11.22.63 Episode 1 Review

Story

The episode starts off with an ederely man telling his tale on Halloween on how his family was murdered by his father with a hammer and the camera slowly panning out. This really sets the tone for the rest of the episode, with the bone chilling ephaasis on the story. The ederely man is taking (at what i can only guess) is an adult class. James Franco, one of the main Reasons why the show will be popular. He's the teacher of the class. everyday James (Jack), he goes to a 50's style diner and has a hamburger everyday. he's served by a friendly guy in his late 50's, early 60's. They have a strong relationship. Jack's wife comes into the diner and signs the divorce papers and after his wife leaves, the waiter of the diner comes back from in a blind panic, shortness of breath and falls straight on the floor. This is when the plot thickens. Jack and the waiter tells him to grow the closet door to explain why he's in teh particlar condition That he is. Jack goes through the door and gets Transported to the 1960's. Jack does not know what's going on, then he goes back to present day and it turns out the waiter was trying to figure and stop the JFK Assassination. he's been gathering the evidence and go back in time on the track who and who to kill.

It's really nice to see all the things we say in today's age and all of our nouns and verbs That in use in our day to day life are an extreme oddity back in the 1960's. This is also Including technlogies. Jack takes his iPhone with him and it drops out of his pocket and he actually uses the phone to distract someone.

If you're wondering, how would he be able to fit himself with the scene, well the waiter took down sports scores and he also has a drivers license, social security number.

The closet transports you to the 1960's. it's not a simple time machine, all it does and transport you to a single point in time always. does not matter how long you're spending in the present, when you go through That closet, that date of transportation will never change. so if you wanted to visit the 1970's, you'd have to wait the respective amount of time.

It was noted That if you go back to the 1960's and then change anything in the past, it would change the future dry as as the butterfly effect but if you changed anything you'd see the changes but if you Decided to go back into the closet, it would literally be like wiping the slate clean.

Conclusion

I found the show very engaging for every minute of it and i'm not sure if it's going to wear off over time but i'm really looking forward to the next episode. Hopefully That the episode are not always an hour and 20 minutes. It felt a little bit too long for my liking but rest asured the episode was entertaining throughout.

Chef 2014 Review

Chef

Story

What i’ll do, i’ll start you off with the story and then i’ll tell you my opinions.

The story starts with a chef who’s got a history with a certain critic and the chef is currently working for a restaurant that has been doing the same food for the past ten years. During this time, the critic is going to pay a visit to the restaurant. The Chef being played Jon favaru, who’s directed IronMan 1 & 2. he’s appeared in Youtube celebrity Freddie wong’s video and one of his most notable and probably one of his best known acting roles would be playing the millionaire and Monica’s Boyfriend for a short while in Friends. Anyway. THe chef finds out the critic is visiting his restaurant soon so he’s trying to change to menu to something for delicate and something more unique. Dustin Hoffman (The manager of the restaurant) doesn’t want him to change the menu in the restaurant because the chef previously changed the menu to his liking and it didn’t sell very well. so the manager and the chef get into a little argument about how the restaurent runs. The chef decides to leave and sees how the restaurant survives without him. The critic comes, reviews the food and as he’s leaving the chef comes back and starts ranting and raging about his previous bad reviews. The chef decides to start up his own business starting from a foodtruck by selling sandwiches with gourmet style dishes and entries. by none of the stretch of the imagination, this is not a spoiler, they become very successful.

During this entire time, Jon is finding it hard to spend time with his son as he’s struggling to manage his social life, his work and his son. Whilst Jon is building his sandwich van, he asks his son to help out and the son is getting better and better and more and more confident as the film goes on.

The film has a very old style theme with the style of shooting and the way things are phrased but by also bringing it in for the new generation by bringing in new technology and buzz words that the younger generation can relate to. Twitter, Vine and One Sec videos play a massive role and they aren’t a ploy or a sponsor by any stretch. they fit twitter and vine organically into the script and the screenplay.

Performance

The acting is tremendous, The cast is only helped with the introduction to the characters and that helps you bring in an understanding of these characters. For a small film that i know didn’t get a massive reception when it was first released has really got a huge cast of upper hollywood stars. Jon Favreau which is the Writer/Director and he’s the lead role. as a said before Dustin Hoffman. Robert Downey Jr and Scarlett Johansson. Yes you’ve got Iron man and Black widow and this could have been caused because all these three people have worked together in previous films and they are also fantastic friends that always compliment each other and you can see that chemistry between them on screen.

Conclusion

The only problem i have with the film i that the movie starts with off with the chef wanting to make tasty meals but also presented really well. Something that you’d see in a five star restaurant and he corrects his menu to suit his needs, the chef disappears and puts together his own food truck selling sandwiches. Excuse me, i thought he wanted to have a restaurant selling gourmet food not sandwiches. but as me of writing this review, it’s not about the chef's journey through his food career, i’ve realised that it’s him building a relationship with his son and always being right by him and always being there for him.

The film was fantastic, I’d highly recommend watching it, it’s got one of the best uplifting stories with a great cast of people and it suit all generations.

Ant Man Review

Ant Man

Visuals

THe visuals were fantastic, special effects are getting better everyday and with every improvement of the marvel franchise, they are never slowing down. The visuals for Ant Man were on a much smaller scale, THis is the most realistic marvel film that they’ve made. All of the other marvel films have been set in over the top action scene with aliens/robots/systems fighting against each other. The repercussions of say Avengers Age of Ultron where a portion of a town hurdling towards earth and an alarming rate that it lead to extinction of the entire planet. With Ant man, The repercussions aren’t so drastic because they’ve been scaled down. Obviously the characters could die but us as a species isn’t threatened by this down-scaled marvel super hero adventure.

One of the fight scenes were set around the thomas the tank engine playset and they were fantastic, i’ve never actually laughed at a fight scene. Up close, Ant Man is dodging everything that’s thrown at him and especially the thomas the tank engine train coming steaming towards him, resulting in death. THe camera quickly zooms out and shows that the train just falling off the track.

Story

The Story of Ant Man was a natural hero's tale, The hero in question doesn’t know/incapable of being a superhero and then somewhere out of the blue obtains these abilities from a suit or an injection. On this occasion he obtains these abilities from a suit. Paul Rudd plays Paul Rudd and you may be saying that sounds stupid but if you’ve ever seen two films with Paul Rudd in them, you’ll know what i’m talking about. Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) has been in and out of prisons for most of his life, for Armed robberies, Breaking and entering etc and during the start of the film, he’s just being released from prison. he gets fired from baskin robbins for being an Ex-Con. he gets back to his apartment where his roommate and his friends are there and they speak of a score that’s locked away in a highly protected safe. Scott then becomes an engineer, a crafty and scientist and there’s no explanation of where he gets these skills from...Anyway. he breaks open this safe and there’s nothing in the safe...except this suit so instead of leaving with nothing, he decides to make the good out of a bad situation and take the suit. He puts on the suit and there’s no buttons on the suit right near where his thumbs lie. he presses both of these buttons and he shrinks down to...you guessed it, the size of an ant. This is where Michael Douglas comes into play. Michael Douglas now uses Scott Lang for his breaking in skills, throw some baddies in there and you’ve got the rest of the plot of the movie.

Performance

The more you think about the film, the more you think that Paul Rudd playing Ant Man is just basically playing the same character like he does in every film he’s been in. Which isn’t a bad thing, Paul Rudd Playing as Ant Man, was kind of the sarcastic wit and the comedic role that it close to Ryan Reynolds playing as Deadpool. Obviously nothing can beat deadpool in his wit but no other marvel superhero other than deadpool and Ant Man has that banter.

Conclusion

Ant Man was a thrilling film and i’d happily watch it again and not to see what easter eggs are in there but also pick up on story arcs that i might not has seen before. Michael Douglas and Paul Rudd work well together as a team. you’ve even got the weird advert that was used to promote ant man.

Here’s a link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpPx7E27Bc8

Saving Mr Banks Review

Saving Mr Banks

Sound Design

When i was watching Saving Mr Banks, most of/all of it was sound cues or sound bits taken from the Mary Poppins Movie. it was elegant and it made you remember of a time gone by.

Story

As for me, i didn’t watch the trailer and i didn’t read anything about the film before actually watching it. so i didn’t see any promotional material before i watched the film. I was surprised by what i was greeted with. it was a thrilling experience to watch, to be honest, i started watching the film, just to kill some time and i was playing a game on my phone whilst i was watching it but i had to go out somewhere so i paused the film and when i came back, i left my phone alone but not on purpose because i was so excited and eager to see where the story could go that i didn’t even think of going on my phone. This makes me sound like a typical teenager but i’ve watched films in the past and i’ve looked round and there’s other people on their phones and i think it’s a disgrace. I was watching the revenant with my mum and my other half and they were both on their phones and i was completely engrossed by the atmosphere of that movie but that’s details for another review.

sorry for rambling on. Basically the story starts off with Mrs Travers in her house with a load of disney merchandise and that has been collected over the years by her but these are not things that she has bought, these are gifts sent personally by walt disney and the reason for this is, Mary Poppins, the beloved children’s book and fantastic cult classic was actually written by Mrs Travers and the reason why Walt Disney is sending all these gifts is to persuade in selling the rights of mary poppins to the Disney Corporation. she’s repeatedly said no so eventually she’s got sick of the gifts/offers so she decides to go to disney and confront Walt Disney himself to decline him in person.As Mrs Travers is leaving the disney, she hears a song coming from the building so she decides to go back in and it’s actually the songwriters of mary poppins and she says, if you’re going to do the movie, at least give it justice. so most of the film is her turning down and destroying the ideas of the creators. One moment is when she put off by the colour red so she decides that she doesn’t want the colour red to be in the movie. As the film is set in london, there’s Phone booths, Post boxes that are coloured red.

The performance is backed up tremendously by a great cast. Tom Hanks for starters plays Walt Disney and he plays him very well. Whilst being a businessman but you can also see that he is still a little child at heart and he’s never lost that touch. Mrs Travers was played by Emma Thompson and she was such a brilliant actor that i didn’t even realise that it was infact her. She played the role very well.

Conclusion

The film was heart warming and throughout the film, you were either loving and loathing all the characters. You wanted Walt Disney to win but then you wanted Mrs Travers to win and once they came to an equal ground, it was only then when you felt so proud and so gracious of the entire situation.

The only thing and it’s a minor thing about the film would be, it took you out of the action at some places to have a juxtaposition segment and as i said before this is review that i was on my phone. When i looked up on my computer screen, i thought NetFlix had changed the film but it turns out, that it was the scenario but presented through Mrs Travers Memory.

For a film i had no expectations for, i’d happily give it a 7/10. One of the reasons for it’s minor success was the actors and their pull alone persuaded me to play the movie.

Avengers Age of Ultron Review

The movie that kicks off the summer of summer Blockbusters has got to be the best film that I’ve seen so far this year and I’ve seen a lot of films. Films that are from the 1960’s and onwards. Avengers Age of Ultron is so good. It’s only been out at the Cinemas since 25^th April (Including Premiere Screening) and I’ve already seen it twice.

The story

From the Start of the Movie it’s immediately into the action. A town that will play a bigger role later on in the film (Slovenia Town) the bad Men in this Town has got a Tesseract, The Item in which Loki had in the first film which is was able to control anybody. The Avengers have travelled to the town to get the item back, fighting waves and waves of enemies. Using the new Drone that Joss Whedon (The director) He was able to go above and beyond with his camera angles.

There’s one continuous shot in the first avengers film when the camera is going from avenger to avenger. Panning Tilting and churning in all kinds of directions then eventually the camera coming to create one of the best establishing shots of all time.  All shots from avenger to avenger were made of all different Composites all coming together. Whereas with the drone, The camera can go in and out of itself going from different camera angles just using one shot and adding in the special effects later of For example The hulk, Captain America with his Shield and then Thor using his mix of Strength and Lightning abilities that he can bring down a storm from the sky.

Just before claiming the tessaract. There’s twins within the town building, One boy and one girl. The boy is QuikSilver who has the ability to run at the speed of sound and he’s also able to slow time as well. The girl is Scarlett Witch, Which she has Telekinetic abilities, She’s also got the ability to induce fear and make them see theirs fears that they’ve got hidden within them. Just before Tony Stark grabs the tessaract, the girl induces tony with his fear that the earth will end in destruction and all of the avengers died. His nightmare is in some ways pretty straightforward: He sees all his teammates dying around him, and Captain America scolds him for not doing everything he could to stop this fate. Tony Stark Grabs the Tessaract using his Iron Man Fist and enrol the title screen with epic music.

Tony Stark has a dream of building a robot around the world protecting citizens from anything dangerous. With this dream, he can’t implement Jarvis to an army of robots that would be sustainable around the world so he’s had a vision of creating an operating system that can think for itself and do things for itself without user interaction. This is where the Tessaract comes in. Jarvis and Tony scan the tessaract and they see that it’s everything that they’ve been looking for. An operating system that can think for itself. They run some tests and configurations to implement the tessaract’s code within Jarvis’s mainframe but it then starts thinking for itself and taking over the entire Stark operation. The android named Ultron is planning taking over the world and creating the world in his vision which is causing a mass extinction for the human race so the only thing that is left are robots. This leads to the rest of the film.

Ultron’s Vision could only be successful if he obtained the strongest metal on earth which is the same material captain America’s shield is made off. Ultron Searches the internet’s database and he finds out that it’s been produced off an African coast. Ultron have gone to the coast to steal the Adamantium and the avengers shortly follow. Iron Man, captain America and thor are fighting again Ultron, a few of his minions, Quicksilver and Scarlett watch. Everything is going well for the avengers, they look like they were going to win the fight until Scarlett which induces the fear within captain America, thor and Black widow which switches back and forth from their fear induced dreams. Black widow’s dream is becoming an avenger and a stonecold killer in a very bright and secluded ballet room. Captain America’s dream is being brought back to the events of the second world war with a massive ballroom filled with people from his past and Thor’s Dream makes him go to a mythology place with all of his friends but they’re all dead and they blame Thor for their fate. The next shot is Bruce banner asking Tony ‘is it code green’ and over the muffled radio tony replies with ‘yes’ so Bruce opens the back of the stationary plane. It cuts to a shot of the twins with Scarlett witch saying ‘I want to go after the big guy’.

Iron Man vs The Hulk Fight

This is by far the best Marvel Battle that has ever been presented in the Marvel Universe. Bruce Banner actually reveals his true hulk. During this battle, you haven’t just got the Iron Man suit but you’ve also got Vanessa. A system that is previously discussed in the film where it’s only purpose is to diffuse the Hulk from his true self. The special effects of this scene alone are utterly amazing. Granted some of the shots when Iron man and the hulk are both in the sky with each other and scraping themselves against the building, the shots are quite fast and sometimes I didn’t know what was going on. This is obviously a testament to special effects nowadays, these special effects with a team of beyond 50 people are creating these and these people work on each shot for days on end yet there’s no exxageration for the special effects at all anymore. When Jaws came out, the shark was only spoke about and the last 30 minutes of the movie, you actually saw the shark and you actually saw it in action but this was due to the robot shark that steven speilberg and his team created. Steven speilberg wanted the shark to appear more often through the film but due to the cost of the shark and the technical difficulites they had. They had to limit their time.

One of the final battles, Vision goes from the thighs of the robots up to his head, using a striking and fast force and this is only slowed down by 70% and there’s a hell of a lot of stuff happening in the background as well, especially with the other avengers using their powers to fight against the army of robots (ultrons).

During the exact same scene, the camera is churning, tilting, shafting and the camera movements are so smooth, Most of it is CGI, mainly done in 3DS Max and Maya and after effects. All working together for the best viewing experience. And by far these few shots are the best special effects ever seen in a film and this is a true testament to special effects.

The Special Effects

3000 individual special effects shots have been used. Everything about special effects has just been getting better and better. Every detail is lit and executed very well with the environment. The best testament to special effects is the lighting on ultron, Ultron is a robot that’s made out of mainly Aluminum and steel and all intercut designs that in the perfect lighting, looks utterly stunning. There’s a scene at the beginning after the avengers have managed to knock everyone out, it’s time for the hulk to have his lullaby and the only person who can do this is Black widow, she uses her touch to turn him from the hulk to Bruce banner. As the Hulk is approaching black widow, you can see the dirt and sweat rolling off the hulk and where the sweat has been rolling and dripping, it’s lit from the rays of the diffused sun seeping through the clouds in Slovenian forest. Everything looked amazing.

On my second time watching the film, I picked up more effects than I did the first time around. There was one shot in particular that didn’t look natural at all. The camera was two feet from the ground, looking up at one of ultron’s minion robots with the cloudy sky behind him and the robot didn’t move naturally through the scene and Yes it’s a robot and how robots move doesn’t look natural anyway but I looked at this shot and it was poorly executed. It was like somebody created it in Premiere Pro which has basic special effects abilities rather than after effects where you can literally create anything that comes to your imagination.

Conclusion

If you’re interested in any films containing any of the marvel super heroes and just have a love for special effects or just love comic books in general. I strongly recommend watching this film. Preferably at the Cinemas or IMAX. If you’re too late and you’ve missed the Cinemas/IMAX viewing, get it on DVD and you’ll be watching it at least a few times.

The only one problem, I have is that it’s a self set-up movie plot and that if tony stark didn’t try and create Ultron from the AI then anything past the 30 minute mark wouldn’t have happened.

9/10

 

Monty python live (mostly) review

I was watching monty python last night and all the reviews from the daily mail and various other newspapers. I thought it was going to be rubbish but it was the complete opposite it was utterly amazing. It was what the fans wanted they wanted all of the old sketches from the original monty python flying circus series to be re done by the 5 of the remaining members of the pythons. They honoured graham chapman with serious and gentle humour. A lot of the things that the daily mail was saying was there was no new material or sketches. And i'm being completely honest i haven't seen all of the flying circus series so are lots of the scenarios and sketches that was portrayed by the remaining members that i haven't actully scene so i was seeing the fish slap it was the first time hearing i like chinese and the lumberjack songs.

The show is called monty python live and in brackets it says mostly which is actully true most of the time you were seeing cartoons to help the transition between their live sketches. As they are getting old now, being mainly 70 years old, it probably did take them ages to change costumes and set up the new stage set.

The prices for the tickets were 105 pounds, which is quite a lot for a show but it was definitely worth it, like me and my family for tickets. My uncle mike, uncle Steve, aunty donna all drove from the north west to Essex to arrive at your family down south, Karen and mike, who both had tickets so driving down there. So overall, the petrol money, the ticket price, the train fair and the added cost of buying merchandise and drinks and the o2 arena. It was quite pricy for a weekend but to see the comedy giants and still are remembered by a number of people and yet they haven't done anything for over 30 years. Remember when Alfred Hitchcock changed the way we look at films, with its story telling techniques and exposition. Same with rockstar and the open world sandbox game, they basically invented the genre and the same goes for Monty python. Monty python will always be remember for being silly and being the greatest comedy acts known to man

Transendence Review

Eventually i got round to watching this film. I saw it advertised when i went watching Godzilla a few months back and i've been wanting to watch it ever since that trailer.

Transedence features Johnny Depp as a neural scienctist, head of Computer Lab company trying to push their way and try to improve the quality of life of citizens and humanity in itself. Using research that they've found from monkeys, they've been able to encode the brain on the monkey into a computer called PINN. Using this concept, Johnny Depp goes on Stage to present his breakthrough PINN and research that follows. and for humanity creating a person/Soul that controls everything that we do through technology. A person asks johnny depp a question whilst he's out on stage asking 'if he's making a God' That same person goes up to him after the conference and shoots him. He goes to hospital gets the bullet removed. later he finds out that the bullet was coated in a radioactive material that slowly kills him. Using the technology that they've learnt from the monkey and uploading it to the company. they've decided to upload his personality and his profile to the machine just to keep him alive. with that only being the intension. well he starts invading peoples computers collecting information.

I loved the concept from the trailers and i liked the film but it wasn't that great, i was always expecting something big to happen but everything had a steady pace and there wasn't a visible change to how things were progressing or drama.

To be honest, it wasn't that good, it was just a movie trailer that got me excited but sadly the film didn't deliver, if you're not interested in computers you won't be interested into this film at all. and i wouldn't even say give it a watch, i'd say don't even download it. that's just my personal opinion. 5/10