Small Blog Update

I know I said I was moving my blog away…I will keep this open for a few weeks just to see how my sites spam filter is. If its crap then I will just continue with this one…keep watching

My Blog Is Moving

Hey all,

Just to let you know i am moving away from WordPress to add my blog to my site.

To keep following my blog just visit http://www.krismunro.co.uk/blog

Thanks see you there

Gamer (2009) – Review

Plot : Set in a future-world where humans can control other humans in mass-scale, multi-player online gaming environments, a star player (Butler) from a game called “Slayers” looks to regain his independence while taking down the game’s mastermind

Review : I went to this film with an open mind, only seeing the trailer and it look interesting.

The film has some really nice ideas, and a lot of cool action scenes. You are instantly interested in the main characters back story, and want to learn more.

Its basically a re-invention of the Running Man, with the look of a First Person shooter game every now and them though this is more serious than the Running Man. Most of the real world parts are lacking something, you don’t get a lot of emotion and get a little bored at parts, though the area this film excels is the parts when he is playing the game its very well done and looks great. Granted the characters don’t really have much to work with, and they do a good job but it just felt that it was lacking something and could have been a hell of a lot better than it was.

The film at parts is very graphic and gorey, espeshailly some of the in game deaths so do expect a lot of blood.

To be honest I cant really say too much without giving a lot of information away.

Overall it is an ok movie nothing special, it was better than I expected but not one I would get on DVD.The best parts of Gamer are the action sequences in and out of the game environments, if there was some more character development and also some longer in game scenes it might have helped. Its a mix between Secondlife meets CounterStrike meets The Running Man.

My Rating : 5 out of 10

Night at the Museum (2006) – Review

Plot : A newly recruited night security guard at the Museum of Natural History
discovers that an ancient curse causes the animals and exhibits on
display to come to life and wreak havoc.

Review : I decided to skip this one when it came out at the cinema, as it didnt look to hot. I then spotted it on TV and decided to tape it and watch it at some point when there wasnt much on.

The film is very family oriented which is good, as there are lots of childish jokes plus a good amount of adult humour which really helps. The film is packed with laughs and some make you laugh out loud, though there are a few Ben Stiller moments where you think “your role never changes / your jokes never change” which kinda puts a dampener on some parts as he can be a good actor.

The film has a lot of good well known actors, that you should be able to spot and the special FX are really good.

To my surprise I actually enjoyed the film, but not loads. I know that there is a sequel and I feel like most ok family films the sequel goes down a more kids oriented way and isnt as good.

Overall its easy to watch and has a few good jokes.

My Rating : 6 out of 10

Hexed (Comic) – Review

Publisher : Boom! Studios

Plot : #1-4. “Blood. Theft. Sex. Magic. It’s said
there’s no honor amongst thieves. Add to that a thief operating in the
occult underground, and it’s a whole different kind of nasty! Luci
Jennifer Inagcio Das Neves, Lucifer for short, takes a new job that
will expose her to the macabre underbelly of the city, and a secret
that she’d rather nobody know.”

Review : I have never been a big comic fan, but I have an iPhone and noticed that there were a few digital comics available so I decided to take a look to see if they sparked any interest. So if I dont go into a massive review, please forgive me for now as its a new area I am trying to get in to.

I started with a 4 part series titled “Hexed”, the first issue was free so I thought no harm in trying it. After reading the first issue, I decided to see what #2 was like and the next thing I new was I had purchased all 4 and enjoyed the read.

The storyline is basic, and the characters are very interesting. You arent given too much information about the main character till around issue 4, and around issue 2 is where the story picked up for me. The main character is a thief who specializes in procuring dangerous items of an occult nature. She is very interesting, and its a shame there wasnt more character development as I wanted to know more about her.

During the four issues you are introduced to some interesting characters, including demons and weird looking creatures….she even goes for a swim inside a guys belly…that was an interesting few pages lol. No spoilers here but there is a mention of some woman, but unfortunatly you dont learn to much about her hopefully there will be more about her in new comics.

Overall Hexed is well paced, at times brutal. This is one that I feel I will keep an eye out for more titles, and see where the story leads.

My Rating : 6 out of 10

iVerseComics iPhone App – Review

There are 2 big comic book apps out on the iPhone, you have Comixology and IverseComics. Both of these applications, are portals to digital comics. When you purchase a comic from within these applications, they stay within this application and not taking up your iPhone desktop space.

I started with comixology, but then found out that iVerse were releasing one. I decided to go with iVerse as I had several digital comics already purchased by them, and that they would at somepoint be merged into this single app.

The comics I had purchased were Farscape #1 and #2, Ghost Whisperer #1 to #5 and Atomic Robo #1 to #4.

The iVerseComics application is nicely designed, the main icon looks proffesional and when you run it its easy to use and navigate. There are several screen to choose from the main two that users will click are the store and the My Comics, this My Comics page is designed to look like a bookshelf where all the comics are displayed by there covers and you slide left and right to see them…once you find the one you like you can just click it to start reading or there is a list view if you dont like this view.

The viewer to read the comics is great, it makes reading the comic easy and displays each section of the page just right on screen.

To be honest I have never been a big comic fan, I had a few Spawn comics when I was younger but I thought I would try them again. I enjoyed the ones I had purchased and also the free ones that have come with iVerseComics and will continue to try the free ones and if I like them continue with that series.

Overall its a very well presented application, but there is room for some improvments :

*note : I didnt include bring in already purchased comic apps to the application as this feature is coming.

• Subscriptions : Like an issue and want to subscribe for it to purchase and download the comic, this would be very cool…dont know how hard it is to do but would be a nice feature.
• Zoom : Once or twice I have found myself trying to read small speach/text in a comic (tried both views) and wished that I could zoom in just a little to read it. A zoom feature would be nice.
• More Comics : Its not been out long and am sure there is lots of work behind the scenes to do this and talking to the publishers, but past 2 weeks only a handful of comics have been released each week.
• Grouping : on the My Comics view, it seperates a series…maybe some sort of grouping for that series where you click that and you see all the comics for that series.
• More Preview Images : When you click a comic you only get to see the coverart, seeing maybe 3 inside previews would be nice.

Two other things that would be cool, and am sure most fans of this application and comic would like are :

• Motion Comics : I sent a message to iVersecomics on Twitter about if they plan on doing motion comics, they said they would stick with static comics. I think maybe an IverseMotion application which featured on the motion comics would be cool….but since they said “just static” I cant see this happening but it would be a nice idea.
• Desktop Viewer : So you have download your comics to the iPhone but wouldnt it be cool, to have a nice desktop viewer that grabbed your comics and you could see them on a bigger screen. A desktop viewer would be cool…though to do this I feel you would need an IverseComics account system, so it tracks what comics you have downloaded etc.

As I said its a great application and I will continue to use it, as comics are slowly growing on me. If your a comic fan and have an iPhone do check it out.

www.iversecomic.com

KJHM Production Update

Its been a while since I blogged about my video productions, so here is my latest news.

This year I am hoping to have Trust : No One, completely filmed and ready for a December 2009 or January 2010 release. So far there has been some footage filmed, and hoping to get a lot more done soon.

Filmed So Far :

* Several internal Airport shots
* Several internal airplane shots
* BBC News Presenter scenes
* Dutch suicide bomber scenes

Still to be filmed are the scenes with myself and Dr Trust, plus the title shots, tween shots, and more location shots.

Hopefully the rest of the footage will be filmed within the next few weeks.

District 9 (2009) – Review

Plot : An extraterrestrial race forced to live in slum-like conditions on
Earth suddenly finds a kindred spirit in a government agent that is
exposed to their biotechnology.

Review : Watching the trailer this looks like an interesting film, there has been lots of talk about this film…and I went with an open mind.

After 20mins I was so tempted to just walk out, it was so boring and the plot so far was barley coming through. Its all done via a news report style camera work, which is interesting but after 10mins you are sick of it. I decided to stay just in case it got a lot better…….it didnt.

Still sitting watching the film about a good chunk in, and I was finding myself nearly falling asleep. There was no new ideas, new fresh concepts, and not even a hint of realism to the story. I was really sick of this on-scene news style camera work, and sick of hearing the word “fuck”.

About 90% through and ohhh it picked up….but only just a little…up until this point I would have given it a 1 out of 10 but due to this tiny pickup I bumped that number up to a 2. I lost count with the amount of times they said “fuck”, probably to help bump it to a higher age rating but this amount was just unnecessary as apart from that there wasnt much in it that would call for the 15 rating more a 12.

Overall what a waste of time, I would not recommend this to anyone…well unless you needed some help in getting to sleep.

My Rating : 2 out of 10 (more like District Diarrhoea)

Transporter 3 (2008) – Review

Plot : Frank Martin puts the driving gloves on to deliver Valentina, the
kidnapped daughter of a Ukranian government official, from Marseilles
to Odessa on the Black Sea. En route, he has to contend with thugs who
want to intercept Valentina’s safe delivery and not let his personal
feelings get in the way of his dangerous objective.

Review : After watching the first and second film, I was glad to hear that there was a third one. I missed seeing this in the cinema, so I decided to rent this via AppleTV.

The first two films I really enjoyed, the action was great, the stunts were excellent and there was always an attractive girl. Granted the storyline is mega basic, but the action and stunts make up for that.

There are a lot of great scenes but one that stuck out for me was the car chase scene, this guy is some driver lol. The plot to introduce an explosive device was interesting, and I think helped keep this film being fun rather than just a carbon copy of the previous two.

This film is just like the previous two films, it has great action, great stunts and an attractive girl….thats really all you can say about these films. I think I have heard that there is a fourth planned, if they keep up the good stunts and action and improve the storyline it could be very good.

Overall if you like action and great stunts this film is for you.

My Rating : 8 out of 10

Bye Bye Bebo

When I was in school I joined the lot, Bebo, MySpace, YouTube etc granted I didnt really use all of them as much as I should have but I still joined. Over the years I have slowly cancelled my accounts for some of them, and started to make use of the remaining ones a lot more.

The first big one I killed was MySpace, it was fun years ago…everyone was on it…and I had over a million friends (99% I never knew and most just spam). It was really good at the start then everyone added HTML behind the scenes, videos etc etc and every page would either take a long time to load or just crash your browser…GONE!

My recent one was Bebo, I had been a member for 4 years and again most of my friends were on it. I did use this a lot more than I did with MySpace but not as much. Over the past year Bebo has gotten worse, pages are taking a long time to load, users are filling them up with crap and lots of “Friends Requests” from half naked or nude girls who want you to click their website link and infect your computer.

Most of my Bebo friends started to move away and join FaceBook and Twitter, I had a FaceBook account already but I also recently joined Twitter and really like it. My Bebo account wont be missed as it was starting to go down hill like MySpace.

It was a dark Scottish night, the rain was light and it was around 8pm. Last night I committed a crime…..I killed my Bebo account.