TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

S omething a little different for me in terms of movies I usually review,  Memory  is a film I was invited along to see by my partner, and both of us didn't know much about the movie going in, other than it was a film where one of the leads has dementia. The basic premise follows adult, special needs social worker, Sylvia (Jessica Chastain), who leads a simple and structured life. When Saul (Peter Sarsgaard) follows her home from their high school reunion the surprise encounter profoundly impacts both of their lives. The film starts out very awkward and disjointed to some degree, which I feel is intentional, to reflect that Sylvia, who is also a struggling single mother, is fairly resilient, she is, in many ways, just barely holding everything together because she doesn't have any other option. When Saul sees Sylvia at their high school reunion it seems like some unpleasant memories from her past are fast tracked into the forefront of her life, and things move forward from ther

Trump by Leonardo.ai & TET A s an outsider looking in on the US 2024 election, right up until election day, it is beyond my belief that the election continued to be a 'close race'. It is even further beyond my belief that Trump won, without question.  Even if the Democrats wanted to claim the election was rigged somehow (which I'm sure Trump was gearing up to do had the outcome been different) it would be hard to make the case, beyond a recount. There's no slim margin here. Trump clearly won. While I would've preferred a Blue win, I at least got one outcome I was hoping for. A clear winner on election day. If I could give the Democrats some free, unsolicited advice for the next election. Stop targeting the opposition as if they're somehow selfish, evil villains. That's not how political parties work. At the end of the day the all represent the public. The people. The everyday citizen who you're trying to convince that you have what it takes to meet t

A s a kid, Scooby Doo cartoons were something I used to watch fairly regularly. I wasn't a diehard fan but it was one of the better, of the many, cartoons I used to watch. I had heard about the new animated series, Velma , around the time of its release but it wasn't coming out on any streaming service I was subscribed to so it went off my radar pretty quickly. Quite by chance I signed up to a streaming service so I could watch DC Entertainment's, The Penguin, and noticed Velma was on that platform. I figured I may as well get my money's worth out of the subscription. I did know that Velma, herself, had been race swapped for the show, which made no real difference to me, though I do prefer classic Velma if pushed to choose. However the first episode of season one was a real shock to my expectations! No where had I heard this series was skewing very much into adult humor and themes. I was expecting something more along the lines of the original Scooby Doo show. Instead I

W hile I'm a late comer fan of The Office, only watching after the original and USA versions were both available on streaming services, I did watch them in the order of release i.e. I watched the U.K. version first. Now, with the release of the Australian version of The Office on Prime Video, I think it's best to approach watching this new version understanding that it is not those shows. More importantly, remembering the US version was not well received or as popular as it has become since streaming became a thing. I personally remember people often saying the original version was better, back in the day. Of course, the Australian version has analogues for all the same characters you're familiar with from the previous versions, with their characteristics, so you can easily see who is the Aussie version of each character. While there are actually 13 different adaptations of the series worldwide, I was surprised to learn this is the first time the boss has been female. No

Tesla Optimus Robot Serving Guests. Image: Tesla O n the tenth of October Tesla held their 'We Robot' event, which I guess is the new incarnation of their previous Tesla AI Day annual event. There were three much talked about reveals, the driverless taxis, a driverless bus, and Optimus robots moving around the event, fully interacting with people 'on the ground'. Tesla Driverless Taxi. Image: Tesla While it was cool to see so many driverless taxis, that you could get in and experience for yourself as they drove around the Warner Brothers lot, and the driverless bus was something of a surprise reveal nobody expected, my attention was on Optimus. Tesla Driverless Robovan. Image: Tesla It was in September of 2021 that Elon Musk first announced his plan to create an affordable, humanoid, domestic robot, that would eventually be in homes worldwide. That vision was underlined with a person wearing a robot suit, that wasn't as well received as Elon may have liked, despite

I f you're like me and didn't go to see  Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom  in theatres you made the right choice. For context, I loved the first Aquaman movie . It's one of my favorites from the Snyder/DCEU era. It is a relatively well made adventure story, with some fantastic world building, amazing visuals, and included some commentary on  environmental issues as well. Despite having, mostly the same creative team, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom comes across as a film that couldn't decide what it wanted to be, in terms of a sequel. On the one hand it wants to showcase the cool, fun, wisecracking, but bad ass, rock'n'roll  version of Aquaman (Jason Momoa) with another rollicking adventure. On the other it feels like someone said it had to be epic with potentially world changing stakes so Aquaman would have to do 'King Shit' and be all serious, navigate deep sea politics, and generally try to be a responsible heroic good guy that he is when he's not being

W e've always been able to talk to animals, and it's sometimes said, jokingly, you may have a problem if they start talking back, but what if they could? One thing that AI is good at is processing data and spotting patterns, common elements, and highlighting relationships which makes it ideal for all kind of research, so why not studying the language of animals? It seems like science fiction but so were  real-time language translators not too long ago. What if you could understand exactly what your pets are saying to you and speak back to them (through a real-time translator) in their own language? While were not there yet, advancements in AI learning systems seem to suggest that the idea is no longer as far fetched and fanciful as it used to be. To be honest, using AI to decipher animal communication accurately, is something that never crossed my mind but I'm truly excited to know that this research is being done. Watch the Bloomberg Originals video, Could AI Unlock the S

D esigning paper airplanes is something I've done quite a lot of, particularly in my school years where a lot of take home notes and newsletters got folded into paper airplanes. Not that I was fanatical about it. I only really designed planes when a random piece of paper made it into my possession, and I just found trying to design a new paper airplane a more interesting challenge than making the same airplane every time. I did, however, have three rules for creating a successful design, with my goal being to design a paper airplane that looked more like an actual airplane: Planes must be made from one piece of standard A4 copy paper. No cutting or tearing of the paper allowed. The finished plane must be able to glide in a stable flight. Some time back in the 1990s I came up with a completely original design that looked clearly like a jet, that came to be known as the 'ePlane TETMKI', when I published a website with the folding instructions of several of my designs in 2000.

T he trailer for Borderlands is an example of a movie trying hard to convince you it's better than what it actually is.  Initially I had wanted to see this movie in theatres just because it had Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis in a movie that looked pretty bonkers. I mean it's two veteran, Oscar winning actors, it should be amazing. I'm not familiar at all with the computer games Borderlands is based upon so a really fun looking trailer and the top tier cast was all I had to go on. Unfortunately the reviews started coming in and it wasn't just games fans that were disappointed with the film. Critics thought it was bad too. Ordinarily this wouldn't stop me from going to see a movie but, since my local cinema closed down, I have to travel further to see a film on the big screen. I've become very selective about what I'll go see. Someone uploaded the entire movie to YouTube. I just happened to see it (YouTube suggested it to me) so I took the opportunity to

Trump and Harris both gave a clear insight into what they were about at their first Presidential debate. W hat a difference a competent opposition to Donald Trump makes. Watching the second, or first? Let's call it debate 1.5 since it's Trump's second debate and Kamala Harris' first in this US election campaign. Watching debate 1.5 my overall impression is, regardless of which candidate you support, and if you don't drill down too deep into what each actually said, both looked like they delivered a strong performance. After the debate the Left media seemed to think Donald took every piece of bait Kamala threw out, and was flustered, and even shouting at one point. I watched the whole debate and at no point did I feel Trump was shouting - no more than he would at any public rally to get his point across. He certainly never look flustered either. He did exactly what Kamala was doing when he heard something that he felt was false or inaccurate, he asked if he could res

1X Technologies, Robot for the Home, Neo. B ack in 2022 Google announced it had a small army of 100 AI enabled robots training at the company to become home helpers. As far as I know these robots, which were visually, little more than a pedestal on wheels with a mechanical arm and a head full of cameras, haven't emerged in anyone's home (and haven't banded together, laser guns attached, to start robot Armageddon either). Undeterred by Google's lack of progress, along with the rapid advances in humanoid robots,  1X Technologies , a robotics company based in Norway and San Francisco, focused on creating humanoid robots for your home, plans to build 100,000 of its Neo Humanoid robots for the home by 2027. That puts them into I, Robot territory. Let's hope they don't own any big, omnidirectional trucks to facilitate the roll out on mass, while some old school, naysayer detective tries to warn everyone that something isn't right! 1X Technologies, who have at le

I  wasn't familiar with Rebecca Yarros prior to receiving the first two books in her Empyrean Series, Fourth Wing and Iron Flame , as a gift. (Note: links will take you to the audible product page versions of the book on Amazon and are affiliate links. You should be able to find links to physical copies of the books from there if you prefer). It's been a long time that I've read a book that I don't want to put down after the time I have to read for the day is over. These two books, which are not insignificant in size at 498 and 623 pages respectively are page turners from beginning to end (almost but I'll get to that later). The story is set in a fantasy mythical world where dragons and magic are common place. Fourth Wing opens as Violet, the younger, weaker daughter of a fairly infamous general in a dragon riders army, is pushed into the first year of dragon rider school, rather than her preferred, and prepared for, path of scribe school. Both her mother (the afor

I 'm not a huge fan of DC animation in general, despite owning a lot of their movies and TV series on DVD. It may be because they tend to stick to adaptations of the comics a little too much, or it may be that the over exaggerated action that cartoons allow makes it feel like there's never any real stakes for the characters. With that in mind, if I'm going to like anything from DC Animation it's likely to be Batman related. I recently watched the entire Batman: The Animated Series when it came to Netflix, having never seen the whole series when it originally aired. Which I'm obliged to mention since Batman: Caped Crusader is helmed by the same creator, Bruce Timm. Just like that series, Caped Crusader is set in an undisclosed time period but the look, style, and lack of tech used, even by Batman, suggests somewhere around post World War II era, possibly stretching into the 1950s. It could even be 1930's but I feel the vehicles look a little more modern than th

I 'm willing to bet a lot of people haven't seen this film, and probably will never plan to watch it. Madame Web was poorly reviewed by critics and largely ignored by audiences. For myself, I'll only see a Sony superhero movie in cinemas if Spiderman is actually in it. For everything else I can wait until it hits a streaming service I'm subscribed to. Sony's Spiderman/Marvel adjacent movies aren't actually terrible movies. They're not great movies either but I've never put one on and not watched it all the way to the end. I do find them watchable... just not really rewatchable. Madame Web is an origin story for the title character (Dakota Johnson), and three other future Spider Women (that I'm not all that familiar with) who suddenly find themselves being pursued by a dark figure with very spider-like powers. The problem with this movie, in my opinion, is the writers forgot that the main reason anyone comes to see a comic book superhero movie is to

W hen I first heard the news that JD Vance was selected as Trump's running mate for Vice President I must admit, I had no idea who he was.  However I was hopeful that we'd finally get someone in the US election who could actually string a coherent sentence together, that wasn't either catchphrases, or a meandering mashup of barely related thoughts, organized into dot points as a memory aid. A quick glance at the man's achievements, ex-military correspondent, university graduate, and author of a book about the lower and working classes of middle America (I think? I don't know? I haven't read it. I just appreciate he wrote a book with a point of view), definitely showed he had potential. Unfortunately he quickly revealed he's every bit as good as former President Trump when it comes to saying things that make any swinging voter do a double take - he really said that? Not withstanding that JD was formerly in the anti-Trump camp, as outlined in this PBS article

I  can't say I was particularly excited for Disney+'s Star Wars series, The Acolyte . Not because I haven't enjoyed previous Star Wars based series - most have been fine - mostly because it's a Jedi focused story. For me the Star Wars prequels dulled the specialness of Jedi characters in the universe. Suddenly every character was, or could be, a Jedi. They were no longer mysterious beings, you just needed  a better than average Midi-chlorian count and you could be a Jedi too. Even worse was that Jedi were supposed to be formidable fighters, yet so many Jedi characters were there to be 'red shirts', no more formidable than anyone with a sword. So, a show where everyone's a Jedi, wasn't really doing anything much for me in the lead up to it. The Acolyte is set about 100 years before the prequels, and begins with an assassin, hunting down Jedi who were all part of some great tragedy, many years earlier. Investigations into who the assassin is uncovers more

E ver since Ryan Reynolds managed to get the first Deadpool movie made it was a no brainer to some day team him up with Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.  While it could've been done without Fox being sold to Disney, the merging of the Fox Marvel Universe and the Disney Marvel Universe allowed Deadpool and Wolverine almost unlimited access to all things Marvel on the big screen. Making this much more epic than it might have been without the merger. The story isn't too hard to follow. Wade Wilson/Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) is tasked with saving the timeline and needs to find a Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to help him. Chaos ensues. If you've enjoyed the previous Deadpool movies then this film should not disappoint. Its plot is as solid as any of the previous films but with the cameos and Easter eggs turned up to eleven. That said, all the main cameos tend to serve the story and aren't there just for the sake of the cameo. To be honest though, the main reason to see this film is for

I f you haven't seen the previous Beverly Hills Cop movies in a long time, like me, I would highly recommend you at least watch the first two before going into Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024). I remember enjoying all the previous movies but I've only seen each one maybe once or twice, around the time each was released - which is quite some time ago. I didn't re-watch any of them, assuming I'd just like this new film, and as a result I don't think I enjoyed it anywhere near as much as I might have. Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F sees Detroit cop Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) returning to Beverly Hills to help his now fully grown, lawyer, daughter, Jane (Taylour Paige) with a case that has endangered her life. Naturally we see the return of several familiar faces as the story unfolds. Other than watching the trailer I didn't really know a lot about the film going in, so I surprised to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the movie, underused as Detective Bobby Abbott.  He's s

Sky News Australia filling minutes with commentary and opinion surrounding the assassination attempt on Trump. I n the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, I've been looking to YouTube to get more information about the events of that day as they unfolded. One of the strengths of YouTube is that you get a real mix of news media across the political spectrum. One of it's weaknesses is that, when it comes to news, the algorithm geo-targets your location, so news from your local media outlets get priority. Which means a lot of Sky News Australia clips for me. Sky News Australia is not a news organization any more than Fox News is in the USA, both of which are either owned or controlled by the same person and his family, Rupert Murdoch (who unfortunately hails from the very city I live in, Adelaide, South Australia). I don't much care for Sky News Australia. Particularly in this case, where I see Americans commenting on their videos, saying things like, they

D iscombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot. It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'. Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices.  My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'? Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe?  Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net I've noticed it gets us