Puss In Boots

If you have seen the Shrek movies, all four of them, you will be familiar with the hugely popular character Puss In Boots, voiced by Antonia Banderas, who appears in 3 of the movies. Well Puss gets his own prequel movie – Puss In Boots. This movie precedes the events of Shrek 2, in which the character makes his debut. Produced by DreamWorks Animation, directed by Chris Miller, executive produced by Guillermo del Toro, this animated movie came out last year and also stars the voices of Salma Hayek, Zach Galifianakis, Billy Bob Thornton & Amy Sedaris.

Outlaw Puss In Boots is in search of the magic beans that he’s been looking for most of his life, beans that can lead him to a giant’s castle holding valuable golden goose eggs. At a local bar he  hears that fellow outlaws Jack & Jill have the beans in their possession. When Puss tries to steal them from the outlaws’ room, he is thwarted by a masked cat and they have a fight and both fail. The masked cat leads Puss to a cat hideout where they have a dance off to Flamenco music and Puss finds out that the masked cat is a female cat – Kitty Softpaws. Kitty is allied with Humpty Alexander Dumpty, Puss’s long estranged friend who wanted to lure Puss to him and ask him to help him get the beans and find the golden goose eggs. Puss is upset and we find out in a flashback as to how the two childhood friends became estranged.

Both Puss & Humpty were orphans raised by a loving woman and they soon became best friends. They both had grand plans, especially Humpty who wanted riches. Humpty tricked Puss into helping him rob the band and when they got caught, Puss had to jump and escape to save himself, leaving Humpty behind. It wasn’t what he wanted to do and ever since then Puss could never go home. Humpty however appeals to Puss and says that they can make things right by getting some golden eggs and help their town so Puss joins him & Kitty and the trio steal the beans from Jack and Jill and and plant them in the desert. The go up the beanstalk into the clouds to find the castle of the late giant, while avoiding the Great Terror who guards the Golden Goose. When they realize the golden eggs are too heavy to carry, they steal the Goose, which is just a gosling (the great terror is the mother goose), and escape the castle. However as the group come back down they are ambushed by Jack & Jill and Puss is knocked out cold. Turns out that Jack & ill were in cahoots with Humpty’s scheme all along and he planned to take revenge on Puss for betraying him many years ago.

At their hometown the townfolks charge at Puss and his mother pleads him to give himself up, which he so does while Humpty becomes a hero by giving the people plenty of golden eggs. In prison Puss meets the real Jack who warns him that the large mother goose will soon come looking for it’s child. Kitty approaches Puss, tells him she loves him and helps him break out of prison.  Puss tracks down Humpty, who wants the Great Terror to demolish the town. Puss tells Humpty that he must help him and knows that he is a good person inside. The giant mother goose arrives and starts attacking the town. Using the goosling, Humpty, Puss & Kitty lure the mother goose outside the town  but Humpty and the Goose are knocked off a bridge with Puss holding onto them. Humpty knows Puss cannot hold both of them, so he lets go, sacrificing himself to save the Goose and the town. Humpty’s shell cracks open to reveal he was a golden egg on the inside. The Great Terror then takes the Goose and Humpty back to the giant’s castle.

Puss’s efforts makes him a town hero again and he kisses Kitty. Puss rides off again into the sunset off to seek more adventures and we know that he later joins Shrek, Donkey & Fiona. Great fun, hilarious and exciting. This franchise is awesome. Puss in Boots opened to very positive reviews and became a success at the box office with a gross of over $554 million. It was also nominated forBest Animated Feature Film at the 84th Academy Awards.I’d give it a 9 outta 10!

How Much TV Do You Watch Each Week?

Ah the tv question. Well, from a guy who used to watch 3-4 hours of his tv shows each week night and perhaps an additional 4 to 5 more hours on a weekday, I have now come down to almost zero hours this year. Or I should say from May 2011 to May 2012. I literally do not watch tv on a regular basis and can go days without watching the actual tv or programs shown on the tv here in my land to make it very precise. From cartoons to my fav cop-shows, scifi, supernatural, comedy & drama tv series and WWE I used to watch a lot. And ofcourse the many movies I used to watch on 4 or 5 different channels that show movies. I was never much of a reality tv show hound, with exception to shows like Rock Star or American Idol ( a couple of years) and I did watch Animal Planet, Discovery, Nat Geo and especially Travel & Living shows.

My tv watching diminished at about the same time as I got a new computer around September of 2006 and took a broadband connection a little later. I spend hours upon hours online so tv kind of lost much of it’s appeal. Plus they did have a lag in good shows for a while. Then I bough some dvds of tv shows and hence could watch the episodes at home while lying in bed at my leisure. Soon I discovered torrent and now I download all the tv shows I need with some exception as I like to keep the dvd collection if I can. However not all the good shows get dvd releases here and also they can be rather stupidly expensive. So downloading is the major option. I also do the same for movies.

The only thing that I didn’t want to download or watch online as my broadband speed isn’t that high is football matches. Watching football matches live is really something else all together and that proved to be a big exception to the rule. Around 2009-2011 football was the only thing that I watched online with a couple of exceptions here and there. Saturday and Sunday evenings watching football with coffee and chips or if it is later in the evening a pizza or sandwiches. Total relaxing time and great fun to watch. However, from May of last year my stupid cable tv provider has had a legal hassel with the 3 major sports pay channels – Star Sports, Ten Sports & ESPN – and hence no football for me.

The only thing that I still watch is when I am home alone and the internet is out. Or I am really bored and want to check what’s on tv during lunch or dinner. Maybe a movie that I haven’t seen yet or a couple of episodes of a tv series or two once in a while. That’s about it.

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The Walking Dead – Season 2

If it took me a couple of episodes to really start liking The Walking Dead in the short 6 episode season 1, it took another couple of episodes in season 2 to make me a fanatic. I have zombie fever and it hasn’t died down at all. And if season 1 was a miserly 6 episodes, the sophomore year didn’t really explode with just 13 episodes. Not bad but not good enough. A decent season run is 20-26 episodes, although that is seen less and less in these years. Anyways the group leave Atlanta and decide to try to head to Fort Benning. Along the way, they come across a traffic jam of abandoned vehicles on I-85. Seeing an opportunity they raid the cars for supplies that they can use, including huge bottles of water from a truck. But they are soon forced into hiding in & under the various vehicles as a horde of walker come passing by.

Sophia is chased away from the rest by two walkers who were at the very end, stragglers at the very end of the pack. The young girl runs into the woods to get away from them and Carl runs behind her, leading the walkers away and killing them. But now they have to find Sophia who is missing. In the initial search Carl, who is entranced by a deer he sees, is accidentally shot by a hunter Otis. Shocked by what he has done, Otis leads Rick who carries Carl in his arms, to a farm house owned by a veterinarian Hershel and his family. As the search for Sophia continues, the rest of the group slowly move into the farm. Shane & Otis go to a hospital in town to get supplies for Hershal to treat Carl’s wounds and are attacked by a large group of walkers. Running out of bullets, Rick shoots a tiring Otis in the leg, leaving him to be attacked by the walkers and offering himself a distraction to escape. Rick takes the medical stuff back to the farm and Carl begin the slow road to recovery.

Shane changes post this, becoming more antagonistic and dangerous. The group camps out in tents just outside the farm house, eating meals inside the self-sufficient household with fresh meat & vegetables. Things slow down to an almost idealistic pace, although Hershel wants them to leave. Rick asks him to reconsider letting them stay permanently as the farm is well isolated and there’s plenty of food and enough work for all the group members to pitch in as the search for Sophia proves fruitless, much to Carol’s dismay. Lori discovers that she is pregnant, after asking Glenn to get supplies from town and using a test kit. Glenn builds a romantic relationship with Maggie, one of Hershel’s daughters, and discovers that Hershel’s barn is full of walkers, many of whom in life had been friends and family members of Hershel’s. This causes a huge rift amongst the group, some of who want the walkers to be killed while Rick wants to respect Hershel’s feelings. The old veterinarian is hopeful that a cure can be found for his family members to bring them back to being humans and hence feeds the live poultry in the meantime.

During a moment of heat Rick, with some of the group on his side, forces the walkers out of the barn and the group opens fire killing all the walkers as they stumble out into the open. Rick & Hershel’s family tries to stop it from happening but all the walkers are killed. Finally we hear a less confident snarl as a zombie Sophia come out, staggering towards the group – she was there all along! A scared Sophia while trying to find shelter must have stumbled onto the farm. None of the group is able to do anything as Daryl holds a crying Carol back and Rick is forced to shot & kill Sophia. A grieving Hershel goes away into the deserted town nearby and finds a bar to drink his sorrow away. After Rick and Glenn find him and convince him to return, they trio have a run in with another group of survivors and they end up having to kill two of them and rescue an injured young man, Randall, and bring him back to the farm as a horde of walkers arrive. Shane wants to desert Randall in town as soon as he is healed but a disagreement between him & Rick ends up in a fight and attracting more walkers. Rick decides to bring Randall back for execution instead. Meanwhile Hershel’s younger daughter Beth tries to kill herself in order to escape a seemingly hopeless situation.

The group argues & debates about Randall’s fate and finally agree to execute him despite Dale’s passionate pleas not to do so. As Rick & Shane take a gun to Randall, they are urged on by Carl, who is seemingly experimenting with death and must be finding things strange as the only child in the survivors midst. Rick cannot bring himself to kill Randall with his son watching and halts the execution. In the night Dale is attacked by a walker and dies. Later Shane secretly releases Randall and kills him nearby, while the rest of the group conduct a search for him. Daryl and Glenn come to the realization that the dead can reanimate without previous exposure to walkers, as the find a zombie Randall without bite marks on him. An almost deranged Shane uses the search for Randall to kill Rick but it backfires and Rick is forced to kill Shane. After Shane’s death, he reanimates and Carl shoots him in the head. The gun shot attracts a horde of walkers who had wandered into the woods and they attack the farm. Rick and Carl get into the barn and ignite it to destroy a bunch of walkers.

In the battle, Jimmy & Patricia are killed and the rest make their way away in a couple of vehicles but Andrea gets left behind. She is later rescued by a mysterious hooded woman, leading chained, armless, walkers. The others – consisting of Rick, Lori, Carl, Glenn, Daryl, Carol, T-Dog, Maggie, Beth, and Hershel – regroup on the highway and are forced to make camp due to shortage of gas. This is where Rick reveals the truth behind Shane’s death and about what Dr. Jenner told him – they are all infected carriers of the walker pathogen. Meaning if they die they will immediately reanimate as zombies. This revelation leaves the group feeling uneasy and as the season ends we see a prison looming nearby.