what everyone thinks of the changes.