#236 a norwich blog

#236, now updated quarterly! I was hooked with an brand new iMac at work, so the most important thing was to take advantage of the Intel chipset and install several operating systems.

Mac OS and Windows at the same time! Courtesy of Unity mode in VMware Fusion. I have an Ubuntu build on it too but don’t really know what to do with that.

As for the rest of the iMac, the glossy screen is ok, not as bad as some reviews suggest, but it does makes flat colours look like gradients more than non-glossy LCD displays do.

The mighty mouse is the worst mouse I’ve ever used, it requires magic fingers to click the button you actually want, I have to use it as a one-button mouse. The keyboard however is my favourite keyboard ever.

Overall, I’d happily buy an iMac for myself, and here’s a quick film recommendation:

Eastern Promises

I associate David Cronenberg with his old stuff like Videodrome and Naked Lunch, so Eastern Promises was surprisingly serious. (I’ve not seen A History of Violence but I gather that’s a “proper” film too.)

My verdict: very good, but it’s probably best seen knowing as little as possible about the story. I’ll write no more, just trust me. Or look it up on a review site. 8/10.

The once-a-week update plan has really gone out of the window. I can’t think of any reason why you wouldn’t want to know about films I’ve seen recently, so here goes:

Death Proof

It might look good from the picture, but Death Proof is the most boring film I’ve seen since Timeline. 2/10. If you want a film that’s mostly talking, try…

The Magician

Chance rental by hungover Duncan. It’s about an assassin and is shot as a documentary that is filmed by his neighbour. There’s not much violence but the dialogue is solid and often quite funny, which makes this a black comedy of sorts. Watch it then impress people at parties with your knowledge of independent film. 7/10

Day Watch

If you’ve seen Night Watch, this film is great, see it. If not, the end of Day Watch will be totally meaningless, so watch Night Watch then watch Day Watch. 9/10. If two witches were watching two watches, which witch would watch which watch?

Bonus round: Chili facts!

Chilis aren’t actually hot like fire, but the chemicals in them bind to pain receptors in mammals (birds are immune to chilis, that’s their superpower). The body interprets the pain as heat and reacts accordingly. Use this to your advantage by eating chilis when you’re hot, tricking your body into perspiring more. Science is full of useful information.

The Scoville scale is a measure of the “hotness” of a chili pepper.

• A standard jalapeno scores 2,500-8,000 Scoville Heat Units
• Scotch Bonnets rate in the 150,000-325,000 range of Scoville Units
• Naga Jolokia, the world’s hottest chili, measures 855,000-1,041,427 Scoville Units
• Pepper spray wins with 2,000,000-5,300,000 Scoville Units

Chili research is all from Wikipedia, so could be lies.

In the name of content diversity, it’s film review time!

Summer blockbusters

Die Hard 4.0

Exactly what you would expect from a Die Hard movie. A good action flick carried excellently by Mr Willis. 6/10

A Michael Bay Film

As a standalone entity Transformers is top entertainment with action, humour, big robots and Megan Fox. If you loved Transformers as a child it might make you cry, but like whatever. 8/10

The Simpsons Movie

All those expensive script writers and this is the best storyline they could come up with? A Simpsons episode spread over ninety minutes makes for an average film, something The Simpsons Movie should never have been. 5/10

DVD rentals

The Fountain

It’s an art film, the story makes little sense. Knowing that will save you re-watching it to see if you missed something. A compelling audiovisual experience nonetheless. 7/10

Brick

Even though the plot is explained at the end, I still couldn’t follow it. Very stylish, more than enough to compensate for the confusion. 9/10

Harsh Times

A buddy film that is mostly about Christian Bale flipping out and becoming increasingly mental. Watch this and call people “dawg” and “dude” for days. 7/10

That’s all folks. What have you seen recently, what did you think?

While there are other places on the internet you could read about films, they’re all wrong unless they agree with me. Today I shall be assassinating 28 Weeks Later, I’d say the following contains spoilers but that suggests it has anything worth spoiling.

Off we go. The story is weaker than Simon Quinlank’s lemon drink – frying pan, fire, repeat. It might have worked if it wasn’t the same frying pan every time, but evolving the plot would have been a great backup plan.

People in the film have absolutely no common sense. To my reckoning the virus outbreak, and therefore most of the film, could have been avoided at least four times:

1. They let the boy into their safe house when they know the infected are outside. It’s one of him, several of you, he has to die for the greater good.
2. The girl unblocks the safe house window-slats to look outside, giving away their presence nicely.
3. Annoying kids sneak out of the safe area of the city and find their infected Mother.
4. Despite having seen first hand what “the rage” does, Robert Carlisle’s character kisses the obviously infected wife.

I spent the whole film hoping that the main characters would be mutilated by zombies because it’s all they deserved for being so stupid. It ruins the drama when “will they live” becomes “I don’t care if they live“.

Finally, Bob Carlisle’s zombie vanishing tricks and firebomb immunity were ridiculous. One and a half films have shown “the rage” to turn people into mindless killing machines, then inexplicably it turns one man into a zombie Solid Snake.

In defense of 28 Weeks Later, nearly all modern horror films are rubbish. What do you think, was 28 Weeks Later crap, is the horror genre more stale than old bread, or has The Departed spoiled me so much that I can’t enjoy any lesser film? Answers in the comments.

All dazzle and no substance, that’s the way to win people over. By the time they realise, it’s too late and you have their £6.30. I watched 300 last night.

The battle sequences are excellent but if you want something to watch you’d be better off renting a good film instead. I suggest The Departed, Pan’s Labyrinth and Children of Men.

Alternatively, if you just really have a thing for Spartans, God of War 2 is out shortly. My neglected PS2 will be reunited with electricity on account of this.

The fish fingers fell out of the packet into the hot oil so I had to eat them.