After getting the PS3, one of the first things I wanted to do was to watch a Blu-ray movie.  Although you can control the movie via the wireless controller, this method puts a selection overlay on top of the movie image.  That’s annoying enough, but there’s more.  Maybe it’s just me but watching a movie using a game controller just doesn’t feel right to me.

Well, the cure is easy and cheap enough simply by ordering the PS3 remote ($24.99 at Best Buy, uses 2 AA batteries, included).  Unlike normal remotes, this thing connects via Bluetooth to the PS3.  So, the first time you use it, you have to add this as a device so that it can get “paired” to the PS3.  Once you do this, it acts just like any remote except you don’t have to point it at the console.

The remote has all the Blu-ray movie related buttons so that you can get full enjoyment from your HD movies.  Without this remote, you have to go through multiple button presses on your game controller to do what you want.  Not fun when you’re just trying to watch a damn movie.  As a bonus, it also has the PS3 controller buttons so you can pretty much do everything on the PS3, except maybe play games.

For example, viewing your pictures from your media server (i.e. computer) can be a nice experience using this remote because you can see the next picture by pressing the “Next” button.  How much easier could it be?

So, if you’re going to watch any Blu-ray disk movies, this remote is a no-brainer must have.

As for Blu-ray movies, I got “The Departed” and watched it in one sitting.  Although the extras are pretty weak, the quality of the Blu-ray is so good, I don’t think I can watch my old DVDs anymore.  The difference is very noticeable.  I don’t think I can afford to switch my entire DVD collection but I’m sure not going to buy anymore DVDs.  That’s for sure.

While watching Cranky Geeks on my Tivo, I noticed Dvorak complaining how his Tivo didn’t skip commercials like his cable DVR.  Huh?  Hasn’t he seen the tons of websites that explain how to “hack” your Tivo (e.g. BigMarv)?

Just in case you missed all the posts from long ago, if you want to skip 30 seconds on your Tivo every time you press the “Skip” button, follow these steps:

1.  Sometimes this “hack” doesn’t work unless you start off clean so it’s best to re-boot your Tivo first.

2.  Go to one of your recordings, and press “Play.”

3.  While your recording is playing, press the following sequence of buttons: Select, Play, Select, 3, 0, Select.

4.  You should hear 3 “bings” in a row.  Sometimes it’s hard to hear with your TV show playing in the background.  At this point, click on the “Skip” button and you should see the show skip 30 seconds.  If this doesn’t work, repeat step 3.

I have the Series 2 Tivo and this “hack” does work.  I’m not sure if it works with the Series 3 or HD versions.  One problem is, everytime the Tivo downloads new firmware and automatically re-boots, you’ll have to re-do this sequence.

One interesting side effect of this feature is that you don’t even see any part of the commercial.  This means sometimes you’ll be at the water cooler and somebody will say, “Did you see that new Coke commercial with the hot babes?” and you won’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

The movie “21″ is based on the book, “Bringing Down the House,” by Ben Mezrich. The book is based on the events of the re-generated MIT blackjack team in the late 90’s and Jeff Ma’s experiences. Although I’ve not read the book, reports are that the movie basically changes everything except a few specific scenes.

First off, let me start by saying that I used to count cards in the 80’s but found it too much work. Meaning my brain power wasn’t good enough to do it for 12 hours straight. I’m still an avid gambler and play poker a lot. Generally, I love casino and gambling movies,  I loved “Rainman,” “Casino,” and of course, “Rounders.”

As for “21,” other than the correct explaination of how to use simple counting techniques for blackjack play, almost everything else seemed inaccurate or completely wrong to me.

For example, the team stayed at Hard Rock and were seen all going to the same suite. Then, they played at the Hard Rock casino. No blackjack team would ever do this, and certainly not the famed MIT team. They are seen together too often and too many times.  They know the casino has cameras everywhere.

There are several scenes where the movie teaches how simple counting is done.  I say “simple” because there are more complicated techniques.  My friend that I watched the movie with didn’t understand this section of the movie and I had to explain it more in detail to her after the movie.  So I’m not sure if this part of the movie was useful to anybody since it’s apparently too difficult to understand for the untrained, but boring for blackjack counters.  It’s hard to balance things like this in a movie. 

They also used typical signals to communicate with each other.  However, they used the same cross arm signals throughout the entire trip, and even on subsequent trips.  Good for audiences to understand what’s going on.  Bad for presenting reality.

When the player pretending to be a “whale” would come to the table, the “counter” would stay at the table. This makes no sense since the whale player was perfectly capable of keeping the count himself and the counter player was eating up cards that the whale player could be getting.  This, not to mention, having the counter and whale players at the same table increases the chances of the casino taking note of this weird coincidence.

Also, there’s another scene where the “whale” splits 10s.  I could be wrong but I think even if the count was very high, splitting 10s is a sure signal to the dealer that you are counting cards.

To illustrate, I was playing at the Riviera, back in the 80’s. It was a multi-deck shoe, and I was playing by myself at the table. I had been playing for a while, doing nothing too strange and winning good money. At one point, the count became abnormally large and I switched from betting $5 per hand to two hands for $50 each. I kept winning and I increased my bets to $150 each. Before the count got back down too low, the pit boss came over and told the dealer to re-shuffle.  They noticed me out of all the players in less than 15 minutes.

Instead of getting up, and basically admitting to counting, I decided to risk losing some money back in order to prevent them from tagging me. I stayed and kept playing, lowering my bets only down to $50. By pure luck, I started on a long winning streak at this point, so I raised my bets back up to two hands at $150 again. This time, the pit boss came over and changed the dealer. To make a long story short, they changed dealers one more time on me before I left with about $10,000. The pit boss stood next to the table the entire time I played.

Remember that this was back in the 80’s when they really did beat up counters and cheats. The movie apparently takes place in present time since they were talking about face recognition software. If so, I doubt any large corporation would be using tactics like beating people up anymore. You could argue that the security consultant did this on his own but it’s still a big risk for everyone including the casino.

On yet another occasion in Vegas, I was at the end of a long session and I was so tired, I thought I had a hard 16 against a face card and hit. Before I realized what I did, the dealer brought out a 4. I had accidentally hit on a hard 17 and made 21 with the 4. The dealer immediately called over the pit boss. He looked and told the dealer to keep dealing but watched me play for a few minutes.

These examples show how paranoid the casinos were, (and still are) about cheats and counters alike. I wasn’t even playing with $10,000 chips or anything crazy like in the “21″ movie and they kept checking up on me. This is why what happens in the movie is totally fiction. If they did what they did in the movie, they would have had the casino watching over them like hawks. No way, they could get away with it. I’m sure the book is very different from this fictionalized version in the movie.

Enough mathmatics and gambling. What about sex. Well, other than a unrealistic romance between the protagonist and one of the female counters, their meeting place is a strip club. So as you can imagine, there are the required lap dance and pole dancing sequences. It’s not as nasty as I like, but it’s there. Let’s face it. This is a gambler’s movie. Not a horn dog movie.

All in all, there’s a lot of special effects showing the cards close up with sound effects making the cards sound like rocket ships. As gambling movies go, it’s not too bad. It’s not as good as the Vegas scenes from “Rainman,” but it’s okay. When the dealer peels off yet another card to make 21, while all the players are shouting for “Monkey,” a picture card, your heart will pump a little harder if you’re any type of real backjack player.

Summary
So what’s the bottom line?  If you’re a gambler but can’t leave town and you need your Vegas fix, this might be one option.  Otherwise just wait for the DVD or Blu-ray.

Jenna Jameson in a movie called “Zombie Strippers.”  Need I say more?

This picture just looks like some Japanese market somewhere but actually, it’s in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles. A film crew put up banners and bikes to make it look like a Japanese scene for the TV show “Heroes” on NBC.

This scene involved Hiro Nakamura (played by actor Masi Oka) doing is usual time travel or some other super human activities.

The left side of the banner simply says, “Shopping Center” in Japanese.  The bicycles are props but they did look like they might actually work.  Click on the thumbnails below to see a bigger version of some of the other pictures I took.

During one of my outing to Little Tokyo, I saw Chris Gore shooting what I assume was a clip for his DVDuesday on Attack of the Show on G4.

Basically, he reviews the new DVDs that come out on Tuesdays with “Buy, Rent or Pass” choices.  From his reviews, I can tell that aside from being a movie fanatic, he is more of a geek than I am, which is pretty hard to do.

Chris is also the founder of filmthreat.com, which started with reviews of mostly small indie movies, but now has gone more mainstream.

Speaking of movies, I saw “The Brave One” with Jodie Foster on Monday with my movie buddy.  Although there was a flashback sex sequence with the dead guy with Jodie, I’m pretty sure the nude scenes were done with a body double.  That’s not to say that Foster doesn’t have a nice body, but she probably doesn’t have to do stuff like that at this point in her career.

My friend liked the movie because she has some anger inside wanting to come out, but I found the movie to be a cheap imitation of “Death Wish”.  Arguably, it could even be considered an imitation of “Taxi Driver,” in which Foster played a teenage prostitute in New York, and De Niro was the vigilante.

In “The Brave One,” Foster plays a radio personality who is a victim of a violent attack which ends in her boyfriend being murdered.  After this attack, she becomes a recluse, then has some type of weird epiphany where she finds pleasure in a Bernie Goetz type vigilante murder spree of New York.  She befriends the detective investigating the murders and even interviews him for her radio show.

At this point, I lost interest in the plot line and was just hoping to see some good gore.  Unfortunately, the gore is not glorified and the plot turns into a rediculous ending.  The only thing missing was an epilog showing the detective taking credit and being a big hero.  If Foster’s character and the detective were lovers, it might almost be able to fly, but I didn’t buy the ending for a second.

As Chris Gore would say, “Pass.”