Mov Rev: The WIld

Not usually my cup of tea - actually I don't drink tea either but anyway... took a little relation to see this at the weekend and it's not the worst animated cartoon movie I've seen. The jokes and movie spoofs aren't quite Shrek quality, but Nigel the Koala (Eddie Izzard) is excellent and delivers most of the best funny moments in the film. Not too many singing and dancing bits either which was good with me.

Twelve out of Twenty Five

Better than Garfield 2 is going to be, not as good as Cars is going to be. (Probably)

Mov Rev: X men 3 - The Last Stand

Potentially was destined to be one of the films of the year for me - the trailers have been spine-chillingly exciting, hinting at one of the best superhero storylines in a movie ever. However I found the movie a bit of a disappointing roller-coaster, some extremely good action scenes, some very good character scenes, but then some pretty cheesy, un-required and pretty boring scenes really. Some really cool new mutants, but then they decide to focus on Juggernaut which seemed one of the worst of them.

There were a lot of good parts (especially the return of the loverly Framke Janssen) , but if this is to be the last in the series for a while, it was a little disappointing. Film of the year looks like it might be heading towards Pirates of the Caribbean -DMC now..

2.7 out of 3 (could have been a 2.9)

Better than being Juggernaut, not as good as being Mystique.

Mov Rev: The Da Vinci code

One of the toughest movies to make - a mutli-million selling book most people know the story already and have formed their images of the characters etc. I think they pulled it off pretty well. Being more interested in history than religion I find it all intriguing, not entirely believable but then I think that about most religious text too.

Tom Hanks was watchable (not really a big fan apart from Road to Perdition, Saving Private Ryan and Forest Gump - pun intended) but the rest of the cast were very good I thought. I think the script at the start favours a book rather than a film and it was a little bit slow at some points for a long(ish) film. Overall though I quite liked the book and this is a good representation of that.

8 out of 13

Better than National Treasure, not as good as Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Digital Photos

These are a few of my photos I've taken in the last couple of months since I switched from my old film SLR to a digital SLR...


Rain is one of my favourite subjects and I find it pretty challenging most of the time, I like this rippling puddle and country lane shot, the contrasting light levels and sky reflecting in the water makes for quite a nice photo I think.

Kind of annoying this next Fox photo; I was out trying out my old Sigma lenses on my 350D saw these pair sat in a field but my 70-200 Sigma just didn't want to work (needs to be chipped). I took this on an 80mm and have had to zoom and crop the image heavily in photoshop. If only I had my new Canon zoom lens it could have been one of my best photos. (I was taking this from a raised old railway track, they were frozen in the field and I feel I could well have gotten down the slope for a more ground level shot too) .

Two experimental shots next, one of a houseplant which I just love the transparency of the sunlight through the leaves and the over-exposed background. The other is one of my cats called Pip, always the comsumate poser this photo kind of sums up his cheekiness prefectly (bit of a cluttered background and harsh flashlight though - all a learning process).




The last one is Wiltshires only working windmill, the photo came out quite sharp and taken at something like f/22 it has great texture on the grassy field leading up to the windmill. The cloud shadows on the sunny field make it a bit more layered also. There is just something nice and fresh and simple about it, maybe just me but I like it. I'm not a big fan of editing my photos in photoshop, but I'm tempted to remove the bushes on the horizon to make it a cleaner picture.

Mov Rev: 16 Blocks

The best thing Bruce Willis has done since .. well Sin City. Playing a similar character to both Sin City and Hostage (sick, bad cop turned good) seems Mr Willis is trying to corner the acting market in drunk down on their luck cops. I think I related to this charater, being an aging (though quite not quite so old), alcoholic, dis-illusioned citizen myself. I quite liked the casting - David Morse (The Negotiator, The Rock, Proof of Life) as the anti-hero and the passable Mos Def (great Star Wars/Def Leppard fusion name - dodgy voice acting maybe).

Overall I think 5 out of 7.

Better than Hostage not as good as Training Day.

Take 1

My first blog entry - how exciting! OK, so the very first line is sarcastic, which is probably going to be pretty representative of the rest.

Expect future Movie, Album reviews, TV chat, football and baseball result celebrations, moans and life events all fully documented*.

* Subject to censorship.