WFC Côte d’Ivoire: La Victoire en chantant

Uh-oh. That’s not a good sign.

I guess that this film is really rather more French than Cote de Ivoirean? (That’s probably not a word.) And it’s a “satire”, which is usually code word for “not actually funny”.

MUCH BITE SATIRE

An it is, indeed, a bit eye-rolling-ey at times. But it’s not bad.

Black and White in Color. Jean-Jacques Annaud. 1976. Côte d’Ivoire.

Hibiscus Margaritas

  • 4 parts hibiscus syrup
  • 1 part lime juice
  • 2 parts tequila

Shake with ice. Pour into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lime wedge.

This post is part of the World of Films and Cocktails series. Explore the map.

WFC Cambodia: នៅកម្លោះដល់ណាខ្ញុំ

Ahh! A lighthearted goofy comedy. Somehow those aren’t the films that are usually exported from non-major-film-producing countries. It’s always the serious or artsy films. And I love serious artsy films, but c’mon.

Unfortunately, this film also illustrates why these films aren’t exported. There’s just not very much about this film that’s memorable.

It’s amusing.

Staying Single When?. Tom Som. 2007. Cambodia.

Banana Daiquiri

  • 2 parts white rum
  • 2 parts banana liqueur
  • 3 parts lemon juice
  • 1 part simple syrup
  • lots of banana

Blend with ice. Pour into cocktail glass and garnish with a banana slice.

That’s way too much lemon juice for my taste. I think it could have been really good with, like, a third as much?

This post is part of the World of Films and Cocktails series. Explore the map.

WFC Palestine: عمر

Hm… I can’t see the pixels on that map…

There’s lots of stuff here to like. The courtship scenes are really sweet, lots of amusing and real-sounding dialogue, some of the actors are good, and all the parkour is invigorating. But. Everything is so damn obvious. I was shouting at the screen when the al-Aqsa Brigade guy sat down with Our Hero “HE”S AN AGENT! DON”T SAY ANYTHING!”

Guess what.

And so it goes.

But great plot twist at the end!

Omar. Hany Abu-Assad. 2013. Palestine.

Limonana

  • 1 part sugar
  • 2 parts lemon juice
  • 2 parts rum
  • 2 parts water
  • plenty of mint leaves
  • ice cubes
  • 1 drop of orange blossom water

Run through a blender and pour into a glass. Garnish with mint leaves.

This isn’t really a Palestinian cocktail. I googled and googled and googled but found nothing.

But this it apparently a real Palestinian soft drink. I just dumped some rum into it since it seemed vaguely mojitoish.

This post is part of the World of Films and Cocktails series. Explore the map.

Blacker than Black? A Small Monitor Review

I’ve been using an Emacs-based alarm clock for almost a decade through various hardware incarnations.

The main issue is the screen: It’s difficult to find a small screen that has a good black level. The last version used this USB IPS screen from MIMO, and it’s just about as good as you can get with IPS.

It’s difficult to illustrate just how it looks since the camera helpfully adjusts everything, but with the camera on manual, I think this is just about right when it’s darkish in the bedroom. When it’s completely dark, its glare is rather annoying.

So! I got an OLED screen today, because OLED has perfectly black blackness, right?

Quotes like “Produces True Blacks” and “Because OLED displays are not backlit like LCDs but rather lit by each individual pixel, black means black. This yields a contrast ratio of infinity to one.” can’t lie, can they?

And everybody knows that an OLED pixel that’s off doesn’t emit any light, right?

That is, indeed, quite black. But is it completely black?

No. If you look closely, it’s trivial to see where the black bezel ends and where the screen, filled with black pixels, starts. (The picture above exaggerates the issue a bit, depending on your monitor.)

But here we compare the IPS screen (to the right) with the OLED screen (to the left) in a completely dark room. The difference is huge. YUGE! But it’s not perfect!

The myth of total blackness in black OLED pixels: Busted.

SO DISAPPOINT!

Oh, well. This is approximately what this screen looks like from my vantage point in the bed when I’ll be waking up in the middle of the night and wondering what time it is before going back to sleep again, cursing the monitor gods and waiting for the next hardware revolution.

Sad!