On June 1st the 5 Obstructions blogathon started. More details on what it is and how to join can be found here. Each month a new obstruction will be posted. Click for a complete overview of the entries
The 5 Obstructions blogathon: Overview
My Techviews: Do you really need a new phone?
It has been ages since I started a new blog series, but for the last couple of weeks an idea for a new series has been brewing: My Techviews.
As you can guess from the title it is not going to be about movies (although there surely will be some tech/movie related posts), but it is a new series where I will be sharing my thoughts about tech related things. This might sometimes be some new tech I think is awesome, but it could also be about my frustrations with them. I hope you will enjoy reading this new series as much as I like writing it.
Mobile Phones
The first subject? Mobile phones. Around 80 percent of people (5.9 billion) own a mobile phone and that number is quickly growing. I have had one since 1999 and in those 14 years I have probably owned about 6 or 7 different models, so roughly a new one every 2 years. The reason for upgrading was easy for a while, since you would get one for “free” when renewing your contract and phones were quickly changing, being able to perform more fuctions. A couple of years ago I started looking at the costs and realised it would be cheaper to buy the phone myself and just get a “sim only” subscription, which is a lot cheaper. After this, the only time to upgrade my phone would usually be when it didn’t work properly anymore, but looking around me I feel like I am one of the few people doing it that. Continue reading
102 Minutes That Changed America (2008)
Translating real events into a compelling movie can be very difficult. You have to stick to the facts, but also still tell a story within those facts. Various movies have been made related to 9/11 and although they might have captured part of what happened you still know you are watching something which was recreated. If you were around on 9/11 you will remember the day vividly. Most people will know what they were doing and how they heard about it. They remember the impact it had on everybody, even if you were not living in the United States. Over the years I’ve seen a lot of movies and documentaries about it and was not expecting this documentary to add much. As it turned out I was quite wrong. Continue reading
The Monday Question: Social!
Last week Twitter opened up their analytics to the general public. The site basically allows you to see how many times you were mentioned, retweeted, if you were followed and unfollowed and the most interesting one, how many times a link you tweeted was clicked. I must admit I am not someone who is extremely active on social networks (although I have a twitter and facebook account for the blog), but looking at the statistics for the clicks I was surprised how little they were used. I used to have social sharing buttons on my blog, but when I found out nobody seemed to be using them I removed them. Now I don’t think I will stop posting to either Twitter or Facebook yet but it did make me wonder about their effectiveness. This week’s question:
Do you use social media for your blog and do you notice the benefit of them?
The Many Faces of… Gwynneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Paltrow was born on September 27, 1972 in Los Angeles. Her parents worked in acting/movie industry. She studied anthropology at the University of California but dropped out to pursue her acting career. She regularly saw her mother perform and in 1989 she appeared on TV in High. Her first movie role was in Shout (1991). She appeared in Steven Spielberg’s Hook and played the wife of Brad Pitt’s character in Se7en. She appeared in movies like Sliding Doors, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Royal Tenenbaums, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the Iron man movies and Shakespeare in Love, for which she received an Oscar. Continue reading
Fast and Furious 6 (2013)
The general feeling about sequels is usually that they are a bad thing. Many franchises ran out of steam quickly (Pirates of Carribean, Police Academy, Terminator, Die Hard to name a few) and they are the a big number of people despise sequels, they are often seen as lazy and rehashing an idea. But for every A Good Day to Die Hard there is a Toy Story 3 and there are more examples. Looking at the Fast & Furious franchise I would have never thought that a movie about street racing would result in another 5 movies. Even though the opinions about them might be mixed (personally I didn’t like Tokyo Drift, but had a great time with the rest), nobody can’t deny that is has been a successful run. Part of this is because it stept away from purely street racing and moving towards heists and action, while keeping the fast cars front and center. With Fast Five Dwayne Johnson was added to the existing roster of Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and many other returning faces and it injected fresh blood to make it even more exiting. Seeing Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson fight was a cool thing to see. Fast & Furious 6 sees Dwayne Johnson returning, just like the rest of the crew. Continue reading
Harsh Times (2005)
I think that Christian Bale is an awesome actor and like some other actors/actresses I will check out each movie he is in. Harsh Times is directed by David Ayer, who was also responsible to one of my favorite movies of last year, End of Watch. He also wrote Training Day and Harsh Times has some similarities with those movies. Continue reading
The Station Agent (2003)
There are times when you wish that a director has more movies to his name and for me Thomas McCarthy is one of them. In his career he only directed three movies, Win Win (2011), The Visitor (2007) and this movie, The Station Agent. They are all excellent movies about relationships. All his movies have a soul to them, a realistic depiction of life and how people interact. The Station Agent had been on my “to watch” list for a while after another blogger reviewed it. Continue reading
The Monday Question: Romance!
Welcome to another Monday Question. Hope you have had a movie filled weekend and really enjoyed yourself. This weekend Before Midnight opened in various countries. I saw it at the first possible moment I could and as my review shows I loved it. Just like the other two movies you connect to these two people and understand what they are feeling. It got me thinking that I don’t know of too many other romantic movies which are similar to this. The only ones I could come up with are Once and Lost in Translation. Someone suggested An Affair to Remember, but I was very disappointed by it, as it did not feel realistic for a moment. So this week I’m looking for suggestions:
Which realistic romantic movie shouldn’t be missed if you love movies like Once, the “Before…” trilogy and Lost in Translation?
As featured on… Head in a Vice
What movies would you take with you if you knew in advance you’d be stuck on a desert island for a long while? That’s the question Tyson from Head in a Vice regularly asks fellow bloggers. Today the honour falls upon me and I had a hard time picking the movie to pack, but after much consideration I made my choices. Click on the image above to check them out.
Before Midnight (2013)
The “Before…” trilogy to me is like a box that is opened every 9 years. You look into it and just for about a short while you are allowed to look into the lives of two people, Jesse and Celine. The first time you met them (Before Sunrise) they did too and when the box closed you thought about what might have happened afterwards. 9 years it opened again (Before Sunset) and you found out what ended up happening, where both of them were in their lives. Also at the end of that movie you start wondering if Jesse went to the airport, if the two kept in contact. Now that the third movie has been released you finally get to see the answers to those questions and know if the theories you might have thought up are right. Continue reading