Revenge of the Nerds
I promise the blog isn't becoming a movie blog, but I am starting to rewatch a bunch of ones from my youth through my 20s. ;) This time, the rewatch was for Revenge of the Nerds.
There are quite obviously some problematic scenes in the movie. Lewis tricking Betty by pretending to be her boyfriend was wrong. I know they needed the two to connect for the movie to completely work, but there had to be another way.
Lamar's homsexuality carried a message of inclusion, but at the same time was played as a joke. I suppose that was the only way it could have been played at that point in the 80s, but it doesn't make it right. The jokes surrounding it most definitely fall flat these days. Asshole 14 year-old me probably found it funny. Luckily, people can grow out of stuff like that.
The body-shaming of the women of Omega Mu played for comedy was another problem with the film. I get that 14 year olds weren't meant to be allowed to see the film, but my parents were pretty liberal in some parts of their lives. I saw through that, because 14 year-old me thought most of the girls who were meant to be shown as "ugly" were better looking than most of the cheerleaders. I've never been one to abide by society's concept of "beauty." ;)
There are lots of of other problematic issues which made the film not age very well at all. Those issues were also problems with society at large back then, and many of them are, unfortunately, still a problem. But some of us managed to grow since then.
Now, you might be thinking that I did not enjoy rewatching the movie. You'd be dead wrong. I was a nerd. I am a nerd. I've alway preferred "geek," thank- you-very-much, so I identified with Lewis and Gilbert and the rest. I still do. The underlying story is still good, and not all of the comedy relied on the problematic parts. I still enjoyed the film, because I was able to look past the problems and at the underlying message of acceptance and inclusion, which I think is the real message of the film.
Tags: movies, comedy, revenge-of-the-nerds
Compaq LTE Elite 4/75CX
This is the first repair from the group of machines I received from a friend. It is a Compaq 486DX4/75 laptop with a 9.5" screen, 16MB of RAM, and a 340MB hard drive. The hard drive a standard 2.5" IDE drive, but it's stuck inside and aluminum "can" with a proprietary connector exposed instead of the normal one. When I first performed a triage on the machine, it powered up, but the screen was shattered and the hard drive was dead, and the floppy drive was in need of repair.
I did some searching on eBay and found a 4/50CX for cheap. This unit was listed as non-working and appeared to have been dropped. The main thing I was looking at in the listings was the screens. Most either appears to have cracks or to be delaminating, or didn't show individual pictures. Because this one was is such rough shape, the seller took lots of photos showing all the damage; cracked plastic, broken hinges, missing trackball, etc. But the screen looked like it was in great shape. So I pulled the trigger.
When I received it, I didn't even test it. There's a good chance it would have fired right up and just needed extensive plastic repair to get it back into a reasonable condition. But it was a random busted laptop from eBay, not something my friend's father passed on to be restored and cared for. My friend new that I would take care of his old collection, which is how I wound up with a rather large collection of mostly laptops in need of some TLC. So I figured out how to open the screen and completely stripped everything from inside it, including the hinges. I disassembled this laptop's screen and swapped them. There was only two connectors which disconnected the screen and four screws holding it in, so it was a pretty easy task. Plastic this old is pretty brittle, though, so care was taken not to weaking the plastic where the hinges attach any more than it already was. I plugged the laptop in and powered it on, and was greeted with it counting up the RAM and a perfectly good screen!
Next up was the hard drive. I hadn't opened the "can" on the old one yet, so as far as I knew, it was a completely proprietary drive. I noticed that the part number on the donor machine's drive matched the part number on this one, so I figured I'd give it a try. Imagine my surprise when it fired right up and loaded Win95. I believe DOS/Win31 would have been what this laptop shipped with, but I'll take the win. I know I'll have to prepare the can from the dead drive with a different solution at some point, but I'm happy with this drive for now.
At this point, I hadn't opened the laptop up except for the screen, but I wanted to see if the donor's floppy drive still worked, so I swapped those. In the process, I discovered some broken plastic parts inside so pulled them from the donor. Unfortunately, the floppy drive is dead. Research seems to indicate that it is a belt-driven drive, and the belts tend to melt over time. This is a problem for another day, though. As is a good cleaning. Aside from those, this machine is done, and I am completely happy that I was able to make good on the promise to keep it out of a landfill and get it running again.
Now I have a (potentially) working Elite 4/50CX with a busted screen and dead drives, as well was broken plastics, which I am unsure what I want to do with. I'm thinking of 3D-printing a case for the motherboard and such and using it with an external monitor. Then repairing the plastics and stuffing a Raspberry Pi into the shell. Or just testing and organizing all the leftover parts so that I have spares to help keep this one running. The CPU is socketed, so even the mainboard is the same between the two machines. Only the CPU speed is different.
Tags: vintage, computers, 486, compaq, retro, win95
Real Genius
Earlier this week, we lost another great actor in Val Kilmer. Most people will always think of Iceman from Top Gun when they think of him, or Batman, but to me he will always be Chris Knight from Real Genius. So to honor him in my own way, I continued my rewatch of my old favorites with this gem.
Even though laser technotogy has come a long way since the mid-80's, this movie played just as well today as it did 40 years ago. I'm guessing people not interested in such technology probably now about the same amount about lasers now as they did back then, and because the laser was just a prop for the character-driven story, the movie aged well.
If you've never seen it, you owe it to yourself to check it out. It's one of my favorite movies of all time, and some of Val Kilmer's best work.
Tags: movies, real-genius
The Matrix: Ressurections
Wrapped my rewatch with The Matrix: Ressurections last night, and I barely made it through it. I kept finding myself distracted and reaching for my phone to play a round of Suduku or something to keep me entertained.
It wasn't bad, per-se, but I think it brings the problems with all the sequels to the foreground. They all focused way too much on the love story between Neo and Trinity, and also went all-in on the action. While I liked the concept, which went back to bending reality and asking what was real and what wasn't, but instead of being subtle about it, it kept hitting us over the head with it. It wasn't taking us on a journey, it was preaching at us. And that was even worse than focusing on the wrong things. ;)
There is another sequel in the works. I hope they drop the love story. I hope they use action well, like in the first one, and don't rely on it too much like they did with all the sequels. I hope they find a good concept and take us on a journey instead of bludgeoning us with it. Time will tell.
The Matrix: Revolutions
We finally made it to Revolutions, that unsatistfying end to the original Matrix trilogy. I no longer feel like Reloaded ruined it, and it's not a bad movie. It just wasn't great. I'm glad I finally rewatched it.
Overall, the entire trilogy holds up fairly well. The original was mind-blowing when it came out and is still a great film. The other two are simultaniously better and worse than I remembered them. The second one was too long and the ending just wasn't very satisfying, which is probably why they eventually made the new one, The Matrix: Cash Grab, errr... Resurrections. I'll be wrapping up with that next, even though it took me several attempts to make it through it the first time.
The Animatrix
The rewatch continues with The Animatrix. It's harder to judge this one, as it's the only animated one in the series, and is also a bunch of different shorts taking place at vaious different times in the chonology. This is why I am doing these in release order instead of chronologically.
Some of the shorts are prequels, some take place between the movies, and some have no specific timeframe and could take place at any time before, during, or after the original trilogy. They are considered canon, though, so I included them in the rewatch.
I amd not a huge anime fan, but I remember enjoying these when they came out, and I still enjoyed them on this rewatch. The styles they're done in varies, and I quite enjoyed the different ways they were animated. The range from more traditional anime to near-realistic, almost uncanny valley, type of animation. And the stories really flesh out the universe a bit, which gives the entire series much more depth.
Tags: movies, the-matrix, matrix, animatrix
The Matrix: Reloaded
I decided to not skip anything in my rewatch of The Matrix, and am watching them in release order, so that meants I did wind up watching Reloaded last night.
I think this is the first time I've rewatched it since it came out. As previously mentioned, I had originally thought that the series was stronger without it, and that it someone ruined Revolutions. While still not my favorite movie, I didn't find it nearly as bad as I did way back when I originally watched it. There are a few scenes which probably should have never made it past the cutting room, but overall it was better than I remembered.
Because I am going in release order, The Animatrix is next.
The Matrix
Continuing on my binge of older movies, I just finished the first of The Matrix trilogy, and I am suprised at how well it holds up.
I remember when this one first came out. My wife an I watched a *lot* of movies back then. We had gone to a packed cinema on a Friday or Saturday evening and took her brother and parents with us. The showing was nearly sold out, and we wound up with crappy seats (way too close and way too off from the center of the screen) for a movie none of us had actually heard of. And then the lights went down and the movie started, and all the complaining about being too crowded and crappy seats suddenly stopped.
As I mentioned, the original held up extremely well. I did not like the second film in the series, and always felt like Revolutions would have been much better if Reloaded had never happened, so I don't know whether to skip Reloaded and go straight to The Animatrix or not.
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