Rodent's Reviews

New look coming soon to Rodent's Reviews...


New headers, new stamps. Realised I'm in the 300s now in terms of movie count so I've decided to update the thread. Next review unknown but it'll be the first of my revamp.

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Ok... decisions decisions...

Current/old:





Old design, never got used.





New design made an the past hour.







Which one should I go for in the Rodent Revamp?

I like these, but you should make the colors gold, silver, and bronze for the rating levels of good movies, and maybe blue or green for movies that are just okay, and red for bad movies.

I thought about the gold, silver and bronze but I've always gone with the full colour red/yellow of my avi for the good films, a saturated for a medium and black for rejected. I think it stands that a decent film, or one I would recommend, gets the full colour treatment.


This is what I'm doing with the new headers. Took this from my Guardians review on the last page as an example.

That looks very nice.

I know how to get the movie poster image centered, but is there a way to resize it here when you post it, or do you have to do that in an editor before you upload it?

Ah... that's my little secret.





To be totally honest, that header image is one picture. I've Photoshopped together an image with those film reels on it, and then pasted and resized the Guardians poster, saved the image and then uploaded to Photobucket.


I'm thinking of this design as well.

If you're making an image for MoFo... try sizes of 700 wide max, and 500 tall max... that way it will fit into your post/on one page perfectly.

They're both nice, but I like the films reels better. The dark color of the curtain border in this image make it look a little bit claustrophobic.


That sounds like a lot of work. My reviews are so short that they're basically just ratings, not reviews, so I usually just grab an image off the Internet that's close enough to the size I need, and I just upload it here.

Use wiki then... wiki pictures are pretty standard in their sizes and tend to work well on MoFo.


In fact, look over this entire thread and all the posters in here are wiki's.


But yeah, just a tip really, keep the images smaller than 700x500 and they'll fit perfectly on MoFo. Any bigger and the site resizes them, or they won't fit into one page and you have to scroll down to see the bottom half of the image.

I prefer the film reels too tbh. They look pretty flash.

Thanks. I'll try to remember that.

Sometimes I find a few different movie poster images for a specific movie, and I try to pick the one that I like the best, so whether or not there's a choice makes a difference too.

I'm going with these... and made an improvement. small change to the colouring and a slight shadow underneath...


= Regardless of rating, I'm recommending the movie for fans of all types of genre, actor or whatever. Basically I'm saying you should see it.


= Middle of the road. Not for everyone, but I'd recommend it for fans of the genre, actors, director or general style of movie.


= Total garbage. Avoid.

The only one that I can see a difference in (from your earlier post) is the black one. The border looks thicker, but that's probably just because of the shading on the dark color.

I've edited that post a little too


There's a tiny change in the contrasts and the 50/50 one and the Rejected one have both had the borders recoloured to match the browns and blacks.

What you guys think about this for a header design?

Synopsis:

The Sun is dying. A mission called Icarus-I is sent to save the Sun, and us, by delivering an incredibly powerful bomb, and it has failed. Icarus 1 disappeared without a trace.

Icarus-II, has now been sent with a similar bomb to complete the failed mission…

But on approaching Mercury, they pick up a distress signal.

Review:

I didn’t like this movie on first watch. I get the impression a lot of people are in the same boat.
However, Sunshine is simply not a science-fiction thrash’em up full of aliens and explosions and far-out fantasy.
It’s a sombre and pretty downbeat sci-fi-sci-fact movie that, although at times is kinda boring, has great payoffs from scene to scene and a couple fantastic twists throughout the running time.
One good thing though, is the quieter scenes, or more boring stuff, doesn’t last for too long. It kinda comes in little hits before something new happens to keep the story going and keep the viewer interested.

It’s been summed up in the DVD commentary as well, that the film can be interpreted in numerous ways.
It’s not deep exactly, but there are a few ways this movie can be, well, “seen”. Is it a psychological movie or a drama? Is it sci-fi or sci-fact?

Well, it’s all of these things.

The cleverest part of this movie is also its downfall though. The reality and fact based sciences.
This film is truly one of a kind yet this can alienate some of the viewers, especially those in a mindset of wanting a sci-fi extravaganza, or maybe something like the movie called The Core.
Sunshine is a very grown up, serious, adult sci-fact movie, laced with the occasional hit of artistic licence so that the simple yet effective and affective story can keep going.

The other thing is Boyle’s use of colour. Inside, everything is grey and green, white, black and so on. It’s only outside the ship that yellows and reds are used so that the Sun and any scenes with fire are more of a shock to the viewer’s system.


The acting is, with the lower tones and scenes in the film, on a top tier when it comes to movies of this kind.
Cillian Murphy as our lead hero, is bang on form. The work he put into the character I mentioned shines (ahem) through at all times. He’s also incredibly naturalistic with it too and has a few moments of peril to get through. Cillian’s acting though, makes all the hits of action much more powerful and believeable. Cillian nails this role.

Chris Evans also makes a decent hero. He’s like the polar opposite of Murphy. The two even come to loggerheads a few times. Evans though plays it naturally as well, and comes across as a likeable and intelligent rogue on the ship. Certainly one of Evans’ best acting roles, as most people know him as the action hero these days.

Cliff Curtis also makes a memorable character within the group. He’s the Doctor and Psychologist keeping the crew sane during their trip. The introduction of his character and some of his lines of dialogue during the running time though throws the viewer. You’re never really sure exactly what going on in his mind. Is he dangerous? Or is he just a little weird? Brilliantly played by Curtis.

Hiroyuki Sanada, Rose Byrne, Troy Garity, Benedict Wong, Michelle Yeoh play more background and supporting roles though. I wanted to see a little more of these guys but they’re just sort of, there.
Benedict Wong plays a more pivotal role though at one point and plays it extremely well, he steals the scene when certain things go bad for the crew.
Mark Strong also makes a showing in two separate parts of the film as Pinbacker. His second show in the movie though, he’s unrecognisable.



The action and FX though are on top form. The CGI throughout is incredibly simple and very well rendered. In particular the scene with Mercury going across the face of the Sun is beautiful.

The action and more highly charged cinema is held in reality too. The odd hit of artistic licence as I mentioned keeps things looking very stylised and exciting but holding most of the movie in reality and keeping the action stakes in the ballpark of “when needed” instead of just for the sake of it, makes Sunshine stand out from the crowd.

Toward the end, there’s also a sequence of highly claustrophobic action when Murphy is stuck inside one of the space suits and the choreography is brilliantly underplayed.

Is this the cheap, imitation, knockoff version of JayDee's Movie Musings?

It's an upgraded version of Rodent's Reviews.

Where have you been Sexy? That's what this thread has always been!

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JayDee doesn't have fancy pictures and paragraph separators like I do.


Or as good reviews either.