Never heard of it before - and wish it had stayed that way.
Awful film, badly written, directed and acted.
It's very snidey and sarcastically put across - it doesn't work whatsoever.
Not bad enough to be entertaining in a so bad it's good kind of way.
The scares are useless and the characters are nothing more than underplayed caricatures.
I don't even know why I'm bothering with this...
Leave well alone.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
Star Trek
Remakes, Remakes, Remakes...
Now look I loved Lost, and I got a big old kick out of Cloverfield does that mean I now have to go and watch Star Trek???
Oh please say it ain't so.
' The new Star Trek film has rocketed to the top of the North American box office chart, early figures show.
Now look I loved Lost, and I got a big old kick out of Cloverfield does that mean I now have to go and watch Star Trek???
Oh please say it ain't so.
' The new Star Trek film has rocketed to the top of the North American box office chart, early figures show.
Director JJ Abrams' prequel to the sci-fi franchise took an estimated $76.5m (£50.3m) in its opening weekend, easily beating its nearest rival.
The figure far surpasses the opening totals of the previous 10 Trek films.
Star Trek's impressive opening pushed previous chart-topper X-Men Origins: Wolverine down to second place, with takings of $27m (£17.7m).' - BBC Entertainment
I hated it when I was a kid - hated the films - hated generations.
But now I'll have to watch it just to make sure I'm not a complete plum.
Can't be any worse that the Fantastic Four movies though can it???
Who said Hulk?
Cold Prey
Fritt Vilt/Cold Prey - Norwegian made horror film.
Just caught up with this film this morning.
So yeah I'm behind with the times a little as it was made in 2006.
But I heard it mentioned a few weeks ago and thought I'd ads it to my list at Lovefilm.
----->>>
Basically it's a bog standard slasher film, nothing new in the conecpt - wierdo killer out in a remote part of the country preys on teenagers, kills them one by one until one triumphs.
Little bit Jason part Wolf Creek.
But it was really enjoyable - so ok it has a well worn story - take a look at most film premises these days they all pretty much follow the same formula.
There are exceptions and that's what sets them apart as the truly great films...
Back to Cold Prey though,
It has some nice touches, the characters are nicely written and it doesn't follow the same dumb patter you generally find in these films - it's not excessively gruesome and it manages to give you a cold sweat.
It feels clasutrophobic - I'm not saying it's truly scary, but it does the job well.
It's well acted, especially the lead actress Ingrid Bolsø Berdal who apparently won awards for the flick. And Rolf Kristian Larsen who plays Tobias - in my mind the most interesting character.
In fact all the actors deserve credit, they add personality to this film.
Roar Uthaug - the director, does an excellent job and uses the set and location to it's fullest.
All in all a good film and worth a look - 7/10
A sequel is out now
Called strangely enough Cold Prey 2
Maybe I'll check it out.
Equipment Whore
I've got three laptops, one for work, one for internet and one as an fx farm(? I'll explain in a mo)
I've also got a desktop pc ( I say desktop, it looks like a bleedin fridge).
The desktop is my studio - it's a 2ghz 2gb big baby - specs
M-Audio 2496
Apadtec - Scsi Card - for connection to my Emu Esi 32 and 4000 samplers - (they have Os 3.0 installed which is required to transfer samples to and from the pc.)
UAD PCI FX
4 hard drives - 160gb and 3 x 40gb -
XP installed on 1(40gb),
software on 2nd(40gb)
and Vst on 3rd(40gb)
USB devices include,
Korg NanoPad and NanoKontrol,
M-Audio e49 Keyboard,
It has a Gigabit Lan card installed as well (this allows netork connection to laptop via gigabit express card - this then gives me the option of farming out fx processing to the laptop using a program called FX transport)
he setup
I also have a laptop that acts as a synth/soft sampler connected via midi.
This folks is the PC side of my studio - it's a wibbly wobbly setup but it works and it works well.
That said geek as I am there is also the equipment side of setup.
I love old stuff,
YamahaTG500 - My favourite when it comes to it. I love the proteus but this is better.
Proteus 1 - My first synth - and cool
Proteus 1/orch
Roland D110 - the runt of the little, harder to use and sounds not as good - but has some nice pads
2x Emu Esi 32 with maximum 32mb each 1 with turbo card, one without.
1x Emu Esi 4000 with maximum 128mb and turbo card installed.
Now I can hear all those new school dudes saying what 32meg? why? why not software?
Well have you seen these sexy things? They've got knobs that flash and dials that dial.
And best of all they sound great - honestly the samplers sound a country mile better than any software program. Warmer.
The synths also sound great - I dunno but they feel more real than some desktop based instrument.
I like to use them all, not all the time but it's nice to have the choice.
I've also got a desktop pc ( I say desktop, it looks like a bleedin fridge).
The desktop is my studio - it's a 2ghz 2gb big baby - specs
M-Audio 2496
Apadtec - Scsi Card - for connection to my Emu Esi 32 and 4000 samplers - (they have Os 3.0 installed which is required to transfer samples to and from the pc.)
UAD PCI FX
4 hard drives - 160gb and 3 x 40gb -
XP installed on 1(40gb),
software on 2nd(40gb)
and Vst on 3rd(40gb)
USB devices include,
Korg NanoPad and NanoKontrol,
M-Audio e49 Keyboard,
It has a Gigabit Lan card installed as well (this allows netork connection to laptop via gigabit express card - this then gives me the option of farming out fx processing to the laptop using a program called FX transport)
he setup
I also have a laptop that acts as a synth/soft sampler connected via midi.
This folks is the PC side of my studio - it's a wibbly wobbly setup but it works and it works well.
That said geek as I am there is also the equipment side of setup.
I love old stuff,
YamahaTG500 - My favourite when it comes to it. I love the proteus but this is better.
Proteus 1 - My first synth - and cool
Proteus 1/orch
Roland D110 - the runt of the little, harder to use and sounds not as good - but has some nice pads
2x Emu Esi 32 with maximum 32mb each 1 with turbo card, one without.
1x Emu Esi 4000 with maximum 128mb and turbo card installed.
Now I can hear all those new school dudes saying what 32meg? why? why not software?
Well have you seen these sexy things? They've got knobs that flash and dials that dial.
And best of all they sound great - honestly the samplers sound a country mile better than any software program. Warmer.
The synths also sound great - I dunno but they feel more real than some desktop based instrument.
I like to use them all, not all the time but it's nice to have the choice.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
I am internet geek hear me roar...
Yup here I is, I what admits it.
I is a geek.
I always have been I expect, I've always been impressed with flashing buttons - that said computers and game systems didn't register until about ten years ago.
Before that I really didn't bother - not sure why.
Maybe I didn't have the time - or maybe they just weren't good enough.
I'm in my late (muffled breathe) 30's and so I remember ZX81's
I also remember ZX Spectrums, Commodore 64's and the first Atari Computer.
And they all sucked - Oh please don't - no - yeah you with the glasses on shurrup.
They were not cool - They sucked bung.
Waiting three hours for the 'computer' load from cassette to play a game consisting of one block character scrolling up a screen shooting lines out of his pee pee - ain't cool.
That's if it even loaded - how many trees died due to the consumption of power from these evil devices of children torture - they should have been listed in the geneva convention I tell thee.
Yeah - they had to exist so that others may come afterward - evolution and all that.
Just glad I missed the sticky, bubonic plague that occured betwixt.
Anyway I finally got onto PC's due to there possibilities in music - (ok that's a lie I had two disterous flirtations - both involved being at college stuying music - one using a crappy desktop publisher the other Midi - man they sucked - constantly crashing)
The developement is music software, primarily Trackers and Cool Edit 2000, really turned me on to PCs - so ok at first the PC wasn't nearly powerful enough - and it could be very painful at times but the results were there to see. Although it would take me a few more years to ditch the cassette four track and minidisc.
'Minidisc arghhhhhh!!!!!! I hope sony suck balls in hell for that.'
<----TANGENT ALERT--->>>
Yeah I fell in love with Mini Disc and recorded everthing onto it that I recorded - even bought the net md - to transfer music from the pc to player - but would sony release software to do it vice versa - not a chance - something about copyright - copyright???
On my music, what a bleedin' cheek - I don't own mini disc for anything else.
Can't even transfer it digitally - I have digital recordings that I had to transfer via analogue - ???
Riddle me that. Sony you suck - your playstation is cool though...
<----TANGENT ALERT OVER--->>>
Back to it -
As the software got better, the PC needed to get better and so my understanding had to get better.
I learnt how to install - oh Windows 95 how I hate thee.
I fixed PCs - primarily my parents - I couldn't afford one then - well I say that, I bought used ones that might have been best served as glorified bricks thrown through PC worlds window...
I also played a lot of Doom.
When I finally discovered the internet - (I planted a flag proudly, and shouted I declare this...) I put it back where I found it - Cor it was slow. Dial Up sucked balls.
I gave it a few more years, got into web design for a while - (this consisted of me creating the worste site in the wolrd and declaring my new proffesion as a dot com bandit...)
Why all this?
I dunno but if you read so far it good on you.
Cos I thought I had time to waste.
What I'm trying to get to is that now I would consider myself very comfortable with computers. They've come a long way in ten years and the internet is very cool, and can only get better.
This blog will act as my way of spreading the love, about stuff I found or learned or crap I fall upon whatever and whichever...
I is a geek.
I always have been I expect, I've always been impressed with flashing buttons - that said computers and game systems didn't register until about ten years ago.
Before that I really didn't bother - not sure why.
Maybe I didn't have the time - or maybe they just weren't good enough.
I'm in my late (muffled breathe) 30's and so I remember ZX81's
I also remember ZX Spectrums, Commodore 64's and the first Atari Computer.
And they all sucked - Oh please don't - no - yeah you with the glasses on shurrup.
They were not cool - They sucked bung.
Waiting three hours for the 'computer' load from cassette to play a game consisting of one block character scrolling up a screen shooting lines out of his pee pee - ain't cool.
That's if it even loaded - how many trees died due to the consumption of power from these evil devices of children torture - they should have been listed in the geneva convention I tell thee.
Yeah - they had to exist so that others may come afterward - evolution and all that.
Just glad I missed the sticky, bubonic plague that occured betwixt.
Anyway I finally got onto PC's due to there possibilities in music - (ok that's a lie I had two disterous flirtations - both involved being at college stuying music - one using a crappy desktop publisher the other Midi - man they sucked - constantly crashing)
The developement is music software, primarily Trackers and Cool Edit 2000, really turned me on to PCs - so ok at first the PC wasn't nearly powerful enough - and it could be very painful at times but the results were there to see. Although it would take me a few more years to ditch the cassette four track and minidisc.
'Minidisc arghhhhhh!!!!!! I hope sony suck balls in hell for that.'
<----TANGENT ALERT--->>>
Yeah I fell in love with Mini Disc and recorded everthing onto it that I recorded - even bought the net md - to transfer music from the pc to player - but would sony release software to do it vice versa - not a chance - something about copyright - copyright???
On my music, what a bleedin' cheek - I don't own mini disc for anything else.
Can't even transfer it digitally - I have digital recordings that I had to transfer via analogue - ???
Riddle me that. Sony you suck - your playstation is cool though...
<----TANGENT ALERT OVER--->>>
Back to it -
As the software got better, the PC needed to get better and so my understanding had to get better.
I learnt how to install - oh Windows 95 how I hate thee.
I fixed PCs - primarily my parents - I couldn't afford one then - well I say that, I bought used ones that might have been best served as glorified bricks thrown through PC worlds window...
I also played a lot of Doom.
When I finally discovered the internet - (I planted a flag proudly, and shouted I declare this...) I put it back where I found it - Cor it was slow. Dial Up sucked balls.
I gave it a few more years, got into web design for a while - (this consisted of me creating the worste site in the wolrd and declaring my new proffesion as a dot com bandit...)
Why all this?
I dunno but if you read so far it good on you.
Cos I thought I had time to waste.
What I'm trying to get to is that now I would consider myself very comfortable with computers. They've come a long way in ten years and the internet is very cool, and can only get better.
This blog will act as my way of spreading the love, about stuff I found or learned or crap I fall upon whatever and whichever...
Upgrading memory on a laptop
In the past two weeks I've upgraded three laptops -
The first was a Packard Bell Easynote C series. It came with 192mb build in memory - and blimey it was sluggish - it's a fair few years old now and it was tired - But for the sake of £15 - yeah £15 I managed to save the bugger.
Slammed in a 512mb memory module and bobs yer aunties favourite cousin.
It was really easy n all. I'd always been wary of upgrading laptops - this was my first attempt and gotta say it was really straight forward.
Here's a link to Packard Bell's tutorial on installing the memory. Click This!
The 192mb was already soldered in - there is a spare slot for a 512mb chip.
Memory I used was a generic 512mb PC266 (PC2100 / DDR-266) DDR SDRAM 200-pin SO-DIMM.
When I was looking around the internet for advice on wether it was worth the upgrade I came across 1 or 2 articles/forum posts stating it isn't.
Well the change was instant and now 2 weeks later I can tell you it was worth it, it's faster and smoother - the difference is massive - so before you ditch it spend the £15 and do it.
The second laptop - to get a make over was my Dell Inspiron 1520 - it is the Celeron M Model with 1gb installed - Two Dimms of 512mb.
Bit more difficult this one as one of the memory slots is under the keyboard -
Video tutorial on you tube -
Now here's the thing, initially I bought two sticks of 2gb memory - to give me a combined memory of 4gb - I installed them as directed - and powered up the laptop.
Things went weird, or so I thought - POSSIBLE TANGENT WARNING -
Not sure if this happened because of the memory or was just a coinkidink but I suddenly had a really slow laptop - the hard drive was almost choking and when I played audio it was stuttering.
Anyway follow this link to another article I wrote on my website before hand just in case.
Anyway before I fixed the problem I removed one of the sticks and replaced it with the 512mb stick I'd removed before - this was from the slot on the back of the laptop(I had no desire to remove the keyboard again).
So now I have a laptop with 2.5 gb and after fixing the IDE driver problem in above article everything worked a treat.
So me thinks If that works could I slam the extra 2gb stick in my other laptop?
No harm no fowl sez me.
So Off I go, grab the Compaq - full name Presario C500EA Notebook PC - celeron chip.
The memory slots are on the back of the laptop - uses the same memory I had already bought.
Installed it - restarted and it's excellent - Note that the first two laptops have XP installed the compaq has vista.
The first was a Packard Bell Easynote C series. It came with 192mb build in memory - and blimey it was sluggish - it's a fair few years old now and it was tired - But for the sake of £15 - yeah £15 I managed to save the bugger.
Slammed in a 512mb memory module and bobs yer aunties favourite cousin.
It was really easy n all. I'd always been wary of upgrading laptops - this was my first attempt and gotta say it was really straight forward.
Here's a link to Packard Bell's tutorial on installing the memory. Click This!
The 192mb was already soldered in - there is a spare slot for a 512mb chip.
Memory I used was a generic 512mb PC266 (PC2100 / DDR-266) DDR SDRAM 200-pin SO-DIMM.
When I was looking around the internet for advice on wether it was worth the upgrade I came across 1 or 2 articles/forum posts stating it isn't.
Well the change was instant and now 2 weeks later I can tell you it was worth it, it's faster and smoother - the difference is massive - so before you ditch it spend the £15 and do it.
The second laptop - to get a make over was my Dell Inspiron 1520 - it is the Celeron M Model with 1gb installed - Two Dimms of 512mb.
Bit more difficult this one as one of the memory slots is under the keyboard -
Video tutorial on you tube -
Now here's the thing, initially I bought two sticks of 2gb memory - to give me a combined memory of 4gb - I installed them as directed - and powered up the laptop.
Things went weird, or so I thought - POSSIBLE TANGENT WARNING -
Not sure if this happened because of the memory or was just a coinkidink but I suddenly had a really slow laptop - the hard drive was almost choking and when I played audio it was stuttering.
Anyway follow this link to another article I wrote on my website before hand just in case.
Anyway before I fixed the problem I removed one of the sticks and replaced it with the 512mb stick I'd removed before - this was from the slot on the back of the laptop(I had no desire to remove the keyboard again).
So now I have a laptop with 2.5 gb and after fixing the IDE driver problem in above article everything worked a treat.
So me thinks If that works could I slam the extra 2gb stick in my other laptop?
No harm no fowl sez me.
So Off I go, grab the Compaq - full name Presario C500EA Notebook PC - celeron chip.
The memory slots are on the back of the laptop - uses the same memory I had already bought.
Installed it - restarted and it's excellent - Note that the first two laptops have XP installed the compaq has vista.
This week weird rumours - and what?
Looking on the BBC news website this week and I saw the weirdest news,
Falls into Good Idea/Bad Idea territory, you sat down?
The Lone Ranger is being remade.
With George Clooney as the title hero and Johnny Depp as Tonto.
On the remake front Russel Brand is being lined up to do 'Drop Dead Fred'???
Oh please, no - the original film is fine as it was.
Now they're gonna take a perfectly snotty childish character and turn it into some dickensian sex pest.
Why?
What is it with remakes?
They generally suck arsehole.
Not only is the Long haired pirate wannabe set to do that but he's also set to remake Arthur!
Frig me he might as well go the whole hog and remake Krull.
Truthfully I've got nothing against the boy - I like him but he has a bleedin' habit of reheating.
Watch him on Jonathan Ross or some other such chattercockery and you'll see him reheating the same standup routine you bought on dvd last week that also turned up in on ponderland the week before.
Talk about getting mileage out of it.
Now I do like the lad - his stuff the first time around is funny and he does have a certain charm - albeit I wouldn't leave him in the room with my coffee table never mind me mam.
I saw 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall', last night - enjoyed it a lot and he's good in it but he is just playing himself.
Falls into Good Idea/Bad Idea territory, you sat down?
The Lone Ranger is being remade.
With George Clooney as the title hero and Johnny Depp as Tonto.
On the remake front Russel Brand is being lined up to do 'Drop Dead Fred'???
Oh please, no - the original film is fine as it was.
Now they're gonna take a perfectly snotty childish character and turn it into some dickensian sex pest.
Why?
What is it with remakes?
They generally suck arsehole.
Not only is the Long haired pirate wannabe set to do that but he's also set to remake Arthur!
Frig me he might as well go the whole hog and remake Krull.
Truthfully I've got nothing against the boy - I like him but he has a bleedin' habit of reheating.
Watch him on Jonathan Ross or some other such chattercockery and you'll see him reheating the same standup routine you bought on dvd last week that also turned up in on ponderland the week before.
Talk about getting mileage out of it.
Now I do like the lad - his stuff the first time around is funny and he does have a certain charm - albeit I wouldn't leave him in the room with my coffee table never mind me mam.
I saw 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall', last night - enjoyed it a lot and he's good in it but he is just playing himself.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)