Posts Tagged ‘Movies’

We Own the Night

Friday, July 4th, 2008

(Spoiler warning! If you’re planning on watching We Own the Night, please don’t read this entry!)

I watched We Own the Night last night over dinner, and noticed how they portrayed the New York Police Department like a mob family.

On the one hand, you have the mafia or mob who are known to value family and loyalty over law at any point. They tend to support each other in time of crisis, without second guessing the impact it might have on their individual selfs (selflessness).

On the other hand, you have the NYPD in movie, who did exactly that! Moreover, the measures the brothers took to seek revenge was far beyond what the police or law enforcers are allowed to do (I know, I know, it is just a movie!).

I just felt that the writer and director James Gray portrayed the NYPD indistinguishable from the Russian mobs. At least to me, the movie did not have feel that it was about Cops vs Robbers, Good vs Evil, NYPD vs Russian Mob smuggling drugs. It felt more like 2 mob families going at each other.

(Maybe there’s some artistic edge to it)

On the whole, I thought the movie was pretty great. Some really good direction and acting. Joaquin Phoenix did do justice to his role. I would recommend it if you’re into crime drama.

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Converting videos for the Sony Playstation Portable PSP in Linux

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

I’ve had this script lingering around for a bit to convert almost any video file that MPlayer can read to one that can be played on a Sony Playstation Portable (PSP).

First, you have to ensure that you’ve got the latest PSP system software (I’ve got version 3.72 installed, at time of blogging, version 3.90 is the latest one).

Then, install mplayer and mencoder. If you’re using Ubuntu, this is as simple as:

$ sudo apt-get install mplayer mencoder

Finally, copy and paste the following script to a file. Lets call the file ‘convert_psp’:

#!/bin/bash 

if [ -z "$1" ]; then
    echo "Please specify movie filename"
    echo "$0 [-n] "
    echo "where -n is for 4:3 mode"
    exit 1
fi

scale=368:208
while getopts n: o
do
    case "$o" in
    n)    scale=320:240;;
    [?]) print >&2 "Usage: $0 [-n] file ..."
         exit 1;;
    esac
done

let "x=$OPTIND-2"
if [ $x -gt 0 ]; then
    shift $x
fi

src="$1"
title=`basename "$1"`
title=${title// /_}
title=${title%.*}
out=${src%.*}
out=${out}.MP4

echo Converting $src with title $title using scale $scale to output file $out

mencoder -ofps 30000/1001 -af lavcresample=24000 -vf harddup,scale=$scale -of lavf \
  -oac lavc -ovc lavc -lavcopts aglobal=1:vglobal=1:vcodec=mpeg4:acodec=libfaac  \
  -lavfopts format=psp \
  -info name="$title" "$src" -o "$out" 2> /dev/null

Do remember to chmox +x the file:

$ chmod +x convert_psp

Using it is pretty simple, just run the script and pass in the video filename:

./convert_psp <filename>

The script will generate a video file with an extension .MP4. Transfer this file to your PSP’s ‘VIDEO’ folder and you’re done!

One thing, I can’t and won’t claim all the credit for this script. It was not me who did all the work, and I remember copying the initial script from somewhere and I’ve retro fitted it for my needs.

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