Terminator Salvation

Terminator and Terminator 2 were ground breaking movies, they were movies that had us gripped to our seats and left us with that uncomfortable feeling that nuclear devastation and a fight against machines was a mere hair breadth away. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machine for me was not such a good ending to the franchise and the chance to give a truly superb ending was missed; now 6 years on we have Terminator Salvation that will, hopefully, give us a different take on things.

It is 2018 and john Connor (Christian Bale) is fighting the machine as a member of the resistance, he is constantly listening to old tapes of his mother, Sarah Connor in an attempt to glean information in his quest to bring down skynet, so far everything that his mother had predicted has come to pass. He is also aware of the name of his father, Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) and tries to find him. Learn more…

The Plot

Winged Migration as the title hints at is a visual story about migrating birds.

The Main Event

Winged Migration or “Le Peuple migrateur” is a 2003 Oscar nominated feature documentary about the migratory habits of birds, although I have to say that the term documentary can only loosely be associated to the production. For me a traditional documentary will give you some fairly detailed commentary over the visuals to explain what you are seeing. Think David Attenborough. Winged Migration doesn’t do this. In fact even when the narrator does speak (about once every 10 minutes) he comments on something quite general rather than anything specific to what we see on screen. What we do get is sequence after sequence of stunning footage that will blow you away and leaving you asking yourself “how did they film that?” However I think it is the lack of any real commentary throughout that will endear this DVD to you or not.

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The Damned United

Even if you only have a passing interest in football the chances are that you would have heard of Brian Clough. He was an immensely successful football player and manager having scored 197 goals in 213 appearances for Middleborough and 54 Goals in 61 appearances for Sunderland before being injured in 1962, an injury which essentially retired him as a player. In 1965 he became manager of Hartlepool and with the help of his assistant Peter Taylor was extremely successful with them as well as Derby County and Eventually Nottingham Forest where he took the small team on to win the  European Cup in 1979 and successfully retain it in 1980. Learn more…

Labyrinth

Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) is a teenager who lives in a word of dreams, magic and fantasy. And this particular evening she is supposed to babysit her baby half brother, something she doesn’t really want to do. He is crying all the time and so Sarah tells him a story, a story whereby she will wish him away to the Goblin King Jareth (David Bowie). Unbeknownst to her the words she uses awakens a horde of muppets…erm I mean Goblins as they along with Jareth whip the child away as she recites the magic words. Confronted by Jareth she decides that she needs the get Toby (The Baby) back and so the oh-so-fearsome Goblin king gives her 13 hours to get through the Labyrinth after which the baby will become his and live in the castle forever. As time slips by Sarah enters the maze and meets across a plethora of different characters, some who help and some who hinder her way to the Goblin Kings castle. Learn more…

Paul Blart: Mall Cop brings Kevin James to the silver screen in a leading role for the first time. Sure he shared the credits with Adam Sandler in I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, but this is his first time out there on his own. Not satisfied with the leading male role, he’s also gone for producer and writer as well!

For those that aren’t that aware of Kevin James, he started out his career as a stand up comedian and moved to TV sit coms from a few appearances in Everybody Loves Raymond to his own vehicle King of Queens. It was only a matter of time before he took a swing at Hollywood. His first role was quite a successful turn in Hitch as the hapless Albert Brennaman and the role of a chunky guy, hopeless with affairs of the heart is essentially the role that he’s repeating here. Learn more…

It’s difficult to put a genre to Alex Proyas latest film ‘Knowing’. Disaster movie, drams, thriller, science fiction, they’re all in there somewhere, what it certainly is, is different.

In 1959 a class of young children are asked to come up with an idea to mark the opening of their new school. One girl, Lucinda, a bit of a loner, comes up with the winning idea, to bury a time capsule containing pictures drawn by them of what they think the world will look like in 50 years time. The children paint the expected pictures of rockets and robots. All except for Lucinda. Lucinda hears whispering voices in her head and they tell her to write down a massive sequence of numbers. She frantically writes but runs out of time just short of the final few numbers. The teacher is surprised by Lucinda’s contribution but includes it in the capsule anyway. Later that day, after the capsule has been buried, Lucinda goes missing. A search party is raised and the grounds of the school are thoroughly searched. The teacher finds Lucinda in a cupboard under the stairs having frantically scratched the final numbers into the door with her fingers until they bled. Learn more…

Mumbai Calling’s pilot episode first aired in May 2007. After receiving a terrible critical reception it was instantly panned, but after a slight reinvention of the series and a well deserved second chance provided by ITV, the series began its initial run exactly two years after its failed pilot first aired, to a much more positive, and well earned, reception.

Mumbai Calling is the latest in a long line of British sitcoms, but one that is fairly modern, almost completely original, and utterly different from anything that as come before. The shows premise revolves around British-Indian Kenny Gupta (Sanjeev Bhaskar), who is unwillingly sent to India to improve the profitability of his companies call centre, Teknobable. Also appearing is Terri Johnson (Daisy Beaumont), who was sent in to assess the job being carried out by Kenny, and Dev Raja (Nitin Ganatra), the extremely laid back call centre manager who works solely for the money and doesn’t really care how the call centre is run as long as he can have a laugh and catch a glimpse of the odd belly dancer. Learn more…

The wife really wanted to go see this when it had it’s cinema run but we just couldn’t get away (must start to complile list of babysitters!). Come to think of it, it doesn’t seem that long ago, but here we are at DVD release time already. Here’s the official press release:

DUPLICITY
STEALING $40 MILLION IS EASY.
TRUSTING EACH OTHER IS THE HARD PART.

Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich, Pretty Woman) is reunited with Clive Owen (Closer, Sin Ciy) in Duplicity, director Tony Gilroy’s (Michael Clayton, Bourne Identity) smart and sexy comedy, out to own on DVD and Blu-ray from 27th July 2009. Learn more…

Saw this on another blog and thought I would post it here. It’s Optimus Prime presenting the top ten things that sound cool when spoken by a giant robot.

Director Of CTU (Counter-Terrorism Unit), Los Angeles, Jack Bauer (Sutherland) sees his daughter to bed and is called in to the office when the CIA becomes aware of a threat to Presidential Candidate David Palmer (Haysbert). As Bauer investigates the threat against Palmer, he realises that there is probably someone on the inside, and that there is no one he can trust, leaving himself and his family in danger. Filmed in real time, we live with Bauer, Palmer, their families and the CTU team over 24 hours, the longest day of their lives…

I didn’t see this on TV, so I’ve watched all 24 episodes without missing one (which usually happens when I try to watch a TV series). I very nearly didn’t sleep in the two weeks it’s taken to find the time to watch and entire TV series. After the first few episodes, which introduce the characters, it becomes very hard to switch off – brilliantly acted, incredibly well directed and ending each episode with a cliffhanger, it becomes an obsession. The real-time aspect means that you find yourself wondering what is going on at that time on another sub-plot. Often you see two or three stories on-screen, and as it takes many episodes to resolve even the smallest story, you keep coming back for more, and just when you think you’ve figured it out, there’s a twist you didn’t see coming and another story starts up. Learn more…