Is it possible for the alien spaceship to survive an ... (spoilers)?

James Cameron is definitely a great director. I didn't know he is directing T5. I will look forward to that. 3 & 4 is a joke IMO. 1 is ok but 2 is brilliant.

I never actually read movie books, so I don't know the differences. I also like it though because if you don't know the books then it feels brand new to me since I never even heard the story.

Michele Rodriguez is always the same (:

Avatar wasn't good either. I am looking forward Elysium though. Btw Neill Blomkamp is also a VFX artist. I don't know other directors who are, and IMO this gives him an edge especially in effects heavy sci-fi films. He is a genius.

T3 was terrible because they made all sorts of changes to details that altered the continuity from T1 and T2. It was as if the T3 team decided to rewrite the background to suit their version. In a franchise that involves a story arc, you can't change important details such as John Connor's age, historic reference points, naming nomenclature of the Terminators, etc.

While on the subject of Terminators, T-X was supposed to be the most advanced Terminator - Wrong, T-1000 was much more advanced. T-X was merely liquid metal over a solid frame. T-1000 could completely liquify which enable it to change its shape to suit any situation.

The T-X was fragile to say the least. The antiquated T-101 in the first movie was struck by a by a semi-truck at full speed on the freeway. It emerged from under the truck and commandeered the vehicle. That truck, including its load of gas was blown up later with the T-101 inside. The T-101 picked itself up (sans artificial flesh) and continued the chase with a broken leg. The T-1000 was completely flash frozen by nitrogen and blown into million of pieces - It reassembled itself later and continued the fight.

In comparison, the T-X was a mangled wreck after being hit by a helicopter piloted by the T-850. At that point, it was barely able to crawl and was easily defeated by the T-850.

T-Salvation. What a crock. John wasn't doing much rebel leading, some other yoyos were making the decisions. And Christian Bale as John Connor? <roll eyes> Don't even get me started on the Marcus character. <roll eyes> x 2

Which one is T-X? If it's the one in T4, I don't know why they claimed it to be better. T1000 was amazing, nearly invincible I think from what I have seen in the movie. So many great scenes in T2, that just watching those you pretty much watch half of the movie.

T3 woman terminator was rubbish. T4 had very bad story, not sure how they allowed it to happen. I also don't like that Marcus guy as an actor.

Wonder how T5 will be like.

The female Terminator was called the "T-X". The T3 production people redid the model numbers, for what reason I have no idea.

The only things known at this point about T5 is Cameron and Schwarzenegger have signed on. As much as I want Arnold to reprise the role of a Terminator, logically, I know it will be a hard sell. T3 Arnold was pushing it, he's even older now. The years as Governor have taken a heavy toll on him and so has the public scandal.

"The Geriatric Terminator", coming soon to a theater near you.

Yes he is very old, and the CG Arnold was very obvious in T4. I would still love to see it but who knows how it will be (:

What about the new Robocop? I am glad now they don't have to use stopmotion which should make it more realistic for the other robots IMO but not sure if their new design is good or the story. The original is definitely a classic movie.

I'm not so sure about the remake of Robocop. Peter Weller actually looked like a man in a machine's body. The stills I've see of the new Robocop just looks like a guy in a plastic/rubber suit (ala Michael Keaton as Batman). Zero improvement.

I agree, Robocop 1987 is a classic. If you only update the bi-pedal droids to modern CGI, the movie would entertain a whole new generation of audiences. But sigh, we get a guy in a plastic/rubber suit. I'll probably pass.

lol I will still watch it but I agree. They can never avoid screwing the essence of the original like it has to be done.

If it was me, I would just update the effects but I would probably redesign the enemy robots. Robocop should only be tweaked very slightly if necessary, not redesigned.

I think the new directors always want to make a name for themselves by totally changing everything.

Not sure if you have seen Dredd, but that was a joke. Very bad effects, acting, cinematography, story, dialogues, everything.

I never thought much of Stallone's Dredd. Everything you indicated that was bad with the Dredd retread was the same with the first one. Why they took a turd and turned it into a reheated turd is beyond comprehension.

I saw Oblivion the other day. Great affects but the story was terrible. After half an hour, I pretty much knew what the plot twist and secrets were going to be. Is there simply a lack of qualified people to write screenplays these days?

I know what you mean. I didn't like the original Dredd either. You are right. In fact when I watched some scenes on bluray, I was like man this is pretty cheesy. Demolition Man is better because of Wesley.

I respect great writers a lot since I can't write and I know good story is extremely important. It's not sci-fi, but I love the Bourne series for example. Such great atmosphere in those movies. I am not much of a reader so haven't read the original books but that author must be kick ass.

I wonder if they are gonna dry up all these great stories one day. Although I can't complain because watching a movie takes far less time than reading a book, and if it's well made, I don't really have a problem with differences from the book, like Fight Club which is another amazing film IMO. Btw I heard that guy wants to write another one for Fight Club 2 (:

In fact this is another cool thing that since I don't know these stories before they aren't spoiled for me. Even LOTR was brand new for me, never heard it before.

I think story takes a back seat (way back, 20 rows at least) these days to action due to CGI advancements. Actors don't need training to look like they know how to fight and you don't need armies of men to look like you have armies of men. Until the public gets tired of the "gee whiz" special effects, the proliferation and saturation of such films will continue. I guess I may be in the minority for wanting story over action.

The first Iron Man movies was interesting because it had story first and action second. The two sequel were just blah because they tried squeeze as much action in as possible around loose stories.

Case in point about CGI, Skyline 2 is going to be made. <insert roll eyes emoticon>

First IM was insane. Second went down considerably but third one I am shocked. Only scene I liked is the Gary the cameraman scene, and I have never seen that guy before. First one had all the right elements.

I would definitely watch Skyline 2 but I know it's a very bad movie. The atom bomb scene was dramatic but that's it.

Btw have you seen Starcraft Cinematic by Blizzard for the game? The first one though. They actually have a full DVD for it, 30 mins. Some of the graphics look bad but story and some visuals are insane. It looks like Starship Troopers, not sure if they is any connection but either way in the end, you feel like crying. This one shows it I think but I have the DVD:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9x7SlpWgog

I played Starcraft years ago when it first came out. It definitely was a great game as I remembered. These days, I don't have the time to devote to hours of game playing, I've missed quite a few good games. The last game I played was Halo 2 and that was only because it was released for PC. Only the original Halo game and Halo 2 were released for PC, the other versions can only be played on xbox 360.

Did you see World War Z? What did you think about it?

Count me in too, I am not much of a gamer even though I worked in games industry for 5 years. Last game I played was D3 for 2 months last year when it came out. It became too repetitive though. I hear you need 2000 hours to get to paragon level 100 which is the max. I only spent 60-70 hours.

When gaming becomes a task, then it becomes a chore and you spend your valuable time on earth for virtual numbers in a computer's memory, i.e. your character being at level 100 instead of 0. Why exchange your life with those 2 additional digits.

Playing for fun is good though if you like it. Also even if you don't play like me, you should still watch the cinematics, especially Starcraft 2's and the expansion packs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVbeoSPqRs4

Looks insane. I love Blizzard, Blur and DIGIC for making these kinds of cinematics.

This one is also my favourite by DIGIC. Amazing music too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YnopWO4X_Q

As for World War Z, I saw it 2 weeks ago. I was really excited because I thought it was gonna be really good, but really disappointed. I would probably give it 2.

OK, just checking. I didn't want to spoiled the movie for you in case you hadn't seen it. (Not that I can do anything worse for it)

WWZ was another movie that had all kinds of potential but went absolutely nowhere. First problem, you cannot do an effective Zombie movie with a PG-13 rating. What do people want when they go see a Zombie movie? ZOMBIES! Not just zombies running around at mach speed, they want to see zombies doing their thing (ie: attacking, biting, gnawing and chewing people). Most of the time, zombies were shown attacking and then the scenes were cut. Great.

The CGI zombies in some scenes were pretty close in appearance to the ones in "I am Legend," not very original.

The story was horrible. It's clear that Pitt and his wife/family are very close - did the audience need to be constantly remind of this? The So Korea airbase scene was really dumb. They knew they had to be quiet to sneak back on the plane but Pitt left his phone on and his wife called at the worse moment..... another unoriginal idea.

Pitt's character was unintelligent and unsympathetic. Even as an anti-hero, I didn't buy the character. One of the few moments I enjoyed was when he criticized the WHO official who said he did not have a family and then learned the reason why he did not have a family. Oops!

Camera work was junk, shots were bouncing all around the place. Sigh, when are they going to quit the "shaky cam" and go back to steady camera work?

Last parting shot. That little boy from the apartment complex - he forgot about his mother and father awfully quick. <insert roll eyes emoticon>

Oh yes it was very bad. I didn't even watch the trailer just seeing a few pics like the red room picture where Pitt is leading, I thought it looked cool.

It failed big time, like you said it didn't move anywhere.

Have you seen Equilibrium? Definitely a great movie, one of my favs. Great story acting, music, really powerful scenes. Some scenes were low quality but still I liked it.

Also very original ideas like gun-kata, etc.

Is that the movie with Christian Bale? That goes back quite a few years if it is. I never was a big fan of Christian Bale and giving him the role of John Connor didn't win him any brownie points as far as I am concerned.

The movie was OK, the story reminded me of Fahrenheit 451 and Matrix. I was disappointed with the ending though, Bale's character was too invulnerable. Normally the hero is the underdog in the last fight with the boss and has to rise from the brink of death to win. Bale was more badass than the main boss.

I did like the plot twist with his son though. They made him seem like a real fanatic, deserving of a boot to the head.

Yes that's the one. I think that might be my first movie that I have seen him. The main woman character was weak but I found Bale pretty good in that movie, and I am not really a Bale fan.

Some people were saying it's from 1984 the movie which I have seen afterwards and was shocked because I thought it was terrible.

There is a lot of cool scenes in Equilibrium and the music rocks too.

The kids were interesting for sure, good contrast.

I think this director doesn't do typical hero movies that you are talking about. Ultraviolet was the same where the heroine was very strong/invincible.

Reign of Fire was the first movie I saw with Christian Bale. Reign of Fire was a low budget dragon movie that could have and should have been a lot better.

The movie poster was deliberately misleading and implied massive helicopter vs dragon battles. In actuality, there was only one helicopter in the movie and it was not even armed.

It's a shame because the dragon special effects were pretty good, especially for early 2000's CGI.

If you haven't seen it, envision "Mad Max" vs. dragons.

Yeah I like that movie, I saw it later on, but Denton Van Zan that guy was insane. Going 1 on 1 to a dragon, he is legend. It's not a strong movie, but yeah some good scenes.

Have you seen Pacific Rim? I just got it on bluray.

Matthew McConaughey is under rated when it comes to action roles. As you indicated, he played the almost psychotically focused Denton Van Zan really well. I thought he was really good in "Sahara" which was unfortunately a theatrical flop. It was meant to be a fun movie but the story included a political undertone which the general public don't usually like.

I haven't seen Pacific Rim yet, waiting for it to show on one of the movie channels. What's your opinion, worth paying the price of a rental?

I like that actor too. I like Killer Joe and Frailty. He is good for sure. Sahara was on a flight I was on years ago, didn't watch it, but I know the kind of movie. I am not a fan of those either.

I think Pacific Rim is worth seeing once. I only saw one trailer, and it should be better than Battleship. I just wanna see the effects and hope the story is ok. There are a lot of "brags" from the effects side from what I have read, in terms of new tech and methods used.

Same reason I enjoyed Transformers because of world class fx, but the story was ok. Like some of the jokes were entertaining. Though now I would only watch certain scenes.

Transformers was a treat for all of us kids who grew up in the 80's. Making the movie now was the right time - had it been made 20 years earlier, the primitive CGI and/or stop action "claymation" style special effects would have not done the characters justice. I think most fans of the original cartoon were satisfied with how the characters were represented.

With all the cyber-robotic eye candy on screen, what more could you want, right?

If you ask Hollywood, you need to add pretty girls, unnecessary characters (ie: unfunny wise cracking donut eating hackers and used car salesmen), toilet humor (Bumblebee "lubricating" the Sector Seven guy) and pointless dramatics. (Jazz gets ripped in half by Megatron and dies but the radio shape shifting Decepticon survives being cut in half with a saw)

Distractions aside, I think the CGI was great. It didn't matter if the bots were transforming, whacking each other senseless or just standing around talking, they were great to watch. Modern special effect is so good you have to wonder how much better it can get? Scrawny Steve Rogers/Chris Evans, that was remarkable how they took a skinny body double and seamlessly grafted Chris Evans head onto it.

I'll see about getting a copy of Pacific Rim, maybe it will surprise me and be entertaining.

lol don't. I watched it yesterday, probably one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I didn't care for the characters, no story, acting, even effects couldn't save it. I would probably rate it 2 if I am generous.

Yeah vfx is not getting so much better than it's getting faster to do in terms of computation. Most of the developments I have seen are going in that direction. A lot of processes still take so much time to compute.

I thought it looked kind of dumb from the trailers, people running around like hamsters inside the bots. You would think they would have developed some sort of cybernetic interface to link the operator's brain to the machines. Human thought would be way faster and more accurate than using arms, legs and hands to control those bots if you ask me.

I'll grab a copy anyway and check back. Sometimes, bad movies are so awful that they become entertaining.

Yeah the tech wasn't very smart at all. I thought they wanted to have 2 people so that they can do this group dance sort of moves that's in sync which wasn't very good anyway.

I also saw Oblivion and that was very bad too IMO, though not as bad as this one.

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Hmm, I saw the trailer for Captain American 2, it looks like a conspiracy themed story. Not sure if I understand that, he goes from fighting Red Skull/HYDRA to fighting Government elements against SHIELD?

Captain America was the weakest prequel leading up to The Avengers and I don't see this film as being much of an improvement. Iron Man and Thor were the best prequels in my opinion. IMDB shows a 7.9 rating for Iron Man, 7.0 for Thor, 6.9 for The Incredible Hulk and 6.8 for Captain America. It appears many movie fans are thinking along the same line as I am.

Captain America and his WW2 team just seemed to be a copy of the Inglourious Basterds team.

For me I guess it would be:

Iron Man > Thor > Captain America > Hulk series

I think Iron Man and Thor was world class quality in everything. Really liked them, even though I am not a comic book guy who knows all the details. I thought Captain America was gonna be worse but I think it was better than Hulk movies.

I hope Thor 2 delivers. I haven't seen Captain America 2 trailer but hope it doesn't go down like Iron Man squeals.

Thor 2 looks good from what I've seen so far. Not sure why they had to bring Natalie Portman back as his love interest but I'll give them the benefit of doubt.

It's going to be interesting seeing how long Loki stays aligned with the "good" side. There's a glimpse of Loki battling Thor so it's a given the conflict between them will continue. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing Thor 2.

Not very enthused about Captain America: The Winter Soldier at this point.

Me too. I thought Thor was gonna be bad but was surprised by how good it was. Like the first fight in the beginning was cool. Destroyer was also great to watch like how she jumps on top of him and pins him, etc.

Thor vs Destroyer should have been longer and better, but still.

Overall too many great scenes.

Also looking forward Transformers 4 :)

It's hard to believe that Transformers was released in 2007. The CGI was great back then, it has to have gotten even better since then. Unfortunately, evolution in special effects technology also enable studios to produce turds such as "Oblivion" and "WWZ". Actually, the CGI in WWZ was not that impressive, the zombies were fairly fake looking. What Hollywood doesn't seem to understand is, just because someone becomes dead, their physical characteristics will not change immediately.

In the Thor 2 trailer, it showed Natalie Portman slapping Loki for attacking New York. The Iron Man series is set in the same timeline, as evident with references to the attack on NY as well.

It will be interesting to see how they integrate Iron Man into the next Avengers movie as since he seems to have retired at the end of Iron Man 3.

Although I love Iron Man, I understand why they might not make any more movies. In my opinion, the two sequels just didn't measure up to the first movie.

VFX in Transformers is definitely great. My fav would be Pirates of the Caribbean where the captain goes down with his ship in slow mo. Insane art.

I thought vfx in WWZ was gonna be better from the trailer but yeah they failed. Also this zombie stuff is getting very repetitive. Same with resident evil series with its cheap fx. It's so obvious they cut corners like crazy and it looks bad.

The Avengers universe is definitely very interesting. I look forward to seeing it.

Is that Pirates 2 where Jack Sparrow gets eaten by the Kraken and takes the Black Pearl down with it? I think in general, Disney has been pushing special effects technology along for the better. Now that it has acquired Industrial Light and Magic from George Lucas, they should get even better.

That is of course if Disney doesn't ruin the existing Industrial Light and Magic organization by trying to run it the "Disney" way.

That scene is also my favourite. I didn't wanna say alot thinking you might not have seen it, but it's where Beckett dies in his own ship, after freezing up to make a decision to fire. That scene is truly a masterpiece. I can't stop watching it.

But all the VFX of the POTC series was done by ILM. They are definitely a world class studio.

Ah, the super slo-mo scene where Beckett was walking down the stairs while everything around him was being destroyed by cannon fire. Indeed, the special effect was very impressive.

That was a very strong scene too. Beckett was a man used to being in control - when he realized that both the Black Pearl and Flying Dutchman were coming for him, he mentally gave up.

That being said, Beckett's ship of one of England's finest ship of the line. She would have carried almost twice as many cannons as the Black Pearl or Flying Dutchman. A full broadside could easily sink the Black Pearl; not the Flying Dutchman though since it was a mythical ship.

Yeah I wondered how it would be if they fired too. I loved the whole scene though from start to finish where they call "fire" to the end. The way they bombard the ship while the camera is moving to the side at the back of the Endeavour ship, where things are falling into the scene, but the ship is still standing, etc.

I also liked the shot where is shows his boots before going down in stairs and you see them wet, which is common on a ship I assume or splashed from the action, but either way gives a lot of value to the scene I think.

Pirates 1 - 3 were enjoyable, Pirates 4 was not so much. They killed off or wrote off just about all of the supporting cast from the previous movies and just kept Jack, Barbossa and Gibbs. The Blackbeard/Mermaids/Fountain of Youth story was plain silly, ack!!!!!

Pirates 4 also created a big plot hole for Pirates 3. It was alleged that all of the Pirate Lords had to get together to save themselves from Davy Jones and Cutler Beckett. Jack even toyed with the idea of not attending the Brethren Court and becoming the last pirate in the world. Um, no.

Blackbeard would have survived. Although he was human, his sword gave him magical powers that would have protected the Queen Anne's Revenge from both the Kracken and Davy Jones. He would have simply tied up the Kracken's tentacles and Davy Jones' men if they tried to take over his ship.

One on one, I don't think Davy Jones can best Blackbeard with swords. Jones could barely out duel Jack (Jack is clearly not the best swordman and needs tricks to win). Jack is about even with Barbossa and Barbossa needed to cheat to kill Blackbeard.

On another thought, I finally got around to watching Pacific Rim this weekend.

I get what the director wanted to do with the movie, I actually kind of admire Pacific Rim in a weird way. They were trying to do something new, fresh and unique. It appears they tried to borrow from the old Japanese Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, etc. movies which were silly and inane but fun to watch.

They wanted to inject some fun and spirit into their movie to differentiate it from the rest. It's safe to say that most movies have become dull, grim, formulated and predictable.

I applaud innovation and give credit where its due. Unfortunately, it didn't work at all. Did they get a 10 year old to write the script? The dialogue is juvenile and story is slow and plodding. I cringed every time they showed the two "scientists" tossing insults at each other; didn't someone tell those jackasses that the world was coming to an end?

The Jaeger teams were stereotypical caricatures. They played the big Russian overtures whenever the Russian team or Jaeger was shown. The Chinese were shown wearing their red China communist colors and the Aussies "Throw a shrimp on the Barby 'mate!"

The Jaegers battling the Kaiju scenes were decent but they were fairly tame compared to Transformers battles. The Jaegers seemed to rely mostly on punching and had only a few weapons. Why?

And a world wall? Geeze, the Kaijus can't climb, jump or fly over them. (roll eyes)

All in all, the battle scenes were OK but everything else was terrible.

I always thought POTC is a bit childish and probably that's the main audience. But after seeing some of the great scenes in the second, I thought it was remarkable, especially the soundtrack is unbelievable.

I really hated Pacific Rim though. Doesn't even deserve checking it out after watching. Too mediocre IMO. The only thing that separated that and those low budget rubbish disaster movies that come out frequently these days is that these guys had the budget to spend insane amount of money on VFX. Take out the VFX, then there is no difference between them. Sure there is that black actor who is pretty good but in this movie, he sucked.

He was very good in Thor as Heimdall though. Cool as hell.

I don't think anyone, actor or otherwise could have saved Pacific Rim. The movie was handicapped from the get-go with a lousy script. I find it incredulous that the director, producer and studio executives all reviewed the project, found nothing wrong and spent 190 millions dollars making a turd. Talk about flushing good money down the toilet.

I'm probably going to watch Elysium next. Not too sure about it. It appears to be another movie concerning the "have" vs. the "have nots".

I hope Elysium is good. Waiting to see it on bluray but somehow I am not super hyped. I hope it's comparable to D9.

I could believe everyone was saying how awesome pacific rim was though. Good thing I never trust most people's opinions anymore. They exaggerate things too much.

How people could enjoy the childish behavior of the two "scientists" (and I use that term very loosely) is beyond me.

When I saw the trailer for Elysium, the first movie that came to mind was "Demolition Man", then "Total Recall". The have and the have-nots, it's a pretty popular theme to use in movies.

From what I've seen in previews, scenes appear gritty, similar to District 9. Both are set in dystopias where no one cares about the sick and dying. In D9 though, it's the aliens who are suffering.

The special effects should be decent, it's worth seeing I think.

Yeah I hope it will be something. I don't like alot of the new scifi movies coming out lately.

Is Gravity any good? I don't trust people hyping it again like a masterpiece.

Not sure about Gravity, I think it has to do with Sandra Bullock being an astronaut who is lost in space or something. The trailer I saw is somewhat vague.

I did however have the misfortune of watching "The Lone Ranger" last night. I turned it off about half way, I may or may not finish it.

I watched the trailer of lone ranger, seemed very boring. Glad I was sort of right then :)

Did you see Man Of Steel? I think it's also gonna be pretty bad.

Boring is not the term I would use to describe Lone Ranger, I have a few other metaphors that come to mind. In my opinion, Tonto is basically Jack Sparrow trying to be an Indian, not original or interesting.

I have not liked any of the DC Comics super hero movies of late. Dark and brooding, the characters are too serious. Marvel however, tries to inject fun into their stories (not always successful but they try) and keep the story lines light.

I haven't had a chance but I really want to see Thor 2 in a cinema. Maybe this weekend?

I didn't know Thor 2 was close. Elysium is out on bluray I think so I am gonna watch that probably soon :)

I am watching series now, since I haven't seen any for a long time. Finished Breaking Bad, and now on Fringe Season 4. I think series are a little more forgiveable to be not great all the way. So it's good. I was getting sick of seeing terrible movies with no story.

I don't watch a lot of TV so I can't comment on the shows. I've started recording episodes of "Marvel, Agents of Shield" but haven't watched them yet. They are up to episode 9 I believe. What do you think, "yea or nay" on the show?

Me neither, I don't have a TV :) But I have them on bluray, so I watch them on my PC.

Fringe is definitely not a top tier show but I would say it has some good episodes. Overall definitely worth watching once. At least it's not like say Pacific Rim. I mentioned it as it's sci fi basically :)

Btw I just Elysium and it was sick. Finally a movie I really liked in a long time. Very cool tech and weaponry. The story seemed a little rushed, like things developed very quickly, so instead of 1h 40m, I would have liked it to be 2h 30m or something.

Really wanted to see more of the weapons and the droids, etc. If you have seen Neil's Tetra Vaal work, it was very obvious they looks similar in some sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTnxP7e7-YA

He is a genius for sure.

I haven't seen it yet, waiting for the DVD release. Looks like Dec 17 or something.

Watch it on blu to see all the crazy detail on the droids :)

OK, I'll go hi-def. Blame it on under whelming titles like Pacific Rim that have dulled my movie viewing expectations.

Hehe yeah. I only watch blu for as long as blu format was out. But not every movie shows appreciable detail. Battlefield did, with their air field water shots. Lots of detail.

Same for D9 and Elysium. I also love getting the 4K movies like Taxi Driver (2nd bluray release). Remarkable image quality.

My 70" LCD TV really magnifies bad visual effects. When screens were smaller, like 42", you could get away with bad effects. With the current generation of large screen TVs, details are just too clear and sharp. Bad effects look fake.

For sure. I only have a 30" lcd but it's higher than HD :)

I would love to check out a 4K lcd monitor but too expensive.

Also with Elysium the movements of some robots, jumping and spaceship flying seems off. Jumping 3d characters is always something I notice in most movies in terms of not having the same quality as their look.

I find explosions lacking quite often. A lot of times, they look super imposed over images. I can understand low budget films lacking sufficient funds to spend on good CGI but you see it on large production films too.

Yeah those obvious ones are bad. Although all VFX shots are brought together in layers, but the trick is whether the scene is partially or fully constructed in 3d so that the fire, smoke, water can react realistically. Of course it's a full 3d scene, then no problem.

Though a lot of movies generally lower budget uses stock explosion footage. Not matter how good the footage looks, those are rubbish IMO.

Creating realistic fire, smoke, water takes a lot of skill IMO.

Volumes are the backbone to these effects, one of which is being developed by DreamWorks:
http://www.openvdb.org

The software I use integrated them in the previous release, and they kick ass :)

They need to work on flying planes missile hits too. Some of the worse effects I've seen are fake dog fighting scenes and the ensuing explosion from hits.

I haven't seen many plane fight films except Pearl Harbor made by ILM which was the best I have seen :) That ship explosions and massive plane firing was kickass.

I saw Total Recall (2012) tonight. The effects are good but the story is not. The scenes leading up to Quaid going to Rekall make little sense and the Quaid/Hauser puzzle (for lack of a better term) is puzzling. In the original version, Quaid is kept alive because he is really a bad guy pretending to be a good guy. The remake has Quaid as a bad guy turned good guy who is kept alive and used as a tool to get to Matthias. The whole charade is unnecessary because Cohagen was going to invade the Colony regardless whether or not Matthias was found.

You can add this movie to the failed remake list.

Yes I saw that one long ago. Extremely bad, had nothing interesting. Even the fx were weak IMO.

When are they gonna learn?

Tunnel through the Earth? I guess the writer(s) slept through geography classes and don't know that the continental plates are always moving. Earthquake/cave-in anyone?

I wouldn't be surprised. I am just looking for a good movie :)

There's a company that keeps sending me invitations to go preview and critique unreleased movies and shows. I've gone to a few in the past, the only ones I remember is a theatrical movie that flopped at the box office and the other was a TV series pilot that did not get picked up. Sometimes the movies are complete, others are just spliced together. I'm guessing the ones that get bad feedback get reshot and reedited and the really bad ones get released directly to DVD.

That's interesting. I think the tv series will hold for a long time since I am not watching them non-stop but in between breaks. I will still add in the occasional blockbuster or something I have been waiting. But so far, only Thor is in the list.

OK, Elysium has been released. I'll watch it this weekend if I get a chance. So you say it's worthy of watching in high def eh?

For sure man, HD all the way (: There are a lot of gritty details similar to D9. Those androids, the space station and the spaceships, etc. Also the medbay has great details when working towards the end.

I also love the weapon designs. Weta will sell full scale ones just like D9. I heard it's bad quality though, 3d printed badly, etc.

Just finished Dexter recently. 96 episodes, imagine that. Took me over a month as I don't like watching non-stop. Still a huge time-sink.

I might watch Riddick over the holidays. It's on bluray.

Happy xmas (:

Happy Holidays.

I watched Elysium the other day, talk about a depressing ending. For Matt Damon to go through all that just to lose everything is terribly anti-climatic. Maybe it's just me, I was hoping for a happier ending that included Matt getting the girl and living happily ever after. (Heck, he had already taken a kick in the pants when he found out she had forgotten about him after she left the orphanage.)

I agree, the special effects are great (except for an early shot of the space station in the sky that looked pretty bad). Speaking of bad, Jodie Foster is not aging well is she?

Happy holidays to you too.

I wasn't too bothered with the sad ending tbh. But I found it sad to see him locked up in the radiation unit. His boss should have died.

I liked seeing William Fichtner. That scene where they try to capture is insane. I love how they gunfight with the droids. Droids really behave like humans. So realistic.

I wish there were more of it.

As for Jodie Foster, anytime I see her, I keep thinking of Taxi Driver. Makes you wonder time takes its toll on anyone, especially women, and she is no exception. Very few stand the test of time IMO.

Also I love how the dirty immigrants always go straight into medbays. It was pretty funny.

I would say "Silence of the Lambs" would be what I think of for Foster. It appears she has lost some weight which makes her look even more aged and wrinkled. She's only 51, not that old if you think about it.

In my opinion, the droids were too fluid, there should be some mechanical limitations on their range of motion. The machines in "i, Robot" seemed too flexible as well.

That was something I liked with "Terminator", the machines had mobility limitations. Even the T-1000 (Robert Patrick) when solid was not especially agile.

While I agree that the supervisor should be taken out back and beaten severely, the person truly responsible is John Carlyle (Fichtner). He fostered the oppressive and management by intimidation environment the supervisor had to operate under. It would do no good killing the supervisor as someone exactly the same would replace him.

If you think about it, Elysium's ending wasn't exactly happy. A few thousand, maybe a few hundred thousand will get treatment from the mobile medical shuttles. The space station's resources obviously can't support the entire population of Earth. At some point, the computer will have to scale back and people will be left out. When that happens, there will be continued civil unrest and the fighting will begin again.

Yes, I am a "half-empty glass" kind of guy. ;)

You are right, it wasn't happy. But it was ok. There should be more fight scenes. The end fight wasn't even good. The part where Damon blows away Kruger's guys with chemrail gun was insane. The bastard couldn't even make it to the door in one piece.

Damon must be like, damn this weapon is sick.

You actually surprised me when you mentioned Silence of the Lambs because I just finished watching Hannibal series. Not sure if you have seen it, but it's ok. It's only 1 season yet anyway. I was looking for something to watch after I finished Dexter.

That's one thing good about not having TV and then suddenly you can watch all the seasons, which in the case of Dexter is 8 seasons. If you were to follow it from the beginning, it would take 8 years. Way too long for me.

In 6 months, I have seen Breaking Bad, Fringe, Dexter, Hannibal. I wanna see The Following as they say it's also about a serial killer. Mind you lots of tv series suck big time, so you have to watch out.

I gave up on regular TV a long time ago. I mostly watch documentaries and even then infrequently.

Pacific Rim 2 is being considered from what I understand. Apparently it made 3x more abroad than here in the states, enough to stir the pot for another movie. It may be a prequel which makes sense since the rift has been closed.

If they make the second one, I will pass it for sure :) I didn't like PR at all.

Ah come on, aren't you the least bit curious? You had high expectations for the first one.

If it is a prequel, there should be more bot battles than the first one. Maybe they will write a real script this time and have trained actors? :)

No really not even curious about their movie :)

I saw the vfx behind PR a few days ago and it's amazing, but they can't save this abomination.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwU7io8Q7xo

Pretty neat. I saw this on the link you posted too. How about this one?

http://www.youtube.com/embed/zwU7io8Q7xo

It's the same video :)

I must say that it takes a lot of time to do those breakdowns so props for that. But otherwise not impressed at all. Vfx for the sake of vfx doesn't impress me.

This movie comes to mind:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1186371/

Nothing but vfx, absolute rubbish everything else.

Whoops, try this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zY3OyYGfjg

Storm Warrior, never heard of it. Is it worth watching on Netflix?

Wow that looks terrible.

Storm Warriors is cool to look at, not very boring but it has no substance. Still the effects look nice. Watch it once :)

Actually watch the trailer, it shows some cool scenes I think.

Heh, heh, meet "The Asylum" pictures. They take high dollar films and create low to no budget copy cats and release them direct to video. The films are laughable at best but to their credit, they pump them out fast and cheap. They can create and release their own versions of terrible movies such as "Battleship" while it is still being shown in theaters. (Incidentally, their version was called "American Battleship" and in my opinion, had a better story.)

Which goes to show that you can spend 200 million to shoot a bad movie with great special effects or you can spend a lot less for a slightly better movie with lousy special effects.

Very true, at least great vfx make it somewhat bearable. Still a great story is what is important IMO.

Also saw Riddick this week, not as good as previous ones but it was ok.

I figured that as much. The first two movies were very different, with Pitch Black being a thriller and Chronicles of Riddick a sci-fi action film.

Vin Diesel really wanted to do a third but no major studio was interested in financially backing the movie. They had to raise capital on their own to get the film done.

I guess I'll check it out but not until it hits the bargain bin or one of the movie channels I have.

Are you sure you don't want to watch "Atlantic Rim?" I have a copy but have not watched it yet. I'm pretty sure hi-def will be wasted but what the heck, it can't be worse than "Pacific Rim." ;)

I should have guessed the quality difference in the last Riddick then. 1 and 2 is definitely good. Also they are low budget too so it's not it had awesome vfx, just subtle. But this one had a few flying bikes scene that was very bad, where they were floating on the background, so bad keying and tracking.

No lol I am done with PR. ILM did post another video of Tokyo fight that shows some great vfx. Most of the details are lost with high speed action and dark environments though.

Not to mention "Chronicles of Riddick" was just plain weird. And they brought the little girl character from "Pitch Black" only to kill her. I hate when they do things like that.

Yes she was sexy in Riddick 2. Also was funny how Riddick saved the girl near the end from the sun but left that other guy, because was hot and he was nobody :) Thatt part is one of my fav.

Also Riddick climbing the rope from the prison and then unroll himself to break his cuffs was insanely well done.

I just saw a preview of Riddick, what the hell??!!

He became the ruler of the Necromongers at the end of "Chronicles of Riddick" and is still being hunted in Riddick?

It's absurd how the sequels jump around, no wonder no major studio was interested in making the third movie. Imagine taking Indiana Jones from the first movie and changing the role so that he is a secret agent in the second one? I guarantee no one would be interested in seeing a third movie.

I don't get it. I guess I won't until I actually see the movie.

Yeah lol it's explained right at the start of the movie. But bear in mind the first part almost takes half of the movie for trying to break free. I mean come on. I was expecting it to be short so that they could focus on what he does next, who he is gonna kill, etc.

Though just yesterday I saw Vin thanking the fans for R3 and that the fourth is gonna be made thanks to us (:

But yeah they shouldn't have cut that necromonger ruler thing fast. I wanted to see more of that.

Agreed. They had a number of good storylines that they could have built on. The Necromongers wanting to continue conquering worlds. Karl Urban and his conniving wife. Riddick trying to use the the Necromongers for his purposes (He's always going to be a criminal).

To liven things up, there's always the underworld (or whatever the place the former Necromonger ruler got his powers from) who come calling looking to destroy the universe or something.

Just think of all of the drama that could have been written.

I was also hoping for something like that but they didn't have it. I also wanted to see the old king's right hand man to be more in the movie. I guess they want Riddick to always be sort of alone.

OK, I have a copy now. Will try to watch it this weekend.

Do it man, I got Thor on bluray so need to watch that this week.

I put the movie on the back burner, the winter Olympics is upon us. This is one of the few things I really enjoy watching on TV. Vin will have to wait. :)

I love Olympics too but don't like watching it on tv :( I watched Thor 2, blew my mind. Definitely one of the best I have seen for a while.

Yeah I thought it was going to be good. I had really wanted to see it at a theater but I never got around to it. By the time I had time, it had already been bumped out for other movies. Movies don't stay in theaters very long anymore it seems.

I would have thought Thor would stay long though as it's a block buster. Blows IM3 out of the water.

You would think that would be the case but most movies are lucky to play in top tier theaters for a month. There are some exceptions but for the most part, the majority of titles rapidly lose viewers only after a week. I usually wait a couple of weeks before seeing movies to avoid the crowds. There have been times that my wife and I have watched movies in near empty theaters. Pretty difficult for theaters to make money under those circumstances.

Theaters are overpriced IMO. I like watching movies exclusively on bluray. Only bluray though as DVD looks rubbish IMO. 4K looks even better like the new Taxi Driver transfer.

The 4K stuff is currently a niche product, I can't imagine it getting mass market support. Many people are still using DVD and many others only have 720P TVs.

Although I am thoroughly happy with my 65" 1080P LCD panel, I don't appreciated the clarity all the time. Bad visual effects is more noticeable and detracts from the viewing experience.

Yeah it's becoming more and more common in hardware but yeah content wise you are screwed, because even it's hard to find 4K games. Also from what I know the computer displays are using 2 separate displays acting like one right now, so it's not mature.

I would love to have more 4K stuff in the future. Although the way things are progressing in hardware that need to support them, i.e. RAM, CPU, GFX card, I am not very helpful.

You got that right. Last year I bought a GTX 680 GPU for big bucks and a few months later, the GTX 770 was released. The review sites quickly determined it was pretty much the same card but for less $$. :(

I have even worse GTX 580 :) Yeah they also had Titan which was insane and expensive but now 780 destroys it for less money.

Unless you play games at max resolution with all the eye candy turned on, that 580 should be sufficient for most games. I went from a 285 to 570 to 680. There was a big performance jump between the 285 to 570 but nothing noticeable between the 570 to 680. Probably because I only play RTS games that don't require a lot of FPS.

I am not big on games, but last game I played was Diablo 3, which has pretty low specs anyway. But being able to play at 2560x1600 is great for me, as it's higher than regular HD. Nowhere near 4K though.

It's the 3d apps that I use that need the high GPU horsepower, CPU and LOTS of RAM. Hopefully if I get something by the end of this year or the start of next year, it should be pretty exciting.

I haven't upgraded my computer in a while, I'm at least 3 generations behind. I have a first generation Intel i7 hexa-core processor with 24bgs of ram. It does an OK job with HD video encoding albeit slow. I picked up the GTX 680 thinking I could use the GPU's hardware encoder to speed things up. Nope.

lol that's still better than mine. Yeah encoding is CPU intensive AFAIK. Even in 3d apps, GPU is not utilized a lot apart from GPU renderers but they are limited.

I am really interested in the upcoming 8 core/16 thread i7 Haswell processors. Those processors should be monsters. However, as much as I want one, I can't see forking over >$1,000 smackers for a processor.

Well I need more RAM than CPU cores for now and if you look at the specs I think the max memory you can get for i7s is 64GB which is not much for what I am doing.

I don't want to buy another PC when I want 128. If I could get 64 with the ability to change to 128GB in the future, then it would serve me for 5 years easily.

Only their high end Xeons support that much memory.

I hope the new 16GB DDRs come soon but Intel still need to up the memory limit.

Wow, with those memory requirements, you'll be hard pressed to make it work on consumer grade hardware. As you indicated, Intel's current memory controllers are limited to 32gbs or less. Heck, my i7 only recognizes up to 24gbs.

Even if 16gbs ram modules were available, they wouldn't do you any good. Not on a consumer grade PC anyway.

I think a Xeon workstation class PC would be more suitable for your needs. Some of them can handle up to 196gbs.

One of my friends work as a programmer for the 3d software I use and he said he is using i7-3930K which support 64GB. So that's good. Only thing is I don't want to change the whole PC just to add 64GB more RAM in the future. I still have to hold for a year so hoping to at least have the capacity to have 128GB for a consumer CPU.

Actually there is a consumer mobo that claims to support 128GB, not sure what you can do with it though.

I have the guts of my PC on ebay right now, trying to get whatever I can for it while it still has some value. I guess I will upgrade to an Intel Ivy Bridge E 6-core processor when the Haswell E 8-core processors are released. That should drives the prices down to where an i7 4960X becomes reasonably affordable. The only thing I am not selling is the GPU, I paid a lot of money for the GTX 680 and will keep it.

For the next few months, I'll be using an old i7 930 quad core processor.

ATTENTION! SLOW VEHICLES ON THE RIGHT! :D

VFX artists don't make much money. I only update every 3 years and some of my friends even much longer like 6 years even.

You must be rolling in cash :) What do you do?

I wish, I'm just a working class stiff like you with a bit of IT knowledge.

That's pretty good man. If you know IT, that's good. I like when my IT friends in companies sometimes hook me up with free components. Brand new old models but still.

Unfortunately companies cheap out on good stuff like large displays. 24" max. Whereas 30" LCDs are a lot better IMO.

Would be nice but the company I work for lease our equipment from Dell business and swaps them every 3 year for new ones. When you see "refurbished" Dell PCs on the market, they are off-lease equipment from users like us.

I take care of my laptop but a lot of people do not. Consequently, when you buy an off-lease laptop over the web, it's a crap shoot on the condition. (Think scratches, cracked cases, food particles, etc.)

I saw some old dell precision machines on ebay that had insane amount of ram but very expensive.

My company was also using Xeons but with a lot less ram and somehow it still felt very slow compared to what they paid.

Depends on the Xeon models, many of them have multiple cores but run at low frequencies. Software optimized to take advantage of multi-threading will run well but single thread applications, not so much. Those types of application need processors that run at high frequencies since they do not take advantage of simultaneous processing.

For instance, you can have a 16-core (32 threads with HT) Xeon monster but if your applications don't utilize more than a couple threads, it makes no difference.

I see what you mean. The apps we use even though should be fairly parallel for certain operations, you find that most aren't so you have to ask the devs, and they agree :)

Need to get your IT folks on the ball, you're probably spending a lot of extra time rendering if the software is not taking advantage of SMP processing.

I don't know about that one but the rendering is pretty parallel. It's simming stuff that's not always then they add some tools that are but others aren't so you end up bottlenecked by those non-parallel portions.

Hate the hardware and software world lives in their own bubble :(

It always is. You can have the best hardware handicapped with weak software or the best software running on inappropriate hardware. It's a Yin and Yang thing, finding the happy medium, especially when there are bean counters involved.

Hehe yeah, but also artificial segmentation and milking cash from very small increments of progress. I would rather see terahertz CPUs, etc right now. If it's gonna happen a century later, then what's the point?

The way the CPU market is going, Intel has no competition and doesn't need to ramp up their CPU speeds to maintain their dominance over AMD. A few incremental changes here and there but nothing really ground breaking since 2009 when Intel released their "Core2Duo/Core2Quad" series processors. AMD never recovered after that and has been relegated to the middle performance/low budget market.

The focus now seems to be on more efficient multi-core processors, which is contradictory for terrahertz speeds at this time. Hobbyists have been able to overclock processors to those speeds but have needed extreme cooling to achieve it.

I thought they only reached 5GHz or so with OC, no? I never heard reaching Thz speeds before. I would love to use one :(

Sorry you're right, ghz, not thz. I was at work when I drafted that response and wasn't paying attention.

Looks like we are at a lull with movies at the moment with nothing exciting being released. They were planning to do a "24" movie but the idea has been shelved. Instead, they are releasing a "24" miniseries next month (12 episodes or so) which I'm looking forward to. Seeing how much time has passed since the original series ended (2010), I'm hoping they haven't lost the feel of the show.

I never saw 24 series. Is it good? I don't like that main guy tbh :)

I wanna see Non-Stop, X-Men. Thor 2 was amazing too. Actually the last X-Men they did the vfx in my city so really hoping to work for them, though they are using a different software for now so it might not happen. But there is another studio that's on the same level that use the same software I use.

24 was great, the format was very different compared to other TV programs.

Rather than each season taking place over weeks or months, each season represented a single day, hence the title "24". There were 24 episodes each season with each episode representing one hour of the day or night. Most of the time, the story moved along at a frenetic pace with Jack Bauer (played by Keifer Sutherland) trying to catch the bad guys and thwart their plans.

Jack was not the best agent, he appeared to audiences as the common man who didn't fight that well nor was he extremely skilled with weapons. He frequently got hurt, either by being beaten up or shot, but had just enough skill (luck?) to survive and take out the bad guys.


Through the seasons, you watched him transform from a mild mannered counter-terrorist unit (CTU) Director to a cold, harsh and unfeeling anti-hero who adopted a "the end results justifies the means" attitude.


The first six seasons were really good, there were plots, sub plots, conspiracies within conspiracies, nothing was off limits. The writers did their jobs well, they crafted antagonists whom you really hated and couldn't wait for Jack to get his hands on.

Towards the end, they must have run out of good ideas because the storyline shifted to blame Jack Bauer for everything and Jack having to clear his name and beat the baddies at the same time.

Sigh, although I hated the series to end, I knew it was time.

That's strange, if each season is 1 day, then how much stuff can he do? He can't catch dozens of bad guys in a single day, right?

Even in Hannibal series which doesn't take place in a single day, you have a hard time seeing all these freaky killers in the same city, and killing around the same time.

Also is it at the quality of the same actor's action movies? Because I saw one that's not old and it was like a B movie.

Yep, the later seasons were not as good as the first ones. The earlier seasons were much more creative than the later ones, I'm not surprised you did not enjoy what you saw.

The gimmick of the show, watching it in almost real time. They had it synchronized with the actual time so that the minutes in the show always matched up with real time minutes. They fit a lot in during each episodes with the main story always being someone or some organization wanting to create havoc and Jack Bauer being the only man able to foil them. There were always stories, back stories and conspiracies working against Jack.

It was the beginning of the end of the show when they started writing story lines that blamed Jack for the problems and having him work as a maverick outside of the law.

That seems interesting. I will have to check it out. Right now I only watch Hannibal once a week which doesn't take up much time. 24 has 195 episodes wow :)

The mini series starts Monday, May 5 at 8:00 PM on FOX. It's not going to be following the hour per episode format but conceptually, the story continues the single day format.

They ended the series with Jack Bauer on the run as a fugitive even though he saved the world from a major international incident. The mini series pick up with Jack still on the run but has to come out of hiding to thwart yet another situation.

I'm hoping to see if the writers finally clear his name and end the show on an upbeat note. I doubt it but we shall see.

Get Seasons 1 - 4, those are the really good seasons. 5 - 6 are just OK, and 7 - 8 are disappointing.

Why do they make mini series? Will they make new full series later on? It seems like it's on high demand if they still make them I guess?

There is still interest in the show, enough to do specials from time to time I think. It's a heck of a gimmick if you ask me. Risks and costs are lower than producing a full season and there will be a market for the DVDs and BluRays later.

I saw this one where he was also in but bad movie IMO:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1321861

Was surprised to see him though.

I am not watching more tv series currently though, just one Hannibal, and that's ok. But I will add 24 to my list :)

I think you might have Stephen Dorff confused with Keifer Sutherland. :)

And yes, that does look like a terrible movie.

Oh wow I swear I thought they were the same guy :)

Is Kiefer better than Stephen? Their most popular movies shown on their IMDB page don't seem better than the other.

Neither are very accomplished actors but I think Sutherland may have an edge having made more A list movies than Dorff. Sutherland was in the very good sci-fi feature "Dark City". If you haven't seen it, look it up on IMDB.

Yes I saw Dark City, it was very good. Definitely a great movie, and soundtrack :)

Sutherland was the gimpy mad scientist in that movies. I particularly like the scene where he injected the training program into Rufus Sewell's mind and he starts learning in fast forward.

Yeah I remember him clearly. That actress was on a pier in 3 different movies by 3 different directors which is also very interesting.

I also liked Dark Water by her but it's not as good of course.

Jennifer Connelly - She is forever associated with the very uninteresting 2003 "Hulk" movie.

I never make that connection but yeah that wasn't a very good movie.

That was the first time I saw the super skinny Jennifer Connelly so "Hulk" is forever ingrained in my mind as the point of reference. She was so much better looking before she hopped on the anorexic bandwagon.

It didn't help that "Hulk" was terrible.

I think I saw her in Requiem for a Dream. House of Sand of Fog is awesome though, amazing movie.

I haven't seen those titles. Isn't Requiem for a Dream about drug addicts?

Yep :)

So have you seen any episodes of the current "24" series? What do you think if you have?

No I haven't. Right now since Hannibal is finished, I don't have any series I follow.

I found some seasons online but it's gonna be hard to gather them all I guess. I had the same issue with Lost seasons. But this is like 2x more season I think.

OK, I've procured a copy of "Requiem For A Dream" and watched the first 5 minutes of the movie where the loser runs off with his mothers TV to buy drugs. I was really hoping a bus would run him over and when it didn't happen, I turned the movie off. You sure this is the correct movie you want me to see?

Yes that should be the one :) It's depressing and I would say inspiring for anti-drug usage. I prefer House of Sand and Fog though.

OK, I finally sat through the whole movie and yes, it is depressing as hell. Except for the mother who is a victim of circumstances (ie: lonely with no reason to live), the other main characters deserved what they got. I hated Jennifer Connelly's character, there was nothing redeeming about her at all.

My personal feeling aside, Requiem for a Dream has a strong and very dark message to convey. Watching such movies put some people out of their comfort zones. As a non-drug user, I don't see the attraction for its use. I think the movie fell short in this area, that is not developing backgrounds for the characters. I would have like to have been introduced to the characters early on and learn what drove/tempted them into drug use.

Definitely I would like to see more character development as well. Right now I am not watching anything. I watched Rome series that was barely OK.

I got many seasons of 24. I might watch that if I can find some time.

You'll know you're hooked or disinterested (unlikely on the latter me thinks) after watching Seasons 1 and 2 of 24. Season 1 segues directly into Season 2 which makes for a big and complex story. The rest of the seasons are a little bit looser and don't tie directly into the preceding seasons. Each season ends with a cliffhanger and are somewhat followed-up upon during the succeeding season. They could have done a better job with the cliffhangers/story continuations in my opinion. They are shamelessly done in a way to build excitement and hold viewers interest until the next season begins. Since you'll be watching the episodes continuously, that won't bother you as much. For those of us who watched it real time as they were shown, it was somewhat annoying.

"The Walking Dead" is a fairly entertaining series. Although the setting is in a post apocalyptic world over-run by zombies, the zombies are only a tiny part of the story. The main focus of the show are the survivors doing what they have to do to stay alive. As characters die, new ones are introduced to keep the story fresh. The show is more drama than horror, more story than action. It's very different from theatrical zombie movies. There is minimal gore, nothing really shocking. People get bitten here and there, that's about it.

The show is shown on AMC channel, they are always showing reruns of the earlier seasons. Season 1 is only 6 episodes I believe.

Thanks I hope so :) I will need some stuff to watch on my spin bike after I get a replacement as this one is DOA :(

I have walking dead seasons 1, 2 and 3 I think and checked the first episode by quick rewinding but didn't seem to like it. But I only spent like 10 mins. If it's like you say, it should be good but otherwise I thought it seemed to show lots of zombie killings which gets boring IMO.

The first season had more zombie action for sure. Season 2 and later focuses more on human interest story lines and the fight for survival. I am glad they finally moved away from the love triangle mess that was prevalent during the first two seasons.

Will have to watch it sometime after 24 then :)

There are zombies wandering about but they are usually not the focus of the story lines. For example, if they need to get somewhere they may have to kill a few that get in their way but for the most part, they are like mosquitoes harassing them. Big ugly mosquitoes, just like the ones that attacked me in Florida. ;P

That's good to hear. I kind of like that guy in the series not sure of his name but he is in the Boondock Saints which are great movies IMO.

I like those kinds of hitman movies. Btw Non Stop wasn't very good if you haven't seen it yet.

You might like "Shoot 'em up" with Clive Owen then. As the title indicates, there is a lot of gun play action. It's all over the top and none of it is believable. The story is fairly basic, the bad guys need to kill someone, the anti-hero steps in and saves the day plus gets the girl at the end. You'd probably like it if you haven't seen it already.

I saw that long ago, it wasn't very good :) But Revolver was very good for me for example. I like hitman movies but I don't like when it's super over the top. Realism is always better for me, like the Bourne series :)

You'll need to scratch all three of the "Transporter" movies off your list. There not a lot of realistic anything in those movies. The car chases are fun to watch though.

Bourne 1, 2 and 3 were good but after Robert Ludlum's death, another author took over the writing. I don't care for the genetically enhanced new character they introduced in Bourne 4 (Bourne Legacy).

I saw all transporters. Definitely not worth watching again IMO. Statham's movies rarely are.

I like all Bourne 4 but yeah the 4th one is lacking some elements the other 3 had. Still want to see Bourne 5 :)

I dunno, something about Jeremy Renner I don't particularly like. He as Hawkeye was my least liked character on The Avengers.

Speaking of The Avengers, I hope they don't screw up the sequel. I've watched The Avengers at least 20 times, I enjoyed it that much. Same with Iron Man, I loved that movie. Iron Man 2 and 3, not so much.

That's pretty cool. I don't watch movies more than once easily. Avengers was great for sure IM too. IM2 is not that bad, but 3 is very bad IMO.

Most movies I don't watch more than once either which left me with a large library of once watched movies when I used to buy DVDs. Now with digital media available for download, I don't have that problem anymore. I still occasionally buy titles that I want to want more than once, The Avengers and Iron Man, etc.

With 4K TVs getting more popular and affordable, it is only a matter of time before 4K commercial media is released. Knowing George Lucas, he will be sure to re-edit and update all Star Wars movies to 4K. Lucas is severely disturbed if you ask me.

My personal opinion of Lucas aside, I need a new TV for the bedroom. I am looking at a 40" 4K model but with very little media available at this time, it's hard to justify the premium price. Since you seem to be versed in this area, what are your thoughts regarding 4K technology?

Sorry for the late reply. Yeah I think not only there are very few 4K titles but also most computer software don't show up using correct scale at 4K which makes the UI super small/fine, so hard to read. I think 4K lcd monitors are good price right now and it will be even better in the future.

I am not suer about 4K TVs but AFAIK they are not better than 4K lcd monitors since the monitors have to have higher refresh rate if I am not wrong. TVs rae larger though.

If I needed I would love to get 2 4K monitors. Right now I have 2 30" lcd monitors which are beyond 1080p and covers my needs.

I decided to go with a nice LG 42" 1080 monitor. With the lack of 4K media, everything you'll see is pretty much up scaled from 1080 anyway.

A lot of people seem to be buying 40" 4K TVs to use as monitors. Apparently 4K TVs are cheaper than 4K monitors I guess.

Sorry for the late reply.

Yeah I wouldn't be surprised but the monitors have higher refresh rate I think. Still the price of 4K monitors is going down.

It seems a lot of gamers are buying the 4K TVs as a cheaper alternative to 4K monitors. Some seem to like them, others complain about ghosting, tearing and jaggies.

Most 4K TVs have relatively low refresh rates (compared to monitors) because there simply isn't a need for it at the moment. With HDMI 2.0 being the latest standard at 60hz, I don't think there is any advantage other than bragging rights to have a TV with high refresh rates. Just about all media including BluRay is upcoverted to 4K.

I think so too. TV tech seems to be changing too fast. Maybe in 5 years I can see myself changing my 30" lcd monitors with 4K lcd monitors. Nowadays the UI support is very bad so things look super small. So much for synchronization :(

Also recently I am listening Hans Zimmer soundtracks and while I knew some of them, King Arthur which I haven't seen the movie has an amazing music. Not sure if you have listened it? It has a lot of same elements as POTC which he made the music of too I think.

As for the last movie, not sure if you have seen The Raid 2, but it kicks ass. I have seen the first one long ago. Really good. But 2nd one is much better.

Too many movies entitled "The Raid". I thought you were referring to this one which I didn't like:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1899353/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

But The Raid you are referring to, no I haven't seen it. Is it worth watching?

Changing gears, I just finished watching season 4 of The Walking Dead. I record the episodes during the year as they are aired and watch them all at once. All I can say is wow. The subject of children living in post apocalyptic world stories is rarely explored. It hit me by complete surprise when they tackled the subject head on this season. I can't say the results were enjoyable but the intent was to show the dark side of what could happen. (Note: They were not killed by zombies)

The Walking Dead writers are willing to tackle tough subjects, I think that is one of the reasons why it is back for a fifth season. The zombies wandering about are not the focus, they are just part of the environment. The focus is on human interest story lines and survival. The cast is always evolving, people die and new friends (foes) are found. Only 4 characters from the first season remain which adds to the realism that no one is safe.

Sorry for the late reply. Yes that was the one. The first Raid is ok but second one was better still could be better.

I wanna watch the Walking Dead too so I only downloaded blurays so far. Hopefully I will see them later. I have 9 seasons of 24 also.

I am just watching simpsons now when I have some time since they are short so it's not a big time commitment and the story doesn't carry over. I never watched them before so that's good too.

I haven't seen Simpsons in a long time. I think I've only watched 20 episodes total since the series began. Same with South Park, just a handful of episodes.

The new season has started for The Walking Dead, I'm chomping at the bit to peek at the episodes. I'll wait though, I want to enjoy them all at once.

I saw the trailer for The Avengers and was a bit disappointed. They showed Thanos in the ending of the first movie which lead me to believe that he would be the next villain. Instead, the next villain appears to be a robot built by Stark that runs amok.