timwheatley.org

Having read the book this movie is based on, I knew what I was in for, but did expect the ending of the book - instead I was pleasantly surprised to see another ending that worked and finished off the story in typical ‘feel good’ ways.

Will Smith plays a Military Virologist in New York City, he is alone and hasn’t seen another Human Being for three years. He is all alone because three years earlier, Dr. Alice Krippin created a genetically re-engineered Measles vaccine capable of curing Cancer in all forms. The Virus mutated those who took it and mutated itself, turning Humans into Rabid animals interested only in eating living flesh.

So Robert Neville (Will Smith) stays behind while everyone else without symptoms evacuates New York City so he can try to create a cure based upon his own immunity. His wife and daughter are dead because of a helicopter crash during the evacuation and his only company is the Dog handed to him as a Puppy by his daughter during that evacuation.

Reduced to a wonderful mix of primitive and modern living, Neville drives around in cars of his choosing, hunting for animal meat with Dog and Gun but all the while fearing the shadows and the Sunset. The first time we see Neville board himself up inside his building with steel shutters and shake from fear in the bathtub we begin to get an idea of the horror that emerges each and every night.

Eventually the mutants begin to show intelligence by setting a trap for Neville, leaving him hanging by his foot until Sunset. Having just managed to escape after attack by infected Dogs, there is a harrowing scene where his Dog succumbs to the Virus and turns, giving him no other choice but to choke his only friend to death.

Enraged at losing his friend, Neville sets out the next night to hunt the infected and commit suicide in the process. Just as he is about to have his face bitten off by the apparent leader of the group he was hunting, he is saved… He drops in and out of unconsciousness, but was just able to tell the woman who had saved him where he lived.

Neville awakes the following morning to find himself no longer alone. He finds it hard to accept that there is someone around who talks back to him and ate the bacon that he was saving for a special occasion but eventually, because of the child the woman brought with her, opens up to them.

Will Smith and friend; all alone in New York City.

Getting ever closer to the cure, Neville and his new friends close the shutters as normal that night when suddenly the groans of the infected can be heard louder than ever in the distance, it is then that Neville realises they must have followed them the previous night and tonight they were going to try to get into his home. Neville launches all his defence mechanisms including explosives, but that doesn’t stop some of the infected getting through. Neville and his new friends end up down in the Laboratory where to their amazement the subject he had been testing his latest cure on, is getting better.

Neville frantically shouts through the glass to the infected who’re trying to break-in, telling them he can save them. Eventually realising they are beyond his help he passes the information on the cure to the woman who had saved him, tells them to stay in the bunker at the back of the laboratory until morning, grabs a hand-grenade from the drawer and waits for the leader of the infected to break through the glass…

Alpha Male (left), Will Smith (right). Shot is from the alternate version of the movie (which is much better).

STORY

While this adaptation of the book does differ from it quite a bit, it is a very good ending. The story perhaps fits this era better than any other and this is much, much more than a Zombie picture.

SPECIAL EFFECTS

I have absolutely no idea how they achieved the level they did with this movie, most impressively New York City looks as deserted as it should… All of the animals, vegetation, even the infected, they all look absolutely fantastic and it is worth seeing this movie for these alone.

ACTING

There really is only one recognizable name in this movie and really only one actor. Will Smith doesn’t carry this movie - the story does - but if the story wasn’t up to par, the acting would be… Smith is capable of talking to manikins and makes it a convincing conversation! The performance by the Dog was also impressive and it really is heart-breaking when Neville (Will Smith) has to choke him.

WORTHINESS

The movie does seem short and really that is no surprise because apart from the flashbacks to the evacuation, all the action takes places over a few days. I really liked Zombie movies in the past and this a fantastic modern spin on the book, but it does have a totally different ending… I’d suggest reading the book also if you like the movie. The movie itself is absolutely worth seeing as long as you don’t expect the plot of the book to feature very much.

Buy on DVD: Amazon (USA) | Amazon (UK)

Victim: Amoteus Brere
Alliance: NONE
Corp: Center for Advanced Studies
Destroyed: Velator
System: Clellinon
Security: 0.8
Damage Taken: 435

View Full Kill Information | EVE-Online Free Trial

This was me, killing me. Weapons testing.

Such a dissapointing season for the Bears… Here’s to the next one!

1 in 4 British people are now Obese. 1 in 3 American’s are overweight.

Britain: It will not be long before you catch-up. As a British citizen I have to say that there is far more opportunity in the USA *not* to be overweight, there are dedicated running and cycling paths, for example… In the UK, I have never seen anything like that outside parks in London…

So, I’m just voicing my concern for my homeland: If you exercise little, you don’t need the fats, sugars and energy you are eating. It will be stored as fat. We British believe the stereotypical view of ‘overweight Americans’ - time to take a look at ourselves (like I said before) before statistically a higher percentage of our population are obese than in the U.S.

Victim: Logan Zeifer
Alliance: NONE
Corp: The Really Awesome Players
Destroyed: Crow
System: Vittenyn
Security: 0.9
Damage Taken: 3574

View Full Kill Information | EVE-Online Free Trial

In a way, I am dissapointed I didn’t get more credit for this kill. If you look at the damage done - I did 64% and in reality - I did about 63% of it in my Hulk…

Logan used the well-known tactic of ‘can flipping’ in order to get some aggression out of me. He flew towards me, emptied my ore out of my jettison can and put it into one of his own - if I either fired on him (as I was now able to) or took my ore back - he’d then be able to fire on me.

I opened fire on him with my drones while alone in my Hulk and we seemed fairly evenly matched, I sent out a distress call to some of my friends who began to fly towards me offering aid. By the time they got there I had Logan down to his Hull - but I was almost as heavily damaged.

When my friends did arrive it gave me an opportunity to leave and get strapped into my Vexor which was waiting in a nearby station, I returned to the fight just in time to send my drones before my friend, Arazel, finished off the Ore Thief for me.

All quotes are from this article.

The President looked awful. He stood puffy-eyed, stoop-shouldered, in front of the press corps discussing the stunning new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that Iran halted its nuclear-weapons program in 2003. He looked as if he’d spent the night throwing chairs around the Situation Room.

As recently as Oct. 17, the President had said Iran’s bomb-building program could be a precursor to “World War III.” It was a statement that was both outrageous in its extravagance and very strange. Bush acknowledged that he had first heard in August that a new intelligence analysis of Iran’s nuclear-bomb program was imminent, but — and here comes the strange part — he hadn’t bothered to ask the Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, what it might contain. “If that’s true,” Senator Joe Biden opined soon after, “then this is … one of the most incompetent Presidents in modern American history.”

Yikes…

Wednesday is ‘patch day’ for Eve-Online and nobody can play from 02:00 for a full 24 hours… They’re upgrading to “Trinity”.

The main thing being added are graphical improvements but a full list of changes are available in the patch notes.

Since I last mentioned Eve on my blog I have started to play it again, but now I don’t pay. I am able to mine enough ore from asteroids and make enough money to be able to pay ISK (the game’s currency) for ‘game time codes’ that other people buy and sell in exchange for ISK! My character is a very successful miner and I am also able to defend myself against those players attempting to steal my ore while I mine… I recently killed a much more skilled player while I was mining, you can view the details here.

I should also mention that this game is also now available for PC, Mac OS and Linux. If you’d like a free 14 day trial, please use this link.

Yeah, we had some bad news recently. We got a letter back from U.S. Immigration saying that because we didn’t file a form with another form, but instead filed the form when they asked for proof we had sent it with the previous form (because we didn’t think it was required until then), they couldn’t process any of the forms. They did not have a problem taking the $170 processing fee for that one form (from a total of over a $1000 we had paid so far) that we desperately struggled to produce though - even though their processing consisted of telling us they could not process it. It’s especially annoying because Infopass (the service meant to help those going through immigration) told us that filing in this way for the forgotten form was the correct thing to do.

So, we are 99% likely to have to re-file all the information, taking all the passport pictures, re-taking the medical, paying another $1000 - all that good stuff. We’ll have to survive on what Sheila makes working full-time for longer and this time - we will be hiring an immigration attorney to check I haven’t f*cked up before sending in the papers. There is a 1% chance, I guess, that an Immigration Judge will overturn the decision based on how idiotic it is… Stay Tuned.

If anyone can recommend an Immigration Attorney in the Chicago area (who will accept monthly payments), please do. Additionally if anyone would like to Donate towards our legal costs please do so here!

But hey, we were down but we’re not out. Sheila and I will still be together for our first Christmas and that’s all either of us wanted. Obviously any of you we’d normally be sending anything to - it isn’t going to happen… But one of Sheila’s friends has donated all the stuff you see in this video to us, a video I shot just a few minutes ago: