Pete's Write

It has been a while since I have visited the cinema.. Covid put a halt to my days of watching a movie with hundreds of others in a confined space. Somehow it felt unnerving to do so.  So my viewing diet has been a series of 4k discs, streaming platforms or binging on an aeroplane.  However some movies are meant for the big screen and the comic book genre is definitely one of them. An opportunity came up to watch The Marvels came and I guess it was as apt as any to return to the cinema, especially since dinner was also thrown in.  The recent MCU franchise has been a treat, right up to the last Spiderman outing, No Way Home, but since then, there have been a couple of damp squibs and I did wonder if this would suffer the same fate. Sadly, I have to say that The Marvels is not up to the same standard that brought in the crowds for the The Avengers and other earlier outings.  There is still the action, the technical marvel (pun intended), some smattering of humor, b...

In my old estate, every Christmas and Easter the housing committee would get together and screen a movie on the lawn outside the main community area and the most request shows were Superman, Star Wars and surpassing these two franchises, was Indiana Jones. At that time there was only the first one, and later on the second out of the four, and the first one, Raiders of the Lost Ark, is still the gold standard by which I measure all other action adventure movies. In fact, it ranks as one of my all time favorites. Raiders was a classic movie with the just the right combination of amazing action, good plot, chemistry, comic timing and just a dash of romance with plenty of interesting locations and a rousing soundtrack. If a movie could be perfect, Raider was the closest, and I always enjoying any making of Raiders documentary too. Many have tried, but none come close to matching it, even with modern CGI and new actors. So whilst the last outing was not really memorable, the Kingdom of the ...

Hijack This is a nice tight plot with great suspense.  Idris Elba makes a good focal point of an ensemble cast that works together to give us a movie that is like a marriage of the good bits of 24 hours with Into The Night And Speed. The Brits again show us how they can use dialogue to good effect and keep us in suspense and in anticipation of what happens next. The idea is simple, a plane gets hijacked, but the purpose behind it does not get revealed until later, and the twists keep you guessing on who's who and what. There are many players in the series, and they contribute to keep the pace going, with Idris and the main hijacker doing a slow dance of wits whilst additional events play on the ground and add tension to whether the plane will make it or not.  Apple TV does not have a massive list of winners, but this one is one of their better ones and I recommend it but don't watch it all or you might feel sad when it all comes to a head and ends.

So it ends here or does it? An odd way to begin a review but we have we have seen John Wick get beat up, shot, fallen off roofs and he still lives to fight another day.  He is going against the 80s type epitomized by Stallone and Arnie, who can fight thousands and not get a scratch.  He might hail back to the die hard sort of protagonist, the hero who gets extremely beat up but never stays down.  The premise of the story is man who has to kill to survive, he loves animals especially dogs but deals with his enemies mercilessly.  Each time he meets an impossible to meet goal, he faces the odds and surmounts them.  The plot remains fairly simple along with a weave of killers working for an ethereal organization. The attraction is how he always picks himself up after each painful battle and faces the next series of insurmountable odds.  And battle he does. And he kills in more and more complex and novel ways, each those methods get more jaw dropping.  You ...

So everyone is back on the road again and I've also joined the crowd  I managed to wrangle a conference in Rome and will do a quick trip there.   Singapore airlines has become too expensive to afford a business class seat so I've had to choose an alternative and swiss air is part of Star Alliance so at a considerable saving and only one hour difference in arrival time, I have picked them.  now that is also the issue as the transit time is only 70 mins so it's cutting its close. However when I called the airlines they almost felt offended when I asked if it was sufficient  and so the journey begins .. So they use the silverkris lounge at changi and it's pretty impressive with a wide selection of food and drinks plus free toiletries  now for the airline  When you travel you see and feel a lot and this is one of the major benefits of travel. You also get to compare and see what's really good  Swiss air is well very swiss in efficiency but they don't have ...

Apart from the smattering of original screenplays, the rest are rehashed from older plots. Quite a few movies are just almost carbon copy remakes, others add some current affairs or new technology but essentially the plot remains the same. Some perform as well as the older, others bomb and yet others make far more. So will smith took his real son and made a movie about crashing landing on earth and taking a perilous journey to escape a few years back and we'll say it wasn't exactly a success.. So Adam driver decides to make a movie about him crashlanding on earth 65 million years ago and finding another survivor, then they must journey across a landscape strewn with dangerous dinosaurs to find the escape craft. Sounds familiar ? There's a paternal child angle here too and apart from the action scenes which are decently executed, the director tries to add this extra emotional dimension to give the movie some depth and latitude. It is interesting that they...

Guy Ritchie and Jason statham are one of those combinations that seems to keep striking cinema gold. With a string of hits under their belts can they conjure up another hit and make their fortunes? The concept and plot are hardly new. Jason plays an action man of mystery working for yet another agency for the UK government to stop a rogue AI program from causing global meltdown. The movie is very much by the books, he first assembles his team, a motley crew of individuals with 'skills' and there's is of course a rival team to make the job at hand more difficult. The villain here is our versatile and reliable hugh grant who has mastered the transition from the debonair romantic leading man to playing likeable or funny antagonists who are bad but not vile, or at least don't terribly cruel. It's almost impossible to not smile at his antics and mannerisms as he plays a good counterfoil to Jason and his team. Josh hartnett has been given a reprieve but there i...

In the old days, when you wanted a home theatre system, there will be at least 5 speakers, a subwoofer and plenty of cables snaking around the home, plus a host of boxes of Blu Ray, CD players, a radio and more. These days, your TV is smart enough to have all the apps to stream the latest movies and a single HDMI cable to your soundbar will allow you to experience better dialogue and potentially a decent surround experience. But not all soundbars are created equal and just because there is an Atmos sticker on the box does not guarantee a wonderful surround experience. Bose has been rather late into the game of Atmos, having entered earlier with decent efforts like the 300 and 700. These gave a very significant boost to the vocals and dialogue, some left and right directionality and sounded more than half decent for music too. They also had internal streaming options which allowed you to listen to the internet radio and other music streaming options. Then came the 900 and it has bee...

In the past, a stereo system was the staple in every living room. Apart from the sofa, there will be a TV and the radio. If you had space, there will be a multi-deck system, with an equaliser, radio, cassette deck and the amp, flanked by a pair of speakers.  When home theatre became popular, the pair of speakers then became five and more, but things changed, especially when homes became smaller. The soundbar reigned in many domestic settings, but there are some issues with a soundbar. When you take the same budget and divide it up into more channels, the main thing that suffers is sound quality.  However, you may want domestic bliss and keep the two speaker layout minus the cables and multiple boxes, so are there alternatives? And the answer is yes! The powered speaker used to be the preserve of computer users, who use it as alternatives to their built in speakers. It added volume and fidelity. Then someone felt that it was a good idea to use it in a room for music, and KEF ca...

​   Singapore is located in the tropics, with frequent downpours and some of these can be torrential. If you look up the weather channel or app, it's quite hit and miss, but occasionally, our weather guys get it right. This afternoon was one of them, and there was a pretty big downpour coming back from the goat farm in the Choa Chu Kang area, all the way back to my home.  So I had to drive on single lanes, dips, potholes then hit the expressway, and the PIE has stretches which are covered in water. Not submerged mind you, which is requires another skillset, but basically there is a few inches of water on the surface and that can be even more dangerous. I witnessed all kinds of driving patterns and as a means of getting it off my chest and also to share and solicit tips on how best to navigate such roads in safety. So here goes TLDR Firstly, make sure your car is up to shape. That means proper tires that aren't slicks that are worn to the barest. Brakes that wo...

Covid has intensified the rebirth of the Home Theatre system, and that begins with a TV upgrade. But after buying that fancy TV, with the latest apps and 4k resolution, you think you're in TV heaven, enjoying some high quality images. However when you begin streaming movies that indicate they are master in Atmos, somehow the sound is flat. Or worse, even for free to air TV broadcasts, the dialogue is not very audible and the TV speakers don't even go that loud. Well, with the advent of wafer thin TV sets, there is no more room to put proper speakers inside. Don't let those specs of "20W per channel with subwoofer" fool you. Some TVs even say they are Atmos equipped.  Remember, to get a full home theatre surround experience, you need sound to come from the front, the sides and for Atmos, from the top, or at least have sound bounce off surfaces so they sound like they are not just radiating from the front.  Many home owners who live in smaller settings and are not a...