Inception

I've always been a little critical of Christopher Nolan's movies, not because I think they are bad but because I just haven't felt they lived up to the hype they seemed to generate ( especially The Dark Knight ).

Now along comes Nolan's latest movie Inception and again he's declared a genius and the movie is supposed to be one of the most amazing things to come out of Hollywood in years and this time it's almost true, Inception is a pretty good movie, it really is, I was a little disappointed with the end of the movie because it was the obvious thing to do with this type of film but despite that it was well worth watching.

There is one thing that confuses me, I'd heard that Inception was hard to understand and that the plot was confusing, I can only assume most of the people watching the movie weren't paying attention since they characters were constantly explaining what they were doing and why along with the consequences of their actions, if that was truly hard to follow then I suspect the viewers weren't paying any attention to the dialog spoken by the characters, it all seemed pretty straight forward, at least to me.

Inception is a movie I'd highly recommend and if Christopher Nolan manages to keep producing movies of this quality them his work will be something to look forward to for some time.

Robocop: The Series

I only ever saw a few episodes of Robocop: The Series and if you'd asked me before today I would've told you it was pretty bad.

For a little while now I've wanted to watch the series from beginning to end and it seems the DVDs are pretty cheap these days ( at least they are if you order them from Amazon UK ) so I ordered a set, so far I've only watched the pilot movie and the first regular episode ( which was based on a comic mini-series I also have ) and I thought they were actually pretty decent.

This series was made in the 90's for network television so of course it couldn't be as violent as the movies which I seem to recall was the cause for a lot of complaints and the TV series departs from the continuity established in the movie series.

The pilot movie was written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner who wrote the script for the original film and is based on their ideas for Robocop 2 which was abandoned when the studio decided to hire Frank Miller to write the screenplay and I think that's a real shame since with a Hollywood feature budget the pilot would've made a great feature film.

So far I've enjoyed what I've seen but it makes me wonder what one of the cable networks could do with this property if the got the rights to it and the people with the creative vision to do a modern Robocop TV series.

Well we made it.

Well it looks as though we survived Christmas without anyone winding up in hospital - well other than Fiona but she works there, at least this time she wasn't a patient.

Food and drink were consumed and far too much spent on presents but it was a reasonable day.

A movie marathon.

As a result of buying a new Plasma screen TV a couple of days ago I've watched a whole bunch of movies. oddly enough most of them weren't in high definition.


Gremlins - A Christmas eve tradition, it's the closest my daughter can get to convincing me to watch a Christmas movie ( either that or Die Hard ).

Robocop: The Future of Law Enforcement ( pilot movie for the TV series ).

Avatar ( Extended Edition ) - it's a fun movie I guess but I'm still failing to see what all the fuss is about.

Mr Vampire 2 - They don't make them like this anymore and that's a bit of a shame.

Family Guy: It's a Trap - Funny at times and not funny at others but I think three Star Wars spoofs is more than enough.

Lost in La Mancha - This documentary still makes me sad, hopefully Terry Gilliam will get to make his Don Quixote movie one day

John Carpenter's The Thing

Invasion of the Body Snatchers ( 1978 ) - This along with John Carpenters version of The Thing are two remakes of classic movies I really enjoy

Where does he get all those wonderful toys ?

We bought a new TV on sale yesterday, picked up this little number for a $1000 off the recommended retail price and Panasonic currently have a promotion in Australia  where you can get a five speaker surround sound system and blu-ray player for the cost of postage if you buy one of their 3D TVs, I don't need the surround system so I'm going to give to my daughter when it arrives.

This is the TV if anyone is interested

Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner

Last night I watched the Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner and I have to say I was pretty unimpressed.

I always though that roasts were supposed to be funny but this certainly wasn't, you got several comedians (?) and two of Shatner's Star Trek co-stars and the same jokes over and over and over again and they really weren't funny the first time, tasteless yes but not funny, for those who don't know Andy Dick is apparently bi-sexual and George Takai is gay which meant the show was dominated by anal and oral sex jokes which weren't funny.

I'd say this is easily the most disappointing thing I've watched in ages, what ever happened to the good old days when comedy was actually funny ?

More dresden Files

I've finished The Dresden Files I thought the first half of the season ( plus Storm Front ) wasn't very good but after that the remaining episodes of the show were solidly entertaining but I guess by then a lot of the audience had stopped watching which is a shame, there was some great stuff at the end especially episode 11. Things That Go Bump  which despite being an obvious bottle show was the pick of the series for me.