Film Strip

Last night I happened to be flipping through the channels and saw that Tron was on HDNET.  Tron was a favorite when I was a kid, and I hadn’t seen it in a few years, so I flipped over. 

After watching it for a little while, I’ve gotta tell you I was wowed by it.  It honestly took me longer than I’d like to admit to myself to realize I was watching Tron in High Definition, and it looked awesome. 

I’ve had my 50 inch 1080p DLP HD TV since the World Cup in 2006 (so that I could watch all the soccer games in High Definition), and while I have become an HD snob for TV shows and Sports, I haven’t yet put in the money to switch my movie watching to Blu-Ray and full HD.  Part of that had to do with the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD wars, and part of that is because I had an addiction to buying DVD’s from around 2003 – 2008 that took me a while to get over.  (I’m doing good in the fact that I’ve only purchased one DVD for myself in the past 2 ½ years – Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and it was a used copy for cheap.)

This viewing of Tron reminded me how awesome HD can be.  Now that I think about it, the only other HD movies I’ve watch are The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and The Fifth Element, and I remember thinking those looked great too.  But Tron is a little different because these computer graphics should be incredibly dated by now with the dawn of Avatar in 3D (Which on a sidenote, I’m over Avatar these days because it just looks like stuff we’ve seen in Final Fantasy games for years—that, and the overly clichéd story). 

Instead of looking dated, Tron in HD looked really polished and cool.  Sure it was hokey at parts, and the technology is simple polygons and such, but you tell me when you can watch Tron in HD and not want to create a custom Tron costume next Halloween.

My birthday was last week, and to be honest, it was a pretty awesome birthday.  Three birthday’s ago I went snowboarding in New Mexico with three of my friends, and 4 other guys I didn’t know.  Being from Texas, it was awesome that that was the first time I’d walked on snow, but I did go to another state and missed out on spending time with a lot of friends.

Two birthday’s ago, I decided to have a superhero costume party and invited almost everyone I knew.  That turned out to be awesome, but all the planning and cleaning that went into that were a little too much.

Last year, I decided to go in between those two extremes and just have people over to my place.  Turned out to be really good.  This year, I did the same, but also made is a board game party, so that was sweet.

But the coolest thing about my birthday this year was some of the sweet gifts I got.  My wife really did a great job (and probably spent too much) getting my a bunch of small gifts while we’re in the middle of buying a house, instead of one large gift.  Like a house.

I just wanted to highlight two of the more awesome movie related things I got.

Sweet Birthday Gifts

The hat on the left is one just like the hat Woody Harrelson wore in Zombieland.  It’s made from recycled Brazilian cargo truck tarps, and you can get them from Real Deal Brazil.  I haven’t been able to give it a solid test run since I rarely wear hats, and I’ve only worn it around the house a bit.  I will say that it’s not as deep as a normal baseball cap or cowboy hat and seems to sit high on my head, but that may just be mine since they’re all different.  I do like that they’re all different and each have their own individual character.

The other items all came together.  It’s the Family Guy Presents: Something Something Something Dark Side Collector’s Blu-Ray Set!  (So those of you who have read the FAQ, I now have two Blu-Rays and no Blu-Ray Player.)  I haven’t yet seen this Family Guy special, but I did really like the first Family Guy Star Wars spoof, Blue Harvest.  I’ll tell you, the thing that really made me want this is the official Thermos brand lunchbox that it came in.  It’s exactly like the old Empire Strikes Back one except with the Family Guy characters on it.  It reminds me of the red Transformers lunchbox I used to take to elementary school.

There are a couple of downsides to this set.

1. It comes with a great T-shirt with the giant chicken dressed up as Boba Fett, but the shirt is an XL.  I’m a Medium.  Maybe I could’ve shrunk a Large, but XL?  Seriously?  When did Extra Large become the American standard?
2. The Thermos brand lunchbox doesn’t come with a Thermos.  Like the thing you drink out of.  That’s a minor complaint, but I may have to buy an old Star Wars Thermos on eBay to put in this thing.
3. The movie is full screen.  I know Family Guy is still broadcast in 1.33:1, but it’s 2010 already!  At least fill up a 16:9 TV.  I thought maybe Seth McFarlane and crew would up the production value by now.  Who knows, I may be wowed when I see it in Blu-Ray one of these days.

All in all, I wanted the set for the lunchbox, and that’s what I got.  Anything else is just icing on the cake.