Tag: Films

Films I’ve watched recently…

I’ve seen a few films recently, but not got round to blogging about them, so here’s a quick update:

Snakes on a Plane – It’s like a high budget ‘B’ movie, but it’s really cool. It’s not going to win an Oscar, but Samuel Jackson is as cool as ever, and it’s a total bite-fest! 🙂

Lady in the Water – This had really bad reviews, but I liked it. It wasn’t as involved as previous films by M. Night Shyamalan. There was some suspense, some “make you jump” moments and quite a few bits I found amusing. I really dig the leading lady (Bryce Dallas Howard), who stared in The Village. She is in Spiderman 3, so perhaps it won’t be a rubbish as the last installment.

Revolver – I watched this again for the first time in ages. What a great film! Jason Statham is cool and I really like the whole vibe of the film. Must watch it more often.

Cheers

Tim…

District 13

I went to watch District 13 on Saturday evening. It stars David Belle, who is regarded as the originator of “Le Parkour” (free running), and Cyril Raffaelli, who seems to know his stuff as far as fighting is concerned. It’s a french film, co-written by Luc Besson, so learn the lingo or take your reading glasses 🙂

Visually the film works really well, as you would expect from anything involving Luc Besson. The fight sequences are spectacular, with Cyril showing off some cool moves. He’s very inspiring and definitely knows his s**t! Of course, the most amazing part of the film is the free running. I love watching this stuff. It’s nice to watch wire-work in films like “Croutching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “The Matrix”, but when you see what the human body is capable without wires and crash-mats it’s totally awe inspiring. This film is like Ong Bak on steroids!

A must for any adrenalin junky!

Cheers

Tim…

Pirates and Super Heros…

After last weeks abortive attempt to see Pirates of the Caribbean, I finally got in this week. Jonny Depp was his cool self. He rarely manages to put a foot wrong in his films. If you liked the first one you’ll like this one too, and vice versa. I did enjoy the film, but at 2.5 hours long it requires some stamina in the backside region 🙂 They could have easily chopped out 30-45 minutes from the film and not lost anything.

The following night I went to see Superman Returns, another 2.5 hour film. I suppose it’s worth mentioning, I’m not a big superman fan. Well, I just didn’t see the point of this film. I felt like I was watcing every other superman film. There was nothing wrong with it, but I felt it added nothing either. I’m sure it will be a major success and spark a new franchise, but I think I’m the wrong side of 15 years old. 🙂

Some of the stills from the new Spiderman film look really cool, especially the ones where he becomes Venom. I quite liked the first film, but I hated the second one. If I hear the line, “With great power comes great responsibility”, one more time I’m going to puke. Less talking, less nausiating nostalgia, less rubbish love interest and more action please!

Cheers

Tim…

Fearless…

I saw Fearless (Huo Yuan Jia), the new Jet Li film, at the weekend. It’s based on a true story and has some seriously cool fight sequences. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, in my opinion Jet Li is the personification of martial arts. He is such a complete practitioner. He has technique, power, speed, flexibility, precision, finesse and grace by the bucket load. This is supposed to be his last martial arts epic, but I hope he keeps producing films with quality fight scenes like those in Hero, Unleashed and this film.

Cheers

Tim…

PS. Take your reading glasses, it’s subtitled 🙂

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift…

I went to see The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift last night. Like the previous films, it’s very low on story and characters, but heavy on cars and racing. I’m not really into cars, but it is quite nice to turn your brain off just watch kids race around like nutters. If you liked the previous films, this is more of the same. If not, go and see XMen-3… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Poseidon…

I went to see Poseidon last night. My thoughts include:

  • Visually cool, like Titanic.
  • A bit boring, like Titanic.
  • I didn’t feel any connection or empathy for the characters, like Titanic.
  • I wasn’t really bothered who lived or died, like Titanic.
  • The ship sunk, like Titanic.
  • Hopefully I’ll never see this film again, like Titanic.
  • Effects over substance, like Titanic.
  • People have the ability to function at their peak capacity, even in very cold water, like Titanic.

The characters were a little different to those in the Gene Hackman version, so some things I expected didn’t happen, which was probably a good thing for the older audience.

On reflection, I should have gone to see Xmen-3 for the third time 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

XMen 3 – The Last Stand, and Spiders…

I went to see “XMen 3 – The Last Stand” last night. It was totally brilliant! I loved the previous films, but this one was like the previous films on steroids. Loads more mutants and loads more destruction. Cool…

During the day I went to a 6th birthday party for one of my friends kids. In addition to all the usually party stuff, they got two guys to bring in an assortment of animals from a rescue center. All the kids, and most of the parents loved it. The guys brought a mixed bunch of animals including:

  • Two pythons
  • An African albino hedgehog
  • A skunk
  • A meerkat
  • Lots of cockroaches
  • Several types of tarantulas
  • Two types of scorpions
  • A paraquete

The kids were desperate to hold/touch/feed everything and apart from the scorpians, they got their hands on everything. Having seen a six year old holding two tarantulas, I bit the bullet and held one. I think it’s safe to say that I’m scared shitless of spiders, but it wasn’t half bad. Tarantuals are quite laid back and move very deliberately, not like those nasty house spiders, whose sticky little legs move at ten-to-the-dozen…

As a result of this, I feel moderately less scared of spiders. I guess the next time I find one lurking in the bath I’ll try and pick it up with my hands, rather than a glass and a piece of paper 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

The Da Vinci Code…

I’ve not yet seen anything positive about The Da Vinci Code film in the UK press. I saw a bunch of people leaving the premier in Paris saying it was awful, predictable and boring. One woman said it was the worst two and a half hours of her life. I all I can say is she must have had a pretty exciting life if that’s the worst she has had to endure!

With all the bad press and the fact that Tom Hanks gets on my nerves, I wasn’t really into the idea of going to see it, but I thought I ought to know something about it for reference sake, since everyone has been banging on about this story for a ages…

I went to see the film last night and I thought it was quite good. I don’t cope well with overly long films, but I coped OK, so it couldn’t have been too boring. It was a little predictable at times, but since most of the literate world seems to have read the book, that’s hardly a problem. Notice, I don’t count myself in that group 🙂

If you haven’t read the book, go and see it so you can nod politely while people spout rubbish about the factual accuracies/inaccuracies of the story. Maybe seed the conversation with controversial statements like, “I think it’s totally blasphemous!”, or “It’s an accurate account of history!”, then sit back and watch as people have the vapors… It’s like trying to teach evolution in America 😉

Cheers

Tim…

PS. XMen 3 next week.

Mission Impossible 3…

I went to see Mission Impossible 3 last night. My thoughts are:

Shaking the camera so you can’t see what’s going on does not make everything more exiting! It makes it hard to watch the film without having an epileptic attack!

The film went on and on. I guess it ran for about 2 hours and 10 minutes. This is really a 1 hour 30 minute film, max. Why does hollywood insist on making overly long films these days. I wasn’t as boring as Lord of the Rings 2 or Matrix 2, but it was close!

The Ethan Hunt character is so uninteresting, and a little thick if you ask me. It’s all just so run of the mill. I found myself not caring if he lived or died. In contrast, Mat Damon’s character in The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy has some interest value.

MI3 is like James Bond without the humour and style, so what’s the point?

Cheers

Tim…

Disaster Recovery, Solaris and Inside Man…

I’ve just started another disaster recovery test week. I’ve got to install/recover the whole of the production environment, including 10g RAC in Tru64, Cold-Failover Cluster Infratructure on Linux and Application Servers. As a result, might get a little quiet over the next week…

As well as testing some FC5 stuff, see previous post, I installed Solaris 10 on x86-32 at the weekend. It was pretty straight forward, but it took forever to complete. I ended up leaving it over night. I don’t know if this was because it’s just slow, or whether it was an issue with VMware Server. Once it had finished I started thinking about an Oracle installation, then I noticed that 10g is not available for Solaris 10 on x86-32, just x86-64. Bummer! I might end up writing a Solaris operating system installation document, just so I don’t feel like I’ve wasted the time 🙂

On Saturday night I went to see The Inside Man. I thought it was a cool film, but it’s one of those films that twists and turns constantly. If you like heist films, then you’ll probably dig it, but avoid reading any reviews that mention content, because it would be really easy to ruin the film…

Cheers

Tim…