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greyreviews' LiveJournal:
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| Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 | | 3:15 pm |
Moving on up!
Have just been offered (and accepted) the position as Administrative Officer at UWA Library.
Thanks to all who offered words of advice and encouragement.
I start on 25th August, so now is a really good time for everyone to share any inside knowledge of UWA workings, computer programmes and politics that I should know of in advance.
*does the happy dance* | | Saturday, July 19th, 2008 | | 7:31 am |
Behold the power of the Internet Amusing: http://www.imdb.com/chart/top?tt0468569As that is topical and no doubt change in the next week or so and make no sense to anyone clicking the link; The Dark Knight is currently listed as the 3rd best film of all time, edging out The Godfather Part II for the position. EDIT: Now Number 1 and by a fair margin too, it will be interesting to see how long it holds that position. | | Thursday, July 17th, 2008 | | 11:34 pm |
Stuff I didn't like about The Dark Knight
..and why it doesn't matter.
Batman still does stuff that could potentially kill. Same as the complaint about the caltrops from Batman Begins and most of the car chase scenes in both films, there are just too many variables for even Batman to guarantee everyone is getting out alive. Doesn't matter because they all do and flipping trucks looks cool.
Dent's face is massively scarred from what would have been a petrol fire for only a few seconds at most before Batman would have been able to extinguish it.
Doesn't matter because you can explain the extra damage as from shrapnel coming from the exploding building and who cares if he is conscious the next day and the wound barely seeps, it must have hit all the nerve endings just right.
400+ Handwritten votes are counted on a boat in under 15 minutes. Doesn't matter, could have just been the national guards and the crew voting, in both cases the decision came down to one individual.
Massive barrel bombs set up seemingly instantly in multiple locations, or as one friend said the super power to teleport ANFO to any location. Yes I agree technically impossible, but no-one blinks when in any other film people are lugging around cubic meters of C4 just to open locks. How the bombs were made or placed is essentially irrellevant to the story, the size and capabilities of the Joker gang are never explained and he did have at least 68 million in cash at one time or the other available to him.
Batmans tech. Bah, I don't even dislike this, some other twit mentioned it. It is well established cannon that Batman has the sharp cutting edge of technolgy, ie. if its in theory in the real world, Batman owns the working prototype, complaining about this is like complaining that he doesnt have a long fight scene in this film. He isn't supposed to, Batman is recognised as the best martial artist in the world, a half dozen thugs in a bar are not a threat, they are an entrance scene.
Two Face dies. Waah he doesn't die in the comics. I agree and Two Face is one of my favourite villans, however, it fit the story perfectly and as such is completely forgiven. Also lets face it, one of the major reasons this movie rocked was its respect of the source material whilst still managing to forge its own unique vision. | | 12:31 am |
The Dark Knight
In ten years you can come and tell me if I was right or wrong (this means you Lee) but The Dark Knight is a culturally significant piece of entertainment.
To elaborate, this means it will have a significant resonance within our culture much like Star Wars, The Godfather and the Simpsons have. Loving or loathing any of these is irrelevant, they have all changed our lexicon, been responsible for a thousand wannabes and copycats and altering the way in which their sucessors were made. It is quite possible to quote or reference scenes from these examples to someone who has never seen them and have them understand you. They are now part of the cultural consciousness as much as common fables, knowing what a vampire is and having heard of the parting of the Red Sea without ever picking up a bible.
Spoilerish review will be put up tomorrow after I watch it again, and most of you will have too. | | Monday, July 14th, 2008 | | 6:47 pm |
| | Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 | | 9:49 pm |
Hancock Will Smith once again delivers a brilliant display of acting despite a script that was short on intelligent dialogue. Which is a pity, because this film had a great premise. Not the original one about the depressed superhero who kills his girlfriend during sex. Nor the one presented in the trailers of a drunken superhero who gets talked into being awesome. But the actual premise of the film which was to present Hancock as a metaphor for the USofA. The eagle thing was bugging me for a while, it was referenced far too often just to be a cute symbol, then it clicked for me at the train scene. The Bald Eagle symbol of the USA. Here is a fine picture example thereof:  Anyhow, Hancock is a massively overpowered being, who charges in to try and make things better without thinking about it, makes an awful mess doing so because of that lack of thinking and as a result is hated by everyone. The French bully Michele is fairly obvious. By pulling back and letting the world ask for help, rather than just charging in and assuming his help is wanted, Hancock becomes loved again. This reformation also allows him to think carefully to successfully defeat the man with a bomb, another obvious metaphor. Finally when the film seems to take a major twist and have Mary as Hancock's long lost wife who abandoned him 80 years ago and how if they are together they will die, this still sticks to the theme of the Supers being America. Only when they reconcile together ie. the internal conflict of America, can Hancock truely be healed. Please note their reconcilliation is not about them getting together and dying but by forgiving one another for their past hurts. Also 80 years ago Hancock was badly wounded and beaten. 80 years ago was the Great Depression. | | Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 | | 11:11 pm |
Batman: Gotham Knight Showing only for the next 2 weeks at Luna Leederville as part of their Reelanime festival. Basically 6 short films about Batman occuring after Batman Begins and before Dark Knight. Written by Western authors and animated/directed by a bunch of famous Anime people. Details here: http://www.madman.com.au/reelanime/batman/Its solid, nothing spectacular, but well worth a watch in the two week wait for Dark Knight to be released. The animation rarely was wowing me (although the "on fire" Batman was cool) and to be honest considering the festival is supposed to be celebrating Anime I was a little disappointed. The writing however holds it together nicely. The stories give some interesting developments to what happened in Gotham since Batman Begins. Ie, the island of people hit with fear gas, where Scarecrow went, the fallout of Falcone no longer running organised crime, how Batman deals with mobsters he cannot get evidence to convict, how there is a lack of concensus amongst the police as to if Batman is a good thing or not, and some nice back stories on Bat-tech, Bat-training and Bat-angst. Individually no one story is magnificent, but together they have fleshed out a decent narrative for fans which I quite enjoyed. I doubt this will be essential viewing before Dark Knight, but you could find many worse ways to spend 80 minutes in a theatre. If you are a fan of Batman beyond having just seen the last film this is something well worth your time. | | Friday, June 27th, 2008 | | 4:16 pm |
| | Thursday, June 26th, 2008 | | 9:20 pm |
Get Smart and go watch Kung Fu Panda
2 films today after crippling myself clearing the back yard.
Get Smart: Not bad at all, an enjoyable silly spy movie with enough references to the old series to keep those fans happy yet being different and distinct enough to draw in a fresh crowd.
Max is a considerably better spy in this film, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing. However, it does make the clutzy/stupid scenes seem a little out of place and breaks the flow of the film, moreso when this sudden brain=off syndrome seems to affect other characters at random too. Agent 99 who is the most consistant character throughout the film unfortunately completely lacks the charm of the original, she also loses her individuality and just becomes another cookie cutter generic action chick.
Kung Fu Panda: Is so awesome you could be blinded by the awesomeness. Will be watching again, and will be purchasing a copy when it hits DVD. This is probably the most I have ever enjoyed a film where I could tell you the whole plot in the first 30 seconds and take only 10 to do it. | | Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 | | 8:24 pm |
You don't mess with the Zohan
This was just like a Steven Seagal movie, without the humour. | | Sunday, June 22nd, 2008 | | 6:45 pm |
Tree Lopping
Should any of you need a tree lopper or trimmer, I highly recommend Tree Monkey's Services.
Brad (it is a one person operation) is fast, efficient, and will cut to whatever specifications you are after. I got him to keep the main trunks from two ironbarks for future furniture or flooring plans.
As he climbs the trees rather than using a cherry picker he can also get to stuff on small blocks. He is Western Power certified and gives free quotes. Call 0402317584.
He also has a level 70 WoW character, so he speaks our language. | | Sunday, June 15th, 2008 | | 9:30 pm |
The Counterfeiters
Well thats the hardest I have ever laughed in a movie about a concentration camp.
Admittedly the laughter was due to my heavyset friend falling through one of the dodgy chairs at Luna halfway through the film with a large bang and the following scrambling on the floor for our drinks (fortunatly capped).
The film was good, although the ending was very weak and in many ways spoilt the whole internal moral conflict the protagonist was struggling with for the previous 90 minutes.
Sally just throwing all the money away in a fit of self loathing was really just a cheap and dumbed down ending for anyone who hadnt been paying attention for the rest of the film.
To be honest, I would have rather just watched a documentary on Operation Bernhard. | | Saturday, June 14th, 2008 | | 9:56 pm |
Speed Racer
Yeah that was fun and enjoyable.
The "hyper-reality" CGI worked for feel of the cartoon in real life the movie was presenting. Which incidentally, see this film at the cinema, because unless you have a wall sized HD TV, it will look shit on anything smaller.
My complaints are:
The only black man with a speaking role in the film has some of the worst dialogue offered to a character since Jar-Jar Binks, I was seriously expecting him to say "That's whack!" at some point.
The highly fappable Christina Ricci suddenly being a world class driver and martial artist was rather contrived.
The monkey and the younger brother could and should have been removed from the film entirely.
I still think the Wachowski siblings are still shite directors, and to keep it short on why: I very rarely felt like anything was moving fast. Sure lots of stuff was happening on screen, explosions, flipping cars etc, but I didn't have an experience of speed or acceleration. One major reason for this was the camera was far too often circling around and overtaking the cars or looking directly into the face of the drivers. So this means as a viewer I am constantly overtaking and looking back at the cars, which means relative to me they are not going very fast.
One of the few scenes that was shot well though, was Speed Racer vs The Memory of Rex at the start of the film, it was just a pity that was far too early on. The final race doesnt even finish with him beating anyone of note, the incredibly poorly developed archvillan driver is out half way through the race, so all Speed has a showdown with is flashy lights.
All in all, I dont regret seeing the film, and it was a good fun family film, but I wont be watching it again. | | 9:25 am |
Give this man an award!
| | Thursday, June 12th, 2008 | | 9:32 pm |
Incredible Hulk
First let me preface by saying I enjoyed the Ang Lee Hulk movie considerably better than it is generally reviewed. However, it largely failed due to lack of Hulk smashing stuff and it required far too in depth knowledge of character history for some parts to make sense.
The Incredible Hulk is a considerably better outing, however, still had too many flaws for me to rave about it being great. Edward Norton is a much better choice for Banner. Eric Bana name similarity amusement and Oz appeal aside just didn't fit the role very well, not least because I would fight Edward Norton, I wouldnt want to fight Eric Bana. (Yes that is a nod to Fight Club.)
They go with the variation of Hulk where he doesnt speak or know that he is Banner, whilst Banner knows he is the Hulk. My preferred variant is where Hulk is aware that he is Banner and can communicate. Nonetheless the mindless angry monster does fit well with the presented storyline.
The special effects are an improvement and took a note from Jaws and demonstrated seeing everything straight away isnt always the best path to take. The fight scenes were much more impressive and I was particularly pleased that they stuck to "Thatchers Superhero Car Fighting Rule" which is basically the best thing superstrong characters can do is throw/trash cars into each other, due to the easy relatability of size and durability of cars to the audience. However, the director/scriptwriter has no idea about the mechanics or physics behind fire and the two scenes involving it whilst pretty were ridiculous.
Roth was great as Abomination and the development of his character was much better handled than I expected. Liv Tyler cannot act to save her life though and deserved a good-ole Hulk smashing for her performance in this film, seriously she is out of breath in every scene.
The two setups for sequels both a direct one and the link the the Avengers movie also were not obtrusively tacked on and fit with the story nicely.
The one big opportunity the film missed was on Stan Lee's cameo. He drinks a soda that has been tainted with Hulk blood, shakes a bit and drops it. That scene would have been infinitely better than most scenes in history if instead he had hulked out, destroyed the fridge and then collapsed back to being Stan Lee.
Thinking about it, that is what the film was lacking. No comedy moments, all good comic book movies have at least one or two good comedy scenes. | | Thursday, June 5th, 2008 | | 11:27 pm |
Prince Caspian
Fucking Fantastic!
Lord of the Rings good, forget the average Lion Witch and Wardrobe outing, this is hands down the most impressed I have been walking out of a cinema this year.
Go watch it! I will possibly expand more when I can be more objective. The closing scene music is the only thing which leaps to mind that I dislike about this film. | | Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 | | 11:34 pm |
Indiana Jones 4 no good reason
Ah George Lucas, still preventing Joss Whedon from claiming the position of Number 1 overrated and overpowered hack fanfic writer in the world.
Whilst I could rant for quite some time on the many things wrong with this film, (and probably will) for now I will just point out the whole film hinges on the following premise:
Sometime in the 1500s a Spanish conquistador found his way to the hidden city, traversed past all the one-way (and apparently non-resettable) traps, an army of guards (who presumably freshly wall themselves into the temple every morning) encountered 13 immortal, ultrapowerful psychic interdimensional aliens (or at least the skeletons thereof) and despite them still being alive; stole the head off one of them and made it back out.
As such Mr Lucas has answered the greatest riddle of all time, the Greys are really just the Fire Gang from Labyrinth.
| | Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 | | 9:34 pm |
CJ7
Well I laughed my arse off.
However, I suspect very few people will share my opinion.
Which makes me like it even more. | | Thursday, May 1st, 2008 | | 11:16 pm |
Iron Man
Good, but not great.
Only one really annoying scene: Why does the owner/director of a company need to send his secretary to steal info off a company computer inside his own building? Instead of, say the far more efficient method of showing up, walking in and just taking it, with police guard if really necessary.
Definitely worth watching, big screen and all that, plenty of laughs and explosions but I just was not impressed enough that I would watch it again tomorrow.
Comparative to other Superhero movies, I would say its on par with Spider-man 1. | | Thursday, April 10th, 2008 | | 7:16 pm |
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