2021 April
-
Bond movie no. 7: Diamonds are Forever (1971). Connery's hair starting to go a bit gray in his last appearance. More Blofeld than I'd expected (harhar). Space laser! Plenty O'Toole seemed pointless, there just to die. A lot of cheesy lines from the assassin henchment. These movies would be a lot shorter if they just shot Bond whenever they caught him. The action scenes in all these old Bond films always feel so jarring compared to modern ones. Limited by the technology of their time I guess.
-
Bond movie no. 6: On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). Only Lazenby appearance. He was fine, I suppose. Tracy probably best Bond girl so far. I liked the ski scenes more than Thunderball's underwater scenes. Loose continuity. Was confused by Blofeld not recognizing Bond after they already met in the previous movie. Apparently, the novel order was reversed. Also, did Bond just leave him stuck in a tree assuming he was dead after hunting him relentlessly?
2021 March
-
Bond movie no. 5: You Only Live Twice (1967). Such Japan. Much wow. Cringe at trying to pass Bond off as Japanese. Introduction of secret volcano lair trope. Ninjas with guns! First screen appearance of the head of SPECTRE, inspiration for Dr Evil. That endgame scene of ninjas invading the secret volcano lair reminded me of the Simpsons episode You Only Move Twice. Bond's "wife" never named despite being only Bond girl to survive the movie.
-
See also: Justice League spoiler-free review (2017) This is basically a movie that's more than 3 years old, we're not holding back on spoilers here. plot basically follows the same beats as the theatrical cut except this time we have a lot more team setup time (one of my criticisms from the previous version), giving the characters stronger backgrounds, especially Cyborg and Flash Ray Fisher was right to complain; in this version he's one of the important characters of the ensemble while he was basically a minor guest character in the theatrical cut more DC characters make appearances in this
-
Bond movie no. 4: Thunderball (1965). This is the first one I didn't like very much. Too many boring/confusing underwater parts. There's a jetpack! Wasn't there an atomic bomb aboard that boat when it exploded? And did they just leave the guy who helped Domino escape floating alone in the ocean?
-
Bond movie no. 3: Goldfinger (1964). Lot of the classic Bond tropes introduced. Bad guy's plan was actually pretty good, even had the escape contingency. Disappointed he did not have an actual gold finger. Great fight between Bond and Oddjob.
-
James Bond movie no. 2: To Russia With Love (1963). This one actually had more bits that felt like actual espionage. And Bond didn't need to get captured this time!
-
Haven't seen any of the pre-Brosnan Bond films, so I started today with Dr No (1962). Pretty good, but if this were a modern film, I'd have expected some kind of plot twist with Honey Rider, like maybe she would have turned out to be the actual Dr No
2021 February
-
For some reason, I watched Space Sweepers, a Korean sci-fi movie on Netflix. Fun ride, fairly entertaining, pretty good setpieces and special effects. (They are so far ahead of the local film industry.) Plot a bit predictable. Villain made no sense.
2021 January
-
2021 movie no. 3: World War Z (2013). Pretty typical action movie I think, entertaining enough. Should have watched at the start of the pandemic.
-
2021 #movies no 2: The Godfather part 2 (1974). This is two movies rolled into one. Still pretty good, but I think I liked the singular focus of the first one more.
-
2021 movies no. 1: The Godfather (1972). Everyone is so young! Such a well-told gangster tale. Looking forward to the sequel
2020 December
-
Finally watched #WonderWoman1984. Maybe don't think too much about what's going on in the movie. My headcanon is that the only reason it takes place in 1984 is because it's pre-crisis
2020 September
-
October is imminent! There are two distractions I'm looking forward to in the coming month. The first one is Inktober, which I've been doing since 2016. Basically it's just to do 30 ink drawings in October, one per day. There are some official prompts, which I'll probably follow. I haven't really done any serious sketching in a while, maybe this will help me get back into the groove. The second one is Hacktoberfest! Basically it's an event where you have to submitted some number of GitHub PRs in October, and there's some swag for people who finished. I last participated
2020 August
-
This last week was weird. I feel like I didn't really get much done in terms of productivity, yet I don't feel I was unproductive. A very relaxed and chill week. Once again a tiny bit of work done this past week, some fixes, including to side projects. I also spent some time preparing for some events next weekend. Although I wasn't productive this week, I did outline a bit of a roadmap of new features for one of my side projects, hopefully I can get into that in the coming weeks! We are still in a pandemic! But I
-
Bill and Ted Face the Music is a most excellent sequel
2020 July
-
My country: There are days when I have to consciously temper my rage at the shenanigans of this government. I can't write about them today. My stuff: This week's pandemic notes. Had a busy work week again; at the same time I also picked up an older charity project where the client asked for UI updates. Had issues with running the old code, and it was small enough, so I decided to rewrite it in a new tech stack. Might write about it at some point. Gaming: I am like 98% through the FF7R hard mode run. I'm totally making
-
My country: Friday afternoon the House of Representatives voted to deny the franchise application of the nation's biggest broadcaster ABS-CBN. This despite all agencies of the executive testifying that the company had no violations. Justifications cited were mostly personal reasons. The Palace claims they remained neutral on this issue, but no one really believes that. Probably not even then. What now, Philippines? My stuff: This week's pandemic notes. Had a busy week work-wise. Learning a lot about Vue and Laravel though, so that's fun! Gaming: I am like 95% through the FF7R hard mode run. Only a 5% difference from
-
My country: Friday afternoon the president sighed the controversial "Anti-terror law" that vastly expands police powers, allows people to be arrested without warrants on mere suspicion of terrorism etc. Interesting timing, right after China applies a new anti-terror low to Hong Kong (and rightly gets castigated for it by countries all over the world) and also right after the PNP (who promise not to abuse their newfound powers) are under criticism for killing some soldiers in a misencounter and tampering with the crime scene to cover it up. Many are afraid of the chilling impact on freedom of speech, but
2020 June
-
My stuff: This week's pandemic notes. Easily the most annoying thing this week: our broadband modem conked out Wednesday night. Customer support isn't super responsive for local telcos: I called their support line the next day (support line is not even available 24/7!), got put on hold for 45 minutes TWICE before they agreed to send a repair crew over the next day (Friday). Friday morning I got a text that the technician visit was actually scheduled for SATURDAY morning. They arrive Saturday AFTERNOON, due to traffic apparently. And unluckily, they are out of spare modems for the replacement. They