Movie Review - Taken 2

In September of last year I blogged about how I was looking forward to the release of "Taken 2".

When the movie came out though I didn't go to see it. The reason: the bad reviews it was getting.

I finally watched it on DVD the other day. And boy were those reviewers right! What a turkey.

Same writers. Same cast. Luc Besson still producing. Bigger budget. So what went wrong?

I don't really know. The movie was silly. The script was awful. The acting was awful.

I guess I should blame the new director: Olivier Megaton.

Now I don't know much about Mr Megaton but IMDB tells me the following about his surname: "Megaton takes his name from his birthday : the 6th of August 1965 is the 20th anniversary of the dropping of the Hiroshima A-bomb"

OK. Enough said.

I guess he must be to blame. He is certainly to blame for ruining all of the action/fight sequences by needlessly shaking the camera (I really hate that). Pierre Morel directed the first movie and he made Neeson look as if he could beat up bad guys without feeling the need to shake the camera continuously.

My rating: 4/10 (turkey)

Here is a shot of Neeson and his daughter being pursued through the streets of Istanbul. She is driving (don't ask). Neeson shouts the following at his daughter repeatedly throughout the case: "Faster", "keep going", "do it", "come on". Excruciating! The shot shows him shooting out of the passenger window. I am completely at a loss to know why he would choose to shoot at a pursuing car through the passenger windows when it would be so much easier to do so out of the rear window!

 The most unbelievable thing of all may be that IMDB indicates that there will be a "Taken 3"!

CoderDojo Mentor T-Shirt

Mentors in CoderDojo in Malahide will be sporting these t-shirts from now on.

Good idea, and not a bad looking shirt either!

And lots more ideas in the pipeline.

Snow arrives in Malahide

Out first snowfall of this winter (even though it's the 11th of March and so officially Spring):

Movie Review: Super 8

Having watched this movie the other day, I'm trying to imagine the phone conversation between J.J.Abrams and Steven Spielberg before the movie was made.

Spielberg: Hello. This is Steven Spielberg.

Abrams: Hi Steven. J.J. here.

Spielberg: Hi J.J. What's new?

Abrams: Well, I'm planning to make a new movie which I'm going to call "Super 8".

Spielberg: Hey, remember how when you were teenagers I hired you and Matt Reeves to restore some of my Super 8 home movie?

Abrams: Funny you should mention that Steven...

Spielberg: Why's that?

Abrams: Well it's just that I'm thinking of doing something similar with some of your movies from the 70s...

Spielberg: How so?

Abrams: Well I'm thinking of a new version of ET...

Spielberg: You're serious?

Abrams: Yes I am. But the alien will be a lot bigger, and a lot uglier. And it definitely won't be vegetarian!

Spielberg: So you're bringing it all bang up to date?

Abrams: Well no. Actually I'm going to set it in 1979.

Spielberg: Let me see if I have this now. You're going to remake ET and you're going to set it in roughly the same time period. Is there anything else you need to tell me?

Abrams: Well I need to talk to you about "The Goonies" too...

Spielberg: Listen here J.J. - sounds like I'll need to sign on as Producer for this one.

My rating: 5.5/10

What I would change in Scratch

If I could wave a magic wand and change one thing about Scratch...

It wouldn't be any of the things I have mentioned previously: FOR loops, FLOOR and CEILING functions, different method for handling layers.

It wouldn't be the facility to clone sprites. It wouldn't be the facility to write subroutines and functions.

Note: Some of these have been addressed in Scratch 2.0 which is currently in Beta and all of them would be on my wish-list.

Instead it would be to reverse a decision which I'm sure the designers made with the best of intentions. It would be to allow you to move a sprite completely off the "stage".

The designers decided obviously that having a sprite which if off the stage would be confusing for kids. So if you instruct a sprite to move off the stage it will only do so partially - the x/y coordinate will simply refuse to increase/decrease past a certain point.

This is annoying where you want to:
1) Have a sprite glide onto or off the stage
2) Work with scrolling backgrounds

So yes: if I could do one thing then that would be it.

And no: this has not been changed in version 2.0.

This picture shows how you cannot get the Scratch Cat to exit the stage no matter how many times you press the space key:

Movie Review: Lawless

There are some actors/actress you like, and some you dislike. I don't really know why. I guess there are people you like more and people you like less so maybe it works the same way.

I don't like Shia LaBoeuf. Not entirely sure what it is. He seems to play the same character in every movie. He's always annoying. He's always "mouthy".

I watched Lawless this evening. I had heard good things about it and I thought I'd give it a try. Then I say that Shia was in it and I had a sinking feeling. Then I saw that he was playing his usual role.

I should have stopped watching at that point. But I didn't. I regret that now.

I don't get what it is that people see in this movie. On IMDB it has a rating of 7.3.  I guess not everyone feels the same as I do about Mr LaBoeuf.

My rating: 5/10

Here's a still from the movie that doesn't have you-know-who:

Scratch Programming - Layers

All sprites in Scratch have three coordinates: x, y and z.

The x and y can be set directly:

The z cannot be set directly but can be adjusted by changing the sprites layer. This is not as intuitive as it might be (well it certainly confused me for a while).

I imagined that a sprites layer number would work in a similar manner to the x and y coordinates. So a sprite which has been told to "go back 5 layers" would be behind one which has been told to "go back 3 layers".

The reality is that every sprite has a unique layer. When you tell a sprite to "go to front" it does just that. It takes a position in front of all other sprites (let's call this layer 1). The sprite that was on layer 1 moves back to layer 2 and so on down the line.

When you tell a sprite to "go back 1 layers", it basically swaps places with the sprite that was behind it.

When you tell a sprite to "go back -1 layers" (you can use negative numbers) it swaps places with the sprite that was in front of it.

So basically all layers are relative, not absolute.

I added the following code blocks to a sprite in a 2 sprite program:

When you press "a" the sprite goes behind the other sprite.

When you press "b" it comes back to the front again (you do not have to press "b" twenty times!!)

Resident Evil Retribution

Watched Resident Evil Retribution in 3D the other day.

My 10 word review:

Silly. Silly. Silly. Silly. Silly. Silly. Silly. Silly. Silly. Fun!

Actually two extra words needed:

Nice 3D!

My rating: 6/10.