All Fast All Furious

Like that title? Its what I came up with for the 6th movie in the franchise. I finished waching all five of them now with a double bill today of 'Fast and Furious' and 'Fast Five'. Was a good idea too as 'Fast Five' directly follows on from the previous. (and by that, I mean the ending scene of F&F is pretty much the start scene of F5).

With this I am FINALLY clear of the movie timeline. It is as follows (well for now at least):

• The Fast and the Furious
• 2 Fast 2 Furious
• Fast and Furious
• Fast Five
• Tokyo Drift

As the Japanese guy at the end of F5 is on his way to Tokyo after he visits Berlin. But what becomes of his new girlfriend then? she is not in TD.

I have fully enjoyed all of the movies, yes including TD. You see when I first saw TD I wasn't that pleased with it. Same with 2F2F for that matter, as they kept dropping cast members. But now with the latest ones having the full cast, I can see and appreciate how 2F2F and TD fit into the whole story.

Oh and one thing I didn't notice when I saw it at the cinema (as then it had been AGES since I saw the other ones) the undercover cop lass from 2F2F appears in the mid credits scene at the end of F5!

Also some random trivia: in TD there are two fishermen watching the main guy (Lucas Black) practice his drifting. They have nothing really to do with anything, they are just random fishermen making comments about his bad drifting. And when he gets it right, one of them says something like "he's good!". Well that guy is the REAL LIFE drift king in Japan! holy shit!

They are making a 6th one, will be due in 2013 or 2014. I really hope that they set it after TD, and have Lucas Black as his new crew member at least just to clarify the time line of the movies. It wouldn't make any sense at all for the Japanese guy to be in it as he dies in a car crash in TD, and at the end of F5 he is on his way to Tokyo after he visits Berlin. ALTHOUGH they could still get away with it without destroying the time line by setting the 6th one in Berlin. But they wouldn't be that stupid.... right?

There are a few strange continuity things like for example at the end of 2F2F, the guy and his friend take some of the evidence money to go and open a shop for car stuffs or something. But yet in F&F the guy has reenlisted and is now a fed, and his friend is no where in sight. And when his friend appears again in F5, there is no explanation as to what happened between the two of them.

I suppose you could use your imagination: the money ran out, they went their separate ways, then the guy needs a job so he reenlists. Or maybe big foot stomped on their shop.... or maybe an alien ship landed on the shop or... or....

So yeah the 6th one will be about Dom's girl friend as she was spotted on some CCTV (she supposedly got killed off in F&F) and why she didn't contact him or whatever.

Thanks for reading!

The Fast and the X-men

Hi guys! so the other movie series I have been watching this week is the 'Fast and the Furious'. Since the latest movie in the franchise is out on Blu Ray, I decided to watch through the whole series.

The very basics of these movies is about driving, awesome cars and fast paced adrenaline pumping action! We start to loose cast members as we go into the second movie (2 Fast 2 Furious). In fact only one cast member remains from the first one (Paul Walker) as we go into the second movie, and we get a whole new cast in the third one (Tokyo Drift). The main cast returns in the forth (Fast and Furious) and fifth (Fast Five). We also start to loose the street racing element too as the franchise goes on, which really isn't a bad thing.

I have watched through the first two so far; was tempting to skip 'Tokyo Drift' altogether as it is more of a spin off BUT the Japanese guy in that ends up with the main cast later one. One of the great things about 'Fast Five' is that it has cast members from all of the movies! I'll not go into detail about the plot, but if you like driving scenes, cool cars, and old skool action then check this movie series out if you haven't already.

Other stuff I have watched this week (and weekend) 'X-men: first class'. This is a reboot of the movie franchise that will be running concurrently with the other X-men movie franchise. It's about the very start of it all, Charles Xavier gets approached by a lass from the government to take down some badguys with poiwers (mutants of course). He joins up with the guy that becomes Magneto allong with other folk, and take down an ex Nazi guy with the power to absorb any amounts of energy.

All this is set during the 60's cold war Cuban missile crisis. The bad guy wants nuclear war so he can rule the world and the usual stuff bad guys do.

I found this better than the other X-men movies, as it dealt more with the true team dynamic instead of being mostly about wolverine. There was however a cameo appearance. Hopefully they concentrate on this reboot series of the franchise instead of making X-men 4, which is planned....bah. Let's not go into how disappointing the third X-men movie was..

Going to be watching Thor some time this week, but for a bit of a change we will be watching some foreign movies. Some Jackie Chan, Chow Yun Fat, Donnie Yen, and some ultra violent strange Japanese gore feasts, with a bit of Korean action on the side.

Look forward to a report on that! or nor.....

Thanks for reading!

Planet of the apes

We have planned to go and see 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' some time next month (yes I know it is already out) so of course some homework needed to be done. I have seen all five Apes movies before round about ten years ago, so I had mostly forgotten the happenings. On top of that, one of my friends that lives next door had never ever seen them (and he is also coming along to see the new one) so we have been slowly watching through. So far we have only seen the first two.

They are both basic in plot, and are quite over acted. They sort of remind me of the old Star Trek series which was made around about the same time. Both have Charlton Heston staring, although he is only in the second one at the very beginning and at the very end.

First one is about a guy (Heston) on a space mission of some sort. They land on a planet, travel around quite a bit, come across talking apes, get captured, escape, yadda yadda. And at the end he realises he is on Earth in the future as he sees the statue of liberty sticking out of the sand on the beach. He then gets off his horse and has another one of his mental breakdowns. Those where the best bits, his over acting and going mental my favorite line being "IT'S A MADHOUSE IN HERE!!!!! A MAAAADDD HOUSE!!!!!" while some "damn dirty ape" sprays him with a hose pipe.

The second one, another astronaut crash lands meets Heston's woman (she has flash backs of him vanishing into a cliff), meets the apes, escapes with Heston's woman, finds remains of NewYork's train network (realising of course he was on earth), finds some weird telepath guys that worship a dooms day device, and they have Heston held captive. The apes go to war with the weird guys, Heston's cave woman gets shot, the other guy gets shot, Heston gets shot and as he is dying presses the detonation button for the doomsday device. Earth is destroyed according to the text displayed at the end of the movie.

But wait, there are three more! what the heck.... We will watch those at some point but not the Tim Burton remake. Not terrible by all means, but it was a bit of a flopedodah in moor ways than one.

I am number four

We have all done this. Looked at a movie trailer and though "wow awesome!!!" and then come to actually watching the movie and it turns out to be not the awesome movie you where expecting.

The movie in question here is is 'I am number four'. The basic idea for the movie is this: a planet gets invaded by some aliens, everyone gets killed. There are nine of them with special abilities but they didn't mature enough for them to save the planet. (we find this out in the narrative, we don't actually get to see all of this). They get put into pods or ships or whatever and they end up on earth. The invading aliens start to track them all down, killing them in order (no explanation as to why they all had numbers or how the numbering came about).

The movie starts out with a guy (suppose to be in his teens, but typically he looked over 20..... stupid Hollywood) with his mates jet skying and hanging out on the beach. He gets a text from a girl that wants to meet him out in the water, at night (que the advertisement for a fruit themed tech toy that only tossers that show off in star bucks use. This advertisement goes on all throughout the movie). So then a circle on his leg lights up and he sees a vision of someone being killed. Chick swims away rather sharpish and he wakes up on the beach the next day.

So apparently the guy is on the run from the aliens trying to kill him. He is with his 'guardian' some sort of warrior guy with little swords that light up on the ends. They end up in a small town where he goes to high school using forged documents to get in. So now it turns into a typical American teen drama with all the cliches that come with it. Idiot football jocks, blond haired love interest and all that other boring rubbish. This goes on for half of the movie *yawn*.

He finds how to use his powers, glowing hands, he can run fast yadda yadda. There is also another chick looking for him. She blows up the building he used to live in at the beach with an unnecessary forced explosion scene. We see she has powers too. So he makes friends with a science geek/alien freak guy; turns out his father disappeared while helping number four's guardian.

So the bad guys catch up with him, try to kill him etc. The other chick turns out to be number six, they combine powers, stuff blows up and they kill all the baddies.

At the end number 4four and number six along with the science geek go off in search of the other number folk. And that was it.

It's almost like the movie was two different stories badly plastered together. A story about teen drama rubbish, and a story about aliens. A whole lot of boring stuff leading up to disappointing action scenes, so there was no reward.

Not completely unwatchable, perhaps give it a go if you have nothing else to watch (and with all the movies around this will never happen anyway...). I give this movie a 4 out of 10.

Thanks for reading.

Fun at the home arcade

Hi guys, so the other day I aquired A Blaze 'home arcade twin shock' from a guy on ebay. These are quite difficult to come by these days, and can go for a high price.

Let's take a peek at it shall we? (arcade stick is NOT a euphemism for  something else as you can see...)

This is the 'standard' silver version and not the 'special edition' black one. This uses cheap type parts, buttons are not micro-switched; instead they are connected to PCBs with standard buttons (they work the same way as standard game controllers, remote controls, etc).

The sticks themselves are micro-switched, but they are el-cheapo made. It's in decent condition, a few scuffs at the front, but this can be touched up.

Being a playstation stick, I can use it on the PS1, PS2, Dreamcast (via EMS adapters), and on the PC (via any old cheap USB adapter) so pretty much it's a universal controller.

Trying it out I noticed a couple of problems with the button placement; start and select are too easy to accidentally hit while in game (pausing the game). It has a 'slow' button which really is just like hitting start over and over. A common feature on third party controllers from the megadrive days and as it was even back then, it is rather redundant.

One of the sticks was faulty, but was an easy fix. One of the micro switches in the left stick was stuck inwards so a quick disassemble of the case, then the stick part itself, and a quick poke with a screwdriver (get that dirty thought out of your mind right now!) it clicked back into place and now works as designed. Is that good or bad? well...

Since they are cheap parts, the sticks are rubbish for fighters such as Street Fighter, and King of Fighters. A right pain in the arse to pull off moves. For fighters you really need quality arcade parts such as from sanwa. Buttons are ok though....

I will be modding this later on, but it will take allot of work. For the buttons as they are not standard 30mm like sanwa, I'll have to use 24mm ones instead. Others have used Korean crown buttons for this, but they are hard to find in the UK, and probably would be expensive anyway. I have found some 24mm standard arcade buttons on gremlin solutions, so as long as they are not too long (limited room inside the casing) then those should be fine. As for sticks, I would like sanwa ones but I'll need to dremil and drill and such to get them mounted inside the case. One thing I will be doing is relocating the start and select buttons to the top row, getting rid of the 'slow' button and putting the turbo buttons where the start and select are now.

So there you have it! with a bit of work, this will be used as my control pannel on my future arcade machine setup ;-) saves me making one from scratch! not bad at £25 + £5 postage.

Thanks for reading!

Fortress Craft

Hi guys, so lately I've been playing allot of fortress craft. And when I say allot, I mean hours at a time. In this game all you do is build things out of blocks. Sort of like Lego I suppose. This is an indie game available on Xbox live, and it will set you back 240 Microsoft Xbox points. This is round about £3. It is worth that and a hell of allot more as you will get hours, weeks, months and perhaps years of enjoyment. Well that is if you like building stuff with virtual blocks. The game is updated quite often with bug fixes and new features.

You have a few options before starting your world, you can have it as hilly as you want, or you can have it completely flat. Every time you go into your made world you can choose whether you want other people to build with you. You have 2 options to set, one for friends (that is people on your friends list on your xbox) and there is an option to set for everyone else. You can choose between "join only", "join and edit" or "blocked". So for example you can block everyone else, and have just your friends join, or you can allow everyone to build with you, friends or strangers.

A word of warning though; there are people out there that will just come to your world just to destroy your creations, so choose wisely! Personally I choose "join only"  for both friends and guests, as I don't want anyone touching my creations. You can visit though just to look...

A while ago I made a video of my world, so without further a do.... here it is!

I have done allot more since then, so I'll make another video some time in the next few days.

Thanks for reading (and watching).

From the dark corners of the interwebs!

Hi people. I decided to start this blog mainly due to my lapsed typing skills. The other day I saw helping out a family member with typing up an assignment on the computer, and in doing so realised I was making a TON of typing errors. I can still type at a really fast speed but at a high error rate. So here we are.

I'll use this space for talking about video game related things, comic book things, movie things etc etc. Since I've got into making videos; I'll post them up too. I think I can embed youtube vids on here since this place is also owned by google (to my surprise! when my college teacher used this page as a bulletin board, it was not google owned as I recall!)

Speaking of videos, to record I use a kodak 14mp digital cam that has HD video recording features (I cannot afford a DVR). Trouble is it eats batteries. I can't use normal rechargables with it as it will drain them in about 3 mins (even 2700 batteries). It takes a li-ion battery though which does last about 15 mins recording video. It is a third party chinese make kind of one, and I read that the offical kodak ones last allot longer. Trouble is though they are expensive.

What I would like to do is power it by mains adapter when using it at home. There is no adapter to power it and then use it while it is powered. What I was thinking is an empty battery shell with a wire coming from it, then that going to a mains adapter. I have googled 'till the cows come home but not found anything like that. The only way would be to make one myself. I have spare standard connections power adapters that run at various voltages. The li-on is 3 volts according to the label, power adapters are around 5 volts, so I would need some resistors and whatnot. No idea whre to even start. I'll ask on some forums perhaps.

Do I get achevemnt points for my first blog post? what this is not xbox? ohhhhhhhh nevermind then.

Thanks for reading.