Projection = Good

My job got very interesting about 2 weeks back because I was finally trained in Projection. This means that for my shift I am running around upstairs, unseen and unheard, threading films through the projectors and making sure everything is running ok. It’s great and I love it. I also have the task of putting together movies when they come in. They usually come in 5-7 reels of film which I have to splice together to make one big one. Putting together trailers and all the cool projectiony stuff. The best part about the job is I can manage to do the whole thing without interacting with a single person. It’s like a dream come true!

Sold Out

I did it. It hurt. I left the shop 3 times empty handed before forcing myself to get it. I bought a PS3. Few things about it. After playing Wii for so long it’s amazing how unintuitive using an on-screen keyboard is without the Wiimote. Simple things become so much more difficult! The XMB also sucks compared to the channels on the Wii dashboard. On the other hand games looks insanely great. I have only downloaded a few demos and run Metal Gear Solid 4 (the reason I bought the PS3 anyway) but the clarity of them is amazing in 1080p vs the Wii’s crappy 480p. It makes me want a more powerful Wii.

Geek at the Movies V

Tropic Thunder
Ben Stiller has always been one of my favorite actors. His movies however are sometimes hilarious and sometimes not so. Zoolander was a weird exception which I hated the first time I watched it, but when I reflected back on it over time it became one of my favorites in its off beat, random humour. I had watched it again and found it heaps funny. With that pre-lude out of the way, I can say that I thought Tropic Thunder was one of the funniest movies I had seen in a long time. Some of the humour may be in bad taste for some people but those that don’t get offended easily should have a blast with it. 4.5/5

Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
With all the treasure hunter movies coming out these days it looks like the genre is running a bit thin. I enjoyed the first two movies quite a bit but this one didn’t tickle me like the others. It had some funnys and some actions but it seemed pretty generic. There wasn’t really anything bad about it, just not a lot good either. 2.5/5

Mirrors
Horror movies are always fun. This one had a great concept because who isn’t at least a little freaked out by mirrors?? Anyway it started out great and the scares were solid but the reason the mirrors were killing people is so lame! (spoiler)The final scene with Ben and the Demon lady looked like it was pulled straight from one of the Resident Evil movies. All the suspense from the first half of the movie was pretty much dissolved halfway and you are left wondering if you’re watching the same great film you went in with. Still pretty creepy though. 2.5/5

Pineapple Express
Lame stoner movie. If you liked Grandma’s Boy then you’re going to like this one. There are a couple genuinely funny moments but they are too few and too far between. Many of the people I saw it with said because I had little experience with drugs a lot of the humour was lost. Drugs experience or not, I didn’t find it very funny. Go see Tropic Thunder instead. 1/5

Dark Knight

Dark Knight
Saw it last night on IMAX and the best thing about it was easily the joker, it was however a batman movie so much of it was expected. It was a little too long, which isnt a dig at the length but more a dig at the fact it didn’t draw me in enough to not see the length. LoTR was longer but didn’t seem as long as it drew me into the world better. The music also got a bit repetative, they played the same theme for what seemed through the whole movie. Which is not to say the theme itself is bad but 2.5 hours of the same thing can get tedious. **suspence time, that means we have to play that strings bit again** The Joker was by far one of the best parts about the movie. He was incredibly creepy yet also funny. One of his first tricks was one of the funniest yet extremely disturbing things I’d ever seen… I’m talking about making the pencil dissappear. Anyway I would certainly reccommend seeing it in IMAX, the whole thing wasn’t shot in the film so it often goes back to the regular format. But when it kicks into IMAX mode in some of the major action sequences it looks all that much better. I’d have to say I did enjoy Wanted more though. 4/5

Winky Winky

Last night we went shopping and purchased a few of the foods always seen and featured in movies. A box of Twinkies and a bag of tootsie rolls! The Twinkies were very disappointing however tootsie rolls are very tasty. I have also become more aware on the fat content of foods in recent times (coincidence? i think not!) Twinkies are so bad for you and they are shit! I can see how people would get enormous on those. It would take at least a box to get any sort of satisfaction from them. They are very lame indeed.

Geek at the Movies IV

X-Files
Was ok. If you liked the X-Files series this movie will satisfy your X-Files deprived needs. While not as good as the first movie as I remember it. Is still very creepy. It felt like an extended episode rather than a feature film though. There seemed to be many links back to the series and since I missed a lot of the last seasons I didn’t understand some of the references made but it didn’t seem to impact the story too much. Not really jump out of your seat scary, but not a walk in the park, there was a lot of suspense. Fans should definitely go and see it. 2.5/5

Step-Brothers
This was a very funny movie with Will-Farrell and that other dude he is often on screen with who isn’t Ben Stiller. It had a lot of laughs but nothing worth rolling on the floor over. I would perhaps compare it to movies like Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby but not as funny as Blades of Glory. Slightly higher than average. 3/5

Geek at the Movies III

Sorry I’m a little behind. A lot of good movies are coming out and I haven’t had enough time to watch them all! I didn’t get to see Meet Dave. It was either that or Hellboy 2 and I had only heard good things about Hellboy which the same cannot be said about Meet Dave. A friend said the humor was like Love Guru, but worse. Hardly anyone saw it at our cinema and the showing ended before the weeks end. By mid week it was down to one showing a day because no one was going to see it. Anyway these are the ones I did see. Next week I should have seen The Dark Knight, X-Files movie, Step-Brothers and something else that I don’t remember.

Hellboy 2
It was a fun action/fantasy movie. I didn’t like it as much as fey though. I guess my problem with it is that it is a fantasy movie set in the real world. which to me means it should still abide by real world rules. How a wisp of smoke can speak is outside of real world rules and I have a problem with that. There are a few moments where things that shouldn’t happen, happen.
Despite this the action was solid, the acting was good and the settings the movie took place in got better over time. 3/5

Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
The best part about this movie is that it was in 3D. I really don’t know why more movies don’t do it because it can make an average movie look fantastic and some wont be able to see past that fact. JttCotE3D (how’s that for an acronym??!!) looked amazing and they certainly loved to flog the 3Dness of it. However the story was crappy and pretty un engaging. While funny at times it really didn’t do anything for me at all. I still think people should go see it though because 3D movies are awesome and they will only continue being made if people pay the money to go see them. 2.5/5

Indy

IndyCar racing is on in Edmonton today. It was on yesterday too! I can hear the cars blazing around the track, they’d have to be only 5-7 blocks away from my house. Too bad I’m not like most Australians else I might be excited that I could just walk there.

Breathe In

It was 11:30 when Fey came into the room, smiled and said “you have a parcel here” I ran out to the front door wearing nothing but my boxer shorts and swiped said parcel. The Post dude looked at me weird but it didn’t matter. In my grotty little hands, I was holding joy in a box. What a breathe of fresh air. No longer do I have to wait 2 minutes for firefox to open its 10th tab, no longer do I have to limit myself to only 3 programs open at a time, no longer do I have to be worried about HDD space for media! My QNAP is also in “da” house and I have access to all my music, movies and TV shows. Oh how I missed thee!

Japanese Food

We went out for dinner tonight to a place called “Japanese Village” and it was awesome. They get you to sit around a big table and there is like a stove in the middle and a chef comes out and cooks your meal in front of you. Of course not before doing some knife throwing and cool stuff like that. The steak was so juicy and not fatty juicy somewhere like hogsbreath would cook either, it was really good. The best part about the meal though was that obviously to be able to eat with chopsticks, which I did for the entire meal, they have to cut everything up into bite size pieces. It was so good not having to cut my steak, everything just the right size for a mouthful of flavoury goodness. We will definitely be going there again some day. Thanks to Buggy and Earl for taking us!