Titanic 3D

I have watched a number of 3D movies on my Panasonic Viera TV.

The best 3D by far that I have seen was on the 3D version of Titanic.

It's a great movie anyway, and it already looked great, but it looks sensational in 3D.

You can pause the movie at almost any moment and get a fabulous 3D image. Whoever did the conversion put a huge amount of effort into it.

Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, who looked pretty amazing in 2D, look even better in 3D.

Here's a still of the two of them as it would appear on a non-3D TV:

Lost in Translation by Sofia Coppola

I watched "Lost in Translation" on TV the other day.

It was only my second time watching the movie, although I bought the DVD some time ago.

I guess I bought it because:

• I had read a very positive review
• I like Bill Murray
• I knew it was set in Japan (I have a big interest in all things Japanese)

To be frank I didn't enjoy the movie very much the first time around. I think I was expecting to learn more about Japan and that didn't materialise. In fact, Japan is used mainly as a strange (weird might be a better word) backdrop for the story. Its main role is to provide a setting where Murray and Johansson can feel lonely and isolated.

Watching the movie for the second time was quite different as I didn't have those expectations. Instead I was able to focus more on the story and on the evolving relationship between the two main characters. That's why I was able to enjoy it so much more.

Murray and Johansson are both excellent. And it works very well as a love story. And the movie looks great.

I saw an interview where Murray said that it was his favourite movie of the ones he was in.

After the movie I went on the web to see if I could find out what Murray whispered to Johansson near the end. I did find some speculation but no answers that satisfied me. I decided that Coppola was right - it is better to leave that to the viewers' imaginations.

My rating: 7.5/10 (would have been higher if it didn't make Japan seem to strange!).

Here is a nice shot of the two leads:

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I went with my son Andrew (8) today to see The Hobbit. We went to the 3D version (the 3D is not bad)

Andrew, like me, is a big fan of the LOTR movies.

We both enjoyed the movie.

At 169 minutes it is a long movie, although not as long as any of the 3 LOTR movies.

The current IMDB rating is 8.4 which puts it under the 3 LOTR movies (which are currently scoring 8.8, 8.7, and 8.9 in order). I think that's about right.

Martin Freeman does quite a good job in the role of Bilbo of matching the voice and mannerisms of Ian Holm. I though that Richard Armitage did a very good job in the role of Thorin, the leader of the dwarves.

The first section of the movie takes place in The Shire and introduces the dwarves and focusses on convincing Bilbo to take on this "quest". This part feels overly long to be frank.

The rest of the movie goes along at a good pace. There are excellent action sequences which will be a pleasure to anyone who enjoyed the LOTR movies. There are orcs, goblins and trolls. My favourite action sequence features the "stone giants".

Some familiar characters make a welcome appearance, although the majority of these are quite brief.

I had some concerns about the fact that the book is to be made into 3 movies. I guess those concerns still exist especially as I was sitting through the first part.

My rating: 8/10.

I see that an Irish actor, Jimmy Nesbitt, has landed a role as one of the dwarves. I'm open to correction on this but I don't recall any Irish actors in the LOTR movies so this is a welcome step. Here is a picture of 3 of the dwarves with Jimmy in the centre:

"Unblock Me Free" by Kiragames

I mentioned the Android game "Unblock Me" in a previous posting.

And I subsequently blogged about the fact that the game wasn't making me any smarter!

Well I have now solved 153 puzzles at the "Expert" level and that fact is that I am still as dumb as I ever was!

At the start of every new puzzle I still think that it is impossible!!

The company's website says that there are "4200 puzzles in total for you to enjoy". So maybe there is hope for me yet...

Best Christmas Movies

I mentioned the two best Christmas movies in a posting last year: "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Scrooged".

We watched the latter on TV a few weeks ago.

We watched the former on DVD the other evening. It seems to get better every time we watch it. Certainly Andrew (8) got more from it this year than last.

Here is a nice photo of the stars Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reid:

Programming Languages

I was at the open day at Coder Dojo in Malahide this morning with my three kids.

Very interesting presentations on hardware and programming. And demos of cool stuff including a Raspberry Pi and a JavaScript-controlled helicopter!

The organisers asked the kids to name programming languages. The kids duly came up with Scratch and Java. One of the kids asked me if I could name any more. That got me thinking.

So here I am going to name all of the programming languages I can think of in alphabetical order:

Algol, APL, Assembler, AutoIt
B (I think?), BASIC
C, C++, C#, COBOL
D
E
Fortran
G
H
I
Java, JavaScript
K
Lisp, Logo, LotusScript
M
N
O
Perl, PHP, Processing, Prolog, Python
Qt
Rapid-Q, RPG, Ruby
Scheme, Scratch, SNOBOL, SQL
T
U
VB, VB.NET
W
X
Y
Z

That's 31 by my count.

There are lots more than I know of but can't remember, and lots more that I have never heard of.

Best Christmas book: The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey

I blogged last year about the best Christmas book ever: The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey.

I read it again this year with my (now) 8 and 10 year olds. Again there were tears. Again they were mine.

The difference this year was that my 8 year old, Andrew, read it this time. He did a great job.

At the end he asked me if they all got married and lived happily every after. Obviously I told him that they did. How else could a great book like that end!

Looper

I like time travel movies a lot. I will return to this topic in a future post.

I watched Looper the other day. It is very good. It is a time travel movie where the story is interesting but also not too hard to follow (once you have accepted the premise that it makes sense to send people back in time to have them killed).

The cast is very good. Joseph Gordon-Levitt look like I've never seen him before. Bruce Willis gets to do his "die hard" thing. Emily Blunt does a good job too.

But most of the credit most go to writer/director (and actor too I see) Rian Johnson. This seems to be only the third movie he has written/directed and he did a fine job.

My rating: 7.5/10

Here is a still from the movie showing Willis and Gordon-Levitt:

Miracle on 34th Street - I'm not so sure

I bought Miracle on 34th Street (the 1947 edition) on DVD some years ago but I never got the kids to watch it.

Originally they would have been opposed to the idea of watching a movie in black and white. But of course I have won them over to this idea some time ago with It's a Wonderful Life.

So this year I took it out again and I watched it with the two younger ones (10 and 8).

It has a number of things going for it:

• It's a "Christmas classic"
• It features Ireland's own Maureen O'Hara
• It is #9 apparently on the American Film Institute's "100 Most Inspiring Movies of All Time"

The bad news is: I don't think we will be watching it again. At least not until the kids are older.

Without discussing the details, suffice it to say that I just don't think it is suitable.

So if you want to watch a "Christmas classic" with your kids, I would suggest that you try one of these two.

12/12/12 12:12

Did you do anything exciting at twelve minutes past midday today to mark the fact that it was 12/12/12 12:12?

I was at work and didn't realise that anything exciting had happened!

Strange that it was one of those dates that worked on this side of the Atlantic and also on the other side.

Not really as exciting I guess as 10/11/12 13:14 but that one was on different days depending on where you live.

Strange also how often these special date/time combinations occur.