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“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is in small part inspired by the famous sequence in Walt Disney’s “Fantasia” (1940), where Mickey Mouse does battle with bewitched brooms and buckets while Leopold Stokowski conducts the famous music by Paul Dukas. Here there’s an amusing sequence involving enchanted mops and such, with music that shares most of the same notes as Dukas but none of Stokowski’s conducting flair. No matter. Most consumers have likely never heard of the music — or of “Fantasia,” for that matter. Even this shadow of the original is more charming than anything else in the film.
There is little more here than a premise for a film. And that premise is simply surrounded by special effects. Still movie goers are certain to lap this film up like a warm saucer of milk.
There is little story set up. The reality of the situation is all in special effects. The director, Jon Turteltaub (“National Treasure”), and his several writers devise some clever set pieces, such as a dragon in a Chinatown parade that starts breathing smoke and fire, and it’s up to Balthazar and Dave to vanquish the villains. I also liked it when Balthazar brought to life a steel eagle on top of the Chrysler Building and flew around on its back.
“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is a perfectly typical example of its type, professionally made and competently acted. Imagine a graph with one line indicating the consumer’s age and the other line representing his degree of enjoyment. These lines would intersect at about the age of young Dave.
Verdict:: Just so so.

One great thing about podcasting is that you can do it at home with a basic Mac or PC and an inexpensive microphone (which may come with the computer). High-end equipment is nice, to be sure, but many of the best podcasts out there are recorded and edited with basic equipment and widely available software.

Still, there are several ways to set up a podcast recording “studio,” from using nothing more than a computer with a microphone to having high-end microphones, preamps, digital recorders, and the like in a sound-dampened room.

For serious podcasters, the list of necessary equipment is as follows:
        •        Microphone
        •        Preamp
        •        Digital recorder (or computer)
        •        Headphones
        •        Sound-editing software
This section examines the equipment you need to get up and running (software is covered a little later on). I need to point out that many devices that can make podcasting easier or higher quality, but I cannot cover every one of them in this book. Instead, I examine several key pieces of equipment in each category.

Microphones

Arguably the most important device in the creation of a podcast, the microphone stands between your voice and the podcast file. As such, it behooves you to ensure that the quality of the recording is as good as it can be based on your budget and expectations.

Two main types of microphones are used for podcasting: condenser microphones and dynamic microphones.

Condenser microphones use a capacitor to capture sound. This works when the pressure from the sound changes the space between the thin membranes in the capacitor. The advantage of a condenser microphone is that it has a very broad frequency response; the down side is that it requires a source of power (like a battery) to charge the capacitor so that it can work.

Note
Condenser microphones require external power to function. This power often comes from a preamp device and is referred to as phantom power .
Dynamic microphones work by measuring the movement of a wire coil around a magnetic field as the sound waves agitate the wire. The advantages of a dynamic microphone are that it is cheaper to make than a condenser microphone and can be miniaturized more easily.

Pop Filter MPF-6 6-inch Microphone Pop Filter
Cost: Range $15-$25.
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One of the major problems for first-time podcasters is that any time they say the letter P, it comes across as a popping sound. This sound is created when the exhaled air used to form the P hits the microphone, temporarily overwhelming it. Unfortunately, this sound is not something that you can remove or doctor with editing software; once it’s recorded, it’s there forever. Not to worry, however. If podcasting is becoming a major part of your life, there are two relatively simple solutions:

7701B Tripod Boom Microphone Stand
Cost” $20

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MXL 990 Condenser Microphone with Shock Mount
Cost: $70 each

Alesis 8 channel USB Mixer​
Should cost between $100-$200 used.

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4 Channel Compressor/Limiter ACL4
Cost: $150

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Editrol R-1 High-End Digital Recorder
Cost $299

Edirol R-09 High-End Digital Recorder
Cost: $150

or

iRiver IFP-795 Digital MP3 Recorder
Cost: $100 used

Because the iRiver comes with software that allows easy connectivity to PCs or Macs, its USB 2.0 connection makes connection and export of recorded files a breeze. The device supports recording bit rates between 8 Kbps and 320 Kbps in WMA, MP3, and OGG music formats.

or

Olympus LS-10 Portable Digital Recorder
Cost: $249

This is my personal favorite. It has line in inputs as well as very good built in microphones. Good quality with plenty of recording time.

For years now, film geeks and Fight Club nerds have been deconstructing David Fincher’s 1999 masterpiece for greater meaning, hidden messages, and any other vital details (“His shoes are untied! It’s a sign, I tells ya!”) they may have missed during their first 200 viewings of the film.  The truth is, Fight Club is just one of the greatest films ever made– nothing more, nothing less.  Oh, sure, you could sit around all day trying to read deeper meaning into it, but we all know that…

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiMuj85ngEo&feature=player_embedded

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“Knight and Day” aspires to the light charm of a romantic action comedy like “Charade” or “Romancing the Stone,” but would come closer if it dialed down the relentless action. The romance part goes without saying after a Meet Cute contrived in an airport, and the comedy seems to generate naturally between Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. But why do so many summer movies find it obligatory to inflict us with CGI overkill? I’d sorta rather see Diaz and Cruise in action scenes on a human scale, rather than have it rubbed in that for long stretches, they’re essentially replaced by animation.
The movie is entertaining, but could have been better. The director is James Mangold, whose previous two films were “Walk the Line” and “3:10 to Yuma.” I have a hunch there was an early draft of Patrick O’Neill’s script that was more in the Cary Grant rom-com tradition and then somebody decided the effects had to be jacked up. From the ads, you could get the notion this is a Michael Bay film.
There’s never been a particularly crisp line between intense, SUPER-AWESOME Tom Cruise and the characters he plays. In Knight and Day, Cruise’s age-old cool curdles into motormouthed neediness. Approaching 50, he suddenly seems desperate for our love. The love Roy Miller’s angling for is that of June Havens, a plucky cipher played by Cameron Diaz who Roy runs into—literally!!—in the Wichita airport. He’s handsome enough, she’s apparently on the prowl, and their flight to Boston is filled with torrid flirting and enemy agents. One unconvincingly filmed plane crash later, the two are on the run, with the explosions, gunplay, and spycraft provoking an awakening in June’s soul. The plot, such as it is, revolves around the hunt for a precocious scientist (Paul Dano) who has invented a perpetual-energy battery. In the end, you may wonder if the makers of this hyperactive, joyless thriller didn’t stumble upon a perpetual-energy battery themselves—and not for the good: Knight and Day keeps going, and going, and going.

Verdict: Worth Seeing.

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When I first heard of Shyamalan taking on this project I admit my first thoughts were that there would be too many special effects for a director of his ilk. Well my first thought was bore out as it is clear from the first frame of this film that he couldn’t handle the special effects. Even the 3D is added after the fact to top this 2D movie.

The 3D is so badly added to the film that all it appears to do is darken an already darkly lit movie. Even if you’re a 3D fan I don’t see how you could like this afterthought 3D. The second mistake, if you can count them this way, is the changing of this animated idea into a live action movie. I think this is a huge mistake. The animation of the Nickelodeon TV series drew on the bright colors and “clear line” style of such masters as Miyazaki, and was a pleasure to observe. It’s in the very nature of animation to make absurd visual sights more plausible. Since “Airbender” involves the human manipulation of the forces of air, earth, water and fire, there is hardly an event that can be rendered plausibly in live action. That said, its special effects are atrocious. The first time the waterbender Katara summons a globe of water, which then splashes (offscreen) on her brother Sokka, he doesn’t even get wet.  Firebenders’ flames don’t seem to really burn, and so on.

As “The Last Airbender” bores and alienates its audiences, consider the opportunities missed here. (1) This material should have become an A-list animated film. (2) It was a blunder jumping aboard the 3D bandwagon with phony 3D retro-fitted to a 2D film. (3) If it had to be live action, better special effects artists should have been found. It’s not as if films like “2012” and “Knowing” didn’t contain “real life” illusions as spectacular as anything called for in “The Last Airbender.”

This stinks.