Mad Max holds up despite being 30 years old, presenting a gripping and gritty view of the near future and spawning a generation of look-alike films.
Stripes
A classic Reitman comedy staring Bill Murray and Harold Ramis, Stripes is funny and embarassing in equal measure yet still delivers a fun feel good experience.
Stargate
A well produced, engaging sci-fi actioner with some excellent performances and only a few marginally annoying elements which let it down.
Hellboy
Hellboy is an entertaining and engaging action fantasy film with stunning visuals and only a few minor flaws.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
A lackluster and disappointing movie which feels more like a collection of one-off action sequences than a real story.
Diagnosis Technological Developments
It amused me to discover that despite this being 2009, despite the huge advances in medical science, hernias are diagnosed using the following two techniques,
- prodding and asking ‘does it hurt there’
- pressing and asking you to cough
I’m not complaining it obviously works, and it’s quick cheap and easy, but I just found it funny.
You can keep your multi-million pound body scanners, just press there tell me if it hurts and cough for me, thanks.
Grasstastic
Before Grete had major back issues for half a week, and before I really accepted I should be resting due to a potential hernia, we cleared/dug over the back and front garden areas ready for some grass seed, and then put the seed down.
It took ages for it to show through and we’d started to assume the pigeons had eaten it all – but then a couple of days ago we spotted a thread of green! It’s odd though, if you look down vertically onto the soil you can’t see the grass, if you look at an angle you can and if you look at it horizontally, it’s clear to see!
Back garden
Front garden
The front doesn’t look as good because neither myself nor Grete have been in any condition to get out and keep it weeded, but hopefully the grass will pull through. The back is looking excellent and we hope the grass will stop the soil washing down the bank in the first sustained heavy rains we get. The other side of the apple tree is on the same kind of slope and the grass keeps it all in place.
The apple tree has gone crazy as well, I thought the pruning would keep the apples away this year but the tree appears to have decided to wreak revenge by growing twice as many apples. The thin branches are dropping under the weight of the slowly forming apples already. I suspect I’ll have to take action to get rid of them before they mature otherwise the branches are really going to suffer.
Terminator Salvation
So I’m starting to see some reviews for Terminator Salvation and it’s not looking hopeful. Disappointing, let down, missed opportunity – those phrases never add up to anything good.
Maybe in the battle of the Giant Robots this summer, Transformers has already won.
Star Trek
A fast paced, well executed action sci-fi flick, with emphasis on the -fi and the characters, this franchise reboot gets it right in so many ways.
Resident Evil 5
Despite not being very good at ‘shooters’, I picked up a second hand copy of Resident Evil 5 for the PS3. I’m playing it on the easiest level it has and it’s fun, certainly engaging. I was frustrated by the first ‘boss’ encounter which seemed to auto-kill me every time I tried until I worked out I had to get out of the room, but after that it’s been entertaining.
The only major downside is probably because I’m playing it on easy, which means my inventory gets full quickly because I don’t chew through healing stuff (don’t get me wrong, I suck enough that I die and I still need to use the healing things, but I’m not using them so quickly that they don’t sit in my inventory for ages). Also, I know I’m not making effective use of grenades, which is why I usually end up selling them by the bucket load.
One thing I do like a lot, even though it’s not entirely visible to me, is that the game adapts the difficulty even withing the set difficulty levels, based on how well you’re doing. So if you die a lot, the enemies get a little easier and if you’re doing really well and not getting hit, they get a little tougher.
There are enough checkpoints to avoid too much frustration of re-doing stages, and there’s a checkpoint before any moment which can lead to sudden death. There’s also a good range of different styles of game play. A lot of it is moving around carefully and killing the bad guys, there’s some out-right grenade your way out of a mess, some cut scenes which rely on you hitting the right buttons when prompted to avoid deadly danger, different kinds of boss fights and some nice tactical elements. My favourite moment so far, was entering an area filled with zombie-soliders in tactical gear, and watching them come into the room in single file like you see SWAT / military types in movies do. You have to hide behind crates and pop around while they reload to take them out, moving your way through the room. It was such a different style to the early crazy-zombie encounters and very refreshing. I really enjoyed that.
I also like the way you can stop at any point, restart the game, but keep your gear. For someone as inept as me, this gives me the chance to build up some decent weapons (by upgrading them), and then trying the game on a harder setting (like, normal) without getting immediately wasted.
All-in-all, I’m surprised at how much I’m enjoying it, I was looking for something with a more roleplaying element, and when the shop didn’t have anything I sort of picked up RE5 expecting to be frustrated. But it’s proven to be engaging, entertaining and fun.