 At the moment, there's no 'we', just vu. |
posted Jan 24, 2010 3:13 AM by Vu Nguyen
From Vu
 01: 36th Chamber of Shaolin (Mar 2, 2010)
01: Deadly Duo (Bluray) (27 Apr 2010)
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posted Dec 27, 2009 8:06 PM by Vu Nguyen
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updated Dec 27, 2009 9:41 PM
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From Vu
I am migrating all my movies to Bluray. In fact, I'm going from just 10 or so items to about 50 in a week. I'm not buying any DVDs from here on, with the exception of Five Element Ninjas (Super Ninjas). This is my most favorite movie ever and it'll kill me if I had to wait for the bluray version well into 2011 or so. As you can see from the photograph on the right, I'm starting to collect those wonderful bluray "books". Unfortunately, those particular discs are pretty expensive. Also, there's a collection of "steel cases" from Best Buy, but those are usually priced at $35 or so, too expensive for my blood. Incidentally, since space is an issue for me, those "bigger" standard DVD case, I normally toss out and replace them with a slimmer DVD case. I'm hoping for the industry to come up with small/thinner bluray cases. I've seen them used for the Star Trek and Harry Potter boxsets, so I can't see why people aren't producing them for sale. The average price I will pay for a bluray that I've already own on DVD, I am paying about $15. The most expensive I've paid for was the Star Trek Boxset for $80 (even though I've already own all the original DVD releases). Fringe was $50, Angels & Demons came with an audio book for $30 (this is a Best Buy exclusive). Ronin bluray was bought for $9 at amazon.com. Couldn't pass that up! Also, I got the Ichi bluray prior to Christmas Day, so I was quite pleased with that. I did see that bluray at Best Buy for $30, so it was a deal online. For Christmas, my siblings and I, pitched together to get the Insignia® - Blu-ray Disc Player with Wi-Fi and 1080p Output ( NS-WBRDVD) for our parents. I also had to setup the player for the 'rents. It's not as intuitive as it should be, and it would not connect (to update) via WEP wifi. I had to actually had to hook up an ethernet cable to do the update. Once the new firmware update was installed, you can now stream Netflix (which was the primary reason why we got this player for our parents). By the way, the Bluray player interface is not very user-friendly. Why is the Netflix icon buried under the "Connect" icon? When you put in a data disc (with MP4 or AVI files), to me, the disc should autoplay, but instead, you have to browse to "Disc" and "open" manually. There's a lot of improvement they can work on for the next iteration of this product. It seems like I'm complaining a lot for a product that I'm not even using! Well the report I got from the parents is that they LOVE the Netflix feature. So there you have it. For about $200, this is a pretty solid product, from my brief encounter with it. However, if you want to pony up another $100, I recommend just getting the Playstation 3, where you get the Netflix streaming, bluray support, the AVI/data files (it supports DIVX), and it also plays PS3 games. Whatever you do, don't get an Xbox 360. Since I got my red ring of death (everyone I know had this at one point) and their lack of bluray support (as far as I know, there's been no announcement that xbox is getting bluray since their failed HD-DVD add-on player), I have been an xbox hater. I hate the xbox, and so does the nation of Japan. PS, I noticed that between the Insignia and PS3 netflix streaming, is that the PS3 is much faster. For instance, I can browse the movie cover artwork as soon as I arrive in a genre (the images loads up in the background as I'm browsing). The Insignia waits until everything is downloaded before it will even let you move around.
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posted Nov 21, 2009 8:07 PM by Vu Nguyen
posted Nov 15, 2009 1:37 PM by Vu Nguyen
posted Nov 12, 2009 9:23 PM by Vu Nguyen
Update
05: The Brave Archer (07 Apr 2009)
06: Ten Tigers of Kwangtung (26 May 2009)
07: Black Magic 2 (16 Jun 2009)
08: The Flag of Iron (25 Aug 2009)
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posted Nov 11, 2009 12:20 AM by Vu Nguyen
Update
36: The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk: Special Collector's Edition (26 May 2009)
37: An Empress and the Warriors: Special Collector's Edition (21 Jul 2009)
38: Five Deadly Venoms: The Shaw Brothers Classic Collection (18 Aug 2009)
39: Battle of the Warriors: Special Collector's Edition (8 Sep 2009)
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posted Jan 11, 2009 9:44 PM by Vu Nguyen
01/11/2009 23:43:38
♥
written by vu ( )
As you know, I have other interests outside of music, so taking a break
from writing about music, I thought you guys may be interested in
hearing what's going on in my struggle for media on the television. I'm
closely following CES
coverage, and happy to see newer television models will come equipped
with wireless connectivity. This is pretty sweet, considering that if
you're like me, you get your programming via netflix or hulu.
I was on the lookout for getting my own media receiver/player,
and there's just not a lot of appealing players with equally appealing
price (read: cheap). What I'm looking for is a product that can play
back my media files, plus connect to the internet to watch Netflix,
Hulu, CBS, etc. I do not want the product to be reliant on a media
server nor do I want to hack it to get it to function (I'm looking at
you Apple TV).
Since I'm probably never going to get one that will work for me, instead I'm currently playing around with free TVersity,
since ditching PlayOn (the trial was only 15 days and there was no
compelling features that would warrant me paying $30 for beta product).
TVersity, based on testing it, works pretty well, that is if
you don't use their transcoding or interface! Best of all, you can
launch Safari on your iPhone and and point to your IP address:
xxx.xxx.x.x:41952 and it will automatically take you to the sharing
folders of TVersity. Music and videos plays flawlessly on the iPod and
works amazing if you use that same method on your PS3 using their
built-in browser.
If you want to test it out for yourself, here's how you find your IP address, on Windows:
- Go to Control Panel: Networking Connections: Local Area Connection.
- Double click on the icon and go to the "Support" tab and it will list your IP address.
On Macs I'm sure it's a lot simpler
I did test out their rival, Orb's
player on the iPhone and was not impressed with its image quality (or
the fact that you have to pay $10 for the full version). It's still
very early on, so until Sling or Netflix
(very doubtful since they haven't even made their streaming service
work on Firefox or the mac) comes up with their own product, I'm
sticking with TVersity for the time being.
 
Links:
www.weheartmusic.com
podcast.weheartmusic.com
news.weheartmusic.com
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posted Aug 12, 2008 6:47 PM by Vu Nguyen
I just found out that Hollywood Video is offering free bluray rentals (one at a time per account). This is good for early adopters, and also good for people on the fence about bluray. Heck if they get a player, they get as much as 30 free bluray movies to watch.
Since most of the good free rentals were taken (my Hollywood had a small selection of blurays), I ended up renting National Treasure 2.
At the moment, I'm renting and watching Art of War 2, since I liked the first movie (and most Wesley Snipes film).
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posted Aug 6, 2008 6:26 PM by Vu Nguyen
I do love Clive Barker, let me tell you. Ever since I seduced by Hellraiser 2, I went and bought many of his books. I love his trilogy The Books of Blood which I have bought twice over after my first set was lost in a house move. One of the story from the Books of Blood is "Midnight Meat Train", which this film is based on.
Nowhere on the main credits do you see Barker's name (ala Clive Barker's Nightbreed or Clive Barker's Lord of Illusions), so you go in the film not knowing that this is a Clive Barker story. In his early stories, Barker concentrated on demons and the supernatural (he seems to have gone sci-fi in his later books if you ask me), so Midnight Meat Train has a bit of the supernatural flair - which doesn't translate well on film.
I think if they had (shock) change the story to focus more on the serial killer elements (about a butcher who kills people on the midnight train), it would've been cool. Once you get to this point of weirdness, that's when the film fails for me. So basically three acts of the movie is pretty good, it's the last part, the ending, that I wasn't that keen on. Also, maybe "bullet-tooth" Vinnie Jones' character didn't scream scary for me :/
Oh also, Ted Raimi makes a surprisingly eye-popping cameo.
I will go on to say that if you're interested in a thriller, this would be great movie for you. It's currently not out on DVD, yet, but well worth a rental.
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posted Aug 1, 2008 6:35 PM by Vu Nguyen
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updated Aug 1, 2008 11:15 PM
]
 DOOMSDAY (2008)
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I tried watching the John Woo produced film, Blood Brothers, and couldn't bring myself to watching it. I started the film last night, and about 45 minutes into the film, it just felt too cliche (and boring) that I thought I could put it off until today. I put the film in and tried again, wow, seriously wasn't paying attention to the movie at all. I suppose the film didn't grab my interest at all.
Instead, I'm re-watching Doomsday, a British film, I think. The star of the film is a Kate Beckingsale-look-a-like, called Rhona Mitra, who was absolutely gorgeous in leather. The futuristic film is about how they isolated Glasgow in a containment zone because of a Doomsday virus. Since there are no law enforcements, etc., Glasgow suddenly turned to a Mad Max-type of world.
Mitra, as easy-on-the-eye (and I mean "eye") as she is, it's hard for me to believe this little girl can fight, but I think she manage to pull it off. There are moments of disbelief, but you just have remember that it's just an outrageous movie.
There are extreme scenes of bloody gore (smash hands, exploding bunnies, gunshot to the head at extreme closeeup), which at time, looks incredibly cheesy, but it looks awesome just the same.
There is a "Fine Young Cannibal" inside joke if you can bring yourself to watching at least the first act of the film.... You would think this film tries really hard to be "Mad Max" or "28 Weeks Later", but those are great films to try and emulate. It just doesn't feel like an original film, but I reckon you would enjoy the film if, or if you have not, seen those other films.
I only rented the DVD, but would consider actually buying the bluray disc if prices were reasonable.
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