Review: Triangle (2009)
Friday, February 12th, 2010 | Movies, Reviews | No Comments
When Jess sets sail on a yacht with a group of friends, she cannot shake the feeling that there is something wrong. Her suspicions are proven when the yacht hits a storm and the group is forced to board a passing ocean liner to get to safety, a ship Jess is convinced she’s been on before. The ship appears deserted, the clock on board has stopped, but they are not alone… Someone is intent on hunting them down, one by one. And Jess unknowingly holds the key to end the terror.
If you are into mystery and somewhat horror this might be a good choice for you. Even though the cover looks more like another hillbilly flick the key element of the mystery is time bending/travel and it is portrayed quite well. Films that play with different time lines often lack logic. Triangle manages to have at least three (maybe even four, I can’t remember) parallel realities – which I found very well done regarding the complexity that may occur. There is just one minor glitch that you might want to complain about – why is Jess acting as she does first entering the boat? No more explanations here, I don’t want to spoil the story. Speaking of the story, don’t expect too much, it’s above average, but nothing special – compared to earlier instalments of director Christopher Smith (like Creep or the downright annoying Severance) it’s pretty good.
What I liked best was the camera work / setting / editing… everything is shot very impressively, right angle, right light – not to be mistaken as pretentious, more like minimalistic but elaborate. I don’t really know how to express my impressions. It just was an eye treat that I enjoyed a lot. Not one of these cheesy low budget cheap shots.
7.0 / 10 – Entertaining and a pleasure to watch.
New word(s): 9 terms for being sick
Friday, January 1st, 2010 | Language, Quirks, Vocabulary | No Comments
What’s a better way to celebrate new year’s eve than attending your bro’s wedding (congratz again, Tim and Thilo), having a hip hop battle where you ruin your wedding suit’s trousers and discussing the vast variety of words for “throwing up” with an English army man. A great night indeed!
I was pretty proud I already knew 7 words – impressing the crowd, embarrassing me performing the appropriate gestures with my new friend from the UK to each way. Jo taught me one more, to honk. My wife then gave me the last one, which I first didn’t take as a way to do it but more as a descriptive term – but people really say something like “to be sick on the floor”.
Okay, enough of an introduction, here is my list of words for being sick:
- throw up – the well known term
- vomit – slightly informal
- puke – colloquial
- barf – a big shot straight forward
- hurl – like a barf, but done in an 120°+ horizontal angle
- huee – the sound you make just before you ralph! (dont know the spelling though)
- ralph – the sound you make after a few huees!
- honk – new word from Jo, I am sorry I forgot the appropriate occasion for this one
- be sick – new word from Liz
The “sound” descriptive ones (my favourites!):
New since last night:
Impressive, right? Don’t take me wrong, I am not specially attached to this topic, it’s just a fun thing to discuss at a late night party with a few drunkards. Dictionaries even provide a few more terms, but that’s kinda like cheating. Consider giving it a try next time you are at a party with a few friends that don’t mind talking about, well, being sick 
Review: inFamous – my first platinum trophy
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 | Games, Reviews | 5 Comments
I’ve done it. My first achieved platinum trophy. This trophy is only rewarded by completing every achievement the game provides.
Anybody playing on Playstation network or XBOX Live knows that this is something quite demanding.
I decided that this will be the end of my gaming career. Well, not entirely, as I cannot deny the pleasure of casual gaming, but recently I just wasted to much precious time playing games such as GTA 4, Midgnight Club LA, Resident Evil 4/5, Dead Space, you name it. So I decided to put an end to endless weekend sessions of grinding.
Gaming has been an important part of my life, going back in time as far as 1982 playing River Raid (the first videogame ever to be put on the “Index” – meaning banned in Germany! *lol*) and Sea Quest on the Atari 2600. I can’t deny that I wasted a lot of time in front of systems such as the Commodore Amiga, Nintendo GameBoy (the grey one!), Super Nintendo/Famicon, Playstation 1 2 3 and the PC. Thank god it was just a lot of time, never an addiction (although the platinum trophy hunt came pretty close!).
Playing inFamous never felt like playing a great game. I just played forever, one more mission, one more achievement, end credits. Let’s play it again in hard mode as the villain. Beat it again, almost threw my controller into my telly fighting Kessler in hard mode, decided to do the rest of the achievements. In the end I think inFamous is a great game, I just can’t be bothered any more. I decided to spend my future spare time with things more rewarding, family, guitar or maybe even working overtime 
. There is so much more to do than spending half the weekend in front of my PS3. Guess I had to have it all just to come back to the roots and enjoy the simple things again.
Let’s see whether this will work out – I already pre-ordered Red Dead Redemption. Again, the exception proofs the rule, right?
7.5 / 10 – a great game that didn’t really worked out for me – or did it?
Geek joke
Thursday, November 26th, 2009 | Language, Misc, Quirks | 1 Comment
Today somebody posted a nice geek joke in our team chat, it seems to be quite common, but nevertheless it was new to me:
Why do programmers always confuse Halloween and Christmas?
Because 31 Oct = 25 Dec.
If you dont get it, read the Mathematical jokes Wikipedia article for an explanation. But I assume that people who dont get it right away wont find it funny even after reading the explanation. Revenga of the nerds! Merry Christmas
Review: Zombieland (2009)
Saturday, November 14th, 2009 | Movies, Reviews | No Comments
Earth’s population has been decimated by a virus, related to the mad cow disease, that turns everyone into flesh-craving zombies. Only a handful of humans remain, including Columbus, trying to make his way to his home town, where he hopes his parents are still alive. Columbus has long been an outsider and somewhat phobic, which he uses to his advantage in avoiding zombies. In fact, zombies are not his greatest fear: clowns are.
Woody Harrelson and dork Jesse Eisenberg in a zombie flick? Well, you kinda get what you expect, a quite cheesy comedy, but the zombie part is very well done – and very graphic (almost feels real). After watching the opening scene I was completely hooked. See for yourself (wait for the opening credits part starting at 2:35!):
Zombie splatter in slow-mo accompanied by Metallica’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls”. An instant winner
It’s a pity the film cannot stand up to this brilliant start, it’s coming down to a quite good zombie comedy (Zombie Bill Murray, muhhaha), but towards the end it feels kind of random. I am impressed this film made it into the IMDB Top 250, well done!
I also have to state that I disliked the “senseless destruction” scene. Watching a bunch of Whities whacking an Indian store to pieces… felt kinda racist to me (yes, there was a cowboy, too, but come on, next time whack a Wall Mart!).
7.5/10 – a modern zombie comedy that almost rocks completely, almost …
Harddrive cleanup: returned from oblivion
Saturday, October 31st, 2009 | Language, Misc, Quirks | No Comments
OMG TEH SPAIDER WUZ THIS BIG!!11!!!!
So funny! Cleaning up my hard drive I found this lolcat … scary shit indeed!
For more of them have a look at my favourite lolcatz or visit icanhascheezburger!
Review: Paranormal Activity (2009)
Sunday, October 25th, 2009 | Movies, Reviews | No Comments
Who is afraid of the Kwyjibo? A couple is haunted by an entity that tortures them every now and then. This time it’ll be the last.
I was sooo happy seeing this film, because I expected something really spooky.
Heard about it, saw the rather high IMDb rating, got excited.
Here are some quotations from the cover (should have known these are NOT to be trusted):
“Paranormal Activitiy” is one of the scariest movies of all time. You will be affected as it’s hard to ignore the imprint it leaves on your psyche. Nightmares are guaranteed.
Don’t see it alone.
What I got was a pretty bad instalment that borrows from films such as Blair Witch, Poltergeist and The Grudge without ever becoming something that might play in the same league. In fact, it’s very dull except for the few moments when something is happening. These moments start promising, but just never evolve to something that really gets you. People might say that all happens in your head, well, for me it ended seeing the footsteps scene. Evil twin, dead stepmother, schizophrenia, all gone. Anyone call Mulder, please? Okay, Mr Spookaway explained that this entity is a demon rather than a ghost. This even allows for more nonsensical things happening, right? Lights on, lights off, wow!
There is also practically no such thing as a story, no twists and no explanations, just some knocking noises, a wind here and there and finally physical intervention of the invisible force. The shaking camera genre is once again used as an excuse for the absence of writer’s skill.
3.0/10 – A highly overrated and overhyped film. May only scare the unversed masses.
New word: placeholder
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 | Language, Quirks, Vocabulary | No Comments
I was pretty astonished finding out that this false friend is none.
If you are German, think for yourself whether you would have guessed that “placeholder” is indeed the correct translation of “Platzhalter“.
Xtreamer – the x264 1080p blackbox
Saturday, October 10th, 2009 | Gadgets, Reviews, Tech-savvy | No Comments
I was thinking about buying myself a new remote for my bedroom telly/pc combo, but I was not willing to pay 109 Euro for a (second) Logitech diNovo Mini. This thing is great for the big screen in the living room, where browsing and stuff also is a general requirement.
Anyway, I’ve heard about these media playback/streaming blackboxes being available for even less than a Logitech keyboard (including a remote )
After some googling I decided my blackbox should be able to
- playback x264 1080p mkv (and everything else that is “older” like well-known DivX/XviD)
- provide WLAN
- has the option to install a hard drive (I don’t want my NAS to be on 24/7)
- (optical out SP/DIF) – not really as long as it’s connected to a stereo TV only (bedroom!)
I found a device that sounded promising, the Xtreamer. Ordered it Wednesday evening, received it Friday morning – how cool is that? The setup is easy and working out of the box. Well, there are a few small downsides, the firmware is not yet 100% stable (YouTube not working…) but it is under constant development, or the fan being quite noticeable (but you can change the fan speed).
The (optional) hard disk installation was easy as well, open bay, insert disk, format, use.
All in all a nice little gadget which provides a lot for less than a hundred Euros. Let’s see how the long term tests will turn out (and what the 2.x firmware will be like).
8.0/10 – Quite cheap and almost a perfect media playback blackbox.
Review: Drag me to Hell (2009)
Saturday, October 3rd, 2009 | Movies, Reviews | No Comments
Sam Raimi strikes again! And he still knows how to do so! His “The Evil Dead” is a masterpiece horror classic (Beware! Remake approaching!), no doubt about that and he even did an outstanding job doing “Spiderman” – a completely different genre. Now he returns to classic horror and does not fail as so many other out there do all the time. The last film I remember that scared/thrilled/entertained me equally was “The Ring” remake (don’t tell!), and that’s quite a while ago. Since then I digested dozens of cheap boring horror wannabe flicks, “Drag me to Hell” being a most welcome exception.
Okay, a few words about the film without spoiling too much. First, it is not a remake of an Asian classic (w00t!). Second, it’s done by somebody who knows his profession – no low budget “my first director’s job” 5 kids in the wood spilling guts crap (again, the exception proofs the rule, right?). The story is basically “Don’t piss off any gipsies or they might curse you” with our main character almost unwillingly deciding to go for the curse – doh!
What I liked especially (apart from the perfect technical presentation of the flick) is that it does not focus on one stylistic device, but tortures the viewer on multiple levels. A recap of the my feelings that arose during the first “scary” scene: reserved, repelled, disgusted, embarrassed, intimidated, and finally horror-struck. I was trying to have my dinner watching that, for heavens sake
Watching “Drag me to Hell” made me somewhat feel like a kid watching “The Evil Dead” for the first time. I am happy that it is apparently not my fault that most of the so called horror movies out there just plainly bore me to death. I can now blame the directors/writers/producers, because even for a superficial western blockbuster it is possible to do a great entertaining job! Well done, everybody!
9.0/10 – Thanks for providing something that stands up to 80s horror classics and is not stealing from an already made film.
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