Cowboys and aliens (film review)

For some reason I expected a really corny comedy film, Cowboys and Aliens was anything but that, done straight the film was an unexpected pleasure.
The plot is aliens in the wild west, but there is a lot more to it than that, with superb 'hardman' acting from Daniel Craig, and Harrison Ford as the 'baddie' the film is a good ballance of acting and action.  Special effect are great, all in all a good evenings entertainment.
Waynes rating 8/10   well worth a watch.

Soldiers Beret, why can't films get them right?

Every time I see a British soldier in a film he's always wearing his beret like a bloody pork pie sitting up on top of his head, no real soldier wears his beret like that, don't films get proper advisers anymore?
I was a soldier, and we used to spend days shrinking and shaping our berets until they fitted like scull caps .No "pork pies" for us, and it was all the regiments not just ours, that was the way it's been done for years, you would think by now they'd start getting it right.

Braveheart.
I suppose we must blame Hollywood, after all getting historical things right isn't their strongpoint, take the film Braveheart, they have the Scots weraing kilts, about 400 years early, the British soldiers weraing uniforms (they didn't in those days they had normal clothes) Then theres the Scots paint thier faces blue, err that was in Roman times guys, do try to keep up.  The other major error is the Stirling bridge, it played a major part of the real battle but is pretty much left out of the film

U571
Here again Hollywood screwed up, first off the Americans never actually sunk or captured the real U571 (it was sunk  by an Australian plane off Ireland in 1944) Secondly by 1942 several Enigma machines had already been captured (The first capture took place in February 1940, when the U-33 was taken by HMS Gleaner off the coast of Scotland.} Thirdly the Enigma had actually been deciphered almost a year before this film is set – and seven months before the US entered the second world war.
The film seems loosly based on  Operation Primrose ( 6 may 1941) where HMS Bulldog (a British navy ship) captuerd an inigma machine and more importantly code books, to add insult to injury they had the cheek to praise the real sailors who captured the machine, if they cared why make up a load of rubbish about the story in the first place.

Updates ???

I'm starting to really HATE bloody updates.  Recently my son turned off a computer during a windoze (yes that's the way I spell it!) update and it killed the computer, I had to re-install windoze and start again, it seems you can't restore to before a service update, bloody stupid if you ask me, especially as they tend to have "issues" with them all the time.

Take Adobe Photoshop, a recent update now requires the users to put in the serial number every time they use the software, ohh Adobes aware of the issues and issued a fix, that didn't work either though, so some people are still struggling to use the software they bought that worked fine till an update.

Then theres Adobe Acrobat.....  So badly made it needs 3 or 4 updates a WEEK! to fix it    My God how bad has it got to be to need that? and even turning the updates feature off doesn't stop the bloody thing bombarding you with messages to "remind" you theres an update available, so many people are getting fed up that theres now loads of websites dedicated to helping them find a replacement.

I had a windoze update today, and it tried to auto shut down my computer to finish updating (I didn't want the update never mind the shut down) not only does it install itself on MY computer, but it's so stupid it can't even tell I'm actually doing something on the PC when it's trying to force a closure How dare windoze take over my paid for properly without my consent of permission, worse theres no option to stop the bastard thing, only shut down later (wich turns out to be about 5 minutes) I had to run a dos command in the end to kill the beggar.

Company of heroes (film review)

Plot.
American soldiers lost behind enemy lines during the WWII make a horrific discovery: Hitler has a super bomb in development. Against all odds, they set out to find the scientist in charge of the program who is looking to defect.

Now I always watch war films with a certain amount of caution, the trouble is being an ex-soldier I see the mistakes, some films are terrible, others pretty good, this one falls about midway.
The uniforms and weapons look about right which is a plus, but they still get basic things wrong, like soldiers smoking at night behind enemy lines (not a good idea) and worse the squad being bunched up all the time, in the real word they'd be about 15 meters apart at least, otherwise one good burst of fire and their all dead.

The film started looking very promising, a routine delivery patrol turns into stopping Hitlers atomic bomb, sadly though I didn't really enjoy the film, I didn't find most of the characters engaging or believable, and things started to get a bit far fetched when the small patrol took on a tank supported by infantry, after that things went downhill getting less and less believable.

A good idea, but could have been a lot better if it'd had been made a bit less "gung ho"

Waynes rating 5/10

Adverts?

What is wrong with companies these days, I remember when adverts were normal sensible things, you know "Freds hair cream, it sticks your hair down!" that told you the name and what it did, now we get terrible adverts, but if you look closer you'll see they may be saying the opposite to what the company want!

Car adverts.   Theres an ad for a car that shows it being dropped from a plane, built as it falls and then driving underwater, very clever, but the message I get is.... this car was put together in a hurry by people who had more important things on their minds (gravity) you'll think your driving underwater as it'll leak so much, and what happens when some silly bugger actually tries to drive one underwater... after all the advert showed it doing it... law suit here we go.

Car insurance adverts.  These here in the UK are bloody awful, they all more or less have one thing in common, they don't actually talk about insurance or what happens if your unlucky enough to have an accident.  Talking dogs, mearkats, and stupid opera singers say to me, we know bugger all about car insurance (and not a lot about advertising either) but we'll have a gimmicky advert to sucker you in and take your money. God help if you have a bump because we haven't a clue what to do then, maybe we'll just send you a stuffed meerkat?