I’ve already reviewed Wanted based on the cinema experience. We got the DVD a couple of days ago and watched it last night. A second viewing certainly adds some value, it was interesting re-watching scenes knowing how the whole thing plays out, seeing the characters playing out the lie that is central to the story, watching it build towards the end.
If you’ve not seen it in the cinema, and you like a bit of action with some flare, I recommend it. Really.
Time paradoxes make inherently confusing stories, so it’s critical that you connect with the characters and feel the plot has some value otherwise you’ll be left drifting. Deja Vu manages enough to keep you interested, keep you wanting to see more, and keeps you caring about the two main characters.
The screenplay is clever but doesn’t try to overstretch and there are no attempts to explain the paradoxes, and plenty of in-story explanations of why time travel is a really bad thing[tm].
The performances are solid, Denzel is interesting and believable, Paula plays the small amount of time she has on screen pretty well. I’m not entirely convinced their actions in the latter half of the movie make much sense, but I’m willing to suspend disbelief to let the story play out. There’s some action, some cute effects, some nice ideas and a certain level of suspense especially towards the finale.
The ending was kept hidden pretty well, and although I finally realised how it would play out just before it actually did it was worth the wait. No shocking last moment twists, no huge discovery, just a decent ending for a decent movie.
Deja Vu keeps to a tight script and a simple premise to bring a solid story about time-travel to life in a near-believable way delivering an entertaining and enjoyable experience.
Case fan has been noisy and getting worse (two big fans in the case, one front, one back, it’s the front one that’s been going). Bought a couple of new ones a while back, but found that I could get by, by tapping the fan and the bearings would settle down so I never actually put the new one in.
But the last few days the tapping has only fixed it for a few minutes, so I finally got around to replacing it tonight.
Not as easy as I’d hoped. Had to remove the hard disk cage to get to the back of the fan mountings. The existing fan was wired into an adapter plugged into one of the power cords, all of which was nicely cable-tied together by the folk who built the machine, with about 50 other cables. So I had to cut the ties and then sort out all the hanging wires and remove the fan. Lucky for me I bought a fan with a 3-pin to 4-pin converter, because I needed it. Picked the quieter of the two I bought, and lined it up to screw it to the front of the case.
The screws are self tapping into the plastic, but they’re not easy to put in, and while putting the second one in my left hand slipped and I dragged my thumb over some sharp metal on the case. Nice 1 inch long, 2mm deep gash on my thumb. I didn’t get a photo, we dressed the wound pretty quick. Nice big splodge of blood in the case, I think I got most of it.
I was tempted to check my blood sugar since there was so much spare blood hanging around.
Finally got the screws in and the case sounds nice and quiet.
Grete has more patience than me, and she’s arranged an appointment for me with the dentist on Friday. So now I get to blog about how I hate dentists, and my irrational fear of not being able to open my mouth wide enough.
Hey, I said irrational.
When you can’t really taste food, the texture becomes doubly important. And you begin to realise how much texture and taste interact to form the overall experience.
Melon which is over-ripe and soft is ok as long as you can taste it. When you can’t taste it, it’s like eating soft mushy nothingness and my brain decides the best response is a gag reflex.
Don’t worry, soon I’ll get better and you can stop reading this junk.
My team leader is on holiday, the other UK team member doesn’t work Mondays. Not much choice today but to work despite the cold and the tooth. We had a long running issue with one of our complex systems on Thursday and Friday. The on-call guy got it in the neck all night Friday and all weekend. So I worked from home today and spent the whole day on calls assisting with problem diagnosis. Until 8:30pm.
I tried calling the dentists to arrange an appointment. I hate medical receptionists. We went to this surgery a few years back (5) so they have us on the books. I needed to explain that, and then explain that I had a damaged tooth and needed an appointment. She was exhasperated and told me I could see my regular dentist on Friday. I asked if she had anything sooner, but she said I had to see my regular dentist. It’s been five years, how regular can my visits to that dentist be.
But no, she can’t deviate, I have to see my regular dentist, he has no free slots until Friday, despite the piece of tooth sitting on a plate in front of me.
So I mumbled something about finding a different local dentists and hung up.
It has been a miserable, miserable day.
eating with only one side of your mouth is very hard work, requires a lot of concentration not to move the food around.
i never knew that before.
yeh, this is the kind of thing twitter was invented for, i know. another 1f and i’m officially having a fever.
another smaller piece of tooth.
i know you like being kept up-to-date.