deKay’s Blog

After almost two years with the previous theme, I thought it was time for a bit of a change. Is this better? Worse?

OMG! Matthew Broderick looks about 7 years old!

The plot: boy “accidently” kicks off World War 3 by hacking into a military defence computer, thinking it’s part of a video game company, and playing “Global Thermonuclear War”. He’s arrested, escapes, finds a guy who was legally dead (who wrote the “games” on the computer), and obviously, saves the day.

I don’t even know where to begin with regards to the nonsensical way computers are portrayed. But then, every film involving computers as a major plot point has the same problem. At least here the issues (mainly to do with the conversations with the computer - no, really) are relatively minor. It’s not like Minority Report or anything.

But it was pretty good all the same. Especially Malvin the geeky bloke, who didn’t remind me of The Gubbins at all. Oh no.

Verdict: 3/5

And you’re not!

Remember a while back when I posted about how v1.2 of SyncMate was horribly broken? And how I had to revert back to v1.1 while they sorted out the issues with the driver on my Vario II?

Well, good news everyone! I thought I’d give the relatively recently released v1.3 a punt. And guess what? It works! Not only that, but they’ve added a few useful new features.

For a start, you can now sync your bookmarks with Firefox instead of smelly old Safari. You can also sync your calendar with Google Calendar too, and similarly sync contacts with Google Contacts. They’ve also added the ability to see your call log, and, most usefully, you can now mount your mobile device as a drive (although this feature is currently in beta, it worked fine for me).

SyncMate is available in free and paid for versions (the latter with more features) from Eltima.

Visually, this has to be the cleverest, most well done art style I’ve seen in ages. Somehow, it welds live action with steampunk comic-book, adding some 1940s war film overtones, and film noir lighting. Pretty much the entire film was recorded on a blue-screen, yet everything seems real enough - albeit almost sepia-toned in places (and where appropriate).

The plot follows Joe (”Sky Captain” himself) and Polly, a reporter and love interest/rival for Joe, as they investigate the giant robots that have been attacking cities all over the world. The plot is OK, although it does wander from detective story to fighter plane action flick to Tomb Raider, getting slightly confused on the way.

One thing I didn’t understand, is how, at the start of the film, only Sky Captain himself (and not his entire fleet of aircraft) were sent out to take down an entire army of giant robots. And why didn’t Franky’s huge airbase get involved earlier? Anyway.

Well worth watching for the artyness of it. Perhaps missing something from the story, though.

Verdict: 3/5

Kurt Russell is an awkwardly almost-funny trucker who somehow ends up part of a fight against supernatural Chinese supermen and a very old, almost dead, guy who wants to regain his youth by marrying and then sacrificing a girl with green eyes.

The plot has huge holes. Some of it doesn’t even make sense. Lo Pan (the evil old bloke) reminds me of Davros. The acting is rubbish, several of the characters are completely superfluous, the Chinese girl (with green eyes) says about three words in total. Wang, one of the good guys, summons up amazing martial arts skills from out of nowhere. It’s nonsense. Complete nonsence.

But it’s also pretty ace. Despite having Kim Cattrall in it.

Verdict: 3/5

I have a few films to get through, so nothing in depth on these, sorry!

The Princess Bride is a film of the same genre, as well as style and era, as such things as Willow, The Neverending Story and Time Bandits. Basic plot: man and woman fall in love, man goes off to find his fortune, doesn’t return, girl is taken as bride for local prince, gang kidnaps girl, girl rescued by mysterious stranger, blah blah.

The plot doesn’t matter. Because the film is funny, brainless, and has Columbo, Fred Savage and Andre the Giant in it. What more do you need?

Verdict: 4/5

This is more than a little impressive. The robot first scans all the faces, then works out a solution, before carrying it out.

I’ve seen this before. A long, long time ago. But I was somewhat confused while watching it again.

First of all, large amounts of the film are pretty irrelevant to the story. There’s an awful lot of setting the scene, but the majority of the main action happens in the last 20 minutes. In fact, the first half of the film isn’t really even about Max himself anyway - it’s all about Goose, Max’s partner.

And there’s lots I don’t understand. Why are there so many broken old cars? Why is the police force now just a few guys in leather who take down people on the roads? What happened to all the people? Why, when they appear to have the whole of Australia to play in, do the police (or rather, “MFP”) keep bumping into the same biker gang? What exactly is wrong with Toecutter, which makes him and his gang decide to torture and kill random passersby for no reason?

So it didn’t make a lot of sense, had a stuttery story, and Mel Gibson only spoke around 20 words in the entire film (and most of them were in some soppy soliloquy which didn’t go anywhere). But I like “stories of a dystopian future”, so it scores a bit higher for that. And the scene where Johnny the Boy gets his come-uppance.

Verdict: 2/5

Some people say a lot of bad things about Quentin Tarantino. They say his films are overly violent. They say he borrows too many ideas from other films. But that doesn’t matter - he’s a clever writer and an outstanding cinematographer.

Like his previous films, Kill Bill is told in a disjointed, out of sequence manner. The story jumps backwards and forwards in time, but never in a way that confuses. It follows The Bride (Uma Thurman) as she bumps off the five assassins who attacked and killed both her and her wedding guests. Only, of course, she wasn’t dead.

Each sequence in the film is fantastically put together. Tarantino uses his skills to make the most of light, colour, shadow and sound. Each part of the film has it’s own feel - some parts are like a comic book. Another is straight out of Crouching Tiger. There’s even a whole section shown as Japanese anime.

Looking forward to Vol. 2 now!

Verdict: 5/5