Blog & White

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Doctor Who and the Daleks is the first Doctor Who movie. The Doctor has invented the TARDIS, a machine for travelling across time and space. The fiancee of the Doctor's niece accidentally triggers a journey to a random place and time. The travellers arrive to a planet where the vegetation has been fossilized. All but the Doctor want to go back where they come from, but the Doctor simulates a failure in the TARDIS to convice them to go and explore the city, pretending to go there and look for tools. They are made prisoners by the inhabitants of the city, the Daleks. A nuclear war has made the life on the planet almost impossible. The Daleks have then build individual, mobile protective suits that look like conical robots on invisible wheels (with an insufferable voice). They send the Doctor's grand-daughter to go and meet the Thals, the other people on the planet, who have an antidote to radiation poisoning. Their goal is to get a sample of the medicine, synthetize it themselves and get rid of their suits. The Thals, in need for food, are willing to help the Daleks and give the medicine. In return, the Daleks lure them into a trap (pretending to give them food), but the Doctor manages to warn them before they all get exterminated. Since a vital component of the TARDIS is still in the hands of the Daleks, the Doctor manages to convince them to attack the city. The fiance and a couple of Thals are entering from behind (following the pipes that bring water into the city) while the others show themselves in the front. They finally manage to enter the city and destroy the Daleks (but I don't remember how) before the latter can launch the bomb they intended to exterminate the Thals with.

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Fourth Harry Potter movie, The Goblet of Fire starts with a scene showing Voldemort growing strong again. It then continues with the usual heroes going to the Quidditch worldcup (without actually showing any part of the game) followed by an attack of Death Eaters on the encampment where the spectators have spent the night. The heroes then go back to Hogwarts, where the usual new teacher of Defence Againts the Dark Arts (Alastor Moody) is presented, along with the visiting students from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons. Soon after, Dumbledore announces the Triwizard Tournament, which will oppose one champion from the previous schools plus Hogwarts and presents the Goblet of Fire where the candidats must put a paper with their names. The Goblet will later choose the three champions. Unexpectedly, the Goblet spits out four names, the last one being Harry Potter's. All his friends think he has been cheating and start to loath him. Soon after, Harry is shown by Hagrid that the first task of the tournament will be to fight dragons. Harry gets the nastiest of the four, but manages to get the golden egg it was protecting, supposedly giving him a clue about the next task. When he opens the egg, however, all that comes out is a shrieking noise. Meanwhile, their new teacher of Defence Againts the Dark Arts introduces the heroes to the three unforgivable curses (which allow torture, mind control and killing). During the Yule Bal, Ron manages to get Hermione even angrier at him. Harry later gets a tip from Cedric, his co-champion from Hogwarts, that the egg must be opened under water. The next task involves the lake and mermaids: he must dive in the lake during one hour to save his friend Ron, prisoner of the mermaids. Instead of getting immediately to the surface, he checks that all the other victims are taken up, and finally saves the sister of Fleur Delacour (the Beauxbatons' champion) who had to give up soon after the beginning of the task. He finishes last, but is still granted second place for “high morale fiber”. Meanwhile, the creative articles of the Daily Prophet about Harry increase Ron's hate towards his friend, and Harry discovers that Barty Crouch, an official from the Ministry of Magic who is supervising the tournament and has mysteriously been killed just after the second task, had sent his son to prison for being a Death Eater. Finally, it is time for the third task: the champions have to enter a labyrinth and get to the Triwizard Cup located at its center. Harry and Cedric get to the cup at the same time and find themselves transported to a cemetary where Cedric is killed by a sycophant of Voldemort, while Harry is made prisoner and a drop of his blood is used to give Voldemort back his strength. Voldemort forces Harry into a duel with him, but Harry manages to escape thanks to the help of the fantoms of his father, his mother and Cedric. When he is back in Hogwarts, he is taken away by the teacher of Defence Againts the Dark Arts, who actually is Barty Crouch Junior who had escaped form Azkaban and was drinking Polyjuice potion all the year long to look like the real Moody. Thankfully, Dumbledore and other teachers arrive just in time to save Harry. At the end of the movie, Dumbledore warns the students that Voldemort is back (although the Ministry refuses to acknoledge it), and Ron, Hermione and Harry are friends again.

The movie is mostly an action movie, jumping from one task to another, like the second movie did. One barely feels the time flowing through the school year, and the background details about Voldermort and his history are barely mentioned. In the Star Trek movie series, the odd-numbered episodes are bad while the even-numbered ones are good; in Harry Potter, it seems to be the opposite.

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Fourth Wallace and Gromit movie, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is about Wallace and Gromit working as pest control specialist who protect a small town from all the rabbits that want to eat the vegetables grown by the inhabitants for the coming vegetable competition. But instead of killing all these cute, fluffy little bunnies, they store them in their cellar, and the lack of space becomes a problem after they “de-rabbit” the gardens of the local Lady, organizer of the competition. Wallace then decides to brainwash the rabbits (with his latest invention) in order to make them forget their love for vegetables. The experiment fails, and Wallace creates a monster. Soon a giant rabbit, identified by the local priest as a were-rabbit, wrecks havoc in the town, eating all the vegetables. Wallace and Gromit try to catch it, but it manages to elude them. During the chase, another local noble, a hunting maniac who promised to kill the were-rabbit, discovers that the were-rabbit is actually Wallace, something that Gromit learns a bit later, just after discovering that the rabbit that was turned into a monster actually resembles Wallace in his love for cheese. During the competition, the were-rabbit reappears, the hunter tries to kill it while Gromit tries to protect it. Gromit finally wins, but Wallace seems to be dead. He is revived thanks to the smell of a very strong cheese, which also cures him from being the were-rabbit. Finally, the Lady turns her gardens into a rabbit sanctuary, for all the rabbits that Wallace and Gromit had caught.

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Second Doctor Who movie, Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. starts with a robbery in London. A policeman is knocked out before he could have done something and fails to stop the thieves. He then enters a police public call box that happens to be the TARDIS and finds himself in London 2150 A.D. The city is destroyed, the Daleks have invaded Earth and are enslaving people to dig a well in an old mine somewhere not too far from London. Some humans are turned into robomen that serve the Daleks. Doctor Who and the policeman are taken prisoner while his niece and grand-daughter are taken by the rebels. The latter try to raid the Dalek's mothership, disguised as robomen, but the attack fails. The Doctor is free, but the niece and the policeman are still in the ship as it takes off. The rebels then flee London, while the Doctor goes on foot to the mine. The grand-daughter and another rebel try to join the other rebels, but are arrested by the Dakeks on the way and taken to the mine. Meanwhile, the niece and the policeman manage to leave the mothership unconspicuously and join the Doctor who is hiding in a toolshed on the mine's grounds. The goal of the Daleks is to explode a bomb in Earth's center to eject its metallic core, responsible for its magnetic field which is harmful to the Daleks, hence the need for human labour working deep inside the mine close to the point of convergence of the magnetic south and north poles. The Doctor then devises a plan to defeat the Daleks: if the bomb can be deflected to the old mine shaft that happens to go straight the convergence point and be connected to the Dalek's shaft with a secondary tunnel, the magnetic energy that would erupt from the ground would destroy the Daleks. While the policeman takes care of modifying the shaft to direct the bomb the tunnel, the Doctor gets himself caught on purpose by the Daleks in order to use their device transmitting orders to the robomen and turning them agains their masters. The following confusion allows the humans to escape the mine while the bomb goes exploding just where the Doctor wanted it to. The Daleks finally get eliminated. The Doctor and his friends come back to their present with the TARDIS, just in time for the policeman to arrest the robbers.