ShouldBeOK.com

 Go to official movie website for trailers: http://www.halloween-themovie.com/

Wham, Bam, Thank you … sis?

By “Tarface”

This is actually the 9^th installment of Halloween, although it’s essentially a remake of the first. I have to admit two things before going on: 1) I consider myself a fan of the series, 2) I must be a really bad fan because I was unaware of there having been additional movies after #5, other than H20. I’ve recently been to the center of Michael Myers’ (he’s the bad guy in the series) world, a.k.a. http://www.halloweenmovies.com/, and I’ve realized that I have some catching up to do. That’s what you get for living out of the country for a while…

The first thing that surprised me was that this movie was 10 minutes shy of 2 hours. Of course, I didn’t know this until it was over, yet I felt is was going to go longer than the usual hack & slash when I realized that the movie was going to do its best to make me know, understand, feel for and practically condone what young Mike Myers (not to be confused with the real world actor that goes by the same name) is about to do to his family & friends. Let me just say that Mike Myers’ idea of the Family Plan is NOT the same as AT&T’s… or if you prefer, you do NOT want to be in his ‘myFave 5”… Ok, enough cell phone service provider jokes.

This guy is one sick, demented, twisted, bad-ass, you-know-what. The movie pulls us through Mike Myers’ 10th year on the planet to show us how hard his life is, was, and how scummy the people around him are/were, and how crappy an environment he had to grow up in. Although this aspect of the movie, which goes on for some time, may not appeal to the younger generation looking for instant gratuitous sex scenes followed by bloody butchering (Fret not young one! Your time will come!), it appealed to me as a fan because it dove into the psyche of Mike Myers. To the best of my recollection, earlier movies had simply mentioned en-passant the history of the boy and what had happened to his family. Here we get an hour long expose and if you ever had any doubts as to why the kid was demented, they will be gone an hour into the movie.

Mike Myers (adult) is played by Tyler Mane (Sabertooth in the 2000 X-Men movie) and he is, how to put it…. simply HUGE! The contrast in his size is brought out even more so as we follow young Mike Myers (played by Daeg Faerch) through the first half of the movie during which he is a normal, albeit slightly overweight 10yr old. I have to say that Daeg (how do you pronounce that name anyway?) did a good job. Firstly, I don’t recall whether I had ever heard Mike Myers speak before and as a 10yr old, he has a few lines to say although most of his work will be silent; God knows his victims more than make up for his silence.

Its all good and what-not to know how and why Mike became who he did but as fans of the series, we want to see the new Chop ‘Em Up (think of this as Shoot ‘Em Up [see my review] but with knives and a few other instruments of torture). The film delivers, of course. As with all previous movies (that I saw), there are a bunch of pretty, sexy college-aged girls running around with their breasts hanging out, making out with their boyfriends, etc… you know the drill. And of course, they all get massacred. Oh give me a break! I didn’t give away the movie! As if you thought this was about penguins in the South Pole…

So the question is: Does watching one hour of a dysfunctional family turn a 10yr old into a psychotic unrelenting, seemingly unstoppable, huge, powerful Cuisinart for the second part of the movie justify taking my 8 bucks? Barely.

Of course, the cast is supported by the ever famous Doctor Loumis, played by Malcolm McDowell. Now I consider Mr. McDowell to be a first rate actor and I wasn’t too sure what he is doing in this movie but the now departed Donald Pleasance couldn’t reprise his role, so I guess they had to find someone. I hate to say this about a great actor, but he just didn’t “doi it” for me in this role. I never truly felt him as the good doc and I found his attitude cavalier and superficial. I don’t know, maybe I just expected more out of the whole movie. I regret to compare Donald Pleasance as Loumis to McDowell, but Pleasance seemed more “intense” and seemed to truly live the role.

That said, it is what it is: a hack & slash movie, essentially from beginning to end. He’s big. He’s unstoppable. He’s excessively violent. He’s ticked off. He’s scary.

And he loves his sister (who just doesn’t get that…)

If you want to go and scream, jump, be startled, and see someone in a mask walk around slashing pretend teen-agers making out and running around with their breasts flopping about, then this 9^th installment in the series Should Be Ok for you. If you are a Halloween fan, then you too must go see this movie. If you want a date flick, and your girl is up to this kind of flick, then you should go see this movie; she’ll be in your lap circa 55 minutes into the movie. If you are looking for some sort of enlightenment as to the why and how Michael id who he is, then you too should go see this movie. If you are offended by blood, killing, slaughtering, massacres, guns, knives, beatings, lots of curse words, children talking like drunken sailors, women’s breasts, bloodied or not, loud noises, and creepy people (I’m referring to the other people in the theatre), then YOU, my friends, should NOT go see this movie because it surely Should NOT Be Ok for you.

OK OK OK I gave it 3 out of 5 OKs because it is what I expected, no less, no more, it was entertaining, and I do like the whole series.

As always, I welcome any and all your comments as well as any corrections to anything I may have posted erroneously.

 Go to official movie website for trailers: http://www.shootemupmovie.com/

OK OK OK OK OK  (4 out of 5)

Shoot ‘em up, down, left and right, backwards, flying, and the list goes on…

By “Tarface”

OK, this is my first blog posting and rather than explain that further, here’s my review of the newly released movie “Shoot ‘Em Up” starring Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti and Monica Bellucci.

First let me say that this movie is awesome. Better yet: This movie Should Be MORE THAN Ok, (considering the name of the site this is posted to.) What a refreshing new look at … gun fights. My ongoing feeling throughout this movie was “The commanding order while this film was being made must’ve been: let us find completely different, all new ways of killing people with guns.”

Like the masked magician who unveiled the inner workings of many popular magic tricks [Fox TV], this movie will force all movie-makers to now go beyond the norm, to search further for new, imaginative, creative ways to … apply the trade of gun slinging.

OK, ok… Yes, you will quickly notice that most situations in the movie are, to say the least, highly improbable but nevertheless, it’s darn good viewing.

The story tells of a lone-wolf of sorts, a British ex-championship marksman, clearly later trained by Special Forces, now living in anonymity, hiding away in an abandoned warehouse in a U.S. city. We will know him only as “Smith” (Clive Owen).

The movie starts off (don’t worry, I won’t unveil anything important but the basic plot) with Smith sitting on a bench waiting for a bus in an abandoned warehouse district of the city. Action starts to take place around him as a pregnant woman is pursued by a “very bad guy”. To make a long story short, Smith’s conscious forces him to defend the woman and later to defend her baby while an ARMY of men led by “Hertz” (Paul Giamatti) try to kill him and the baby. If you want to know why they want to kill the baby so badly, you will have to go see the movie…

So why do I love this movie? Because it was ORIGINAL! Do you know how often I go to movies and WISH to see something original? I went to Shoot ‘Em Up expecting just that: another shoot ‘em up movie. This movie went far beyond my expectations. Guns were used in all new ways, mounted, un-mounted, right-handed, left-handed, both hands, no hands, broken hands and even with a CARROT! Seriously, a carrot. Cut off fingers, broken fingers, strings, I’m probably forgetting many more of the uses but suffice it to say that much thought was given to how they used the guns and how much it had to be NOT like all the other shoot ‘em ups.

There were plenty of times in the movie I told myself “Wow, that’s cool!” or I just laughed at how painful that last image looked, and as many times as that, I told myself “There’s no way the baby could have survived the G-force of that maneuver in real life”, but who cares! Once you accept that assumption – that the baby won’t have shaken baby syndrome by the end of the movie, if he even survives some of the high speed chases, jumps, and grabs, then most of the rest of the movie works fine.

Paul Giamatti is also a wonderful psychotic bad guy with a fun twist of humor, way too much self-confidence, a serious mean streak which gives him just enough of an edge to be practically likeable. It’s a far cry from the sweet, nice-guy we know from many of his previous movies but perhaps that’s what was fun. Throughout the movie, he gets phone calls from his wife to whom he must explain his tardiness at arriving home as his “business” is taking longer than planned. It’s not done too often, it’s not done in a cheesy way, and it’s done at just the right times to make it funny yet unobtrusive.

Monica Bellucci plays the part of Donna Quintano, a prostitute. Yep, it’s that simple. They needed a woman because what would a movie be without a damsel in distress, and so they took this 42 year old Italian bombshell (sorry guys, she’s married to French actor Vincent Cassel) and tossed her in there as eye candy. She doesn’t really do much, or bring much to the movie other than …. well…. eye candy. But HEY! Good for Clive Owen! He gets to make out with her, not to discount the torrid love-making scene (yes, this movie is rated R for very good reasons) which climaxes (pun INtended) in yet another original shoot out.

Rumor has it that Clive Owen does all his own stunts. Well, I have no idea, I wasn’t there when the movie was made but most if not all of the stunts certainly look like him. Of course, one can unfortunately tell that a shoot out scene done while falling through the sky from a plane with many bad guys right behind him was done in front of a green screen, of course, no surprise but I did find the “feeling” of the scene to be sub-par. It looked TOO fake. Oh well! How often do you get to see a bunch of grown men shooting it out at terminal velocity anyway?

Some minor things that bothered me were some wide-angle shots in the streets of the city. At one point, 75% of the C.N. tower in Toronto (that’s in Canada people, eh.) is visible and since the movie was supposed to be in a non-descript U.S. city, that bugged me, as did the Ontario (that’s also in Canada, eh.) license plates during a prolonged car chase. Of course, I lived in Toronto for a while at one point in my life, so I recognize these things whereas most would not, I guess. At one point, an extreme close-up of one of the guns shows it’s manufacturer to be “Hammerson Guns, Ft. Lauderdale, USA” and minutes later Smith is sneaking about the Hammerson factory. Well the movie definitely wasn’t in Ft Lauderdale, and only minutes earlier seemed to be in Toronto, but was supposed to be in the U.S. and so all this “locale confusion” bugged me. Little details, nothing big, but I noticed and it bugged me. You may not have noticed but now that you’ve read this, when you see the movie, you WILL notice.

But the movie is about guns. Some say: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Well in this movie, Smith kills what well may be the most people I have ever seen killed by gun in a single movie. Amazingly, he does it convincingly! Once you accept the premise that he is/was a championship marksmen later taken into and trained by the Special Forces (or was he?…), his uncanny amount of one-shot kills seems normal.

Clive Owen delivers, as does Paul Giamatti, and Monica Bellucci does exactly what was expected from her. The movie delivers exactly what it says and although there will be no Academy Award nominations for these actors, it’s a very fast-paced, noisy, violent, sexy, movie with a few plot twists that will give you little time to catch your breath between shoot outs.

Just some parting words: carrots play a big role in this movie. I had never thought of a carrot as used in this movie. You too will never look at a carrot the same way, ever again after you see this movie. And NO, I don’t mean “that way”.

OK OK OK OK I give it 4 out of 5 “OK”s because it was just so darn fun.

I hope you enjoy this movie as much as I did. I welcome any and all your comments as well as any corrections to anything I may have posted erroneously.

I have installed an interesting application - BlogJet. It’s a cool Windows client for my blog tool (as well as for other tools). Get your copy here: http://blogjet.com

“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.” — Albert Einstein

The above snippet is a default entry once you start Blogjet – The initail setup was a breeze – I will follow up with some more comments on finding the best blogging client.

PS i found blogjet via a google search and hitting another blog ; kudos to the reseach!

http://www.idano.net/

http://www.idano.net/wordpress-desktop-client-search-15.htm

Windows XP SP2c Release to Add New Product Keys

More product keys are needed to support the continued availability of Windows XP Professional through the scheduled system builder channel end-of-life date of January 31, 2009. Service Pack 2c (SP2c) will be released to provide system builders with a new, extended range of product keys. System builders who use imaging must create new Windows XP Professional images with SP2c when shipping product keys; otherwise end users will not be able to complete installation.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6954397.stm

Check this out - All the people survived

In no particular order, this is the first gripe of many about Vista (shouldofbeen named Manana or hasta like Hasta la… well you know), I’ll be posting fixes for the issues i come across. Most of the time this will be the relentless pursuit of knowledge (via Google , cause the other search engine still suck!) for the weirdest of Microsoft bugs that haven’t been documented.

I have 6 intel/AMD machines at home. I build every single one - Too cheap to spend the premium buck on a Best BUY(or… insert crappy store chain here) PC. I have had XP running fine on all of them but like many of us I want to upgrade. So I did ! I have many stories about upgrading 6 machine with different Motherboard,svideo cards etc. This particular issue is after i had upgraded and stabilized all my machine on Vista and I started doing a little networking. Oh, forgot to mention that all the machine are running Vista Home Premium!

I standardized all the machines with the same Users and password. Good form just for starters. Then I proceed to access the other PCs via UNC. No problem until my i tried to access my laptop (\\machinename\c$) and i got the dreaded logon access dialog box. Did my usual testing and checking of services, programs you name it - Nothing – couldn’t access it. So I proceeded to Google !!! And low and behold someone had had the same problem - So this is a repost from http://www.jimmah.com/vista/Networking/filtertoken.aspx

Why can’t I access the administrative shares or remote administrative functions from a remote computer?

Windows Vista prevents local administrators from using their administrator powers over the network. This results in the inability to remotely administer a computer using filesharing and tools that use similar technology (such as the computer manager MMC snap-in and the administrative shares, such as C$). However, this DOES NOT affect Remote Desktop in any way.

To allow administrators local to a computer to use their administrator powers when accessing the Vista computer remotely, please follow these steps:

CAUTION: Improperly modifying the registry can harm your system.

1.             Click start

2.             Type: regedit

3.             Press enter

4.             In the left, browse to the following folder: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\system\

5.             Right-click a blank area in the right pane

6.             Click New

7.             Click DWORD Value

8.             Type: LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy

9.             Double-click the item you just created

10.          Type 1 into the box

11.          Click OK

12.          Restart your computer

Just a quick note - I am dropping the ecto blogging client for many reasons - one main one is that the wordpress internal editor seems to be sufficiant for now. Plus I didnt feel that the product is complete and refined and lacked a few things. So on to the next product.

I started using Apple computers back in the day - more preciously the early 80’s (I’m not that old, just started early). The new iMacs are out and I went to the local Apple store to play around with them. I’m not going to comment on the OS (BSD NEXT UNIX). 

The box itself is thin - 2 versions; 20 and 24 inch screens. The attention to detail is good - Style wise: I like it - nothing extraordinary. I would say’ Clean’ ( that seems to be Apple’s core style anyway.) The Machine is quick - it has enough external connections. Resolution and screen quality are good - the glossy aspect to the screen might be annoying - the keyboard is, again, clean and minimalistic.clearly here, the design of the keyboard won over the feel and functionality. I could get used to it but I am a big fan of the Logitech DiNovo Edge keyboard. The macbook book and the iMac are the consumer/casual Macs,  so to keep them similar they took the keyboard style from the Macbook  – I’m not a fan !

The new iMacs are all around good machines – they do a good job at being a digital hub for the family and even have enough horsepower to run some more robust apps. Price is good – not great.

If I was asked ‘would I buy a PC similarly equipped or an iMac’, I would lean towards the new  iMac. 

Just downloaded the ecto desktop blogging client. This post is a test to see if it makes my blogging easier or if it adds an extra layer of complexity. It this tool worth the 18 bucks. So far so good! Downloaded quickly, installed easily and the setup was straight forward - One beef already the spell check doesn’t know the word Blogging. it’s a minor beef but i guarantee you someone said “ah the spell checker as it is should be OK” - Already starting Sam I am.

3 o’clock in the morning - on a blissful 90 degree night here in central Florida  - I’ve just got my Website up with WordPress- A no brain-er! Really - thou my hosting company provided me with a boat load of nifty little tools to install most blogging and CMS apps. So now the next step is to customize the site, the look and create a direction for the blog.

 Typically the theme of the site will be technology but won’t be limited to just that! I am leaning towards the idea of most everything is made or is just OK. And I have a huge gripe with just OK or the idea of that most everything reaches a point (specifically engineering) and then someone declared “Should be OK” – I can’t begin to tell you how that feeling of using a product or a services that is sub standard – So, I’ll be adding my 2 cents to the world of opinions.

 Also, since I am heavily rooted in Tech, I’ll be working on documenting the products I use as well as solutions to many of my issues I come across – Forums seem the best way to document the crap I fix over and over again and can’t remember all of them.

Hopefully I’ll be able to inject some humor, sarcasm, disdain, contempt (nope I didn’t use the Microsoft Word thesaurus) into the stuff I write about!