holabendez blog

Maybe it’s because of my new life situation; unemployed and single – that this movie struck a chord with me.

I have never had a job that has really involved a lot of travel, but I can confess to having a bit of a romanticised impression of airports, hotel rooms and airline travel.

George Clooney plays a man who spends over 300 days a year flying around the country doing his job, which is to fire people.

His character is effectively a soul less person with little interest in making a connection with other human beings. That didn’t make his character unlikeable, on the contrary it seemed quite intriguing.

The movie tries to tell you that no matter what, having other people in your life is the most important thing. It’s more important that money, or a job, it’s the thing that will sustain you at the end of the day.

Whatever, shut up Reitman.

It was an okay though, a mildy amusing movie. Three stars.

To be honest, I’m not that big a fan of music. I don’t dislike music; it is just that it has never been a big deal to me. If tomorrow people stopped creating music, it wouldn’t bother me, there is already more than enough in the world as it is, why do we even need any more?

It is perhaps this bias that has had me wondering why music piracy should be such a big deal. Music labels argue that they have lost so much money because of how easy it is to illegally distribute music via the internet. I don’t question for a second the ease internet makes music distribution, what I do question is why music companies are relying on revenue through the sale of music in the first place.

Music should be free. The notion of a user paying for an individual song that they can own and play just seems ridiculous to me. Music singles should be considered advertising. They are promoting the band, increasing interest in the product. The product however is NOT the individual song.

I’m not going to pretend to understand the intricacies of the music industry from a business point of view, but it seems clear to me that you can’t sustain a business if you’re relying on selling something that is easy to obtain for nothing.

Surely bands make more money when they tour; assuming of course they have a decent fan base. Artists can make money through licensing revenue such as when their music is featured on television, video games or other media that is more easily sold and can generate its own revenue. An argument to this is; what about the small bands starting out? My answer to that is simple; we don’t need that many of them in first place. It’s perhaps time that less people even try to eke a living as musicians.

The market should only exist for the truly good acts, ones that are able to sustain profitability through the above sources. If, at the end of the day we lost 70% of the commercial musical artists tomorrow, I would say good riddance. The fringe acts can’t make much of a living anyway, and those that do probably make their money from performing, and you know what? They can still do that.

It seems to me the problem is more that the music industry is used to having a fat cash cow with music sales, but the simple fact is, the cow is dead, it’s time to change. It’s not a question of whether or not they should change, because that ship has sailed – the music business landscape has changed and will never be the same again. I can get music for free (if I cared to), so stop charging me for it.

Clint Eastwood sets a very high standard with his movies, Gran Torino was arguably my favourite movie of 2009 (at the very least my favourite 2D movie…) Invictus seems like a strange movie to me; not being South African, and not much of a rugby fan, I had no idea that the winning of the Rugby World Cup in 1995 was that big a deal for South Africa. What’s even more strange for me is that after seeing this film, I still wasn’t convinced.

I’m not actually arguing whether or not it was an important moment for South Africa, but what I am suggesting is that whatever is that Invictus was trying to convey, I wasn’t feeling it.

It’s hard for me to put my finger on what this movie actually was, it’s not a rugby movie, despite the setting. The movie does make it clear that it really isn’t about the sport itself, but what it represents, and the movie, perhaps deliberately does little to use the matches themselves to convey any drama at all. I wasn’t sure if that was a deliberate effort to not focus on the rugby itself, or simply the result of a director who likely wasn’t all that familiar with the intricacies of the sport.

Nelson Mandela is a great man, who has endured a lot and achieved so much – but I never really credited “winning a rugby world cup” as one of his achievements.

Rather than being a movie about a nation overcoming a dark history of division among its people by uniting together through a game of rugby, it comes across more like a powerful leader’s misguided obsession with a sport he knows little about rather than focussing on the day to day running of his country.

I’m pretty sure that’s not what Eastwood was going for. Morgan Freeman plays Nelson Mandela with the kind of reverence that would have you believe that he was the second coming of Christ (or a reincarnation of Buddha), in a performance that kind of says “give me an award because I’m playing Mandela and he’s a legend, right?” Matt Damon plays Francois Pienaar as a quiet, humble man, so much so that it contributes to the legendary aura of Mandela this movie tries to convey.

Eastwood would have you believe, the Springboks didn’t win the World Cup, Nelson Mandela did.

The intentions of this movie seem honourable enough, but the movie just doesn’t work.

And of course, there is no mention of any “food poisoning” of the All Blacks in the grand final, but then, who really believes that happened anyway?

Three stars.

Made in 2006 this is a pretty old game that holds up rather well, but still shows its age. It’s a pre-Modern Warfare first person shooter, so it lacks the “auto lock” style zoom feature that has become prevelant these days and uses the traditional “shooting from the hip” Halo style of combat.

That in and of itself is by no means a bad thing. I couldn’t help but feel that if I’d played this game earlier I would’ve had a greater appreciation of it, but I suppose the passage of time and the prevalence of other superior games in recent times makes Resistance look a little sub-standard.

Don’t get me wrong it is a good game, just a bit dated. The variety in game play is lacking though and could’ve benefited from some more innovations in its game play. There was a time when this game would’ve been very well regarded, but that time is not now.

Three stars

I am a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, I used to read the books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle when I was younger. This movie felt to me like it captured the spirit of Sherlock Holmes and tweaked it to well suit the 21st century audience.

All the little details are there. They make clever little references all over the place in this movie, to details and characters from the extensive Sherlock Holmes case files. I guess considering Sherlock Holmes has been a literary figure for well over a hundred years a lot of those details are “well known”, well, perhaps not to the everyday audience, but as far as popular literary characters go, he is surely one of the best known.

I’m not sure if a Sherlock Holmes purist would approve, but I certainly did. “Factually” (in as much as a fictional character can have facts) it was all there, Holmes was an adept pugilist and does make references to the fact that he utilises a form of martial arts involving fighting with his cane, and Watson often brought a pistol with him whenever they suspected a situation would get dangerous. This movie just cranks that up to the point where the adventures of Holmes and Watson are well laiden with action – and that wasn’t a bad thing at all.

Jude Law seemed a comfortable fit as Watson, and his character was well done. One of the big challenges with Watson is that he is a medical doctor and very intelligent, and yet whenever he is with Holmes, the danger is always how do you manage to showcase Holmes brilliance without making Watson seem like a fool.

Robert Downey Jr seemed like a curious choice to me to play Holmes, but it’s clear the man has cornered the market on playing pompous prats that the audience can’t help but love. They play Holmes as the brilliant, drug addled genius who is socially inept, and arrogant – just as the books intended. RDJ finds a way to do this and you still love the character.

The classic Sherlock Holmes style is still there, he deduces things like no one else can, and the manner in which Guy Ritchie does exposition seems well suited in allowing all the explanation to take place in an entertaining (and expedient way).

Finally, the aesthetics of the 19th century Victorian England setting is really well done. The streets (and the faces of people) is all grimy and the whole setting looks great.

All in all, this is the best Sherlock Holmes movie I could have possibly expected, it takes all the elements of Holmes and tweaks it for the modern audience, without losing a single part of the Holmes fiction at all. A great movie.

True in spirit, exaggerated in detail – with the modern audience in mind.

Four stars.

Modern Warfare 2 takes all the strong elements of the original Modern Warfare and cranks it up to eleven. The quality gameplay is still there, but the story just goes over the top – in a good way. Any semblance to reality goes out the door in favour of jaw dropping sequences. This coupled with a really strong multiplayer element, including a co-op feature, makes it pretty clear why this game is so damn popular.

Four stars

Wow, I feel like I have watched a movie from the future. Not just a film set in the future, but a movie FROM the future. I don’t want to over state things, but after seeing this film, I know that movies will never be the same again. I saw this movie in IMAX 3D, and it was a visual experience unlike anything I have ever experienced before. Visually the movie was absolutely amazing. It is beautiful, it is mind blowing, it is the sort of movie that only James Cameron could make.

From a story point of view it is not exactly original. Thematically I felt like I had seen a lot of it before in both “The Last of the Mohicans” and “Dances with Wolves”, both entirely excellent films. Now imagine those films set in the future, with amazing special effects, in 3D and with some awesome kick ass action scenes – that should hopefully give you an idea of how good this film is.

It is a long film, over three hours long – but it tells such a grand, epic story, you couldn’t do the movie justice being any shorter. Cameron creates a world so wonderous, so beautiful, you are never bored, and you are always amazed.

Would I be gushing so much if I hadn’t seen it in glorious IMAX 3D? Not sure, I’ll tell you when I go see it again, probably for the fourth or fifth time, after seeing it another two more times in IMAX.

The future is now, and god damn it’s beautiful. Five stars.

This game is an improvement in just about all areas of an already amazing game. The gameplay mechanics have been incrementally improved – enemies no longer absorb a ridiculous amount of firepower and the puzzles are more complex. The melee combat system has changed, though I’m not so convinced it’s an improvement, there was nothing wrong with it in the first place anyway.  The scale of the game has gotten grander, and the action is relentless, the game moves seemlessly from one amazing action set piece to the next.

Never before has a game made you feel like you’re part of such an amazing adventure. To be fair, it’s more like you feel like you’re immersed in an amazing blockbuster feature film rather than real life – video games haven’t achieved that kind of level of immersion and realism just yet.

The production values found in this game are second to none. The facial expressions and movement of the CG characters represent some of best “acting” you’ll ever find in a video game. While you are guided along the story in a linear fashion you never feel like you’re simply along for the ride. Not being open world means the game can tell a very controlled and specific story, and Uncharted 2 tells a spectacular story of epic proportions.

Truly one of the greatest games to be found on the PS3. Five stars.

So how do you take a beloved kids book, that is mostly illustrations and very thin in plot and turn it into a full length feature film? You don’t. This movie was garbage. It’s definitely not for kids, but it hardly plays for adults. Strictly for nostalgic people who absolutely loved the book.

Two stars.

This game put to rest any fears I had that the PSP couldn’t bring console quality games to a hand held device. This was my first foray into the God of War series, and it was pretty easy to see while it’s so popular. Given that this game apparently isn’t as good as the console versions, I’m left pretty eager to try them out.

Three stars.