Death by Milk Truck ( almost )

Have you ever had one of those days where you should've just stayed in bed ?, I've been having a week like that, it just seems to be one thing after another at the moment.

I was out for a walk early this morning ( very early actually around 6:30am ) and a truck delivering milk to a local hotel rounds a corner and drives up onto the footpath nearly hitting me, his excuse was there usually never anyone there so he shouldn't need to slow down and check to see if anyone is there first and no amount or arguing was going to make him think otherwise, I continued my walk and the heavens themselves opened up with the kind of downpour that would make Noah think he was doomed, the rest of the day was just a series on really annoying events, with any luck tomorrow will be better.

I did pick up a few DVDs this afternoon so I guess the day hasn't been a total travesty, tomorrow I'm expecting a plague of locusts.

One of those days

This morning my wife did something to her knee, don't know what it was but she did a good job of it since it's now in a splint and shes on crutches and has an appointment with a surgeon later in the week, it seems that it may be a complication of an injury she received when some idiot t-boned her and my daughter on Christmas day last year, apparently you only have to obey traffic laws when you think other people will be on the road, not sure what he was thinking since I know a lot of people who travel even if it's only short distances on Christmas.

We spent the better part of a day at the hospital getting her checked out and then I arrive home to hear my favorite podcast SciFi Dig is going away ( at least for a while ), no-one was killed and the world didn't end but today has been kind of a drag.

Survivors

I've started watching the original version of Survivors on DVD, this was I show I remember seeing on TV as a kid and finding it rather creepy, while it is dated in some respects ( it was made in the mid-70s ) I found the first two episodes to be very effective, it will be interesting to see if the producers of the show managed to maintain the quality levels throughout the series.

This show doesn't have the production values of the recent remake series but so far at least the original version of the series has been much more atmospheric.


If anyone is interested amazon UK have the complete series boxset on sale at the moment.

and knowing is half the battle.

I sat down to watch the animated G.I. JOE movie this afternoon and as far as movies go it was ok but I just had to stop watching about halfway through, the picture quality on the DVD I have is just terrible, I have the region 2 DVD released by Prism Entertainment - this version should be avoided at all costs.

I'm planning on picking up a better quality copy of the movie at some point, this is the second DVD I've bought that was released by Prism Entertainment and like the previous title Hard Boiled this was a poor quality release so it would seem that Prism releases should be avoided in general.

Supernatural Season 4

I've been watching the fourth season of Supernatural on Blu-ray over the last few days, the show came back strong and I really enjoyed the first three episodes for the season but what is the point of setting up a season long story arc if you are then going to mostly ignore it or even worse reveal that a lot of the important action is happening off camera ?

I had high hopes for this season but it seems it's still the muddled mess it's always been, hopefully things will inprove with the second half of the season.

Catching Up

I've been catching up on a few movies I really should've seen by now, last night I watched Sky High, the Extras: Christmas Special and How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, I've finally made a start on season four of Supernatural as well as Flash Forward, Flash Forward started out well but I'm starting to get bored with it now.

I've also finished the second season of Dead Like Me along with the TV movie, it was an interesting show but I have mixed feelings about the TV movie.

Kiss of Death

Well just the other day I was saying that I hadn't had any type of computer virus in years and it's true I hadn't but I should have just shut the hell up and not said a thing because it seems no sooner had I opened my mouth than my system had been hijacked by a piece of crap adware program - I messed around with it a bit yesterday but I decided it was more hassle that it was worth and spent a decent part of this afternoon reinstalling Windows and various other programs - perhaps next time I won't tempt fate by opening my big mouth.

Hail to the ( Master ) Chief part 2

I've finished Halo 3, it was a fun but short game, certainly not a game I would've payed full price for but being an older title that shouldn't be an issue now anyway.

Honestly I found the single player game a little disappointing, I know these days it's all supposed to be about online game play and while I haven't tried it I'm sure the multi player part of Halo 3 is well done, what I want from a game is an immersive single player experience - I'm over generic online deathmaches.

Halo 3 is worth a look but it just doesn't live up to it's hype.

Stagger, stagger, crawl, crawl, jump...

It' strange, I remember watching Yellowbeard and finding it incredibly funny, it was one of those movies I used to watch over and over again.

Eventually my old VHS tape died so it's been several years since I've seen the movie, I finally bought the DVD this week and it was a nice widescreen print in pretty good condition ( the first time I'd seen the movie in widescreen ) but I just wasn't as amused by the film as I once had been, it still has some funny moments but I guess the movie just hasn't aged all that well ( or I haven't ).

Yellowbeard is certainly worth a look, it's features a pretty amazing cast including a few members of the Monty Python team, it'd be interesting to know what someone who saw the movie for the first time thought of it.

Enemy Mine

You have to wonder about the people who package DVD sets for the various studios, I picked up the excellent Enemy Mine packaged with the first Alien vs Predator film, not a combination I would've thought of.

Enemy Mine is a movie I've always enjoyed but it was also something I'd just never picked up on DVD until a couple of weeks ago, as far as I know it has never had an Australian DVD release so the only way I'd ever seen it was on a well worn pan and scan VHS tape.

Having never seen the movie in widescreen before Enemy Mine was a joy to watch, the print they used to master the DVD has suffered some minor damage with the passing of time but this is still the best version of the movie I've ever seen.

Watching Enemy Mine I was reminded why I fell in love with movies in the first place, good story telling and acting not special effects ( although it has some nice effects shots as well ).
 
I don't know if a movie like this could get made today but I live in hope, if your a science fiction fan or just a fan of good storytelling and you haven't seen it you really should check it out and if you have already seen it it's well worth a revisit.
 

Hail to the (Master) Chief

I finally finished The Saboteur, not just the main game but every sub mission and free play objective, it took me a while but the game is 100% complete.

So what next ? I have a few X-Box 360 and PS3 games that I hadn't played but I was in the mood for a shooter and the little bit I'd played of the recent Alien vs Predator game failed to impress me so I decided it was time to take the shrink-wrap off Halo 3 and give it a bit of a play.

I like it but I don't love it and that was how I felt about the previous games in the series as well, I'm not really interested in online play ( endless death matches are so boring ) so a game for me succeeds or fails on the strength of it's single player game play.

As a single player game Halo 3 ( what I've played of it ) is a fun little shooter but like all first person shooters it's lacks in depth, I've no doubt I'll enjoy the rest of the game but I'm also pretty sure I won't feel and need to revisit Halo 3 once I've finished it.

Almost Unreal

I watched Super Mario Brothers on DVD a couple of days ago, I hadn't seen it since I saw it in the cinema nearly 20 years ago, my opinion of it hasn't really changed, the movie is pretty much perfectly cast but they got everything else completely wrong, it's a mess from begining to end.

Hard Boiled

It's pretty much heresy to say it but I've always felt John Woo is rather over-rated as a director and I've never been a big fan of Chow Yun-Fat either but I rather liked this movie, this movie more or less delivered everything I've been expecting to see from other movies featuring this actor / director combination.

I almost didn't recognise Anthony Wong at first, he looked much younger than I'm used to seeing him in movies and he seemed to be having a lot of fun playing the over the top bad guy in the movie.

I have the region 2 DVD by Prism Leisure which I assume does cheap ass releases of movies, the print they used to master the DVD is in pretty bad condition in places and it looks like the picture was in the wrong aspect ratio, the only language options were for a mono English dub.

I enjoyed Hard Boiled and I'd be interested in picking up a better quality copy at some point, perhaps I would've liked it more if it wasn't for the flawed DVD that I have.

City of the Daleks

The first of the new Doctor Who interactive episodes has been released and I'm afraid to say it's a mess, substandard graphics, unresponsive and clunky controls and repetitive game play all combine to make City of the Daleks a fairly unpleasant gaming experience, one it's target audience of younger gamers will probably just find frustrating and give up on it in favor of their X-Box or PS3.

The actual storyline behind the game is decent and the voice acting was better than I expected, personally I'd have preferred to see this story adapted as an animated project like Dreamland or The Infinite Quest.

I know the BBC is keen to develop games on multiple platforms based on the Doctor Who franchise but I'm concerned by allowing such poor quality product to be released they are only going to do harm to the brand name, hopefully they can address some of these issues in the later episodes.

Catching Up

I've been trying to catch up with a few things, I finished The Saboteur yesterday on X-Box 360, I've been slowly getting through Crysis on PC and I hope to have Dead Like Me season 2 as well as maybe the Dead Like Me movie watched by the end of the week.

My reading pile is still rediculous and I imagine it will remain thay way for some time but I'm trying to make a concerted effort to finish some things before I start something new.

Dead Set

It's hard to believe that it's been nearly 2 years since Dead Set was on TV, I bought the series on DVD recently and spent a lazy morning watching it again and I must say I really enjoyed it, this time around I found that it often reminded me of the remake version of Survivors, in fact it would be interesting to know if the producers of Survivors had seen / were inspired at all by this show.

I can't think of many examples of horror TV shows but I thought this worked really well, it's not the sort of thing I'd like to see as a long running series but I really enjoyed the show, I think it would be interesting for a production company if they could get a deal to produce a series of similar stories that each feature a diferent set of characters in different locations that find themselves in similar situations but I guess that would be a bigger gamble than most nerworks would be willing to take.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

The classic Doctor Who series ( except for Sylvester McCoy's era but it wasn't his fault ) is my all-time favorite show and I enjoy the new series as well, Russell T Davies got a lot of crap over his five years on Doctor Who, he wrote some terrible and also quite wonderful stories, Steven Moffat during that time wrote some outstanding scripts but that's all he had to worry about - writing one or two scripts for the the show each year.

When it was announced the Moffat was taking over the show all the RTD bashers declared that the show had been saved and a quality writer was finally going to redeem the series, Moffat had some previous experience as a show runner with Coupling and Jekyll but I was concerned, Coupling was a fun little sitcom but in my opinion whlie most of Jekyll was fun the ending was predictable, too long and well weak.

Moffat has so far produced a fairly disappointing season, his leads are well cast, I'm really enjoying Matt Smith as the Doctor but Steven Moffat seems hell bent on changing everything that was done over the previous five years and has created a plot device that will allow him to ignore or change everything that has gone before.

The show may well be building towards something huge but if that story isn't told well either then who cares ?, Steven Moffat has pretty much changed everything in front of the camera but he really needs to get Greame Harper and Euros Lynn back where they belong in the directir's chair as they have the talent to salvage weak scripts and produce entertaining well paced episodes, it's nice that they've tried out some new directors this season but so far it hasn't really worked out for them and I think thats where some of this current series problems lie, the director's they've been using just aren't suited to Doctor Who.

Since it's Doctor Who I'm in for the duration but I really hope they can get it back on track by the end of this series.

Did I fall asleep ?

I finally finished watching the first season of Dollhouse on Blu-ray today, I think it's fair to say that most of the season ranged from bad through to merely average with the show making a strong improvement in it's last two episodes as well as the unaired bonus episode Epitaph One.

While the show improved over the course of it's first season based on what I saw I don't believe the show deserved to be renewed for a second season although I do believe the second season of the show is considered by most to be a vast improvement on the first.

I do eventually plan to see the second season of Dollhouse but I'm in no hurry to do so, of course hardcore Joss Whedon fans will tell you both seasons of  the show were brilliant ( but then they are hardcore fans ) but that's simply mot true, personally I'd only rent the first season if you hadn't seen, it's the sort of thing you should buy if it's heavily discounted in a sale, here's to hoping the second season lives up to it's reputation.

I don't get it.

There's plenty of complaints about insurance companies, it seems that if you've never personally had some sort of problem with them it's a sure bet that several people you know have.

Today our insurance company got in touch with us in regards to our recent car accident, the guy who ran into us was speeding, driving an uninsured and unroadworthy car as well as ( probably - it sure looked like he was ) talking on his phone without using a headset, all of those things are offences here and I'd also imagine that any one of them would usually be reason to deny an insurance claim but they feel they should pay for the repair of any damage to his car - now heres the best part, he hasn't tried to make a claim so they are going to contact him to inform him he should make a claim - like I said i don't get it.

Webcam Woes

It was too good to be true, now that my computer is back up and running my webcam has decided to die and I'd barely ever used the thing, I have a much older one I can use but after playing around with it for a while I realised it was a piece of crap so of course it works perfectly.

I guess this means I'm in the market for a new webcam, it's not something I use often but they are handy to have, I've got no idea what I'm going to get but I want a good quality unit that will hopefully last at least a few years.