Star Trek - Into Darkness (2013): Like a Bond movie in space....

Critic 1

When I go to see a Star Trek movie I would like to see epic space fights, exotic new races (Klingon's at least) and hear some double minded comments from captain Kirk. What I do not want to see is a copy of the Moonraker. I wasn't overly surprised though. The plot was what I feared based on the trailers I saw. Apart of the evident lack of proper space fights the movie was really nice. Especially the visual effects were extremely good. Plot was ok but as I said I expected something else. An acceptable date movie. Even a total Star Trek n00b can appreciate the visual effects of this movie.

Critic 2

This is a next Star Trek movie in a new timeline. The movie begins about from the situation were the previous one was left. The beginning of the movie was very good and hooked the watcher. In my opinion the setting for the plot the were very interesting and movie dealt with the issues quite satisfyingly. Well, there were some holes in the plot if you think too carefully, but during the movie I didn't pay much attention to these. I think three main actors were exceptionally good. Visual effect were pretentious and nice to watch. If you liked  the the previous Star Trek movie you will probably like this one too. 

Judgement Star: Into Darkness (2013).

G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013) : Total waste of time.

Critic 1

 

The first G.I. Joe was a passable movie with some eye candy and weaknesses related to... Well... Everything. Sequel on the other hand has dropped all the good parts (most notably the Scarlett) and left only the crap left.  The plot is weak and senseless, acting is mostly second class and so on... Stay away.

Critic 2

 

This movie is a sequel to first G.I.Joe movie. I have to admit, that I didn't remember what happened in the first movie, so first minutes I was wondering who are this guys and what is happening. But soon it was told who are the bad guys and good guys. Maybe I needed to have some information about the characters in advance from old comics or from somewhere, since some twists in the plot seemed highly illogical. Well, graphics were nice sometimes. 

Judgement Star: Close to B class movie...

A Good Day to Die Hard (2013): Let the John McClane finally die....

Critic 1

 

As a die hard fan of Die Hard movies I'm appalled.  This piece of art is totally unaligned compared with the true John McClane  films. All the humour is gone and the once so fluent storytelling and greater than life goons are missing.... Now I just felt that " This is what really cheap movie looks..." And  John McLane was lamer than ever... There was a Mi-24 flying around  and John is known to have taken flying lessons. Conclusion based on the old films is obvious and highly anticipated but no.... Keep clear. Do not bother your date.

Critic 2

 

Die Hard saga continues. The idea of the movie sounded very good, John Mclane meets his son after long time. From the previous Die Hard movies I understood that the idea of movie saga was that John McClane just happens to be there in the middle of action accidentally. This time he went straight to car chase and things started to crash. Also a character development scenes could have been less obvious. In the previous Die Hard movies there were more (funny and stupid) jokes included or maybe I remember wrong. The storyline and movie felt rushed, a cheap copy of some unknown (super)agent film. I also wondered why the aspect ratio of film screen wasn't that wide as usually in movies today. I think Die Hard saga deserves far better movies than this kind.  

The Judgement Star: Very close to be a B-movie.

  

Zero Dark Thirty (2012): Nothing surprising here.

Critic 1

 

I was wondering when somebody starts with the "USA rules" movies about the war on terror. This was in a such a fairly good movie. The story was more about individual stubbornness than superiority of a nation. But to be honest I have the feeling that the main character is not a real one and she is written in only to twist the knife in the wound. The ending was naturally spoiled long ago but the happenings after 9/11 and their links to the hunt of O.B.L were very interesting. Not really a date movie I'd say. The interrogation scenes may ruin the mood...

Critic 2

This was a movie about a hunt for a terrorist. Everyone know how the movie will end so there is nothing new in there. But the movie was well made and you still wanted to know what happened next. The style of the movie reminded a documentary and somewhat cold leading role fitted this style. Movie also represented refreshingly different female role what I have seen in long time.  For me it was hard to figure out what a director really wanted to say with this movie and I'm not sure did I get it. The movie was pretty long, but it didn't feel that long. The plot development was well done.   

Judgement Star: A fair movie.

        

Django Unchained (2012): Beat those white sorry asses!

Critic 1

 

Tarantino's newest does not leave anybody cold. You either love it or you hate it.  Christoph Waltz makes excellent work as a German born dentists who's noted that killing people makes more money than healing them.  Jamie Foxx plays a part of an shining black knight rescuing a damsel in distress. When the plot is laid  down the movie rolls on nicely and the body count rises steadily. There is a kind of lapse during the end game but who cares. This is exactly what you would expect out of western made by Quentin Tarantino. Maybe not for the first dates though.

Critic 2

 

A new movie by Quentin Tarantino. A western about a topic rarely discussed in western movies, namely, slavery. Basic themes are familiar from previous movies by Tarantino, a lot of lively discussions and violence. But again marvellously talking is not boring and almost three hours went quickly. If you liked Tarantino's previous movies you will probably like this one too, although in my opinion this is not one of the best movies from him. The leading actors were really great again, but storyline starts to fall apart towards to the end and this is the biggest minus of the movie. 

Judgement Star: A very good movie.

   

Book: Judas Unchained - Peter F. Hamilton

May the aliens shiver...

 

A sequel to the Pandora's Star  tells the story of the epic end game of the struggle between humans and the evil aliens the Primes. Not very surprisingly humans prevail after some moral dilemmas which are solved by an unruly hippie... Of course. The story flows nicely without unnecessary stalls. For a fairly long book (~1000 pages) its very fast to read. As a stand-alone book this will not work. It's expected that you know what happened before.

Conspiracy by Apple...?

 

One odd detail stole my attention. There were several references in Finnish things. Like one minor character and a planet named after a Finnish town. And make no mistake. The low Finnish birth rate will make sure that no planets will be named after our towns. At first they kind of seamed out of place and my crooked mind instantly thought  " Could it be that Apple modifies the details of the books based on the purchase location... " Damm... Changing these minor details would bring just enough patriotism in to raise the future sales.  But no. Hamilton has made these references before. Shame. No hidden conspiracy there. But I claim the idea of modified details myself (if it's unclaimed.)


A nice book indeed.

Forget it! - Take it as a gift - Buy it from a discount - Buy a hard cover - For the prime spot on the shelf     

Book: Pandora's Star - Peter F. Hamilton

 

Solid but unsurprising universe...

 

The first part of the commonwealth saga paints a very plausible view of the human society in the not-so-distant future. Humans live practically forever - if the wallet allows - and humans are more or less under one government. Nothing really extraordinary here. Contrary to mainstay stories the space flight does not have so big role in this book. A refreshing exception, although towards the end of the book it started to become more prominent. The bad alien in this book is described chillingly good. The motivations behind the alien actions are told and the pure inhumanity tingles my spine... 

Storytelling like in the Game of Thrones

There is no single main character in the book. Much like in the certain very popular fantasy and middle-age related book series. And I like it. It lets the tension build up or lets you breathe when the main flow of the book demands it and splits the book into a manageable chunks.

A very entertaining but not so overly exceptional book.

Forget it! - Take it as a gift - Buy it from a discount - Buy a hard cover - For the prime spot on the shelf   

-Critic#1 

Juoppohullun päiväkirja (2012): Hasling around without ending...

 

Critic 1

 

Usually Finnish movies are dark whining stories about hardness of life. It was very entertaining to see a movie where the hardships of everyday life were systematically bypassed and life lived with a full throttle.... With help of booze but who cares? Story itself was very mediocre and without proper ending with some very disturbing but plausible details from professional drunks life. Joonas Saartamo plays the main character extremely well, I'd say he will get some Finnish equivalent of Oscar because of the role. Take care that your date can handle bad language, vomiting and gay porn scenes.

Critic 2 

 

Movie is about a Finnish man, who is addicted to alcohol. The king named alcohol is everything to him, but then he meets a girl. An overall plot sounds like ordinary romantic movie. But this is a Finnish movie about a shabby man with an irony and without colors of roses. The movie was better than I expected, I thought it would be all mindless fiddling. There is a lot of that too, but also a plot. But there could have been a little bit more of a real plot, since the movie felt a bit too long, even the length of the movie was only about one and half hours. The ending pointed towards to sequel too clearly. But I have to admit that this movie wasn't so depressing as so many other Finnish movies.

The Judgement Star: A movie with some weak points.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) - Feels like a fairytale.

Critic 1

 

First of all I have to mention that we saw the HFR version of this movie and oh boy... It was really worth it... Picture was sharp as life it self and the annoying blurring of movement was totally gone. Some corners were cut though but not too badly. Otherwise the movie was as expected. Nothing extraordinary with the plot (if you have read the book), or with the characters. If you can survive the dish washing scene in the beginning (you'll know) this is a really good movie. Just make sure to wear a pointy hat in the theater and make sure that your date is OK with that.  

Critic 2

 

This is a movie about a novel by Tolkien. A hobbit will have a big adventure. I was surprised how well it merged in the similar world with the movies from the Lord's of the rings by the same director. The 3D effects were better than usual, a new technique seem to be promising. I liked the movie although some similar scenes with LOTR movies could have been filmed from different angles. I liked a bit slow phase of the movie and in the end after almost three hours I would have still wanted to stay in the theater and watch more.  

Judgement Star: The Hobbit is a very good movie.

Book: The Fractal Prince - Hannu Rajaniemi

How confused you can get..?

 

If you have not read the Quantum Thief  you can stop here. There is no point to read further.

The Fractal Prince starts where the Quantum Thief ended. The mystical thing made by one of the not-properly-introduced fractions is doing something to mess the bandwidth or something....

A very hard to read book, totally impossible if you have not read the previous book by Hannu Rajaniemi. If you can leave your day work and read this word by word then you may have some chance....

 -Critic#1

Despite (or because) of the complicated nature a very unique book.

Leave it in trash - Take it as a gift - Buy it from a discount - Buy a hardcover - For the prime spot on the shelf

Star Trek - Generations (1994): And Captain Kirk saves the day.

 

 

Critic 1

 

The first Star Trek movie with Captain Picard shows promise in the beginning but turns down to metaphysical mumbojumbo. Again the crew of the Enterprise fights mystical forces and evildoers with grater-than-life plans, a bunch of Klingons are mixed in the soup and dead Captain Kirk shows up. So it is a common day in the Star Trek universe. The visual effects are clearly better than in the previous Star Trek movies and there is even a minor space fight. As a date movie... Are you kidding? You are a Star Trek fan. You don't have a real date... 

Critic 2

 

The Star Trek saga continues with the next generation. The story stars a bit slowly, but improves later. The ideas in the storyline are diverse, but plot doesn't grab a full usage of them. Computer generated graphics are nice although not spectacular. The ending feels a bit prolonged but by thinking of a story it is justified. I got the feeling that this is a transition movie and next movie will fully focus on next generation and I will see a real space adventure. 

Judgement Star: Generations is an average movie.

 

Imaginaerum (2012): Bizarre in a good way.

 

Critic 1

 

Usually when a band has some issues with their old members they trash the issue in the popular media and downplay as much as they can. But the Nightwish made a movie... Movie itself is very unorthodox and surprising in both weird and captive ways and very touchy. There is no telling what comes next.. Unfortunately the acting is not up to standards and being "a musical" there is less music you would expect. Visually the movie was quite nice. Specially the final scenes.  If you want to see something different this is for you. 

 

Critic 2

 

The Nightwish band made a movie. Initially I thought that it would be a musical, but the movie included surprisingly few musical performances. Somehow I was hoping to see more of them. The best in the movie were music and dreamy visions, unfortunately the basic storyline was nothing new. But if the storyline would have been complicated maybe movie would have been difficult to understand. The dreams and "real" story folded together nicely. The computer effects also looked fine. Actors were actually good and I'm glad that they chose real actors in roles instead amateurs.

Judgement Star: A fair movie with some weaknesses.

Looper (2012): A ruined future indeed..

Critic 1

 

Our dear western culture teaches us that the life of a child is precious and must be protected at any cost. But is it so? In the wild weak, ill and young are the first to perish. In this movie our basic values around this topic are tested... Along with some physics laws. Besides different than usual motivation the plot of the movie is a standard seek-and-kill, bad versus even worse and so on.  In general a good movie without a special edge. A solid option as a date movie.

Critic 2

 

Looper is a science fiction movie with time traveling. But somehow time traveling theme is more intelligent than usually and also other themes in the movie as well. A cyclic nicely written plot leaves some mysteries to the watcher, but you shouldn't think them too much after the movie. During the movie you can just relax and enjoy the movie or you can start thinking all the thing related to time traveling. Luckily also the movie acknowledges this. Actors are better than usually.     

Judgement Star: Looper is a nice movie

 

 

Argo (2012): Ben Affleck's best... So far.

 

 Critic 1

 

Oh... The old times. It was allowed to smoke in the airplane and champagne was served even in the economy class... And there was a need for proper spies. And you really have to honor the bravery of these men. The story that Argo tells is not possible anymore. It's all too high tech nowadays. The plot of the movie is based on a true story and nice it is. Not too high flying to be unbelievable but tricky enough to be really captivating. Not much of action and the few computer effects were really lame. Setting these minor details aside Ben does a good job with this movie both as a leading actor and as a director. Argo is a good movie. Take your date to see it. 

 

Critic 2

 

Based on true story, this movie tells about an agent trying to save lives in the 70s. There was a revolution in Iran. Plot develops nicely and there are exciting moments, and you don't know how it will end (or maybe someone has heard the story in advance). The plot is realistic, no booming action scenes, but it doesn't matter. Couple of times I was thinking that did it really happened this way in reality, but in whole this moments didn't matter. Not a brilliant but a good movie with feeling of the 70's.    

Judgement Star: Argo is a good movie. Even with Ben Affleck.

Game: Angry Birds Star Wars - Business as usual.

May the bird be with you....

First of all I'm not a very big Angry Bird fan. It's nice game as it is but just too simple for me. Pointing and shooting just does not take you very far... If you are older than 5 years...

Anyhow I decided to give this a try. I downloaded the game from iTunes store on my iPad 2 with a prize of a coffee cup or two. My budget can just cope with that...

On with the game

I have some earlier versions of AB on my phone and iPad so I was surprised of the fact that this version of the game was somewhat harder to play than the previous ones. The view over the "battleground" was too tight by default and zooming left the slingshot too near to the left edge of the field. This again causes accidental shots when the finger slips over the edge of the screen. 

The game experience otherwise is similar with the other AB's. You basically point and shoot. The Star Wars theme brings some nice perks in it but is it enough? Well with this prize yes it is. And some of the levels are pretty tough if you aim for the full stars.

Beware of the mammal side in you...

 

AB is a very good business to the Rovio I recon. A simple and very addictive game.... With a dark side. To my understanding the Rovio's privacy policy states that they reserve the right to collect "non-personal" data as they wish. They should at least ask weather it's OK during the first use or something...

So if you can cope with the mild breach of privacy this is worth of your money.

-Critic#1

Star Trek - The Undiscovered Country (1991): Orders... Disobey naturally.

Critic 1

 

For once the Captain Kirk has to deal with a non-epic enemy. This time he just has to deal with Klingon empire and traitors within Starfleet. And it's a good thing. For once there is a room for proper plot development and character introduction. The epic enemy and the psychedelic images of it are not stealing the show as in some of the earlier Star Trek movies. Nice computer effects in not-so-80's style and suitable amount of action and drama. But the epic space battles were still missing. As always with the classic Star Trek movies to be watched only with a special date.   

 

Critic 2

 

This movie of Star trek saga kind of reminds me of a detective story. A peace treaty lies on an uncertain ground and the crew of the Enterprise has to save the day. The story starts a bit slowly, but when it gets going it keeps watchers interest in high level all the time. Story proceeds nicely and steadily. Sadly there are not big space fights or epic visions from outer space. But it's not a bad thing that story was not left behind of special effects. 

Judgement Star: The undiscovered Country is one of the best classic Star Treks.

Skyfall (2012): The best Bond movie so far...?

Critic 1

 

Impeccable outlook, fast cars and bold determination that the bad guys don't actually score hits. This is what I expect from the 007 character. And how I disappointed.... In a good way. Now our Mr. Bond gets shot and even slightly ragged. A human touch on the previously so inhumanly cool character. Barring the character development this was a business as usual Bond movie. The girls were beautiful (but surprisingly few) and villains were in general no mach for 007. I could spot one or two cut corners in the visual effects but nothing catastrophic. A solid choice as a date movie.  

Critic 2

 

In this latest movie James Bond is more serious than ever, most of jokes and scifi gadgets are gone. But a certain realism fits in the mood of the movie, even Bond shows signs of being only a normal human, but without loosing his coolness as being an iconic character. Some scenes reveal realistic filming beauty, which I didn't expect to see in the Bond movie. I really liked the style of the movie, when despite being an action movie it wasn't an hyperactive one, which seem to be a current trend in action movies.    

Judgement Star: A nearly perfect movie.

Star Trek - The Final Frontier (1989): Uhura! One for the team.

The journey trough the Star Trek box continues.... 

Critic 1

 

After the mild disappointment with the Voyage Home the fresh and unruly spirit of this movie was a pleasant surprise. The first part of the movie was especially lively. The opening desert and bar scenes and Uhura's dance scene were really something out of the blue. The plot of the movie is really good. You just could not see the final goal of the bad guys before it was revealed... And astonishing it was. The visual effects had this 80's feel in them (and I hate it) but what what is done is done. The life goes on. This is a movie to be watched with an extraordinary date.    

Critic 2

 

This movie of Star Trek saga started maybe a bit surprising scenes, but after a while adventures in space continued. Although the staring of the movie was made with relaxed mode it was well made and conflicts were promised. A plot was somehow above the average. I liked the theme of dreams.

The Judgement Star: A good movie.

iPad 2: A really expensive pdf reader?

Where is the USB port? Where is the memory card slot?

 

This falls under the stuff I guess...

I got my iPad 2 from the after Xmas sales near the end of year 2011 (a customer return piece) and I think that it's time to share some of my feelings about it.

First of all it's beautiful, sleek body design and sharp and responsive display. I tried some styluses but noticed very soon that they are not really needed. At least my stubby fingers are accurate enough.

I thought that I would be using the pad as a notebook at the work or lectures but no... The text input was not good enough for it and - to be honest - hand writing works better with a piece of paper.

Another thing I originally planned to use the pad was making of fast drawings. And in this my iPad really excels. You can find really good drawing programs with reasonable prize. Shame that I don't really need to do that so often.

But whatever I create the biggest problem is always "How to move the file". Without any data ports the only viable option is to use email (or something similar). And that just pisses me off every time.

In the endgame I have been using my iPad as a pdf reader or just to surf the internet. And I guess that for example this (in Finnish... Sorry) would do the same things with a much less credit exchange.

- Critic #1

Leave it in trash - Take it as a gift - Buy it from a discount - Buy it full prize - Steal it from the factory

PS. This is for Technorati blog claim Y2MEJCX897UY 

Book: Caliban's War - James S.A. Corey

"A couple of fast movers..."

The second part of the Expanse series is a solid piece of science fiction. The storytelling follows the same GRRM lines than the Leviathan Wakes with a slightly better result. The characters are wide apart long enough to create the feeling of vastness. And this time there are more of them. Again I'm very happy that at least the humans obey the laws of physics and the aliens are not in the spotlight all the time. I was disappointed with the lack of epic space fights when the settings were right and guns were cocked... This book has a less "Friedmanian" touch in it than the Leviathan Wakes had. The rich actually gets what they deserve.

A very good book. Go for it.

- Critic #1

Leave it in trash - Take it as a gift - Buy it from a discount - Buy a hardcover - For the prime spot on the shelf