District X: Episode 0 (a.k.a. District 9)

The movie that came out of nowhere… Produced and sponsored by Peter Jackson. Made for cheap and heavily advertised, it went to make a huge profit. Not bad for a guy whose first movies were short films on Youtube.

 

While I did enjoy the movie, I didn’t understand what all the hype was about. Yes, it does have a story, and is story-driven, AND it’s not Transformers 2… But, the story has more plot holes than actual plot lines. And I didn’t care for the main character, at all.

 

The following review contains SPOILERS. I repeat, SPOILER ALERT. You have been WARNED!

 

The story about a space ship that appeared out of nowhere and stopped over Johannesburg seems very promising. The first few minutes with their documentary-style really attracted my attention. But I guess the movie was like a pretty girl who was pretty until she started speaking.

 

If the movie didn’t try to be big on the story, I wouldn’t have minded, but to try to be story-centric and then deliver a mediocre one is baaaaad in my book. The movie fails to answer a lot of the questions that it asks, giving you the impression that the story is incomplete. The biggest mistake they made was the 20-year time gap between the arrivals of the aliens and the events of the movie. 20 YEARS!!! That’s a lot of time… If the aliens were sick when they arrived and the humans helped them and reallocated them. Did we learn anything about them (except that they love cat food)? Nope. Nothing. Did the movie tell us how come they were prefectly adapted to the Earth’s atmosphere and gravity? Nope. Are we given any explanation on how come humans and aliens are able to understand each other without speaking the same language and without even being able to replicate the same sounds? Nope. I don’t even think that it is humanly possible to replicate these clicks. Do we know anything about their government system, their society, religion(s), anatomy and physiology? Nope. Did anyone try to board the ship and dismantle it, know its energy source, flight logs, operating mode, loaded weapons? Why wasn’t the ship destroyed after the evacuation of the aliens? So many questions.

 

But the most important question that was left unanswered is why they came to earth? Refugees? Then why pack such kick-ass weapons? Which brings me to the point of how come were these weapons brought to earth from the ship if the evacuations were done by humans? And if you had such awesome weapons that can only be used by your kind, why beg for food when you can take it? Why stand so much humiliation for 20 YEARS without doing something about it? Wasn’t any of these aliens interrogated to find their purpose? Why wasn’t the city evacuated for fear of something so massive as the mothership to fall down? And speaking about falling down, why did the little shuttle fall down? And why was it needed for the operation of the ship? And how come no one found it, again for 20 YEARS?!!! Why, why and a million other whys?

 

And here is another why: why do I care? Because the movie could have been GREAT. It could have been a whole new sci-fi universe that could rival Star Wars, Trek and Battlestar Galactica. But no. It was just a wasted opportunity. I don’t care that the movie was made for cheap. Look at The Fountain. It was made for real cheap! And it delivered a great, minimalistic story that respected its budget while answering most of its questions.

 

This brings us to the point of looks. The movie is a looker and I think after watching this movie two persons committed suicide right away: whoever was responsible for the Halo movie in both Microsoft and Universal. A Halo movie with these filming techniques and visuals would have been massive… It could have been the biggest blockbuster for many years, looking at home much the game is popular. The special effects in District 9 are life-like, gritty and believable. Too bad that the story wasn’t given the same attention to details. Great job by the WETA guys. After all, the made Lord of the Rings visuals!

 

For a movie that was shot by a South African and filmed in South Africa, I think the movie is racist! There is not a single good black character, except for Wikus’s assistant who is a total noob! The bad, non-alien guys are black, and they are (surprise, surprise) Nigerian. Nigerian? Why Nigerian? Why not South African? And why not white, or a mixture of both? And it’s really ironic that Wikus can understand the clicks of the aliens, but he can’t understand the Swahili or whatever these Nigerians are speaking… Ironic, isn’t it?

 

So, after everything is said, this is a good movie that could have been great. It was a commercial and critical hit, which means that District 10 is only a matter of time! Which makes District 9 nothing more than a pilot movie, a proof of concept and a test drive to the abilities of Neil Blomkamp… And as Christopher the Prawn told Wikus that he will be back in 3 years, I am waiting for the sequel in 3 years.

 

I didn’t hate the movie, but I was pissed off because I was expecting something great. The hype was incredible and I did put myself in my radio silence mode and avoided any distractions from trailers and reviews. But I wanted more… The Amorphous Snake is disappointed… 3.5/5.

 

P.S. I guess after reading this you must be shaking your head at disbelief and saying, “All this criticism and he gives it 3.5/5”. And my answer is that I could have gladly given it 5/5 if it had filled the clothes it made for itself. It’s a nice first effort, and it has great action and visuals for a $30 million movie, but when you start something, you finish it. Look how Battlestar Galactica’s pilot was. It didn’t fill in all the details about the Cylons, but the movie was about the human survival and the Cylons were a mystery to us and the movie didn’t try to give you conclusions, but asked you to focus your attention elsewhere and allowed you to fill in the gaps with your imagination, but the gaps were small gaps, not lunar craters!

Avatar: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Enjoy the CGI

Several months ago, I read an interview with James Cameron about this movie. He said that directing such a movie is risky nowadays, because it’s not a franchise. Avatar is a totally new thing, and he didn’t know how the audience would react to it. He also said that he wanted this movie to be the next Matrix. He was right in everything.

Enter the world of Avatar, dear friend and don’t look back, because you won’t want to do so. James Cameron deserves the place he has crafted for himself among moviemakers. I don’t care if he makes a movie every 10 years or every 100, at least it’s better than what some great directors have been doing, like Spielberg whose movies have been going downhill ever since Saving Private Ryan.

Avatar is a revolution in film making. It’s the most visually impressive movie I have ever seen. Period. The CGI (or Computer Generated Images, for the not so tech-savvy readers) used in this movie wasn’t an extra or a gimmick: it’s the whole movie. It became more than just “special effects” and became an item by itself that even rivaled, and dwarfed, the plot. More on that later.

Before watching this movie, I put myself in the radio silence mode… No trailers, no reviews, no previews, no viewer comments, not even an IMDb score, and it worked! Before watching it, all I knew was that the movie was in 3D, looked spectacular, was about a planet called Pandora, and had James Cameron’s name on it. Good enough for me.

This was the first time I have ever seen a movie in 3D. The verdict (about the 3D, not the movie): it was good. I will certainly watch more and more movies in 3D when they become available, but it wasn’t quite what I expected. Also, I got a little headache, but I really can’t blame the 3D effects for that only. It’s the 3D way! I am not used to wearing glasses, and I think that was the reason. I expected a little more depth in the image. But I can’t complain. For the first time in my life, I am finally able to see a clean picture in a cinema, without the usual film artifacts from the film reels.

Pandora is a living and breathing world. Everything is detailed, from the flora to the fauna. And it’s not just the details, it’s the beauty of the details. The beauty of seeing a whole new world that is so different from ours, and knowing that it’s fake but you still believe it’s true because it’s so gorgeous to look at. Cameron forced you, through his CGI magicians, to go into suspension of disbelief mode, see the tale, and like it.

The Na’vi people are the real stars of the show. They are pure and simple, strong and proud, ancient and spiritual, and they were all done in motion-capture technology. Damn, I can’t write two words without mentioning some technical stuff that the movie did… Only 40% of the movie was live action with real actors. The rest was all motion capture and CGI. Which brings us to speak about acting… There isn’t much of it here, and there can’t be. Like I said before, Hollywood blockbusters generally don’t have good acting. They have memorable characters, sure. But not good acting. You simply remember the characters, not the actors who did them, because the characters are over the top, and the actors are just doing their best to fill the shoes of these characters. The Avatar character of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is much more alive, memorable and likeable than Jake Sully the Marine. Sam Worthington is also staring in Clash of the Titans, a remake of a movie that is one of my favourite childhood, and adulthood (Hell, yeah!) movies. I haven’t seen much acting from him, but the success of Avatar will catapult him into the world of stardom, that even made the producers of Titans decide to make the movie in 3D, increase its budget and allowed the director to re-shoot some stuff. Let’s wait and see. It’s coming next year.

Back to the Na’vi… I really liked Neytiri. Her character was so likeable, her role pivotal to the movie. The only problem is that I have seen it all before. Yup, and this is the only black eye in the beautiful face of Avatar: the story have been told before, over and over and over. You can say about Avatar anything of the following, and you won’t be wrong! Avatar: Pocahontas III, Dances with the Na’vis: Avatar, The New World: Avatar, Avatar: Tarzan the Ape Man in Space, and so on. And there is more! After walking out of the cinema, I kept trying to remember a cartoon movie that I have seen before, a lot actually, when I was a child. I didn’t quite remember the name. It was *Something*: The Last Rain Forest. So, when I went back home, I did a search on IMDb. The movie was called FernGully: The Last Rain Forest. Lots of other users saw the resemblance too and there is an active forum post there discussing that. Youtube has a lot of videos about it!   is not just similar to this movie, it’s more or less a shot for shot remake!!! Even the huge bulldozers were in the cartoon. I remember really liking FernGully. But it’s not a reason to hate Avatar. It’s just retelling the tale, in glorious style) to a newer generation.

So, is that all there is about Avatar? Special effects, 3D and a native people. Nope, there is more… There is a (drum roll, please) message behind the movie… Save the environment. Save the planet. Stop wars. RIP to every indigenous culture that was butchered at the hands of colonialism. Not bad for a Hollywood blockbuster.

Jurassic Park was perhaps the biggest movie of my childhood. Alas, I haven’t seen it at the cinema. But still, it held it’s place as one of the most spectacular thing I have seen in my mind. Note: there are other, a lot other, spectacular stuff I have seen, but I am not going to compare Lawrence of Arabia, Ben-Hur or Lord of the Rings to Jurassic Park, it’s unfair. Peter Jackson’s version of King Kong is also in this list. And now, there is Avatar to add. These three movies represent the best of their kind in my eyes. Total immersion in an ancient and lost world. You will notice that I didn’t mention Lord of the Rings, even though it had great visuals too. But like I said, it’s unfair, because even if you remove the visual elements from LOTR, you still have a huge and beautiful story, which is not available in the other three movies. They do have stories, but it’s not the main attraction.

There are two minor things that bothered me in Avatar, and they are related to it’s presentation. The first is some, very minor animation problems. They only happen like in 0.00005% of the whole amazing ride! But they are there. CGI has come a long way, but still the human eye can differentiate between natural and synthetic animation. The other is that most of the creature sounds in the movie were taken straight from Jurassic Park.

James Cameron is a master of film making, he is the one who made Terminator 1 and 2, Aliens, The Abyss and Titanic. While Avatar won’t make as much as money as Titanic (I hope I am wrong), it will make a lot of money. Which brings us to the point of sequels… While I do want to see more of Pandora, I don’t want a cheap sequel. Cameron said that he may work on Battle Angel (his ambitious, manga-based project) or an Avatar sequel. I would like to see the first. Avatar will have a long life and it will not age badly. The attention to detail in the movie will assure years and years of compete supremacy in its category and it will be remembered in the same manner that the original 1933 King Kong or the 1993 Jurassic Park are. And when you consider that Cameron made two among the three best sequels ever! (The Godfather: Part II, Aliens and Terminator 2). I guess he can make a great Avatar sequel…

So, if you want to see something amazing, meet a new civilization, hear a new language, see some cool aircrafts and mechs, ride a pterodactyl-like bird, watch epic battles, see an effective although repeated story, see Ripley, err, I mean Sigourney Weaver, all in 3D… Then what the hell are you waiting for?!!! Go and watch this movie, NOW!

The Amorphous Snake is pleased… 5/5. A masterpiece…


[Edit 1]: I forgot to mention that I am actually glad that something will just make people forget Transformers 2's visuals. With Avatar, there is simply no comparison, at all... This is the Academy Award 2010 winner for Best Visual Effects (among a bucket load of other Academy Awards). A friend of mine sent me a comic about George Lucas commiting suicide after seeing Avatar. Well, I have to say, it's not just Lucas, but almost every director that made or dreamed about making a sci-fi movie. In the case of Michael Bay, director of Transformers 2, he should go to the real Optimus Prime and beg him to step on him and end his and our misery...

Tarantino and his Inglourious Basterds

This is a different movie. Yes, different is the word for it. The movie wasn't quite what I expected. I expected a wild WWII movie, something along the lines of The Dirty Dozen and Kelly's Heroes. But this wasn't the case. I don't know why I got these expectations in my mind, although I avoided watching any trailer for this movie (not just for this movie, but for all movies). Perhaps, it’s stuff that got into my head since Michael Madsen was attached to this movie. He would have made one fantastic Basterd… Even better than Brad Pitt.

The movie is great if you want the short version (great and different). This little review may contain spoilers, or what I consider to be spoilers. My spoiler-alert meter is quite different than most of the people I know.

The good stuff:

It’s a Tarantino movie! So, everything from the cool factor, to the music, acting, length, stylish and memorable conversations that would make you feel that the characters are really alive and you have known them for ages, the selection of actors and their performances. Brad Pitt has been better before, but his role as Aldo the Apache is marvelous, but I don’t think it will win him any awards. He was a little stiff. But Chrisopher Waltz as Colonel Landa was amazing. A great villain was added to my all time favourite villains list! Yes, I do have such a list!

The opening of the movie is something to behold. If you are like me and love great opening scenes, and in particular, if you like westerns, and especially, especially, if you liked Once Upon a Time in the West. This is an opening that would have made Sergio Leone proud! And if you watch Chapter Two, you should start thinking about The Wild Bunch.

The Basterds were cool. The intro scene for Hugo Stiglitz should have been for every member of the Basterds. But it wasn’t. I’ll talk more about that in “the bad stuff” part of the review, below.

The bad stuff:

The ending of the movie is unique, it will be a love it or hate it kind of liking. Tarantino tried to do something that wasn’t done before in WWII movies. But the sudden change from reality to fantasy was abrupt. I wasn’t expecting that ending, at all. Really, it came from nowhere. The gritty tone in the rest of the movie made me think of a different ending.

Now, to make the last paragraph more understandable. All movies are works of fiction, even if they were inspired by true events, which this movie claims to be!!! But ending this movie the way it ended, is like ending Braveheart with a bunch of angry Scots that came to storm the castle to save William Wallace. You get what I mean? Braveheart prepared you that Wallace will be executed. And you accepted and expected it.

I wanted to see more and more of the Basterds and their inglourious conquests! After all, the movie is named after them. But this wasn’t the case. Tarantino gave you a taste of sugar in the first two chapters of the movie and promised you for more, but he didn’t give you sugar, at least not in the promised quantity. This doesn’t mean that the later parts of the movie are bad, but it wasn’t what the beginning of it made me think.

Like I said, all the lengthy conversations in this movie were awesome, but I felt that introducing the British Lt. Archie Hicox was a distraction. But the almost 20 minute basement cellar sequence was great and Archie’s performance as a British officer was stunning and was a tribute to all those classic WWII movies. Tarantino could have skipped him and showed us more about the Basterds adventures among the Nazis. You must have seen the baseball bat in posters of the movie. It was only shown and used once… A big missed opportunity...

Speaking about old movies, I would like to see Nation’s Pride! I hope it gets the same treatment as Machete and be turned into a separate movie that is a parody of all the 1940-1950 WWII movies that were made to boost morale.

A great movie, but Tarantino has done better movies. This is not Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill. But it's NOT Death Proof! But he will get some awards for this movie. After all, you know the saying that says, “If you want to get an Oscar, make a film about the Holocaust.”.

Great movie, but I expected too much of it: 4/5.

[Edit 1]: Added some hyperlinks, a score, the baseball bat and fixed some stuff. I visited Youtube and watched 2 trailers for this movie after I wrote the review. Man, I am glad that I haven't seen them before watching the movie itself.

Transformers: A Movie for the Fallen

How do I begin? The short version? OK: This is one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life... up there with legends like Ocean's Twelve and Komodo!!!. Wait, strike that. This is not a movie, this is a 150-minute MTV music video with bad editing, some explosions and shiny graphics. These are a hundred and fifty minutes that I have lost and never, ever will regain.

A friend told me that the movie was enjoyable but not to expect anything cerebral. But the truth there is nothing to enjoy in this movie. NOTHING... There is no story, at all. There is no climax, no characters, nothing is happening throughout the duration of the movie, even the music was bad. I think they started filming without the script, and when they did have a script, it was too late. Can you imagine 150 minutes with nothing happening in them, but they are full of crappy one-liners and explosions.

I gave this movie a score of 2/10. I originally was going to give it a solid ONE, but the CGI added another. The only thing worth watching in this movie is the CGI, and this could have been edited out of the movie, and made a solid 15-minute short movie.

And Megan Fox... She was hot in the first movie, really hot. But in this one, she is... Well, let's say that every time I saw her in the movie I wanted to laugh! The "wow" factor is gone, and the truth is now clear. This is a pretty doll who can't act. And even in this movie, she is neither pretty nor hot.

The biggest factor that destrtoyed this movie for me was the Egypt segment. Mr. Zahi Hawas, you should resign for allowing this crap to be filmed in Egypt. The should have filmed in Morrocco and made all the people there rich, I don't mind. But what I do mind is selling out. WTF was that? The Pyramids are ... I don't quite get it, in Egypt or in Jordan? In Giza or in Aqaba? I didn't know that there was a sea near the Pyramids! With deploy-able amphibious assault troop and tank carriers parked at sea waiting to intervene. I didn't know that aliens built the Pyramids. I didn't know that the Temple of Karnak is next to the Pyramids. I didn't know that Petra was within walking distance from the Great Pyramids. I didn't know that Egyptians live in Pharaonic ruins with obelisks and all. I didn't know that we still have camels and goats and that our streets are full of broken cars. I didn't know that there are generals in the Egyptian Army who actually are dwarfs. I didn't know Egypt had no army at all, and when there is a need we call brave Jordanian helicopter pilots that are no match for the transformers, but the Americans are. I didn't know that Americans are stupid...

Seriously, are Americans stupid? Do they really know nothing about basic geography and history? Do they really feel envious that since their nation has no history to speak of, then every major ancient wonder must have been built by aliens or robots or whatever, just because they refuse to believe that while their great grandparents were dancing around fire, there were actual humans building these wonders?!!!

Michael Bay should be stopped. He should stop making movies for good. I did enjoy some of his movies like The Rock, Armageddon and The Island. Hell, I even liked Pearl Harbor. And I somehow enjoyed the first Transformers.

This is to keep my promise! I gave the original Transformers a 6/10. The movie was a textbook example of what a Hollywood popcorn movie is. The low score is because the movie should have been called The 15-Years Old Virgin, because the movie is more about the trials of Sam Whitwikey to lost his virginity than actual Transformers, who we only see for a fraction of the length of the movie. The movie also thinks that there are no people living in Qatar (Qat-aaaaar, as they pronounce it in the movie) except a nomadic tribe that, surprise surprise, also lives in ancient ruins with only one working phone and some WWI-era rifles. Megatron is shown for minutes and Starscream didn't transform into a gun.

6/10 is what it gets.

So to conclude, if you want to watch an enjoyable B-movie, watch the first Transformers, if you want to torture yourself, watch the second. If you enjoy the second movie, then you either should have your head checked or you should stop watching movies for your own good.

2/10... And this is after being generous...

While not every movie can be The Dark Knight, but it's a proof that you can make a summer blockbuster that will satisfy those looking for explosions and those who think that movies are an art form. And this year's example was Star Trek.

Star Trek (2009) Review

I have never been a fan of Star Trek. Make no mistake, I had nothing against it, it’s just the fact that I wasn’t exposed to it to either like it or hate it. All I knew about it is that it had deep lore and if you want to be called a real geek, then you must know about Star Trek, and by know I mean be a real fan.

So, you can guess that I went to see the new Star Trek movie with a real open mind, after all, I had no real prejudice to like it or hate it. The only Star Trek material I have previously seen was about less than 10 minutes from one Star Trek movie. I guess it was the Insurrection movie.

The movie is great. It’s not spectacular and it won’t make it in my top 10 list for sci-fi movies, but it was really great. The production values are top notch with really impressive CGI and special effects. The music was also great, from the Medal of Honour and The Incredibles composer, Michael Giacchino.

This was supposed to be a reboot for the series, and after the movie ended, it was clear that a sequel is already in the works (that’s how they roll in Hollywood). The story was good with its fair share of twists but I can’t say anything here as it will spoil a good part of the plot. What I can say, is that it tells the early story of the Star Trek universe (which I honestly know nothing about), and almost all of the characters featured in the movie are much older in the series and previous movies. I think I spotted some homage to the original characters, but since I don’t know anything about the universe, I can’t be sure.

Where I think the movie excelled is in this: it managed to grab my attention to the Star Trek universe. I am a complete newcomer and I really liked it there. And if I have the time, I think I will try to watch the previous material like the previous 10 movies and the series. I know that I have the desire, but I simply lack the time, after all, this is too much viewing. But I am willing.

I was impressed.

8/10

P.S. I am starting a new rating method for movies. 3 stars are for the plot, writing and direction. 3 more are for the audio/visual department (music, CGI and presentation). And finally, 3 for the acting. The remaining star is my secret power-up that I will give to a movie according to the way I see fit, that is, if it deserves it of course.

To practise this: For this movie, it gets 3/3 for audio/video, 2/3 for writing, 1/3 for acting (I didn’t like Captain Kirk, although I liked Sylar, err, I mean Spok. Besides, don’t expect good acting in big budget movies, except those made by Christopher Nolan!). I choose to gift it with the extra point for creating some enthusiasm for the franchise for a newcomer like me.

The Road

I do like the "end of the world" scenarios a lot. They just spark my imaginations into countless "what if" scenarios. To the extent that on some crazy moments, I started thinking how I will fortify my house in the case of a zombie apocalypse! I am not joking. It makes a relaxing mental exercise. Try it someday.

I spent the greater parts of last November and December reading, watching and playing all sorts of stuff related to the apocalypse. The frenzy started with me reading Blindness during the last days of my exams... It made a great mood changer! Please read the last post to know what I thought of the novel (and its movie). Then I read the original 1950s novel I Am Legend, which I liked its 2008 movie adaptation a lot. After that I read the fantastic, breath-taking and mind-blowing The Road by Cormac McCarthy. And this reading session was concluded with one of Stephen King's best novels: The Stand. In this article I will be discussing The Road. I have already talked about Blindness, and God willing, I will write about the other 2 novels some other time.

During this frenzy, I watched a lot of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic movies and played the wonderful demo of Left 4 Dead. I was also hoping to walk a bit on the barren wastelands of Washington DC in Fallout 3, but it never happened. But nothing in this grim time reached the heights of The Road, and here is why...

The Road is a 2006 novel by the American writer Cormac McCarthy. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 2007 and became a best seller. A movie adaptation is being made and will be released in 2009 starring Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron.

The novel follows a cataclysm whose nature is not mentioned at all in the whole novel. The events take place in North America in an unknown year and mostly about 10 years after the unknown cataclysm. A man and his son are trying to make escape the freezing north into the warmer south while heading east towards the ocean. Well, that's almost the whole story. But if you are not looking for events, but rather to an experience, then you will find plenty of this here. The story is incredibly grim and pessimistic. It will haunt you and personally I felt a huge psychological load on myself while I was reading it. The images are strong and memorable and the events in the novel so lifelike that it's really scary.

You never know what really happened. The sun is no longer visible from the dark clouds. All the plant and animal species are history. Food, fuel and clothes are no where to be found. Some people found out an alternate source for food: other humans. So you see, some people turned to cannibalism, capturing people and imprisoning them to eat them piece by piece. The fact that you never know what happened was an annoyance to a friend of mine that read the novel. But I see the opposite. It really means nothing to know what happened. In the first couple of years it might have been important, but after that, what's the point? The end is coming and no one can stop it. You just live long enough to see the next morning and that's all you dream of.

At first, I thought that this was too much, and I started making my thought protest as I did in Blindness, until I thought about it. 10 years is a lot of time. The survivors lost all their humanity if they have survived that long in a dying world. The man and his son are maybe the last of their kind. The man is of a dying breed and I thought that he must be some sort of a legend for his son. He tells his son stories about stuff that the boy never saw and never will. The boy never saw lots of things that we take for granted in our modern life. In one part of the novel, the man was trying to describe to his son what a cow was... The scene was so strong that it reminded me of a similar thing in Band of Brothers when a US soldier gave a little boy a piece of chocolate. The little boy took it while he looked a bit surprised. After taking a bite he started smiling. The little boy's father told the soldier that the boy never tasted chocolate before.

The trip of the man and his son across the dying American landscape with charred forests, ransacked houses, dead farms, derailed trains allowed me to reflect a bit about all the stuff that we can lose and that we already take for granted. For this sad couple, there was really no future. They are just living day to day with no long term goals. The boy asked his father what their long term goals were and the man was astonished to hear this sentence and asked the boy where he heard this before!

The man knows a lot of stuff and is a survivor, which is a given when you know that he stayed in that hell for so long, while doing his best to keep his son alive. He was underfed, cold and tired and in a constant danger of being eaten by the cannibals, but yet, his father did his best to keep him safe.

One of the strongest pictures that made its place in my memory is the picture of the man and his son walking together on the ever going Road while pushing their supermarket cart in front of them. It haunts me when I walk in the street. When I go to the supermarket. And when I think about the future.

This is one of the best novels that I have ever read in my life, and I think every adult should read it at some point in his/her life to know that we are living in a paradise and that in a blink of an eye, we can lose it all...

Dissecting "Blindness"

I first heard about this novel from the movie by Fernando Mierles whom I have liked his work in Cidade de Deus (City of God). The movie was screened in Cannes 2008 and received very bad reviews from critics, so I thought about reading the book myself. It turned out that the book is by a Nobel Laurette called Jose Saramango.

A few pages into the novel and you realize that you are going to read something deep. At least that's what I felt. I am sorry but this discussion will contain spoilers, major spoilers, I assure you. So read if you are not interested in the novel or the movie or simply have read it before.

The novel follows the story of a group of people who lived in an unnamed city that had an epidemic of blindness. White blindness that is. The disease was highly infectious, so the government quarantined those who were infected or exposed to infection in an old mental asylum and surrounded it by army troops. The story takes place during the quarantine and *spoiler* after the destruction of the asylum and the escape of all the inmates. Among the people in the asylum was a woman who could see. She was the wife of an ophthalmologist who lost his sight, but she lied about her condition so that she could accompany him.

The novel is incredible in its strength and scope. I have never read anything that was remotely similar. But the last part of the novel felt as if I was reading a novelization of a zombie movie, like 28 Days Later or one of the Dead series of movies by George Romero. I didn't like this. Perhaps what I hated most in this novel is the cruelty of the writer. When people were thrown into the quarantine, the condition of their life was very harsh. There was no water, no lavatories, the food wasn't enough, everything was dirty and rotten. The soldiers guarding the infected were very easy going with the triggers of their rifles and a lot of the blind were shot by the guards who feared that they might get close and infect them. The blind were issued some rules that were repeated over loud speakers daily. Among the rules was that no external help will be provided to them, this includes medical help and medications. Also, if violence erupts inside the asylum, no one will interfere.

Most of the description we received was through the eyes of the doctor's wife. I forgot to say that there are no names in the novel. Not a single name. People are referred to with adjectives; like the doctor's wife, the man with the eye batch, the first blind man, the wife of the first blind man, the car thief, etc, etc. I thought it was weird at the beginning but it fit the mood, as, like I said, we saw things through the eyes of the seeing doctor's wife. And I think this is the way she identified all the people. According to a feature in them.

This is a dark and violent trip into the heart of humanity. The people degenerated into savagery and barbarism. With no one watching, they started to fight over the food, urinate and defecate everywhere, refuse to bury the dead who died in clashes with the soldiers. When the situation became worse and more and more people started going blind, the government threw into the asylum more and more numbers that the wards can fit. In total, there was about 250 blind persons in the asylum, that's when trouble happened, and this is where the novel lost me...

A group of thugs started to take all the food and require payment from all the other inmates to receive their food. When this happened, I thought "This will boil down to sex." Because in a community like this, money, gold and other riches simply have no value. The only things that will be valuable are medicine, food and services. And the writer didn't let me down, and this is where the novel turned barbaric. The thugs started asking for women, or no one will eat. People refused at first, then they succumbed and agreed. There was 6 wards in the asylum. The thugs occupied one, so that left five. They will start with each ward's women and then rotate. According to the doctor's wife who made a small expedition into the thugs ward, there was twenty of them.

I don't know how can people agree to this, even if it meant their death. To allow women to be raped so that the whole of the quarantined people can eat is an inhuman idea. How can any one accept this? Also the married people, including the doctor's wife, who could see!!!, did what was asked from them. This is just insane. The thugs had a single gun with them, and they were twenty, this leaves about 230 or so of the other inmates. Can't they storm the ward and kill the other thugs. Yes, there will be casualties, but compare this with the greater benefit and you can see the winning formula. Besides, a gun won't last forever, and the one who was firing it was blind for God's sake!!! But no, no one thought of that, and I, as a reader, had to endure scenes of brutal raping of women who couldn't see, by men who also couldn't see. This part of the novel shocked me like nothing I have ever read or seen in my life. When I was reading it, I was speechless and my face flushed and my heart started racing. It was brutal, really brutal. That's why I will NEVER recommend this book to anyone.

Then there was an uprising in the asylum (but when it was too late, why didn't it happen sooner than this?) and everything was destroyed.

Those who managed to escape were then shocked when they knew that the whole country was struck by the disease. Everyone was blind, and everything fell into anarchy. There was no law anymore, no police, no food, no running water, no electricity. People lived together in ground floors and in shops in groups and they went forging for food, in groups. They urinated and defecated everywhere in groups, and they died in groups. Dogs and cats started eating the corpses, the air was filled with the pungent odour of death and decay. It was the apocalypse. That's why I referred to this part as a zombie movie.

But all of this is nothing compared to the ending. This really blew things for me. People started seeing again... It's not clear if the infection was worldwide or not, but I think that that it was worldwide. If the whole world was living as it was described in the novel, then to start seeing again is simply a disaster. Can you imagine how can there be a leadership again? It will take people centuries to return back to what they were. It reminded me of the short story The Poison Belt by Sherlock Holmes creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. And if you think about it, I think some people started practicing cannibalism in some regions, but this is a speculation from my part.

You might think that I hated the novel. I really don't know what to think. The novel was very well written, with meticulous attention to details. But what bothered me was the cruelty. There is way too much cruelty in here, for no reason. We could have just fast forwarded from the point of the appearance of the thugs to the destruction of the asylum, without having to endure all the pain and misery.

Also, religion is almost totally neglected in this novel. Whenever people face problems, they tend to be religious and start believing in the presence of a Higher Force and start praying, each according to his/her belief. If this happens in day to day activities, why won't it happen at the end of the world. The religious themes have to be taken carefully into consideration. But its absence here didn't shock me as its absence in On the Beach.

The writer didn't specify a certain country or a certain ethnic group, even the religious part at the end was also non specific. I think the writer wanted his novel to be universal. A universal account of a plague that could have caused the end of the world. I think the thugs were a symbol for non democratic governments: they just came and started taking all the wealth into their hands and abusing the resources for their own benefit. The blind in the quarantine are the helpless people that are governed by such regimes (but in my book, it doesn't relieve them from the responsibility of what happened in exchange for food). But what I fail to see its symbolism is the blindness itself. Is it a sign for the fall of false charade that people are keeping because everyone else is looking at them. I have read similar novels that dealt with this subject like Lord of the Flies and Deliverance. Or is it simply a sign of the fall of laws and rules, and that's what is keeping the savagery of man at bay? Or is it simply just a thing for the plot that has no deeper meaning? I think it's the first one. When you can't see what you do and people can't see what you are doing, then those without strong inner rules will simply lose it. Lose everything and degenerate back into animals, where survival is the most important and vital thing.

The woman who can see is the link between us and those living zombies. She is there so that we can identify them. Why she never lost her eye sight is not explained in the novel. Although she could see, yet it kept this matter a secret and endured everything that the other endured, from hunger to rape. Her husband is someone who fooled me. At the beginning of the novel I liked him. He was the sound of reason in the beginning of the quarantine, but then I saw that he was just full of air. He didn't stand for his wife to protect her from the sexual abuse, no even worse, when they were "preparing" for the abuse, he cheated on her when chance presented herself. I don't know how can he allow himself this after everything his wife did for him. She took care of him, cleaned him up from his own filth and gave him the higher position that he occupied in the ward where they lived.

Fernando is a great director. His work in Cidade of Deus and The Constant Gardener is a living proof for this, but the critical opinion for this movie was very low. Critics hated it and I understand why. I have no idea how he will portray some of the scenes in the novel, from the orgies to the streets full of excreta to the rendering of hundreds of people on screen who are acting like blind people. The movie was released in the US months ago, and was, as expected, a box office flop. The movie has a very strong cast with Juliane Moore doing the role of the doctor's wife. I know that it will be painful, but I am looking forward to seeing it.

UPDATE: I have seen the movie. Like the novel, I can't recommend it. Lots of the novel didn't make it into the movie, especially the city parts. I didn't get the huge scope and magnitude of the cataclysm as I did in the novel. In the novel it felt like the apocalypse. You felt desperate. I am not sure if it's humanly possible to film these things. And I am also not sure if not being faithful to the novel was a good or a bad thing, considering that I didn't really fall in love with the novel.

I hope you liked this article, dear reader, and I am sorry for the spoilers.

Three Movies from 2007's Best

No Country for Old Men

You might have noticed that I am a fan of the Coen's Brothers' work. I mean, I liked Fargo, Miller's Crossing, The Ladykillers (2004) and The Man Who Wasn't There (first post of this blog!!!). Many reviewers have stated that No Country is their magnus opus. Well, I agree...

Everything about this movie is beautiful, even the violence (which is plenty). I know it's hard to say that the violence was beautiful, as it's hard to put the two words in the same sentence. But, the Coen Brothers are famous for their style. Their movies are highly stylized, and so is the violence.

I won't say anything about the story. But you should know that the movie introduced the "best" villain since, say, Darth Vader! (EDIT: I think we have seen some pretty good and memorable villains since Darth Vader, like Hannibal Lecter, The Terminator and many others that I totally forgot about). This guy, Javier Bardem, really deserves an Oscar. If he doesn't get it, then that's what I would call a rip off.

The movie probes into the state of chaos and violence that our communities are degenerating to, in the first minute of the movie, Tommy Lee Jones is telling us about the good old days when his grandfather was sheriff.

This movie is highly recommended. It gets an Amorphous Score of 5/5. Do yourself a favour and watch it.

There Will Be Blood

This movie is Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia, Boogie Nights) tale of an oil man, Daniel Plainview. It's a tale of greed, power and madness. It spans about 30 years during the beginning of the 20th century. The character was magnificently done by Daniel Day-Lewis. No words can describe his superb performance, so I won't waste my time trying. The only thing that will be a reward for him, will be to walk out tonight with the golden bald statue!

You get to see the rise of Daniel Plainview as a major oil man from his first well till ... (well, I will leave this out). His greed and will to dominate all his competitors fuel up his anger and hatred. He is a man who hates all people, except himself. He want success to himself, and himself alone.

The movie is professionally done and is a feast to the eyes, but... I think that the movie could have used a little trimming. Don't get me wrong, the movie is terrific as it is, but I think that some non-important scenes took too long and, in my humble opinion, didn't affect the story a lot. But you see, watching Daniel Day-Lewis acting is really great. If I were the director, I would leave every shot recorded to film alone. Let the world see what real acting is...

Hollywood doesn't seem to be getting it right this year. For example, Atonement could have used an extra 30 minutes, while There Will Be Blood could have been better with 30 minutes less of its 150 minutes runtime.

The title of the movie is deceiving, there is very little blood throughout. Moreover, Paul Thomas Anderson made a great move that I really appreciate in movies: he delayed the first lines of spoken dialogue. As in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Once Upon a Time in the West.

EDIT: This movie joins some of the best movies to touch the subject of greed (one of the characteristics of the human personality), like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (by my favourite actor, Humphrey Bogart) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (by the eternal Sergio Leone).

This movie is a great watch and is, again, highly recommended: 4.5/5 Amorphous Points.

Michael Clayton

George Clooney has his share of great movies, but some were not so fortunate, cough*Ocean's Twelve*cough.

I wouldn't get into any details as this is the kind of movie that you must follow all the plot twists and turns. But my only complaint is that it has been done before, many times. I won't say what movies were like this one as you will know what to expect then.

If you let the repetition fact go, then you will have a nice movie. Clooney's acting is superb, but he is no match for Daniel Day-Lewis... Hell, even Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises is no match for him!!! The music is also great. It's from the same composer who did Batman Begins.

So, a good plot and an interesting one at that, superb acting and a good score will make a good movie... But this is not Best Picture material. They did this movie a huge injustice by placing it in the same category with other superior movies.

A good 4/5 Amorphous Points is the score.

Mid-year vacation movies

I have seen a lot of movies this mid-year vacation. I can't possibly write a review for each and everyone of them. So I am just going to rate them.

I am changing my rating system. Instead of the 1-10 scale, I am using a 1-5 one. This way, I will have 10 possibilities, not 20 as in the previous system.

Here is the list, ladies and gentlemen:

Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others): Mind-blowing... 5/5

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: A huge surprise! 4.5/5

2046: no score given, entitled for a re-watch. It was the last part in a trilogy!!! Damn!

Brazil: re-watch is a must!

Gone Baby Gone: Ben Afflick has talent!!! 4/5

Ballad of a Soldier: Heart-breaking. 4/5

Annie Hall: Finally, a realistic romance. 4.5/5

Lust, Caution: Generally, good. 4/5

The Matrix Reloaded: Better than what I remembered from my first viewing. 3.5/5

The Matrix Revolutions: Shouldn't have been filmed... A disgrace to the original. 3/5

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Special Extended Edition): 1000/5! Enough said!

Fight Club: I haven't seen this movie in ages... Still great. 5/5

I, Robot: A decent sci-fi flick. Not the next Terminator. 3/5

I Am Legend: A bad ending to an otherwise very good movie. 4/5

The New World: Malick delivers... as usual. 4/5

Atonement: My only complaint is that it was too short: 4.5/5

Los Olvidados (The Forgotten Ones): It has aged terribly... Watch Cidade de Deus (City of God) instead. 3.5/5


As you see, they are a lot, but I wanted more... You have to take into account that I was busy with the assembly (err... I mean forging) of my precious Arsenal Gear.

The Kingdom and Eastern Promises

I try to keep up with my tradition that Thursday night is the movie night. This is not always the case, depending on what I am playing. But the thing is, I never run of good movies to watch. NEVER!!!

So, tonight (technically, we are on Friday's morning) I watched 2 movies: The Kingdom and Eastern Promises.

THE KINGDOM

There is something about this movie that I didn't like. Agreed, this is a good action movie, but take care of this: action movie. Although this movie tries, very hard, to carry a message, it fails... Not miserably, but it still fails.

The movie is about a terrorist attack on a foreigners' compound in Saudi Arabia. This is followed by the trials of a FBI team to get on Saudi soil, until eventually they manage to do so, or there wouldn't have been a movie, duh!!!

I hate Jamie Foxx! The guy can't act. The rest of the cast was OK. But the Arab cast was a hit and miss. First of all, they all sounded like voice overs from Battlefield 2! But I have to mention that they spoke correct Arabic. Maybe not 100% correct, but better than any movie I have seen. Non Arabic movie, that is.

The 4 superheroes making up the FBI team land in SA and they start teaching the Saudis how to investigate and how to collect evidence. This is really absurd. This reminds me of the scene in Kingdom of Heaven when Balian started digging a well for the Arabs to irrigate their crops. Balian was a blacksmith from England who knew nothing about life in the desert, but still he taught them. The same Tarzan the Ape Man Complex...

The movie tries to be balanced, and it is better, much better, than, say, Munich at that. But still, it's biased! By the end of the first 10 or 15 minutes, I think a Western audience would be so angry of Saudis and Muslims in general that whatever you say during or at the end of the movie won't help change this image. Some effectively symbolic shots really grab a Western audience by the throat and scream at them for affection.

It's understandable that the director wishes to show the Saudi world to a Western audience who, presumably, know nothing about this world. While no parts of the movie were shot in Saudi Arabia, the movie tries to capture what it is to be in a Middle Eastern country. But unfortunately, this didn't go without its faults... For starters, the movie draws attention to the females dressed in traditional Saudi dress more than once. It should have been done only once. Most of the urban areas around the Western compound look like the people in there live in the 1980s or something. In fact like my friend Falcon said, it does look like a level cut from Call of Duty 4. The environments are dirty, gritty and looks like there was a war fought there not too long ago, even though nothing actually happened there, yet. They also remind me of the gritty environments of Black Hawk Down. But the thing I want to say is that, Middle Eastern countries do not like this, not anymore... And certainly not in a rich, actually ridiculously rich, country like SA. In many parts of the movie, I sensed disrespect to Muslims, but in other shots, the movie tries to show the audience some of the activities of Muslims in a respectable way. My guess is that the director wanted to show all the colours of the rainbow in his movie. But the fact remains that the movie shows more Muslim villains than it shows Muslim good guys!

The action sequences are nicely done and it looks that we are getting more and more movies (and games!) featuring combat in the Middle East. I mean, the audience has already seen action in jungles, forests, European beaches, Mars, bla, bla, bla. Now it's the desert's turn.

I was originally going to give this movie a 7, but there was a thing that made me chop off another point: stupid cinematography! I don't mean that the shots are bad, it's just the camera is too shaky! It's a nice effect in action sequences, but when you have 2 people talking to each other, why do you have to shake the camera? I got a headache watching this movie. It was a nice effect but overused.

Nothing will ever beat Lawrence of Arabia when it comes to a movie done by a Westerner about the Middle East.

6/10

EASTERN PROMISES

Now, that's a good movie! If you have seen, and liked, A History of Violence, you will like this movie a lot. It share the same atmosphere. I will get to that later. And if you haven't liked HoV... Why?!

The movie takes place in modern day London and involves the Russian mafia. I won't get into any plot details for fear of spoilers. The plot is not the most complex of plots but it's very good.

Now, what made this movie excellent was the atmosphere. Like in David Cornenberg's other movie, the mob is real. These people are real and they live like other people, well, sort of. The scenes where you have mob members setting with family, cooking, drinking, ... etc makes you believe that they are real. They are crazy, stylish people, but they are real. Some of the locations and scenes in this movie are pretty memorable too.

Acting is great, although Naomi Watts screen time is rather limited. Like HoV, again, this is a somewhat short movie. At about 100 minutes, I think it was a bit short. The other actors did a great job too. But I think HoV had better acting... After all, it had Ed Harris!

I recognized Howard Shore's music from the opening credits!!! As usual, he is great!

This is a highly recommended movie. Watch it ASAP.

8.5/10

EDIT: Part of the review of The Kingdom was edited from its original form. The reason for this is that I saw it was a bit unbalanced. And I did reference my friend, Falcon, who was the first to comment on this post.

Grindhouse

I was very interested to see this movie. Directed by Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill) and Robert Rodriguez (From Dusk Till Dawn, El Mariachi Trilogy and Sin City) and it made it to the IMDb Top 250 in its release week although it performed poorly in the box office.

The idea is simple, you have 2 full length feature movies with trailers for fake movies in-between. I am a fan of Tarantino and Rodriguez, so you must think how excited I was to watch this movie.

The movie was not released in cinemas where I live, so I got my copies from you-know-where!!! I only got to see one of the fake trailers, out of four. I will look for the rest and try to see them, but this review is for the 2 feature movies; Planet Terror by Rodriguez and Death Proof by Tarantino.


Planet Terror

This movie is a spoof of all the cheap zombie/sci-fi B-movies. You get crazy soldiers with a crazy scientist, redneck Texans, vigilante police officers with shotguns, some hot chicks and a hero who is a nobody and everyone calls him Wray, but when things go wrong, it turn out that he is El Wray, the badass.

Wray's girlfriend gets attacked by zombies and her leg is chopped off, instead she has an assault rifle with an attached grenade launcher!

This movie resembles From Dusk Till Dawn a lot. If you liked the former, you will certainly like Planet Terror. The movie has a visual filter than makes the screen grainy and very old, like you are watching a movie in a very cheap theater, which is intended by the makers. The soundtrack of this movie is also pretty good. The main rock theme blends with the action smoothly, and it has the cheesy feeling that accompanies the whole movie.

All in all, the movie was good. It was so cheesy to the extent that it was good!

If you like zombies or other sci-fi related movies, or if you want to see a ridiculously cheesy action movie, you will like Planet Terror.

6.5/10



Death Proof

This is Tarantino's newest movie. This guy has a problem. He is very self-conscious. If you have seen Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, then you saw Jackie Brown, you will know what I mean. His hits will make him so full of air that his next movie will be not-so-good. In our case, Kill Bill is the good movie and Death Proof is the bad one.

This movie is incredibly boring, and I have seen a lot of boring movies, so I know what boring is! It's so full of ego, I thought it would burst. There is ZERO plot. There are lots of f-words and strong language for no reason other than ... well, to make the movie sound cool. Anyone who have seen Pulp Fiction will know that f-words can make the dialog a bit interesting. But this is too much.

The plot (which doesn't exist!) is about a stuntman who stalks young girls using his creepy stunt car. The movie is made of 2 parts with ZERO relevance to each other, other than the stuntman and the car. The dialogs are very, very long and again, incredibly boring... like Ocean's Twelve-boring. It's like a group of random girls talking about random things which have no relevance to each other or to the audience. The girls are also, very sleazy and almost all of them sound like Uma Thurman (The Bride) from Kill Bill. By that I mean, strong, over-confident and foul-mouthed women.

The car chase scenes are well done, but boring. This movie pays homage to all the 70s car chase movies, and this is referenced more than once in the movie. Car chases are good, but you can't base a movie on them!

The only good part of this movie was the soundtrack, which is, typical of Tarantino, very cool. The visual filters present in Planet Terror are almost missing in this movie, which is really a shame, considering that they added a lot to the feeling that I am watching a B-movie.

This is one Tarantino movie that I really didn't like... And I even liked Jackie Brown, which was great compared to this crap!

6/10... Sorry Q!

Overall rating for Grindhouse (subjective, not an average): 6/10. Only watch if you are a fan of either of the 2 directors. But if you are a regular guy who wants a good movie, avoid this.

EDIT: I changed the score of Death Proof. Now it's 6 instead of 4. It's still a bad movie, but what made me pump up the score was the fact that this movie was highly memorable! Whenever I am driving, I can't help but remembering it. But, thank God, I don't drive like Stuntman Mike!!!

The score for Grindhouse as a whole is not changed. It's still 6/10.

Distro Smackdown (First half, 2007)

So, I have tried all the major Linux distributions released during the months of April and May. These are: Mandriva 2007.1, Ubuntu 7.04, Fedora 7 and PCLinuxOS 2007.

Let's start with Mandriva:
Installation: The Free DVD version is much better in my opinion. The live/install One CD is good if you want to get to know Mandriva. But if you want to install it, go for the DVD edition. The Mandriva installer worked fine for me in both, although a very annoying thing in the One installer was that there was no "back" button!

Package management: I am a bit spoiled by APT, so Mandriva URPMI wasn't that good in my opinion. I did install Smart. But I don't like Smart that much.

Artwork: Mandriva Free has beautiful blue artwork, while One has an annoying orange one. You can change that but not easily. The icon of the K menu (if you use KDE) is not that easy to change, besides it is oversized. In fact, it's huge!

Package selection: You get all the usual suspects (Firefox, OOo, etc). But as you should expect, the Free DVD has more software.

Management: The Mandriva Control Center makes your life a lot easier. You almost never have to go near the Terminal or type any commands, except for adding repositories from the EasyURPMI site.

Thoughts: The most annoying thing that I encountered in Mandriva 2007 was that when there was an update, you will have to select the packages to be updated manually. This was very annoying. This was fixed in 2007.1. What Mandriva needs to get back to where Mandrake (Mandriva's precursor!) was, is to remove the confusion the users have developed thanks to a bad website and lots of versions to choose from.

I had Mandriva on my REX but removed it after sometime. I got bored of the slow URPMI (which downloads packages and updates one by one). REX is currently running Ubuntu 7.04.

I will revisit Mandriva when 2008 is released sometime this month, God willing.

Now it's Ubuntu's turn:
Installation: I use the standard (live/install) CD. I also downloaded those for Kubuntu and Xubuntu to try them. The installer in all of them was the same as the one that was introduced with Ubuntu 6.06. An addition, however, was the Windows migration tool. I didn't use it so I can't comment on how good it was.

Package management: It's based on Debian, so it has APT. Now add Automatix to install all the software that you want and you have one of the easiest distros to manage software in.

Artwork: It's Ubuntu!!! They will never change the brown theme! It's not bad at all, it's just OLD. They need to change it to add a touch of freshness to this distro. Artwork for Kubuntu and Xubuntu remained almost the same too.

Packages: The usual suspects. But you have a huge repo and Automatix.

Thoughts: Ubuntu Feisty (7.04) added some nice additions to Ubuntu like the addition of the codec installer, the restricted driver module and easy to use Compiz. Almost none of these features are available in Kubuntu or Xubuntu (except the restricted driver module in Xubuntu). Xubuntu is completely uninspired. It confused. It doesn't look like a regular XFCE distro like ZenWalk. Instead, it looks almost like Ubuntu. While Ubuntu is fine, but XFCE has it's own character that is different from Ubuntu's GNOME.

Kubuntu however is good, but it lacks the advanced features of Ubuntu, and it also lacks a characteristic configuration method of any kind. You only get KDE's configuration tools.

Ubuntu 7.04 is really good. I have my two systems running it. But I always wish it was perfect. Looking forward to 7.10, due in October.

As for Fedora 7, I have already stated my opinion on UbuntuForums. Here is what I said:

I installed Fedora 7 twice. The first time, installation went fine, I added Livna and started installing stuff using Yumex. Then I discovered that almost everything I installed had a missing dependency. This has never ever happened to me in any distro I have used. Never! I removed and reinstalled the packages and they worked fine. But I decided that I needed a fresh install.

On the second install, everything went smoothly, which gave me time to think about Fedora. The package manager is a pain in the back. For example, the update manager tells me that there are updates but doesn't tell me their size or how much time is remaining for individual packages. I have a slow DSL line (256 Kbps) and downloading updates without knowing when they will finish is annoying. Moreover, I don't want to use Yumex anymore, because of my previous experience. As for Smart, it's good but I didn't install Fedora just to use Smart, you know!

Apart from the package manager, I had a Gnome desktop. I realized that with the exception of a nice GUI to configure Samba, there is very little difference between Fedora and Ubuntu. I am not saying that Ubuntu invented Gnome. But when you have a distro with a better package manager, better repos, better forums and better wikis and documentation on the web, what will make me go and use Fedora... The Smaba GUI, no thanks!

The other RPM distros that I used and had to bear the bad package management were Mandriva, PCLOS and openSUSE. They had somethings to offer that Ubuntu doesn't have: Better KDE and a user-friendly control panel. Ubuntu doesn't have these.

That's what I think of Fedora!

Now, it's PCLinuxOS 2007's turn:

Apart from the cheesy name, this is a very good distro. A very, very good distro. The only problem that I felt (By the way, I almost didn't run into any problem using this distro) is that PCLOS is uninspired. I feel that it's not its own distro. You get the best parts of every other distro, but where is the PCLOS character? Even the looks was made similar to Windows XP!!!

The only missing feature is that Synaptic (the GUI for the package manager) lacks an "Update" utility, which means that you won't be notified of new updates, instead you will have to check for updates yourself using Synaptic or simply "apt-get update" from the terminal. But this is only a minor problem.

So for me, the winner was Ubuntu followed closely by PCLOS. The clear loser was Fedora 7!

Strangers on a Train

I really want to watch all the movies in my collection before the start of college. So, I gave this Hitchcock movie a try today.

Let's start be saying that the movie idea was new: two strangers having an innocent conversation while on a train may cause more problems than they imagined. But the problem of the movie was that while the movie plot was great and the acting was superb (as any thing you would expect by Hitchcock), the general pace of the movie was lacking. I think the movie could have been a little shorter. I don't mind long movie, and Strangers on a Train is not long, it's just an hour and 40 minutes long, but I think it could have been shorter, say 1 hour and 15 minutes at max.

Short movies are not bad. I have recently seen Christopher Nolan's debut movie, Following. The movie is very short, but that works for it, as anything longer would have been bad. I will try to review this movie some day. Nolan is one of my favourite directors.

Anyway, I am not saying that Strangers on a Train is a bad movie. Not at all. It was enjoyable. But I didn't enjoy it as I did enjoy other Hitchcock movies (Like The Birds, Rear Window, Psycho, North by Northwest and Vertigo). Maybe because there was no James Stewart in this one!

My next Hitchcock movie, God willing, will be Lifeboat. I have seen this movie as a kid. It's time that I watch it again as a grown up.

Score: 7/10

Best quote:

"My theory is that everyone is a potential murderer."
- Bruno