The Grand has all the sly breezy confidence of a card sharp
The comic mockumentary has become a full-fledged genre, thanks to the consistent efforts of Christopher Guest (from "Waiting for Guffman" to "For Your Consideration"). The films in his wake have been far less consistent, but with Zak Penn's "The Grand," an off-center portrait of the "second most famous" poker tournament in America, Penn eases into the candid style and subdued rhythms of the mockumentary with a breezy confidence.
Forget any pretense of naturalism in this unlikely collection of top-ranked poker players centered on Woody Harrelson's Jack Faro -- a recovering addict of pretty much everything and a dazed casino owner on the verge of bankruptcy.
His competition includes a borderline autistic obsessive-compulsive human calculator (Chris Parnell), a bigoted old-school player (Dennis Farina) who pines for the old Vegas days of knee-capping and segregated entrances, a sassy middle-class mother of two (Cheryl Hines) with a sensitive heart and the mouth of a sailor, and a grinning idiot (Richard Kind) who wanders his way through winning hands like a lucky tourist. Director Werner Herzog (of Penn's "Incident at Loch Ness") displays his comic chops as a weirdly sinister character known only as "The German."
There are no real surprises on the way to the $10 million winner-take-all showdown and Penn plays down the conventional cliches of staredowns and psych-outs over betting build-ups. He's less concerned with big dramatic tension than the deadpan eruptions of minor conflicts, favoring sly over slapstick.
As the outsized personalities settle into the fabric of the film, the chemistry of the cast clicks in and Penn finds the middle ground between the absurd and the authentic.
While not a grand-slam comedy, the offbeat humor and easy byplay gives "The Grand" a winning hand.
Figuratively speaking, if you are willing to even put it into the standard 5.25-inch PC drive in the warehouse.
ARTiGO open, we find that the internal structure is simple, basically only three parts: the biggest was the EPIA PX Pico-ITX motherboard, next to the front output interface panels, in addition to a DC power adapter plate.
The VIA has always followed the tradition of the power system ARTiGO also very good control, free under 15 W load would not exceed 20 W. Of course, this was mainly due to the VIA C7 1GHz processor and VX700 integrated chipset.
Another model of the Builder Kit also shows that this is a DIY kit that allows users to build their own hands ultra-light PC, and ultimately to a complete x86 PC on our own hands. Although it can not run Crysis , but the handling of various contemporary day-to-day tasks without any problem, multimedia features also are very abundant.
To meet the needs of DIY, VIA ARTiGO system in providing a large amount of packaging components, including the power adapter, power cord, assembly screws, IDE interface boards, 12-20-pin motherboard power lines, the serial line, DVI lines, data lines IDE , PS / 2-wire, tools CD-ROM drives, etc.. It is particularly worth mentioning is that the IDE hard disk and connecting That motherboard adapter plate. For the overall volume control considerations, can only use 2.5-inch hard drive models, and the need to put in the back of the motherboard, to the use of traditional data lines are IDE will be very convenient, VIA provides the compact adapter.
As a result, although ARTiGO itself provided little external interface, which is the side of DC interface, VGA, RJ45, and the other side there are four USB 2.0, audio output and microphone, power supply and hard disk LED indicator, the boot button, but there is such a need users can add their own hands, is very simple.
Finally, there is one, the memory can only be inserted into a DDR2-533 SO-DIMM notebook models, a maximum capacity of 1 GB.
ARTiGO Pico-ITX Builder Kit A1000 is scheduled to begin on the 14th of this month in the United States, the UK, suggested retail price of 300 dollars, the United States Avnet, EPROM Computer Systems, Fry s Electronics, Logic Supply, Ma Lab / Ewiz electronic retailers, and the United Kingdom The LinITX.com, Mini-ITX.com will provide this product.
Official product page:
Http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/embedded/artigo/
