Ted's Blog

One of the few movies where the upgrade to 3D was really worth it was probably Gravity, a space disaster movie that came out in 2013 and wound up at the top of my list of best movies of the year. I got the Blu-ray last year and finally watched it. Just like the first time it kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time and I was blown away by how realistic everything looked. So I watched it and enjoyed it all over again and started watching the making of segments which are really amazing. For the space stuff they had two light sources, earth and sun, and as an actor moved or spun the lights would have to go around the actor since they couldn’t really spin Sandra Bullock and George Clooney that much. So they got robots like they use for making cars and would have one robot hold the camera, one the sun light, and one the earth light and the actor wouldn’t have to move that much. In the scenes that take place in space, really the only thing that was real was the actor’s face. Everything else was pretty much CGI. On scenes inside space ships they had sets (but still did a great job of mimicking weightlessness, which I won’t go into).
Continue reading “Gravity”

I have been on Blu-ray forum for two years now, which I noticed this week made me a “Senior Member” (edit: actually it is because I have 400 posts; has nothing to do with time). Like any online forum, reading about what other people are getting makes everyone spend more money than they would otherwise, just like with flashlights. However, while I have been buying entirely too many movies this year, I am paying a lot less. In January, I read about Dollar Trees around the country getting shipments of Blu-rays (so $1 each) and I wound up buying a few titles including Fargo and Enough Said, the former a classic Coen brothers movie and the latter a mostly overlooked gem which I still haven’t watched (edit: watched it later, B-). I also got the less well reviewed Dom Hemingway which I did watch and wasn’t that crazy about (C-). And in order to get some cheap replacement Blu-ray cases, I bought a few copies of Parental Guidance, a terrible Billy Crystal movie with the key feature being it includes a Blu-ray and DVD version of the movie. This let me get rid of some old Blu-ray cases and gave me homes for bare Blu-ray disks I had bought from Redbox, but I will probably never watch the movie.
Continue reading “Dollar Tree Blu-rays”

A couple of years ago I joined the Disney Movie Club and was able to get 9 Disney Blu-ray movies for about $90, so $10 each on average. The next time I enrolled I got a little smarter and got 9 movies for $80 (about $9 each on average) by pre-ordering new releases for my two commitment titles while the prices were marked down from $29.99 to $24.99 temporarily, saving $10 total. Now they have loosened up the rules a little more and will count titles priced as low as $19.95 as a commitment. However, they don’t have many titles for that price, mostly older titles, often older editions that don’t include a digital copy of the movie.

After my third enrollment, I started to run out of movies I wanted to own, but Disney is also making new movies and releasing new editions of old ones, so I just have to be patient. After my third enrollment I stayed a member for a year until Disney released two new titles I wanted as commitments to complete my obligation. During that time I was lucky someone used my Refer a Friend link and I got two additional movies for the cost of shipping only. So that time around I got 11 movies for $85. Plus all of these movies come with Disney Movie Reward points that you can save up and get an older Blu-ray title. I have gotten 9 more movies for free using those points, most of which come from the movies I am getting at the club (also other movies, movie tickets, and little bonuses Disney gives away).
Continue reading “Disney Movie Club, Part 4”

Last year I planted some Gloriosa Daisy seeds I got from the Disney Movie Club. I was able to get at least three plants from the containers where I planted the seeds, but only got one flower, which was cool looking, with autumn colors. After planting them in my front yard garden, the plants died back a little during winter, but never completely, even when it got really cold. So this Spring they made a quick comeback and were soon a couple of feet high with tons of flowers coming up. A storm blew the yellow ones down, but even lying on the ground, they seem to be doing okay. The yellow ones seem to be black eyed susans, but the one with autumn colors also has a lot of flowers. Continue reading “Daisies Part 2”

Last year I got a membership to the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Of course they have all kinds of plants there and right now they have a collection of living sculptures scattered throughout that were kind of neat to go looking for. But they also have a plot of pitcher plants that were just really cool. There are different kinds, but they all looked pretty neat.

Continue reading “Pitcher Plants”