As I hadn’t been to the cinema in such a long time I decided to take my wife and see the first move that was on when we got there. It was Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

If you don’t know, it’s based on a Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim. I hadn’t seen any trailers for this movie and I was taken aback when I realised that the movie was a musical too. However, the content is not what you would expect to see in a musical. You don’t often see a film’s genre listed as horror/musical. It is rated 18 in the UK and R in the US. And it is very,very gory.

Johnny Depp stars as Todd, a man scorned by the local judge, played by Alan Rickman. Todd’s “business partner” is Mrs Lovett, played by Helena Bonham Carter. I must says how strikingly similar they are to the puppets that they voice in another Tim Burton film, Corpse Bride. There is also a great appearance by Sacha Baron Cohen.
Mrs Lovett runs a meat pie shop and Todd, being the Demon Barber, slaughters his customers and provides her with the “meat.”

As a musical I thought it worked quite well. Initially it took some getting used to and at first I struggled to hear the words over the epic musical score. As I got used to it I really began to enjoy it. There is definitely more music in the first half of the film though.

It has an inevitable ending. But there is a little bit of romance to finish with too, which makes us think that all the throat slashing is worth it.

Don’t be turned off by this film just because it’s a musical. It is a great film. Some positive points to end on? Well, Nightmare Before Christmas had songs in it. And if that’s not enough of a positive? Cloverfield is out next week.

It seemed like not so long ago that Saw III was released. I looked back at my blog and saw that I had reviewed it on October 31, 2006. This franchise releases films very, very fast.

Anyway, on to the review. As usual this will contain some spoilers, as I can’t express my frustration without giving some bits away.

The first thing I thought when I left the cinema was “I don’t have a clue what happened in the movie!” I was genuninely confused.

I got home and started looking on some of the Saw message boards. Then I came across some very important pieces of information that they didn’t make clear in the film:
1. Saw III and Saw IV happen at the same time. This is so important and it really wasn’t clear.
2. The autopsy scene that you see at the beginning of the film actually happens at the end of the film. I guess they show you it first to let you know that Jigsaw is really dead. But this really confuses people. This is an extract from the BBC Movies review:

After a tape recorded message is found in Jig’s stomach, Detective Hoffman (Carlos Mandylor) and SWAT Commander Riggs (Lyriq Bent) are thrown into yet another fiendishly complex morality play.

Even the BBC didn’t get this. The tape is found at the end of the film, not at the start. See what I mean? Confusing.

While I am on the subject of things that confused me I need to talk about characters. I had a really hard time working out who everybody was. I would see people and I would keep asking “Who is that guy?” Maybe it’s just me.

Darren Lynn Bousman (the director) told us that Jigsaw’s role wouldn’t be confined to flashbacks. Not true. These are the only appearances he makes in the whole film. We do get a lot of insight into what makes Jigsaw do what he does and we do learn who the woman is in his flashbacks in Saw III.

However, other things that should have been answered were not, such as what was in the letter that drove Amanda crazy in Saw III. One would guess these will be answered in Saw V or VI (which were approved way before III was released). Perhaps not. Maybe we will have to wait until Saw VII or VIII.

The traps are good, very twisted and gruesome. We see some very hardcore stuff, even by Saw’s standards. Scalpings, daggers to the eyes, Eyes and a mouth stitched closed. Very extreme.

As a standalnoe film, Saw IV is a complete no-no. But if you have watched the first three you will have to watch this one, you just will. And we will all inevitable watch the next two, no matter how bad they are.

I came across this story on the Daily Mail website. It is a UK-based newspaper and this story is about UK-based Royal Mail. It is not particularly related to WebCards but I thought it was an interesting story none-the-less.

Apparently Royal Mail finds “about 500,000 undeliverable parcels are sent to Royal Mail’s return letter centre every year.”They are kept for up to six months, after which a proportion - about 15 per cent - are sent to auction, with the proceeds making a contribution to the centre’s annual £10million running costs.”

The system was exposed by a retired school teacher who sold a set of bagpipes for £1500. He sent them to Belgium using Royal Mail’s premium Airsure service. He claimed the package was labelled correctly but it never reached its destination. He was only able to claim £500 compensation.

It turns out the pipes were sold by Surrey auctioneers Wellers for just £60 and ended up on eBay. The police are currently in posession of the pipes until they can determine who owns them.

It just goes to show that you never know what is happening with your mail. I don’t know why Royal Mail would ever start selling lost packages. Surely they never own them in the first place?

Since the explosion in the world of blogging over the last few years one of the biggest problems has become comment spam. This is when somebody automatically (or perhaps even by hand) adds some lame comment to your blog which is actually promoting their website. A good proportion (at least in my experience) is promoting online prescription drugs. The kind that we all used to get emails about before the days of Gmail.

Many things have been tried such as Google’s support of the <a rel=”nofollow”> tag and the use of a CAPTCHA to prove you are human.

A few months back I installed Akismet. It is a product from WordPress themselves and you require an API key from them to enable it on your blog but it is such an amazing tool. Because it interfaces with the Akismet website it is constantly updated and you don’t need to update spam “definitions” like you would do with a virus checker or other such application.
Any spam it blocks is sent back to the Aksimet database to enable it to learn and update itself to help others. You don’t need to maintain your own “blacklist” of spammers and in my experience it is very, very effective. You can pick out false positives or any missed spam and this gets reported back to Akismet so it can be updated and improved. According to the website “Akismet becomes more effective the more you use it.”

According to Akismet 4,853 comments have been detected as spam on this blog alone. You can also see how Akismet is performing world wide. From their website:

• 1,781,113,909 spams caught so far
• 2,964,756 so far today
• 95% of all comments are spam

So if you are suffering from the problem of blog spam and you use WordPress then give it a try.

I went to see Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End the other day and thought I would share my views. As usual there are spoilers here so don’t read it if you don’t want to know what happens.

The main story sees Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann travel to the end of the world to rescue Jack Sparrow from Davy Jones’ Locker (ie. bring him back to life). They must then unite with the Pirate Lords from all over the world to bring an end to Lord Backett, who is trying to bring down the pirate world.

The plot is sometimes a little confusing. Character’s change allegiances back and forth so often you often forget who is a good guy and who is a bad guy. But the aim of the film is to try and tie up all the loose ends created by the last two installments. Unfortunately it often does this by changing rules set in the other two films. A good example is that of Davy Jones. He is only allowed to set foot on land once every ten years. How does the script get around this? By placing him in a bucket of water of course!

Although there are some annoying parts to this film it is still a great movie. Depp is as superb as ever and very, very funny. Watching him debate situations with multiple Jacks is one of the best parts of the film.

As you would expect the effects are amazing. The final battle scene, pirates vs East India Trading Co. in a whirlpool is spectacular. This goes for the creature effects too.

Overall a very enjoyable, if long, movie that is pretty essential viewing to anybody who has watched the previous ones.

I am currently sitting in the “business centre” of the Club Hotel Dolphin in Sri Lanka. I am on my honeymoon as I mentioned in my previous post.

This place is without a doubt the most amazing place I have ever been. I thought I would quickly post this photo.

I will be able to post loads more when I get back.

Big things are happening this weekend… I am getting married.
The WebCards project has been pretty much static over the last few months while I have been planning the big day. Not to mention getting started with a new job.
I will be away for two weeks and then WebCards will get back on track.

There are a fantastic set of users who regularly contribute to the forums and bug tracker over on Sourceforge and I want people to know that I do take note of what is posted and read every single bug report. You may think posting a feature request or bug report is achieving nothing but I promise you it is not true.

There are a whole list of features that I am ready to introduce into the next release of WebCards and I want to see it develop into a nicely rounded, stable piece of software. So please keep posting comments, filing bug reports and sending me emails telling me what problems you are having.

Thanks for your continued support.
Chris

After watching Spiderman III over the weekend I was left with mixed feelings.

It is the first film that I have been eagerly awaiting for a long time and perhaps it was that expectation that left me feeling ever so slightly disappointed. My review contains spoilers so don’t read it if you don’t want to know what happens.

Firstly I have to say that the main two criticisms I have heard about this movie, namely it being too long and the story line being too complicated, are not opinions that I agree with. I didn’t feel myself getting tired and I didn’t find myself particularly lost as to what was going on.

My main criticism was some of the missing bits in the story. Firstly, where did the black goo come from that enhanced people’s aggression? It came down in a meteor. Was it a coincidence it landed near Peter Parker and followed him home or was it dropped and aimed at him? This parasitic creature seems to come looking for Peter Parker. I don’t know if this came from the comic book or whether I am rwading too much into it, but it seems to me like that deserves some more explanation.

Spidey ends up fighting fights two bad guys in this film. The first is Flint Marko. His becomes known as The Sandman after his DNA bonds with sand when he falls into a pit housing a scientific experiment. He also turns out to be the guy who killed uncle Ben in the first film.
The second bad guy is Venom. A rival photographer to Peter Parker, Eddie Brock, gets transformed into an evil black creature when the aforementioned black goo falls onto him after Spiderman forces it out of himself. I did note, however, that the name Venom wasn’t actually mentioned at all in the film.

There are some incredible fighting scenes in this film as you would expect, as well as some of the best computer animations I have ever seen in a movie. There are also some very funny scenes, as Peter Parker becomes cocky and aggressive after being consumed by the black goo.

The final battle scene is the other problem I had. It is such an anticlimax, especially when comapred to the scene with Harry Osborn fighting Spiderman. It turns out that Venom apparently can’t stand the chimes of a bell! Spiderman surrounds him with scaffloding poles and continuously hits them, creating a noise that drives Venom crazy. Spidey throws in a grenade and Venom is no more. And how does Spiderman offload The Sandman? Actually, he doesn’t. Sandman convinces Parker that killing uncle Ben was an accident. Parker forgives him and Sandman blows away into the night.

Considering the build up Venom got during the months before the film was released his appearance was almost a cameo. Venom certainly deserves his own film as Sandman would have been a more than adequate enemy for this one.

Overall, I thought it was a good film but just not quite as good as I wanted it to be.

I went to see Saw III at the weekend and thought it was a great film. This is my review of it. There are a few spoilers here so I wouldn’t recommend reading it if you don’t want to know the ending.

At the end of Saw II Jigsaw (John) is very ill and has taken Amanda under his wing to continue his work. In Saw III he is in an even worse, bed-ridden, state. Amanda kidnaps a doctor (chosen for a special reason, of course) and forces her to keep Jigsaw alive while they watch another of their games played out on the cameras in their lair. Their victim Jeff has to complete some puzzles and make some tough decisions in order to reach the end where he is promised he will come face to face with the man who killed his son.

The traps and torture devices are even more elaborate than before and include a kind of twisting crucifix, an ice shower and death by pigswill. While not as jumpy as Saw I the torture scenes are particularly gruesome including a hand burned by acid and a close up shot of a leg being snapped.

Throughout the film we are following two storylines - Jeff’s race to have vengeance on his son’s killer and the challenge to keep Jigsaw alive. The two plots come together at the end in a typically Saw-like excellent plot twist.

Another thing that was excellent about this film was the way it answered many questions from the first two parts. I was impressed by this. They also introduced flash backs to Jigsaw’s early life, leaving other avenues open for exploration in the inevitable sequels (or prequels as I have been hearing rumours about). It also helped our understanding of the original films when we found out that Amanda had been working with John since the beginning of Saw I.

Overall I would say Saw III is an excellent film and is essential viewing for anybody who has seen the previous two. I think it would be a nice ending to the story to leave it how it is but there are a few unanswered questions in the film and the flashbacks to John’s earlier life make a sequel inescapable.

Google has added some new webmaster tools to its sitemaps console. The first gives you information on Googlebot’s activity on your site. It lists number of pages crawled per day, number of kilobytes downloaded each day and the average time spent downloading a page. Click the thumbnail to see a larger view. You can see that this site has few pages but it is growing a little each day.

The next new feature allows you to take control of how often Googlebot crawls your site. Googlebot places some load on your server and you can set the crawl rate to “slower” to reduce this load or if your pages change less often and don’t need crawling as frequently. If Google think your site can handle the bandwidth and Googlebot has the ability to crawl your site faster then the “faster” option becomes available. This increases how often the bot visits your site.

There are also a couple of additional features. The first is the ability to opt in to Google Image Labeler. This allows people to label the images on your website. The final addition is a URL count in the sitemaps tab. This tells you how many of your sitemap URLs Googlebot is crawling.