The Phantom Menace (3D) disappointing experience and more

This is an off-topic comment for this blog, a sort of a film review. I went to see this afternoon the Phantom Menace in 3D with my 12 years-old kid. You should know that we're both Star War´s die-hards and when the film was shown the first time in the theaters (1999), he was not even born yet. We have seen the whole 6-films saga many times in DVD, but he's never watched not a single one film in a large screen. So I thought yesterday, after arriving from a long 5-day business trip, that it would be nice spending a father/son afternoon, and sharing a common interest (...I'm not a PS3 guy, I'm afraid)".

After the school finished today at midday and sharing a "nice" lunch (...at McDonalds...), with all the excitement we hit the cinema at 16.00...lights off...Star Wars theme...  "In a Galaxy, far and away...."  Well, in the end a real very disappointing experience. The new 3D tricks are no good at all, do not add any real value to the watching experience.


Furthermore, I can honestly tell you that they make a much poorer film than the original: when it was filmed, it never intended to be 3D, so the digital trickery is really bad, nothing like the display in Avatar or more recently Tintin, if you have watched either one or both films. The overposition of layers along the film  to create the 3D depth illusion resulted in a very poor and low quality footage. It sometimes remind me to those old (50-60s) films when you had a car-driving scene and you could perfectly see that the background was just a pre-filmed projection.

In my opinion, a clear mistake in the case, similar to when some severals year ago a genius decided to "colour" some old black  & white classics resulting in a complete fiasco. My recommendation: save the time and specially the money: in my case €22 total for both, including the extra charged for the 3D glasses.

Turning to other topics, my blog have in January got the attention of 104 followers and broke the 40,000 hits barrier. Thanks, and many more thanks to all those who take their time to read my posts. I also specially and deeply appreciate for the time invested in leaving comments. Believe me, it encourages me to continue keeping this venture started almost 2 years now, alive.

Now I want to share with you some recent changes in my working lfe, that will likely force a review of the time invested in my hobbies. Unfortunately (and for the second time in 12 months) I've been made redundant in my company (coporate politics clearly do not bode well with me);  now close to being 50 years-old and accumulating a long (and until recently, successful) professional career in different senior posts, I've found that not many  abound with enough seniority to fit my profile, a fact aggravated by the deteriorating economic conditions of Europe in general and Spain in particular, with our new conservative party goverment happily and merrily applying sharp and deep contracting measures that will take the economic growth again into negative (1,5-2,0% ) territory... thank you guys! 

Well, to conclude: as a result of all these, I'm now considering partnering with another guy in a kind of start-up business, which is likely to drag not only significant amount of time allocated to the hobby, but also a LOT of physical and mental effort to make it economically sustainable. And as the economy is so poor here, most of our business will be undertaken abroad, in the Middle East and/or Latina America... see also the positives: it looks like my BA miles account will swell fast in the near future, I can guarantee some many years of free flying to Salute to London :-).

Am I abandoning the hobyy? Definetly NOT. Am I closing this blog? a big-capitals NOT again. Both wargaming and writing (and reading!!!) are really good for my health (and even for my sanity) but I need to reconsider how to best confront the challenges that my new professional orientation is taken. So bear with me and continue giving me this very much needed support. THANKS