Author Archives: tony

Bad Guys & Good Lines

Posted on by

I was thinking a few days ago, that in a lot of movies the good guys get the best lines.  Certainly much of the movie quoting that goes on is focussed on lines delivered by the heroes or the good guys.  However, there are times when the bad guys get the good lines, and I thought I’d put together a random list, for my own entertainment.   Some of them are no-brainers (the ones at the top of the list!) but maybe a few will make you want to go back and watch the film again and there’s bound to be some which I include only because I remember and quote them but they don’t count as truly cool.  Stick any more you can think of in the comments.

  • The Terminator – “I’ll be back” (The Terminator)
  • RoboCop – “Can you fly, Bobby?” (Clarence Boddicker)
  • Die Hard – “Alas, your Mr. Takagi did not see it that way… so he won’t be joining us for the rest of his life.” (Hans Gruber)
  • Die Hard – “I’m going to count to three, there will not be a four.” (Hans Gruber)
  • The Shining – “Heeere’s Johnny!” (Jack Torrance) ((Suggested by Sue))
  • Highlander – “I have something to say! It’s better to burn out than to fade away!” (Kurgan)
  • Highlander – “Father! Forgive me , I am a worm!” (Kurgan)
  • Highlander – “Happy Hallowe’en, ladies! Nuns. No sense of humour.” (Kurgan)
  • Highlander – “I am in disguise!” (Kurgan)
  • Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi – “Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station!” (The Emperor) ((Suggested by Sue))
  • Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi – “This bounty hunter is my kind of scum” (Jabba the Hutt)
  • Star Wars Episode IV : A New Hope – “I have you now” (Darth Vader)
  • Star Wars Episode IV : A New Hope – “I find your lack of faith disturbing.” (Darth Vader)
  • Star Wars Episode IV : A New Hope – “When I left you, I was but the learner, now I am the master.” (Darth Vader)
  • Star Wars Episode IV : A New Hope – “The Force is strong with this one.” (Darth Vader)
  • Star Wars Episode IV : A New Hope – “Your powers are weak, old man.” (Darth Vader)
  • Star Wars Episode V : The Empire Strikes Back – “All too easy.” (Darth Vader)
  • Superman II – “Come and kneel before Zod!” (General Zod) ((Suggested by Sue))
  • Ghost Busters – “There is no Dana, only Zuul!” (Zuul via Dana) ((Suggested by Sue))
  • Ghost Busters – “Are you a God? …… Then Die!” (Gozer)
  • Pirates of the Caribbean : The Curse of the Black Pearl – “You best start believing in ghost stories Miss Turner. You’re in one.” (Captain Barbossa) ((Suggested by Sue))
  • Pirates of the Caribbean : The Curse of the Black Pearl – “… the code is more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules.” (Captain Barbossa)

That’ll do for now, I’ll maybe come back and add more later.

Do we expect too much?

Posted on by

There are some minor spoilers for Terminator Salvation in this post.

I’ve read reviews of Terminator 4 which lambaste the movie for the parts of the plot which don’t make any sense, and appear only to exist to allow a particular shot or to justify a particular action sequence.  I understand the concerns.  For example, why is only one T800 used to try and kill Connor in the SkyNet lab, why not hundreds?  What I don’t get is that movie makers have been doing this for ever, and the ‘original’ movies we love and revere are just as much at fault but the reviewers don’t seem to want to acknowledge that or accept it.

In the original Terminator movie, the excuse given for being able to send a Terminator back through a machine which can only send living organisms is that it’s covered in flesh.  Being covered in flesh does not make you a living organism when you’re also 3/4’s of a tonne of metal alloy inside, at best it should transport the fleshy bit and leave the alloy behind.  Personally if I was Kyle Reese I would have smuggled a powerful weapon through by having it surgically implanted in an animal and sending that through at the same time.  Or, get a couple of 24oz steaks and wrap them around a good gun while they’re still fresh and bring that through with you.  The whole concept of how they can send a machine wrapped in skin is an excuse to prevent them having anything on them from the future, because they couldn’t afford the effects.  But we forgive them that because the film is good.  It’s still just as silly though.  In T4, they didn’t use all the Terminators because it defeats the purpose of the story, full stop.

Bond villains don’t employ ex-special forces snipers with high powered rifles to kill James Bond as soon as he steps out of his hotel room because what’s the point?

That’s why we’re forced to suspend our disbelief.

Now I admit, that if you didn’t enjoy a movie because it didn’t engage you enough, then it’s harder to forgive the silly bits.  Totally understand that.  If you don’t find yourself engaged, the silly bits stick out even more.  But please, don’t claim ‘the original’ or ‘other films’ aren’t as silly.  They are.

Aliens, it’s a superb movie, lots of people think so.  In the first movie Ripley lives through the terrifying process of her entire crew being killed by a single alien, which she witnessed bursting from the chest of a friend, after seeing a facehugger implant the egg.  In the second movie she goes to sleep with a small child in the same room as several containers in which are living examples of those same facehuggers.  Why?  Why on earth would she do that when she knows what they do?  Why take any risk at all?  Totally stupid.  Designed entirely to create the next scene where Burke releases them.

In Aliens, we have technology capable of building androids and travelling hundreds of millions of miles, but apparently, no way of sending down an android to the plant surface to check out if it’s safe to go in before sending live humans.  Slightly less tense but much easier.  We ignore that because it would kind of ruin the story.

In Terminator, The Terminator goes into a gun store to buy some guns.  He has a long conversation with the guy in the shop and then shoots him.  Why does a killer robot need to ask for guns?  He walks in, kills the shop owner with his bare and impressive robot hands and then takes the guns he needs, or he asks for one gun and shoots the guy with that before taking the rest.  It’s a really cool scene as it stands, but it’s totally stupid as well.  The whole scene exists so that The Terminator can say “You’re wrong” and blow the guy away with the gun, and so that we know how many weapons he’s got.  Again, why does The Mighty Terminator need to drive a car into the police station to break in?  He can just step through the wall himself, he’s tough enough to do it.  And many more examples.

If you enjoy the film you forgive the sillyness, if you don’t enjoy it, you linger on the silly parts.  That’s okay, I get it.  I do the same.  But please, don’t pretend that all the movies we loved were perfect and had nothing silly in them – that just makes it sound like a lame excuse.

NB: It’s really quite late, and I’m not sure how well this reads through, but it was in my head last night and made it hard to get to sleep so I had to write it down today, warts and all.

Today, hour by hour

Posted on by
  • 5:00am – omg ow ow ow ow
  • 6:00am – ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
  • 7:00am – ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz
  • 8:00am – ow, ouch, ow ow ow
  • 9:00am – ow, ow, ouch ouch, tablets
  • 10:00am – ow, ouch, omg work tablets
  • 11:00am – ahhhhh ouch ouch ahhhhh
  • 12:00pm – hungry!
  • 1:00pm – argh ouch ouch
  • 2:00pm – tablets!
  • 3:00pm – ah, finally, less ouchy
  • 4:00pm – oh woozy
  • 5:00pm – huh where am I?
  • 6:00pm – huh who am I?
  • 7:00pm – ahh, tablets.
  • 8:00pm – wooooooooooooooozy
  • 9:00pm – woooooozy
  • 10:00pm (prediction) – more woozy
  • 11:00pm (prediction) – ouch, ah tablets
  • 12:00am (prediction) – bed ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz

All gone, all gone

Posted on by

So that’s it – all my sites / domains are moved off gradwell now.  Just waiting for them to action my request to cancel my outstanding services.  I’m in two minds whether to reconfigure Thunderbird to use Nildram for usenet or whether to just wave goodbye to NNTP entirely.  I was really only using it for the gradwell private groups and haunting long abandoned places as a by-product.  Hard to let it go totally though, I moved from FidoNet to Usenet and it was that which got me involved in lots of things which eventually led to where I am today.

So yeh, hard to let it go.

Gradwell have re-branded (personal opinion of their new website is that it looks horrible) and appear to be far more focussed on servicing businesses than individual technical users.  I’m sure there’s a much better future in that direction, but it would have encouraged me away even had the service not stunk and had I not received sales calls at the same time.

Gandi have been great, and 1and1 have been entirely invisible, other than a single brief outage a couple of months ago it’s been fine.  All-in-all it took longer than I hoped (near 4 months) but less time than I feared and wasn’t painful at all.  The only complexity was related to the .com registrations and changing owners (from me, to me).

Post Surgery

Posted on by

Surgery went well, up at 5:30am, at Derby City General Hospital by 7:45am, in prep at 8:30am and out of surgery and recovering from 10:30am.  Grete picked me up around 12pm, and I’ve been dozing on the sofa since.  Codeine always makes me sleepy.

It’s pretty uncomfortable when I think about it, but the pain killer cocktail (codeine, paracetamol and ibuprofen) takes the edge of it.

The nurses in Derby were great, really kept me informed and relaxed the whole time, can’t thank them enough.

Now, two weeks of snoozing and asking Grete what time is it.

Terminator Salvation

Posted on by

I’m beginning to think I’m unsophisticated, easily led, maybe even a little stupid.  I read the reviews for Terminator Salvation and they say ‘doesn’t capture the magic of the original’ or ‘haggard, nothing new’. They say that it’s a tired franchise and that it was a confusing and fractured movie.  I know cinema is an artform, and in art there are as many opinions as there are people.  Everyone reacts differently, but still, I think about the movie I saw yesterday and I wonder what other people went in expecting?

The first two Terminator movies are similar in layout, in my view, to the first two Alien movies.  Terminator is a very personal story about a single machine trying to kill a single person and anything that gets in the way.  Alien is a claustrophobic story about a single alien trying to kill the crew which eventually comes down to a single person.  Both Terminator 2 and Aliens ramp up the action and move away from the heavier horror elements.  I’ve seen reviews complaining that Terminator Salvation doesn’t capture the glory or the originality or the heart of the first movies.  Well, I hate to break it to them, but Terminator Salvation isn’t trying to do that.  It’s trying to be a modern action-based continuation of the Terminator story.  On top of that, how much heart was there really in T1 or T2?  Yes, we get the emotional bond and relationship between Sarah and Kyle in the first movie and we get a bunch of cheesy surrogate-father activity in T2 but they aren’t the mainstays of those two films.

I loved T1 and T2, I think they’re fantastic movies.  I think T3 should have been different, but it had some okay elements.  Personally, I think T4 (Terminator Salvation) is at least as good as T2.  But the rush of bad reviews make me question my own experience, maybe I missed something they saw, maybe I saw something that wasn’t really there?  I have to keep reminding myself that it’s art, and everyone experiences it differently.  I think if you go in expecting something, and  you don’t get it, then it leads to disappointment, and I think too many people went in with too many expectations.  I’m not saying I lowered my expectations, but I went in prepared to watch MCG’s film, not my idea of what it should be, or my idea of how it should play out, but what he wanted to do and the film he wanted to make.

So with that said, here’s my actual comment on the film, and there are minor spoilers.

Continue reading →

Pre-op

Posted on by

Pre-op appointment went okay, gave some blood, had blood pressure and ECG taken, spoke about what happens on the day, etc.  Being diabetic gives me the benefit of being treated as a priority in the morning since I won’t be able to eat from midnight.

Nurse in Derby City General Hospital was really friendly and helpful.

Operation still planned for the 11th, should know by mid-afternoon that day if I’m going to be home that night or not.

A day of updates #6 – Miniature Mayhem

Posted on by

Despite the fact that I’m not painting anything at the moment, I just bought a whole bunch of miniatures from Hasslefree, because they’re superb sculpts that I’d love to paint (in the part of my head that thinks I can).

p1060789

They had an offer on to raise some cash, allowing you to buy credit with them and then spend it when you wanted with some bonus credit added on.  I spent it all in one go (they understand the difference between profit and cash flow for small businesses, and they needed some cash flow).

So if I do finally get my painting mojo back on – I have plenty to go at.