Movie Review : Ninja : Shadow of a Tear (2013)

Ninja : Shadow of a Tear is the follow-up to 2009's Ninja. Scott Adkins is back as Casey, after a trip to the dark side in Expendables 2. He picks up from where he left off in 2009, having married Namiko and leading an peaceful life as the sensei of the dojo he inherited from his father-in-law.

But bad things happen to good people and one night poor Namiko is brutally murdered. Inconsolable Casey is on the warpath. This will see him rampage through three different countries, bring down innumerable bad guys with his bare hands and lay waste to bars, jungles and dojos as he tracks down the villain who destroyed his life.

The screenplay does require one to leave one's thinking cap at home but it is all in good fun. For the most part, the movie plays like the average revenge flick but there is a cool climax that really spices up the story and is a bit of a pleasant surprise.

Regular readers of this blog (both of you) will know of my legendary distaste for wirework. Wirework creates unnatural situations that subvert law of gravity and take away from the beauty of the fight. The mark of a hero is to conform to the laws of physics and prevail against a zillion bad guys.  A ninny flying around, kicking at the air can never convey the raw power of a real kick as the foot pounds flesh or properly display the crushing impact of falling over furniture or being hit by sundry objects and weapons. No sir, not cool.

So I am happy to announce, that Scott Adkins is a real hero - or he fights like one. Given the low budget, there are no trick shots or CGI, just plain, old fashioned action. He seems have to performed nearly all of the fight scenes and stunts and that includes plenty of flying kicks, 360 degree flip kicks, fistfights, knife fights, swordplay and bone jarring falls. There is a cool scene where he pummels 5-6 guys in the room, shot in a single take.  He is not a guy you want to meet in a a dark alley as two unfortunate goons find out. He is not a guy you torture with hot irons and lock up in a prison cell - as the prison warden finds out. You don't give Scott Adkins a bunch of ninja paraphernalia and grenades and then expect a tea party. Even his friends are not spared a royal smacking when he gets angry.

The performances are tolerable. Scott Adkins doesn't really have much time to emote, which is a blessing because a thespian he is not. His emote-o-meter maxes out at the identical disconsolate, pained look he sported in Assassination Games - and lucked out again with his on-screen spouse. Shun Sugata puts in a sinister performance as the drug lord Goro and Kane Kosugi proves himself to be a formidable fighter in his own right.

In all, a good action movie, well worth a watch. One hopes that one doesn't have to wait for four more years for the next Ninja flick.

Movie Review : Tales from the Dark 1 (2013)

Tales from the Dark 1

Tales from the Dark 1 is a compilation of 3 horror stories - all by author Lillian Lee, filmed by three different directors. The 3 films are unrelated to each other and are jarringly different in their approach to their subject matter.

The first deals with an eccentric, middle-aged man who cant hold down a job and resorts to stealing  funeral urns and ransoming them to the  families of the deceased.  This marks the directorial debut of actor Simon Yam, who also plays the eccentric. This film is the weakest of the lot with plenty of pretentious imagery and random ghosts that contribute zilch to the story. Think irrelevant visuals of little girls wandering around and crying, a gluttonous ghost who wont or cant stop eating, an elderly grandmother talking to these other ghosts and so on - similar to some of the visuals in 'Thir13en Ghosts'.

The second film deals with a psychic played by Tony Leung and a fortune teller played by Kelly Chen who team up to exorcise the vengeful ghost of a schoolgirl. This one is straight forward, light-hearted and more 'traditional' than the first movie. It also has a decent back-story for the ghost, allowing us to sympathise with her. Some portions are annoyingly contrived though - especially the sequence revolving around the psychic and his son's CD.

The last film deals with another bitter ghost trying to exact revenge on an elderly lady. It starts off with an affluent woman who comes to a 'villain basher' - a person who places a curse on her clients' chosen victims and symbolically 'beats' photos or images representing said victims in exchange for money. Then the story of this woman is abandoned as another young girl approaches the villain basher - a good performance by Susan Shaw -and the story turns into a violent, revenge tale. This film is the most stylish of the three but suffers from a thin storyline that is unnecessarily padded out.

The movie relies too much on filler material to stretch its running time and is not a horror movie at all - zero scares. It is just a set of sad stories where the antagonists happen to be ghosts. Fans of horror movies will be sorely disappointed and most movie-goers should be puzzled as to why this was made into a motion picture instead of a TV series.

There is a companion piece - Tales from the Dark 2 - released a couple of months after the first one; if the entertainment provided by the first is any indicator of what can be expected from the second, one will err on the safe side by skipping them both.

Can avoid.

Movie Review : Metpo / Metro (2013)

On the heels of 'A Good Day to Die Hard', that features a super-cool chase sequence in Moscow, comes the Russian disaster movie Metro, directed by Anton Megerdichev. Here the action shifts underground to the subway, where passenger lives are threatened when a crack develops in the subway tunnel and the river starts flooding it. The unlucky few trapped in the tunnel must rely on their wits and each other to escape.

One bright, cheerful day, the unsuspecting passengers of the underground train find the trains shutting down, threatened by water from the Moskva River leaking into the tunnels. The trains crash and the people make a run for it. But electric rails and water make for an unfortunate combination and only the few passengers that stayed behind in the carriages are spared this grisly end. The motley group that survives trudges through miles and miles of underground railroads trying to find an opening to the surface. Meanwhile tragedy after tragedy strikes the group as well as the rescue teams and both are running out of time and ideas for survival and escape.

The movie doesn't start as abruptly. There is an introduction to the main characters ; a doctor, his daughter and his wife's lover who are (surprise, surprise) all on the same train in the same carriage. The wife is on the brink of divorcing her dull husband for the dashing businessman because he spends too much time saving people's lives and is not making enough money. On this fateful day, she is not on the train and we have to watch her run around Moscow in high heels, wracked with guilt and remorse, looking for her loved ones.

For the younger viewers, there is a sweet love story that blossoms between a young girl and boy as they keep saving each other lives while trying to escape the tunnel. An eccentric hippie woman and an overweight accountant are the other survivors, the former is annoying and the latter doesn't get to do much. The emotional elements introduced don't really do much for the story, but provide a breather from the relentless disasters striking the hapless Muscovites. I watched the movie with a terrible set of subtitles but the slick pace and good performances from the cast ensured that I did not miss too much of the plot - the story is simple enough to follow. The tension never really lets up and even while we know enough to expect a happy ending, there is an ever present undercurrent that suggests the characters are doomed.

This is a complete entertainer. It is very evident that a lot of talent was involved in making this a technically sound, interesting and neatly packaged product and one looks forward to even more entertainers from the land of matryoshka dolls and samovars.

There is a very good chance that even though you thoroughly enjoy the movie, once you step out of the theatre you would be at a loss to recall specific elements of the story. Yet definitely worth a watch even if it makes one nervous about using the Moscow subway.

Dell Vostro stops recognising the adapter and charging the battery

The good ol' personal laptop is an HP dinosaur - it has served me for over 6 years now and has taken a massive amount of abuse. That said, it is the equivalent of an automobile held together by duct tape - functional but the sum of its parts is worth way less than each part on its own.

The Office issued me a Dell Vostro 1220 - an uber-basic laptop loaded with security provisions that is halfway decent for word processing, mail-check and a random video viewing. It provides minimal incentive to work on (and that is a very good thing , who likes to lug the monster back home and work after hours). It also has its flaws and plenty of them.

The battery charging for instance - the fickle machine randomly refuses to recognise the Dell adapter provided and this is usually the case when the battery juice has been drained down to under 10% (and when the charging is required the most!!).


Here is a workaround.

1) Get into the Device Manager
2) Disable the Microsoft AC Adapter. 




I have been in hassle-free battery charging mode after this neat trick.

I don't really know what the side-effects are, but it has been over a couple of days and the laptop hasn't exploded yet. So I guess this is ok-to-go.

Now to look forward to a day when we figure out how to stop the annoying jumping-cursor effect (the cursor jumps to a previous line in the document and all your text ends up typed there).......
 

Movie Review : Love Is All You Need/Den skaldede frisør (2012)

Love Is All You Need

After the Denmark Incident, the Family had decided to boycott all things Danish. It is only recently that the embargo is being lifted and hence this movie.  This one is escapist fare for women of a certain age. It has a trite storyline, unlikable characters and gets by on the strength of performances.

Ida’s daughter Astrid, is marrying her beau Patrick, in Italy and their family and friends descend in Italy to participate in the festivities. All of them have some issues that will be addressed in due course of the movie.

Hairdresser Ida has completed treatment for cancer and is on tenterhooks about a relapse. She is at an absolute low - her looks are fading, she is edgy all the time, her children are leaving the nest and her cad of her husband is cheating on her with a younger colleague. Possessing very low self-esteem, she blames herself for her husband’s infidelity and pleads with him to not leave her, even after catching him red-handed in their own living room.

Patrick’s father, Philip, is a British businessman in Denmark who trades in fruit and vegetables. He owns a farm in Italy and is hosting the planned wedding. He is a widower who immerses himself in his work to overcome his anger and loneliness. He is immune to the charms of the women who throw themselves at him but falls for the simple hairdresser, his son’s future mother-in-law.

An assortment of supporting characters tries to enliven the proceedings.

Astrid is having serious doubts about the strength of her relationship with Patrick who is growing distant as the wedding date approaches.

Patrick has spent a lifetime trying to bond with his intimidating father and must come to terms with his identity, perhaps at the stake of his future.

Ida’s husband Leif brings along his scatter brained girlfriend Tilde to the wedding snubbing Ida even as their son Kenneth tries to fob them off in defense of his mother. Philip’s sister-in-law Benedikte has her eye on him and will go to any length to seduce him and secure her meal ticket.

These are meant to be foils to the leading actors, but don’t really add value except to clear the path for Ida and Philip to be together in a non-gross sort of way.

Super-suave Pierce Brosnan, who is aging like fine wine, appears to have wandered off the Mamma Mia set onto this movie. His gruff manner is the only indication that this is a different film. It is an easy role and he tries to bring an earnestness to his character but mostly sleepwalks his way to the bank.

Pretty boy Sebastien Jessen brings a heart breaking helplessness to Patrick although he wears out his welcome quickly as he morphs into the mandatory gay character. It is an easy way out for the writers to breakup the wedding and clear the way for the Ida-Philip story while also being politically correct and all-inclusive.

Molly Blixt Egelind is wide-eyed and fresh as the loving but naive Astrid. Astrid loves to take care of her hair - her roots keep changing color and finally she is all blond at the wedding.

Paprika Steen as the loud and obnoxious Aunt Benedikte brings energy to her scenes but she doesn't have much to do.

Trine Dyrholm is the only reason to watch this movie – she is equal parts vulnerable and vibrant and lights up the screen. Saddled with a weak character, she puts her big blue eyes and radiant smile to work, trying to depict Ida’s inner turmoil and bravery in the face of everyday struggles.

There are many questions left unanswered about why the characters put up with each other in the way that they do. The chief question though is why a professional hairdresser would choose such an obvious, unflattering wig for herself.  

There are better ways to spend time than watching this movie, but it is a harmless couple of hours and the Italian setting brings in sunshine, color and cheer to a dull day.

Movie Review : Lost in Thailand (2012)

Lost in Thailand

Lost in Thailand is China's highest grossing movie for 2012. Three oddball characters face a series of misadventures in Thailand while learning some important lessons along the way. 

Xu Lang, a scientist, must convince his boss to grant him sufficient time to research and refine his latest invention - a chemical with the power to increase the volume of any liquid that it comes in contact with. 

Gao Bo, Xu Lang's colleague and professional rival, wants to convince their boss to sell this research to a French company instead. 

The boss is vacationing in Thailand and has agreed to go with the suggestion made by the colleague that finds him first. Xu Lang takes off for Thailand immediately, closely tailed by Gao Bo. Xu Lang is also in the midst of divorce proceedings initiated by his wife, who has grown frustrated with his workaholic nature and neglect of their daughter. She keeps calling up and reminding him to turn up in court in a couple of days, not quite believing him when he says that he really can't come this time.

While on the plane, he meets Wang Bao, who has brought along a list of activities he wants to undertake - plant a cactus, fight a Muay Thai boxer and visit a spa. He works as a pancake cook and is a bit of an earnest simpleton. Xu Lang tags along with Wang Bao to throw Gao Bo off his trail - but Gao keeps catching up with them. He only has a picture of a shrine where his boss is vacationing and drags along Wang Bao with him to find it, promising to help him achieve the tasks on his list. Along the way Xu Lang loses his money, phone, laptop and very nearly his sanity but he also learns the importance of relationships and re-calibrates his moral compass. 

The story is light weight and the movie relies on the chemistry between the characters to move forward. Although billed as a comedy, the only chuckles to be had are from the dazed expressions on the characters faces as they must come-to-terms with the helplessness of their situations.

Xu Zheng - who also the director - is adequate as the uptight scientist, Huang Bo is a decent nerdy, evil colleague and the charming, dimpled Wang Baoqiang fits the simpleton role to a T. 

For a debut directorial effort this is a really good movie and a pleasant enough experience although it doesn't quite live up to its 'blockbuster' tag. Be prepared to be assailed by thoughts such as  'is this supposed to be funny?", "was this really a $200 mn grosser?".

Android Wi-Fi Connect Error

I have had a tough time with getting my Android devices to connect to my wireless router. I cannot figure out if this is a router problem because laptops connect in a flash but I am inclined towards this explanation since I have had 3 devices – 2 Samsung phones and an Android tablet – struggle to connect with the network. I don’t have the energy to keep configuring and tweaking and testing the router settings – but it isn’t like one hasn’t tried.

A rudimentary Root-Cause Analysis brings up the following

1. There is an issue with the router settings
2. There is a problem with Samsung phones 
3. There is a flaw in Android 
4. Some/All of the above  

Now, one has better uses for one's time than deconstructing the mysteries of the wireless networks and hence has to come up with a quick-fix, 'dirty' solutions to nudge these devices into ‘talking’ to and connecting to the wireless. Needless to say, the router has been switched on and the network password has been punched in correctly on your device.

Samsung Galaxy Ace

There is a nifty, preloaded app called AllShare that helps Samsung devices wireless-ly connect and share media and is based on the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA). Simply create a shortcut to this app on your home screen and always use this to connect to the network of your choice.

Click the icon on the Home screen, OK to connect, Wi-Fi icon lights up after connecting

Do not switch on the Wi-Fi from the Main Screen and then attempt to use AllShare - it won’t work.

This irrational sequencing of rituals angers the elves that leap from the Ace to the Router dragging behind them the diaphanous strands of connectivity that link the Ace to the World Wide Web and they will curse your phone and cause it to bear that Mark of Horror – the Gray WiFi signal

Budget Android Tablet

Things get a little tricky with the tablet. AllShare doesn’t work with it, so a similar app needs to be found – one that allows various devices to connect to a common network (your wireless network!!) and start ‘speaking’ to each other.

Thankfully, the very first app that I tried – iMediaShare– did the job. This app allows media to be streamed across various connected devices and also very brilliantly allows for a seamless connection to be established with the router/WWW, all within a matter of seconds.

1. Connect to the Wireless network  
2. Switch on iMediaShare
3. Wait for the glorious Wi-Fi icon to light up and start flashing and the 'success screen' to show up.

iMediaShare Home Screen and 'Success' Screen on connecting to Wi-Fi

Sequencing is the key - if you don't follow my words of wisdom in the order as prescribed, then fully expect to be disappointed.

If you have faithfully adhered to what I have told you to, you can now partayy on the WWW with your Android device. WOOT! WOOT!!