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Philips Sensotouch 3D 1250 shaver

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Written by lithgow lithgow

Category: Reviews Reviews

Published: 29 December 2010 29 December 2010

Last Updated: 08 January 2015 08 January 2015

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The Sensotouch 3D 1250 is my fourth Philips electric shaver.  It's also the best, so far.  Note, this review is based on two weeks use, so it doesn't take into account any long-term reliability issues (and by long term, I mean more than two years).

The previous shavers I've used have been a mid-range 3 head shaver from around 2000 (it lasted until 2006, and was still working but it's battery was almost completely exhausted so it needed to be plugged in while shaving), the top-of-the-range HQ9190 from 2005 (I went through two of these in four years -- the batteries completely died after two years making the shaver useless), and the mid-range HS8020 from 2007 bought in 2009.

Of these, I was very happy with my first shaver, which lasted for ever and still works as a plug-in shaver.  However, the newer shavers have improved over it by offering the ability to be washed clean in hot water -- this is a big advantage.

The second shaver, the HQ9190 was a good shaver while it lasted.  The shaving mechanism on all newer Philips shavers is a lot looser than the old ones, which takes a bit of getting used to, but which works very well once you adjust your technique.  This shaver was easy to maintain (you could clean it in water) and a decent size, but after two years, with two different shavers (I got a replacement since the first failed just inside the warranty) it failed completely.  Thus my note about long-term reliability above.  This was doubly disappointing considering the HQ9190 was a top-range shaver, and quite expensive.  As far as I'm aware it was Philips' first use of LiOn batteries in their shavers and they may have got it horribly wrong and never corrected it in this design.  Hopefully they've corrected it by now.

The HS8020, which is a "wet shaver" using Nivea shaving cream built into the shaver was a bit of a disappointment.  It simply doesn't shave as well as Philips' dry shavers.  When used dry it's very painful (abrading your skin) and very slow (not picking up longer hairs).  When used wet it's OK but not spectacular, and I found that using it wet didn't really suit my lifestyle (I don't have morning showers).  When used dry, it also drops all the cuttings straight out the bottom, so you have to be careful to shave over the sink.  The recharger was also poorly designed, with contacts at the bottom of the shaver corroding onto your bench when water inevitably dripped from the shaver.

The Sensotouch solves all the problems of the HS8020, while still having the new, separate head design (originally labeled Arcitec).  The cuttings are caught in the independent head, and the flexibility of the head mount, plus the flexibility of the blade mounts within the head make it very easy to shave with, and to shave quickly.

This is a big shaver, and the charger is big, too.  However Philips have finally got the charger design right, with contacts on the side of the shaver rather than the bottom.  The shaver can now sit in a small, plastic dish while the contacts are up, out of any pooling water at the side.  The size of the shaver doesn't affect shaving, once you're used to it, but it does make it a little less convenient to travel with.  At least the charger wall unit is still nice and small.

The shaver has a simple three-segment charge indication, which seems not entirely reliable so far.  I'm sure it will adapt, but none of the shavers I've had have been terribly reliable at showing charge indications -- in fact very few of my electronic gadgets are good at giving battery indications, so Philips isn't alone in struggling with this.

The shaving heads themselves work very well, giving a pretty close shave very quickly with no abrasiveness at all.  There is no comfort-level adjustment like my first two shavers, but neither is it required.  The latest iteration of Philips' head design works really well, handling longer hairs as well as shorter ones, and doing it quickly.

The shaver is easy to clean, although it feels a little fragile, with its three heads opening separately like an alien Predator's mouth.  Still, previous experience shows that these parts are actually stronger than they look.

Finally, the shaver has a very handy trimmer, which I use for trimming sideburns.  I really missed this on the HS8020, which doesn't have this feature.

Oh, and it's quite a handsome shaver -- nicely designed and varying plastics making it pleasant to both look at and hold.

In conclusion, then, this is the best Philips shaver I've used so far, and a worthy improvement on previous efforts.  It doesn't seem to get anything wrong so far, and does everything just a bit better than previous shavers (except for portability).  Personally I view the Nivea series of shavers as a dead end for my usage patterns, and I'm glad I bought the cheapest in that range, although knowing what I know now I wouldn't have even bought that one.

In comparison to the other members of its family, the Sensotouch 3D 1250 seems like the obvious choice, with the other two models above it merely adding slightly better battery life and a jet cleaning unit.  I was rather unimpressed with the jet cleaning unit that accompanied the second instance of my HQ9190 (the first came with a bomb-proof stainless steel travel case), and the unreliability of the digital battery remaining readout of the higher end models is not really worth paying for either.  So don't waste your money and just get a 1250 -- you'll be getting a solid, fast, comfortable shaver.

(BTW, Philips claims that the Sensotouch 3D shavers work with shaving cream, too.  This rather defeats the point of an electric shaver for me, so I haven't bothered testing this out.)

Update:

The RQ1250 stopped working last week, out of the blue.  Simply didn't turn on.  I took it in to Philips to get it repaired under warranty.  We'll see how that goes.  Impossible to tell whether this is a design flaw (as with the HQ9190, which failed around the same time in both models I had) or just a one-off issue.  At least Philips has a two year warranty and it's relatively easy to take advantage of it.  I would be more annoyed if I didn't still have my HS8020, though.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader

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Written by lithgow lithgow

Category: Reviews Reviews

Published: 11 December 2010 11 December 2010

Last Updated: 08 January 2015 08 January 2015

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We finally got to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader today, with Atalia.  She spent most of the movie with her 3D glasses off (which made everything a bit blurry) because she was determined to be scared of everything.  So much for her impressions of the movie.

Mine were more positive.  The first impression was that this is an absolutely spectacular looking movie.  The 3D worked quite well, adding a feeling of depth (which is, of course, what it's supposed to do) without being distracting.  I've heard some criticism of the 3D in this film and frankly, I'm not really sure why -- it seemed fine to me (much better than Toy Story 3's weak 3D, for example).  But far more impressive was the beautiful work on two important things for the story: the Dawn Treader itself, and Reepicheep the noble mouse.

I should note -- I'm assuming that you've already read the book.  If you haven't, and you don't want to know anything about the story, you might not want to read this review.

First I should say that I saw, and was very impressed with, the actual, full size prop of the Dawn Treader when we visited Movie World last Christmas.  So I knew what to expect, and wasn't disappointed.  But I was very impressed with the way they filmed her -- wide sweeping, aerial shots perfectly merged with the surrounds.  The Dawn Treader is almost a character in C. S. Lewis's books, and while the film dotes on her a little less, she is nonetheless a visual triumph and makes a big contribution to the feel of the movie.

Reepicheep, of course, isn't a prop, but rather a work of CGI.  And at last CGI has come of age.  This is the first flawless CGI work I have seen.  Reepicheep has courage in his eyes, a bounce in his step, and interacts perfectly with his surroundings (at one point Lucy hugs him -- a difficult effect to pull of given Reepicheep's long fur -- and it looks perfectly real).  Simon Pegg adds to Reepicheep's veracity and appeal with an excellent vocal performance.

The other visual effects are all superb, too.  Of special note are the dark island -- a mere bank of fog in Lewis's story -- here a frightening, vast, contortion of root-like smoke-pillars.  Eustace as a dragon is wonderfully animated, but he never seems quite as real as Reepicheep (perhaps because dragons aren't real).  The gold pool's effects are nicely done, and  Ramandu's daughter (the star who Caspian later marries) looks appropriate star-like.  Oh, and Aslan looks as real as a talking lion can (and much better than in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe).  I spent a lot of time trying to figure out where the various scenes were shot, since much of the movie was shot on the Gold Coast while we were there (last year).  However, that was a complete waste of time -- much of it was shot in the studio, and what wasn't was perfectly merged with CGI backgrounds so there was no way to tell where it was shot -- it just looked like another world.  The only part that looked like the Gold Coast was a brief scene where Lucy sees herself as Susan in America (except America looked like the Gold Coast -- there were even mangroves in the background).

So, visually a triumph.  What about in other ways?  Well, the acting is solid -- the returning actors playing Edmund, Lucy and Caspian do their jobs, with perhaps Lucy the standout here, although I've always sympathised with Edmund, and found myself doing so in the movie, too.  Peg's Reepicheep was a standout, and Gary Sweet's Drinian (the captain of the Dawn Treader) has a certain presence.  Newcomer Will Poulter actually does a pretty good job with Eustace, although he gets very little time to show Eustace's reformed character (since he isn't transformed back from the dragon for quite some time, and the dragon can't speak).  Still, he makes good use of the time he gets, and we understand something of Eustace's journey, although it's much better done in the book, of course.

The story has been tweaked a bit, not as much as Prince Caspian, and chiefly to give a more urgent purpose to the questing.  This makes for a more spectacular climax (it's actually quite scary).  The only real victim of these changes that I noticed was the point of the Dufflepud episode.  Lewis used these invisible, silly creatures to portray vanity and willful ignorance.  In the movie this is simply lost, although Lucy's lesson in vanity is not (fortunately).  Overall the movie is a faithful to the story as it is possible for a movie to be, and carries through most of Lewis's simpler themes.  Can it compare to the incredible richness and depth of the book (the Dawn Treader is one of the most theologically rich of the Chronicles)?  No, of course not.  Movies are capable of conveying only extremely crude, simple stories, although they can do that very powerfully (think of something like A Simple Plan).  They are very poor at conveying multiple levels of meaning, and when they attempt to do so you end up with something horrible like Pi, or something inaccessible like the colours trilogy (Red, Blue, and White).  The best you can hope for is two levels, which the movie of the Dawn Treader manages.

Of course, movie makers will swear that this is not the case, as will the educated movie critics.  But the common element that both of them share is that they spend enormous amounts of effort on a single work, which is what is required to extract more out of a movie.  Books are different.  With a movie you need to put very little effort in to get a rewarding experience at two levels: the surface story/character level and the thematic level.  To get more out of a movie requires intense study and effort.  Books, on the other hand, reveal their layers in a more evenly progressed manner.  Perhaps that is because books convey their story and characters via words, which are the same means we use to convey ideas and propositions.  Movies use vision and sound, which require far more interpretation to divine their propositional content.  For example, Eustace's de-dragoning is a searingly powerful scene in the book, but in the movie it's mostly just a visual effect, with most of the impact only conveyed to us later by Eustace's recounting it.  (As for the theological implications of that episode, well, you're never going to guess at them from the movie, but they're quite clear from the book.)

Anyway, given those limitations inherent in the medium, the Dawn Treader makes a decent attempt.  Perhaps the music could have been better and the performances given a little more room to breathe, which could have made it more moving.  Still, it's definitely worth seeing, and will transport you into another world for a couple of hours.

Monopoly Deal

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Written by lithgow lithgow

Category: Reviews Reviews

Published: 01 September 2010 01 September 2010

Last Updated: 08 January 2015 08 January 2015

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Monopoly Deal is a card game that attempts to replicate the Monopoly board game.  In fact, it betters it!

The card game includes cards representing money, action cards (including a "Pass Go" card which allows you to pick up two more cards), and property cards (all the properties plus some wildcards and houses and hotels).  The goal is to collect three full sets of properties to win.  This goal is actually quite achievable, so Monopoly Deal is a much faster game than it's ancestor.

Some of the action cards make the game a fun, tactical challenge, especially the "Sly Deal" (steal someone else's property), "Deal Breaker" (steal someone's full property set), and collect rent cards.  Collecting rent is a great way to collect properties, too, since every property card has a monetary value, and if you don't have any cash on the table you have to pay any charges with properties (though you get to chose which ones).  This lends the game quite a lot of tactical room, deciding when to place your cards on the table from your hand (where they are both vulnerable and useful), and how to pay for various charges (since you don't get any change, it might be worth handing over a $1M property rather than a $10M money card).

We have the Hong Kong version, which has HK property names and appropriate money cards.

Atalia loves this game, but it's fun for adults, too.

Highly recommended.

Ip Man: Three movies

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Written by lithgow lithgow

Category: Reviews Reviews

Published: 10 July 2010 10 July 2010

Last Updated: 08 January 2015 08 January 2015

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Hong Kong is an incredible producer of movies and television. Considering that the population is only 7 million, the volume of output is quite extraordinary. The quality, on the other hand. Well, at least it's better than Bollywood, eh? (Ooohh, controversy!)

Anyway, one of the higher quality pieces of output we've watched since arriving here has been the three recent Ip Man (or Yip Man) movies. Ip Man, who I had never heard of before, was the martial arts teacher of the famous Bruce Lee (who I had heard of). It turns out that he is famous in his own right, as the person who opened up the kung fu style of Wing Chun. Given this, it's unsurprising that there are a number of movies about him -- what's surprising is how different and similar they are, how good they are, and how fictional they are.

Let's cover them in the order they were released.

Ip Man, the first movie

Directed by Wilson Yip and starring Donnie Yen as Ip Man.

I watched this on a DVD from the mainland (so it was probably pirated), with English subtitles that looked like they'd been generated by Google Translate. As a result, it took me a little while to get into the swing of the movie. (Who was this "Leaf master"? Turns out Leaf is a translation of Ip, which the translation software didn't recognise as a name. Much other mistranslation led to great confusion and occasional hilarity.)

Eventually, it becomes obvious that Ip Man is a highly skilled martial arts practitioner who is interdependently wealthy and thus not interested in running a school, but rather indulges the occasional student or master with demonstrations of his skills. Into this tranquil existence comes the Japanese invading forces, stripping Ip Man of his wealth, and the Chinese of their dignity. The rest of the story is about Ip Man struggling against these forces to maintain the dignity of his people. Kung Fu is presented as a moral way of living as much as a way of fighting (which, of course, is common to all Eastern martial arts), and eventually triumphs over the arrogance of Japanese Karate.

The storyline is fairly conventional, but what makes it all work is superb production values (the sets and costumes are gorgeous, as is the cinematography and the score), accomplished acting (Donnie Yen brings a real gravitas to Ip Man, showing him as a man of enormous integrity and responsibility, while still being able to dazzle in the impressive fight scenes), and a deft emotional touch. While the story is quite different from reality (Ip Man was actually a police man in this period), it works well as fiction. The emotions and travails of that period of history form a powerful backdrop to the conventional martial arts story framework, and make this a movie worth seeing.

Ip Man 2, a sequel to the first movie

Same cast and director.

Ip Man 2 starts with a jumble of images from the first movie, establishing the context for this one. The tone and character of the story are very similar. In this outing, though, the Japanese are replaced by the British as the aggressors. In order to achieve such animosity between the Chinese and the British (which didn't exist in reality at this time, at least in HK), it's necessary for a corrupt policeman to be invented, and a rabidly racist British boxer (called "The Twister") to challenge the ability of Chinese martial arts.  While the corrupt cop comes across as one of those poorly acted Poms from an early Jackie Chan movie, the boxer is portrayed with such venom and arrogance that you can't help but hate the character and cheer for the Chinese (and, in particular, Ip Man).

Unlike the first movie, which had a well paced, well developed story and characters, this movie suddenly switches its trajectory half way through.  The first half involves Ip Man struggling to carve out a living in HK (his first studio was actually located a ten minute walk from here on what used to be the waterfront), battling with the local vested interests (represented by Sammo Hung, a famous HK kung fu star, who choreographed the fights for all three movies).  This represents Ip Man as the principled man against the opportunistic pragmatists as in the first movie, and Sammo Hung makes a convincing villain.  Then, abruptly, Sammo Hung's character (Master Hong) is a good mate and the Poms are the villains.  While, given the behavior of the Twister, it's understandable why the Poms become the villains, it's inexplicable why Master Hong is suddenly such a good guy, even when he lays down his life out of pride (patriotism, not personal pride).  Perhaps the message is that his early corruption was driven by a strong sense of responsibility for his people -- a sense of responsibility shared by Ip Man.

Anyway, all this leads to a big battle between the boxer and Ip Man.  This is a competent finale, and exchanges the feeling of doomed, dignified resistance that marked the final battle of the first film with a feeling of desperation to save face for the Chinese and Kung Fu.

Unfortunately, this second movie carries through some of the characters from the first movie, but doesn't give them anything to do.  While Ip Man comes through the movie with his dignity unscathed, the same cannot be said for the rest of the characters, most of whom are diminished by this treatment.  So while this is a well made movie, the script lets it down.

Ip Man: The Legend is Born

This third movie is set before the first two, when Ip Man was a teenager.  It has a different director and star, with Ip Man played by Dennis To, a Kung Fu champion and one of the minor baddies in the second movie.  To add to the confusion, one of the characters who was a baddie in the first movie and an irrelevant goodie in the second becomes a major character as Ip Man's fictional adopted brother.  Nonetheless, Siu-Wong Fan, the actor who portrays this character does such a good job that he provides the emotional backbone to the movie.  Finally, Sammo Hung returns both as the fight choreographer and the aging Kung Fu master who trains Ip Man (for a few years until he dies).

Unlike the first two movies, which relied on a basic plot of Ip Man defending Chinese dignity against foreign oppressors, this movie is more of a romance, with the classic love quadrangle forming a large part of the drama and humour.  Fortunately this element is resolved in a way far more natural than is the norm for Hollywood productions, and is allowed to naturally end to make way for the surprise twist (which is well foreshadowed, if a bit hard to believe).

Since Ip Man is much younger in this movie, he doesn't have the gravitas of the first two movies and the script wisely adds more humour and vulnerability to the character to compensate.  The gravitas instead belongs to Sammo Hung, Biao Yuen (as the master who replaces Sammo Hung's character) and Siu-Wong Fan (as Ip Chin -- Ip Man's brother).  These three, along with Ip Chun (the real-life son of Ip Man, who plays Leung Bik, the estranged brother of Sammo Hung's character's master -- yes, relationships are complicated in Chinese dramas) present the meditation on Kung Fu, such as it's purpose, spirit and rigidity or openness.  Fortunately, this forms a natural part of the story, and adds to the flavour of the piece (it also provides excuses for several short fight scenes, all but one rather humorous and that last one rather distressing, for emotional reasons).

Once again the Japanese end up as aggressors (inevitable, really, given the setting), and we get some Ninja vs. Kung Fu action, which has to be fun, right?  Fortunately the movie has developed the characters sufficiently by this stage that the final fight scenes are not just eye-candy, but genuinely taut and engaging.

This was the only one of the three movies I saw in the cinema, and it benefited from this in two ways: 1) the subtitling was done by a human being that understood English, as opposed to a machine that was clueless (which meant I could focus more on the story and images and less on trying to decipher gibberish); 2) the sound was excellent, giving more oomph and power to the fights.

Summary

Reading the IMDB reviews of these three movies (follow the links on the movie names above), I was struck by how many of the reviewers were real Kung Fu fans, and how the Kung Fu was a big part of the experience for them.  That is not the case for me.  Also many found the formulaic stories tiring.  I don't mind a formulaic story, so long as it's told well.  All three of these movies have high production values (still not true for all HK movies, though it's increasingly common), and the first and third have universally good acting, with some outstanding performances.  The music, sound, and cinematography of all three is excellent.  The fight scenes are certainly well choreographed and performed, but for me these are not the core of the movies.  Given that understanding, I would highly recommend the first movie, and give a lesser recommendation for the third.  See the second only if you really enjoyed either of these.

Certainly, HK cinema is capable of making engaging, powerful stories that are worth seeking out.