Wednesday, November 26, 2008

DVD Advantages (for the bored)

I saw "The Incredible Hulk" the other day on DVD. I had plenty of time, so I satisfied my every slightest hint of curiosity-- rewatching scenes if I thought I didn't catch everything; turning on and off subtitles at will; and watching fast scenes again, but in slow motion. It was this last act that showed me the following.

Without giving too much away, during the computer scene there are many email messages that fly by very quickly. In slow motion I discovered that there were only about seven total messages that repeated themselves:
We should hit BLUE and GREEN very hard.
The car that I saw was Green!
The grass is always greener on the other side.
Have you been to Mr. Blue's Music store?
It is amazing how little the color blue is used throughout normal communication.
It should be clear that the blue computer is sorting through every instance of these common green words anywhere they are written.
There were maybe one or two more, but, like most, they are pretty dull. Who wrote this? I'm sure I could come up with interesting communication with the words green and blue in them. How about:
Come on! Everybody knows Vulcans bleed green!
You are invited to eat blueberry pie on Saturday.
I couldn't believe how blue the water was!
I prefer the blue-haired Japanese chick over the green-haired one. (You gotta have blue hair!)
Have you seen the new green uniforms?
And yes, even these are not the most interesting thing you've ever read, but I attribute that to being out of context. On a wild tangent, that reminds me that UserFriendly occasionally has people write the punchline of jokes that don't exist. No context at all, but they sure make you wonder.

Finally, the wrist watch heart rate monitor he wears does, in fact, exist. The CVS down the street sells a similar one for $59.99. I didn't buy one, but I'm pretty sure the rapid panic-inducing beeping was added for the movie.

Oh, I almost forgot. In the language settings, there's an option for DVS. I gave it a try and started the movie, and was surprised to hear every scene being described as it happened. Descriptive Video Service. Non-stop talking, basically, but in an interesting manner. It revealed some things that a normal viewer may not catch, like mentioning the name Tony Stark during the opening credits (his name rapidly flew by amongst a montage of newspaper articles), or "Stan Lee opens a fridge," even though in the movie he is given no name.

Well, that's about it for now. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

No comments: