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. 

Wednesday, June 12, 2024

4k-UHD/Movie Review: Ex Machina

 


Ex Machina is a 2014 thriller directed by Alex Garland and starring Alicia Vikander, Oscar Issac, and Domhnall Gleeson. It is a visually stunning movie that will also make you think. The basic premise is that a coder for an internet search engine (played by Domhnall Gleeson) wins a competition to hang out for a week with the reclusive CEO of the company (played by Oscar Isaac). In reality, he is there to test an artificially intelligent robot named Ava (played by Alicia Vikander).

The 4k set is a two-disc set containing a UHD disc and a regular Blu-Ray disc. The movie looks and sounds wonderful in the UHD format, and the cinematography and location shots from Norway really pop in 4k. That is especially true if you are watching on a large screen. The UHD disc has just the movie itself. All the other extras are on the regular blu-ray disc. Those include a 40-minute making-of featurette, a panel discussion from the 2015 SXSW festival, and then 8 shorter behind-the-scenes vignettes. A very good amount of material for a movie that clocks in just under two hours.

Overall, the movie is well-written and very well-acted. It does have a lower-budget independent movie feel to it despite there being a lot of CGI. It does have a bit of nudity (mainly toward the end of the movie) but it is not really gratuitous, as well as some violence, again toward the end of the movie. I would say it does earn the R rating, but it is not as hard an R rating as some other movies have, where there is a ton of sex and violence just to have sex and violence.  There are a lot of themes throughout the movie, including the role of computers and technology in our lives, whether computers could ever become sentient, and, if so, how humans would treat them. And, of course, if they do, how they would treat humans. It has a pretty nice twist ending that I will not give away, but it is not necessarily one that you would expect. It is a great movie that is definitely worth the time to watch.

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