Blog & White

© IMPAwards.com

Lau Xing just stole from the Bank of England a jade Buddha recently stolen from his village in China. Trying to escape the police, he enters at the service of Phileas Fogg under the made-up name of Passepartout. Fogg is an inventor who is ridiculled by Lord Kelvin, the head of the Royal Academy of Science. He then makes a wager with Lord Kelvin where the stakes are Lord Kelvins position against Fogg's giving up tinkering and inventing. The wager is about going around the world in 80 days (the idea being discretely suggested by Passepartout, who needs to bring the buddha back to China). They soon leave for France, where they meet Monique La Roche, a painter who wants to travel across the world to get inspiration. They are also followed by chinese bandits who try to recover the Buddha (it had been stolen by their leader, who is an accomplice of Lord Kelvin, who wants to colonize a part of China). They are also followed by Inspector Fix, a corrupt policeman, paid by Lord Kelvin to stop them, under the pretense that Fogg is the thief. Because of the bandits, they missede the Orient Express, but manage to catch it later using a hot air balloon. In Turkey they are “invited” by a local prince who then wants to keep Monique as his seventh wife. They manage to escape and go to India (whre they fight some Chinese thugs and Fix), then to China where Passepartout returns the Buddha (and fights some thugs). Fogg discovers that he has been cheated by both his valet and Monique, and decides to go on alone. He arrives in San Francisco, but gets robbed of all his money and clothes. He ends up as a beggar, until Passepartout and Monique find hime again. Together, they cross the desert, meet the Wright brothers, then arrive in New York, where they fight the Chinese thugs and their leader again. They defeat them, but miss their boat to England, and hire a small boat to attempt to cross the ocean. Lacking coal, the boat must resort to using sails, but it won't be fast enough. Fogg then builts a flying machine, inspired by the plans the Wright brothers had shown him. They at last arrive in London, crashing their plane in front of the Royal Academy, but Kelvin attempts to prevent them to enter the hall before noon, which was the time and place where they were supposed to end their trip. They are saved by Queen Victoria, who reminds them that because of their traveling east, they actually are one day earlier than they thought. They finally enter the building and Fogg wins the wager and Kelvin's position as Ministry of Science.

© Allocine.fr

Le mur d'une cellule d'un monastère lorrain se met à saigner lorsqu'un novice y plante un crucifix. Un maçon y est retrouvé emmuré, mur qu'il avait aidé à réparer quelques semaines plus tôt. Le commissaire Niémans mène l'enquêtei aidé du capitaine Reda. Un peu plus tard, un homme ressemblant étrangement à Jesus est retrouvé blessé par balle par la police, et un prêtre à la force surhumaine tente de l'assassiner à l'hôpital où il a été conduit. Puis un douanier et deux joaillers sont assassinés, suivis par l'administrateur d'un supermarché et quatre pêcheurs sont retrouvés noyés. Ces personnes étaient au nombre de douze, portaient les mêmes noms et pratiquaient les mêmes professions que les douze apôtres, et étaient des disciples de Jésus. Ce dernier, dans son délire, parle de l'apocalypse et des septs sceaux qui sont brisés un à un. L'enquête de Niémans le mène à une section de la ligne Maginot, qui a été occupée par les allemands et modifiée par ces derniers pendant la guerre. Avec l'aide d'une spécialiste des religions, Niémans apprend que les mystérieux assassins sont à la recherche du livre écrit des mains de Dieu, qui pourra être lu par celui qui brisera le dernier sceau. Ce livre avait été un trésor du Vatican et volé par Lothaire II puis enfoui dans un tombeau secret. La clé du tombeau, le sceau de Lothaire II, est en possession du douzième « apôtre », un prêtre, qui l'a récemment volé. Niémans tente de récupérer le sceau, mais les prêtres le devancent. Le tombeau avait été découvert par un officier allemand, Heinrich von Garten, pendant la guerre, durant des travaux dans les galeries de la ligne Maginot. Il tente maintenant de prendre possession du livre afin de créer une nouvelle Europe, blanche et chrétienne, en passant par la ligne Maginot. L'entrée originale du tombeau se trouvant dans le monastère, Niémans et Reda y pénètrent et tentent d'arrêter von Garten. Le socle sur lequel repose le livre est piégé, les galeries se remplissent d'eau et seuls Niémans et Reda parviennent à s'échapper. Le livre est détruit par l'eau.

© DVDToile.com

The MI6 has just obtained a fake Fabergé egg in East-Germany from the hands of a dying 009, and decide to investigate the murder. They discover that the real egg is going to be auctioned soon at Sotheby's, from an unknown origin. Bond goes to the auction and manages to replace the real egg with the copy and notice the buyer, Kamal Khan, who is usually a seller rather than a buyer. Bond follows him to his palace in India, where he meets him and lures him with the real egg, equiped with a transmitter. The egg gets stolen by Khan's girlfriend Magda and Bond is kidnapped and taken to Khan's palace where he remains a prisoner. Khan presents the egg to the mysterious Octopussy, who lives on an island populated only by women and who makes a living from smuggling jewels. Later, in Khan's palace, Bond manages to witness a dialog between Khan and rogue Red Army General Orlov, about making copies of a lot of Russian historical treasures and about an attack that will taking place in Karl-Marx-Stadt. Bond then escapes and pays a visit to Octopussy, where he discovers that she owns a circus that is currently in Karl-Marx-Stadt. Going there, he learns that the circus is going next to West-Germany on a U.S. military base, and that the jewels are hidden on the circus'train. The wagon hiding the jewels is however secretely switched with another one, identical the the first one, except that it holds an nuclear bomb instead of the jewels. Bond discovers that Orlov's plan is to detonate the bomb in the U.S. base, to make it look like an accident and discredit the U.S. presence on German territory. Once the americans would have left, Europe would be vulnerable enough to be invaded by the Soviet Union. Bond manages to disamorce the bomb and to follow Khan back to India where he is preparing to flight. With the help of Octopussy's troops (who have been betrayed by Khan) he attacks Khan's palace, chases him to his airplane, saves Octpussy who had been made prisoner during the attack and get rid of Kahn.

© Imdb.com

This documentary features Al Gore (the same ex-next president of the U.S.) lecturing about global warming, interspersed with pictures and clips from different locations and various topics. Gore basically tries to convice americans that global warming is actually hapenning despite the claims of the current government, and shows various scientific proofs (CO₂ levels in the atmosphere in the past 650,000 years, temperature levels over the same period…). He also explains the consequences of global warming on the natural disasters such as hurricanes (getting more powerful when passing over warmer sea) and drought (caused by higher evaporation due to higher temperatures), on the desynchronisation of the birth of baby birds and of caterpilars, their usual food, as well as the influence of the melting of ice crusts in Groenland and Antarctica on sea currents (especially the Gulf Stream), which could disappear if the sea gets colder because of more intensive melting of the ice. He also accuses the big corporations to try to hide the scientific results proving the existence of global warming, the same way the tobacco industry tried in the past to deny and hide the existence of a link between smoking and lung cancer. Finally, he gives some hints to the audience about what to do in order to produce less CO₂, showing that the technologies are available but the U.S. refuse to use them, putting the country behind most other countries in the world on that matter, including China.

The movie was interesting, well built and easy to understand. I wonder though if Gore has a political agenda, because he's so many times pointing fingers at the current administration and its supporters.

© Imdb.com

Sophie, une jeune femme, a été victime d'un sort jeté par la sorcière des terres perdues : elle est devenue vieille. Elle décide de quitter la ville et de partir à la recherche de la sorcière pour lui demander d'annuler le sort. Le chemin est ardu, et elle finit par trouver refuge dans le château ambulant de Howl, où elle fait connaisance de Calcifer, le démon de feu qui fait fonctionner le château et l'empêche de s'effondrer, et de Michael, l'apprenti de Howl, et de Howl lui-même, qui est sous l'emprise d'un terrible maléfice. Devant le désordre et la crasse du château, elle se proclame femme de ménage et entreprend de nettoyer le château. Au fil du temps qui passe, elle fait davantage connaisance avec les habitants du château. Un jour, la guerre éclate et le roi fait demander à Howl de se battre pour le royaume. Howl est un couard, et Sophie se propose de se faire passer pour sa mère et d'aller expliquer à la reine qu'il ne peut pas se battre parce qu'il a trop peur. Sur le chemin du palais royal, Sophie rencontre la sorcière des terres perdues et lui demande d'annuler le sort. La sorcière prétend ne plus se souvenir comment l'annuler. Tandis que Sophie explique son cas à la reine, la sorcière est victime d'un sort anti-magie protégeant le palais et perd toute sa magie ; elle devient vieille, montrant son age véritable, et passablement gaga. Sophie la prend en pitié et l'emmène habiter avec elle chez Howl. Howl est tombé amoureux de Sophie (il a d'ailleurs remarque que lorsqu'elle dort ou exprime ses sentiments, elle redevient temporairement jeune) et redécore le château par magie pour donner davantage de place à ses nouveaux habitants. Il se confie aussi à Sophie qui apprend qu'il a perdu son âme, volée par Calcifer, lorsqu'il était enfant, en échange d'une grande puissance magique. Lorsque la guerre se rapproche du château et menace de le détruire, Sophie évacue tout le monde, y compris Calcifer, ce qui provoque la destruction du château. La sorcière tente de s'emparer de l'âme de Howl en prenant Calcifer pour la garder pour elle, mais Sophie réussit à rendre son âme à Howl et à libérer Calcifer du contrat qui le liait au sorcier.

Je croyais que Chihiro était passablement délirant, mais ce film là est encore pire. Le seul vrai reproche que je lui ferai c'est le scénario trop touffu et le manque d'explications par endroit, qui fait nettement ressentir qu'il s'agit d'une adaptation d'une œuvre beaucoup plus complexe (un roman de Diana Wynne Jones). Le pire est probablement l'épouvantail qui, d'un baiser de Sophie, se transforme en Prince Charmant et annonce qu'il est justement le Prince du pays voisin et qu'il va rentrer chez lui pour arrêter la guerre. Ça tombe vraiment comme un cheveu sur la soupe.

© Imdb.com

A truck containing an unknown toxic explodes on the motorway, killing numerous people from an unknown disease. Faye, hunting another pery, manages to catch a glimpse from the driver of the truck, who then disapears mysteriously. Later, her and Spike learn that the driver is worth a huge bounty. Spike and Fay investigate separately. Spike discovers that the mysterious disease is actually caused by a bioweapon made of nanomachines hidden in lymphocyts. The bioweapon is secretely manufactured by a pharmaceutical lab which tries to hide the existence of the weapon and its vaccine. Meanwhile, Faye manages to find the lair of the mysterious truck driver, but she's made prisoner by him. Helped by Electra, a security agent from the pharmaceutical laboratory who has learned too much about it employer and has been disavowed. They are thrown in a cell, but manage to escape and take with them numerous doses of vaccine that they are going to spread over the city on Halloween night, which is the time and place chosen by the truck driver to contaminate all the inhabitants. His plan fails, and he is confronted by Spike. He then tells Spike that he was a soldier sent to Titan as a guinea pig to test the bioweapon. He was the only survivor, and he's very angry about the whole world. Spike defeats him, and everything ends well, more or less.

Thanks to Niko, my Leffakone project is finally complete. He built the timer I designed already two and a half years ago, that enables Leffakone to boot automatically when it is time to record a TV show.

The device is based on a Microchip 16F84A PIC and is connected to the Wake On LAN connector of the computer, as well as to the parallel port. The WOL connector provides +5V to the device even when the computer is powered down. The parallel port is used for sending the 24-bit timeout value to the timer, one bit at a time (one line is data, another line is a “data available” signal). The timer then ignores all input for three minutes, giving enough time to shutdown the computer (when the computer shuts down, some garbage is sent to the parallel port, which would be considered as input if it were not ignoring it). After that delay, it counts down to zero, and then sends a signal to the WOL connector that boots the computer. It's as simple as that.

The device has two LEDs, one indicating that power is on, and one status LED. The status LED is:

• On when the device is in standby, waiting for input.
• Off when the device has received partial input and waiting for more.
• Blinking at 0.25 Hz when ignoring all inputs.
• Blinking at 0.5 Hz when counting down.

When the timer is in the process of receiving input, and the procedure does not complete, the internal watchdog timer makes it reboot after about two seconds, putting the device back to standby mode.

The timer is supposed to accept timeout values in seconds, but the programming contraints in the device are such that the actual time unit is worth about 1.02 seconds.

For years I've been especially following three TV series: Murder, She Wrote, MacGyver, and Lois & Clarke: The New Adventures of Superman. All three of them came to an end within a couple of weeks. The last episode of Murder, She Wrote aired on February 28th, the last Lois & Clarke on March 3rd and MacGyver March 17th. I feel empty, like I'd have lost several friends at once, especially since I had been watching Murder, She Wrote assiduously for over three years.

Thankfully, the wonderful world of television has brought relief to my pain through the remarkable concept of rerun: Jessica Fletcher still shows up regularly in my set from season eight, as do Lois, Clark and MacGyver, since the two shows are broadcast again from the start! This allows me incidentally to see the first six or seven episodes of Lois & Clarke which I missed last time, and to re-record the episodes of MacGyver which are incomplete in my collection.

© MoviePoster.com

Bond recovered a large sum of money belonging to Sir Robert King, a personal friend of “M”. When getting close to his money at MI6 headquarters, King gets killed by an explosion; the bank notes have been covered with an explosive triggered by King's lapel pin, which had been replaced by a fake. While investigating about King, Bond notices that the money he retrieved is exactly the sum that had been paid as a ransom to free King's daughter Elektra some time ago. M had helped King to retrieve his daughter, but had refused to pay the ransom, rather using the daughter as a bait. The kidnapper was Renard the Anarchist, who took a bullet in the brain when MI6 was trying to kill him, after Elektra managed to escape. The bullet is moving towards the center of the brain, making him progressively loose his sense of touch and smell and insensitive to pain. M sends Bond to protect Elektra. He meets her at a pipeline construction site inherited from her father in Azerbaidjan but she refuses his help, not trusting MI6 anymore. Bond later saves her life from an attack; he also tears a piece of cloth bearing a russian marking from one attacker. He then meets Valentin Zukowski, an acquaintance of his in his casino in Baku. Zukowski recognizes the marking as that of an antiterrorist unit of the Russian ministry of energy. He tells Bond that Elektra's pipeline has several competitors who may be willing to get rid of her. Later, while snooping around Elektra Bond notices that her chief of security is somehow related to the former attackers. He follows him and takes his place at some meeting with who were waiting for him. They trust him and take him to a facility in Kazakhstan where nuclear weapon are being disabled and destroyed. He meets there Dr. Christmas Jones, the nuclear scientist in charge of the process and pretends to be a Russian scientist. Bond notices that Renard is also working at the facility and is trying to steal plutonium. Renard manages to escape with a nuclear head, blowing up everything, and Bond and Jones barely escape themselves. Bond then suspects that Eletktra and Renard are actually working together because of something they both said in different occasions, but Elektra convices him otherwise. Elektra then lures M to Baku and kidnapps her, while Bond is sent with Jones to investigate a possible terrorist attack in the pipeline. Instead of defusing the bomb (which appears not to be nuclear), he lets it explode in order to make Elektra believe that he is dead. They then go meet Zukowsky again on the Caspian Sea, because Bond made a connection between him and Elektra. Zukowsky admits providing her with material with the help of a nephew of his who is the captain of a russian submarine. He also tells Bond that they are currently in Istanbul, and takes them there. They then discover that Renard has taken over the submarine and plans to put the plutonium into its nuclear reactor in order to provoke a meltdown that would look as an accident. This would destroy all the pipeline of King's competitors. Bond and Jones get then caught by Renard because of Zukowsky's assistant being an accomplice of him. Jones is taken to the submarine while Bond is left with Elektra who tries to torture him, but he is saved by Zukowsky who died just after. Bond kills Elektra and manages to enter the submarine. There is then an big fight between Bond and Renard; Bond wins and saves the world.

© Imdb.com

A fishing boat saves a man from the sea. The man has two bullets in his back, a small device under his skin which shows a Swiss bank name and account number and no clue about who he is. After reaching the shore, the man spends the night in a public park where he's awoken in the middle of the night by two policemen. Without even thinking about it, he fights them barehanded and flees. The next morning, he goes to the bank in Zürich and finds in his safe a collection of passports, loads of money in various currencies and a gun. He learns that his name is (probably) Jason Bourne. He leaves the gun and goes to the US embassy, just in time to escape the Swiss police. There he is about the be arrested again but manages to escape, with the help of Marie, a girl who had trouble at the embassy. They go to Paris, where Bourne has an appartment. There, they get attacked by an unknown man crashing through the window, but the man dies before Bourne is able to interrogate him. Before the attack, Bourne manages to find a trace of his past: he has spent time in a hotel under another identity, and he is supposed to be dead. Marie manages to get a list of the phone numbers he called when he resided at the hotel, which gives him a clue about what he did in the past: getting interested in a boat owned by a former African dictator, buying diving equipments… During the night, the ex-dictator is assassinated, and Bourne understands that he had been sent by the CIA to kill him (because the man threatened to expose the CIA actions in Africa if they didn't help him to get back to power) but failed. Bourne and Marie then go the morgue to see the body, but it has been taken away already. They then flee together barely escaping the French police. Marie manages to reach a former boyfriend who lives in the countryside, where they find shelter for one night. The next morning, Bourne notices that someone is watching them and will probably try to kill them. He finds and neutralizes the killer, from whom he learns nothing except the name “Threadstone”. He sends Marie to hide with her friend, then uses the mobile phone of the killer, to contacts whoever had ordered him killed and gives him an appointment in Paris. Bourne doesn't show at the appointment, but uses the event to follow the man (his former boss) to a CIA hideout where he almost got killed again. He however learns that he has been specifically trained to be the perfect invisible killer (the Threadstone project), and his memory comes back to him: he was supposed to kill the ex-dictator and put the blame to one of the man's collaborators, but didn't complete his mission because children were present on the scene. Bourne's boss is then eliminated in a CIA attempt to conceal the failure of the Threadstone project. At the end, Bourne finds Marie again somewhere on the Mediterranean coast.

Loads of car chases, fight scenes, stereotypical camera movements, and a disappointing plot. But I really liked the Richard Chamberlain version TV movie when I was a kid.

© eu.art.com

I watched an episode of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman yesterday evening, were they managed to track back a radio signal (sic) to a point located at 47.55 degrees of latitude and 38.69 degrees of longitude. Thanks to Google Maps, I know now that this place, which according to the series is the headquarters of the Daily Planet in Metropolis, is actually located in Russia, north of the Black Sea, not far from the Ukrainian border, in a region full of fields. Superman is therefore a Mujik.

However, since they didn't mention if the latitude in North or South, nor if the longitude is East or West, I checked the three other possibilities, which all are in the middle of the sea. If Superman is not a Russian farmer, then he's completely soaked.

© Moviearts.se

Frank Wayne, the big boss of the mafia, is movig all his money to Switzerland, costing much to the State. The IMF attempts to stop him. Jim Phelps plays an investigator from the Senate who harrases Wayne and finally arrests him. Wayne is switched with Rollin Hand, disguised as Wayne. Rollin is then gettin his real face back under the cover of instant aesthetic surgery performed by Cinnamon Carter, who is actually only removing his makeup. Againts the will of the Organisation's council, Wayne/Hand orders his henchman to kill the investigator by exploding his car. Phelps escapes the attack thanks to a trapdoor in the bottom of the car, leading to a sewer opening on top of which the car was parked. Meanwhile, Hand manages to open the safe of Wayne's office in which all the Organisation's ledgers are hidden. Wayne's is then sentence to death by a full council, but Wayne/Hand manages to escape through one elevator. Barney Collier had previously fixed the elevator so that it is synchronized with the one just next to it. Hand crawls into the second elevator while both are descending, rejoining his associates, and the real Wayne (sedated until then) is put back into the first one and reanimated. When the elevator reaches the underground parking lot, Wayne wakes up just in time to be killed by his henchman. The IMF members leave the place unnoticed just as the police arrives, called earlier by Cinnamon.

© Imdb.com

James Bond's first mission as a 00 agent. A mission in Uganda fails lamely when Bond wrecks havoc in an embassy while supposed to spy on a terrorist. Asked by MI6 to take some time off, he continues his investigation which leads him to the Bahamas, and from there to the Miami's Airport, where a new prototype plane, scheduled for test flight is the target of another hired terrorist. The attacks are ordered by Le Chiffre, the banker of the world's terrorist organizations, who invests his customer's money in hasardous financial gambles. Because of Bond's intervention, he just lost all the money of an Ugandan rebel chief. In order to regain money, Le Chiffre organizes a high stakes game of poker in a casino in Montenegro. MI6 sends Bond there, since he's the best card player of the service and Le Chiffre's loss would destroy his organization, accompanied with Vesper Lynd, from the Treasury, who is assigned to keep an eye on Bond's spendings. The game is interrupted by pauses, during which Bond is almost killed by the Ugandan rebel wanting his money back from Le Chiffre and poisoned by Le Chiffre who doesn't want Bond to win the game. Bond barely escapes the latter attent to his life, and finally wins (thanks to Felix Leiter, a CIA agent who extended Bond's credits after Lynd refused). Vesper Lynd gets then kidnapped by Le Chiffre and Bond rushes to save her, but he gets caught and tortured by Le Chiffre who wants the password that would give him access to Bond's bank account that was setup for the poker game. Bond's life is saved just in time by an unknown third party. He then leaves to Venice with Vesper (with whom he desperatly fell in love). She however betrays him, withdrawing all Bond's (and Her Majesty's) money and brings it to an unknown character. Bond follows her, but is attacked by the henchmen of the unknown one. He doesn't get the money back, and fails to save Vesper's life who commited suicide rather than facing Bond. He then learned that she was trying to save the life of her fiancee, who was kidnapped by terrorists (the same ones she made a deal with that saved Bond's life when tortured by Le Chiffre). Vesper however had left Bond a note before leaving to the bank, setting him on the trail of Mr. White, the one who took the money in Venice. Bond tracks White down, gets the money back and his takes hie revenge on him.

The script is quite similar to Ian Fleming's Casino Royale novel (although terrorists, poker and Montenegro replace respectively the russian spies, baccara and the french riviera, not mentioning the abusive usage made of mobile phones, the Internet and electronic gadgets). The movie is quite different from the others by its structure (the poker game is central to the story although there is no action, except during the breaks) and the fact that Bond fells in love. Also, it is definitely a prequel to the series, but at the same time, it is clearly set in time after the previous episodes…

© IMDB.com

The Cradle of Life is the second Tomb Raider movie. An earthquake in Santorini reveals an ancient temple built by Alexander the Great. Lara Croft goes there and discovers a strange, luminous orb. As soon as she manages to pick it up, she is attacked and the orb is stolen while an after shock destroys the temple. The thief is a Chinese gangster who is acting on behalf of the real bad guy, a bio-weapon manufacturer: the orb is a map leading to the cradle of life, where Pandora's box is located. Lara then gets a former boyfriend of her out of prison who will help her to get to the gangster. She manages to learn that the orb is en route to Shanghai where it is going to be sold. Lara can't get the orb back, but a tracer she managed to put on the orb's crate leads her and her friend to Hong Kong. There she steals the orb from the bad guy's secret lab (located in the middle of a shopping center). There she dumps her friend, because he's too unreliable. Decoding the map on the orb leads her to the foot of Kilimanjaro, where she is soon followed by the bad guy and his army. The army is wiped out in a valley full of strange monsters, but Lara and the bad guy manage to enter the cradle of life (a maze of caves where gravity is not following the usual rules). The bad guy forces her to get the cradle out of a lake of black acid (supposedly Pandora's tears after she opened the box), but Lara's friend arrives just in time to save her. Alas! He wants the box for himself (ain't he stupid!), so Lara kills him. She puts the box back to the lake. End of story.

The first Tomb Raider movie was nicely bad, this one is just plain bad. It looks like a video game, with completely useless shooting scenes which looks just like a “shoot all the targets” sequence in a video game.

© IMDB.com

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.

© IMDB.com

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.

© IMDB.com

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.

© IMDB.com

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.

© IMDB.com

I saw the movie some time ago and I completely forgot to post a summary, so the following is probably inaccurate.

Dead Man's Chest is the second episode of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. The story starts with a soon-to-be-married young couple who is arrested for having helped a pirate captain in the previous episode. They escape (or are released under condition?) and try to find the pirate captain. The latter is trying to put his hands on the Dead Man's chest, which contains the heart of the captain of the Flying Dutchman. They have a map, but need a key to open the chest. The key is around the neck of the captain of the Flying Dutchman, and they manage to steal it. They finally find the pirate captain and together with the captain and a third person also looking for the heart, they finally find it. Then come the crew of the Flying Dutchman, they all flee in different directions, and the heart is taken by we-don't-know-who.

© IMDB.com

Eddie Yang is a Hong Kong police detective cooperating with Interpol to capture Snakehead, a dangerous criminal. They almost manage to catch him in an underground temple, where a young boy was performing a ceremony with a medallion. Snakehead and his henchmen manage to escape, kidnapping the boy and taking the medallion. Later, Eddie follows Snakehead to Ireland and learns that the boy is about to arrive on a boat. They find him on a container carrier, but get attacked by Snakehead's men. Eddie and the boy get trapped in a container that fells into the sea. Eddie manages to secure the boy in a bubble of air, but when the container is taken out of the water, Eddie is dead. The boy secretely presses the medallion into Eddie's hand before being taken to the hospital. There, Eddie resurrects and barely manages to repell an attack of Snakehead's men with the help of his partner, Watson. Eddie discovers that he is immortal and has superpowers, thanks to the medallion. Claire, another Interpol agent and former girlfriend of Eddie, takes the boy with her to her place, but Snakehead's men manage to take him away from her. They suspect that the next attack would be on Watson's family, and get there just in time to repell another attack. They learn that the boy is detaiend in Raven's Keep, go there, beat the bad guy and free the boy. The End.

Watson is supposed to be the funny sidekick, but he behaves like an idiot and the jokes are plain stupid. The script is bad, the storyline is thin like paper, and Jackie Chan is visibly getting old: the action scenes lack the dynamism of his earlier movies.

© IMDB.com

François Truffaut's adaptation of Ray Bradbury's classic S.F. novel Farenheit 451.

The story takes place in an oppressive future, where written text is banned and people spend their free time watching TV, taking part in silly TV games and taking drugs. Firemen don't put out fires anymore (since everything is fireproof), but burn books instead. One day Montag, a fireman, meets Clarisse in the monorail, a girl who looks strangely like his wife, the dullness removed. She asks him if he ever reads the books before burning them. Montag then starts stealing books when he and his crew are in action and reading them. One day, the firemen are searching the house of an old lady that contains a huge amount of books. Montag's boss describes it as one of the hidden libraries used by rebels. The firemen are prepared to burn the heap of books in the house, but the lady refuses to leave and sets herself to fire. Later, as Montag wants to visit Clarisse at her house (of the same kind as the old lady's), he sees that the doors and windows have been barred. A neighbour informs him that the police has taken the inhabitants the previous night. Montag then searches his boss's office, hoping to find where Clarisse has been taken, but discovers that she was not taken. He later meets her, hiding near her house, and he helps her enter the cellar and retrieve and destroy a list of illegal libraries. She tells him about the book-people, who live far away in the forest, away from the oppression of the city, and tells him she's leaving to join them. Later, Montag and other firemen are sent to burn books to a place which turns out to be his own home, just in time to see his wife leaving him (she was the one giving him away). Montag then fights and kills his boss, and flees. He's followed for a time by the police, but he manages to escape them (the police will afterwards kill someone at random and claim it was Montag) and rejoins the book-people in the forest.

Spoiler: do not read if you don't want to know!

© IMDB.com

Marnie makes her living by getting hired as a secretary in places dealing with money. She then steals the money and disapears, changing her identity and her city of residence. One day her scheme is discovered by the boss of the firm where she works, who gives her the choice to be sent to jail or to marry him. She goes for the latter, but the husband discovers that his wife has psychological troubles (fear of thunderstorms, of red color, of being touched by men, recuring nightmares). He wants to help her, and gets information on her past. He then drives her to her mother's place to face the truth about the trauma she had lived during her childhood: her mother was a prostitute, and one night of thunderstorm Marnie was being abused by a client. Her mother tries to protect her, hits the client with a poker, and gets injured in the process. In order to help her, Marnie kills the client who ends up in a pool of blood. Due to the shock, she kept no memory of the event, and her mother raised her to despise men.

Spoiler: do not read if you don't want to know!

© IMDB.com

A remake of Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder. A rich (but soon to be ruined) husband wants to kill his wife in order to inherit her fortune. He pays his wife's lover (who has seduced her only to take her money) to murder her. The lover hires a former prison mate of his to kill the woman. The killer fails and gets killed in self-defense by the woman. The woman then discovers several clues that her husband is actually the one who tries to get rid of her, while the lover tries to blackmail the husband. The husband kills the lover while he tries to flee with the blackmail money, and the wife eventually kills her husband in self-defense when he discovers that she knows about his plot.

Spoiler: do not read if you don't want to know!

© IMDB.com

I just watched Dr. Strangelove (Docteur Folamour in French), by Stanley Kubrick. The movie is a dark comedy about a crazy general launching a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. They manage to call off the attack, except for one bomber the radio of which got destroyed and could not be contacted. The bomber destroys its target and triggers the Doomsday Device that the Soviets just finished to build, provoking a nuclear holocaust all over the Earth.

© Amazon.ca

I just watched the four first episodes yesterday, subtitled in Finnish. It was pretty easy to understand, but then again, the story is not of the difficult kind: a guy moves in as the janitor of a home for young girls, pretending to be a student (whereas he already failed twice the test for entering the university of Tokio). At the same time, he remembers that when he was a small boy he made a promise to his sweetheart to meet again at the university of Tokio. He didn't remember the name of the girl, though but surprise, surprise! she's one of the girls living the the home.

Nice to watch because it's so easy to follow, but it really looks like as series for post-teen geek boys who fantasize on finding a girlfriend but have no clue as how to do it.

© Amazon.co.uk

Cowboy Bebop is about a bounty hunter roaming the solar system. I watched a couple of episodes, and until now, the hero does not seem to be very efficient in his job, since he did not catch his preys (they didn't escape though, the first one got shot by his girlfriend, and the second crashed on the parking lot of the police station). The series is quite violent but probably no more than your average action TV series (big guns shooting all over the place, fast vehicles crashing, this kind of things). One good thing is that the characters do not make stupid faces when they are feeling emotions, on the contrary to most of the previous japanimation series I've watched. That's a definite good point for the series. Also, the episodes seem to be quite independent from each other, there is no long-running story to keep the viewers hooked (maybe this would develop in later episodes?)

Probably the series I enjoyed the most among the ones I recently discovered: it's not all about feelings and relationships between people, but on the other hand, the stories don't fly very high either, which is one drawback of the format (you can't put much in a 20 minutes show meant to be a complete story).

© Amazon.co.uk

One more anime series, again quite different from the others. Gravitation is about a rock band trying to become famous, and the lead singer of which falls in love with a famous love-stories writer. The main character is impredictible (some would say “crazy”), and the story is therefore full of surprises. This makes the series watchable even if romance is not my cup of tea.

© zstore.com

Another series of which I watched the four first episodes last evening, subtitled in Finnish as well. Much more difficult to understand than Love Hina, this series is more about the description of weird characters. The story goes like this: an orphan girl lives in a house with three mysterious boys. The boys have been victim of a curse of some kind, because when touched by a girl, they they turn into animals: a rat, a dog and a cat. The problem is that the cat is not part of the Chinese Zodiac, and it makes the character very angry because he feels inferior to the rat. Then appears a girl who is madly in love with the cat-guy (“madly” is the right word, because she annoyingly keeps on beating him up) and who turns into a wild pig when touched by a man.

This series is about the hero discovering hidden aspects of the various characters and the characters being able to overcome their fear of being touched by other people. I think.

© dvdpris.com

One more anime series I discovered yesterday, again subtitled in Finnish. This one takes place in feudal Japan and is about two samurais (who want all the time fight each other) helping a girl to find a mysterious “sunflower-smelling samurai”. They agreed to help the girl after she helped them escape from the claws of a tyranic local governor who blamed them for killing his son. Later on, they join two gangs of Yakuza who fight against each other for the control of a city.

Samurai Champloo is definitely a different genre than the two other anime I recently watched. The setting is more or less grounded in Japanese history (but there is a warning at the beginning not to consider it as a historical document), and can be enjoyable if you don't mind the katana slashing and the blood stains. One thing I hated about it was the opening titles music: who the hell decided that rap is a suitable kind of music for feudal Japan stories?

Recettes à essayer :

• Whole wheat-banana pancakes (pancake au blé complet et à la banane) (Runners, ep. 4x13)
• Eggs with chocolate sauce (œufs brouillés au chocolat) (Jack Dalton, Mask of the Wolf, ep. 3x17)

Les cookies façon MacGyver :)

De plus en plus souvent de par le Web, je lis des remarques exaspérées de personnes qui se plaignent du niveau abyssal des chaînes de télévision généralistes. Mais en même temps, il semble que les gens regardent la TV plutôt que de regarder des programmes soigneusement choisi. Étant donné que 90% des programmes sont bons à jeter, il n'est pas étonnant qu'en allumant la TV au hasard, on tombe neuf fois sur dix sur un tel programme.

Il n'est pourtant pas difficile de choisir à l'avance ce qu'on veut regarder, l'enregistrer et le regarder quand on a le temps. On évite ainsi deux tracas liés à la télévision : les mauvais programmes diffusés lorsqu'on a le temps de regarder la TV, et les horaires impossibles des programmes intéressants.

Regarder la TV intelligemment est donc possible. Mais ça ne change rien au fait que 90% des programmes sont bons à jeter.