Movie Review -“The Visit”: Confused horror movie

Note: This review contains spoilers in the second half!

My overall rating: 3/10

Night Shyamalan was famous for movies with an unexpected twist. The Sixth Sense, The Village, etc had people sitting on the ed
ge of their seats. However the formula seems to have gotten stale and he hasn't released a movie for a few years.

So when "The Visit" was released with a seeming theme of horror, I expected a lot. I was disappointed!

The movie tracks a one week stay of two children visiting their grandparents for the first time in an isolated place. The usual fun things show glimpses of some weird behaviour and is supposed to build to a grand finale. The glimpses of horror are unfortunately not all that scary and are just weird. Night Shyamalan has assumed that people would get scared of bizarre behaviour shown in the dark and shot with a handheld camera. The twist is quite expected and is unfortunately seen in a lot of movies. To be honest I was actually expecting another big twist and had a few more expected!!

Spoilers ahead!

The reason I found the movie empty and devoid of a good plot are as follows:

Which mother would send her young children to meet people she has not met in 15 years without personally escorting the. The movie has a very weak reason for this and hence the movie is off to a poor start.The glimpses of horror are short lived and more creepy than horror. I agree that there is no supernatural element in the movie and hence the show of horror will have limitations. For people who love very scary scenes this is like drinking diluted cola!The excuse for blocking off the webcam (something baked falling on it) holds little water literally. This is extremely important for the plot and is another weak element.The weird behaviour of the grandparents could have been better shown.The handheld camera shoots are painful after a while. This is a strategy used in many movies and is always a hit or a miss.Th all night shot with the "hidden" camera is not possible with the usual camera for reasons of memory, battery life etc.For a small town where two psychos have escaped and where two two people have not been seen, there is very little concern. I expect that in reality there would have been police visits, etc.The twist was expected and was not really a twist. It was not even well shot! I actually expected another twist. Even at the point when the kids run to the police cars and their mum I ws expecting a twist. When the mother speaks on the video for her daughter, I was expecting another twist. What the heck.... when the last rap video was being shown as part of the credits, I was still expecting the twist! Disappointed.....

There were some nice moments though. The last bit where Beck is finally looking at the mirror and combing her hair may have been missed by many but was a moment to notice!

The connection between Tyler freezing on the football field and the final moment when he freezes and then attacks the fake grandpa is another well built moment.

Overall I would give this movie a miss. It is rated at 6.2 on IMDB, but if you read the reviews there is plenty of disappointed viewers!

My overall rating would be 3/10. It has a poor plot, weak camerawork, no real horror and an expected twist!

iPaky Hybrid TPU+PC Dual Hybird Back Case (for Lenovo K3 Note)

I bought my Lenovo K3 Note as a replacement for my dying Nexus 5. As most new mobile buyers do these days, I quickly chose a good cover which I bought online. The iPaky Hybrid TPU+PC Dual Hybrid Back Case / Cover is available online in most portals like eBay, Amazon, AliBaba, AliExpress and Shopclues. It is priced at about Rs. 500, but you can get it cheaper if you have coupons for eBay or Amazon.

The case has 2 parts. The first is the flexible TPU part that covers the back and the sides. The second part is the hard plastic bumper. There are variouus colour combinations with black, silver and gold bumpers available. I purchased the full black version.

Looks: The cover is slim and not bulky. The textured back looks great and overall it does not spoil the look of the phone. The sleek look is preserved. The black bumper on my phone has a slightly bluish tinge which I don't like. The textured back can be a dust magnet in the grooves, but this hasn't been a major problem for me.

Access: There are cutouts for the charger port, camera and flash. So all these functions are not obscured. It does not interfere with the camera focusing or the flash. It has buttons located over the volume and power buttons of the phone. These jiggle a little when shaken, but are quite tactile and easy to use.

Grip: The case makes it easy to hold the phone and the textured back makes it stay on flat surface without sliding.

Front protection: As the front part of the case is raised a little, the front screen does not touch any surface even if you put the phone face down. This is useful. It also prevents direct impact on the glass when the phone falls face down to some extent.

Back protection: The back is fully covered and hence protected except for the camera and flash openings.
Impact protection: My phone had two major falls on to hard floor from about 4-6 feet. The hone handled the impact well and the cover too stayed intact and probably absorbed some of the impact. The edge got a little scuffed.

Durability: The bumper plastic is hard but gets slowly scratched with regular use. The edges gets easily scuffed and show up white because of this. Also the top part of the plastic broke off at a thin spot just around the charging port.  This is annoying.

Ease of use: You can assemble the case and the bumper together and then slip the phone it and click all four corners to ensure a good fit. This is easy. Unfortunately when you remove the cover, the battery cover often
comes off. This is an annoyance and the battery stays in place.

My overall Rating: 7/10 The scratchability of the bumper and the annoying removal prevent me from giving a higher rating. This seems to have a shelf life of under 1 year. Mine lasted me 6 months.

Cost effective? I think an ideal price for this should be about 350-450 Rs.

Five things I like about the Lenovo K3 Note

As a follow up to my post about five things I dislike about the K3 Note, I am mentioning 5 things I love about the K3 Note.

The Display:
The full HD display is certainly the best part of this phone. The 5.5 inch display is quite rich and not glaring with good crisp colors. You will need to crank up the brightness in full sunlight. The auto adjustment of brightness is enough in most other situations.

The looks:
This is one of the best looking budget phones around. It is reasonably slim and the black color and form are good. I don't know how they achieved this with a standard shape and form factor! The phone is surprisingly sturdy and has survived a 6 foot fall with a good case and tempered glass screen protector.

The default Lenovo Gallery:
This works better than the photos app from google. The layout is a bit better and it has easy share and edit options.I haven't had any difficulty tweeting these pictures or uploading them onto my blog. It even works well with blogjob when I need to upload photos into posts.

Expandable Memory and dual SIM:
The default inbuilt 16 GB has less than 12 GB that is user available. With a lot of videos, etc this can be used up quickly. My memory card of 32 GB is easy to fix and migrating to it is quite easy. I just googled it and I was done in a few minutes. I'd suggest that you do this as soon as you get the phone. I haven't used the dual SIM feature, but users will find this useful. Both are 4G compatible.

Battery Life:
The high capacity battery charges slowly with standard chargers, but lasts well. I have 3G and wifi on all the time and use it often at home at work. I don't play games on this. It easily lasts 24 hours. By night I usually have 20% left with my average use. On days that I use it a lot with things like bluetooth switched on, it needs to be charged after 12-16 hours. Overnight charging works well with the auto cut off after full charge.

My overall verdict: The lag is what kills the phone. My friend who uses the same phone also finds it laggy. This is the killing con that would make me not suggest it to potential users. For a budget phone it is quite good.

Five things I dislike about the Lenovo K3 Note

I was looking for a budget phone in the Rs. 10000 range and the K3 Note had some pretty good reviews. I finally decided to buy it on Flipkart to replace my Nexus 5 which was dying.

Here are 5 things I dislike about it! I will write another review with 5 things I like about it soon.

The Camera:
For a budget phone the camera is worse than I expected. Its specs look decent on paper, but it is pretty much unusable in everything except with good lighting. There is a lag before the shutter goes off. In low light you can forget capturing much even with the flash. The more annoying thing is the shake factor. You have to make sure your hands are absolutely steady and noone moves a millimeter if you want sharp images.

The Lag:
This is quite surprising given terms like 2 GB RAM, octacore processor, 1.7 GHz processor come up in its specifications! The official website boasts these specs and claims, "The 8 ARM Cortex A-53 processors, coupled with the ultra-fast 2GB DDR3 RAM makes sure the phone reacts to every swipe at the speed of light, and shows no hesitation to run the most graphic-intensive 3D games." Of the 2 GB of RAM, more than 1 GB is used by the Operating System. Open facebook, whatsapp, gmail and the usable RAM is less than 400 MB. The lag is terrible and you need to wait a couple of seconds before a touch or swipe registers. A lot of K3 Note users have complained about this. I have never tried to play games as yet, but dare not try! The famed octacore processor struggles to multitask.

The Heat:
This is not a bother to me as I do not make long phonecalls, but the space near the speaker tends to get heated when you are on a long phonecall.

The front glass:
Unfortunately this is not Corning Gorilla Glass. Most budget phones have this. It states that the glass is very hard and scratch resistant, but I am not sure - I have opted to use a tempered glass protector.

Menu buttons not backlit:
The menu buttons (home, back and list) are not backlit. It takes a lot of time to get used to their position and hence I end up struggling in the dark or tap the wrong place and wonder what happened.

Besides the camera and the lag, the other things are manageable for a budget phone. I was expecting an average camera when I purchased this phone. I was not expecting such a lag when I saw the specs. I may end up returning this phone if the lag worsens any more.

Fortune 5-in-1 dishwasher tablets

Rating: 7/10.
Used for more than 1 year.
Purchased from: Ebay India
https://www.ebay.in/itm/FORTUNE-5-in-1-Dishwasher-Tablets-Pack-of-180-Tablets-/281822829121
Cost: Rs. 12-15/tablet

Dishwashers are not very popular in India, but we decided to invest in one to save time and effort on the days our maid didnt turn up and also reduce her workload so she could spend more time cleaning the house and doing a bit of cooking. One of the problems we have had is trying to get good dishwasher detergents. We bought a set of IFB detergent, rinse-aid, salt set at the beginning. Having used Finish products in Australia and being suitably impressed, we found out that the only Finish detergent available in India was the Classic Powder. The tablets (like all-in-one, max, quantum) were available only in select online stores and ebay and were marked up by 300-400% from their cost in Australia or USA! We used to buy the Finish All-in-one tablets in Australia for about  Rs. 10 each (20 cents). Here they cost about Rs. 40!!

While we were quite satisfied with the Finish Detergent, rinseaid and Salt, I had to buy them online at the Finish store which was a pain as they shipped very slowly and the products were often out of stock. I could source them in Chennai from a few supermarkets. I stumbled onto Fortune 5-in-1 tablets, which are manufactured in India by Excel Rasayan, through Ebay.

Fortune Dishwasher tablets

They can be bought on most online stores - ebay, amazon, flipkart, snapdeal, etc. They cost about Rs. 12 a tablet. The more you buy, the cheaper it turns out. I use ebay coupons to get upto 10% discount. Here is my review:

The tablets are individually wrapped and so dont get soggy or broken easily. They fit well into the dispenser. They clean at least as well as the Finish Classic Detergent powder. Sometimes it even cleans better! Really caked on stains like dried noodles, oats and some stains in the pressure cooker dont go away, but this is expected. I wonder if the Finish Quantum tablets will help clean these. It has never left a residue on the dishes so far. There is a mild fresh scent which is quite pleasant. So far my dishwasher has not had any problems with the tablets.

The  main downside is the cost. There has been a recent 10% price hike which is a big downer for me. The present cost is more than the cost of Finish All-in-one tablets in Australia or the USA. The Finish tablet is way better than Fortune. Although the Fortune Tablet claims to contain rinse aid, I find that I need to always add extra rinse-aid to get spot free cleaning. I keep my dishwasher salt topped up at all times as the water supply at home is hard water. I'm also a little wary about quality control in these tablets as a lot of Indian products do not tell you all the components.

To sum it up, I use these tablets when Finish Detergent is not available. I think they are overpriced by about 20% and the rinse-aid in it is insufficient. They clean well and so far I havent faced any serious issues.

I just wish the Finish tablets were a similar price in India.

Nayasa Kids Water Can

My overall rating: 6/10

I have purchased 2 Nayasa water bottles so far and this review is based on these two purchases. Both are, like pictured above, spiderman bottles for kids. We were hunting for water bottles for my son which were BPA free. We stumbled on this product is a store called Santosh Super Stores in Annanagapr Chennai. It cost about Rs. 170 and for a good looking, seemingly sturdy bottle this seemed reasonable. Besides it also had a spiderman picture on it which my son would love.

My second purchase was through Amazon. This time I purchased an 650 ml bottle for just under Rs. 200. It had the option of a Cars image or a Spiderman image. Amazon shipped the Spiderman bottle (random choice).

Some of the positive features were:
- The bottles are BPA free
- They are dishwasher safe

Cost: For BPA free, double insulated bottles, these are pretty cost effective. The cheaper bottles usually have cheaper plastic and are usually not BPA free.

Size: The first 500 ml bottle is the perfect size. It fits into most bags and is easy to carry around. The 650 ml bottle is very tall and it barely fit into my sons lunch bag. Be aware of this when you buy it.

Finish: I was quite happy with the plastic quality. It is I think double walled and hence cool water stayed cool for a couple of hours. This was a big bonus when we travelled. The picture fades after a few washes, but this is not a problem.

Lid and straw: These are the problem areas. The straw and lid and dismantle able which is a great idea when we clean it. However the lid has a small snap open pop up flip cover that you flip open. The rubbery straw then comes out for your child to drink water from. On my first bottle my son managed to chew this soft straw and after about 6-7 months it was not usable. However this is true for most straws and I don't think it is that big a problem.  On the second bottle the flip open section was not well fitted and it would open by itself in the bag and closing it was usually a challenge. after a month of use. The second bottle also started leaking from the side of the lid as it didn't seem a leak proof fit.

Cleaning: Dishwasher safe and hence easy for me. The 800 ml bottle needs a long bottle cleaner if you wand to hand wash it. The lid comes out clean. I don't think any straw can be cleaned - just flush with hot water.

Smells and Taste: I haven't noticed any weird smells or water taste from the plastic.

Unfortunately while the bottles have excellent potential, Nayasa seems to have a quality control issue. I wrote a letter to Amazon about my second purchase and they refunded the amount. Both bottles are rarely used - occasionally at home. We never take it out.

I would not recommend this product unless you completely check it and the store has at least a one month return policy as most problems will be seen within a problem. Also try to instruct your child not to chew the straw. Check the dimensions before you purchase it.

Diztronic Matte Back TPU Case for Nexus 5

Nexus 5 case

Rating: 7/10

I purchased my Nexus 5 in Australia about 20 months ago and literally stumbled on this case. I was keen on getting one of the spigen cases, but a forum member at Whirlpool was giving away this case for free. He even posted it to me and I thus got a free case for my Nexus 5.

This is a flexible case made of TPU and has got a matte finish. Its really easy to slip on and did not cause any problem even after I put on a Nillkin Tempered glass screen protector.

Finish: The flexible TPU looks good when new. The matte finish makes sure no fingerprints are seen. However after 20 months the back has a faded look which is not yet an eye-sore. I can live with that. Its also very slim and adds very little bulk to the phone.

Ease of Use: Its very easy to slip on and slip out. The only reason to take it out is to change the SIM card or to clean the back of the phone.

Access: The best feature of the phone is that instead of holes for the buttons it has a moulded raised button cover that is a joy to use and gives excellent tactile feedback. The cutouts for the speaker, micro USB, headphone jack, etc are precise.

Protection: TPU is supposed to be stronger than silicone, but its definitely not as tough as some of the armour or spigen cases. However the bumper part is fairly sturdy. I have dropped it a few times and my phone is still good. Drops on corners seem OK. The front part of the case is a bit raised and hence you can place it face down on a table without any direct screen contact or scuffing. This probably will help to some extent if you drop your phone face down. Unfortunately dust gets in through the cutouts and also squeezes in to the back of the case. I also found that the backside of my Nexus 5 is now quite scuffed and ugly looking due to constant pressure and movement of this case. So if you want to take your Nexus 5 without a case after using this case, you are in trouble.

Pros:
- Very slim
- Decent protection
- Great button covers

Cons:
- Not as sturdy as armour cases
- Back gets slowly faded/scuffed
- Dust issues

Manufacturer link: https://www.tpu-cases.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=368

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.in/Diztronic-Matte-Black-Flexible-Nexus/dp/B00FZ14E3S

I would not spend more than 10US$ or 700 Rs on a case like this.

Clublaptop 15.6" Pduos BS Laptop Sleeve

Rating: 9/10

For some reason I never purchased a laptop case or sleeve for my macbook. I carried it in an old bag and since it was not my primary laptop I didn't need to carry it to work. It just shuttled between my bed and the bookshelf where it was stored. Slowly I started using it more and realised the need for a case or sleeve to protect and carry it. I preferred a sleeve as it made it easier to carry in my backpack with other books, etc. A dedicated laptop bag meant I needed to carry two bags to work.

I hunted in the usual online site and zeroed in on this as it looked decent in the pictures. I used a small discount coupon and purchased it on ebay. It was shipped quickly and reached soon.

The first impressions were positive. The outer finish was excellent. The inner lining appeared soft but thin. However after 8 months of use it does not have any tears in it. The padding is adequate and feels durable. I doubt it will enable my mac to survive a 2 metre free fall, but will definitely protect it from bumps and small falls.  Its not bulky and quite light and so slips into my backpack very easily.

The zip seems durable and has lasted eight months. It is smooth. However the zip handle is made of a hard rubbery material and this started cracking recently. I just used cello tape to tape it. There is absolutely no storage space and so my charger sits separately in my backpack. There are no pockets for memory cards or USB sticks or CDs.

Overall I am very happy with my purchase and will recommend this sleeve in India. For the price point it is excellent and does its job well. Its cheaper than a few other branded sleeves and seems durable.

PROS:
- reasonable cost
- excellent looks
- feels durable
- fairly rugged

CONS:
- Zip grip cracked
- No storage space

Purchased from: Ebay (Listed as Clublaptop Premium Laptop Sleeve Bag)
Buy link: https://www.ebay.in/itm/Clublaptop-Premium-Laptop-Sleeve-Bag-For-11-6-13-3-14-15-6-Laptops-/131202327447 (listing is still active)
Official product link: https://shop.clublaptop.com/laptop-accessories/clublaptop-15-6-pduos-bs-laptop-sleeve/p-7131560-54251008034-cat.html#variant_id=7131560-54251008034
Date Purchased: 29-Jan-15
Purchase Price: Rs. 540 (Rs. 491 after discount coupon)
Present Price: Rs. 500 (even lesser with discount coupons and using a payment wallet like mobikwik)
Reason for purchase: For my Macbook pro 15" laptop

Transfer from blogjob

As blogjob is potentially closing down, I am transferring my reviews from Reviews by Ross to blogger.