Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life" Blu-ray release

Terrence Malick's new film "The Tree of Life" is set to be released on  Blu-ray tomorrow (October 11, 2011). Terrence Malik is probably best known for the Oscar nominated, The Thin Red Line. His seemingly stream of consciousness film set in World War II. I sat back and watched it some months ago after realizing I'd never seen the whole thing from start to finish.
The majority of the film is dominated by an "in your head" monologue from the characters as they try to come to grips with what they are seeing and experiencing in war. Not so much Saving Private Ryan action war film as it is a philosophical exploration of man and humanity in general. The story seemed very non-linear and I realized at one point that the purpose of the film is a vehicle to deliver the message in the monologue while still maintaining a stunning visual appeal.
I'm expecting that Tree of Life is no different.
Meredith had the pleasure of working a few days on the film during the filming in Austin and around Texas. She could see that he had a real vision for what the film should be and that the physical medium of film and the reality of actors and locations were somewhat holding him back. Things often seemed sporadic and not connected during the filming. Something that is not uncommon when shooting a film as scenes are shot out of order to accommodate locations and actor's schedules. She admired his quest for perfection. She described to me one day of filming in which they had shot most of the day on a neighborhood street before Terrence moved the entire production one street over to shoot it again. It's no wonder that it took so many years for this film to be completed and released.
Terrence is a real visionary and creative genius. I'm expecting that The Tree of Life will be similar in style to The Thin Read Line and have real attention to detail and visuals, but deal more with the emotional struggles of family life and growing up. I'm sure that it will be anything but a literal and linear telling of a family story.
I'm looking forward to it.

Here is the trailer for The Tree of Life:

Coming soon... My Kindle Fire

Well, I pre-ordered a Kindle Fire the day they were announced. It won't be released until November.
I'm excited about it. I have owned the 2nd gen and 3rd gen Kindles and have really grown to love them over the years. So much easier than carting around a stack of books whenever I travel.

Meredith just bought an iPad. It's nice. I've messed around with it a little. They've spent some time making things look pretty cool and aesthetically pleasing. Lots of little animations and graphical things. It looks sharp. But it was also crazy expensive.

A lot of people are thinking that the Kindle Fire will be a direct competitor or a "iPad killer." But I don't think so. I don't think they really have much intention of trying to dethrone the King of Tablets. Though with a $200 price tag and Android installed, these things are going to be popular.
I think it is all about having all of your Amazon content in one place and being able to enjoy it on one little device. So I already have a bunch of Kindle ebooks. I already have some Amazon Cloud player music that I stream on my desktop and phone. I already have movies and TV shows that I've bought on Amazon Instant Video that I play on my Sony TV. I'm also an Amazon Prime member, so I have access to a huge library of free streaming movies and TV shows. I already have a few Amazon App Store apps I bought for my phone. So I'm expecting that the Kindle Fire can collect all this content in one place and I can enjoy it from just about anywhere courtesy of "The Cloud". I like the concept a lot.
That way the next time I decide to do a Battlestar Galactica marathon on the big TV in the living room and get the evil eye from Meredith, I can just switch to watching it on the Kindle Fire and move to a different room.

Once I get mine in my little grubby hands and have a chance to play with it a little, I'll do a little write up about my impressions.
In the meantime, here's a video that Engadget did of a Kindle Fire demo done by an Amazon rep.