Hancock (IMDb) (Trailers)

I remember clearly the day I came across the teaser for movie Hancock staring Will Smith. First of all, I consider Will Smith a great entertainer (singer, comedian and actor) and seeing him in the role of Hancock was just perfect.

I guess I saw the trailer around 5 times the first day and was laughing like a lunatic each time (”… Greenpeace does…”) so this was a movie that went right in on the top of movies to see.

So finally it came to the cinema but I didn’t make it while it was “new” so missed it in the large cinema halls. Some of my friends went and saw it and didn’t specially like it which surprised me a lot.

IT ROCKS
I finally saw it yesterday with a friend and we both loved it.

Sure it is not a movie that will keep you awake after you saw it, no lost of sleep trying to figure out the meaning behind it. Just pure action, comedy, effects and superhero put together in a very nice way, all the ingredients that I want in an action movie.

I did have a few ideas about what to expect from watching the trailers again and again but still I was rather surprised by the change it does after halfway (Hell, was very close to the halfway break they have here in Switzerland).

They did a great job making the trailers as they where rather creative; they changed the order of a few scenes and the voice over was taken from other scenes so at the end the happening in the movie does not follow what people might expect. Then again, maybe it was just me who got it wrong from the trailers.

Will Smith did a very good job as behaving as the jackass he is in the start of the movie (See trailer), suits him very well… Not that I mean or think he is one but he plays the role very well. The rest of the actors also handled their parts with out problems.

Special effects where tops in the movie. This together with the none-stop action, humor resulted in a movie with not a single boring moment. The music also played an important role in setting the mood but here I’m a bit unhappy, I just checked iTunes for the sound track and yes they got it but it is all classical, not that I got an issue with classical but the movie had a lot of other types music, just check the trailer. So I will not be buying the sound track.

So all I can say to the people who didn’t see it: Go and watch it
and to the people who did see it and didn’t like it: Why? What’s wrong with you? :-)

Definitely a movie I will be getting on Blu-Ray.

“Good Job”

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Cloverfield (IMDb) (Trailers)

It is now a week ago I saw Cloverfield for the first time and I might see it again in another week. There have been written a lot about this movie and how it was filmed and it is one of those movies that either you love it or you hate it.

To illustrate this I will give a summary of the cinema experience:

I went with 3 friends and this was the verdict:

• 3 of us liked it very much; two of us actually consider it one of the best movies for a long time.
• The last one of us thought it was total crap.

Now let’s split it up in sexes:

• 3 guys: Love it
• 1 girl (she might prefer woman/lady…): Total hated it, considering it ‘crap’

This does not mean it is only a ‘guys’ movie; well at least I don’t consider it so.

I have to admit it is a special movie, just based on how it is all filmed, if you seen the trailers you will know what I mean, the whole movie is done so it looks like it is filmed by one of the actors using a small hand cam. So a lot of shaking, focus issues, changes of view very suddenly. At NO time the camera view changes to ‘another’ camera, it is always the person from the movie holding it.

Some people complained about this, that it causes nausea and headache but just like some games does this (Good old Doom did this); the effect is just different from person to person. It did annoy me a bit at the very start but I soon got over it.

I also heard people complain about the character development in the movie but this is a ‘private home movie’ so people know each other, so fine in this format I would say.

What I really liked about it was the fear these people had and you did feel it from time to time yourself (for those who seen it: tunnel), this together with the excellent sound just made it all more ‘real’. We did go to the best place in town to watch it and I suggest that people go to a place where the sound system is GOOD as it adds a lot to the movie.

There is a lot of action and adrenalin in the movie, sure the first 20 minutes can feel long but after that the tempo goes up a lot. You will also find lot’s of good humor in it, without it been lame at all. OK, I admit it, I was probably smiling and laughing a good few times when it was not really supposed to be funny; that’s just the type of guy I am.

Only negative thing I can say about it is: Too short and that I need a new sound system for it when it is released on DVD/Blu-ray.

What is next

There are of course a lot of rumors about a possible sequel and I could very much imagine that there will be one. Google will give some good links to rumors and also to hints that are in the current movie. This one would of course be filmed in another way (unless other people filmed the whole happening on their camera). I could imagine a more ‘normal’ movie which might also give some answers to all the open questions (Why? What? Did they….)

I know, I will be there when the second one starts (Keep an eye on IMDb for it)

Last of all: Um… I had a good day. :-)

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I recently went to the cinema see some action, the movie I choose was a pure action candidate and I knew it would not be boring. The movie was of course Die Hard 4.0 (But I almost ended up watching a preview of Transformers)

I got to admit that I liked the 3 previous Die Hard movies; the action; the dark humor; the action; Bruce Willis; Small twists in story; oh and did I mention.. Action.

So with this as background and with having seen the trailers a few times I knew I was not going to be disappointed by the 4th Die Hard movie, and I sure wasn’t disappointed at all.

Bruce Willis returns as the cop John McClane; just funny that no one in the movie knows how much destruction and how much he got through in the past. In the movie he involuntarily teams up with the young hacker Matt Farrell (Justin Long); who does ask after some great action “Have you done this before”. Sure everybody would know what a hero John McClane would be after all the previous action… Never mind, people laughed at this.

This movie should not be taken serious (no surprise); only exception might be the comments from the hacker about the manipulated news media (true or not true!!). The movie also shines with the dry humor, mainly from Bruce Willis and his comments from time to time. I didn’t expect to laugh as much as I did but then again maybe that’s just me (and the other Dane in the cinema).

Sure the action in the movie is over the top but I expected that. Sure the villain is BAD but hey, otherwise it would have been a bit silly. Sure it is also over the top that John McClane and Matt Farrell got to save all from total chaos but sometimes no one else is around to sort it out

I would highly recommend this movie to any Die Hard fans or just people who like action and of course especially to the Bruce Willis fans. For people who prefer movies that makes them think a lot after watching it then maybe this is not the right one, unless you will be thinking about how they made the action scenes, if there will be Die Hard 5… I’m sure this one will join my DVD collection when it is released on DVD.

Oh, did I mention that there is a bit of action in the movie!!!!

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Today it is about the movie 300; at the end of the review I will give my recommendations for the 4 movies and let you know what I plan to get on DVD at a later stage.

300 (IMDb) (Trailers)

Ever since I saw the first trailer I knew I had to see this movie. I later saw it again several times and still wanted to see it. I even bought the sound track as I felt the music in the trailer was SO full of power and emotions (battle emotions). So did the movie live up to the expectations? YES it sure did.

The movie did start out slow with some story telling about the Spartans and who/what they are; but it never felt boring. If you have seen the trailers you will know the movie is about 300 Spartans fighting against the Persian army of millions. Oh, and they fight… and fight. I was worried that the fighting scenes would get boring and just felling like repeated fighting. This was how I had it with Kill Bill no 1, but in 300 it was never like that.

Sure a LOT died; you saw LOTS of blood (or did you!!! I never noticed much RED blood; it looked more as comic blood). The scenes were very well done with switching between slow-motion and normal speed without getting annoying. Oh, and one thing, it will never feel the same as before when you eat an apple; people who seen the movie will know what I talk about… I did have one issue with the movie; the film quality (I’m not talking about the quality of the movie but the quality of the visuals on the display/screen) where not that good. As if the visuals were ‘dirty’ maybe because the movie had been shown many times. This might also be a result of the projectors used in the cinema. I mainly noticed this at the start; hope the DVD will be better quality.

Recommendations

I’m going to recommend all 4 movies!!! Shooter for a nice action movie; Music and Lyrics for great comedy and makes you feel good movie; 300 again for great action with awesome sound track. The recommendation for Sunshine is different; I’m going to recommend AGAINST watching it… But I have to be far and say that the opinions on that movie vary a lot.

What to get on DVD

Two of the 4 movies will become part of my DVD collection later this year. The first one will be Music and Lyrics, for a great laugh and to make me feel good. It was also the nicest cinema evening of them all.

The other will be 300; I’m considering if this one should be my first HD DVD or Blu-ray movie (Not that I got the setup for it), just to be able to really enjoy the music and the style of the movie.

I might get Shooter also; but will wait till I see it at a very low price. Just to have a good movie to sit back and relax with.

Upcoming

Seems the next few month will be a busy cinema time, not that I mind it of course, at least following movies are on my list of movies to see: Spiderman 3, Shrek the Third, Transformers, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Die Hard 4 (Live Free or Die Hard), The Simpsons Movie.. (Transformers and Die Hard are on top of my list). So do check back later for more movie comments.

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Music and Lyrics (IMDb) (Trailers)

Saw this movie the other day and was very pleased with the whole experience. The movie should not be taken serious (few movies should) as it is a comedy. It features a great combination of Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore. To make a long story very short; Hugh Grant plays the role of an old pop star who now earns his livings by singing at small events such as fairs, not a great position for the star of the 80’s. He gets a chance to write a song for THE STAR (in the movie) but got this issue; he is no good at song lyrics; writing music on the other hand is his talent. At the same time Drew Barrymore just happens to drop by to take care of his plants and it turns out she got a talent for writing lyrics. So they team up (after some hard convincing from Hugh Grant). So in very short time they have to write this song and the end result is… surprise :)

This is a movie where people laugh a lot; from the very start where you see Hugh Grant as 80’s pop star standing and wriggling his a.. eh, bottom :) and it continues to the very end. Drew acts very well (as always) but sometimes it does feel as the scripting was not great; as she does do a lot of silly things that people just don’t do. But it can all be taken with a smile as this is for FUN and not SERIOUS. The movie just brings a smile to your face and you will feel good and happy after seeing it. Can’t wait for the next Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant movie (if there will be one). The music in the movie just pops (sorry…just couldn’t write rocks as it is pop music), of course people who lived in the 80’s will recognize the style (and shake their heads) but even people that didn’t live in the 80’s will like it. Oh and yes, I got to admit it… I bought the sound track.

Next and final review will go online in a few days time, this will be a review of the movie 300 and that review will also contain the recommendations and so…

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I would normally avoid any kind of spoilers but this review will contain some; but do read on and you will soon know why.

Sunshine (IMDb) (Trailers)

After I saw Sunshine I was very close to do a post just about the experience, but since I don’t want to be seen as a very negative person I decided to drop the idea. This review WILL contain some spoilers, but please read it, watch the trailer and then decide if you really want to see the movie; if you read the reviews on IMBd then lots of people agree with me and lots disagrees.

So here goes: The whole idea with the movie is that the sun is dieing (yeah, right, just in 50 years time). The only chance humanity got is to reactivate it, so they create a stellar bomb and send it off with a spaceship; this should create a star with in the star. The bomb is sent off with a spaceship but the mission fails. So they build one more; mining the earth for the last resources for such a bomb, so this is the ONLY chance left. This one is sent off 7 years later.

The new spaceship got a crew of just 8. It goes WITHOUT saying that ONLY one can activate the bomb (Capa). I find it a bit funny that they can mine the earth for all resources; build a spaceship like this; program it to fly this far but they god damn fail to train more than one person, or just let a computer handle it all… Anyway, of course Capa has to take part in all exercises that can go wrong; such as repairing the sun shield; enter the OLD spaceship. I would have but him a box and first let him out when it was TIME.

Yes, they do find the old spaceship at Mercury and ends up going there.

I have to admit that until this point in the movie I really enjoyed it. But then it all turned crap.

It started with fancy/arty effects (split second from some other scene) once or twice would have been okay but it was just too much. While they are on board the old spaceship they have to abandon the ship as it looses the connection with the main ship. So one got to stay and they loose one more on the emergency trip back to the main ship. Then the captain from the old ship comes on board (Who survived 6.5 years with a BAD BAD sunburn) and for awhile the movie turns into a slasher horror movie; the captain also got this ability to blur the movie whenever he is on it (WTF). At this stage I actually considered leaving the cinema but stayed…

So here they are (two crew members and Mr. Slasher) on the final path that will take them into the sun; it is clear at this time they will not return. There is a small fight between Capa and Slasher which takes place inside the huge bomb container. Interesting as they had this serious issue earlier that they where running out of air; and here they have SO much of it. Never mind, just ONE more place where it all goes wrong.

Capa manages of course to activate the stellar bomb just before they crash into the sun. So in the end they ALL dies but saves the world. <bow>. The final decent into the sun is done with the camera (renders) shaking, probably to make it all more dramatic but it annoyed me a hell lot.

Of course they would have died anyway as NO spaceship would have been able to leave the gravity of the sun; even with a way too small shield. Oh gravity; seems gravity is only enabled with the spaceship got air; so if you are in the airlock without air then no gravity, they press the pressurize button and they get air and gravity! The movie is FULL of such mistakes.

Let’s see, positive points. The computer graphics in the movie was VERY well done; the sun was amazing, sure they spend more money on those renderings than the script… The actors did a pretty good job I would say. Decoration / the set were well done; didn’t seem cheap. Sound was also great. The idea behind the story was good but something went wrong.

Sorry that this part got so long; but I just had to get rid of it.

I was talking to a good friend of mine who also saw the movie; his opinion is close to the opposite, pretty interesting how people can see this movie SO different.

This was the second part of my small movie review collection. In the two other parts I will write about the movie “Music and Lyrics” and then finally the movie 300. In the last part I will also come with recommendations and a few comments on what I will get on DVD. So do check back again for the other parts.

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In each of the reviews I will try to avoid any spoilers except for one movie where the spoilers are for your own good…

I will also be giving links to the IMDb (The Internet Movie Database) (great resource for movie information) and also links to the trailers on Apple’s site. Then again, why avoid spoilers when the trailers are full of them :-)

Shooter (IMDb) (Trailers)

This is a great action movie that mixes conspiracy, justice, love, one man army and action all good together. Mark Wahlberg plays the role of the top sniper Bob Lee Swagger; that retried early in his career (Damn, that I wrote I would avoid spoilers). The government later tracks him down and offers him a job that he can’t refuse as he is SO full of patriotism. The acting of Mark is top; could he be the next young Bruce Willis (Not that I’m writing off Bruce Willis).

Things do not work out as planned (far from it) and then the action really starts. Of course he is not taking care of it all but gets some help from a certain lady and another agent. The movie does have a few surprises elements but most of it is straight forward.

This might not be a movie that will trigger any deep feelings or make people think much about life, except maybe the amount of conspiracy in the movie. It is an action movie that I would classify as very good. There are no time in the movie with it feels as if nothing is happening but there are times where it might be over done a bit (Hell, Rambo was over done a good bit).

This movie is not for kids as it does involve a lot of violence and death. This might be one of the points where the movie goes a bit wrong; Mr. Swagger got this attitude ‘I shall prove that I did nothing wrong, I will have my revenge and put the people to justice who treated me wrong and I shall do it no matter the price.. kill..kill..kill’. This was a thought that I had while watching the movie and especially at the ending scene. Then again, this is made for entertainment.
This was the end of part 1. In the second part I will write about the movie Sunshine; so look forward to an interesting review ;-) Do also keep an eye out for part 3 and 4.

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If I think about the devices I got that uses batteries then the list is not short of course, just to mention a few of them: GameBoy Advance, Leapster, 2 flash lights, joysticks with build in games, Flexi-Trax cars, Wii controllers, wireless mouse, various remote controls. The winning device for battery usage must be the 2 flash lights that my kids have for bed time; they often forget to turn them off or lay them under the pillow where they easy turn on again. Anyway, I keep buying batteries again and again.

So when I a while back saw the products from USBCell my first reaction was ‘must have’. So when I earlier this month received a newsletter from them where they offered a 15% discount and at the same time mentioned they now ship to Switzerland I just had to order.

So I bought 5 packages (max you can buy with the 15% discount) of AA batteries. Right now they are only offering these batteries but according to their website they will be offering other types soon. I would not mind a few sets of AAA batteries for the mouse.

I have to admit these are the most expensive batteries by far that I have bought. Price for a single battery including import duty and all is 12.32 CHF (Equals to around USD 10.11 or EURO 8.6). This might sound a bit crazy so I guess I better explain what these batteries are and what makes them so special.

The batteries from USBCell are rechargeable batteries with a unique feature; they can be recharged using a USB port on a PC (or any device really). So when a battery is low on power you just pop off the top of the battery and you will find a USB connector; plug the battery into a USB port and wait. There is a small LED that will show the status: Charging, 90% recharged and done with recharging.

Of course I could have used a normal recharge station and get the same feature and I do have one… somewhere… Now with the new batteries I don’t have to find it; just plug it to the PC which is on all the time anyway.

So when I got the batteries today I got busy… So time for some pictures.

The USBCells

The 5 packages.

Open and closed USBCell.

Time to recharge

PC is busy with recharging…

Even Xbox 360 can recharge them; just had to pull a good bit in the top.

The Nintendo Wii could only handle one at a time as the two ports are very close; so one poor Cell had to wait.

Several hours later I was ready to test them. The batteries got pretty warm during the recharge but that is normal so nothing to worry about.

I plugged the recharged batteries into several units and had no problem with them. Just need to keep them in mind; don’t want to loose one by mistake. So next time a battery is low on power I will swap it and plug the empty one into the USB port and some hours later I got more power again.

At the moment I would say this is a awesome product; well worth buying if you use a lot of batteries.

So the big question is; when will they have paid themselves back. I don’t know but it sure will take awhile. In the meantime I will just be happy about not having to buy batteries or give them back to recycling.

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Name: Diskeeper 2007 Professional
Usage: Disk de-fragmentation
Platform: Windows 200, XP, Vista
Company: Diskeeper Corporation
Verdict: Highly recommendable

What is Disk fragmentation and do we care?

Due to the Windows file system a file might be broken up in to blocks that are stored scattered around the disk. When a file is scattered we say the file is fragmented. When accessing fragmented files the speed is reduced as the hard drive will need to use several disk accesses to get the data from the disk. Having all data contiguous (defragmented) will allow faster access to the data. When a fragmented file is deleted it will leave ‘holes’ so creating new files will be slower and again the access will be slow. When using Windows many files will be used all the time; this might be files for Windows or user files; so it is VERY likely that files will get fragmented and if no defragmentation happens it will only get worse over time. Another issue with very fragmented files is that it can in theory reduce the life-span of the hard drive as the heads inside the hard drive will have to move a lot more than if all files where defragmented.

So the main goal with a disk defragmentation program is to remove all fragments and make sure all files are stored contiguous; at the same time making sure new files got space to be created without fragments. This will have a big impact on the performance of the whole PC.

The Past

In the old DOS days I was a big fan of Norton’s Speed Disk. Not that it was the only disk fragmentation program but it was the one I had most trust to. Things changed when I moved to Windows; didn’t really trust or feel that any of the disk fragmentation programs worked as I wanted. The build-in from Windows worked okay as long as you didn’t use the PC while it was working… So for many years I didn’t use disk fragmentation programs as often as I should.

Time changed and trust came back

So time changed and Diskeeper took over (for me at least). I’m not 100% sure when Diskeeper appeared for the first time; I first saw it when it was at version 6 or so, so several years ago. I did try the trail versions but never really decided if it was what I wanted. I was close to buying it when they got to version 9 and 10 but first bought it when it reached version 2007.

I mentioned trust several times already; the reason for this is that I MUST be able to trust programs that work on the hard drive in a way as Diskeeper does. It does after all go directly to the file system on a lower level than most programs does. This is specially the case when a defragmentation happens at boot time. It gets even more interesting when the program works on the disk WHILE the user is working. After evaluating and testing the trail version of Diskeeper 2007 Professional I felt good enough about the software and bought it.

Diskeeper 2007

The edition of Diskeeper that I bought was the 2007 Professional one. They do offer several other editions for home use and some for servers. For me I had to choose between Diskeeper 2007 Home, Diskeeper 2007 Professional and finally Diskeeper 2007 Pro Premier. The reason I decided for the Professional edition was the features it offered that was missing in the Home edition. These are “Automatic Directory Consolidation” and “FragShield™”. FragShield™ guards against fragmentation of system files; the “Automatic Directory Consolidation” makes file searching and access faster which also helps for backups and virus checks.

The Pro Premier edition offers all the features of the Professional edition but also “I-FAAST™ 2.0″ which I didn’t feel I needed, it also supports larger than 768 GB drives which I don’t have any way. Who knows; maybe I will end up investing in this version when I upgrade to a new PC. Just a word about I-FAAST 2.0 (Intelligent File Access Acceleration Sequencing Technology), it is used to monitor file access and reorganize files for fastest possible access. So files that are often used will be faster to access.

So let me mention some of the features that made me decide for Diskeeper 2007.

• Running in the background (InvisiTasking™).
  This was one of the main reasons for me to choose Diskeeper. It is possible to have Diskeeper running in the background without it taking any CPU time from other programs. So it will NOT slow down the PC. Often when you work with the PC there will be idle time; this is when the CPU is not working at full power. Example: While you are reading this text the CPU is not doing much but when you open an application or if you are playing a game it will be busy. So the system will use idle time for disk defragmentation. I had a funny experience with this: I had some issues with other programs that slowed the PC down; so I was watching what tasks was running and how much CPU they used. Then suddenly 25% of the CPU was used; I quickly checked what program it was: Diskeeper. Made me laugh a bit as it proved that their system is working. So now I have Diskeeper running ALL the time but it never disturbs me; actually I don’t even think about having it running at all.

• Simple to use.
  Start it, configure it… Forget about it. This is the simplest way to use Diskeeper, let it do the work in the background. Of course you can analyze a drive and see the stats of it and force a defragmentation; but you don’t really have to do so.

• Multiple drives.
  I have several hard drives with multiple partitions and I have defined them all to be automatic defragged in the background. Works without any problems. Only problem is if a drive is larger than 768 GB then the Pro Premier version is needed.

• Boot-time mode.
  This allows Diskeeper to run at the very start of the booting of the PC making it possible to defrag important system files; such as paging file; Master File Table…

• Defragmentation when having low free space.
  The system does not require a lot of free space on a drive for defragmentation. The Microsoft defragmentation program has failed to work for me several times as I was low on space. So I had to move data between the drives before I could defrag.

The Future (Windows Vista)

Good news here. Diskeeper Corp announced yesterday in a newsletter that Windows Vista is now supported by Diskeeper. (Not really a surprise that they would). They even offer a free upgrade to people who already bought Diskeeper 2007. I have not tested how well it works with Vista as I do not have Vista installed on any of my PCs.

Verdict

My experience with Diskeeper has only been positive; I never had lost files; broken files or crashes because of Diskeeper. If I had then I would not have done the review. What I have gained from Diskeeper is hard to say; did the PC become faster… my feeling is yes but I can not say how much faster. Just knowing that it is defragged is enough. I fully trust Diskeeper and will continue to run it; also on all future PC’s. Only regret is that I didn’t get the software earlier.

So if you are a PC user running Windows; if you got a hard drive (I know… you do) and would like the hard drive to work with optimal performance then I recommend you to get Diskeeper.

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