Land of the Pharaohs (1955) Movie Review

Land of the Pharaohs (1955) (IMDB)

Land of the Pharaohs movie poster

This movie is about a pharaoh, Pharaoh Khufu who is planning for his second life after his death. He wants to be buried in a pyramid, surrounded by his many treasures, that is grave robber proof. So this is an estate planning movie. Can you imagine if in modern times when a person passed away they were buried with all of their valuable things instead of leaving an inheritance. The pharaoh has a captured architect design a pyramid that uses a labyrinth combined with blocked passageways to trap and block grave robbers. Now you just need to build the pyramid ! And that is the bulk of the movie, the building of the pyramid. There are thousands of extras, great orchestral music, huge sets, and dramatic acting - everything you would expect from this type of movie except the 3+ hour runtime (it is only 1 hour, 46 minutes). Overall it was a solid movie.

I give it a 6.4/10.

The Actors (2003) Movie Review

The Actors (2003) (IMDB)

The Actors movie poster

This is one of those Michael Caine movies that somehow slipped through the cracks for me. The story revolves around 2 failed actors (one of them played by Caine) who run a con to intercept a payment between gangsters. It works, but complications arise when the gangsters realize what happened. Can the actors continue the ruse and get away with the heist ?

About 50 minutes into the movie there is a short scene with a hedge maze in the movie that takes place at Humewood Castle in Ireland. During my research I couldn’t find the hedge maze in the gardens (Aerial view, searches) so either the hedge were replaced or the filming took place in another location.

The movie is fun, and worth a watch but not something to seek out unless you love Michael Caine.

I give it a 6/10.

In Praise of Nothing (2017) Movie Review

In Praise of Nothing (2017) (IMDB)

How do you feel about slice of life documentaries ? Where you see a short video of a small scene, typically beautiful or meaningful in some way, with narration on top of it. This particular documentary is just that with narration by Iggy Pop whose voice I did not not know I liked until now. You get lots of cool scenes of life being lived, vistas, attractions, and nature to name a few. And a little over 17 minutes in you get a first person view of someone walking through a hedge maze ! Relaxing to watch and listen to, I enjoyed this slice.

I give it a 7/10.

Maze of the Week Mini Redux Collection - #2, #62 and #89

I combined 3 maze updates together into 1 blog post because each of the changes were minor and I felt that they didn’t deserve their own post. None of them are worth becoming a new maze of the week either. You’ll see what I mean:

Maze#2 - Monument Valley

Here are the enhancements I made to improve the maze:

1. Added texture. I added texture to all of the land portion of the maze to be more accurate. This ended up dampening the color a bit as a result.

2. Title changes. I changed the font type & font size of the title, while adding the location.

3. Size changed. I reduced size of the horizon (the original horizon line was too thick). I also took 1 inch off the mazes height and reduced the foreground as a result. The effect is a zoomed in look from the original maze.

Not many changes.

Here are the before and after mazes:

If you like the brighter color, the original is for you. If the color change doesn’t bother you, then option 2 is for you.

Some data: The new file is 463MB from 87MB.


Maze#62 - Windmill

Here are the enhancements I made to improve the maze:

1. Added texture. I added texture to the grass and bushes.

That’s it. The problem is I can’t get what I see on my screen to render as a pdf or png (so I took a screenshot which came out as low quality).


Maze#89 - Hollywood Sign

Here are the enhancements I made to improve the maze:

1. Added texture. I added texture to the grass and bushes.
Here is the before and after:

Eh.

So here is where I landed on these 3. Monument Valley Maze gets a main page update. The other 2. No. The updates did not work in some way. Those mazes will stay as is.

If you like this type of content check out all of my case studies:

A Collection of Maze Design Case Studies to Improve your Mazes

Happy maze-ing !