Princess Mononoke Movie Review

Review: Princess Mononoke, was release in 1997 to a world wide audience, and consists of 144,000 hand drawings, which alone, is worth some credit. 80,000 of these hand drawings where created by Miyazaki, who relates this movies scenery to an earlier series release that he had created.

As far as anime goes, Princess Mononoke is a classic. It contains all the violence that is embedded within movies such as Akira and the storyline involved in such movies as Spirited Away. Princess Mononokes plot is rather simple but that’s what makes all movies good, a simple story, that allows for less concentration to be required.

There are the two main characters within Princess Mononoke. Ashitaka is the first of the two that you are introduced to within the movie, who is chasing after a wild boar to protect his villige, but unexpectedly takes on the role of being cursed, through the beasts interaction. The curse takes form in the shape of a scare which evolves as the movie continues. With no hope of Ashitaka being able to save himself by staying in the villige, he aims to take an adventure through the great forests that surround him, in the hope that something may appear, that can save his life.

The second character starts to appear at around this point, which is San, a girl adopted by wild wolves, as part of their pack. She has grown up with them and been taught their ways, allowing her to understand the forests more than any of the humans who occupy the surroundings.

San has been trying to stop the never ending invasion of miners into the forest, in the search for Iron, and this has resulted in here continually attacking the a near by mining villige, and them retalliating, which is when Ashitaka gets stuck right in the middle due to the belief that both groups of life can adapt and live along side each other. Princess Mononoke, is a movie of Nature Vs Mankind, whilst set within a past history, where spirits, curses and deamons are not only believed in, but actually exist. This mystical world, of beautiful anime and exceptional storyline, conjure into what could be considered one of the best anime movies of all time.

I will leave the review at this point, because I believe you should watch Princess Mononoke, to discover what happens. Will the forest be saved? Will the minors stop? Will a war of Nature Vs Mankind take place? And most importantly will Ashitaka find the cure he is looking for?

Princess Mononoke gets a 4 out of 5 star rating from Edd The Zombie.

Originally posted on Edd The Zombie

Monster House Movie Review

Review: Monster house, what do you think of when you hear that for a movie name? My assumption was that it would be about monsters within an old house, and I was partially correct. It turns out that the house was in fact the monster.

Two of the very best things about Monster House, were the angle from which the story was told, because the developers/directors pinned down what appeared to be a solid idea of what a child’s view towards an angry old man and his old house could be. The other big bonus was the level of artwork and graphic development that had been placed within Monster House, although it did feel like I was watching the original toy story again, but with a new plot.

However, the story follows a simple idea of… It’s coming to Halloween and a few children (the main characters), have an over active imagination which oddly enough turns out to be the truth, when they discover their neighbour has a house that turns into a monster. Of course no body believes them and they have to investigate all by themselves, but through investigation they discover that giving a house a cold, will not quite destroy it.

I have to advise that you watch this movie to discover the ending of the story, but it’s a very simple plot and to be honest it’s not the world’s best movie for those of us who refer to ourselves as adults, but I’m sure the kids will enjoy Monster House.

Edd The Zombie rates Monster House 3 out of 5 stars.

Originally posted on Edd The Zombie

High Fidelity Movie Review

Review: Based off of the Nick Hornby book, this film follows the trivial series of events that happens in relationships as they end.

You follow the life of Rob, the person we all would like to be when we grow up, a record store owner and ex-DJ who has an extensive record collection, but with a negative, he has just been dumped, by his girlfriend Laura, who is now moving in with the previous tenant from upstairs.

After the initial feeling of being dumped, Rob goes on what could be seen as a midlife crisis, where he lists his five worst breakups, and then goes for an adventure trying to find them, to see if he was doing something wrong. Whilst Rob has this little adventure, he also plats and schemes to get Laura back, through methods that most would only associate with stalkers, such things as 10 calls a day and standing outside her new flat.

The best way to summerise this movie, is simple, its about what goes through a mans mind when the partner he loves, disappears from his life, some will see this as the rant of a man, and others will view the movie as complete truth, the things which are insane, for a split moment in time appear as perfect clarity and we understand, but upon reflection make no sense.

It's a watchable movie, but when compared to the book, it suffers badly, because things are jumbled up, and although it portrays what the book is about, it is not the same.

Originally posted on Edd The Zombie

Fireproof Movie Review

Review: Fireproof was released in 2008, and it focuses on how a married couple discover that there are miracles in life, when you are willing to open up and take in new ideas, beliefs and traditions.

The movie starts with the couple being bitter and angry with a vast array of hurdles in the way of their relationship, trying very hard to make things go in the right direction, but upon a heated and raised argument the proposal of divorce creeps into the situation and at this point we enter the lives of Caleb and Catherine.

Fireproof, is any relation fireproof? At first Caleb doesn't think so much, and believes that a divorce may be the answer to all of the worries. His addictions and one way mind set are partially the reason why things are going so bad, and deep down he knows it. It's not until his father says give it 40 days and hands him a book, saying here's a dare for you.

Within this book, for everyday of the 40 that Caleb has to wait, he has been blessed with a challenge, something out of the normal for him, which later finds him not only changing his life but discovering that things can be fireproof.

The summery of this movie, is that it had a small budget but it has tied itself very well into the issues of self discovery, religion and relationships.

I wouldn't say its fantastic, but it's something to watch on a sunder afternoon if you're bored.

Originally Posted on Edd The Zombie

Catch and Release Movie Review

Review: Catch and Release, released in 2006 has an all star cast with actress Jennifer Garner and actors Kevin Smith & Timothy Olyphant. Usually when something has Kevin Smith involved you would assume it's to be an amazing comedy and with a title like "catch and release", it could have been just that.

However, catch and release follows the life of a near widower, who lost her fiancé a few days before their wedding. You discover a lot about Gray just as she learns about herself, as she goes through the discovery of who her fiancé actually was and his hidden secrets.

The uncovering of a secret relationship in another city, a child and a lot of money in the bank, are the remains of a man after his unfortunate demise, but how does Gray cope with such news? Well not in the way that you'd expect, at first she is a little bit hostile about the secrets, but within a short while she opens up to the child, the idea of the money and the relationship her fiancé had behind her back.

By acknowledging that she has lost him but also highlighted who he truly was, Gray starts learning alot about who she really is, and falls in love with a friend, which is where her new life starts and the movie ends.

Simply put, for a drama movie, this one kicks ass, and is one of my favourite movies of all time. It's well directed, nothing has been cut short and it's well thought out. If you watch it, I believe you will come to a similar conclusion and for that reason Catch and Release has been handed 5 stars by me.

Originally posted on Edd The Zombie

Search Engine Optimisation: Part 4

Search Engine Optimisation and Tagging

What is tagging?
When typing code within coding languages, we will often assign attributes to certain aspects of the website page, to help shape and define what is being presented to the user. Tagging is the result of this where the use of certain select pieces of code will result in a robot or spider seeing the information that is tagged with more importance

Why should we use tagging?
As was just mentioned, by using tagging we are allowing the spiders/robots to know that a certain phrase, word or series of numbers is the most important part of our page. That this select piece of information, which could be the title or a word in mid-sentence, has more meaning or importance than the rest of the page, not to say the rest of the page is not important.

What forms of tagging does a robot/spider see with more value?
The basic ones that everybody should be using with a simple HTML page are the header tags, which indicate headers and sub-headings within a page that has been published. They range from H1 through to H6 and can be altered through using cascading style sheets and such, without much effort, so you have no reason to worry about whether the formatting will fit into your webpage design, because you can change that.

Two of the least known tags are some to replace others, which do the same job but also indicate that they have more importance, than the original tags that they can replace. The first one is < s t r o n g > and can replace < b o l d >, it will result in the text that it wraps as being bold, just like the bold tag would do, but it also tells the spiders / robots that crawl through your website that the words wrapped within this tag, are very important.

The second of the two least known tags is one that I my self have just become aware of, and it is < e m > which stands for emphasis, and if you wrap your text within this tag, you will notice the effect is the same as the < I > tag, which makes all of your text italic. Just like the strong tag, it will be represented to the robots as something which has a higher value or more importance.

< s t r o n g > Hello World < / s t r o n g > = < b > Hello World < / b >

< e m > Hello World < / e m > = < I > Hello World < / I >

Search Engine Optimisation Part 3

Search Engine Optimisation and Images

Fancy getting your images into Google image search or just attract more users? If you do then these are the following settings that I would advise to be used when placing images on your website.

Firstly, make the file name for the image relevant, rather than useless. What I mean by this is, your camera might take excellent photographs, but who is going to search for “img_3838978273.jpg”? I can’t imagine very many. If it’s a picture of a tree then name it something like, tree.jpg or if it’s a cat, name it cat.jpg. These are very simple commonsense practices, and yet so many people do not take advantage of them, follow the theory and it will benefit your website.

Secondly, when you place an image on your website, give it an alt tag. An alt tag will specify what the image is of and is good practice for complying with w3c guidelines. The reason we use alt tags is for web browsers that are having trouble reading the image data and can provide an alternative solution to a box with a little red cross. The red cross may appear still but the alt tag will also be present, and this works to your advantage very well, when you have people with some degree of disabilities, such as those who are partially blind, programs that they use can read the text on the page, and will inform the user the image is of, a tree or a cat.

Thirdly, if you are aiming for your images to appear in Google image search, then be patient because Google can take quite a while to update its image search, since it is not as fast as the web search function it has.

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Search Engine Optimisation and Sitemaps.
A sitemap is a page or location that you can visit, which will list all of the pages within your website, this is useful for your users, so it’s worth having. It will allow a user to quickly identify the page that they wish to visit, and as a result becomes a vital page within your website. With that information in mind, having a link to your sitemap, in html format, within homepage or every page of your website, will be very useful, because in addition to a user being capable of using the information, when ever a spider/robot appears, it will read the entire sitemap and as a result, crawl every page on your website, unless instructed otherwise.

The second useful thing about sitemaps is that if you use tools such as Google Webmaster, then you can submit your sitemap directly to the search engine and have a spider crawl the sitemap when ever you update the information. This becomes a fantastic option when you need to create and remove a lot of pages within a short period of time, and should also help you get your website indexed within Google faster, if you are just starting out.