Friday night we went and saw Watchmen. I only had brief knowledge of the comic series/graphic novel that the movie was based off, but i really enjoyed the movie.

The direction, visuals, and soundtrack all blended magnificently together to sell the whole 'alternate reality' of a twisted cold-war 1980s setting. The opening credit sequence of the movie is absolutely fantastic; it set the history and mood behind the plot really well.

Although the movie is a little long at 163 minutes, it definitely wasn't long for the sake of it (i.e. Pirates of the Caribbean movies). It felt very 'epic' in watching it, so the length wasn't an issue for me, it made the movie feel like value for money.

I'd recommend seeing it, but don't expect a typical superhero movie, because this movie definitely isn't that. In fact it's so far from that that i'm not sure how else to describe it. Also this movie isn't for kids: it really earned it's MA rating with the violence alone, let alone a slightly unnecessarily graphic sex scene in the middle.

It's not for everyone, and I feel it's one of those movies that will generate very polarising opinions, but for me, it's definitely the best movies i've seen thus far this year.

Moving on; as a few would have probably noticed, over the past few weeks i've been having regular hosting issues. My account been moved onto a new server, which has proven to be less than stable to say the least. All my sites that are database-driven were down for the better part of yesterday, and now i've noticed that the server's time is set to US Central time, rather than UTC/GMT like it should be (thus throwing out my manual 'local time' calculations on this blog). Hopefully they iron out the issues soon, or i'll have to start looking for a new host.