Author:  MikeW     Date: 2017-10-09T03:02:05+00:00+00:00

BladeRunner 2049 Quick Review (7/10)

Review

Blade Runner 2049 is the sequel to the 1982 file Blade Runner. The main character is a policeman named K (Ryan Gosling) whose job it is to hunt down and kill rogue androids. This is troubling since K himself is an android and knows it. Talk about a sucky job.

The movies' plot center's around two things. First, K's last case results in the discovery of a few mysteries. The deeper he digs into the case, the more dangerous life becomes for him. Second, the relationship between K and and his girlfiend Joi (Ana de Armas) grows as the story unfolds. This is probably the best part of the movie.

The movie is definitely worth seeing and I'm giving it a 7/10. The score is not higher because of some of the issues I have with the movie. Some of which has to do with the original movie that I am a big fan of. My reasoning shall follow in the spoiler section.

Also, Warner Bros made three shorts to help explain what happened between the two movies.

Spoilers follow stop here if you have not seen the movie!!!!


Spoilers: Dislikes

The Soundtrack

The original soundtrack by Vangelis is one of the greatest movie soundtracks of all time. The electronic sounds adds a sense of wonderment and beauty to what is a somewhat bleak setting. Clearly a tough act to follow.

The new soundtrack is sort of a bad homage to the original with really loud fog horns thrown in. The music is loud and distracting, the opposite of what a good soundtrack should be.

The Villan

Wallace (Jared Leto) is the new genius who took over the Tyrell corporation. In the first movie, Eldon Tyrell felt like a brilliant genius business man, charismatic but a little odd. However, Wallace sounds like a teenage stoner reading fortune cookie messages. Everything, Wallace says is supposed to sound "smart", but just sounds lame and two dimensional to me. I really wish the character had been written better so Jared Leto has more to work with.

Dystopian Discontinuity

In the original film, the world was dystopian because so many people had left earth. J. F. Sebastian had the entire floor of an apartment building to himself. Things were falling apart because it felt like no one was left to fix them.

The new movie makes it seem like overcrowding is the issue. That hardly makes any sense given the short time span between the movies (30 yrs). Very annoying.

Everyone a racist?

Every human in the movie is a racist anti-replicant. Except for Deckard, who may or may not be human. Really? Everyone? Just seems over the top to me. If things were really that bad, humans would still be killing every replicant they could get their hands on.

Outside the City?

Any time a dystopian movie leaves a city, it seems clear to me that none of the movies creators have ever left the city, or lived outside a city. The orphanage, the memory lab, just seemed really silly. There is like 1 dude raising like 5000 orphans???? Really???? He would spend all his time shaving their heads. lol.

Comments

K and Joi

The K and Joi relationship was one of the best things about the movie. Well written and acted. The two characters really cared for each other. Towards the end of the movie when K encounters a giant ad for Joi, that was so heartbreaking. You could really feel his loss.

Robot Revolution

I could not quite figure out the whole replicant uprising underground thing. The implication seemed to be that the replicants were breeding? And were increasing their numbers for the eventual revolution? Or maybe they figured out how to manufacture new replicants themselves??? Didn't quite understand that.

Good Ending

It was nice to explain and tie up the whole Rachael and Deckard thing. Well done. Also, K could still be alive even though they played the Tears in the Rain theme when he lied down on the steps.

Overall

Really good movie with a really great core story. My quibbles are really minor on the whole. If you haven't seen the original go see it, you will be glad you did.


Author:  MikeW     Date: 2017-09-29T22:47:26+00:00+00:00

Java EE Support added to Oracle Application Container Cloud

A new feature has been added to Oracle Application Container Cloud Service this month. Support for the Java EE 7 Web applications has been added as a container option. Therefore you can easily deploy your .war applications to the cloud.

We have added two OBEs explaining the new features.

First, this OBE should you how to deploy a sample application to Oracle Application Container Cloud Service.

Next, this OBE shows you how to connect a Java EE web application to Oracle Database Cloud Service.


Author:  MikeW     Date: 2017-06-26T04:33:29+00:00+00:00

Week of 6/25/2017

Haven't been on for a few weeks. Here are some stories I found interesting in the last couple of weeks.

Narcos Quick Review (4/5)

Just finished season 2 of Narcos on Netflix. It is the story of Pablo Escobar and his drug cartel. If you haven't seen, it watch it. It is well acted and super interesting. I never really understood the level of violence that occurred in Colombia once his empire started to crumble. Not for the feint of heart if dislike excessive violence.

Wonder Woman Quick Review (5/5)

DC finally made a awesome comic book movie. (Suicide Squad was good, but it could have been soooo much better.) Gal Gadot was perfect for Diana. When she was first tipped for the role, I had my doubts given her super model background. However, she was super athletic and was very believable as a character that trained 5 or 6 hours a day. The movie moves really well considering its length. Hopefully, Gal will make 3 or 4 more movies just as good.


Author:  MikeW     Date: 2017-05-08T03:26:37+00:00+00:00

Weekly Update for Week of 5/7/2017

Just a few links this week. Saw Guardians 2 on Friday. I give it a 4/5. The movie is a lot of fun, but felt a little predictable at times. The visuals are amazing. Not gonna say anything else as it would be easy to give away spoilers on this movie.


Author:  MikeW     Date: 2017-04-27T03:44:08+00:00+00:00

Iron Fist Quick Review

I just finished watching Iron Fist on Netflix and I have a few thoughts. A lot of sites have given the show some pretty negative reviews, pointing to the acting, and the story. To me the real issue is with the later and not the former.

The story centers around Danny Rand. An heir to a corporate dynasty. He and his family were lost in the Himalayas some 15 years ago and all presumed dead in a plane crash. However, Rand shows up in New York to reconnect with his past only to find no one believes him. Luckily for Danny he has mad Kung Fu skills which help navigate the big city and corporate politics.

The acting was just fine. Finn Jones made a good Danny Rand, given the material. Jessica Henwick was great as Colleen Wing. Rosario Dawson gave another good performance as Clair. Finally a special shout out to David Wenham as Harold Meacham. A nice job of making a creepy character seem likable and at times sympathetic. Not easy to do.

So the real issue with the show is the story. Way way way, too much time is spent on the Meachams and their relationships. The end result is that Danny Rand is never really developed. He kind of comes across as a spoiled naive 10 year old with delusions of grandeur, basically, an incompetent super hero.

Now if you trained with Shaolin monks for 15 years becoming a super ninja, you would have some serious skills. Not only physical skills, but mental skills as well. You would have discipline, patience, be able plan, have infiltration skills, and probably a bunch of other stuff. Other than breaking into his old house in the first episode, Danny shows a complete lack of such skills. Yes he can fight, but he is always reacting to his opponents. Never thinks things through and is mostly an emotional basket case. Bruce Lee would be disappointed.

Anyway, one has gotta hope that in future series Marvel builds the character up a bit. A hero that does not act like one simply won't work. Especially in a martial arts based universe.

Let's hope the Defenders has more butt kicking and less crying.


Author:  MikeW     Date: 2017-04-06T23:23:27+00:00+00:00

Java Microservices MOOC

I just wanted to thank everyone who attended the Java Microservices MOOC that ran over the past 3 weeks at the Oracle Learning Library. It was fun doing the class.

And thanks to everyone at Oracle who helped me get the class done.


Author:  MikeW     Date: 2017-04-06T23:17:09+00:00+00:00

JDK 9 Early Access Docs Updated and Available

JDK 9 early access docs have been updated and are available. For more information check out this link:

JDK 9 EA Docs


Author:  MikeW     Date: 2017-03-20T03:46:36+00:00+00:00

Blue Sky Workshop Weekly post 3/19/17

Animista: CSS Animation Examples - A library of CSS animation examples. Looks cool.

Practical Color Theory for Coders - The page talks you through creating your own color schemes using CSS functions. Looks fairly complete and useful.

Windows Adding Ads to File Explorer and had to remove them - Ugh, more ads for Windows 10. Very annoying. I need to work hard at migrating myself to Linux desktops and laptops.

Windows Central: USB 3.0 Hubs - A good overview of what's out there.

Plex launches cloud based Media - From what I can glean from this, you can store your MP4 video files on Google Drive or Dropbox, and then stream them to Plex. The biggest issue would be uploading all of your movies and TV shows. Most of our upload speeds are still pretty slow. But once, you got it done, your files are in the cloud. That provides you with a lot of flexibility.

Firefox 52 Adds Web Assembly Features - The idea is to be able to load graphic intensive games from a browser. If the browser companies can get this stuff right, you could run other types of apps too.

Easy Java JSON parsing with Jsonifier - This looks like a cool library for JSON stuff.


Author:  MikeW     Date: 2017-02-13T04:15:59+00:00+00:00

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has made pictures of its collection available online for free.

Totally awesome if you would like to make wallpapers for your system. Lots of impressionist stuff.

Lenovo Launches $299 Yoga A12 Tablet

A $299 android tablet with a a built in keyboard touch screen. Very interesting. Will we see some cheap laptops soon?

Rust Rants: My Next Mac Mini

Another example of a Mac geek switching from OS X to Windows or Linux. Lots of folks making the switch since there is no inexpensive option for OS X (MacOS).

For me, it was a Intel Skull Canyon NUC with Windows 10 and an Ubuntu Linux VM. At some point, I'd like to go 100% Linux, but I'm not ready yet.

US Media Publications R

Want to know which US media sites get the most traffic? Well here are the facts.

Learn TensorFlow and deep learning, without a Ph.D.

Become an AI expert in just 3 hours! :)


Author:  MikeW     Date: 2017-01-09T04:25:35+00:00+00:00

Blue Sky Workshop Notes for Week of 1/8

Here are links to the stories and tools I found interesting this week and a few weeks back. The plan is to post once a week moving forward. Hope you enjoy it.

Bloomberg: GitHub Is Building a Coder’s Paradise. It’s Not Coming Cheap

jq a command line tool for searching json

Jakob Nielsen: The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think

Blade Runner 2049’s Practical Sets ‘Overwhelmed’ Ryan Gosling

Leonardo Da Vinci’s To Do List (Circa 1490) Is Much Cooler Than Yours

  

Cool Products

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