It’s 2012 and high time to upgrade your alarm clock from that awful little box you’ve had forever that blares that annoying beeping sound that starts you off in a foul mood every morning. The perfect upgrade is here in Stem Innovations’ Time Command. It’s an alarm clock and an iPod/Phone/Pad docking station that does more tricks than most dogs. The Time Command by itself has a dual alarm, nice big dimmable LCD display for the time, battery backup and my favorite feature, lamp control. Yes, lamp control, meaning you can plug in a nearby lamp and then turn it on or off from the alarm clock, an awesome feature for late-night bed readers and TV dozers who hate having to get up to turn off the light. While I haven’t tried it yet, it might also work as an on/off switch for a TV. Where the Time Command goes to 11 is when you dock your iDevice and open the free Stem: Connect app. It will now charge, automatically sync up with any alarms already set, play music with EQ control, allow dimming options for the app, time display and lamp (with a regular bulb) and an awesome Wake-By-Light feature that will gradually brighten your morning when your alarm goes off. The app also comes with a small, but nice selection of soothing sounds and tones for alarms and an array of relaxation sounds you can set to turn off after you nod out, or you can choose to wake up to a song from your library or an internet radio station. I recommend waking up to the Cowboy Junkies version of ‘Sweet Jane’ from the Natural Born Killers soundtrack. It’s kind of messed up, yet soothing at the same time. You can pick up the Stem Time Command for around $100 or less. It’s found a permanent home at my bedside.
Despite what the fantasy world of television and film would sometimes have us believe, the most powerful human instinct isn’t love, but self-preservation. In Darkness is a Polish film set during the German occupation of the country during WWII. The Nazis are at the height of their powers, and the Jewish residents of Poland are crammed into the country’s ghettos.
A small section of the Jewish community in the city of Lvov have anticipated stronger measures – without realising that those methods would be concentration camps. They develop a contingency plan, burrowing underground in order to hide from the Gestapo. However, this has infringed on the territory of Leopold Socha, the local sewer inspector. These two worlds collide as German forces sweep up any and all Jews, before packing them in trucks and dispatching them to the camps as if they were slabs of meat. Read More »
Around Oscar time, the debate often rages not only on who will win the prestigious Academy Awards, but who AMPAS omitted from the respective shortlists in the high-profile categories. And while 2011 was not a vintage year for the art form, I was not the only one who was left scratching my head at those films, actors and directors who failed to make the cut. But rather than be a philippic on the politics of the voting system, I’d rather celebrate the work of those who left their mark on cinema over the past 12 months. And while it’s common to hear people bemoan who didn’t get nominated, you seldom hear a proposal for who should have missed out in their stead. So, not only will I state who I think should be up for statuettes on Sunday night, but also who shouldn’t have been. Bear in mind that over the process of this post, spoilers are inevitable: Read More »
Self-obsession isn’t an attractive quality. Self-delusion less so. Well, Young Adult gives us a lead character who has an overabundance of both. Charlize Theron stars as Mavis, once the popular girl in high-school, who has moved from a small town in Minnesota to the more bustling municipality of Minneapolis – even though how small does your hometown have do be to regard Minneapolis as the “big city”?
Now a divorcee, Mavis is a writer of fiction novels that can be found in the “young adult ” section of bookshops (as you can see, the film’s title has a double-meaning). However, she is unsatisfied with her lot in life, and rather than write, she spends most of her time drinking heavily and watching trashy reality TV shows that specifically focus on women – which I’m sure is deliberate. She may look at the likes of “tweens” in beauty-pageants and feel superior in their vacuity, but at her core, Mavis is no better. The only difference between her and Kim Kardashian is that she has a diploma. Read More »
Posted by Richard Smith - January 30, 2012 – 9:01 pm
I really didn’t see this one coming, but there’s no denying that it actually happened. Suddenly every box under my TV streams video. I feel a little bit behind the times with this one because there have been streaming video products available for a long time, it’s just that now it seems everything is a streaming video player, and more importantly, that there are lots of places to get the video. Read More »
Posted by Richard Smith - January 30, 2012 – 2:49 pm
A few years ago the original series of a little scifi show called Star Trek was released on BluRay. It was the result of a years long project to enhance something that was fiilmed around half a century ago. It was generally accepted that the work they did was excellent. They didn’t only enhance what was there, but they started adding new things. The special effects were completely recreated, the music was rerecorded, and they gave the Gorn blinking eyes. Everybody was happy.
Then we get to Star Trek: The Next Generation. My personal favourite of all the series, it was the one I started with. I do have the complete set on DVD but they have a little problem, they are close to unwatchable. It’s fair to say that TNG didn’t survive the move to a digital format. Read More »
I love a good news story in the world of sport. So I doff my proverbial cap to the Leeds Rhinos, who announced that their cheerleaders will be supplemented by two male dancers for the new Super League season in rugby league.
I confess I’ve never been the biggest fan of this kind of thing. I think it’s one of the increasingly prevalent sideshows that take away from the athletic prowess on the field of play. But there’s no denying that they are very talented.
However, this raises a wider issue. The use of cheerleaders is an exemplar of a larger societal problem. Even in the ostensibly meritocratic world of sport, men are there to be looked at for their sporting skill. Women are just there to be looked at. So anything that helps bridge the gender divide – proving that there is no domain that is just, “for women” – has to be applauded. Read More »
Posted by Richard Smith - January 27, 2012 – 4:53 pm
Yeah the people who make Pot Noodle.
This is becoming a bit of a pet issue of mine, as this is something I have personally run afoul of in the past. Two incidents come to mind. The first was when one of our listener meet ups ended up at FAB Cafe in Leeds, only to be thrown out because it’s “illegal” to take photos in a nightclub, it isn’t. And the conflict continued as I took photos of the bouncers from the street, also not illegal. Read More »
One could argue a brief look at the publicity for Like Crazy is something of a marketing disaster; the trailer, the mawkish poster, even the title. You’d be right in surmising that Like Crazy is a love story, but it’s not the love story that the first wave of advertising would have you believe. Jakob Rehlinger – from the Nerd Hurdles podcast – argued that this same problem beset the movie, Hanna.
The couple is question is Anna (Felicity Jones) and Jacob (Anton Yelchin). Anna is an English college student in Los Angeles and takes a shine to classmate, Jacob. Sure enough a whirlwind love-affair swiftly develops between the two of them. While I’d imagine that they have been in relationships before, they approach this one with the wide-eyed wonder of a child who’s opened their Christmas presents to find that Santa has brought them exactly what they wanted. Read More »
Since we don’t talk much about Underworld: Awakening in our upcoming Nerd Hurdles episode on Underworld: Awakening, here is a more in depth look at this weekend’s biggest film.
The fourth installment in the franchise—and the proper sequel to the second film Underworld: Evolution—finds our heroine, Selene, awakening from twelve years in stasis to a world where humans have purged Vampires and Werewolves to the point of extinction. This is really the only place the franchise could be taken. This place being the Resident Evil films.
Co-directors Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein borrow more than a few pages from the Paul W.S. Anderson schlock-fests:
Page 1—We see a back-story of where a True Blood-style “Great Revelation” results in lycanthropy and vampirism being treated as like T-virus infections with paramilitary units going on search and destroy missions.
Page 2—Selene breaks out of a glass stasis tube, naked, in an Umbrella Corporation lab (here trading under the name AntiGen) and has to kill her way past endlessly respawning guards who luckily have a bad case of the Stormtroopers as far as their marksmanship goes.
It’s 2012 and high time to upgrade your alarm clock from that awful little box you’ve had forever that blares that annoying beeping sound that starts you off in a foul mood every morning. The perfect upgrade is here in Stem Innovations’ Time Command. It’s an alarm clock and an iPod/Phone/Pad docking station that does more tricks than most dogs. The Time Command by itself has a dual alarm, nice big dimmable LCD display for the time, battery backup and my favorite feature, lamp control. Yes, lamp control, meaning you can plug in a nearby lamp and then turn it on or off from the alarm clock, an awesome feature for late-night bed readers and TV dozers who hate having to get up to turn off the light. While I haven’t tried it yet, it might also work as an on/off switch for a TV. Where the Time Command goes to 11 is when you dock your iDevice and open the free Stem: Connect app. It will now charge, automatically sync up with any alarms already set, play music with EQ control, allow dimming options for the app, time display and lamp (with a regular bulb) and an awesome Wake-By-Light feature that will gradually brighten your morning when your alarm goes off. The app also comes with a small, but nice selection of soothing sounds and tones for alarms and an array of relaxation sounds you can set to turn off after you nod out, or you can choose to wake up to a song from your library or an internet radio station. I recommend waking up to the Cowboy Junkies version of ‘Sweet Jane’ from the Natural Born Killers soundtrack. It’s kind of messed up, yet soothing at the same time. You can pick up the Stem Time Command for around $100 or less. It’s found a permanent home at my bedside.
Around Oscar time, the debate often rages not only on who will win the prestigious Academy Awards, but who AMPAS omitted from the respective shortlists in the high-profile categories. And while 2011 was not a vintage year for the art form, I was not the only one who was left scratching my head at those films, actors and directors who failed to make the cut. But rather than be a philippic on the politics of the voting system, I’d rather celebrate the work of those who left their mark on cinema over the past 12 months. And while it’s common to hear people bemoan who didn’t get nominated, you seldom hear a proposal for who should have missed out in their stead. So, not only will I state who I think should be up for statuettes on Sunday night, but also who shouldn’t have been. Bear in mind that over the process of this post, spoilers are inevitable: 
I love a good news story in the world of sport. So I doff my proverbial cap to the Leeds Rhinos, who announced that their cheerleaders will be supplemented by two male dancers for the new Super League season in rugby league.
3 1/2 out of 5 *****
