Jakob Montrasio’s Net.

Unfinished Business.

// February 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // Videography

Sex And The City: The Movie or How To Destroy 6 Seasons in 148 Minutes.

// August 18th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Videography, Videography - Digital Versatile Disc, Videography - Reviews

Marriage makes you do things you never thought you’d do. Like watching TV series such as Sex And The City or Desperate Housewives. But, as it is normal in a relationship, you compromise. My wife watches testosterone filled action movies with me every once in a while and I watch female movies that make me want to rip my eyes and ears out in return.

But I’d be lying if I’d say that I didn’t enjoy Sex And The City.

10 minutes or so into the first episode of the very first season, I was tempted to stand up and throw myself out of the window. But as we continued with the second and third episode, I slowly started to like it and to got rid of my hate. If you look over the boring fashion stuff in the series - as a man, of course - it’s quite an interesting show with more and more deep characters. And you can learn oh so much about women, seriously, it’s helpful.

Over the seasons, all the characters are faced with realistic problems and their friendship gets them through it. While it’s sometimes too american with all the emotions and stuff, it keeps on getting better and bigger, introducing more and more characters and poking fun at a lot of things. One episode, where Carrie has to fix her Mac even got me laughing real hard… Well done.

So, when the DVD with the movie finally got out in Shanghai two days ago, I immediately bought it and watched it that very same night with my wife, who had been looking forward to see it since I teased her with the first released trailer.

During the opening credits, I already got a bad feeling. They actually tried to introduce the most important characters of the show in two minutes or so, showing some snapshots of the seasons - but not really telling anything at all. You got the names, alright. But try to explain Samantha in 25 seconds. Her character is way too complex to be explained in that short amount of time. Or the hardships that Charlotte or Miranda went through in those six great seasons.

Wouldn’t it have been better to just say nothing, so that people who don’t know the series at all can build their own idea of them?

And then, this dump of a story started. Carrie wants to marry Mister Big, Mister Big wants to marry Carrie… And on the wedding day, Mr. Big doesn’t get out of his car? And Carrie leaves him? Huh? What did just happen?

Right there, after that scene, we should have taken the DVD out and burned it on the spot. But we didn’t, we continued to watch the movie and watched how it destroyed all the things the series build up in such a long time. Now it is one thing to have a bad story. But to change characters completely to get some dramatic story line going is just way out of borders. It’s not fair towards the fans.

Why in the hell would Mr. Big not get out of the car? The whole series, he has been the one chasing Carrie, he was the one who always knew exactly what he wanted and how to get it. Carrie would maybe not get out of the car, but Mister Big? Are you kidding me?

Well, from then on, everything felt fake. And characters like Harry, who were really cool in the series, were completely left out and got like 5 scenes totally. What the hell. But I guess to show a horny dog eff the hell out of pillows is funnier.

But the very worst of it all is that they actually pulled off to show the ending of the movie, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen this year so far. I wont spoil it, but damn, Hollywood. It’s an insult to anyone with a IQ over 50.

Director and writer Michael Patrick King really managed to mess everything up in 148 minutes. It’s a mystery to me why they accepted this screenplay in the first place and why they didn’t let Darren Star, the TV series writer, edit it. But I guess all the brands featured in the movie payed really well and none of the actors are getting any younger…

Let’s just hope they don’t make a second movie, as the rumors tell…

Shanghai crippled by Olympia.

// August 4th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // People's Republic of China, Photography - Shanghai, Videography - Digital Versatile Disc

My brother’s in town during his summer vacation, and that was reason enough to visit a fake market yesterday. He wants to stock up on some nice things. We went to the nearest one on Nanjing road, but were shocked to learn that Olympia has reached even to there. No watches available. No DVD’s. No fake iPhones. Nada.

Of course, they have insane amounts of faked T-Shirts and other cheap stuff, but it felt liked a half-hearted fake market. And the shop keepers seemed kind of silent - I was asked to ‘looky looky’ only three times, and we spend almost an hour there. Weird. Really weird. And police! We passed police guys like three or four times. The security seems rather strong there at the moment, too.

So we only bought half of what we wanted, we didn’t find any fake Nike shoes (what!), only these fugly Crocs everywhere and 90’s Converse sneakers. Back to the future, baby. I wonder what the shopkeepers eat during Olympia, their income will probably be pretty low.

Then we went to two different DVD stores, while I really want that new Angelina Jolie movie WANTED my brother wanted some TV-series. WANTED is out on the net as a downloadable DVD image, so I was pretty sure that the stores would have a DVD-9 already. Wrong.

They told me that until after Olympia, there will be no new movies arriving. None.

And last week, I went to a pharmacy to buy some stomach ache fighting medicine for my wife which I had bought there before, only to learn that you now need to go to the hospital to buy certain kinds of medication - ‘until Olympia is finished’.

Damn. I never thought that this 800 kilometer far away event would ever really ‘touch’ my life in some way. But it does. Not in a good way.

Grand Theft Auto IV sucks.

// July 15th, 2008 // 11 Comments » // Technology, Videography - Reviews

Yesterday night, I finally managed to finish the last mission. I’m now 70-something percent through the game, only having side missions and other stuff left. But I’m not gonna play that anymore. I am so damn bored from the game!

I’ve played GTA. GTA II. GTA III. Vice City. San Andreas. I enjoyed them all, except San Andreas, and after reading some reviews of GTA 4 it became clear that I would love it. And I did, for the first three days or so. I really enjoyed driving around Liberty City in 1080P Full HD listening to cool radio stations in Dolby Digital with awesome music and all.

Don’t get me wrong, visually the game is absolutely gorgeous, the best there is at the moment probably, the radio stations are great as always… There’s only one problem, and that’s a big one: The missions are so boring. So unbelievable boring.

They keep repeating themselves too much. GTA 3 and Vice City had missions that rocked so hard, they were always different and tough but yet manageable. GTA 4 has some cool missions, the bank robbery for example, or the last one. But 95% of the missions are in the end like this: You drive 5 minutes to the contact mission point. Then you drive 5 minutes to point A to pick something up. Then you drive 5 more minutes to bring it to point B. Then you drive 5 minutes back to the contact mission point for the next mission. And so on.

C’mon! One helicopter mission with shooting? And I don’t even shoot myself? Where are the tanks, the military? Why is there no mission to blow up a landing or starting airplane? Why do I only fly that idiot Brucie around all the time? Why are there 50 car pick-up missions that take hours to complete and that are not different at all?

Do young people nowadays enjoy simply driving through huge digital cities all the time?

And the police is a goddamn joke in this part. One star is like no star. Two stars are easy to get rid off, too. Three stars? Just drive fast on a long street. Four or five stars? Get to a paint shop. Boring! Too easy!

And then there’s some five missions that are so unbelievable difficult that you wonder who the hell made them and why he didn’t invent all of them. The best mission anyway, in any GTA game, was the golf club mission in GTA 3. That mission was difficult, funny, challenging, rememberable, it could be solved in different ways… Now that was a mission that you’ll never forget. I’ll remember GTA 4 as the game where I had to drive around 95% of the playing time. And that’s just sad, isn’t it?

You failed to impress me, Rockstar. Sorry. It’s great to see that you’re using all the technology to create these wonderful, colorful, vivd worlds for players - but next time, increase the budget for those who develop missions. Then it’ll be truly great.

Digg this review.

Awesome: Film Geek Graffiti!

// March 23rd, 2008 // No Comments » // Videography

The website /film has collected quite an amount of graffiti containing movies… Some of them are a bit crazy, why other just rock:

If you look around the streets, you’ll sometimes find film geek graffiti. Here is a collection of some of the better street art we have come across around the interwebs.

Here is my favorite.

Review: CJ7.

// March 10th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Videography, Videography - Reviews

Stephen Chow gained international fans with his last two movies, namely Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle - especially teenage fans and people in their twenties. CJ7 is his attempt to gain access to a even younger audience, as it really is a children movie - what a pity!

To be brutally honest, CJ7 is Chow’s more crazy interpretation of Disney’s Blubber or Flubber or whatever the name of that Robin Williams comedy was. Of course CJ7 features a more asian humor, but it’s way more family-friendly than his previous works. Chow plays a poor construction site worker named Ti, alone with his son. To provide a better future for his child, he spends every cent earned for an expensive private school for him. No money is left for toys, but lucky Ti finds a big gum ball on a trash site while searching for goods in the middle of the night. This ‘toy’ eventually finds his way into the hands of his boy, who is even able to ‘activate’ it into an cute alien being - chaos and fun start.

The biggest problem this movie has is it’s running time: Just when the movie is about to find it’s right pace and speed, it’s already over. It takes too long for CJ7 to finally appear alive and kicking on the screen, and Chow makes too little use of the lovely thing in various scenes. There are maybe three jokes that make you laugh out loud, but mostly you will just giggle here and there a bit. It’s a little bit funny to see Chow quote his own older movies every once in a while, but isn’t it also a bit too early for that? In 2010, Kung Fu Hustle 2 is supposed to be released - by then, most of us will have already forgotten about CJ7…

Conclusion: Too short, too childish fun. ** out of *****.

综述： cj7 。

// March 10th, 2008 // No Comments » // Videography, Videography - Reviews

周星驰获得国际歌迷与他的上两部影片，分别是少林足球和功夫-尤其是十几岁的歌迷和人民在二十多岁。 cj7是他企图获得更年轻的观众，因为它的确是一个儿童电影-真是非常可惜！

被残酷地诚实， cj7是议员的更加疯狂的解释，迪士尼的blubber或flubber或其他任何名义表示，罗宾威廉斯喜剧是。 当然cj7具有更多的亚洲幽默，但它的方式更加关爱家庭，比他以往的作品。 周扮演一个贫穷的地盘工人，命名为钛，单独与他的儿子。 为了提供一个更美好的将来，他的孩子，他所花的每一分钱都获得了一个昂贵的私人学校为他的。 没有钱，是留给玩具，但幸运的钛认定一个大胶球上的垃圾站点，同时寻找物品，在半夜时分。 这’玩具’ ，最终认定其进入交给他的男孩，更是无法’激活’ ，它成为一个可爱的外星人正-混沌与乐趣的开始。

最大的问题，这部电影已是它的运行时间：当电影是找到它的正确发展步伐和速度，它已经结束了。 需时太久，为cj7终于出现活着，并脚踢在屏幕上，和周令太少，使用的，可爱的东西，在不同的场景。 有可能是三个开玩笑说，让你笑出来，但大多只需将以此嘲笑这里有丝毫动摇。 这有点搞笑，看看周引述他自己的旧电影，每一次在一时，但，是不是也有点太早是什么？ 在2010年，功夫二是能得到释放-届时，我们大多数人已经忘记了c j7…

结论：时间太短了，太幼稚好玩。 **走出*****.

John Rabe - Little Report, With Video!

// February 27th, 2008 // No Comments » // People's Republic of China, Photography - Shanghai, Videography

When Ben commented to my last post about the pictures from the movie John Rabe, I just headed over to YouTube to see if anything had been released there - officially or not. Sadly, I found no trailer - but a little report! DW, Deutsche Welle, was on the set reporting and seemed to have been allowed to capture some stuff with their cameras.

Now the bad side: The video is almost half an hour long and over 60 megabyte big.

But I watched through it and the John Rabe part is right at the beginning! So just watch it until the report of John Rabe is finished, the rest has nothing to with it anymore.

Here we go:

Official John Rabe(约翰拉贝) pictures.

// February 26th, 2008 // 3 Comments » // People's Republic of China, Photography, Videography

Most of my friends know what I’ve been doing during the last three months: working with the VFX team on the german movie John Rabe. Sadly, no trailer has been officially released yet so I don’t really have anything to show. But! ‘Majestic Film Verleih’, the company who will bring the movie to german cinemas this year (or so I hope) released 8 official press pictures.

So here you go, a little something to feed your appetite in regards to this movie. 8 pictures!

Dr. Georg Rosen (Daniel Brühl), employee of the german embassy, tries to handle the threat in regard of the chinese civilians in diplomatic ways.
(Picture: Majestic / Ruggero Rossi)

Dr. Robert Wilson (Steve Buscemi), leader of Nanjing’s hospital, fights tireless for the survival of the people.
(Picture: Majestic / Tomoko Kikuchi)

Valérie Dupres (Anne Consigny), leader of the International Girls College, can’t enjoy the festivities - she’s worried about her students.
(Picture: Majestic / Tomoko Kikuchi)

Nazi Werner Fließ (Mathias Herrmann, 3.v.l.) is supposed to take John Rabe’s (Ulrich Tukur, 5.v.l.) place as the leader of the Siemens branch in Nanking.
(Picture: Majestic / Ruggero Rossi)

John Rabe (Ulrich Tukur) is desperate, the uncertain future worries him.
(Picture: Majestic / Jörg Gruber)

The members of the international committee for creating a safety zone (Ulrich Tukur, Anne Consigny, Steve Buscemi, Christian Rodska, Daniel Brühl, Shaun Lawton) don’t know how to handle the rush of 250.000 people at once.
(Picture: Majestic / Ruggero Rossi)

Dora Rabe (Dagmar Manzel) tries to convince her husband John (Ulrich Tukur) to leave Nanking.
(Picture: Majestic / Jörg Gruber)

Schoolgirl Langshu (Zhang Jingchu, 张静初), a student of Valérie Dupres, takes pictures of the japanese war crimes in Nanjing.
(Picture: Majestic / Tomoko Kikuchi)

Well, that’s it. As soon as Majestic releases more pictures and / or a trailer, I’ll post it.

Academy Award Babes…

// February 25th, 2008 // No Comments » // Videography

In case you’re more interested in how the female audience of the Academy Awards looked like then in which movies actually won something, here we go…

Canadian website JoBlo.com has put online three big galleries with all the actresses you could wish for.

Part one contains the following celebrities:

Jessica Alba, Cameron Diaz, Heidi Klum, Nicole Kidman, Keri Russell, Katherine Heigl, Kelly Preston, Helen Mirren, Renee Zellweger, Vanessa Paradis, Jennifer Garner, Ellen Page, Diane Lane, Anne Hathaway, Penelope Cruz, Amy Adams, Kristin Chenoweth, Marion Cotillard and Hilary Swank.

Click here to see the first part.

Part two contains the following babes:

Penelope Cruz, Amy Adams, Anne Hathaway, Hilary Swank, Jennifer Garner, Cameron Diaz, Katherine Heigl, Keri Russell, Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, Kristin Chenoweth, Jessica Alba and Cate Blanchett.

Click here for part two.

And finally, part three with the following movie hotties:

Kate Beckinsale, Natasha Henstridge, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Christina Milian, Eva Herzigova, Sharon Stone, Petra Nemcova, Sofia Vergara, Radha Mitchell, Zhang Ziyi and Tia Carrere.

Click here to see these gorgeous women.

Thanks, JoBlo!