Rent - My review
Posted on November 24, 2005
Filed Under Entertainment | 1 Comment
First of all, the theatre was *packed.* By the time the movie started there wasn’t an empty seat to be found. Eric and I were among the oldest in the room. We joked that most of the folks around us weren’t born in 1989 when then movie was set. Some were wearing “Rent” t-shirts.
Overall, I liked the movie a lot. It respected the original show, yet it used the freedom of moving away from the stage well. I’ve listened to the soundtrack more times than I could count. I immediately knew when the script went away from the play, and the times that it happened weren’t jarring. Except for one instance, which I’ll describe in the extended entry… spoiler warning…don’t click through if you don’t want to know…
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Cingular to become at&t? Yuck.
Posted on November 23, 2005
Filed Under Design | 6 Comments
Looks like [Cingular](http://www.cingular.com) will be [rebranding as AT&T, I mean at&t](http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/business/2005-11-20-cingular-att_x.htm) in the near future.
I’m not saying yuck to the company…I’m saying yuck to the new logo.
As a current Cingular customer, I’m going to have to look at this soon? May be enough to finally get me to switch to Verizon, rollover minutes and fast forward cradle be damned:
I can’t even begin to describe how much I dislike that logo. This line from the *USA Today* article is telling:
>”We agonized over the letters,” says Whitacre, who made the final call on the name and the logo.
Well, there you go.
**Judi’s Graphic Design Rule #1: If you have to fight it, it’s wrong. Step away and move in another direction.**
When my decisions have been right, *they just work.* They’re easy. Ideas and type relationships and styles just seem to flow out of the center. Without question, when I’ve “agonized” over a project trying to get just that right typeface or just the right color that would pull it all together, the problem was never the typeface or the color. **It was the whole direction.**
Do the lowercase sans serif type under the graphic (or not…it’s soooooo overdone). Do the 3-D’ified beach ball (are you selling technology or Fisher Price toys…a little hard to tell). Don’t do both. You’re trying way too hard and it shows.
Web 2.0 checklist
Posted on November 23, 2005
Filed Under Internet & Technology | Leave a Comment
[LOL!](http://msippey.tadalist.com/lists/public/155420)
I could add one…even though it’s wordy:
Ask 1000 people on the street if they’ve heard of any of the technologies you’re using…Rails? Ajax? RSS? Wiki? API? Tags (the kind that hang off of clothing don’t count)? Ask them if they’ve heard of any of the companies/sites you’re trying to emulate. Digg? Riya? Flickr? Flock? If the universal answer is “Whaa??” then you’re on the right list.
Color Scheme Chooser
Posted on November 23, 2005
Filed Under Design | 1 Comment
Because you can never have too many tools to help you pick a color pallette. [This new one is rather nice.](http://www.siteprocentral.com/html_color_code.html)
You could [put the thing on your site](http://www.siteprocentral.com/html_color_code_feed.html) by copying some text to allow the color tool to load in an iframe. I was going to do it, until I read through the code:
|
Place this opportunity.com”> Turnkey Websites |
Besides the obvious “it’s probably not a good idea to turn over a page in your site to the whims of another site,” `width=”762″ height=”406″`? No can do. I keep everything here to a max of 450 pixels (468 if you include padding). Anything wider than that does all sorts of nasty with the layout.
Guess where I’ll be tomorrow night?
Posted on November 22, 2005
Filed Under Entertainment | Leave a Comment
Let’s see:
* Going to Mom’s house for Thanksgiving? (read: cheap babysitter) *check!*
* Will be there Wednesday night? (read: cheap babysitter) *check!*
* [**Rent: The Movie**](http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/rent/) opening on said Wednesday? *check!*
* Playing at a theatre near cheap babysitter, I mean Mom’s house? *check!*
* [Advanced tickets purchased?](http://www.fandango.com/MoviePage.aspx?mid=89049&source=otw_title) ***check!***
I’m not expecting it to be as good as the stage show… I’ve lost count as to how many times I’ve played the soundtrack (literally, since I reformat my hard drive and reset all my play counts in iTunes) and I want to see it before the inevitable bad reviews cloud my judgement.
How do I know it will get bad reviews? The trailers I saw today showed raves from “Dark Horizons.” 3 or 4 “INCREDIBLE” “GREAT” or “WOW” text screens…all attributed to “Dark Horizons.” What is “Dark Horizons”? I have no idea, it’s probably [this site](http://www.darkhorizons.com/index.php). Movies that get great reviews have trailers that feature quotes from Roger Ebert, *Newsday* or *The New York Times.* If they feature 3 critic quotes, it’s from 3 different sources. Holiday movies that will be out of theatres before Auld Lang Syne feature critic quotes from *Joe Nobody’s Great Movie Blog* and *The Really Smalltown Newspaper No One Ever Heard of So They Won’t Read The Entire Review and Figure Out We’re Taking the Rave Out of Context and We Didn’t Like it Either.*
For one night, I don’t care. I’m going in just hoping that it’s better than *A Chorus Line* ::shudder:: that one was really **bad**…look up “How to kill a very good Broadway show” in the dictionary and you’ll see Michael Douglas and Richard Attenborough. I hope this movie leaves the script where it is…set in the mid-to-late 90s, rather than trying to update it to make it more relevant to today’s audiences.
Tags: Movie Musicals, Rent
