Asia Precinct

The Wellington Zoo opened a new area yesterday, the Asia Precinct, for their tigers and sun bears. Being a Zoo Crew member, I got in before the general public... too early, I have to say. Saw one resting tiger, and no bears (at least, not actual bears). Maybe later...

While I was there, also took video of The Roost, the Cool Creatures Up Close talk, the Green Zoo exhibit, and one special animal...

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Just a Minute

I'm slowly making my way through a slew of Just a Minute episodes. It's a great half-hour panel show that has caused me more than a few outbursts of laughter, and needing to pause a few times upon occasions to get some control back. The basic idea is to talk for a minute without hesitation, repetition or deviation. [This could be a great show to have during a convention.]

Paul Merton does very well. Clement Freud tends to go for the joke then bow out. Ross Noble is great at just blathering, Sue Perkins does better than she thinks, and Giles Brandreth did a great speech once for 75 seconds. I've only heard one old show (at time of writing), to which I say Derek Nimmo was great, but someone shut Kenneth Williams up please.

For the 45th Anniversary, they did televisual episodes. Check it out, although some of the peoples may look rather older than you remember...

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Ice Ice Ice Ice Age Baby

It's the fourth movie! Or maybe one of the earlier ones. It's repeating so many ideas it's hard to be sure.

Scrat kicks things off with breaking up the continents (because that's now how it happened according to American education), the crew are running around getting split up and trying to get back together... as they have done in every movie since the second one! (Was there one where they went to Hell, or am I imaging things...maybe it was just dinosaurs under the ground...) Only this time there are pirates. And, because it is his turn, Diego gets the love interest of Shira. And, yeah... if you've seen the earlier movies, you can guess entirely what's going to happen, and there it happens...

Of course we get the main actors returning, with added guests of Jennifer Lopez, Nick Frost and Alan Tyduk if you don't blink and miss him. Production style looks exactly like the other movies, but I'm not sure what advancement in that area would look like.

If you like the other movies... you've already liked this.

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The Meddle Min

Recently I finished an online course on the history of the internet. That didn't cover the pornography industry, which, while understandable, does skip over a large motivation for a lot of innovation. Perhaps it might have been able to get a few people to find out about that if it referred to this movie.

Based on a true story (yeah, right) of one of the producers (well, maybe then): two idiots set up a billing website, basically creating the idea of credit card transactions over the internet. They get rich, but, as mentioned, they are idiots. In comes Jack Harris, who establishes their business side, and slowly gets entranced into the pornographic side as well, to the detriment of his family. Then, mixing in a Russian mob, other people who are trying to screw over these people, and the FBI, it gets messier right up to the end.

I'm not sure I would go all out on 'comedy', but certainly 'nicely light' is appropriate. Luke Wilson is Jack, and he looks like he has put on a few pounds. Other actors scattered through this are Giovanni Ribisi, James Caan, Kevin Pollak, Rade Serbedzija and even a cameo by Kelsey Grammer.

This would be rather ignorable and generic, although the 'true story' nature does give it extra interest power.

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The I IInsiiide

Mystery. Sci-fi. Thriller. Yeah, I'd agree with those keywords. Although the sci-fi aspect is faint. Still, a mostly decent movie for the first hour.

Simon wakes up in 2002 after an accident... but he can't remember the past two years. But then it's two years ago, but he can still remember two years later... and what he does in the past can change the future...

There's a lot of mystery in the set-up. What happened to him? Why is he suddenly moving in time? Just who are these people, and what is his relationship to them? It's all quite interesting... but then they have to explain what is going on, and that's where it starts letting down. Let alone I made a fairly educated guess as to the real reason... and I was right. Kind of disappointing there.

I'm sure I've seen Ryan Phillippe before, other than just one movie. Sarah Polley and Piper Perabo were also faintly familiar. I did eventually recognise Robert Sean Leonard (the camera angles were bad), which would be... right before he got his role on House. And similar for others as well...

So, a mostly decent movie. Just cluttered and messy at the end.

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Retributive Evil Residents

Good news: if you are looking for an all-out action movie with a different set piece every five minutes, this is the perfect movie for you. Bad news: if you want a decent movie...

An Alice (at this point, who knows which Alice is real...) is busted out of an underwater Umbrella facility... and that's about it.

As this looks to be a set-up for another movie, there isn't anything substantial to this movie. What we get is set piece after set piece, with various not real sequences, or sequences that are real but not to Alice, or... possibly it's all just Paul W S Anderson's fantasy... but there is no actual story here. (And what pretense there was to a plot reminded me of bits of Alien movies.)

We get a lot of call backs to the previous movies, with reappearances from various characters (although I can't recall if they are the same character... or even the same actor). Milla Jovovich gets naked again, and Michele Rodriguez does some ass-kicking as she is want to. And a bunch of other people, but as everyone is basically just there to shoot, it doesn't matter.

Not a long film, and considering that there is a LOT of slow motion shots it should be even shorter. As a set-up to the next movie, fine, watch it, whatever... but go when it's cheap, and when you aren't interested in a plot.

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DW 7.4

This reminded me of The Lodger. In that the set up was a lot more thought out and worked better than the actual alien menace they had to tack on to explain it all.

So it is a very slow invasion indeed. Enough for us to see Amy and Rory live ordinary lives, interrupted by the Doctor. Which has been a common point across the previous episodes, but why be implicit when you can tell and not show? There are some nice moments in the build up... but let's face it, mainly due to Brian. The actual alien menace is a complete load of pants and solved with basically flipping a switch. No point to it really. (And why create androids with those large mouth pieces? What did that serve?) But at least it is all in the service of the ideal of being with the Doctor... (eyeroll)

And I'm calling bullshit on the heart attacks being reversed. If the cardiac arrest killed the person, they were dead long enough for severe brain damage if not permanent death, no matter how much zapping to the heart is done afterwards. And there is absolutely no way they are just getting up and walking away. Complete fail there while trying to get an 'everybody lives' moment. Just... fail.

As for Kate Stewart [not sure how this links with Downtime, but I will credit them with using the same name... hang on, does this mean Marc Platt gets the royalties?], it reads like they (Chibnall and Moffat) forced in a connection to evoke the Brigadier...which didn't work. Marc did the daughter far more realistically. Can we consign her to the pile of recurring characters that should be referenced again but never are? (As opposed to someone making a return.)

An attempt, but better luck next time...but please don't force the title so badly, not when 'The Year of the Slow Invasion' would have been far better, and probably was the original title...no wait, the original was 'Cubed'...sigh... Fail, guys... just... fail.

Next time: They are in this huge sweeping city... so why does it look like it's going to get set inside one building?

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