Gary Vaynerchuk is proudly loud and obnoxious.  Normally I wouldn’t listen for more than a few seconds to a guy like Gary but his honesty makes him somewhat likable.  That glimmer of hope is why I spent a little time reading his site and watching some of his videos.  It wasn’t until I watched a video of Gary at a Web 2.0 Expo, lecturing about building a personal brand, that I knew how smart he really was (although he’s dangerously close to Tony Robbins territory with how motivating he is).

Gary essentially begged the audience to quit doing work that they hate.  He asked them to figure out what it is that they really like to do and do it.  Make that the foundation and then figure out how to make money from it.  That said, I’ll be launching a new site in the next couple of months.  Fingers crossed…

I hear a lot of people complain that their brand new HDTV just doesn’t look crisp a lot of the time.  Below is my short list of tips, hints, questions, and answers about why your picture might not be as good as you expected.

1. Are you watching an HD channel?  In comparison to the number of channels your satellite or cable provider sends to you, the number that are actually high definition is pretty low.  For Bell ExpressVu all of the channels are in the 800s.  It’s to the point now where I won’t watch a show if it isn’t in the 800s.
2. Even some HD channels show non-HD content sometimes.  I have tried to figure out what the CRTC says about how much content has to be full 720p HD in order to call the channel HD but I have been unsuccessful so far.  My guess is that there is some percentage of the day which the channel must be showing full HD in order to retain its HD status.
3. Some programs don’t use the highest quality equipment.  My wife often comments on how a daytime show she watches, on CBC HD, doesn’t look nearly as good as the hockey on the same channel.  For a show to look its best the signal has to only be touched by high quality equipment at each step of the process.  It’s a weakest link type scenario.
4. Are you using HDMI, DVI or component cables for the video?  The red, white and yellow cables or an S-video cable are not enough to get full HD video (red, green and blue is a component bundle and is fully HD capable).  If you’re not using one of the three types of cables I mentioned, you need to be.
5. Some programs are widescreen but still standard definition (read: blurry).  These are the ones that really try to fool you.  As a rule of thumb for ExpressVu viewers (unfortunately I have no experience yet with cable or StarChoice HD), the programs in true HD normally have an HD prefix in the program name, not just the channel name.

And this isn’t going to be War and Peace, either.  I just wanted to drop a line to let everyone know that I’m still alive.  I’ve found that having an infant in the house doesn’t give you more time to do all of those things you’ve been meaning to do.  Go figure.

My list of upcoming movies that I’d like to see, based on trailers I watched tonight.  (Told you it was going to be fluff.)

• Che - Not that you can believe everything you see from Hollywood but a movie about the history of the Cuban revolution is something I’m interested in.
• Adventureland - Bill Hader is good in everything and Kristen Wiig just cracks me up.
• 9 - Looks like a cool mix of Tim Burton weirdness (even though he’s just the producer) and action and a neat story.  Great voice actors, too.  The director did 300 so it’s got some pedigree.
• Good - Wow.  This Viggo Mortensen flick about a professor who gets drawn into the Nazi party is right up my alley.  A thinker that makes you ask the question, what would I do?  How can good people go so wrong?
• Astroboy - I watched the cartoon when I was a kid.  I’ll rent this one.  Guilty pleasure.
• Watchmen - The special effects in the trailer look incredible.  I know nothing about the back history but it looks like you don’t need to.
• I Love You Man - Paul Rudd is one of the funniest actors going.  There truly isn’t a role I haven’t loved him in.  He plays a guy who has never really had a guy friend and he sets about trying to find one.  Has Andy Samberg as Rudd’s brother and Rashida Jones, of The Office fame, as his bride-to-be.
• The Wrestler - Looks sad but good.  People think Mickey Rourke might win an Oscar for this one.
• Yonkers Joe - A gambling/con movie with heart.  I welled up watching the trailer.  You just know something awful is going to happen.  Joe is trying to win enough money to send his Down syndrome son to a good school, but he’s going to do it by stealing from Vegas.
• Duplicity - A heist movie that looks like Mr. and Mrs. Smith without the guns.  I like Clive Owen enough to overlook Julia Roberts.
• Seven Pounds - Will Smith could sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman in white gloves.  He sold me as an actor after Six Degrees of Separation.  I have no idea what the movie’s about but it’s intriguing.
• Knowing - Although I’m not really a Nicolas Cage fan, the trailer for Knowing creeps me out and excites me at the same time.  His son uncovers a 50 year old letter that has the dates and body counts of every natural disaster from the past, and some from the future.  Hilarity ensues.  Just kidding.  It actually moves into end-of-the-world aliens/gods territory after that, in a Sixth Sense sort of way.  Awesome.
• Terminator: Salvation - If anyone can reboot a franchise it’s Christian Bale, as he’s already proven with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.  But really, if you’ve seen the previous 3 Terminators, are you going to skip the 4th?  Didn’t think so.
• The Proposal - Total date movie but it’s got Ryan Reynolds in it.  Like Clive Owen over Julia Roberts, I’ll see this one for Reynolds over Sandra Bullock.  A witch of a boss is forced to marry her whipped assistant when she finds out she’s being deported (back to Canada).  There’s just something wrong with the whole Canada angle but I’ll overlook it.  (Perhaps Reynolds should have coached Bullock a little on being Canadian.  We would never say, “but I’m from Canada!”  We’d surely say, “but I’m Canadian!”)
• He’s Just Not That Into You - Another date movie about, well, modern day dating.  This movie features a few people I really like in movies such as Scarlett Johansson, Bradley Cooper, Justin Long, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Ginnifer Goodwin, Jennifer Connelly and Drew Barrymore.
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine - My only complaint about this movie is that it seems like it might be overloaded with cool characters.  I felt like that was what dragged down the original set of X-Men movies and others like Spider Man.  Wolverine is cool enough on his own to carry a movie.  We don’t need 7 baddies to keep us interested.  I thought Iron Man did such a great job of keeping it simple.  Amazingly, Ryan Reynolds features again.  He’s my favourite actor right now so that is just more goodness for me.  Liev Schreiber looks completely badass in the trailer and, despite my trepidations, I really can’t wait to see this one.
• All About Steve - Sandra Bullock again?  This date movie has Thomas Haden Church and Bradley Cooper in it so that makes it ok for it to be on the list.  Bullock follows Cooper across the country thinking they’re meant to be together.  Hilarity ensues.  Maybe.  I’m sure I’ll have a couple of laughs though.  Sometimes that’s enough.
• Street Fighter: the Legend of Chun Li - Strictly a wire fu filler.  When you’re testosterone level is a little low, like after watching a Sandra Bullock movie, just watch some wire fu.  It’ll have you topped up in no time.  Let’s hope this one is better than the terrible first try at the Street Fighter franchise featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme.  Just terrible.
• Year One - Michael Cera and Jack Black is a bit of an odd combination but Cera’s uncomfortable nerd seems to mesh well with Black’s over the top crazy man in the trailer.  This one may be best viewed in the company of like-minded viewers.  People who liked Nacho Libre or Superbad.
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - Some people I know won’t have anything to do with a Michael Bay film.  All I can say is that, except for Mojo the dog whizzing on Ironhide’s foot, I absolutely loved the first Transformers movie.  The special effects were truly amazing.  I expect more of the same - pure popcorn fun.
• G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra - Seems like I’ve hit a few movies with colons in the titles.  That might tip my hat a bit to the type of movies I’m apt to pay money to see.  Truthfully, I had no interest in a live-action G.I. Joe adaptation, until I saw the trailer.  I love the direction they’ve gone and again, the special effects look incredible.  I’m nervous about Marlon Wayans in an action role, but I might have said the same about Jamie Foxx before I saw Collateral.  I’ll give him a chance.
• Land of the Lost - I’m all for actors branching out and trying something a bit new (see my Jamie Foxx comment above, and I also loved Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder).  I am worried that this Will Ferrell movie won’t be Will Ferrelly enough though.  We’re pretty used to “non-stop laughfest”s from Ferrell and Land of the Lost appears to have a significant CG component.  Ferrell and his crew stumble into a world with dinosaurs etc.  Hilarity ensues.  Danny McBride, of Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express fame shows up in this so that bumps the movie up my list.
• Crank 2 - Jason Statham seems to only play one character these days: the super tough everyman.  Like a British Bruce Willis in his prime, if Bruce Willis had been an MMA champ.  I caught myself enjoying the first in the series, appropriately named Crank, so I can only guess this one will be more of the same.  The trailer certainly points that way.  Amy Smart was excellent in the first one but I don’t know how they’ll top the sex scene at the newstand in front of a school bus.  The MacGuffin in the first movie was that Statham had been drugged and his heart was going to explode very shortly (just enough time to exact his revenge it turns out).  In this one the MacGuffin is that his heart has actually been replaced by a cheap artificial version which will hopefully last long enough for him to find his real heart and get it put back into his chest (oh, and exact his revenge).  A sequel was inevitable after the original more than doubled its money.  If nothing else, see this one for Statham’s character’s name: Chev Chelios.  Awesome.

Well, that’s it.  I got a little carried away and wrote way more than I intended.  Hopefully you made it this far and dug what I had to say.  If you did, leave me a comment with your 2009 movie list.  If you didn’t, leave me a comment and tell my why my list is terrible.

Cheers everyone!

J