font {size: red;} » film2008

Just briefly

ross — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:01:39 +0000

Second driving lesson this evening. I seem to have trouble with bite points.

Roof repairs didn’t stop water coming in during bad weather.

Apparently I’ve been leaking on downstairs as well. Poo. Hope that doesn’t cost me.

Finished Tales of Symphonia! Only took a little over a year and 50 hours of gameplay.

Converted my T10 to use UMS instead of MTP. Now it works like any other drive and I can use it properly.

Saw Cloverfield. It was a lot of fun.

Ah, technology

ross — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:15:46 +0000

I’m sitting in my lounge with my laptop balanced on my legs. I’ve just finished making alterations to my aunt’s website which is hosted thousands of miles away on servers on the west coast of the US. At the same time, my laptop is streaming out The Sweet Body of Deborah to my modified XBox which is running XBMC . What’s even better is that this film has never seen an official DVD release. Luckily home technology is good enough that enterprising people can take old video copies of these films, record from onto a PC’s hard drive, clean up the video and audio, compress it using very efficient algorithms and then share it out over the internet.

As for the film? Well, it’s good so far and I’ve got plenty more unwatched giallo to get through from the same sources. All because of the technology at our fingertips.

More Film 2008

ross — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:11:27 +0000

Rock The Bells Entertaining documentary following the behind the scenes fun organising a hip-hop concert trying to the get Wu-Tang Clan all together on the same stage.

Resident Evil : Extinction Yeah, I like these movies. They may get derided for being stupid, filled with bad acting, plot holes and dialogue that makes you wince but that’s part of why I enjoy them so much. How can you not love a petrol tanker ploughing through an enormous crowd of zombies?

The Bourne Ultimatum A fitting conclusion to the Bourne trilogy but the triumphant ending is somewhat at odds with the fact that we’ve just seen our hero shoot an anonymous stranger in a basement and that he volunteered to be turned into a killing machine.

Keeping track

ross — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 23:01:35 +0000

I’ve decided to try and keep track of how many films I watch, albums I listen to, etc. etc. this year. Should help with end of year lists in twelve months time. For starters, the films I’ve watched so far this year –

I Am Legend – I enjoyed this a lot. Not sure about the ending but the scenes of a deserted, decaying New York were very good indeed. With a bit more damage and some people, we might see the same thing in a DMZ) film, but that’s just wishful thinking.

Atonement – Not my usual style of film at all and, yes, I was drawn to it for the obvious reason rather than Oscar nominations. However, it was a lot more entertaining that I expected with great use of sound.

This Film is Not Yet Rated – Hilarious documentary about the waste of space that is the MPAA. I may dislike the BBFC a lot of the time but they’re not as bad as the US counterpart.

A Dragonfly For Each Corpse – Another Paul Naschy giallo. It was passable but not as impressive as Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll .

Invaders of the Lost Gold – Crap. Apart from some midly amusing dubbing I lost interest within twenty minutes and spent more time poking around on facebook than watching the film.

So Young, So Lovely, So Vicious – There’s a lot of style on offer with this strange thriller but not a lot of substance. I didn’t buy into the motivation of the characters and the sudden ending left me thinking is that it?

A Fisful of Fingers – Edgar Wright’s first movie. Rough around the edges and slow to start, but once he settles into a more quick-fire approach to the comedy it moves along well. Worth tracking down to see where it all started.

The Lookout – Well done character piece. Enjoyed it more than The Interpreter from the same writer, but that might be more to do with Nicole Kidman’s accent than anything else.

I think that’s it so far. Not a bad list for only two weeks into the new year. Sitting around at the start of the year waiting to shake the cold helped I reckon.