Plane and Carry On

Movies about airports and aircraft.

Plane

In an effort to save fuel costs, a commercial airliner attempts to shortcut through a storm and soon finds themselves emergency landing on a small Philippine island controlled by violent rebels. Good thing their pilot and main protagonist is played by Gerard Butler though, because he's literally the deus ex machina that keeps this unintentionally hilarious film going. While there's an ok amount of action the plot is silly, the main bad guy who gives the orders can barely speak proper Tagalog, and the whole emergency landing thing near the start should have been a crash and burn instead. Only recommended if you are a huge Gerard Butler fan, otherwise don't board this one.

Carry On

Taron Egerton stars as a "going nowhere" lowly airport security guy who finally gets a baggage scanning job only to be manipulated by a bad guy who pressures him into letting a particular carry on bag to be let through. This film actually has lots of decent action scenes (and soooo much running) as well as hilarious exchanges with the bad guy but its main flaw is the massive logic leaps it uses to actually get the bad guy's Batman gambit started. If the protagonist had a spine from the start the movie would be over much quicker, but no - he has to grow that as the movie progresses. Other than that it's an ok watch, but only if you've got nothing better to see.

Piracy in the Age of AI

I'm very late (as per usual) compared to others talking about the feats AI can achieve these days, but given that I've now got a chatGPT level spam comment on one of my posts its a good time to get into it. Sure, making essays and stories might be one thing but what impresses me most is chatGPT is able to handle stuff like "make an HTML webpage with a form that lists these countries as a radio set, have character fields for name, email and comment and a submit button" and it will generate the code for you. I wouldn't be surprised if it could handle heavier programmatic requests either!

Then of course there's the AI art side of things where you just type in what you want to see and it makes it for you. For this one I'm using Night Cafe which has some excellent free to use capabilities (but pay for an expanded range of options). It certainly feels like cheating when you get an amazing artwork in under five minutes. This side of things still has obvious limitations especially when it comes to fingers or some requests like: "a spider wearing boxing gloves" which almost without fail produces some form of friendly neighborhood Spiderman. What I want to know is... are these almost-instant codes and artworks plagiarism and piracy? Should be no but also... yes? Regardless, I might start using some of these AI pics on this site just for laughs.

Speaking of actual sea faring piracy, the Chinese coast guard are keeping that alive when they harass Philippine soldiers at sea with swords and axes. Keep in mind both sides have firearms but I assume to keep things from escalating they just stick with medieval level weaponry. This practice isn't just for their ocean forces either as modern Chinese soldiers armed with spears testing their borders with India.

Trese and My Son

Mysteries in various degrees.

Trese

This animated story is all about the titular modern day supernatural detective Alexandra Trese dealing with forces from Philippine folklore. While the animation is ok, the plot is a bit average not helped by featuring a nearly all powerful and somewhat bland heroine who isn't really ever in any danger at any time. Also, things like having a ghost hacker (who wears ghost glasses) that needs a physical computer to do his work may cross your barrier of disbelief. Not recommended.

My Son

When a boy goes missing, his usually absent father (James McAvoy) goes through extraordinary challenges to find him, and I am so happy that some of these challenges are of the violent variety. Don't let me fool you into thinking this is an action movie though - it's solidly in the mystery category with dreary backdrops, lots of talking, and a good amount of rain. I do feel it runs a bit long though. It's an ok flick if you don't expect anything from it.

Today I Smiled: High Voices

I'm taking a short blogging break for a few days so I thought I'd leave you with something to listen to, courtesy of DL who is currently sucked into Filipino singers.

Marcelino Pomoy and Morisette are pretty good, but I was most impressed by Gary Valenciano who sings Chick Corea's jazz standard: Spain. It is amazing! Here's a low res version but with less ads in the middle.

I also can't help but share a few more Brexit funnies. At some point I feel the Queen's just going to line up those politicians and...

Clean house!

slakmehl (on getting further Brexit extension)
Because when you're sitting in a car with a perfectly good steering wheel careening towards a cliff, your only option is to figure out how to make the edge of the cliff slightly further away.

punchdrunkskunk
    Turns out Brexit negotiations are basically the Spice Girls:

    UK: I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want
    EU: So tell me what you want, what you really, really want
    UK: I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want
    EU: So tell me what you want, what you really, really want
    UK: I wanna Huh I wanna Huh I wanna Huh I wanna Huh
    EU: ...
    UK: I really, really, really wanna [unintelligible].
    EU: ...

Lastly, due to the fire at Notre Dame recently, Ubisoft are offering Assassin's Creed: Unity for free this week. As expected with this outcome, folks on reddit are now suggesting "We need to burn more historical monuments." LOL.

Just the 3 of Us

Spoiler: You never see the third person.

Uno (John Lloyd Cruz) is determined to attain the rank of captain at his airline. He also likes hitting the bottle (a lot) and after one particularly heavy drinking session at a pub with the worst fake band ever, gets it on with a random girl, who turns out to actually like him anyway but was doing the whole love from afar thing.

Just from the poster you can tell this movie was the wife's idea. :P

Well, random girl starts stalking Uno because - surprise! Babies can happen when you have sex. That  is mainly what the film deals with and boy, Uno, is certainly a dick at the start. And a slow start it is. It also has odd bits, such as the requirement of  "stalking" music when being stalked. Having groups of people just  spontaneously speaking as one also is something I'm not really used to.

While most of the acting is average (with a lot of overacted parts), the stand out is Uno's no nonsense evaluation instructor (played by Richard Yap), who as far as I'm concerned, nails all his scenes and works well as an antagonist. All up its an entertaining enough flick, and possibly worth one watch if you understand Tagalog or find a copy with subtitles. I give it two cacti out of five. Not really something I'd watch again unless the wifey makes me though. :P

Today I Smiled: Randomness!

Hope you're all enjoying the death count racking up in my Skyrim Adventure journal. I thought I'd take the time to point out that the new Philippine president is racking up a kill count (albeit indirect) too! The more I read about this guy, the more I think I would have actively voted him in too. Unless Mayor Stubbs ran against him, then I'd definitely vote for Mayor Stubbs because he's one cool cat. Literally. :P

At least neither are as controlling with their reddit channels as the magnificent leader though! r/Pyongyang is the most moderated channel I've come across on reddit thus far and it's pretty funny. Less funny is the upcoming apocalympics 2016 in Rio. I'm on board to give any athelete that attends a gold medal, and if they can leave the country and still have the medal - they can keep it.

Speaking of things that remind me of my own unfitness sports - have you ever seen a Trex run the Ninja Warrior course? Or know that Caity Lotz (aka "Sarah Lance" in the Flarrowverse) is a pocket rocket? It helps that there are gyms that are seemingly designed to train awesome skills like parkour these days. If you have a more medieval taste then this old article/interview with Samatha Swords might be of interest to you.

That's it for now, there'll be no new post tomorrow but the Skyrim adventure journal shall continue the day after. I'll leave you with some odd ball videos such as: Too Many Cooks, Don't Hug me I'm Scared, and How to Hypnotize Chickens.  Or if you prefer some music you can try anime jazz fusion and have a listen to Platina Jazz's version of Sobakasu. Alternatively if you prefer your music instruments airborne you can watch Walk off the Earth's version of Shake it Off. Have a great weekend!

Please help Louie

I've been trying to keep my real life out of this blog as much as possible but this warrants it.

One of my nephews (in law) is suffering from TB meningitis and is racking up a hefty hospital bill so I helped my wife make a Gofundme page to hopefully try raise some finance to help them in this trying time.

Donations are obviously welcome, even amounts that wouldn't buy a coffee (conversion to Philippine Peso nets a good margin) but I'd also very much appreciate simply spreading the word using whatever means, social media or otherwise, you have at your disposal.

Louie is just 22, and he's currently in a coma. Please help him out.

For my readers my regular posting schedule will be delayed for a few days to keep this up top where people can see it.

That thing called Tadhana (Fate)

Since every one else is doing The Force Awakens reviews, I thought I'd do something very left of field. :P

This is basically the story of two people - an angry woman who just got burnt at the end of a long term relationship and a guy who happens to run into her at the airport and henceforth acts like a creepy stalker-leech.

While there are other people around, they only get a handful of lines and are never really focused on - instead relying on Angry and the Leech to carry the whole thing, which is hard to do when there's not much chemistry going on between the two. I should also mention Angry swears a ton.

This is especially evident in the long shots where nothing happens. No dialogue, no exciting action. Just Angry and the Leech staring out at space or leaning ones head on anothers shoulder... for five minutes. WTF.

Fitting reaction to watching this very film.

There is a pretty interesting and simply animated sub story of the Arrow with a Heart pierced through it that runs parallel to what's going on and just like it, the movies ending just leaves you hanging with no real clear resolution.

With very few positive points I can't recommend this to anyone, and give it just one and a half pierced hearts out of five. Watch it again? Nope.

Pound of Flesh

Steal from Van Damme and lets see what happens.

While in the Philippines (which in many shots looks a lot like China), Van Damme uses the wrong head and wakes up to find he has been robbed... of an organ! Naturally this leads him on a quest of vengeance to retrieve what was taken from him. While JCVD is still in good form with flexibility he is definitely not as fast as he used to be but it still makes for an entertaining enough watch to see him beat down the bad guys while supposedly in a "weakened" condition.

Yeah, anyone can do that after major surgery.

Story wise it's ok enough but there are a few characters that could have been excluded or minimized in the telling, Van Damme's American brother being my number one culprit. I also don't agree with their final decision (which basically lets the bad guy win) in the movie making it an even weaker outing than it was already. All up I give it one and a half roofies out of five and only can recommend this to Van Damme fans. Would I watch it a second time? No.

Today I Smiled: Back Breaker +11

Hi everyone! Let me start by apologizing for the delay in my replying to comments. For the last few weeks I was actually overseas and didn't have real dependable access to a computer. How did I still have a post everyday while I was away? Simple. I scheduled them all before I left - I didn't really know I could do that until now. You can tell which ones were automated by their unusually structured posting time stamp.

Apparently it's a common feature and as such, I'm going to be cutting the time down for what I think are "inactive" blogs by a week. I wasn't even AT a computer and could blog. Daily. Yes, what I did was over kill but it just goes to show what one can do with a little prep time. 

Any who it was a good vacation, and now that I'm back I can properly reply to a chain-questionaire nomination from Isey. Much like a few others, I don't really like chain letter stuff but Isey gave me a game with zombies once so I owe him (and I like light, silly questions)! I'm supposed to also list eleven random facts about me to start off with but I'll skip that step, if you really really want to know random stuff go visit my Blaugust posts. :P

Onto Isey's silly questions:

What is the last book you read? What did you learn from it?
The Golem City. I learned that Juris (author and my guildmate) can write! :P

Favourite quote?
Goodness doesn't come from avoiding evil. It comes from facing it and over coming it.

Best Vacation Ever (either in the past, or one you want to do!)
Philippines.

Favourite outdoor sport?
Hrm I'd say Capoeira since that's one I did the longest but it can be indoors too.

What languages do you speak? If only one, what do you WISH you could speak?
I can speak English & Tagalog. I can understand Spanish but can't speak it.

Do you vote?
Yep!

Where did your blogging alias come from?
My first dungeons and dragons character. He has stuck with me since then to almost all my current MMOs. :P

Laptop or Desktop for gaming?
Desktop.

Your favourite trait about yourself?
Creativity

Favourite sports team?
Uhhh... none. I don't really follow many team sports. >.<

Are you ticklish? Where?
Yes, almost everywhere!

I'm supposed to nominate more people at this point to do an eleven question survey but I think I'll stop here. Hope you enjoyed reading! Ah, as a heads up I'll also be collating those photo story posts I did as an experiment. Turns out they were pretty popular and comparatively easy to prepare so maybe you'll be seeing more of those in the future too!

Lastly, here's a cat playing whack a mole... because I like silly videos. :P

Today I Smiled: FPSing through Vindictus

So, I decided to play Vindictus on the Australian server (starting from scratch) and chose to be a cross-gun Kai this time around and have found it to be remarkably fun since it plays very differently - almost like a shooter. I'm find myself curious what a full team of soldiers with ranged automatic weapons with grenades and grenade launchers could do to the club wielding foes in the game. :P

Pew pew pew!

I've also tried and tested my "Game 5" board game which is pretty much a mash up of all my favorite boardgames to date. It plays pretty decently (hard) but ultimately doesn't make sense thematically - and kinda feels like a mash up of games - so I'm going to be moving on from that idea. Hope I'll eventually have one that works better and that I can eventually produce! Maybe "Game 6" will be the answer, whatever it is? If only I had an office with cats.

Blog wise I've had a pretty good run of daily posts and have finished Project Zomboid "End-Times story". That's going to be slowing down a little bit in the next few weeks due to real life stuff. Good to see some talk about the next NBI too. I'd like to be a part of that again. As usual I need to have a musical entry here and I think this time, Lady Gaga's Sound of Music Medley at the Oscars does the trick nicely.

Lastly I just got a supply of these delicious chocolate crinkle cookies. OM NOM NOM NOM. If you ever are in the Philippines, I highly recommend visiting Becky's kitchen. That's it for now! Hope you all have a wonderful day! :)

Tropico 3: I Hate Tourists

[This is part of my Tropico 3 Journal!]

By the horrible machinations of fate, I found myself assigned next to the small island of St. Pata which was famous for being poor and having no natural resources. The only way to make a thriving community here was to embrace... tourism. Shit. With no time to spare I immediately set to task constructing tourist docks, hotels, souvenir shops, tour guides, beach resorts and the like often putting the finances into debt with the World Bank and hanging on barely with support funds from the US and USSR.

However, having totally ignored the needs of the actual residents at St. Pata I found myself on the losing (and losing badly) end of a sudden election and only through splurging money to put Social Security, Food for the People, and Tax Cuts edicts out did I win against Colleen Flores, 55 to 31.

Despite that strikes at the dock and construction sites forced my hand to kill more people until they obeyed my command. Somehow, more people end up joining the rebels and they succeed in destroying a corn farm, making everyone else hungry with their lack of foresight. They also capture and execute some tourists (way to go stupid rescue team) which hurts the treasury even more.

It's ok guys, I brought the +2 hammer of letting kidnappers know we are here!

The tourists themselves also bring problems with one douchebag crashing the presidential limo into the house of the local religious leader. I graciously sentenced him to forced labor, becoming the man slave to some backwater locals. It turns out he is the son of a US diplomat who wants to pay $5k to see him freed. What sort of message does that send your son, and indeed - the rest of the world? I tell the diplomat to fuck off and that his son is a bitch for life. Soon after I am told US Warships are circling the island. Pfft. They just like to act tough.

All it takes is for me to modernize the military and hire mercenaries from overseas then poof, the ships mysteriously leave. Hah! Cowards. Sure, it might have had something to do with Typhoon Dahlia which came a few days after they left and killed 10 people and destroyed 2 buildings but I like to think I scared them off. Fortunately I reached my quota of 150 tourists soon after and heroically abdicated my position to travel elsewhere before people came back to look for me. Yes, I bravely ran away! :P