I should have blogged about this two weeks ago when it came out, but I was in the Netherlands then and since I’ve been back it just slipped my mind completely. Maybe you’ve seen it already, but if you haven’t it’s a lot of fun (especially if you’re into movies). Empire has created this wicked Cryptic Canvas, a painting that contains references to 50 movies.

My brother showed the game to me, challenging me to find as many movies as I could. He and a friend of his had solved all the clues, so of course I had to try and do that too. Some of them are pretty easy to figure out. Just mentioning the object alone already gives you the answer. Some are slightly trickier; it helps saying out loud what you see. And some are just plain evil. 

I think I got to about 30 when I started struggling, so my brother started giving little tips. Not so much tips as in clues about the movies, but more where in the canvas you had to look and what belongs together. For instance, the bird and the flower in the top right corner? Two separate movies. The family with kids (in front of the huge baby)? Also two separate movies (the three mini kids are 1 movie, the rest another). And did you see there are four movies in the bottom right hand corner?

I really struggled with a couple of the obvious ones, especially “CCC”; I am truly kicking myself over that one (also because in the end I didn’t figure that one out, my mum did). There are a couple that I love though: the gravestone with the little flag, the two musical instruments, the towers with the hanging guy, and the guy near the train.

In the end I had to give up at 45, the final 5 I just couldn’t figure out (the family with kids, the flower in the top right, the man on the red line, the fighting cheerleaders, and the book destroyer). Looking at those though, I should have at least figured two of them out; one I hadn’t heard of and the other two were just a bit too difficult.

So how many movie references can you figure out?

I can get pretty addicted to online flash games, and this latest one promoting Ice Age 3 is pretty cute:

I just suck at it horribly though! The highest score I got was 6100 🙁

From AddictingGames.com

Episode 115: “Argh!”

Cute little animation:

[Watch on MissGeeky.com]

Via /Film

I wouldn’t actually buy these myself, but they do look pretty:

They are part of a series of paintings from Christian Waggoner, featuring close-ups of famous helmets in the Star Wars universe. Don’t you just love the reflections?

The paintings are all available in limited edition paper and canvas prints on the Acme Archives website.

Via /Film

Some shows just look awful from the start. Here’s the description from ABC:

Sometimes scaling back is the best way to get ahead. Wall Street legend Hank Pryor (Kelsey Grammer) and his wife Tilly have been living the high life in New York City. That is until Hank is forced out of his CEO job and has to move his family back home to the small town of River Bend.

A self-made man, Hank is used to running the show, but now that he’s lost almost everything, can he learn how to hang with his family? The Pryors have had to seriously downsize their lives — even their king-sized bed won’t fit in their modest new home. Tilly’s not too pleased to be back in the same zip code as her family — especially her badgering brother Grady. Hank’s offbeat son Henry worries about fitting in with a new crowd and his daughter Maddie would rather talk on her cell phone than be anywhere near her Dad. But every great businessman knows that the key to success is to turn setbacks into opportunities. Hank has big plans to get ahead in business… and to reconnect with his family. It may take a while for an industrial giant to figure out how to mingle with the little people — like his family — but Hank’s up for the challenge. Like that smaller bed… Turns out that wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

And the trailer:

[Watch on MissGeeky.com]

I’ve heard a lot about this movie from people who read the book it’s based on: The Road from Cormac McCarthy (who also wrote No Country For Old Men). It’s set 10 years from now, where some disaster has destroyed most of civilization, and a father and his son try to survive by any means necessary. 

I didn’t like No Country For Old Men, so I’m a bit torn up about this movie. Here’s the trailer:

[Watch on MissGeeky.com]

The trailer does look great, so I’m hoping for the best. For those of you who have read the book: should I maybe read it first before seeing this movie?

I love love love these jewelry designs from Molly M Designs. They are just so simple and elegant, but with a mathematical twist.

The story behind the store is pretty interesting too. Molly McGrath is professionally trained as an architect and after using a laser cutter to make architectural models, she realized the machine potential to make unique jewelry. Each design starts out with a sketch, which are then drafted into AutoCAD and printed on the laser cutter.

From what I can see on the site, every design is available as earrings or as a pendant. Depending on the design, they are available as small or large. Here are the prices: small earrings are $36, large earrings are $46, small pendants are $36 and large pendants are $46.

Via Design Crush

Episode 114: “Most popular subject: diapers”

I’m not really familiar with Sprint, but I do like this commercial from them:

[Watch on MissGeeky.com]

Via Alana Taylor

I adore the first two Terminator movies. I was born in the year the first one came out and was only 7 when the second one came out, but I do feel as if I’ve grown up with these stories. These are the movies that made me think and dream about time travel and timelines, and I still enjoy theorizing about these type of plots. I was really looking forward to this latest installment of the Terminator series, and while it’s not everything I hoped it would be, it’s still a great action flick.

Terminator Salvation focuses on Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a man who wakes up in 2018 with no recollection of how he got there. Judgment Day has come and passed, and the human survivors are struggling in their war against the machines. John Connor (Christian Bale) is part of the resistance and knows he has to find his “father” Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), still a civilian trying to survive.

The main problem with Terminator Salvation is that this isn’t the movie every Terminator fan has been waiting for. Anybody who has seen the other movies wants to see one thing: the final battle between the machines and the resistance. What happens after they’ve sent back Kyle Reese and the terminators? Does John Connor and the resistance finally win the war? When does everything finally come full circle? This isn’t that movie. This movie is but a chapter in the whole saga, where Kyle Reese and John Connor meet. And that would have been fine, if they were the main two characters. If this movie was truly about the birth of their friendship. But it isn’t. Instead Terminator Salvation revolves around Marcus Wright, a new mysterious character, whose story line you see coming from a mile away. 

It kind of works. I mean I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and I came out of the theatre thinking it was awesome. But reflecting on it, I just think it could have been better. I mean, you’ve got these characters that the fans love and whose stories they want to hear, but instead we get a movie about this Marcus Wright. I don’t see why they needed this new character; why couldn’t they have focused more on Kyle Reese and John Connor? Or Connor and his wife? Or the rise of Connor in the resistance? It just didn’t feel necessary to have this movie revolving around this character whose story we’re not really interested in.

Sam Worthington is okay as Marcus Wright, and by the end of the movie you are rooting for him. There’s nothing wrong with his acting (although at times his Australian accent slips through), it’s just you’re not as invested in his character as some of the others. Christian Bale is a bit of a disappointment as John Connor. When I heard he was cast, it just seemed perfect; who else could play the fierce, yet tortured resistance leader? And yet, it didn’t really work. There’s just something in him that doesn’t make you truly believe that this is a continuation of the same John Connor, although that may be due more to the way his character was written than Bale’s performance. The highlight of this movie for me had to be Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese. After seeing him in Star Trek as Chekov, I didn’t think he could pull this character off (he just looks too baby faced there and not at all like Reese). But you get the feeling he must have watched and studied Michael Biehn’s Kyle Reese in The Terminator for hours, cause he’s spot on with his performance. 

The other characters don’t add much to the movie. Bryce Dallas Howard is fine as Kate Connor, but she doesn’t get that much to work with. She has this whole back story and history with John Connor and she’s pregnant with his child, but all she gets to do is stand on the sidelines and be a sounding board to his worries. Moon Bloodgood is introduced as a love interest for Marcus Wright, but it feels rushed and very unbelievable. 

I did really like the look of Terminator Salvation. After Judgment Day, the world is practically a bleak, deserted wasteland and visually they’ve managed to capture that. It’s gritty and barren, and exactly what you’d expect the world to look like after a nuclear winter. The action and special effects in this movie are also superb, with enough explosions and fights to do justice to the previous films. I loved the design of some of the new robots, even though some seemed a bit more advance than what you’d expect at this point in time.

Terminator Salvation is a great summer action flick. Story wise it’s not fantastic, but for most people I guess it doesn’t have to be. Unlike some, I didn’t hate this movie, and I think McG managed to deliver a fun enjoyable film. I’m just disappointed it’s not the Terminator movie I was hoping for, but if it does well at the box office, we might see one in the near future.

I had seen the trailer of Gran Torino a while back and remembered thinking “Oscar Movie. Pass.”. But then my brother went to see it and said it would be a film our entire family would enjoy. I didn’t really believe him, but it seemed like the right movie to see when my parents were in town.

Gran Torino stars Clint Eastwood as Walt Kowalski, a Korean War vet who has just lost his wife. He’s grumpy, tough, and can’t get along with his kids or his neighbours. All he cares about is his dog, Daisy, and his prized car, a 1972 Gran Torino. When his teenage Hmong neighbours, Thao and Sue, get into trouble with the local gang, Walt steps in to help them out. Before he knows it, that gets Walt deeper embroiled into the life of his neighbours.

‘Everybody’s a little bit racist sometimes, Doesn’t mean we’re all out committing hate crimes’ (from one of the songs of Avenue Q, but more about that in a later post). Gran Torino’s main character  Walt seems to fit that bill exactly; his remarks about his neighbours are cringeworthy at times, but you know that he doesn’t really mean it. I don’t think anybody but Clint Eastwood could have pulled that character off; Walt is tough and scary, not two attributes you’d associate with a 78-year old. Eastwood delivers lines that could have turned out silly, but hearing him say them you know he means it. Even that old, Eastwood is still believable as a tough no-nonsense guy.

The story takes a bit slow to unravel, but halfway through it speeds up. Don’t come into this movie expecting a lot of action; it isn’t an action movie. There are a couple of “action”-y scenes (Clint being tough), but nothing too spectacular. Gran Torino also isn’t really a drama; most of the movie is pretty upbeat and I found myself laughing during a couple of scenes. 

Gran Torino is an interesting movie, and I’m surprised it wasn’t nominated for more Oscars this year. Having seen most of the contenders, I truly think Gran Torino was better than most of those and Clint Eastwood deserved at least to be nominated for Best Actor.