Welcome

Welcome to my ever-evolving blog. It started out as a blog on Beachbody workouts and products, mainly when I was a Beachbody coach. I no longer coach, not because I don't believe in Beachbody's programs (I subscribe to Beachbody on Demand and use their workouts every day), I am just not a salesperson and hated that aspect of it. I am more than willing to answer questions about my experiences with their products and the various workouts, and I feel freer to do so without the appearance of giving a biased review of something.

I have also started adding reviews for various things I have purchased like movies, books, CDs, and other products. This was brought about by a fight with Amazon in which all of my reviews were removed over a completely bullshit allegation that I posted a review that violated their terms of service. After going back and forth with the morons in the community-reviews department (even after they admitted that my posts did not violate their guidelines) they restored my account (which took them six months to do), but I have been posting my reviews on my blog to have them preserved in case something like that happens again. And here, I will post uncensored reviews so I will swear from time to time and post reviews that may be longer than Amazon's character limit. Everything I post here on any topic or product is my personal opinion, and I take no compensation for any product reviews I post. I am a member of Amazon's vine program and because I get those products for free, I keep those reviews on Amazon only, but everything I have purchased with my own money, whether from Amazon or some other store/website/outlet, I will post here.  

I also plan to do some longer blog posts on various topics, such as how to learn physics, how to get through calculus, and longer reviews of workout programs as I do them. Basically, whatever strikes me as interesting at the time.  As you can see if you navigate around the blog, I had many years in between postings. During that time I was going back to school to get an engineering degree, and learning material that I avoided my first time through college was a different experience and one that gave me a lot of insight into how to do well in those classes, which I will try to impart here for those who are looking to get a science or engineering degree. 

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

4k-UHD/Movie Review: Blade Runner 2049

 


This is the 2017 long-awaited sequel to the (now) iconic 1984 film Blade Runner, which starred Harrison Ford a Deckard, a Blade Runner who hunted down and retried Artificially Intelligent Androids called Replicants. Of course, that movie ended with Deckard falling in love with, and escaping with the replicant Rachael (played by Sean Young). This movie is set 30 years after the original movie. We find out that the Tyrell Corporation has been taken over and is now the Wallace Corporation, run by Niander Wallace (played by Jared Leto). The corporation still makes replicants and has basically turned them into slaves, and the Earth has become a dystopian nightmare, in large part due to an electromagnetic pulse that wiped everything out in 2022. Most humans now live on the colonies that were promoted in the original movie. Ryan Gossling plays K, the most advanced replicant (a Nexus-9 Replicant) who is a Blade Runner that hunts down and retires rogue replicants. In the process of retiring a replicant at the beginning of the movie, he discovers evidence that replicants can reproduce biologically, and this leads him, through a series of events, to finding Deckard (again played by Ford). I will not spoil the movie for those who have not seen it, but if you have seen the original movies, similar themes play out in this movie that did in the first one.

For those who get the 4-k blu-ray, it is a two-disc set with a UHD disc just containing the movie and a regular blu-ray with the movie and the extras. The A/V quality of the UHD disc is top-notch, pretty much what I would call reference quality. There are, of course, a lot of CGI effects in the movie, and everything looks seamless so, if not for flying cars and the like, it would be hard to tell what is real and what is not. The extras include two longer featurettes, one 17 minutes and one about 22 minutes, that focus on casting and the look of the new movie. Then there are a series of prologues which are prequel shorts to the movie that provides some backstory. The longest is just over 15 minutes and the other two are around 6 minutes. Then there are a series of short featurettes that total 11 minutes and can be played all at once, which cover different aspects of the Blade Runner world. Then there is a trailer for the game that was released around the same time as the movie. All in all, the extras total about an hour and twenty minutes, give or take. 

Overall, the movie is very good. The original movie, which was directed by Ridley Scott is widely considered one of the best Sci-Fi movies of all time, if not the best, so this had large shoes to fill. The writers did a good job incorporating parts of the story from the original film into a new, updated movie, and made it work. The cast is very strong and includes Robin Wright,  (in her first major role in the US), and Dave Bautista. The movie even finds a way to incorporate Sean Young's character (using a similar kind of CGI and real actor blend that was used in Rouge One) from the first movie without her appearing in person (although she is still credited as appearing as Rachael). Like the first movie, it is hard to classify what genre this is. It is a movie that has a lot of action, but it is not really an action movie per-se. It is a mix of action, drama, philosophy, and thought experiment all rolled into one. The acting is top-notch with Gossling doing a great job taking over the leading role, and Ford steps back into the role of Deckard well. It is a worthy follow-up to the first movie and is definitely worth watching. 

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