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An iPhone User’s First Days on Android.
I think the main thing most of the commenters on this article are missing is that Mike downloaded an app called ‘Flickr’ with apparently the official Flickr icon, an educated move that both myself and I bet anyone reading this would have honestly done in the same situation. Double checking every app to make sure it doesn’t result in the example stated doesn’t appeal to me to be something I would willingly sacrifice for the sake of ‘openness’.
Apr112011 -
The No-Bullshit Companies.
An article explaining the impact of advertisements in 81 words and 2 youtube videos.
Feb092011 -
Work In Progress - Levon Helm.
A little preview of a painting of Levon Helm from The Band that I’m preparing myself to do. This was done in a three hour stretch on cartridge paper because I wasn’t sure if I could get the proportions right on his face. I like how its turning out so I’m going to continue on with this and see what happens.
Update - I’ve been informed that to some (dirty) people this painting can look very sexual. NEVER forget to draw the microphone kids!
How do you think it turned out?
Feb072011 -
Some would call it a review of Saw 3D.
The latest Saw film is out, and it’s in three dimensions if you didn’t guess from the cleverly worded title. After a lacklustre few years of previous attempts have Lionsgate managed to get the finger out and make a worthy successor to the original or has some over-elaborate Rube Goldberg deathtrap machine invented by some sort of bloodthirsty anger management victim taken center stage to any form of coherent and sustaining plot?
This review admittedly is a good few months late and is more an opportunity to improve my writing skills, so read on if you want some opinionated rants and failed attempts at humour.
Feb012011 -
Portrait of Matilda.
A Christmas present for my Roald Dahl-loving cousin, her favourite book being Matilda.
Jan172011 -
Introducing something [passe].
If you write online at all - even marginally - and are not yet using Markdown, then get ready for an early christmas present.
Dec152010 -
Dinner for Schmucks. I showed it no balls.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before:
Man with well paying job, beautiful girl-friend, and very successful life one day bumps into the catalyst: an idiot that proceeds to upturn his wonderful life into ruins before making amends at the end through a series of loveably hilarious incidents. And everyone learns a valuable lesson. Yawn.
Oh wait a minute, look at this cast list. That’s right, Jermaine Clement. Four down. Jermaine-Fucking-Clement. He’s like a comedy divining rod for me. Being one half of the fantastic Flight of the Conchords and his stellar performance in Eagle vs Shark means that I’ll happily pay attention to any movie he’s in. To top it off the movie also has a pretty minor role being played by Kirsten Schaal, who done this, which one of the comments sum up perfectly as being so brilliant it approaches ‘Python’ territory of apparent retardedness. Its the one time I ever agreed with a YouTube comment. Things are going to get interesting.
And things do get interesting, with Steve Carrell, he being one of my favourite actors playing his best performance yet. Of course he’s had a few slip ups (Evan Almighty rings a bell) but his performance in the American adaptation of The Office and now as the lovable Barry in Dinner for Schmucks has settled him firmly in my top ten. He’s absolutely perfect in this role, his awkward timing and intense facial expressions really bring out the humour in a way that surpasses his short (and very similar) performance as Brick Tamland in Anchorman and reaches hysterical levels of visual comedy only seen by the true classic actors like Rowan Atkinson. And, in Dinner for Schmucks, no matter how much he ruins the fictional life of Tim (played by Paul Rudd), he still has enough of a likeable charm to sway you every time the movie dives into a standard emotional scene.
However, even if a movie has the best cast in the world it’s the script that keeps you glued to your seat and not thinking about what you’re going to have for dinner later, right? Well, despite occasionally slipping into the generic plot grooves that most movies tend to do, Dinner for Schmucks managed to hold my attention throughout, if only in the hope to see some more strangely adorable dead mice art. But seriously, as the credits rolled and I pulled out my iPhone to take down some raw notes I found that I had almost nothing to complain about.
Almost.
Some jokes just seemed to miss the mark and had me wondering “should I be laughing?” while most of the audience stayed silent with occasional nervous laughter. I donned my detective coat and went hunting through IMDB and surmised the cause to stem from the writers David Guion and Michael Handelman, who also both wrote for the movie ‘Fast Track’, which seems to have the exact same mix of jokes that range from genius to weirdness. I’m not slating them in any way, their scripts seem to attract some of the best actors in Hollywood, so they must be doing something right. Plus unless they’re looking to replace all these jokes with desert-dry wit then I can offer absolutely no advice, nor should I. I’m just offering my view on the movie.
So to wrap up, with the occasional weird and slightly deflated jokes aside, I enjoyed it. It had a fantastic cast, a completely random and entertaining plot, and what more can a comedy ask for than to have me laughing all the way through? A scene where a blind swordsman turns off a lightswitch? It’s got that, and for that alone, go see it.
Oct202010 -
Toy Story 3.
11 years is a long time. Kids grow up in that time. Kids get jobs. Kids forget the magic of animated movies and they replace the memory of your first two movies with ‘other’ stuff. 11 years of waiting for another sequel (I utterly refuse to call them threequels) and people start to move on. Kids start calling themselves adults and drinking Starbucks coffee, start wearing suits and worrying about presentations and upcoming meetings, they start to like movies with guns, and death, and ghosts and gore. So, Pixar would have to do something pretty special to make up for that 11 year gap and entice those same kids back into the cinema.
And they have.
After the wonderfully engaging introduction that seems to be plucked straight from a 6 year-old’s mind Toy Story 3 begins by focusing on a grown-up, college bound Andy that has completely forgotten about Woody, Buzz and the gang. This is the moment that splits the audience into two groups: the kids — who won’t quite understanding the full story but will undoubtedly love it and laugh all the way through; and the adults (the ones that grew up with the original movies then kept growing): for them, this scene, hits a nerve, because that’s exactly what they have all done, forgotten about their own toys and childhood as well as the toys in Toy Story. This is where the movie captures you, you forget about spreadsheets, business plans and loans and you feel like a kid again. You remember the wonderful charm that seems to be unique to the Toy Story movies, the childish thrill to think that your toys actually have a soul, that they jump about and have adventures when you’re not looking and that they care about you just as much as you care about them. Toy Story 3 effortlessly slides in and carries on this charm naturally, without a moment of hesitation or awkwardness. You forget it’s been 11 years since you sat in a cinema and watched something like this. It’s like meeting an old friend, or finding a box of old family movies and watching them. It’s nostalgic from the very start.
It’s also in 3D, a subject I haven’t talked about yet in any reviews. There’s a reason for that. Like many I wasn’t convinced that 3D would be able to mature itself past the ‘gimmicky’ stage, and with movies like ‘Step Up 3D’ currently playing would you blame me? Obviously I went to see Avatar in 3D, and despite ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the screen every few minutes I stuck by my original thoughts.
3D is bound to be a premium, distracting add-on that people will tire of quickly, the glasses will become annoying to buy everytime you forget them (I have about 6 pairs at home for that reason, and for going to the cinema as an impulse decision with friends) so in my mind 3D was yet again destined to die another long drawn out death (just like in the 80s) from which we can all get back to normality and reasonable ticket prices.
That was until I had seen Toy Story 3 in 3D.
I had no choice. Cineworld were showing the 3D version in ten minutes, or the 2D one in an hour and a half. I sucked in my pride and took a risk, and I’m glad I did, because the 3D was actually very good. It was subtly done with no gimmicky perspective tricks. More importantly it actually brought realistic depth without distracting from the plot in any way, something I didn’t believe 3D would be able to do by growing up and getting over itself. I’m sure for a long time there will continue to be the very tiresome wow-this-movie-is-in-3D-and-it-looks-like-it’s-coming-right-at-us! movies being made (Piranha 3D anyone?) but Pixar proved that if it’s done with love, attention and careful thought then it can really enhance a movie, and make me think at least a little more positively about 3D’s future.
However I refuse to wear a pair of big plastic glasses in a room filled with strangers every time I go to the cinema for the rest of my life, and I don’t know what kind of people actually buy a 3D television so they can sit like utter cocks in their living rooms with said glasses on and pretend they made a good investment.
Sort out a glasses-free 3D experience please movie-industry, and then try marketing 3D again. And when you do, listen to common sense and don’t put a premium on the ticket prices. Because that sucks.
Back to Toy Story 3, and something that confused me was the disappearance of Bo-Peep, with nothing but a brief hint that she had been sold in a jumble sale. I believe the idea for this was to solidify and center on the relationship between Woody and Andy, but dropping a character like a hot coal is something I’d expect to see in Transformers 3, not from the minds of Pixar. You might not have even noticed that she was gone, I guess I just notice the little things like that in movies, like picking up on how Sid (the evil kid next door from the first Toy Story) is in Toy Story 3 as the garbage man (notice his trademark black and white skull t-shirt) or when I got some stares for giggling during a rather quiet scene when I noticed a Studio Ghibli Totoro toy cameo-ing in the background. It’s the little things that make me smile.
But the best thing about this movie wasn’t the loveable characters, how great the jokes were, or how many sticky situations they all get into. No, the best thing was the ending. Oh the ending. I was weeping like a baby when it finished, because it’s over, and there’s nothing I can do to bring it back. It’s my first break-up all over again, but this time with an animation studio. It felt like I’d been dumped by my true love, leaving me heartbroken and emotionally crippled. I may watch back over the first movies and reminisce of the fun times we had, or even go to see other movies in the hope of some comfort, but it will never be the same. Toy Story was different from all the other Pixar movies, for one it was their first Trilogy, but I think it was also their single greatest idea to date.
Pixar. They have been with me since I can remember. Even though my childhood is filled with all their other movies Toy Story 3 is leaps and bounds better than the rest, which quite frankly scares the hell out of me, because it is a masterpiece, a touching farewell to characters that have been engrained into my heart, and the end of this trilogy has left it in ruins. Because of this, I don’t think I can handle the next film that Pixar produce, but I know that I’ll be queuing up for its premiere regardless. And for their next, and their next, and their next. To infinity and beyond…
Oct202010 -
The A-Team.
So, your movie comes out mere weeks after two blockbuster smashes; Inception – one of the movies that I’m sure I’ll passionately describe to my future kids as much as one of my friends passionately raved about The Matrix when it first came out and changed the world; and Toy Story 3 – probably the most anticipated animated feature film of the century.
How does your movie respond to this?
The A-Team answers by being so crazy, so boyishly daft and over the top that it fits in perfectly with the uber-seriousness of Inception and family-friendly vibe of Toy Story 3 to provide one of the best cinema line-ups in years. The plot might be yet another tiresome cookie-cutter affair where someone took the words ‘revenge’ and ‘plot-twist’ and started throwing them all over the place but the characters, superbly-timed jokes and sheer idiocy of it had me laughing right from the start.
I’ll admit that I have yet to see an episode of the original A-Team TV series so I’m unable to talk about similarities or moan about what’s changed. I will never do something selfish like that — I promise — this is a movie review, not a bitching session about how the director in some way hasn’t lived up to the expectations of some random die-hard fan (I’m sure Michael Bay agrees with me on this). The purpose of my reviews are to endorse good movies, dissuade bad movies, and hopefully entertain people while I’m at it. Plus if they ever make a sequel to ‘The Crazies’ then hopefully I’ll be fantastically popular enough by then that the world’s population listens to my accurate two ball review causing ‘The Crazies 2: Shit on a stick’ to be the lowest grossing movie in existence, thus monumentally bringing about world peace. Quite big goals for someone who is essentially a “movie salesman” — I agree — but I consider myself a damn good salesman, it’s currently my day job, and I can be a pretty persuasive person — I can argue till I’m blue in the face about the benefits of Twitter to skeptics; I preached the word of Facebook to my hometown last year when they were still in love with AOL’s ‘Bebo,’ and they’ve never looked back; I’ve even converted the majority of my close Glasgow friends to the holy grail of cinema viewing – the Cineworld Unlimited Card – after buying one myself mere months ago; and I believe The A-Team is definitely worth seeing.
So, let’s see if I can sell it to you shall we? Alright, here goes.
Ahem.
You should go see The A-Team. Because it’s funny. Because It’s daft. And because it has a scene where they FLY A TANK.
Thank you, I’m out.
Oct202010 -
The Expendables.
Action. Explosions. An amazing cast. Witty one-liners. More explosions. Fighting. Lots of fighting. Guns. Sylvester Stallone trying to speak. A plot shallow enough for a video-game. Jason Statham kicking the living shit out of people. Evil Spanish Dictators.
This is an Action movie, and by god do you get a lot of action. And Explosions.
Oct202010
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