Nov2005 13

Appleseed Movie Review

Posted In Apple |

{mosimage}

From its cel animation to its CGI effects, Appleseed is a very slick looking anime movie and is one of the finest displays of modern CGI blended anime. Bandai Visual has done an amazing job recreating (and extending) Masamune Shirow's original comic and making the 1991 anime look like a distant cousin.

Appleseed also benefitted by having a number of popular electronica artists included on its soundtrack including Paul Oakenfold, Aphex Twin and Basement Jaxx (I still get gossbumps to this day, listening to their remix of "Good Luck".)

Rating:

Nov2005 01

OS X 10.4.3 Update

Posted In Events |

{mosimage}Apple has release it's latest update to Tiger, 10.4.3 and it addresses several security flaws. The update addresses seven separate issues, including a bugs (1) in the Finder that incorrectly displays file/group ownership, (2) in Software Update that may not install certain software updates, (3) in group permissions under Mac OS X 10.4.2 Server where changes may not be immediately applied, (4) in Keychain which may display certain passwords after the lock timeout, and (5,6,7) in the kernel that may display memory information to local users.

Click here for the full story.

Update 2/11: After updating and restarting, I now have no desktop ... No icons and no Finder to access. Safari runs thankfully, Skype and Firefox don't, that's all I've tried so far. I guess the permissions are stuffed ... again. I can't even launch the Disk Utility, so I had to hunt around on Appletalk until I found out the command line to repair permissions.

As I could only launch things from my dock, I launched the Terminal, repaired the permissions using that command, unfortunately, I couldn't shutdown. When I tried to "su", that failed to accept my password.

So, I had to turn it off at the back and when it came back up it was all good ... now I just wish Apple would include an automatic run of the Disk Utility - Repair Permissions at the end of every update. Please.

Every update so far has caused one problem or another.

Oct2005 29

DOOM Movie Review

Posted In Apple |

{mosimage}On Saturday, I went to the see the game turned movie - Doom.
Wow ... what a bad movie. I didn't think it was possible to waste $60 million dollars ... now I do. Let's start with the story - written by first-time writer Dave Callaham. He claims that his story was altered (after being inundated with hate emails from Doom gamers), presumably by the screenwriter, Wesley Strick, who's credits include Cape Fear (Remake) and The Saint (TV Show turned Movie). Not off to a good start.

Now we have the director, the person who shapes the movie, who's vision of the story, is what we see. Andrzej Bartkowiak, who's credits include such B-grade movies as Romeo Must Die, Exit Wounds and Cradle 2 the Grave. Why would you hand a project like Doom over to someone who has no track record. Like I'm not saying get James Cameron to direct it, there are a lot of other talented action flick directors who could have done a better job.

The music or lack thereof, was a major let down. No musical score to add suspense, some scenes just flopped because of this in my opinion. We were treated to some rock score at one point, which leaves just as soon as it enters. Now comes the acting ... well we weren't going to expect much from The Rock, now were we ? Karl Urban does the best he can ... but Rosamund Pike, I thought her acting was weak.

So, overall, I didn't enjoy this movie. It certainly hasn't done well at the box office overall. I've given it an extra half star, just for the First Person Shooter part.

Rating:

Oct2005 23

Haiku HD Images and Blog

Posted In Haiku |

Over the past week or so, I've been busy working on providing the Haiku OS HD Images for the community.

These images are for testing purposes ONLY and are not to be used for product reviews. The images have been made available to test on real Hardware or Emulation, such as BeBochs and/or Virtual PC.

You can check out all the progress over at my Haiku Pref Team blog.

Oct2005 15

Serenity Movie Review

Posted In Apple |

{mosimage}On Saturday, I went to the Southbank Parkland's cinema
to see Joss Whedon's movie length Serenity, a continuation of the
Firefly 14 episode TV show, that was shown on late night free-to-air TV, so I never got to see it. Whilst my
other half didn't like this movie at all, I thought it was not bad. The
overall production had a very TV-like quality to it, even though some
of the scenes were movie-like kick ass.

The dialog was very Whedon-witty-like and the story generally flowed,
however, there were a few uneasy things such as there
being no chemistry between Zoe (Gina Torres) and Wash (Alan Tudyk), and why was River (Summer Glau) being trained ? To fight the Reavers ? Jayne (Adam Baldwin)
had some of the best lines in this movie, and I felt River looked stunning in her
buffy-esque fighting moves againsts the vamp...err reavers.

I really like Nathan Fillion (Captain Mal or to Buffy fans Caleb, the Evil
Priest) as an actor. so I would like to see this project develop
into something else, either another movie or a new series for TV.

Rating: