February 2009
24 posts
2 tags
Hotel Review – Four Points by Sheraton (Darling...
To be completely honest, it seems that location and brand name are the only reason that this place is as expensive as it is. The rooms are small with bathrooms that could use re-fitting (think missing tiles and stained toilet seat), and the staff are competent, but not overly helpful. Our set menu conference dinner was surprisingly good – avoiding the overcooked meat issue of a lot of mass...
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Game Review – Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow...
I’ve quite enjoyed the time I’ve spent with Sam Fisher, the Black Ops NSA operative. Pandora Tomorrow toes a similar line to the original Splinter Cell, just with some minor changes: the graphics have improved, opening doors while carrying a body is a big plus, but the SWAT turn is less than useless. The storyline is just as fragmented as usual, but clears up at the end. The main issue is...
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Webcomic Review – Questionable Content – 4 Stars
There are not many webcomics that upon being introduced to, I’ll go back and read the entire archive – especially when said archive covers over 1,000 strips and almost six years! But Jeph has created characters and a story here that made me want to. The writing is great, you’ll fall in love with the characters, the artwork is extraordinary (and certainly does justice to the beautiful ladies...
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Restaurant Review – Loquat (Sorrento VIC) – 4...
A beautiful location and a nice table were a fantastic way to start dinner. A crumbed pork belly entrée was an interesting take on the theme, and if not great, it was certainly very good. But for me the highlight was my main. As a card carrying carnivore, when a restaurant can impress me with a steak – I stay impressed. The tenderloin was the size of my palm and about 5cm thick. It was...
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Movie Review – Role Models (2008) – 3 Stars
Why’s no one making pure boob-comedies anymore? What was wrong with the ‘American Pie’ style of movies where dick jokes segued to sex jokes without the need to show you how much better life’d be like if you just realised how much you care about other people in your life? Now, I did enjoy this movie, but some of the sentiment was unnecessary. The two kids playing the little brothers were...
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TV Review – Little Mosque on the Prairie (Season...
Why am I not surprised that it took the Canadians to create a sitcom about Western acceptance of Muslims? This show takes a light-hearted look at how a small town reacts when a new Mosque and Imam raise the profile of their small Muslim community. There’s some great character play here: the friendship between the Imam and the Catholic priest from whom the Mosque is rented, the single father...
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Music Review – Black Kids ‘Partie Traumatic’ – 1.5...
I’m all for bands finding a sound that works for them and sticking with it, but when every song on an entire album sounds exactly the same, you know they’ve taken it too far. That’s the problem with ‘Partie Traumatic’. I bought this album because I’d seen the potential in “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You”. But aside from that track and “Hurricane Jane”, this...
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Movie Review - CJ7 (2008) – 2.5 stars
I’m not really sure what to think about CJ7. I’m really not sure whether Steven Chow was aiming it at kids or adults. One minute it’s an extraordinary discovery from ‘The Absent Minded Professor’, the next it’s a deep lesson of sacrifice from ‘Life is Beautiful’. If you’re only watching this because you enjoyed Chow’s work on ‘Shaolin Soccer’ and ‘Kung Fu Hustle’, then you might be a bit...
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Book Review – ‘A Short History of Nearly...
I’d looked forward to this book for a long time. Unfortunately, it didn’t deliver to me what I was expecting. My partner summed it up best with, “It goes on for too long on things you don’t care about, and doesn’t go into enough depth on things you do.” But I suppose I should have knows that was going to be the case with a book that covers so many topics. A word of warning: if you don’t...
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Restaurant Review – Centonove (Kew VIC) – 4 Stars
I love restaurants that don’t rush you through your meal, and this was certainly one. We arrived a little before eight and were the last to leave just after eleven. Wait staff weren’t invasive, but were always available when needed – and they didn’t huff when we said we weren’t ready to order. They lost points for drowning my beef carpaccio in balsamic, but won them back by graciously...
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Movie Review - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button...
I know I’m supposed to take some deep youth-is-wasted-on-the-young message out of this movie, but all I’m seeing is a three hour biopic about a guy born with a bad skin condition who gets better as he ages. If I want to watch ‘The Elephant Man’ or ‘Forrest Gump’, I’ll watch the movies themselves, not this mash-up. Also, there was no need to tell the...
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Webcomic Review – xkcd – 5 Stars
As far as webcomics go, there is simply none better than xkcd. I can’t remember exactly when I started reading, but I think it was somewhere around March ’06, long before I knew what an RSS feed was. It’s a lot more simple now that I don’t have to check the site daily. But by now Randall’s put together almost 550 strips, and that’s a debt of laughter that I could never thank him enough for. ...
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Book Review – ‘The Book of Kakuro’ by Gareth Moore...
I’ll freely admit to being a geek. I like riddles and problem solving, and instead of Playboy and Inside Sport beside my toilet, I have a book of Japanese number puzzles and a pencil. Kakuro puzzles are like number crosswords. They’re the arithmetic cousin of Sudoku. This book is good because it gives a brief introduction to the rules of Kakuro and shows some basic solving methods. It then...
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Hotel Review – Rydges (Port Macquarie NSW) – 1.5...
If I’ve paid for a service and something goes wrong, the last thing I want is for the service provider to ignore the problem and insist that everything is fine. Even if they can’t do anything to fix it, you’d expect an apology for unmet expectations. Our stay at the Rydges had lots of little problems: pre-booked carpark unavailable, in-room toiletries were half used, etc. The issues weren’t...
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TV Review – Dexter (Season 1) – 4 Stars
There hasn’t been a lot of great TV recently, but I can assure you that Dexter is simply high quality television. The premise is great, the scrips and dialogue are brilliantly written, the cinematography can make you feel like you’re sweating in the Miami summer, and to top it all off the performances are exemplary. The concept of a likable sociopath with a conscience may seem like a...
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Music Review – Katalyst ‘What’s Happening’ (2007)...
I didn’t hear this album until the start of 2008 (it was released August ’07) and it ended up being just about my favourite album from the whole year. I love the seamless threading of modern Australian hip-hop with the smooth ‘60s beats and endless samples. My favourite track would have to be “I Know a Place”; a funked-up, progressive disco beat, with some great sci-fi samples and tasty...
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TV Review – The Big Bang Theory (Season 1) – 3.5...
Ok, Two post-doc theoretical physicists, an astronomer and an aeronautical Engineer walk onto a sic-com set. What do you get? Well, nothing yet. But put in Kaley Cuoco, some high-brow (and low-brow) jokes, and some very amusing dialogue and you’ve got the first season of “The Big Bang Theory”. There are elements of all these characters that you can identify with, but I think I get most of...
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Movie Review - Die Hard 4.0 (2007) - 2.5 Stars
This movie really feels like Len Wiseman had a chat to his nephews, and had them chose five things that’d be really cool to blow up; then sat his writing team down and asked them to randomly create a story-line that’d fit around the explosions. The action is classic Die Hard, as is the fantastical plot. This movie really makes no sense at all, but makes a lot of noise doing it. See it if you...
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Meme Review - 25 Random Things about me......
I’m not usually a fan of memes, but this has been capturing so much attention I had to comment. And as far as these things go, it’s one of the good ones. These things have been around for as long as people have been short of something to blog about, but at least on Facebook the potential audience is (somewhat) controlled. Plus, you’re learning some new things about your friends, rather than...
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Movie Review – The Incredible Hulk (2008) – 3.5...
It’s hard to watch this movie without comparing it to the 2003 Ang Lee version. And while that film had the cinematography and editing to make it ‘look’ like a comic book film, this one had the story and action to make it ‘feel’ like one. Norton plays a great ‘Banner’ – a man forced to confront and embrace a portion of his personality that he hates. And Tim Roth’s ‘Blonsky’ is a picture of...
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Movie Review - Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) –...
Seth Rogan seems to have really hit on a successful franchise – films that appear incredibly shallow but end up romantic enough that you could take your girlfriend along. Though, I’m left wondering how much influence Rogan had on the writing and directing here. It feels much more like his previous stuff with
Judd
Apatow than some other Kevin
Smith
films. The story’s good, the message is...
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Restaurant Review - Cordelia's Organic Café...
I’m not the kind of person who would normally choose an organic option over a non-organic version (especially if it’s more expensive), but I’d definitely choose this café again. The menu is succinct, but certainly contained what I was looking for. Today that was a toasted bacon, lettuce, avocado, and tomato sandwich on nice grainy bread, and an organic, fair-trade, espresso that tasted a lot...
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Music Review - MGMT 'Oracular Spectacular' (2008)...
A good album should be like good wine – the longer you keep it, the better it becomes. ‘Oracular Spectacular’, on the other hand, is cheap beer – you’ll always drink it if it’s around, but you’d prefer to be drinking something special. ‘Of Moons, Birds & Monsters’ has the most potential. It’s the only song that doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be something else. This album is basically...
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Movie Review - TMNT (2007) - 4 Stars
I’ve got to admit that this movie impressed me. I was a big ‘Turtles’ fan as a kid, so when I heard that there was going to be a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, I was always going to see it - but I wasn’t expecting much. The storyline, however, is really good. Obviously, we’ve come a long way since 1990 and the production value is much higher than the old animatronic movies. Plus, the...