The catalogue loosely fits in with my series of nano-apps and is hosted on movies.stevenwilkin.com. The code is publicly available on GitHub for anyone who’s interested.

All’s left now is to actually use the system and fill in the details of my collection!

I had a choice between 2 TeleSyncs: a 1-disc Xvid and a 2-disc SVCD. It was a close-run thing but I thought that the SVCD copy was (maybe) slightly better in quality and anyways, it would give me an opportunity to play about with DVD-lab.

Firstly, I fired-up VCDGear and extracted the MPEG-1 goodness. I found an easy to follow tutorial and proceeded to add the .mpg files to my project, DVD-lab demuxed the audio and video sucessfully, but choked when it came to transcoding and resampling the audio for the first disc, so I had to play around with BeSweet and managed to create a pair of 48KHz .wav files without too much hassle.

I hadn’t used DVD-lab before, but it was easy to add chapters and compile a “no-frills” DVD. I didn’t reencode the video and the resultant DVD actually comprised 2 titles (1 for each SVCD), but after creating an image and burning it, my DVD player never knew the difference. My only complaint was a slight click in the audio, but I was happy with the fruits of my labour.

The movie itself was excellent and as far as sequels go, I’ve see a lot worse. Nothing could have been better than the original Clerks, but Kevin Smith definitely gets my seal of approval for this one.

One of my favourite scenes was Jay parodying Buffalo Bill dancing to Q Lazzarus’ Goodbye Horses in Silence of the lambs. And there was even some Inter-species erotica near the end, what more could a deviant ask for? If I could get that song out of my head and off my hard-drive…

Jason Mewes’ character, Jay, wasn’t the same this time around though. But what do you expect, the lad is now in recovery (Bill W, hell yeah!) and looking good for it.

Sell a kidney if you have to and go see this movie and if you have any money why not buy Silent Bob’s coat?

Snootch.

Twisted and dark is the only way I could describe this movie. It begins with the main character, Oh Dae-Su, drunk and in a police station. He gets released from custody, gives the police the fingers, but on his way home is mysteriously kidnapped.

He is imprisoned for 15 years with only a TV for company, begins training and attempts to escape, Shawshank style, but when he has nearly removed enough bricks to break free, he is drugged and
wakes up on the roof of the building…

I don’t want to give too much away, but the essence of the story is that Oh Dae-Su is given 5 days to figure out why he was imprisoned (he quickly finds out who). The movie is action-packed and includes the lesser-known technique of removing teeth with a claw-head hammer aswell as one scene where Oh Dae-Su eats an alive octopus (yum yum!)

To be faithful to the movie I decided to watch Oldboy with the original Korean soundtrack and English subs and after the first few minutes I didn’t notice the subtitles at all and proceeded to be entertained.

It was really refreshing to have to think during a movie for a change and the twist at the end was just demented, get yourself a copy today!

Not only can you read about the origins of the immortal “snootchie bootchies” but Silent Bob also talks about the countless rounds of rehab Jason had to go through and how he only got and stayed clean when he had fallen far enough.

I’m looking forward to Clerks 2 next month and, dare I say it, I might even pay for the privilege.

Snootch.

(It works if you work it!)

I’d had a typical Saturday: I went to the afternoon meeting, fortified myself with some strong coffee afterwards and then hit the pool and did my usual 70-lengths of breaststroke. By the time I got home all I was in the mood for was occupying the sofa and eating like a champion.

Adywan really came through with this release, combining maVen’s video with the audio from multiple sources, good job old chap!

The movie itself was a different kettle of fish… There was loads of action and the special effects were pretty slick, but, plot-wise, nothing much seemed to happen: a cure for the “mutant x gene” is discovered, the bad mutants want to destroy it, the good mutants try to stop them, the good mutants win. I hope I didn’t spoil the movie for anyone!

Saying that though, the movie kept me entertained for the duration, however being tired no doubt prevented me from being distracted by Other Things. If like myself, you are a fan of Sci-Fi, it’s worth a download at least, but it’s like most of the other comic book tie-ins (and most movies in general) to come out of Hollywood: heavy on the special effects, marketing and hype, but lacking in any real substance.