Tuesday 28 June 2011

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

I know I haven't written in what seems like forever and for that I can only apologise! Although I seem have been really busy (Suddenly I feel popular!), I've also had some technical issues with my home network (basically the main server blew up) which involved me having to replace it and rebuild everything. Well I didn't have to rebuild everything, but it seemed like as good a time as any, but whilst the new server is up and running (i7-950 with 12GB RAM!) my workstations have Windows on them and that's about it :)

But enough about all that boring stuff... Although I have tons to write about, I wanted to write an entry whilst the topic was actually still current... namely... I SAW TRANSFORMERS 3 THIS EVENING! (or Transformers: Dark of the Moon if you want to be picky). But don't worry, as usual with my "reviews", there won't be any spoilers.

Okay so way back in 2009 my brother and I watched the midnight premiere showing of Transformers 2 (Revenge of the Fallen) and we decided a while back that we wanted to do the same this time too. However, when the tickets became available we decided that the midnight showing wasn't early enough... and we booked the 9pm showing for the day before it was released... (28th) Yeh I don't really get it either, but I'm not complaining! There was a midnight showing (start of 29th which is the UK release date) and we've joked that we'll be coming out as they're going in and they probably think they're seeing it before everyone else!! :D

My friends Carrie and Emma came with us too and loaded up with food and drinks we made our way into the rather busy screen. I say busy because there were tons of people in there, but apparently there were still over 200 regular seats available, if you like sitting so close that you can't even see the entire screen... :) Being the cinema snob that I am, I had booked us all the VIP seats and as always I'm glad I did. Although they are just comfier and the perfect location (especially for a 3D film!), when it comes to a busy showing, the peace of mind of having booked seats is just brilliant. You can saunter in at your own pace with no rushing, your seat will still be there no matter how close it is to the start of the film :)

Oh, before I forget, we saw a new Harry Potter trailer and it looks really good, but I'm only planning on seeing that in 2D since the 3D is a post production conversion (i.e. rubbish) - Boo!

6 paragraphs in and I haven't actually said a thing about the actual movie so I suppose I better sort that out! It's over 2 and a half hours long, but it doesn't feel like it and I swear I spent most of it holding my breath in awe. Everyone I know pretty much everyone liked the first film, the second film had some very mixed reviews, but this one... in my opinion if you take all the great bits of those films, then triple them, you're still not even close to Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

You could argue that anyone desperate enough to be watching the film as soon as it is released is obviously quite a fan of the series, but as we left I didn't see one unhappy face. It has a decent story, some great character development of Sam building on the previous movies, the absence of Michaela is explained and the new girl Carly is much more likeable (in my opinion anyway and it's awesome that she has the G1 name of Spike Witwicky's girlfriend/wife!), the annoying twins aren't in it (okay I suppose that's a mini spoiler), the use of 3D for the large part isn't abused and is just there to add to the film and just... wow :)

Before you even read this review you'd probably already decided whether you were going to see the film or not so there's probably not much point me telling you to go and see it... but I'm going to anyway! GO AND SEE IT!

I liked it so much I wanted to go straight back into the midnight showing and watch it again! Sadly the others wanted to go home so that didn't happen... boo :)

Wednesday 1 June 2011

The problem with Blu-ray

I've just been watching Terminator 2 and noticed this which was very visible for a good few seconds:


That's quite obviously not Schwarzenegger riding the bike!!!! (it's Peter Kent). On DVD it's not quite so noticeable, but on Blu-ray... HELLO!!!!

In other news, I received the funniest spam email EVER today:


I don't know what's funnier, that they're willing to sell me Tomahawk rockets cruise missiles or that with every 9 grams of cocaine I buy, I'll get a 10th gram free... Maybe I should forward it to Felonious Gru so he can get some rocket fuel for the next time he tries to shrink the moon? :)