Stop Frame

Back in mid-2021, Apple made “news” by upgrading all subscribers of their Apple Music service to lossless audio. They, of course, used their own, proprietary ALAC format. Several services, among the Amazon Music HD, welcomed them to the club (though Amazon uses the open-source FLAC format). Apple's going lossless at no extra charge to its subscribers was heralded as a major sea change. It did have one immediate benefit for me: Amazon made their HD (lossless) tier "free" with their basic subscription, thus saving me a couple of dollars a month. Thanks, Apple! Beyond that, and in the months that followed, it stirred an on-going debate about the audio quality that we've all come to expect and, more to the point, accept. This debate is bound to grow now that Spotify has delayed the rollout of their lossless service, leaving their premium subscribers "stuck" with lossy MP3s. Because of the Bluetooth codecs Apple uses, its existing wireless ecosystem doesn't s...

We now come to the time when we begin looking at the Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 4 films and let’s just start with the worst: Eternals . Summary: Immortal beings who live among us are called once more to defend humanity against an ancient threat that has returned. But who are the heroes and who are the villains and when all is said and done, do I really, truly care? A resounding answer of “No!” ensues. Eternals should have been a very different MCU film. It poses intriguing questions. It wants to examine those in an action/superhero film context, which is fine. Unfortunately, it’s an action/superhero film within the MCU and that means it has to tie back to the 25 films that preceded it while at the same time setting up characters and events for future films. In the right hands, with a studio willing to create something outside of its established universe, it might have worked. Or maybe not. It’s a surprisingly lifeless affair. No one demonstrates any real sense of passion. The few...