Friendly for The Environment: A New Bulb Is On The Block

May 13, 2007EnvironmentRaymond Tomlin

Being the environmentally conscious sort of people that we are, during the course of this past week, VanRamblings installed a low flow shower head in the bathroom, and visited our local Home Hardware to purchase a surfeit of compact fluorescents, this time for the living room, bathroom, bedroom, dining room and kitchen. All and all, we’re feeling pretty good about ourselves.
Seems, though, that with Canada banning incandescent bulbs by 2012 — in Ontario alone, replacing the 87 million incandescent bulbs in that province with more efficient bulbs will save six million megawatt hours every year, enough to power 600,000 homes — the hunt is on for an alternative, other than compact fluorescents, to the traditional incandescent bulb.
The knocks on compact fluorescents are few, but for some significant. Initially, concern was expressed about the tube design of CFs, but now that you can purchase a CF in the traditional incandescent bulb shape, for any room in the house, that concern would appear to have been dealt with. For some, the fact that CFs take awhile to “warm up”, that the lights can’t be placed on a dimmer, and many consumers believe the light seems a little harsh and unforgiving (VanRamblings believes we’re still gorgeous, though, when we look in our mirrors) are barriers to switching to more efficient lighting. Is there an alternative to compact fluorescents, then?
Seems that there is, or soon will be. In this Associated Press story, destined to be the next big thing in the lighting market, we will see the emergence of the LED “bulb”. According to the AP story, at the recent Lightfair Trade Show, in New York, the Dallas-based Lighting Science Group Corp. showed an LED “bulb” that screws into a standard medium-sized socket, producing a warm light equivalent to that of a 25-watt incandescent bulb, consuming just 5.8 watts. Although the bulb currently costs $50 — let’s face it, kinda pricey when we can purchase a 4-pack of standard bulbs for only a couple of dollars at our local grocery store — word out of New York was that “by the middle of next year, they’ll be priced for consumers.”

Oscars 2007: That August Day Has Finally Arrived !!!

February 25, 2007CinemaRaymond Tomlin

After all the prognosticating, more than a month after the nominees were announced, Oscar Sunday is upon us, and all is right with the world.
The Gurus o’ Gold: the 14 critics predict a Best Picture win for The Departed. Kris Tapley, at In Contention, is calling for Letters From Iwo Jima to pick up the Best Picture prize, while Tom O’ Neill at the L.A. Times’ Gold Derby predicts a sweep for The Departed (will win in every category it’s nominated); Sasha Stone, over at Oscar Watch, is right in step with O’Neill.
USA Today‘s Claudia Puig, the ever thoughtful Jeffrey Wells, the independent-minded James Berardinelli, The Hollywood Reporter’s Anne Thompson, and a host of others also offer their two cents worth.
VanRamblings? Where do we come in? Who, and what, do we feel will win?
Well, even though we’re feeling a little verklempt, not to mention a tad burnt out about this whole Oscar prediction thing, fair’s fair, so …
Best Picture: Babel. Why Babel? Very few have seen Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima. Little Miss Sunshine is too slight (and won last night at the Independent Spirit Awards). The Departed is far from Martin Scorsese’s best. And, The Queen is a warmed-over BBC production.
As to the remaining ‘big’ awards: Helen Mirren is a lock for Best Actress (The Queen). Forest Whitaker is a lock for Best Actor (The Last King of Scotland). Martin Scorsese is a lock for Best Director. Jennifer Hudson is a lock for Best Supporting Actress (Dreamgirls).
The only toss-up: will Eddie Murphy take home the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, or will Alan Arkin triumph?
And, oh yeah, Best Foreign Film oughta go to The Lives of Others.
We’ll know soon. Full results will be published below, later tonight.

Update: Perhaps not the most boring Academy Awards in memory (Ellen DeGeneres was fine, if a little unexciting … even if the programme did run long), there were few, if any surprises at the 79th annual Academy Awards.
Nikki Finke snarkily live-blogged the event, as did Greg Kirschling at Entertainment Weekly and L.A.’s Defamer.com.
The New York Times has already published their wrap-up of the ceremony, as has the L.A. Times. Tom Shales at the Washington Post found the ceremony to be “a bore and horror,” while Variety’s Brian Lowry writes the ceremony was “unspectacular bordering on dull.”
So, who won and are out partying while you’re getting ready for bed?
Just as we reported earlier in the day, as critics predicted The Departed won in every category it was nominated (save Mark Wahlberg for Best Supporting Actor), including Best Picture, Best Director, Adapted Screenplay and Film Editing. Forest Whitaker (Best Actor), Helen Mirren (Best Actress) and Jennifer Hudson (Best Supporting Actress) were, as it proved, ‘locks’ indeed, while Alan Arkin proved more popular than Eddie Murphy, taking home his Best Supporting Actor Oscar. And, of course, as we predicted above, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others picked up Best Foreign Film, which oughta improve its box office.
You were thrilled, you were excited, and now it’s all over til next year.
C’mon back later in the week, when VanRamblings will set about to publish the first of two lists on films to be released in 2007 that are likely to gain Oscar recognition come next February 24, 2008.

2007 Academy Awards: One Week To Go (and more reviews)

February 19, 2007CinemaRaymond Tomlin

We’re less than one week away til the big day, and VanRamblings is back to weigh in on four more Oscar contenders.
Of course, Little Children remains our favourite film of 2006 (followed by The Good Shepherd, Babel, The Lives of Others and Letters From Iwo Jima … pretty much in that order), but we’ll leave to another day the posting of our Top 10 Films of 2006 list.

THE DEPARTED - LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA - PAN'S LABYRINTH - VOLVER

First up, the film that will garner Martin Scorsese that Best Director Oscar statuette he’s long sought. Too bad, though, that The Departed is a rather humdrum adaptation of the Hong Kong crime flick Infernal Affairs, a high body count movie where sterling performances (from Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg) become the focus over compelling narrative. The Departed isn’t a bad film; rather, it’s just not up to the standards of Raging Bull, Casino and Bringing Out the Dead.
The pick o’ the bunch this week, Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima is everything that Flags of Our Fathers was not: passionate, strikingly original, involving, masterful and resignedly melancholy. How is it possible that anyone would come away from this film and not see the absolute futility of war? Certainly deserving of a Best Picture nod, Letters From Iwo Jima is eloquent, powerful, humanizing filmmaking, created by a mature filmmaker working at his peak.
Set in the dying days of the Spanish Civil War, when Franco had long been in control of the reigns of government, Guillermo del Toro’s fabulist fairytale, Pan’s Labyrinth, brilliantly melds the realms of fairy tale and brutal 20th-century history as it relates the trauma of war through the haunted eyes of a lonely 10-year-old girl. Often terrifying and graphically violent in its depiction of evil, Pan’s Labyrinth is decidedly not children’s fare, but del Toro does create a richly imagined world, and magnificent film fare.
Volver may not be one of Pedro Almodóvar’s more compelling nor inventive films but for all that, given the heavier fare reviewed in today’s posting, Volver comes across as generally involving, sporadically humorous, well-acted and warmly personal cinema. Relating the relatively slight story of a family who take over a recently closed restaurant and in the process discover much about themselves, Penélope Cruz is very much the star here, her performance radiantly funny, her character immensely likeable.
Well, that’s it for now. See you later in the week for our Oscar post.

ALERT, INSTALL IMMEDIATELY: All-Inclusive Microsoft Update

February 14, 2007Web & TechRaymond Tomlin

Aiming to patch
20 critical vulnerabilities, Microsoft yesterday delivered its monthly batch of security updates — including 11 critical issues in the Windows operating system, Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, etc.), Internet Explorer and even its own anti-virus tools — matching its all-time high for monthly security fixes, its largest security batch since August 2006.
Now, it’s true, you could wait for the fine folks at Microsoft to notify you about the absolutely critical updates — say tomorrow, or next week, or whenever you’re on their notification list of one billion computer users. But do you really want to wait? Should you? VanRamblings thinks not.
Among the factors contributing to the unusually high volume of February patches could be the discovery of four vulnerabilities Microsoft had planned to address in its January 2007 security bulletins, but didn’t.
Okay, so now is the time for you to surf on over to Microsoft’s Update site (in Internet Explorer), and download and install the patches. Immediately.