Written and directed by Gareth Evans, The plot is as much as it needs to be: a twenty-strong team of Indonesian riot police converge on a 30-storey tower block to take down a brutal (aren’t they all?) crime lord. The team is a mixture of battle-weary cops, fresh meat, hot-heads, and the lead of the film, Rama, played by Iko Uwais, star of Evans’ earlier film Merantau, which I’ll be checking out shortly. Rama is shown as a devout Muslim, a father-to-be and someone who loves early morning sit-ups, bag work and chin-ups, just like me. Kind of.

So, a short van-ride later (I think, the cinema ballsed-up the projection and cut off the subtitles, so I had to go inform them), they arrive at the tower, hook up with the raid leader and proceed. The spotters are taken care of, and the team start moving up floor by floor, encountering no resistance.

Well, until they do, in the form of an alarm given by young lad. It’s an actual alarm, with a foreboding drone, which is nothing compared to the chilling, monotone, passionless voice of Tama the crime lord, who informs the residents of the block that whoever helps to clear the “infestation” can live there rent free. As you would imagine, the inhabitants of the tower block aren’t exactly nice people (save a couple), so within a few minutes, all hell breaks loose.

From here on in, I don’t want to give too much away. Suffice to say, most of the team get cut down very early on, leaving a few main players. As the bullets run out, more, er, creative ways have to be found to dispatch of enemies, including a novel use of a fridge. In fact, in a very visual film, the sound direction of the explosion is done very well, with the high-pitch whine that signifies you’ve suffered hearing loss. The weapons sound very punchy too.

So, as the team lessen in number to guns, machetes, knives and axes, the core of the team have to fight their way out. Without giving too much away, there is another plot point (or two) that add to the film to keep it moving along. That said, the action direction being what it is, I would have happily watched them fight their way out anyway. Gareth Evans must have a lot of films in his library, as there are many influences. A stand-out one is a character called Mad Dog, played by Yayan Ruhian, a clear nod to John Woo’s Hard Boiled. He gets to take out Jaka, the team leader hand-to-hand in a thrilling scene, which is exceptionally brutal. He’s about a head shorter than, well, everyone but he’s very, very fast. And yes, I know it’s choreographed, but they’ve still got to throw those kicks and punches. There’s one piece where Mad Dog throws a kick, Jaka grabs the leg and just swings him into the doors of a cupboard. The poor guy gets tossed about a lot, actually…

But this is Rama’s film, and the action stays firmly centred on him. After safely depositing an injured team member with an unlikely ally, he tries to regroup with the rest of his team. He does so eventually, but not before dispatching people in a variety of manners, namely gun, knife (the thigh rends are particularly unpleasant), fists and a doorframe (don’t ask). Iko is a practitioner of the Indonesian martial art of pencak silat, but there’s also thai boxing in there, and a few others. Comparisons with the Thai martial artist Tony Jaa (star of Ong Bak, Warrior King, etc.) are possible, but I found the silat portrayed on screen to be more compact and less focused on large moves, which seem to be Tony Jaa’s signature moves (think flaming knees). There weren’t as many limb breaks as there were in Warrior King, however, and it’s good to see something different.

To sum up, the action is pretty much relentless, but it has structure, a plot driving it and great spectacle. I have no problem giving it a 10/10, and looking forward to picking up on Blu-Ray for all the special features.

Edited for a correction to the team leader’s name; it was Jaka, not Andi – my mistake, thanks to Melissa for spotting it

Well, TCITW turns all that on its head, kinda like the clever Rubik’s cube poster for it. From the very start, it is clear that something much larger is going on here, and there are other pointers along the way. TCITW progresses as you would expect, with jumps, scares and creepy rooms, and it’s all fun and games until some reads some Latin, and then all Hell breaks loose. The numbers are quickly thinned, and then we’re just left with the hero(ine). Maybe.

Without giving too much away, the five in the cabin are being monitored, but for what, we don’t know. This does lead to some very funny dialogue and situations, and also to some “aha!” moments, such as why do couples always have sex outdoors in the woods in these sorts of films? Why do they always split up to search somewhere?

The people doing the monitoring – well, they get a large slice of the film as well, and it is fun to figure out what is going on. It’s also good to see Winnifred Burkle (Amy Acker) again as a, well, whatever she is. Because of the monitoring, there are times that there is a lot happening on different video screens – there’s even something happening off in Kyoto, but I think I’ll need to watch it again as there was a lot in the last third that I missed.

Horror is not really one of my genres, so I’m sure I missed lots of nods to horror films, but I think I got some (there was a Cube nod, I’m sure). I’m no acting critic either, so in my eyes all of the actors did fine, fine jobs or conveying their emotions, from humour to PANT-STAINING terror

I can’t really write much more without starting to give stuff away, so I’ll just end with some choice quotes, which won’t be funny until you’ve seen the film – and maybe not even then

“I’m still on speaker-phone?”

“Good one, zombie hand”

“He has a husband’s bulge”

All in all, see it. The less you know going in, the better, and the last third is a riot. A solid 10/10 from me.

After trawling t’interweb for answers, I came across a solution that worked on a helpful board somewhere, but I don’t remember the link. Basically, find the file ASPDaemon.exe in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Apple\Apple Application Support\, and either rename it (i.e. ASPDaemon.exe.old), or you can allegedly run it in Compatibility Mode for Windows XP Service Pack 3. I renamed it and it’s worked fine ever since.

Might help some people…

public Person GetByID(this List persons, personID)
{
    return persons.SingleOrDefault(p => p.PersonID == personID)
}

However, that then means I need to check for null after calling persons.GetByID(blah), which seems a bit odd for an explicit Get operation, as in “I’m sure this data is in here, if not, than an Exception would be permissible”.

So, now for extension method LINQ queries that use .SingleOrDefault I use FindByID to remind me to check for null afterwards, and my extension method GetByID now uses the LINQ .Single operator / thingy.

Very quick post, but there ya go

H/T to IGN PS3, natch

Awesome – a h/t to Old Holborn for it

I’ve never been that happy that a potential user has to install the .Net framework then the app, so I have decided to write the application for the Android OS, available on phones and tablets and sell it for a modest fee through Android Market.

I’ve not done Android development before, but the logic of the app remains the same, it’s just laying it out on screen that will be interesting, though I’m sure something else will come along to trip me up

Further updates will be posted; I’ve been Tweeting more than blogging so more blog posts should be forthcoming.

Pretty damn awesome, I’m looking forward to seeing this – after Captain America, Super 8, Immortals…

Without giving too much away – pay for your own seminar – he took us through an EVIL stretch warm-up but gave a few pointers that I wasn’t aware of, and then told us to make our lead leg the “third hand”, and then we went into lots of kicking drills, but drills that involved our partner, making contact, not just techniques on the spot.

Bill’s teaching style is, er, unique Certainly not what I was expecting at all, very humorous and got his point across very well. He’d stop us every now and again to correct our technique, or to give further pointers. He also discussed tactics in sparring, and the point I’ll remember most about the day is that “it’s always my turn”, i.e. if you’re attacking and your opponent is blocking, he can’t attack you. Bill’s plan when he fights is to make the opponent move to block and create an opening elsewhere that he can exploit. Several “volunteers” were used to make this point, and all fell for what Bill wanted to happen, e.g. block a few low (on the belt) kicks, finally exposing their head, then Bill just kicks straight to the head, and it’s goodnight. It should be noted that Bill ‘knocked out’ 13 opponents with kicks to the body, really nowhere is safe

For someone in his mid-60s (sorry, Bill) his flexibility is amazing, and his speed is incredible – but with it he has control. I can throw out a fairly decent height hook kick, but there’s not much control. When Bill was talking to me about I question I raised (going from a counter-fighter to a offensive fighter), he demonstrated how he’d make the change with working on the feints and speed, and before I knew it, bonk, he’d kicked me in the head. But it was just a tap, ridiculously light, but damn quick. Awesome.

At the end, there was a Q & A session (in which I asked my question just mentioned), but Bill also spoke about sparring with Joe Lewis, Tommy “The Hitman” Hearn and a boxer called Virgil Hill, all very interesting and entertaining. If you’ve seen Bill’s videos on YouTube, you’ll see that he favours his left leg – the reason for this is that when he started training in Karate (in Okinawa, obviously), he had his right knee in a cast from a high school wrestling injury, so the sensei said “start training, just use your left leg” and so he did and the rest is history.

What was really good was at the end of the seminar, he told us that we just learnt worked really well if you were Bill Wallace – we had to take what he had shown us and make it work for us, i.e. pick our favourite technique / feint, see what works for us, etc. Very good piece of advice as we are all different, physiologically and psychologically (e.g. I’m an arthritic cripple )

It was a great seminar, highly enjoyable, learnt a lot and yes, I even got a signed photo of him – well, you would, wouldn’t you? A huge thank you to Dean Williams of the PKA for organising it

I have not followed Silverlight that closely, or indeed, at all. It has come on in leaps and bounds and with the advent of Silverlight 5 (debuted at Mix11 I think) adds even more enterprise-level functionality. It is something I will most definitely be investigating for Intranet development and gives me an answer to my recent ponderings of “what next?”.

Then I saw Mix11′s keynote on HTML5 in IE9 on Windows 7 – holy crap. The FourSquare 80s retro pixel application running natively in the browser (i.e. no plugins) was fantastic, as was the SVG anime that looked like video but was all real-time. I know that other browsers are HTML5 compliant (as much as they can be, it’s a developing spec), but cripes, it was impressive. In fact, if you have a HTML5 browser (IE9, Chrome, FireFox), get on over to The World’s Biggest Pac-Man site, where there are hundreds of inter-connected Pac-Man mazes to work through – as you exit the maze from the sides, you automatically go to the next maze.

Sure, it’s a game, sure it can be done on PC, games consoles, etc., but it’s running natively in a browser. HTML5 will open up a huge, rich experience on the internet and it’s also something I must investigate.

So, to sum up, 1 + 1 = 2. Ha. Seriously, I would look to Silverlight for intranet business applications where you can guarantee that the end user will have to install Silverlight, and HTML5 for “Joe Public” internet sites. Mind you, if Silverlight continues on its path, it may be shipped as part of the next Windows OS, or a Service Pack, or people will just come to see it as Flash-like, and just install it anyway.

Interesting times

Also, can’t I have you both? I’d buy that for a dollar!

Although this has been known for a while, the Yes vote group has received a substantial amount of financial sponsorship / backing / bribe from the Electoral Reform Commission, who just so happen to be in charge of running elections in the UK. They also just so happen to make £millions if we move to an AV system; as usual Guido Fawkes has the story. It is a grubby little band, and if people vote for AV, more and more grubby coalitions will be formed for years, with the chance that there will never be an outright winner again.

There are two things you should know about AV:

1. It is only used in three countries, and of those, two want to get rid of it
2. Nick Clegg wants it

The second point is enough to convince me to vote No.

Anyhoo, here’s my good friend Alan B’Stard to explain why AV is a terrible, terrible idea:

Please note that you’ll need to watch it all the way through…

VOTE NO TO AV.

Rally Against Debt

This is certainly a great cause – anything to show the State-addicted that the private sector is no longer willing to support them is A Good Thing

Rally Against Debt

Any visits to Fortnum and Mason’s by protestors will only be to marvel at their selection of quality goods and perhaps make the occasional purchase.

I think this is a great idea – it should not be hijacked by any left-wing anarchic idiots as the UK Uncut march on the 26th was. Mind you, the majority of the people in the march were just left-wing idiots, scared at seeing their State-supplied lifestyle being cut off. I firmly believe that more, deeper cuts will be required, preferably diversity co-ordinators instead of front-line services.

I work for a living, I have a private pension, will be losing Child Benefit in a couple of years, and can’t even get a required operation on the NHS despite barely using the NHS over the years. I require nothing from the State, and as such, the State should require nothing from me – it even takes taxes under threat of violence.

Perhaps this is what I should point the remainder of my life at – the shrinking / rolling back of the intrusive State…

Anyway, I was thinking of collating them into a book, but then realised it would be more of a pamphlet, no-one would buy it, hard work and effort is meant to be free these days (thanks to the internet), etc.

I still might tho’, as I have a lot of real-world, pragmatic experience on how software development usually happens (badly in most places), and if you are able to introduce your own rules to your own work, it gives the illusion of control. It would be more of a tips book, with things like “Specs? Hahahaha!” and “Tab spacing is your friend”.

Well, it might help junior developers

Anyway, it’s more like a series of blog posts, so I’ll probably go with that, and then tweet the post URLs accordingly – stay tuned!

First, a better-than-expected trailer for Captain America. It’s about a small, weedy man who gets turned down for the US Army in the Second World War and – wait, you really should know who Captain America is. Here’s the trailer:

Whaddya reckon? Looks pretty good, doesn’t it?

The second is a RED BAND TRAILER for Your Highness, starring James Franco and Danny McBride. I say RED BAND TRAILER as it has 18+ language in it, and bums and boobs, so be warned. It looks like a bit of a goofy laugh movie, so I’m in. Hey, not every film I watch has to be Inception, or The Seventh Seal, or Mon Oncle, or In The Realm Of The Senses, or Zatoichi, or Oldboy, or – ah, here’s the trailer:

“It’s a trap, a booby trap!” – worth the ticket price alone