And that’s being nice! Really, it was more of a three and a half rating. It was overhyped and poorly written.  Ciri and I loved it and hated it at the same time.

It should be called Ferngully Two: The Last of the Mohicans Smurfs

The biggest problem was the plot formula was so obvious it took me out of the movie.  Anytime that happens, I automatically take away a star.  Boom.

It felt like an expensive Ferngully, but with realistic thriving Smurfs. I say Smurfs not only because they are blue, but because of their tree hugging lifestyle.  They don’t make any attempt to hide the inspiration for the character design.  Maybe Ferngumurfs aren’t the inspiration, which is fine, but you can’t deny the similarity.

Dude, to help drive the point, the Last of the Mohicans guy IS the leader of the Na’vi tribe!  It’s the freaking Sphinx, man! Come on…

Don’t get me started on the unibtanium.  Guh.

So, to sum it up, bad character design and a cliché plot lost it two stars.  On the other hand, the characters themselves were beautifully rendered -  visually and emotionally.  The actors did a damn good job.  The artists went to town on those renders too.

The forests where beautiful too, it really is getting harder and harder to see the differences between CG and real actors.  It’s exciting and scary at the same time. I’ll give them a star back.

Although, when it came down to the mixture of the two, I wasn’t that impressed.  District 9 was way better.  Maybe District 9 had it easier with a lighter, less dynamic color palette and maybe it would look better in HD.  Either way, I was more impressed by the integration in District 9’s mecha scene than in Avatar’s final mecha scene.  It looked like a typical CG cartoon to me.

Speaking of bad guys.

The last bit I’m going to whine about is the Colonel’s death.  I won’t argue that it was a good conclusion, I just think it could have been better.  This guy was a war-mongering evil bastard.  I find that antagonists’ deaths mean more when it is caused by their own deeds.

It didn’t make sense for the Na’vi princess chick to kill him.  They’re supposed to treasure life and even evil souls deserve the chance to repent their sins, right?  If they really did hold life sacred, then she wouldn’t have killed him.  I would have liked for him to make it to the tree and as he tried to destroy the tree, the tree absorbed him into the collective.  How cool would it be for the antagonist to be assimilated against his will into the thing he hated the most? All kinds of metaphors in there.

I know I’m late but…

So, by the time I get to watch the movie, everyone has pretty much said everything there is to say.  Argued points have come and gone.  But I don’t care.    If I repeat what’s been said, sorry.  I tried to avoid the conversations about this movie so I could go into it without bias.  The only thing I really heard was the Smurf thing – which I totally agree with too – and the Last of the Mohicans comparison.  I’ve never seen the Last of the Mohicans so I’m good there.  I think I can say I watched it with an open mind.

So. Four out of five stars.  Bad design and plot.  Awesome effects and acting.  The story telling isn’t too bad either.  It’s just the devices I have issues with.  Ok.  Getting off the soap box again… for now.

-Juan

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Part of Moblogging also includes words. So here’s another MoReview on DragonBall Evolution. It’s ok. Yea it has it’s holes and annoyances, but it’s fun. Kamehameha wave was kinda weak – I expected something more epic. There were other liberties that were taken that I thought were just too distracting, but as a psuedo-reboot, it wasn’ t all that bad. Rent it if you enjoyed Dragonballs.

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The first thought I had was to search for some sort of iPhone app that was password protected.  I found a few, some free and some at a small premium.  Writing from the iPhone is convenient when there isn’t a full size keyboard around, but I would rather use a computer when it is available.  So if I was going to buy an app, it would need to sync with some online service or at least sync with my PC.  I couldn’t find any apps that had this functionality so I thought of just using a webapp instead.

Immediately, I found this cool service called Penzu.  It’s a very well thought out service and really simple to use.  It’s completely private and, unlike a public blog, the individual entries don’t have a URL for robots to scan.  Let’s say someone figured out your password, each entrycan be individually locked and would therefore require a second password to view.

It’s also well designed.  When you visit the site you can start writing right away by clicking on the “try it out” link. After you’re done writing, just log in and it will save the entry automatically.  As you’re writing, the text appears on what looks like a sheet of lined paper.  Like I said, really cool site.

Unfortunately, writing on it in Safari on the iPhone is really cumbersome.  I was typing pretty fast and after a while, I had to stop so it would catch up with me.  The site is really good, and adding an iPhone app would make it the best private journaling application I could find.  I ended up not using it because of how the iPhone interacted with it.

This search turned out to be a little more drawn out then I thought it would be.  I thought of  using Evernote or the Notes app, but I thought I would look at Blogger and WordPress first to see if there was a “private” setting.  I created a blog at WordPress.com first and set it to private.  Using the WordPress iPhone app, I was able to log-in to the blog and start writing.  I checked to make sure I couldn’t access the site if I wasn’t logged in and that the RSS feed was not displaying either.  So far, this seems like a pretty good solution.

Evernote could work as well since I have the desktop application and the iPhone application.  It wouldn’t be as  efficient since it’s designed for quick note taking, plus I’m a huge WordPress fan so using the WordPress.com blogs is ideal for me.  Blogger allows for private settings too, but I couldn’t find an iPhone app for it.

I honestly hope that Penzu releases an iPhone app to go with their web application – I’ll switch over if they do. Penzu is designed to be private unlike WordPress which is designed to be public.  Either way, WordPress is a good solution for now and hopefully I’ll keep up with this journal-keeping quest for once.

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I was dreading the task of staining the garden because of how awkward it would be to apply the stain. It had been a couple of months since we started using it and the wire fencing would make it difficult to cover all of the wood.  Enter Krylon’s Spray on stain

Armed with a few cans of Rustic Brown stain, my camera, and the baby monitor (Ciri was at a doctor’s appointment), I headed to the yard during Izzy’s afternoon nap.

The can has a rotating nozzle which made it REALLY easy to apply in a vertical or horizontal motion. I started spraying the posts and frames and about twenty minutes later (it would have been less if I didn’t take pictures ), I headed back inside. That’s it. Done.  Awe. Some.

Three hours later Ciri came home and she went to check it out.  Ciri found some wet spots even though the can claims to be “dry to the touch” in fifteen minutes.  It wasn’t dry to the touch, but it was good enough. I should mention that I gave it a heavy coat instead of the light coat that the can says to give.  The spray on stain sounds like it is the perfect solution for projects that should be quick but actually take up a whole weekend.  Considering how long it would have taken to wipe on the stain, drying overnight is no big deal.

The can also says it will cover 25 square feet and I thought one can, maybe two, would be enough.  I ended up using two and a half cans.  After doing my math on the surfaces that I covered, two and a half cans was an accurate number – even with the heavy coat!  It’s a good thing I didn’t use the rest on the bed frame project!

The stain seems durable and strong, but I wouldn’t say it’s the prettiest stain I’ve seen.  I’m under the impression that the best looking stains are wipe-on, and I kind of agree.  On the other hand, for convienience and durability, I’ll stick with Krylon’s spray on stain.  I won’t use it on projects like Ciri’s Coin Display, but it does have it’s place as the quick and easy solution.

Here are some before pictures of the garden:

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Fully charged and ready to roll.

How many people, when they first receive their iPhones, completely drain the first charge in mere hours?   *Raises hand*   Ok, so I didn’t drain it completely, but it got pretty close.   Probably because I left the bluetooth on all day.   I’m sure configuring the settings, adding my contacts, playing with all the apps, and listening to an entire podcast didn’t really help either.

Yea, the dang thing finally got delivered today.   I really think FedEx is messed up, though.   A truck came by early in the morning and I thought my phone was on it.   The truck didn’t stop here – it just kept going.   About an hour later, another truck delivered the phone.   Crazy right?   It’s like musical chairs but with FedEx trucks.   I’m still confused why it sat in Raleigh for almost three days, though.   Eh.   All’s well that ends well.

I am really loving this thing.   It’s an amazing little device and it’s so much fun to use.   I downloaded a ton of apps for it while it was charging and updating.   My must haves, so far, are the AllRecipes.com app and the Google app.   There were a few apps that sounded really promising, but ended up being a waste of time.   I found one app that would allow the iPhone to send and receive MMS messages, but you have to pay a monthly fee.   I thought it added the functionality, but it turned out it was an actual service.

Speaking of MMS.   I heard the iPhone didn’t have MMS capabilities and I thought that was a real dumb option to leave out.   I figured Apple would include it on some future software update.   No such luck.   If my friends want to send me pictures or video, they need to send it to my email address.   This can be real annoying, but it’s not that big a deal to me, since I don’t get many MMS’s anyway.

The lack of a video recording option, on the other hand, is pretty darn annoying. I downloaded an app that turns my iPhone into a damn lightsaber, but I can’t record video?!   Double ewe tee eff.   The camera takes some real nice photos, but Apple decided it doesn’t want to support the video feature for now.   Fail.

I tried to connect the iPhone to my old Nokia so I can transfer my contacts.   I found out that the iPhone will not tether to other phones.   This is also slightly annoying, but, again, it doesn’t affect me as much, since I only needed to do it once.

I understand that most, if not all, of my issues can be addressed by jailbreaking the phone.   I initially didn’t want to do that because it sounded like more trouble than it was worth.   I now realize how many issues are fixed by jailbreaking the phone so I think I may do it after all.   An added bonus for jailbreaking the phone is I will have access to the NES emulator app.   How cool is that?!

Jailbroken or not, I love my new phone.   I need to go buy a skin for it so I don’t scratch up the cover.   I already bought some screen protectors, but I have to cut them to size.

As much as I still love my Zune, it’s been demoted from “the Precious” status and has been replaced by my new iPhone.   Doesn’t mean the iPhone is replacing my Zune as my media player, it’s just a little more special at the moment.

So that’s the end of the saga.   It was a long weekend.   Stay tuned for a write up on the surprise gift that Ciri is getting from me for her going away party.   She doesn’t know she is getting anything and I don’t think she’ll have time to read this before Thursday.   >:)

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The Dark Knight - Joker

We just watched The Dark Knight Sunday night after an afternoon of tamale making and gorging.   We had Ciri’s dad, step-mom, and step-grandma over, so we had a nice assembly line going.   After they left, we sat on the couch and popped in The Dark Knight.

I wanted to watch this movie way before Heath Ledger died, and it sucks that some people have hyped it up based on it being Ledger’s last performance.   I wanted to watch it because the first one was great and because Heath Ledger was, at the very least, an interesting choice for The Joker.

I grew up with Jack Nicholson’s Joker; people before me grew up with Cesar Romero and his mustache.   Right away, people started comparing the three actors’ interpretations of the Joker.   This is a natural reaction, albeit a flawed reaction.   I am partial to Jack Nicholson’s rendition, but I don’t think that it is fair to compare the three since they all took place during different periods of American culture.   Apples and oranges.

I wanted to believe the hype, but people these days are so eager to jump on some bandwagon or another.   I resisted believing everybody’s opinion until I saw the movie for myself.

So Ciri and I finally got a chance to sit down and watch the movie after we put Izzy down for bed.   I don’t want to review the movie, except I do want to say that without Heath Ledger, the movie would have been crap.   Period.

In the scene where he is robbing the bank we get our first meeting with the Joker.   This single, short scene gave me chills.   I could not believe what I was seeing.   He did meet the hype – in Ciri’s unbiased opinion, he actually exceeded it.   He was really a bad ass Joker.

This brought up so many questions, though.   Is his Joker the best live action Joker?   Is his performance really worth a nomination or even an award?   For the former, you can’t say his is the best.   You just can’t.   Go back to the 80′s and relive the hype of Jack’s Joker and tell me they can be compared.   No way.

As for the nomination.   He was good.   Damn good.   He brought something to the Joker that none of his predecessors could, and he did it right.   Not just “good”, but “right.”   Ciri and I went back and analyzed many other villains from comic book movies.   William Dafoe bombed in Spiderman, I think.   Kevin Spacey was pretty good, but it wasn’t anything amazing.   There’s more, but you get the point.

I was hesitant to say he deserves an award at first because I thought it would be marred with the extra hype his performance received after his death.   If he hadn’t died, would people still think he deserved an award?   Maybe not as many people would think so, but overall, I’m convinced he earned an award.

We decided that Heath Ledger’s Joker, was by far the best performance of all the other superhero flicks.   And not only was he the best, but he also set a very, very high bar for any actor that wants to play a villain after this.

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Lich King

Here I am, sitting at my computer again, virtual-window shopping.   I’m staring at the new expansion for World of Warcraft like some little kid hoping that an onlooker will feel bad for me and buy it for me.   Damn online shopping…

Seriously, I would like to get my hands on a copy, but I am in no hurry.   I play the game for the story and the adventure – which is a nice way of saying I am not level 70 yet.   I started playing around April of last year and my main character, Odium, is currently at level 47.   I have two or three characters in the mid thirties as well, but none of them are as fun, to me, as my Rogue (hence, RogueDad.   Sneaky sneaky).   I would be level 70 by now, but I have other commitments in life, that and I am slow…

So because I am such a low level, I can’t take part in much of the new content.   Although, the recent patch introduced enough content and features to keep me happy.

Just out of curiosity, though, I logged in last night to see how the world was doing and I was really hoping to catch my first glimpse at the new class, the Death Knights.   I got on the zeppelin to Kalimdor and there’s a crazy lookin’ blood elf on her mount standing at the front, all dressed in black.   “Gasp” and “Rawr!”   Death Knights are awe-some (especially female blood elves)!

The new patch and expansion introduced some new elements to the storyline as well as tons of other cool stuff, so I am really excited to see how this whole “war against the Burning Legion” turns out.   Until I reach level 70 and our finances pick up again, Wrath of the Lich King will have to wait.   That is, unless, someone would like to sponsor me…

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