Sunday, October 31, 2010

Review Of : Takers

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If you have watched A-Team, or other action-packed movies that consists lots & lots of shooting, explosions & guns, Takers is that.





The storyline is about a team call themselves the Takers, they are a team of highly-trained , well-organized robbers. They execute their mission, take the cash, and leave; without any trace.

But a cunning detective is going after them, & finding out .

Meanwhile , one of their crew who was is jail 5 years ago was freed & he gives the Takers a 30-million heist of their lifetime. Suspicious but tempting mission.

To execute the heist, they...

( Is that too much of a spoiler? Well, go watch them yourselves. :) )


It's about teamwork, betrayal & taking your chances In a nutshell, this movie is 85% action ( consists of mainly shooting & chasing ). Love that genre? You're love watching Takers.


My Rating?


Plot : 4/5
Storyline : 3/5
Acting*:4/5
Action* : 4.5/5
OVERALL : 7.75/10.

Trailer>>




Friday, October 29, 2010

Happy Halloween! :P

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Exams' Over
, Holidays are coming and Halloween is here!


Even though I don't celebrate Halloween. :P

But, here's a question; what is the first thing you think in your mind when I say :




" HALLOWEEN! "





Jack-O-Lanterns?



Ghosts?



Sweets?

Well, anything you think of ... The origin of Halloween is actually from the Celtics, not the fun, treat-o-treat, costume party thing, ... Here's an extract from Wikipedia.

History Of Halloween
Historian Nicholas Rogers, exploring the origins of Halloween, notes that while "some folklorists have detected its origins in the Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or in the festival of the dead called Parentalia, it is more typically linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain, whose original spelling was Samuin (pronounced sow-an or sow-in)". The name is derived from Old Irish and means roughly "summer's end". A similar festival was held by the ancient Britons and is known as Calan Gaeaf (pronounced Kálan Gái av).


Snap-Apple Night by Daniel Maclise showing a Halloween party in Blarney, Ireland, in 1832. The young children on the right bob for apples. A couple in the center play a variant, which involves retrieving an apple hanging from a string. The couples at left play divination games.

The festival of Samhain celebrates the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darker half", and is sometimes regarded as the "Celtic New Year".
The ancient Celts believed that the border between this world and the Otherworld became thin on Samhain, allowing spirits (both harmless and harmful) to pass through. The family's ancestors were honoured and invited home while harmful spirits were warded off. It is believed that the need to ward off harmful spirits led to the wearing of costumes and masks. Their purpose was to disguise oneself as a harmful spirit and thus avoid harm. In Scotland the spirits were impersonated by young men dressed in white with masked, veiled or blackened faces. Samhain was also a time to take stock of food supplies and slaughter livestock for winter stores. Bonfires played a large part in the festivities. All other fires were doused and each home lit their hearth from the bonfire. The bones of slaughtered livestock were cast into its flames. Sometimes two bonfires would be built side-by-side, and people and their livestock would walk between them as a cleansing ritual.
Another common practice was divination, which often involved the use of food and drink.
The name 'Halloween' and many of its present-day traditions derive from the Old English era.

Origin of name
The word Halloween is first attested in the 16th century and represents a Scottish variant of the fuller All-Hallows-Even ("evening"), that is, the night before All Hallows Day. Up through the early 20th century, the spelling "Hallowe'en" was frequently used, eliding the "v" and shortening the word. Although the phrase All Hallows is found in Old English (ealra hālgena mæssedæg, mass-day of all saints), All-Hallows-Even is itself not attested until 1556.

It' sort like the Chinese Ghost Month right?

Okay!
That's all for now!
Happy Holidays & Happy Halloween..


Sunday, October 10, 2010

Yahoo! News Extracts : Father and son film outer space, do-it-yourself style

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HAPPY 10.10.10 !! :D

Here is some interesting news I found on Yahoo!

What a father & son will do when they are into space & astronomy..


Read On..





Like many youngsters, and those young at heart, seven-year-old Max Geissbuhler and his dad dreamed of visiting space -- and armed with just a weather balloon, a video camera, and an iPhone, in a way they did just that.

The father-and-son team from Brooklyn managed to send their homemade spacecraft up nearly 19 miles, high into the stratosphere, bringing back perhaps the most impressive amateur space footage ever. The amazing footage starts at 2:35 minutes in the video below.


Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.


The duo housed the video camera, iPhone, and GPS equipment in a specially designed insulated casing, along with some hand-warmers and a note from Max requesting its safe return from whomever may find it after making it back to solid ground. All told, father and son spent eight months preparing for their homemade journey into space, in hopes of filming "the blackness beyond our earth."

Then, one day in August, Max, his father, and his friend Miles Horner headed out to a nearby park to see their dreams realized. After attaching their equipment to a 19-inch weather balloon and switching on the camera, they watched as their simple craft disappeared high into the sky.

After a little over an hour, the craft reached the stratosphere, 100 thousand feet overhead, and captured some incredible footage of space before the balloon popped and fell back towards earth. They found their spacecraft 25 miles away from where they had let it go -- stuck up in a tree.

Although the camera's battery died some minutes before touching down, the footage the camera returned is impressive. And despite the fact that the craft didn't technically reach the boundaries of space, Max and his father are undoubtedly proud of their accomplishment.

Geissbuhler describes the experience on the video he uploaded to the Internet:

In August 2010, we set out to send a camera to space. The mission was to attach a HD video camera to a weather balloon and send it up into the upper stratosphere to film the blackness beyond our earth. Eventually, the balloon will grow from lack of atmospheric pressure, burst, and begin to fall.

It would have to survive 100 mph winds, temperatures of 60 degrees below zero, speeds of over 150 mph, and the high risk of a water landing. To retrieve the craft, it would need to deploy a parachute, descend through the clouds and transmit a GPS coordinate to a cell phone tower. Then we have to find it.

Needless to say, there are a lot of variables to overcome.

Just as the space-race of the 1960s was driven by a spirit of exploration and ingenuity, so too was the bold idea of Max and Luke Geissbuhler to film the darkness beyond our planet with their homemade spacecraft. And just as mankind was at once emboldened by the success of science and the realm of possibility was widened for an entire generation -- perhaps this father-and-son team can inspire others to follow their dreams, too, do-it-yourself style.


( Extracted from Yahoo! News )


Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Review Of : Legend Of The Guardians - The Owls Of Ga'Hoole

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The movie has a rather simple plot; it is about an owl named Soren that has a very strong faith & courage. One day , he & his brother had been kidnapped by the owls of St.Aggie's together with other owlets. He then escaped out of captive in search to find the Guardians to save the owlets ...

It is a story about faith, love, betrayal, & courage..

The graphics are very good in 3D.

The owls' feathers & their movements are very realistic..
Yes, if you have seen movies like' Happy Feet ', this is a good movie, since it is from makers of ' Happy Feet ' .

My rating :

Plot : 4/5
Storyline : 3/5
Graphics* : 5/5
Scoring* : 4/5
OVERALL : 8/10.

The synopsis is as follows :

Based on the first three Guardians of Ga'Hoole book series by Kathryn Lasky, it tells of Soren (Jim Sturgess), a young barn owl who is kidnapped by owls of St. Aggie's, ostensibly an orphanage where owlets are brainwashed into becoming soldiers. He and new friends escape to the island of Ga'Hoole, to assist its noble, wise owls who fight the army being created by the wicked rulers of St. Aggie's.

(Source: Cinema Online)

Trailer :




Movie Rating Guide. :)

Lately, I've changed my movie ratings a little. (:


Plot :

is the flow & structural plot of the movie itself.

Storyline :

the overall idea & the concept of the movie.

Characters:

The character's overall acting & character built-up in the movie. Or for animation, the voices & character built-up too.

Effects* :

The visual effects, 3D effects, movie scores/music, graphics, animation of a movie respective to it's genre.


SO, there it is. Thanks! :)