Movie: Battle Los Angeles (2011)

Battle Los Angeles is one of those sci-fi movies I would have liked to see on a big screen when it was released but didn't really inspire me to make sure I did.

Plus it stars Aaron Eckhart, who irritates me for some reason in most movies. I don't know why? I wasn't his biggest fan in The Dark Knight. He's actually a very good actor in the right film and Battle Los Angeles definitely agrees with him. At least I wasn't irritated by him when I caught the movie on free to air TV tonight.

Being a long time sci-fi fan what caught my eye about this film is that it's an alien invasion movie. Sure you've probably seen it all before but the design of the aliens and their spacecraft seemed fairly unique to anything I'd seen before. In that department it didn't disappoint.

Although the actual aliens reminded me a lot of those from the Alien Movies their armor, space craft and other tech was all pretty impressive.

The movies plot is fairly straight forward. A unit of soldiers are pitted against the entire alien force (well the Los Angeles chapter at least) and must work out how to save the planet. Along the way the troops learn a thing or two about trust and loyalty, whilst the staff sergeant (Eckhart) earns redemption from his tragic past.

This movie's biggest strength is also something of a weakness. It deals with the whole situation in a very realistic way that makes the film seem like a typical war movie where the enemy just happens to be aliens. You never see the battle from the alien's point of view or learn anything about them that the soldiers don't learn for themselves. It's pretty fast paced with lots of shaky cam that must have made cinema goers a little bit nauseous.

I did appreciate all the realism and fast pace but it comes at the expense of never really getting to know any of the characters very well. You get glimpses here and there into each soldiers life but it's not enough to get you to care about them.

It's not really a spoiler to tell you that some of the troops don't make it in a war film. The thing is I never cared about those that didn't make it. In fact I wasn't even sure who it was that died in some scenes. If the script had managed to get me to care about every soldier in the unit, in the same way that Eckhart's character did, it could have been a great movie instead of just a good film.

The ending is a little bit of a let down for how the whole alien invasion is resolved but it really couldn't be helped, in a movie about one military unit's involvement in a worldwide alien invasion.

I can't really fault this movie other than it wasn't able to get me caring about the characters on anything but a surface level. Aside from that, it's well worth a look in, and I'd buy it for my DVD collection too.

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Guest Post: MY SOOPER DOOPER NEW CONSERVATORY/ART STUDIO!

Today's guest post is by Artist, Writer, and Mental Health Advocate, Jo B Creative who writes for her blog, Creating My Oddessey.

You should see our (almost) brand new conservatory, half of which is my art studio. 'Lucky me!' I think to myself. Not every creative bod can boast that. It's HUGE! Like a giant greenhouse.

We first moved to our pleasant cul-de-sac house - great for raising kids - when our son, who's on the cusp of thirty-one, was four. One of the main reasons that we wanted it was that, apart from its location on the fringes of a historic market town in rural Hampshire, UK, it had a sizable conservatory looking onto the back garden. It was brown wood framed and had a corrugated transparent roof sloping down from downstairs ceiling height. On the face of it, it doesn't sound that glamourous, but we loved the idea of a conservatory. Luxury! I even liked the red brick walls which it was built against - the original exterior of the house - and the light …

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I'm certainly in that category. Never really giving skateboarding away altogether but only using a skateboard to get from A to B, when I didn't have a vehicle, for many years. In the last couple of years I've been trying to get back into the sport properly, i.e. building up my trick list and skating for fun and not just to get from A to B.

The problem is I have so many interests, projects, paid work, and more, that I would often leave skateboarding to the end of my day. Kind of as something to look forward to. Except I wouldn't be that motivated to really improve because my mind would be fried from everything …

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Who would have thought that owning one of the worlds largest, private Lego collections could take you so far. Tom Lucieer of Angaston, South Australia, not only has met the Queen (of England) but is a frequent guest of her majesty and family when they are in Australia. He's also met Prince Charles, Lady Diana and Camila Parker-Bowles. Not only that, he grew up with TV Vet, Dr Harry, and is a friend of the Irwin family (yes, that's Steve Irwin's family).

Tom will happily tell you all this as part of the guided tour of his collection, which, aside from Lego, includes much railway memorabilia and colourful anecdotes about days gone by, his achievements and more. Frequently he will finish each particular monologue with the phrase, "Have you got that?", just to check that he hasn't confused you because, as he points out, his display and the stories behind it are a lot to take in at once.

In the photo you can see Tom holding a special award, which I think is for bein…

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In my last post I looked at What to Create and Finding Your Market. This post is something of a natural follow on from finding your market as many of these money making opportunities include their own market places that you can research to see what kinds of themes and subjects sell best.

It's worth doing this research to find out if the art you're already creating is a good fit for that market place - which is ideal - or if you may have to consider expanding your interests to cover popular themes in order sell in a particular market.

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Have you been thinking about starting a side hustle to earn a bit of extra money but haven't been able to make a start because of everything you don't know about running your side hustle yet, or because of other things you think you have to do first?

If this is you then chances are, what you're really doing is making excuses not to start. I can't start anything new until I cross a few more things off my to do list. Sound familiar?

I'm too busy to start my side hustle and don't have the time to work on it just now.
One reason you may be stalling is a perceived notion that your side hustle is actually too complicated, and is going to require a lot of research and education before you're even ready to make your first dollar.

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Ten years in the making and Marvel finally releases part one of the Avengers versus Thanos, A.K.A. Avengers: Infinity War.

After seeing all 18 films in the MCU prior to this, and liking most of them, I was pretty confident this movie would not disappoint.

Other than a few minor issues - that are all my personal taste and in no way reflect on the quality of the film - it really delivers. Thanos is indeed the big, bad villain of the MCU that we've been antcipating.

Movie Review: Spider-Man - Into the Spider-verse (2018) No Spoilers

I didn't go see Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse in theatres because a) Sony, and b) Animated movie... and if there's a c) Sony + Spider-man.

Then I started hearing all this word of mouth that this movie is really good so I thought, 'yeah, still not going, I'll wait for the home release'.

Then it won all these awards including an Oscar for Best Animated Feature... so I guess this movie must be good...right?

I rarely see animated features in the cinema because I have little faith in them to deliver enough entertainment at an adult level. Especially movies like Into the Spider-verse which you know is skewing for a younger demographic (as all Spider-man films in general do due to the popularity of the character with kids).

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TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

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