BOND RULES!!!

I did such a fantastic job of developing the backstory for my new screenplay Saturday night and last night that I'm allowing myself to watch dvds and play videogames!

What's that you say? "Bollocks?" That sounds like BOLLOCKS to you?!!

Well, it is.

;P

I did have an amazing burst of creativity SatSun and yesterday, and got some good work done. But the truth is that I'm slackin' off today because it feel groovy. :)

My Gnomey's feeling better than she has in, like, a week and a half, if not 2 weeks!!! She went back to work today (or... technically, "yesterday" as she'll be waking up soon for her Tuesday while I'm still enjoying my Monday night) and I got to see her before I went to bed and she stayed up so I could see her before she went to bed... ALL IS GOOD! :)

I stayed up late last night/this morning, too! I was looking for a very specific Christmas present for her in SL (she insisted I not get her one in RL) and it took maybe 4 hours to track down THE specific think I was looking for, BUT I GOT IT!!! hee-hee :D

And, as it turns out, my alarm still woke me! (It has failed to in the past, lol.)

So after Wendy went to bed I ran downstairs to check the mail... AND MY JAMES BOND BOX-SET FINALLY ARRIVED!!!

There's a story in this:

A couple of months ago I didn't really have money, but I got SO OBSESSED with wanting to FINALLY put a dent in my HQFS library that I ordered 3 dvds off Amazon.

This requires a bit of explaination... HQFS stands for High-Quality Field-Sequential, and it's a format for watching 3-D movies at home.

If you purchased SPYKIDS: GAME OVER or SANTA VS. THE SNOWMAN in the last couple of years and watched either with the red/blue 3-D glasses that came with the dvd, you discovered that it's not really 3-D. In fact, it's not really watchable.

Red/blue 3-D (there's a term for it, and it's something like "anaglyphic" but I'm not sure) works incredibly well if (1) your TV set is perfectly color timed, and (2) the original picture is in black & white. When these criteria are met, one eye sees one image and the other eye sees the other image, creating the same illusion of depth that your eyeballs give you in everyday life. (Assuming, of course, that you have equal sight in both eyes.) But either studios or home video distributors believe that we -- the Public -- will not buy black & white movies. So they simply tint one image blue and the other red and give you the glasses.

But that's not really 3-D. You're not seeing one image in each eye, you're seeing 2 images because any color that's not red or blue fails to disappear. So you sort of, kind of get an impression of depth, but not really, as there is always this ghost image to contend with.

It's a HORRIBLE way to watch a movie!

But some really smart folks came up with the Field-Sequential system which present almost-theatrical quality 3-D.

Each frame of film alternates between left-eye perspective and right-eye perspective. And film frames pass by so rapidly that if you're not wearing the Field-Sequential glasses you see both perspectives simultaneously. (Just like if you take your glasses off in the theater.)

But the HQFS system causes the lenses of each eye of your glasses to take turns blacking out in an alternating pattern, allowing each eye to ONLY see the propper frame from that eye's perspective.

It's quite brilliant, really!!!

So some years back I bought this package of 3 IMAX 3-D dvds and the HQFS syetem (2 pairs of glasses which plug into a box that tells the glasses to black-out according to a syncronizing signal it receives from the dvd being played, if I understand it all correctly). One of the dvds was shite, but the other 2 were quite good.

And I ended up losing the dvds. I didn't misplace them, I lost possession, ownership, of them.

But I found one of them at a pawn shop! My favorite one, in fact!

But ever since I discovered that Amazon still sells several HQFS titles, I've been ACHING to stock-up, so I have a little variety when I want to watch a 3-D movie.

So a couple of months ago I really didn't have the money, but I couldn't stop myself from ordering SPYKIDS: GAME OVER, SANTA VS. THE SNOWMAN (I wanted to be able to watch it in REAL 3-D this Christmas) and a disc called TRANSITION.

A week went by and I still hadn't received it.

Well, HQFS probably isn't in the highest demand, so they're probably rare-ish.

So I waited patiently.

Then a month ago -- around the time you couldn't turn on a TV or log into a website without seeing an ad for CASINO ROYALE -- I decided my Bond library was embarrassingly small.

I had DR. NO, NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN and DIE ANOTHER DAY.

Brian had A VIEW TO A KILL on VHS.

Very sad, indeed.

And these new Bond box-set were popping up in Walmart, each PACKED with Bond!

But they're $80.00!!!

I had money, but I would be broke if I bought ONE of those boxed-sets. PLUS, I have very specific tastes in my Bond flicks, and there were certain flicks I HAD TO have, and the others were just gravy, if I wound up with them.

But the way they arranged these new box-sets, I would have to buy all 4 to acquire my Have-T-Haves. :(

However... Browsing Amazon, I discovered that they still sell the Bond collections from a few years ago!!! (The Christmas that DIE ANOTHER DAY came out in theaters.)

AND they were affordable!!!

AND the first box-set contained MOST of my Have-To-Haves!!!

So I ordered it!

When I ordered it, I noticed that my 3-D flicks hadn't shipped YET!

That sucked.

So for the next few days, I logged into Amazon to see if either of my orders was moving.

Bond shipped a couple of days later.

I've experienced this before... You order something hard-to-find off Amazon and it doesn't ship, and 6 months later you get an email informing you it's still not available, and would you like to cancel your order or continue to wait.

Okay. Real 3-D is kind of a Holy Grail for me, so I accepted that this was just another mirage in my quest.

But I had me some Bond on it's way to me!!! :D THAT would soften the blow!

The next day I get an email saying that Bond has shipped!

2 days after I get an email saying that my 3-D has shipped!

Okay, so I had a weekend coming up... With any luck, Bond would come this weekend and I could watch it before heading back to work, and then -- if the gods were REALLY smiling on me -- I would get my 3-D dvds in time for NEXT weekend!

That weekend came and went, and Bond never arrived. :(

Luckily, though, I had some Marx Brothers from Netflix to tide me over. So that was fun.

Another weekend came and went, and Bond STILL hadn't arrived. :(

BUT... In the meantime I had acquired ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, A VIEW TO A KILL (on dvd... with EXTRAS!!!), THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS and THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH!

So now the Edwards Boys' Bond library was 7 titles strong! (hee-hee)

THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH is a Have-To-Have for me simply because I like the world of Brosnan's 007. It's the weakest of his Bond films (through absolutely NO fault of his own!) but it still has that state-of-the-art, up-to-the-second immediacy that makes Bond exciting for a 12-year-old boy trapped in a 36-year-old man's body, lol.

Brian and I watched it (his first time, my second -- after seeing it on the Big Screen when it was first released I felt no desire to see it again, until now) and it's a lot better than I remembered it!!! The wrote the fuck out of that movie, lol! Seriously, that story was working on SO MANY levels!!! Ig nore Denise Richards' performance -- just enjoy the view -- and that's a pretty strong entry in the series!

So that was a pleasant surprise for me! I now owned a Bond film that I like that I didn't previosuly like!

(I experienced the same thing with TOMORROW NEVER DIES... After GOLDENEYE I guess I expected all the Brosnan Bonds to be of the same quality, but I left the theater a bit disappointed... But when I bought the dvd (which I later lost possession of) I enjoyed the movie more than had in the theater... I think it's something to do with the way those movies end; you have a great time, then it just sort of fizzles just before you walk out of the theater. That's a theory, anyway.)

Then, last weekend, I go down to check the mail and...

...my 3-D MOVIES HAVE ARRIVED!!!

Which is a bit perverse, but I got to see SANTA VS. THE SNOWMAN in 3-D so I'm not complaining one bit!!! It was GREAT!!! :D

And that brings us back to today, the reason I took you on this whole journey in the first place.

I got to talk to Gnomey before she went to work, then spent the next 4 hours or so tracking down her SL Chritsmas present, and that put me in bed WELL LATE. But I woke up in time to see her (because she also stayed up until the time I usually wake up) and I got to talk to her some more -- which was HEAVEN!!!

Then went downstairs to check the mail... AND BOND HAD ARRIVED!!!


(I'd like to take yet another paragraph to explain that this is a fortuitous event. There is a very narrow window between when I wake up and when the appartment complex office closes for the day. And when I order dvds or books, I usually get a slip of paper in my mailbox informing me that I have a package waiting for me in the office. MANY is the time I've received that slip of paper after the office is closed, so my anticipation of these Bond flicks has had me going downstairs in my pajama bottoms -- or Pirate Pants, as I call them because they have Pirates of the Caribbean on them -- and a coat and checking the mail half-asleep, just so I'll make it in time, in case my package has arrived. AND to have it arrive on a Monday, when I have 2 WHOLE DAYS to enjoy my package before the wrok week begins again... Even more of a miracle!)

I talked to Gnomey on the phone for a bit before she fell alseep, and then wandered into the living room to see what Brian was up to. he was destroying humans in Japan. (He's not racist or homicidal.. he was playing the game DESTROY ALL HUMANS 2.) I offered to help him ravage Japan, but he hates the split-screen, so he generously let me destroy some humans for half an hour or so, then it was time for breakfats/dinner (breakfast for me, dinner for him) and we popped in a Bond flick to watch while we ate.

The box-set I ordered came with:

GOLDFINGER
THUNDERBALL
LIVE AND LET DIE
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
LICENCE TO KILL
GOLDENEYE
TOMORROW NEVER DIES

Which is ASTOUNDING because 5 of those are my Have-To-Have Bond flicks. FIVE!!! For $45.00, including shipping!!! (Less than $10 a movie and with LIVE AND LET DIE and THUNDEBALL thrown in as bonuses!!!)

I was suggested we watch LIVE AND LET DIE because before Tom Mankiewicz wrote SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE and SUPERMAN II: THE RICHARD DONNER CUT (NOT the theatrical version of SUPERMAN II) he had written some James Bond films. And being the incredible writer/film nerd I am, I wanted a taste of what he had done for the Bond franchise!

Turns out that Mankiewicz had written DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, LIVE AND LET DIE and THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN.

Now, DAF if the flick that Connery returned to Bond as (for, he believed at the time, the LAST time) and I remember TMWTGG being a decent Bond flick when I had recorded it (along with the other Bond flicks) off TNT's Christmas Bond marathon for my dad several years ago.

So when I thought of how bad LIVE AND LET DIE was, I was probably only thinking of one of two bad scenes, and the movie as a whole was probably much better than I remembered it, right? Like with THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH.

Brian and I didn't make it through the whole movie. I was falling asleep in my chair and Brian was making unrepeatable jokes about the cheesiness of the way the film was directed. (He was in rare -- if scatological -- form tonight, lol!)

So I hopped to the Making Of LALD and rather enjoyed that. (Not sure if Brian did... But he's kind of a wierd cat... He seems to simply enjoy new knowlege and new experiences. Put in an obscure b/w classic and he'll watch it and take stuff away from it that you wouldn't imagine was intended by the filmmaker. But then you pop an "artsy" flick in there and he's in pain and misery -- as am I usually, lol.) We started watching THNDERBALL because we're both familiar with NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN (I think we both saw it in the theaters.. I know I did, but Brian doesn't seem to remember and I don't remember who I was with when I saw it, lol) and I recently discoverd it was a remake of THUNDERBALL.

Before the first act was over we were both heading ofr our beds, lol. But that was probably more to do with the huge meals we had both consumed than the movie.

Anyway, I got a call that woke me up a little, so I decided to just go through the Bond discs watching the Making-Of featurettes, and had a really nice time!!!

Then I played a level of TOMB RAIDER 2... And now I'm here, writing this entry for the last hour or more, lol.

My baby hasn't woken up yet.

At any rate, I haven't written any more on my screenplay, but I'm still really excited about it! :D

Not an excuse, mind you. Just an explanation of what I've been doing instead.

Okay, I'm outty. PEACE!!! :D