Monday, September 28, 2009

Back to school...

Oana Dobre vs. Radu Tudor

Although I like the fact that Oana Dobre is sharply incisive as a reporter I think that she is too stubborn to accept other points of view as it was the case with Radu Tudor in a polemic regarding the Orthodox Church.
Radu Tudor on the other hand is more impartial and more open to dialog. He has also firm ideasand strong points but is by far more flexible in his reasoning.

The rest of the crew at "Sinteza zilei" ranges from jesters to sages... but, alas, who can tell when they are all together.

The Soloist



Not so thrilledabout the movie although it has good music.

Adam's Wall



Nice.

The Quest for Soundtracks

I have started to collect soundtracks since I have received as a gift for my birthday a vinyl LP called "Arii celebre din filme si musicaluri" (Famous tunes from movies and musicals). It contained Henry Mancini's Pink Panther theme - a theme associated in my mind with the funny cartoons I was watching on Hungarian television's "Esti mese" show every Wednesday. In that period Romanian television was broadcasting only two hours a day - but this is another story.
During my high school years I could hardly find such music - a few BW Polish tapes were available on the market. In that period I have learnt about Maurice Jarre, Vladimir Cosma and Angelo Badalamenti (Twin Peaks was a hit).
When the MP3 revolution stroke me I started to collect more and more soundtracks, learning this way about bands that were not in the mainstream in that period (this is how I have discovered trip-hop). Soundtracks - apart from fulfilling their role of plot support in movies can be seen as a very clever statement of the intentions of the film's directors/producers. They explore both mainstream and obscure domains of music, they range from world music to classical, dodecaphonic and jazz. That mixture colorizes and marks sometimes my memories about a movie. Many of the movies I remember have that mark inside my mind: Jungle Books, Star Wars, The Saint, Hopscotch, etc.
Today, as I was sorting some other music using Music Brainz' Picard tool, that there lots of soundtracks search engines. It was new for me as I have been getting the music just by IMDB's references.
The search engines are:

http://www.filmmuziek.be/

soundtrackcollector.org

http://www.gmronline.com/

http://www.soundtrackinfo.com/

... In this very moment I am listening to game's soundtrack - Grim Fandango :)

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Building rockets with stone-age tools

It is possible. This is why we are so amazed when we see the pyramids or the Antikitera mechanism.
But I do not think it is productive at all. Why the upper management insists into using 20+ years technologies and tools (Clearcase mon amour) now in a period when everything tends to be leaner and agile?
This is because they really lack the vision and the technological status quo and they stick with what it is familiar for them. They do not embrace the change - they really fear it. Therefore they circle themselves with paperwork to create the impression of stability.
However looking arround they should realize that the rockets they dream of or that are already in the neighbourhood were built using finer tools and with the finest crafts available on the market.
But that is what I have arround. And I've started not to like it anymore.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

I'm back



Unfortunately my vacation is over. I will dream of the sunny Greece for a long time!

Mount Athos


Faith is a risk of reason, but certainly not a cancellation, but rather an illumination of it.

(father Arsenie Boca)