Mark Thomson

Finally got around to watching this the other day. I've avoided it, primarily because the bad taste MI2 left in my mouth. I couldn't stand the Tom Cruise love-in that was the second one, with its unnecessarily long slow motion sequences - ooh look at me, i'm tom, i'm so great! shudder... Thankfully the third installment is a return to form, and is vastly superior to its egomaniacal predecessor. I'd probably buy 1 and 3, but avoid 2 at all costs.

This one was quite good, story was pretty good, and even though it still focuses on Cruises lead character, there are plenty of subsidiary characters that contribute during the course of the story. Even though the plot was cribbed from True Lies, the new wife and life aspects of the story are relatively minor. It mostly centers around the recovery of the stories McGuffin device - the rabbit foot. Amusingly enough, its never even explained what the device is or why people want it. Worth a rent.

Plot Synopsis:

Ethan Hunt (Cruise) has retired from active duty in the IMF and now works as a trainer. He's recently gotten engaged to Julia, a nurse at the local hospital who is unaware what he really does - she thinks he works on modeling traffic patterns for the Transportation Authority. When he is asked to go on a mission to Germany to recover one of his trainees that went missing, he makes up an excuse and reactivates his team. Traveling to Germany, they recover the captured operative, only to have her die during their escape from an explosive device implanted in her brain.

Back at IMF headquarters they are berated about their lack of success. Hunt uncovers information that pinpoints the location of the man responsible for the death of the trainee. His team heads off to the Vatican. They infiltrate the papal city, and capture Owen Davian, substituting Ethan in disguise. They make their escape and attempt to interrogate Davian without success. Back in the US, the convoy transporting Davian is attacked, and he escapes after a shootout on a bridge. Davian has vowed revenge on Hunt and anyone he cares about.

Shortly after, Julie is kidnapped from the hospital. Ethan escapes custody from IMF who are unsure about his involvement with Davian. Davian instructs him to recover the rabbits foot from Shanghai or he will kill Julie. In secret, Ethan's team infiltrate the building in Shanghai and steal the rabbits foot from a research lab.

Taking the cannister to Davian, Ethan is captured and interrogated. Julie is killed during the process. It is then revealed that Ethan's handler at IMF has been working with Davian. He orchestrated the capture of the trainee, to determine how much she knew. He then planted false evidence to mislead Ethan into thinking that the head of IMF was the mole. Julie's death had been faked. Ethan escapes custody, and goes after Davian. He locates her and after killing a number of henchmen and Davian, he is forced to electrocute himself to destroy the exploding implant Davian installed in his brain. Luckily Julie is able to restart his heart. And the ending is left open for yet another eventual sequel.

What's wrong with some people that they feel they have to go out and steal the gates and sections of fencing from a children's playground? I took the kids down to the local park on the weekend, and some scumbag has stolen the gates and pieces of steel fence out of the small children's playground, you know the one where you generally want to be able to stop your children running out into the carpark.

Thieving seems to have become an epidemic with building sites now losing entire bathroom or kitchen fitouts, or all the whitegoods like stoves go missing. But stealing from a children's playground seems the lowest of the low to me. I hope how ever did it is looking over their shoulder, because sooner or later karma is going to catch up with them, and it'll be payback time!

Our work move has degenerated into a sideshow - I keep waiting for the clown car to pull up outside the office and disgorge a collection of brightly colored loons. We've been planning for weeks, but Telstra has seen fit to turn our finely orchestrated plans into a mess of catastrophic proportions. They had two weeks to get the phones on, but decided they didn't need to send out an engineer to check that the lines actually worked. Internet got switched off, so the move commenced. Then we discovered that nothing actually worked. Requesting an engineer results in a four day delay (the same delay whether we request a priority callout or not), and even then it's vague as to when the engineer may appear. They then offered to transfer incoming calls to a mobile, which they screwed up cutting off the office phones. Then at about 3 they cut off the internet, so we're now totally shafted since we're an internet-based company. And they wonder why people are unhappy with their service? So now we're stretched between two locations, with the maximum amount of disruption possible.

Quirky comedy film in the vein of those black Cohen Brother's comedies. I've heard it's similar to Fargo, although I don't remember that one well enough to have an opinion about whether its better or not. I actually quite enjoyed this one. It's not laugh out loud funny, although there are a couple of laughs, particularly when Robin William's character is trying to stash the dead body, and later when he's covering the body in meat so he can fake a bear attack. Holly Hunter is also quite amusing with her bouts of madness, no doubt caused by the bleak white nothing her character lives in.

I enjoyed it, probably more fun than Stranger Than Fiction (at least this one had a sense of humor). The cast are good and the location work quite breathtaking (if you don't live there day'n'out - probably would drive you mad all that white).

Plot Synopsis:

Travel Agent Paul Barnell is having financial problems. He runs a failing travel agency in Alaska, and his wife Margaret suffers from Tourettes and behaves a bit mad. When he fails to collect on his missing brother's insurance policy, he finds a body dumped in the dumpster outside his work. Paul concocts a plan to pass off the body as his dead brother and collect the insurance. He fakes the return of his brother, then his death by freak bear attack. He tries to collect the money, but a zealous insurance investigator starts to pursue him.

Things become even worse when the two thugs that dumped the body are told to retrieve it, and Paul's long lost brother Raymond reappears wanting his share of the money.

All the parties collide in a confrontation out in the arctic wilderness. Raymond's brother is accidentally killed, the two thugs solve the issue of Margaret's madness, Paul realises what really matters, and the investigator learns to be happy where he is. Paul and Margaret get away from the big white.

Listed in the action section, with a good name cast, should be good right?? Surprisingly not really. It has flashes of good but mostly is confusing and not a lot of fun. The first hour is basically just exposition and a ton of characters. It's kind of like Pulp Fiction with different groups all spiralling towards the same goal, except their are so many groups and the plot is so convoluted that its difficult to follow, and kinda boring. A few times I found myself wishing that they'd just start killing each other so something interesting would happen. The informant that everyone is after behaves like a giant asshole most of the time, then suddenly turns suicidal - not even sure why? Could have something to do with the twist ending, but by the end of it, i was pretty much past caring. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, its just too complicated, too ambitious, too serious, and in the end, too boring.

Plot Synopsis:

Two FBI agents are charged with protecting an informant after they discover a contract has gone out for his death. Enter assorted groups of assassins, bounty hunters, psychos, and contract killers out to collect the reward.

Some violence eventually ensues, and one of the FBI agents is killed. The other finally discovers that they've been manipulated by the FBI - the mobster that the informant was going to turn over is really a longtime undercover FBI agent with extensive facial reconstruction, and the informant is his son. The informant was not targetted for murder, but for organ harvesting as the mobster requires a heart transplant. The remaining FBI agent kills them both out of disgust for what his superiors have done.

McFarlane Toys, creators of the some of the coolest figures ever, have announced they're going to be doing figures for Halo 3. The proposed line up includes:

• Master Chief
• Brute Chieftain
• Jackal Sniper
• Grunt 2-pack
• Cortana

They're also planning on producing die cast figures of the Warthog, Brute Chopper, and Covenant Ghost. Check out the original announcement here. I know one little boy who's going to go apeshit when I show him this...

I saw an article about backing up your blog on a Google Blog. Kudos to the author! I'm going to reproduce the important stuff here. I've been desperately searching for a way to backup my data. It's extremely irritating to lose it. Although this doesn't make it any easier to restore the data, at least you will have a copy of it. Perhaps someone can come up with some useful utility for doing a backup properly.

If you have a blog hosted on Blogger and you've upgraded to the new version, there's an easy way to backup your blog.

This page lists the latest N posts from the blog:

http://blogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=N

Instead of N, type the number of posts. If your blog has less than 1000 posts, you can save this page:

http://blogname.blogspot.com/search?max-results=1000

To download all the photos uploaded to your blog, DownThemAll comes to the rescue. The Firefox extension lets you download all the files with a certain extension from the current page, so it's a good way to download all the images from the previous listing.

There's also a way to get all the posts in an XML feed. This is a better format if you intend to import it in a database.

http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?max-results=1000

The number of posts can be easily obtained from the dashboard.

You can also backup the comments:

http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?max-results=1000

Urgh it's been a long weekend. I'm kind of glad to return to work. It's a battlefield at home with the kids behaviour at the moment. I know you have to be firm with them so they learn to behave, but it's difficult, because punishing them ironically means punishing yourself. They can't play video games, so you can't, they can't watch TV, so you can't. Especially when your trapped in two rooms, and they're always in your space anyway, there's no where to go to do things by yourself. So you all just suffer together. Beeb made some effort over the weekend, and generally improved, but occasionally you have to crack down quickly on his backchatting. Micky on the other hand, seems to enjoying being in trouble. She decided to go and draw all over some items with permanent marker on Sunday. Honestly it's hard to accept that child is nearly into her teens - she behaves like a little baby sometimes. So she's receiving more punishment, but you can tell that it doesn't really matter to her. Should loan her to the Americans - she'd make their CIA interrogators in Guantanamo Bay crack for sure. Doctor Phil preaches "you have to deal with children in their currency." How to you deal with a child that doesn't give a shit about anything? She's currently close to losing her trip back home to NZ in October - but still doesn't look phased. Even the suggestion that she'll be kept back to repeat this year at school doesn't seem to bother her - although she did get creative, and go bleating to my son's teacher at school about how she is being punished for his misbehaviour! She should get an A+ for manipulation.

I'd been told the new Zodiac movie is pretty good, so when I saw this older version at the store, I thought I'd give it a rent and learn up on this serial killer. As an informational movie, it's pretty bland. Sure the movie is well made, and the period locations/costumes look authentic, but it's kind of a movie about nothing. Since we never know the killer, we don't really get any insight into the workings of this individuals mind. The ending is weak, and I kept waiting for something interesting to happen. Fading to black and stating that the killer was never found was pretty disappointing. The most interesting thing about it was spotting actors from other various shows (particularly the strange looking man from Lost - this dude's seriously creepy looking). Only a so-so movie.

Just about crapped my pants today! Standing on the patio, looking to hang up some paper mache creation that we'd been making with Beeb, when I happen to glance down, and there's a freakin long brown whip snake angling out from under the leaves, up onto the patio, very close to my feet. I've since been told the correct thing to do is stay still, but instead I decided to scream "Snake!!" like a girl, lob the paper mache at it, and run away. Rob was really pissed off because the paper mache was a complete right-off - covered in leaves and dirt. I'll have to redo it now. I went out the next morning and swept all the leaves away from the patio now, so hopefully it'll encourage the snakes to stay away, and I'll at least be able to see them coming.

I can't understand my children at the moment. They're a mystery unto me - a bit like women. For some reason they're both grossly misbehaving at school at the moment. Micky's lying like crazy as usual, but we caught her out the other night when her report arrived. She's slacking off as usual. It's disappointing, since she's not a stupid child, but tiring because you constantly have to push her, or force her to do stuff. She still won't use her brain for anything, and cruises along with the minimum of effort. It's quite frustrating, because she want's to be a Vet when she grows up, and I'd like to give her the opportunity, but she won't put in the work required to get there. Unfortunately we're in the process of applying for colleges to send Micky too, and she's pretty much screwed that up now. The low grades were disappointing enough, but the D for behaviour was a big shock! I have to give it to her, her quality of lying has improved. She's certainly getting more sophisticated at hiding what she's up to. Although we still ultimately catch her out - it's just a matter of time.

Beeb's acting out, being disruptive, and not doing his schoolwork. I had wondered if he was bored with what they are teaching. He's constantly coming home with new facts, so he's obviously listening to what's going on, but doesn't seem to be interested in focusing on doing the work. He was really good up until we decided to move. This coincided with Rob going overseas for awhile, and we started having problems and back to bed wetting again. I'd hoped he might have settled down and gotten over things by now. I think he's being bullied at school too, which might explain some of the acting out.

I'm going to go see their teachers and see what I can do about it. The suggestion has been made that they are moved to single desks by themselves so they cannot disrupt or muck around with the other kids. I'm inclined to agree with that. I had to play the 'complete bastard' role last night, and I banned Beeb from going to the school disco at the last minute. Instead he went to bed really early. Micky had to redo all her homework again last night. I hate having to screw the kids down hard, it makes me feel crappy when I come home from a hard, stressful day at work. I'll just have to suck it up, and soldier on. It's for their own good in the long run.

Wow really good film. I really enjoyed this. It's b-grade sci-fi, but of the highest quality. Definitely not deserving of the negative reviews it had in the press. The story was good, the acting good, effects are impressive, and the location's visually interesting. I'd seen the original MTV cartoon, but found the story frequently confusing. The movie made a lot more sense than the cartoon ever did, while elements of the story still stuck to the original continuity and style of the cartoon. Signature moves from the cartoon were carried over in the live-action environment, such as Aeon catching the fly with her eyelashes. Of course, it's a plus that Charlize Theron is easy on the eye too. Definitely worth a rent. Hell, I might even buy it.

Plot synopsis:

Aeon is an agent for the Monicans, a group dedicated to overthrowing the oppressive regime of Trevor Goodchild in the city of Bregna. The city was founded as a refuge for the remaining humans that survived a plague cured by Goodchild. Since then the city has become a utopian paradise, but people have started disappearing, and the ruling regime have turned sinister. After Aeon's sister Una turns up dead, Aeon is assigned to assassinate Trevor Goodchild at the behest of her Handler. She infiltrates the Senate but fails to kill Trevor after some strange memories resurface. Pursuing Goodchild, she discovers that perhaps he isn't the problem in Bregna after all.

Machinations by Trevor's brother, Oren, and the council result in a coup against Trevor. Aeon saves him, and they go on the run, discovering Bregna's secret. The original cure for the plague resulted in sterility within the population, so Trevor has been cloning every member of the population over and over again secretly while he researched a cure. Trevor discovered a cure for the infertility, but Oren started abducting and destroying the citizens who manifested the cure, not wanting their societal order to change. The clones have also been recovering inherited memories from their previous lives, which has caused some confusion amongst the population.

Aeon and the Monicans end up fighting Oren's group, and ultimately kill him and destroy the cloning facility. The wall of the city is destroyed, allowing the population to leave the city and recolonise the Earth naturally.

Finally found our first koala on the property in six months. We've occasionally heard them grunting as they "get it on" at nighttime, but we haven't seen one out during the day since we've been here.

Beeb found it running across the orchard where it bolted up a tree, and then decided it needed a bit of a rest. He says it moved quite quickly. When it decides its going to move, the koala does appear to be quite agile. We watched it climb further up the tree, then jump between trees like some kind of primate. It's funny though that they look perpetually tired or stoned. It's kind of the eucalyptus-chewing hippy of the animal world.

I didn't bother rushing to the theatre to see this one. I'd heard all the troubling reports during its production, read the reviews after it came out, and relevated it to DVD Rental status. Surprisingly it wasn't too bad. The trailer looked good, and consequently the movie looked good, some good action sequences and effects, but it suffers from too much to do in one movie - so consequently it doesn't really achieve anything particularly well. I really do think the studio needs to shoulder the blame for this one. I'd heard the tales of the unmovable release date, and I think if they'd been willing to push it back and give it the development time it required, it could have been a better film. X2 certainly set a high standard, and its a shame that this rushed film lets that down a bit. For instance, a major character dies in the film, but its never given the gravitas it needs to really impact. It's happens, some stuff happens after, that, then it's "move along, nothing to see here". I know Brett Rattner was much maligned, but I can't see that he's done anything wrong with what he was given to work with. It's quite watchable, certainly not as bad as reported, but a little disappointing given what came before it. Let's hope they can restore our faith when the next movie 'Wolverine' comes out.

Plot Synopsis:

A cure for the mutant gene is found by Worthington Pharmaceuticals, causing a huge upheaval in the mutant community. Some mutants are tempted by the cure, some abhor it, and others seek to destroy it before humanity forces the cure upon them. Beast is assigned as liaison between the humans and mutants. He begins to investigate the cure.

Magneto begins rallying more forces to fight against the humans, knowing that it is only a matter of time before the humans turn on mutant-kind.

Jean Gray returns as the Dark Phoenix, and after causing destruction and the death of Cyclops and Professor X, joins the side of Magneto's Brotherhood. Storm is forced into a position of leadership now that Cyclops and Professor X are gone. Rogue unhappy that she cannot touch anyone, and fearing that she is losing Iceman to Shadowcat, considers taking the cure to be normal. Magneto helps free Mystique from prison, but she is depowered by the cure, and abandoned by Magneto. He takes Multiple Man and Juggernaut with him instead. Wolverine infiltrates Magneto's camp to stop the Brotherhood's war plans.

Magneto tricks the humans using the Multiple Man's clones, and advances his full forces against the Worthington Labs on Alcatraz Island by moving the San Francisco bridge. He stands clear as his forces fight the humans who are armed with plastic guns that shoot the cure. The X-men intervene, and Wolverine ultimately renders Magneto powerless by stabbing him with the cure. Dark Phoenix's powers run amuck, and she threatens to destroy everything. Logan is forced to kill her. Shadowcat rescues the young mutant who was being used to create the cure. Archangel rescues his father. Rogue takes the cure willingly to become human. At the end, Magneto is seen in Central Park playing chess, and able to move the pieces just a little with his slowly returning powers. Doctor Moira Taggart is seen caring for a brain dead patient in hospital, who is now carrying the mind of Professor X.

I've never played the game, but the movie is pretty creepy. I have to confess I'd like to play the game now, after seeing the movie. The atmosphere of the game is maintained pretty well, something that was lacking in Doom - it never felt frightening like this one does. This is probably one of the better video game adaptations I've seen done. It's also nice for once to see a film that isn't pandering to the PG-13 market, with some impressive deaths toward the end of the film. The effects and sets are impressive, with some good use of people and prosthetics. Not as frightening as some of the graphic kills in Saw III, but just as disturbing. The creatures look slightly off and register discomfortingly in the mind, and that can be as upsetting as seeing someone get ripped apart like Saw III. I found the movie pretty enjoyable, and I didn't have any problems watching what was going on. The story was well thought out, with no real exposition for most of the film, your left to figure out what's going on yourself. The later narrated explanation by one of the characters fills in the blanks if your too stupid to have figured it out by yourself (I know they probably needed to have some kind of explanation, but this comes across a bit forced). Definitely worth a rent if your in the mood for something a bit scary.

Plot Synopsis:

Rose's adopted daughter, Sharon, has been experiencing disturbing sleep-walking episodes, where she keeps ranting about Silent Hill. Rose discovers the town, and decides to take Sharon there, hoping to cure her mental issues by confronting whatever the town symbolises. Rose does this against the wishes of her husband.

On the way to the town, she encounters a motorcycle cop who pursues her to Silent Hill. When Rose crashes her truck outside of town, she regains consciousness to find Sharon is missing. She heads into town to look for Sharon. Silent Hill is an abandoned ghost town, after a fire in the 70's started, and ignited the coal deposits under the town. Even today it is still burning, and ash rains down from the sky.

While searching the town, a siren sounds, the sky turns dark, and the town ages and decays. Rose is attacked by hideously deformed creatures roaming the town. She escapes, and eventually the darkness returns to light. She returns to her car, where she is arrested by the pursuing police officer. The officer attempts to leave Silent Hill, but finds she can't as the road now ends in a chasm. They soon encounter an armless creature.

Returning to the town, Rose searches for Sharon at the school and discovers clues about Alissa, a young girl in the town. Darkness again descends, after she flees some miners, and she is attacked again by more creatures, including an oversized sword-wielding maniac with a pyramid for a head. She is eventually rescued by the police officer.

Further clues lead them to the hotel where they discover Alissa was burned. They meet Anna who leads them to the church when darkness once again returns. Anna is captured and torn to pieces by the pyramid man. The church is occupied by religious fanatics, who eventually agree to help Rose find her daughter. They take her to the hospital and point her in the direction of the source of the town's evil. However, when they realise that Sharon is the identical image of Alissa, they attack Rose and the cop accusing them of being witches. The cop sacrifices herself to allow Rose to escape to find Sharon.

In the depths of the hospital, Rose outmaneuvers some creepy nurse creatures, and makes her way to the room of all evil. Inside is an aspect of Alissa, and the original burned up Alissa. She reveals that because she had no father, the religious fervent deemed her unclean, and took her from her mother. They burned her alive as a witch to cleanse the town of her supposed evil. Alissa's mother called the sheriff who arrived and rescued her, but not before she was severely burned. The fire spread from Alissa's pyre, setting fire to the town. Alissa has waited to take her revenge. The bad part of Alissa's personality stayed in the town with her, while the good part, Sharon was sent to the outside world. Alissa asks Rose to help her. Rose takes the bad aspect of Alissa into herself.

The religious group find Sharon - she was being hidden by Alissa's real mother. They take her to the church and plan to burn her again to rid the town of evil - after they burn up the police officer. Rose arrives and confronts the priestess with the truth. In the priestess's rage, she stabs Rose. The blood flows from the wound, releasing Alissa. Rose's wound heals shut, and Alissa arrives to take her vengeance upon the church people. After she tears them apart, Rose and Sharon are allowed to leave. They return to their car and drive home. They arrive home, or have they? Rose's husband Chris is in the house, but not with them - they seem to be in an alternate version of the house - perhaps still an extension of Silent Hill.

Seriously, this movie is a piece of crap. Don't bother renting it. The story is a confusing mish mash of elements lifted from other movies, with story threads that go no where, do nothing, and have no real bearing on the movie. The back of the box shows only effects shots to make it look exciting, but they are really nothing that special, and there aren't that many effects in the movie. Really disappointing.

Watched this the other night on DVD. Pretty good film - mind you anything with Denzel Washington in it is bound to be good. He's usually a guaranteed safe bet when selecting films to watch - bit like Morgan Freeman.

The film stylistically feels like Tony Scott's other movies. The story is quite good, and hints are dropped throughout the film that things aren't quite as they appear, and gradually it all unfolds. You will need to pay attention to everything to understand what's going on. There's some good action sequences, and I liked that they didn't really advertise who the villain was. Usually you can look at who's in the film and say, well he's the villain, but it wasn't till later in the film that I recognised the actor playing the bad guy role - it means your not looking out for this person right from the beginning.

Plot Synopsis:

A terrorist bomb on a river boat explodes killing 500+ people, and ATF agent Doug Carlin is assigned to investigate. He discovers some unusual evidence, and some facts that do not make sense, including the body of a woman who died before the explosion, but looks like she was part of the event. Sharing evidence with a government FBI task force, Doug is shown a special surveillance project and uses the technology to further investigate the crime.

Doug later realises that the surveillance technology is somehow interactive, and the team explain that they accidentally opened a window into the past using an artificially generated wormhole. Doug's partner is inadvertently killed after they alter the past, although he had appeared to have been killed in the explosion already. They manage to identify the person responsible for the explosion, by following the life of the young woman who was found dead.

Unwilling to accept that he cannot save the woman, and realising that he has already attempted to change the past, Doug uses the experiment to have himself sent back in time. He rescues the young woman, then works toward stopping the terrorist. A shootout breaks out on the boat, and future-Doug drives the explosive-laden truck into the harbour, killing the terrorist and allowing the woman to escape. Future-Doug is killed in the ensuing explosion, but he has saved all the people on the boat.

The young woman eventually meets present-Doug who has come to investigate the harbor explosion, and she tell him she has met him before. But he doesn't remember.