A Father's Love - The Real Steel Movie Review

The 2011 movies have been more interesting and futuristic as Shawn Levy’s “Real Steel” makes its way for the evolution of the business in the world of boxing where robots substitute for human boxers.  At the moment that boxing had been totally changed, Hugh Jackman, playing the role of the character named Charlie Kenton fights for the title of the best. Instead of the old concept of human fighting one another in boxing, steel robots exchange punches in the ring for more action thus making Charlie to hit rock bottom. He reforms himself through the efforts of his separated son named Max, who is being played by Dakota Goyo, to make another comeback in the field of boxing with the use of his steel robot made from scraps. Charlie is once again regained his passion to leave a permanent name in the sport of boxing through equipping and coaching a future champion.

Charles Kenton (Hugh Jackman) was a former boxing fighter and became a promoter in the underground world of robot boxing. He has many struggles as he is serious problems with many people that he owes money and even came to a worse situation that his ex-girlfriend died and entrusted her son to him that he has never seen and known before. He tries to look for methods to solve all of his problems regarding his son and his once known profession by making its way to the top.

Real Steal is a movie filled with a lot of energy and robotic action more likely when you where watching “Transformers”. It is about how people struggle in the face of problems and grow personally from all of it. It’s a good film worth watching for the family as it shows more of the main character’s life more than the brawling scenes. You would also not get disappointed if you want to see some fights especially robot brawls as they are the must-see highlights in this movie. I think the movie was balanced well enough when it comes to the blend of fight scenes and scenes that shows the human personalities of the main characters. There is a time for action and a time for drama in this film which is well enough to create an astounding and impressive show. It is a great combination of science fiction along with fantasy and small pieces of emotional personalities of man. This movie also becomes even more intense as the scenes of metal robots heighten the intensity from their cool battle punches and techniques.  There is no uncertainty that it is a good movie but I think some of its scenes are a bit too predictable which might have been a little distracting. But overall, the movie is really good for everybody who is inspired to watch.

In summary, Reel Steel is a movie about the individual development of both father and son and about how people stand up from being pushed on the ground. This movie gives both inspiration and also entertainment. It is a movie worth to watch as you will be like watching a combined “Rocky” and “Transformers” movie. It is very impressive to see the outcome of their efforts (both their actors and the directing staff) in coming up with this great movie. 

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Embed Google Analytics Data in Your Reports Automatically

Google Analytics is at the heart of retail websites around the globe, recently tipping the scales in over 50% of surveyed sites. Website owners are attracted by the easy installation, intuitive user-interface and of course the price point (free), as well Google’s reputation for innovation in the online industry.

Many medium to large sized business owners will find that what Google Analytics lacks compared to its paid-for rivals is the big budget investment in customised reporting.

Google Analytics Dashboards

Google have made a valiant effort recently with their new customised dashboard, an extremely useful feature which allows you to build up a dashboard of your favourite widgets, all of which will load when you arrive. From here you can even download as PDF or in Excel, or schedule a regular report by email.

What’s this good for? Well let’s say you have a site which sells things. You probably know how much you sell each week, but you need to know where these customers are coming from in order to manage your business.

Head over to your dashboard, hit ‘Add a widget’ and make a pie chart showing Transactions grouped by Source (see below).

Ta-da! Well almost half of the sales shown here came direct, no surprise there as I know about half of my transactions are from repeat customers, but there’s a new site in 3rd place whose traffic has generated 30 sales. I should head over to that site and find out why, and maybe cut a deal with the site owner to promote this further.

What if I now want another widget which just shows the same information for a sub-set of products, perhaps the most profitable ones? Well this is where we reach the limits of the Google Analytics Dashboards, as segments and sub-sections of tables can’t be applied here.

Vuedata

For business dashboards and reports which require a bit more customised functionality, third party tools are available which will allow me to create these views automatically.

Vuedata is a new tool launched to allow site owners to build automatic dashboards quickly and easily, with no manual intervention. It pulls its data straight out of Google Analytics, so no code changes are required to get it working.

Vuedata’s interface follows the same familiar list of dimensions and metrics as the dashboard from Google Analytics, allowing you to quickly recreate reports. The headline feature is segmentation, making Vuedata one of the only external tools which allows advanced segmentation on all of your reports.

Creating My Business Dashboard with Vuedata

Once inside Vuedata, my report can be recreated by selecting ‘source’ from the list of dimensions and ‘transactions’ from the list of metrics. I also enter ‘-transactions’ in the sort box to ensure that the report shows the highest numbers first, and select ‘Last 3 months’ as my date range.

Hitting generate brings up my data in bar graph form, and flicking this over to Pie Chart gives me the end result I was looking for:

My favourite feature is the ‘Save to dashboard’ button, which saves all settings for future use.

Building on the example above, I’m also able to create a sub-report which looks specifically at my most important product. To do this I can create a segment, which is achieved through the slick new segmentation interface. In this example I’m segmenting ‘productName’ contains ‘widget’ to focus in on visitors who bought a specific item:

Using my Business Dashboard with Vuedata

Once set up, all my business reports are helpfully stored within the My Dashboard section of the site.

From here, all reports can be reopened, edited or shared using the build-in shortlink feature. The real business benefit here is convenience.

Once created, I can take any graph, and copy the automatically generated code into a blog, intranet site or client report.

The polished chart appears automatically and even allows viewers to hover and click on it to see further detail.

Vuedata is available to anyone who currently has a Google Analytics account.. Head over to www.vuedata.com to find out more.

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Movie Review: Captain America: The First Avenger

If you’re a fan of the Captain America series on comic books, you’ll definitely love watching this movie. Although the young Steve Rogers was not really emphasized in the story – before his arms and chest muscle swells into becoming the Captain you know, the movie didn't spoil the epic story of the brave man who wants to serve his country. If Brad Pitt’s transformation in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was superb, the transformation done with Chris Evan into a skinny man wasn't that great. If you’ll pay much attention to the details, you can tell the difference between a man who’s acting with his entire body and someone who’s paid to act without his head (it was Chris Evan’s head and a lame body of someone). My advice is, don’t pay much attention to it!

Chris Evans gave justice to Captain America’s portrayal. Aside from his pumped up biceps and chest muscles after the transformation, the Captain America that you will see in the movie is just like the one you used to read on print. On the other hand, Peggy’s portrayal is just a little step more into something convincing to the eyes. The change of Hugo Weaving’s voice here is pretty smart since his voice has become a trademark on the Matrix and Lord of the Rings series and it would greatly affect the movie somehow (he did a good job with the German accent as well). 

The plot was nice, with some predictable moments as you can observe in other comic adaptation movies (if you’re a fan, you know the story goes!). Joe Johnston really did something great after his The Wolfman movie. It’s something you expect from someone who directed the Star Wars series and Indiana Jones – great movies! If there’s one thing that would probably upset you the most is the ending – a risk that the movie has to take to pave way for Captain America’s return in the upcoming release of The Avengers in 2012 (where it is set in the modern day). Overall, the movie is a must-watch for Captain America fans and Marvel Comics readers. 

Rating: 7 out of 10

Cast:

Chris Evans - Steve Rogers

Tommy Lee Jones - Col. Chester Phillips

Hugo Weaving -Red Skull

Sebastian Stan - James ‘Bucky’ Barnes

Dominic Cooper - Howard Stark

Neal McDonough - Timothy ‘Dum Dum’ Dugan

Hayley Atwell - Peggy Carter

Derek Luke - Gabe Jones

Stanley Tucci - Dr. Abraham Erskine

Director: Joe Johnston

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