Ady's Blog

Warning: might contain spoilers.

There are so many movies being released and I can’t get to them all. I watched Die Hard 4.0 last Saturday after 5 calls to the GSC Movie Reservation lines.

Die Hard 4.0 is one of the best installment from the Die Hard movie series. If you have watched the previous 3 like me, you can actually detect certain changes in style and maturity to the movie. The character of John McClane does seems to be more matured and you can see now he’s an old guy with a teenager daughter. However it is good to know that the bad-ass character and all the things he is willing to do is still preserved in this movie. The only McClane family member in this movie is Lucy, and his wife Holly did not appear. Like her mom, Lucy also refuses to use the last name McClane and used Gennero – until being saved, of course.

The final moment with the villain when he shot himself to let the bullet to go through is the best moment of the movie. That is what I think, anyway. As someone who likes aircraft technologies (and afraid to board them) it is cool to see the F35 which can hover like a Harrier. It is almost ridiculous however for a guy to stay alive after being bombarded and shot by a fighter jet. The multi million dollar jet finally crashed and the pilot ejected.

Did anyone notice the 4.0 number instead of 4? That is definitely related to the nature of issue in this movie – which is IT where a bunch of hacker headed by an ex-Government specialist attacked the whole country’s infrastructure to make his point that the security level is just not strong enough. One interesting thing is that when all of the western power grids are down, Warlock was able to get online with no problems at all. How does he connect to the Internet? Does his generator (or any alternative power supply he uses) also supplied power for the miles and miles of cabling? Bear in mind that at that moment the satellites were all taken down as well. I have to know how he did that as my home area have power failures almost once a month taking the phone lines down along!

There are many heart-pumping moments in this movie such as the patrol car that rammed to a helicopter, the SUV falling down the elevator shaft killing the bad girl played by Maggie Q, and many others.

For some, however this movie is just a movie with no sentimental values. For those who has been following all of the Die Hard movies, this movie is definitely must watch and very satisfying.

How do you like Die Hard 4.0?

Warning: Might contain spoilers.

I skipped my weekly swimming exercise yesterday and went out to Summit Parade to watch Transformers. We thought that the cinemas will not be full as it is a week day but we were wrong and ended up taking the first line of seat in the THX hall. Luckily in the THX hall the screen is a couple of meters away and we can still watch it with a bit of neck pain. Oh well.

As a guy who grew up watching Transformers cartoons this is indeed a very well made movie, and everything is exactly as it was except that they have to make it more realistic. The details on the robots are amazing and meticulously crafted, even all the rust and damages are clearly displayed. What I like the most is that the characters of the robots – exactly as I remembered them. The leadership of Optimus Prime, the coolness of Bumblebee, the rage of Megatron and the bad attitude of Starscream.

And the voice of Optimus Prime at the beginning of the movie is hard to miss. Any Transformers fan will know that deep voice:

Before time began, there was… the cube. We know not where it comes from, only that it holds the power to create worlds and fill them… with life. That is how our race was born. For a time we had lived in harmony, but like all great power, some wanted it for good… others, evil. And so, began the war. A war that ravages our planet until it was consumed by death. And the cube was lost to the far reaches of space. We step in across the galaxy hoping to find it and rebuild our home. Searching every star. Every world. And just when all hopes seem lost; message of a new discovery took us to an unknown planet called… Earth. But we were already too late.

It’s too bad however that Bumblebee is a 1976 Chevrolet Camaro instead of the original Volkswagen Beetle. Yes, I like him more as a Camaro but I still like to think of him as a Beetle and a tad disappointed by this change. At the starting of the movie however you can see that Bumblebee parked beside a yellow Beetle but trashed it to make sure that Sam will buy him 😉 At first, I was disappointed to see the rusty old Camaro but when he changed inside the tunnel my jaw was open with much awe. Bumblebee used to be cute, but now he looks sturdy but he still have his cool.

Here’s a photo of the old Bumblebee as a Beetle that I found in the Internet:

The overall movie quality is very good, but the battles seems to be quite speedy for me to follow. A lot of details are missing because of the high speed battle between the robots. However this is normal for a movie with huge bots like this and I still I love it a lot.

Do you know that this movie is not the first Transformers movie? In 1986 Transformers The Movie was released but it was an animation. I didn’t remember watching it since I was a little kid at that time and cinemas is not common during those days.

Thanks to Michael Bay for producing a good movie like this. Transformers have surely brought back a lot of memories…