Year: 2009

Punisher : War Zone

The other day I watched “Punisher : War Zone“. It turned out to be quite bad. Even awful at times. Yes, there were some special effects and action, but it didn’t make up for a complete lack of story, horrible acting, loads of nonsense.

The worst ever was the mafia boss, who was speaking half-English and half-Italian. Even without knowing any Italian, it’s obvious that he was way off the accent. For audience sake, didn’t the guy at least watch some other films with Itlalian mafia bosses? Crap.

Overall, a 2 stars. Try to avoid.

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

Yesterday I went to see “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3” in the cinema. I expected it to be good, having seen the trailer and knowing that it was directed by Tony Scott and featuring Denzel Washington and John Travolta. But it happened to be even better than I expected.

There is more to the story than shown in the trailer. There is more suspense, than can be guessed from the trailer. And there is some good acting to be seen, both by Washington and Travolta.

Sometimes the film reminds of another Tony Scott and Denzel Washington venture – “Man on Fire”, however not as a copy of a previous work but rather an expansion of it. This is especially so during the cuts of the New York City.

Overall, a good entertainment that will keep you on the edge of your seat for the whole during of the film. 5 stars.

Gmail solves the “on behalf of” issue

This is the day I’ve been waiting for for a few years now – Gmail solves the “on behalf of” issue.

If you are not familiar with it, the essence of it is this. You can use Gmail to manage your other, non-Gmail mail accounts. You can either forward mail automatically to your Gmail inbox, or even set a POP3 fetching from a remote server. In Gmail account settings you can add all the email addresses that you use, and then even reply from those email addresses.

However, due to Gmail not managing your other email accounts directly, it is forced to add a Sender header with a Gmail email address in it. And some email programs, like MS Outlook either get confused by it or interpret it in a certain way. So, if you use your me@gmail.com email address to manage your me@work.com email, and you reply to a message using a me@work.com in From, your colleague’s MS Outlook will show the email to be from “me@gmail.com on behalf of me@work.com”. This is ugly and there was no easy work around this.

Today Google added support for external SMTP servers. This way, you can configure your Gmail to use mail.work.com SMTP server when you send from me@work.com . And it comes from me@work.com , not me@gmail.com on behalf of me@work.com .

With this feature, Gmail practically becomes a full featured email client with support for POP3 for incoming mail and SMTP for outgoing mail. And these are great news!

The “on behalf of” issue was keeping quite a few folks from moving all their email accounts to Gmail. And not that the problem is solved I think more people will move over. Good times!

Demolition Man

“Demolition Man” was on TV yesterday. It’s an old movie and I’ve seen it a few times before, but it’s good to watch some films from the past once in a while to see how well they age. This one is actually still looking pretty good. There is an engaging story, plenty of shooting, and lots of comedy. Plus, the fact that it’s all about the future (as seen in 1993), and the future that we can see quite clear from today, makes it even funnier.

Overall, pretty good entertainment – 4 stars.

Sharpe’s Rifles

I spent the weekend watching Sharpe’s movies. I’ve heard a lot of good words about them, but couldn’t get my hands on the copy. Finally, I managed to get 14 films. I’m missing the last two episodes which were done recently, but I’ll get them too eventually.

The series are a collection of full length films – 1 hour 40 minutes each. It’s a history action set back in 1810’s during the Napoleon invasion of the world. A soldier by the name of Richard Sharpe (played by Sean Bean) is making a military career, being raised from the ranks (as opposed to being born a gentlemen). Each episode has some sort of a mission, or a situation to deal with, some romance, and lots of fighting. The films are also full of moral values, setting good examples. Except that one situation involving a French woman, which is of course arguable.

Each film is on its own and the series can be watched in random order, but if you do it sequentially, there is a little bit more to enjoy of it. Also, one thing that I wanted to note is the quality of the films – all of them are done like they are a one really long movie. No episode is better or worse than any other episode.

Overall, really good stuff – 5 stars.