Personal – Page 98 – Fooyah

March 25 2017

Life

I took a break from building the Lego monster to visit Rochester cinema and watch the film Life. I rated this film on IMDB and you can see a guide to my ratings within this communication.

I rated Life (2017) 6/10 #IMDb https://t.co/ppMEjkCAgP

— Ian Parish (@iparish) March 25, 2017

I spent a lot of this film wondering what to write. I’m still not sure. One of the ways I interact with films is to consider what I write here. It allows me to collect my thoughts and experience the film as something more than just a cinema trip. I am nearly at the point when I am going to take a pad and pen into a film to note down my thoughts as the film rolls. What is written here is normally a collection of illiterate thoughts after the fact. My musings are filtered through the cold process of entropy increasing. Occasionally I add an extra thought here or there when I realise I’ve missed an important point I wanted to make, hence a note pad would be a good idea. I don’t want to write notes on my phone because that’s likely to get me kicked out or would, at the very least, be quite anti-social in the darkened environment of the cinema.

You know what? I’m still not sure what to write. There are some science issues and orbital mechanics things that annoyed me a little but I don’t think they spoiled the film for me. Overall it was quite a good watch. This was essentially Alien but on the International Space Station. It wasn’t really as suspenseful as Alien, but then I do love Alien and Aliens. I did find this ultimately quite not-frightening.

Right [collects thoughts]. This film was fine. I like space stuff and this film had space stuff. Yep, that’s it. Fine.

Now, some bits a pieces with potential SPOILERS.

The ISS had to “catch” the mars probe? Not going to happen.

The life form was very aggressive, I don’t think this type of life form could exists on a planet. It would have to compete for food and resources and it would use them all very soon. Oh, shit, like humans on Earth. Wow! perhaps I missed that metaphor.

The Martian soil didn’t float about.

They found a single microscopic cell out of all the junk they brought in from the probe.

The Soyuz launched to boost the ISS to “deep space” would not have enough fuel. The film mentioned “deep space” a few times as though it’s easy to get there. It’s not. The energy required is immense. We have never, so far, sent a human to deep space. We haven’t even sent a human out of the Earth’s gravity well. We have sent some probes out beyond Earth’s grip but nothing that could sustain human life. I guess the film was set in the future so maybe they can have that one.

The Soyuz docked at a closing velocity that would have destroyed both machines.

There are probably other issues but I don’t want to come across as petty or pedantic. I am both. This film was largely: fine.

March 23 2017October 19 2017

Lego 46 Model 42055 Part 6

This next section of the bucket wheel excavator is the main conveyor belt from the body to the truck. This was about an hour to build. So far total build time is 5.75 hours. I think I’m over half way now.

I was really tempted to start the bucket wheel part of this but it was feeling late in the evening!

I think I’ll be sad once this has been finished. It really is quite therapeutic building this stuff.

March 23 2017October 19 2017

Lego 49 Model 6346

This one marks a change as this is a model I bought from EBay from a charity. All money to good causes then. While I didn’t have all the pieces in this kit there was enough to make the orbiter.

And a view with the cargo doors / radiators shut:

This kit was released in 1993. It amazes me how basic it seems to be!

March 21 2017October 19 2017

Lego 46 Model 42055 Part 5

Now I have a working base unit for the Bucket Wheel Excavator it’s time to make the rotating base which serves as the connector for the conveyors and bucket wheel arm. This build took two hours. I had only really budgeted about ninety minutes of time and so I was feeling quite tired towards the end, but the result is gorgeous.

Here’s some detail of the build.

I’m about a third of the way through the instructions and not quite halfway through the separate bags!

Here’s the conveyor superstructure part way through the build:

This is the initial joining of the pieces but with more work still to do:

Another of the completed sections so far:

March 21 2017October 19 2017

Lego 46 Model 42055 Part 4

Caterpillar time! The big boy needs wheels (or similar). Build time for these was about an 45 minutes for both.

And here are the caterpillars attached to the base chassis.

March 21 2017October 19 2017

Lego 46 Model 42055 Part 3

This Lego model is being constructed in sections. These communications are in line with the numbered bags of legos in the kit. The first part of the kit was to make the dumper truck covered here, this took about an hour.

Here is my workspace:

I use pasta bowls to hold the pieces while I work. This saves them from dropping into the fireplace or bouncing under furniture on the floor.

This was the first main part of this part of the build:

More of the framework:

And this is the final part of this build. This section is the base unit with driver gears for the caterpillar tracks.

This took about an hour. So far, total time is two hours.

March 20 2017October 13 2018

Lego 48 Model 75169

Another in this mni-Lego season. Here we have Qui-Gon fighting Darth Maul in the Naboo power station (?). Obi-Wan awaits to avenge what is about to happen!

You are being spoilt these days as we have another gallery for you!

March 19 2017October 13 2018

Lego 47 Model 75102

It is a mini-Lego season here and so there’ll be a couple more models to show along the way.

Poe Dameron's X-Wing — Poe Dameron’s X-Wing

This Lego is so lovely it needs its own gallery to show it off properly!

March 18 2017

Kong: Skull Island

I took a birthday trip to see Kong: Skull Island at the Rochester Cineworld Cinema. If you don’t know me by now, then you’ll never, ever know that I rate my movies on the IMDB website, but there’s a catch. I explained my rating system here, but I think scores have been creeping recently so I may have to redefine the system. Watch this space. When I decide my score I tweet it, which leads to a quite nice embedded format:

I rated Kong: Skull Island (2017) 4/10 #IMDb https://t.co/Yx7DMF4s8n

— Ian Parish (@iparish) March 18, 2017

I had originally scored this as a 6, but upon reflection it didn’t deserve to be rated that highly, hence my change of mind.

Because, this film, was, shit.

SPOILERS ahead.

The script was appalling, lazy, stereotypical bullshit. Samuel L Jackson’s eyes got too much screen time. The film makers can’t count helicopters.

The monsters looked brilliant. I’m not really aware of the mythology around the Kong character but in this film he seemed to be more of an accidental benevolent monster type thing rather like Godzilla than all out terrible monster. I guess it’s OK because he fell in love with Brie Larson, who didn’t get smashed to death inside Kong’s hand while he ripped the brain out of a two legged lizard thing. It was irritating that Brie Larson seemed to spend all her time with a bag strap over her chest to enhance her breasts, this wasn’t needed, it seemed sexist to me.

The characters were terrible. War mad generals, smooth calm SAS member, crazy scientist with stupid theories, tribe who don’t speak. It was lazy terrible bullshit.

I can suspend my disbelief for gigantic monsters on an island surrounded by a perpetual storm. That bit was fine. The rest of this was bollocks.

It’s the little things. Little things that shouldn’t be things I have to write about. Like helicopters that materialise from nowhere. On the ship travelling to Skull Island there were, quite clearly, one Chinook, one Sea Stallion and four Hueys. All of a sudden when they take off to head to Skull Island the Hueys had babies and there were eight of them!! I have no idea where they came from. I also don’t know where the helos at the end of the film came from unless the US Navy had a task force nearby.

Oh, the Hueys had tape players and speakers. I can’t quite decide if this was an homage to Apocalypse Now! or just a plain bullshit rip off. The shots were almost exactly the same.

If you want a film with rebellious music, at least make the music decent. There was a ton of decent stuff around in the 1973 setting.

The two chaps who had crashed on Skull Island in the opening sequence made a boat out of aircraft parts. The team spent about a day turning this hulk of 29 year old metal into a working boat by turning some bolts and waggling some leavers. They made a metal thing work smoothly after 29 years in a humid environment. They must be geniuses. Oh and then, when they get the engine running it pops away smoothly and quietly in the background. Let me tell you that there are NO aero engines that run “quietly” in the background. That engine would have been producing in excess of 900bhp and no silencing. The makeshift boat would have torn itself apart.

According to the Wikipedia page I missed the post-credits scene where other monsters are revealed to the viewer. I don’t care.

If I wanted to be very extremely generous I could claim that the film was a complete metaphor for the USA’s battle against terrorism with Kong representing the terrorists. But I don’t want to be generous with this film.

March 17 2017October 19 2017

Lego 46 Model 42055 Part 2

Part two of the journey into the largest Technic Lego kit ever available. I made the dumper trump that comes with the bucket excavator. It’s a nice little kit with steering and a raising bed.

The bed raised:

And finally, a mean front view.