Wednesday 6 July 2011

Critique: Immigrant Drivers Are Safer

What a load of horse manure is this?! According to research from Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre's Dr. Donald Redelmeier, new immigrants get into fewer major accidents than long-term residents.

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20110706/imigrant-drivers-safe-110706/

Unfortunately, I haven't found the actual study and have only been able to read the articles from various news media sites. According to his statement in the CTV article, "So we're not looking at violations of (driving) etiquette, we're looking at serious crashes that end you up in the emergency department and hospitalized."

This does NOT mean that new immigrant drivers are safer! He said himself that they weren't looking for violations of etiquette, which means they could very well likely have been the cause of somebody else's crash! The article continues to read:

"The study, published in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention, found immigrant drivers' comparative risk of being in a nasty collision was lowest in the initial years following arrival, but still persisted beyond the fifth and sixth years of the eight years each person was tracked"

My reasons after the jump

Movie: Resident Evil - Apocalypse (2004)

Rating: C

A perfectly written, well acted, brilliantly directed film this is not. But I love it! It's a movie that thanks the fans of the game by adding lots of easter eggs and paying homage to the game, not by staying true to the game's storyline, but taking enough of the game's aspects, and spinning out a different story altogether. And most importantly, not taking itself too seriously.



Was it a brilliant cinematic feature? Absolutely not. And it's not supposed to be. It's a popcorn movie through and through with hot girls in great outfits kicking zombie ass. Normally, I'm bothered by holes in movies, but in this case, who cares! I mean seriously. Why do zombie dogs all look like demonised dobermans? What, Chihuahuas can't be infected too? And what about cats? Bunny rabbits? Chickens? Mosquitoes? Probably would have been a better idea to have left out the fluffies. But who cares. It was fun to watch.

Milla Jovovich returns to lead the charge against the undead as Alice. One of the best things in the entire series is Alice's wardrobe. Bad ass, sexy, and totally awesome. Yes, I'm sure I sound like a total pimply faced teenaged gamer drooling over this character, but that's part of the appeal of this series. Again, don't take it seriously. Enjoy the physically impossible stunts Alice and her crew pull off. Oh, and I have no idea who this Sienna Guillory is, she can't act a lick, and I TOTALLY wish that they would have just kept her natural accent, but she looked spot on as Jill Valentine, and that's again, awesome.

As long as they keep pumping this series out, I'm likely going to keep buyin' the popcorn.

~Cheers.

Monday 4 July 2011

Movie: After.Life (2009)

Rating: C-

You give credit where credit is due. I love movies that leave you wanting for more. I love movies that use misdirection. I love movies that make you scratch your head and make you think. But After.Life is a movie that seems to be puzzling for the sake of puzzlement.



Conceptually, I thought the movie was fantastic. But the application and execution were less so. From the trailer, you already know what the movie is about. Is Christina Ricci's character dead? Or the other question if you like; is Liam Neeson's character a gifted mortician or a deranged psychopath? I commend Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo for her effort of trying to keep the audience in limbo about what the truth is in both questions, but her effort ends up in a tired tedium. And it would have been less of a problem if there weren't so many holes in the movie. The result is that you end up not caring either way somewhere around 30 minutes into the movie.

I loved the use of Hydronium Bromide (spoiler alert if you click) in the movie. I thought Liam Neeson's portrayal as a chillingly nice, potentially gifted, probably deranged mortician to be outstanding. I'm confused at the point of Christina Ricci's, otherwise decent performance, nakedness for the majority of her scenes. And I am completely disappointed at how obvious these performances made evident, Justin Long's inability to act.

~Cheers.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...