This album is from the singer dude from Disturbed. Let’s face it, it sounds like a Disturbed album. It’s good. Not outstanding, but good.
He does have a song with a woman singing along with him. I don’t like that.
Escape Plan
This film was better than the trailers would make out. It was quite good fun although had one MASSIVE and annoying misunderstanding of science. Stallone and Schwarzenegger were both quite entertaining and the whole film worked well. If you want 90 or so minutes of fun and a little plot then it’s well worth the time-investment.
SPOILER ALERT – Do not read any further unless you want to know!
The idea of a prison owned and run by very rich people is sensible enough. Prisons are already run by profit making private companies so I don’t have any issues with that. The main premise of the prison was to keep these people out of society (and to gain information from them). But, this seemed a little expensive. If these people are as bad as thought then it would be massively cheaper just to kill them. There’s no point in keeping them alive (unless you need some information from them and that could be done much cheaper). Is it more morally right to keep people detained without trial instead of killing them, when the bottom line is profit I don’t think so.
It would have been nice to see Stallone’s partner suffer a little more with dirty objects as the film made it quite clear he was very OCD about dirt.
Generally the film was quite accurate to reality. A prison on a ship, done that, there were prison ships on the Medway during the Napoleonic wars. A constantly moving ship in the ocean? No problem with that. Do the prisoners know they are on a ship? Happy that it could be kept from them although every ship I’ve ever been on vibrates with the thump of the engine. It has been a while though.
My Biggest Problem with this film:
The Coriolis effect does NOT, I repeat NOT make the water flow down a plug hole or toilet in a particular direction. If you understand physics a little you would know why. I’m not going to debunk that particular part of the film here. JFGI. Sometimes I hate script writers, ignorance is not an excuse for messing up the science.
Demonstrous – Demonstrous
Somehow I ended up downloading this from iTunes, probably following a “what other people bought link”. I was searching for some music rather like Slayer and Evile but something a bit new.
What I got I would pretty much call an instant classic. This album is awesome. It’s got all the elements that make a great thrash album. There are chugging riffs, melodies, awesome vocals. I would recommend this to anyone who likes a good bit of thrash.
Looking into the band I can see that they only managed this one album. Fair enough. The best music seems to come from the friction and hatred from working together to produce something that works.
This album is well worth the money.
Denim and Leather – Saxon
I love a bit of Saxon. That great NWOBHM sound. Two guitars, bass, drums and vocals. Nothing else needed.
Denim and Leather
I bought this off iTunes about a year ago as part of a multi-album pack. I don’t like they get lumped together in the music app though so I edit the meta data and split the albums up with their own album art work. iTunes HATES me doing this. Recently I did this with Suicidal Tendencies and iTunes went ape-shit at syncing with my phone and I have to rebuild my complete library. I hate iTunes most of the time.
This album is awesome. I originally had the Best of Saxon on music cassette and played it loads. This album has some of the greats from there and others too.
My highlights are:
Denim and Leather
Princess of the Night
20,000 Feet
It’s real party music (or at least I think it is).
White House Down
Channing Tatum – Who? Am I that far away from popular culture now?
PROBABLY
So, I went to see this film because of my Washington DC visit earlier in the year. I really like seeing places I’ve been in films and on the big screen. It’s like seeing London in big films. I feel that slightly more personal connection with the movie because I can say “I’ve been there”.
You get what you pay for with this film. I wanted a brain dead action thriller. I got a brain dead action almost-thriller. The good things about the film: DC looks nice, politicians are the baddies. The bad things about the film: pretty much everything else.
The President doesn’t want to be president. Congress don’t want him to be President, but he is trying to secure a middle-east peace deal. OK, that’s fair enough. But, the rest was just poor and laughable terrible. The script was bad. The action was over the top and implausible. Oh, it was bad. But, as with my tweet rating of 5, it was bad done well, rather than being just a badly made bad film, it was a well made bad film!
It’s curious how some of the most recent American films have depicted disgruntled Americans as the baddies. Perhaps they are waking up to the fact that the greatest threat to USA peace and security comes from within the country and that external factors are small in comparison [US Government shutdown].
Man of Steel
Went to see Man of Steel on a 2nd Chance Thursday. To be honest I wasn’t even aware that 2nd Chance Thursday existed but there you go.
This was a really good film, apart from one minor thing more of which later. I really enjoyed the “names” in the film the cast was excellent and there was someone new at every scene change. Having said that the story made the film not the actors so that was good.
It was nice to see intelligent use of emotion throughout the film and the story played out in flashback. This was much better than, say, Wolverine or any other cheap basic superhero movie. Much like Avengers this film had a good script and good direction.
I’m not sure I understand or agree with the reasoning why Clark was so strong and I’m not sure how being able to jump far means that you can fly and change direction but I’ll overlook those bits.
It’s curious that it’s ok to destroy Manhattan again, or rather Metropolis. After 12 years we can finally have falling skyscrapers and aircraft exploding after hitting buildings.
I did not like the final fight scene. Two brilliantly strong men fighting to destroy each other and the final move comes down to “breaking the neck”. Why didn’t that happen in the first place?
This was well worth seeing. I really enjoyed it.
PS: There was one part of the movie that freaked me out and I haven’t searched the interwebs yet for information so I am probably wrong. When Superman is under the machine in the Indian Ocean it looks for a brief time that his face changes to look like Christopher Reeve’s superman. If this was deliberate then it is awesome. If it’s just me then I think I need to turn down the pareidolia section of my brain.
PPS: I laughed out loud at the church scene. It was hilarious. Clark could have got that same advice from anyone though, you don’t need a book and “gods” to guide you.
Riddick
Riddick. Watch the first one. Don’t see this one. It’s the same film.
I was greatly annoyed at the sexism inherent in the script and screenplay. Katee Sackhoff starred in this film, previously known for playing the most excellent role-model “Starbuck”, Kara Thrace in the TV series Battlestar Galactica. Her first line in this film, as the only woman in the cast was:
Are you going to clean that up?
Seriously. A great female actor who’s been a force for strong female characters asks about tidying up the room? What a waste.
Also, there was a gratuitous boob shot. How disappointing. Just not needed. I really like Katee Sackhoff as an actress but she was let down by this film.
Pain and Gain
About halfway through this film you start thinking that these people can’t be this stupid, then the film freezes and it says:
Remember, this is still a true story.
Well, in reality, in reality it’s a film based on a true story with a number of things changed just to make it more of a film. See the Wikipedia page.
Also, you get to the end of the film and it comes up with Michael Bay and you realise what you’ve just seen.
I felt sad that society has bred thick people who believe it is their RIGHT to have money and be famous. This film is a commentary on the state of society given the modern age of the X-Factor and get-rich-quick. People, you need to understand you have rights to nothing. You have to earn everything you want. You don’t deserve anything until you have put the effort in. Hmmm, think my morality drifted a bit there, whoops!
Elysium
Look, the film was ok. I think the fact that I am now approaching a good number of years on this Earth means that I have seen lots of Sci-Fi themes covered in movies before. This film didn’t say anything new. I guess that, in terms of entertainment, it did its job. I was entertained for a couple of hours. In terms of meaning and interpretation there are other films that do the job much better.
The space station was STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL.
The Lone Ranger
It, was, ok.
That’s pretty much it.
Oh, it had spectacular, implausible action, ugly cowboys, silver and greed. But it was still, just a little bit, ok.