A Summer of Movies

This summer has been the most movie filled summer ever. I have completely lost count of the number of movies I've seen since summer began. The ones I can remember are:

- Transformers
- Die Hard 4.0
- Harry Potter 5
- The Messengers
- Sunshine
- Hot Fuzz
- Next
- The Bourne Identity
- The Bourne Supremacy
- The Bourne Ultimatum
- The Simpsons Movie
- Shaun of the Dead
- Disturbia
- Evan Almighty
- Rush Hour 3
- Ratatoiulle
- The Invasion

I'm sure I've forgotten some. And I also watched a lot more on HBO, Cinemax and Star Movies. Now it's time for the first annual:

Summer Movie Awards

Comic Award
This award goes to the funniest movie. We all love comedies don't we? No? Well I like funny movies.
Nominees:

• Hot Fuzz
• Shaun of the Dead
• The Simpsons Movie
• Rush Hour 3
• Ratatouille
  

Winner - Shaun of the Dead
All the nominated movies were definitely funny, but Shaun of the Dead really stood out for me. I like zombie movies. Add some good solid humour and you've got an excellent flick that you should definitely go check out if you haven't already.

Runner Ups - Hot Fuzz, Rush Hour 3.



Explosive Award
Huge explosions, bullets flying, total chaos, etc. How can you not like all that cool stuff? Goes to the best action flick.
Nominees:

• Transformers
• Die Hard 4.0
• Next
• The Bourne Identity
• The Bourne Supremacy
• The Bourne Ultimatum

Winner - Transformers
I saw this movie 3 times. A friend of mine has seen it 6 times. Do you need more explaining?

Runner Ups - Die Hard 4.0, The Bourne Ultimatum



Chainsaw Award
Who likes the Gears of War chainsaw? This is for the most violent movie.
Nominees:

• Die Hard 4.0
• Hot Fuzz
• Shaun of the Dead

Winner - Hot Fuzz
Hot Fuzz is a comedy which uses ridiculous over-the-top violence which makes it the great movie that it is.

Runner Up - Shaun of the Dead



No One Saw This Award
Occasionally, there are some good movies that didn't get the attention they deserved due to reasons such as poor marketing and promotion. This award goes to the most underrated movie.
Nominees:

• The Messengers
• Sunshine

Winner - Sunshine
Sunshine is a really solid sci-fi thriller flick. I never saw much promotion for it, but was curious enough to check it out. It's certainly the most underrated movie of the year.



Waste of Money Award
Out of all the good movies, there are some which suck.
Nominees:

• The Messengers
• The Invasion
• Evan Almighty

Winner - Evan Almighty
What Mobius are you serious? Yes I am. Evan Almighty was a waste of money. I didn't find it funny at all. Bruce Almighty was WAY better.



Must See Award
This highly prestigious award goes to the absolute best and most entertaining movie regardless of it's genre.
Nominees:

• Transformers
• Die Hard 4.0
• Harry Potter 5
  
• The Messengers
• Sunshine
• Hot Fuzz
• Next
• The Bourne Identity
• The Bourne Supremacy
• The Bourne Ultimatum
• The Simpsons Movie
• Shaun of the Dead
• Disturbia
• Evan Almighty
• Rush Hour 3
• Ratatoiulle
• The Invasion

Winners - Transformers, Die Hard 4.0, The Bourne Ultimatum, Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead.
There are so many good flicks that it wouldn't be fair if I only chose one.

That wraps up this year's Summer Movie Awards

V-Dub In Da House

This is an absolutely brilliant ad for the Volkswagen Golf GTi Mk.5. It was so good they made two sequels for it:

VW - Un-Pimp Your Ride II
VW - Un-Pimp Your Ride III

Check 'em out. They're awesome.

Midnight Movie IV - Next

"If you can see the future, you can save it."

Sounds like something Hiro Nakamura would say. No? The next movie othe list was Next. Next is a pretty average action-thriller. When I say average I mean it's good but not great. The movie is certainly enjoyable and kept my attention most of the time. Next is also one of those movies that get you thinking. Why? Read on.

Next follows the story of a Las Vegas magician named Cris Johnson who has the ability to see 2 minutes into the future. Here's where your imagination should kick in. Think about it. If he sees what happens 2 minutes into the future, he would've wasted 2 minutes 'watching' what happens and thus whatever he's 'watching' is also happening in real time (if any of that makes any sense). I assume that his 2 minute visions into the future are stored as instant memories - so he doesn't actually stand there for 2 minutes and see what happens around him. But anyway, his ability attracts the attention of a government agent, who wants to use him to locate a nuclear bomb before it nukes 8 million people.

The action in Next is pretty solid and the pace of the movie is good. CGI isn't top notch for today's standards though. It's not the best action film you can find out there, but it's certainly enjoyable. Personally I enjoyed Next, until the last 10 minutes.... The movie ends with another one of those twist endings which actually ties in with the movie's plot perfectly. It leaves a wide open door to a sequel, which I would watch if one came out. But I personally didn't like the ending. It reminded me of Halo 2's ending...

Next is a recommended movie if you're looking for moderate action with an interesting story. Yup, action is only moderate because the first half of the movie is focused around building up the story. But overall it was enjoyable.

Overall: 3/5

Midnight Movie III - Hot Fuzz

"Big Cops. Small Town. Moderate Violence."

Saturday night's movie was Hot Fuzz and it has officially made it to a top spot on my list of awesome movies. Hot Fuzz is an incredibly funny British action-comedy film made by the same guys who did Shaun of the Dead (which I haven't really watched). The two leads in Hot Fuzz are played by the same guys who were in Shaun as well. If you liked Shaun, you should love this.

Hot Fuzz tells the story of a hard-boiled cop with an insane service record named Nicholas Angel who gets sent from the busy city of London to the quiet town of Sandford, where there hasn't been a recorded murder in twenty years, by his superiors. But of course, there's always something going on.

This film gets funny real fast and it just gets better by the minute. Hot Fuzz is filled of references. Most notably to many other cop action films such as Point Break, Police Story and Bad Boys 2. In fact, there is a scene where Nicholas and his less intelligent partner Danny sit down and watch Point Break and Bad Boys 2. Anyway, the two make for many very humourous scenes. The jokes really don't stop at all. One thing I didn't expect was the over-the-top ridiculous, yet somewhat humourous violence that Hot Fuzz uses. Though there's nothing bad about it.

The action sequences in Hot Fuzz were very well directed and are comedic, exciting and ridiculous yet awesome. The real action doesn't start until about 30 minutes left into the film, and it kicks off with an old lady with a shotgun getting flying-kicked in the face. Even in the climatic sequences, they manage to throw in excellent jokes. Hot Fuzz is a highly recommended film. You should definitely go check this out if you liked Shaun of the Dead. Even if you didn't quite enjoy Shaun, if you like these type of films, watch it.

Now I shall start my hunt for a Shaun of the Dead DVD.

Overall: 5/5

Midnight Movie II - Sunshine

"If the sun dies, so do we"

Thursday night was time for another movie. This time it was the sci-fi flick Sunshine and I personally think this movie is underrated. From what I saw in the trailers and other promotional media for the film, I was expecting this to be another 'end-of-the world disaster' type film much like The Core. However, Sunshine was much more than that. This completely destroys The Core.

Sunshine has an effective and easy to follow story. About fifty years into the future, the sun is dying and and a team of astronauts on board the ship Icarus II are sent on a mission to re-ignite the sun via the use of a massive bomb the size of Manhattan. Seven years prior to this mission, another ship, the Icarus I had been sent on the same mission. However, contact with Icarus I was lost and the mission was a failure.

At a glance, Sunshine certainly seems like just another natural disaster movie, but it really has much more to it. If I told you why, it would be a major spoiler. If you really wanna know you can just go look it up in Wikipedia. The leading character is that guy who plays The Scarecrow from Batman Begins. To me, he still has the psychotic look he had with The Scarecrow but that doesn't matter. It was a good choice putting him in the lead. Sunshine is probably one of the best movies I've seen this year actually. It's kind of like a fusion of The Core (though MUCH better) and Event Horizon (though a lot less scarier and a lot less violence). And if you're wondering why Event Horizon, well you just gotta go see it.

Overall: 4/5

Midnight Movie - The Messengers

On Wednesday night, I was bored, so I decided to watch The Messengers. My review:

The Messengers is another average horror/thriller movie. I expected this to be something along the lines of The Grudge and I was right. In fact, I think The Grudge was a better flick than The Messengers. The story is simple. A troubled family moves to a house in the middle of nowhere and it turns out to be haunted because of some crazy incident in the past and all. The Messengers borrows a lot from The Grudge. A creepy looking house full of dark and spooky rooms, a lot of jump scares, similar looking ghosts to the ones in the Grudge (the usual abnormally white skin tone, completely white eyes, completely dark hair, etc.) and hell, they even made the ghosts move in that crazy jerky way.

I knew a movie like this wouldn't be much of a scare, so to maximise the effect, I watched this movie with the lights off. The only light came from the screen and I also used headphones on moderately high volume. Even then it wasn't really enough to scare me. Probably because I almost knew what was coming. One or two of the jump scenes made me jump, but it was more of a shock instead of a scare. However, The Messengers is not a bad movie. Even though the story was average, it was good enough for the movie. Though I have one major complaint about the story and that would be the twist ending. To me, it was disappointing and it definitely closed most if not all paths to a sequel. Don't ask me to comment on the acting because I really can't tell between good or bad acting. To me it seems all the same. The atmosphere was good and most of the time the tension held up where it should.

In conclusion, if you have some spare time, you're bored and you're looking for a cheap scary movie, The Messengers would be an option. It's not one of those ridiculous horror/thriller flicks that are unbearable to watch. However, The Messengers doesn't bring anything new to the table. As I mentioned before, it borrows a lot from The Grudge and other movies of the same genre. But hey, if you're into horror movies, maybe this movie is for you.

Windows Visuck

So, my grandpa bought a new NEC notebook (which I am using to write this post). Unfortunately, it came with Vista Business edition. For the past few hours I've been playing around with it and so far I have to say it's pretty crap. While the look and feel of Vista is excellent, a lot of the other things and user friendly-ness is crap. The following screenshot will help illustrate some of the problems I have with Vista:


Firstly, this notebook has a Core 2 Duo and 1 GB of RAM. If you look at the screenshot, you'll see that having six windows open already uses up 90% of the available RAM. In fact, having the PC idle already uses, at the bare minimum, 50% RAM. In other words, Vista hogs RAM like nobody's business.

Next we have the unnecessarily huge icons. I have yet to find a way to make them smaller thanks to the very helpful Windows Help and Support. Heck, I don't even know if you can make them smaller or not. Point is, with the already very clear widescreen display on this notebook and the even clearer layout Vista offers, huge icons are not necessary.

The Piece o' Crap Firewall is another big issue. My MSN has been signing in for the past half hour. After about 45 minutes, it alway gave me some networking error even though I had Live Messenger on exceptions. I finally managed to get it working somehow...

Finally, tabbing in 3D. In case you're wondering, you can still tab normally. So uh...I personally think the 3D shit is unnecessary. I guess some designer and Microsoft thought it would be cool...