I’ve been in the movie business for a couple of years now, and I know now never to trust anyone’s opinion of a film. I missed out on what I consider one of the greatest projects to hit the big screen and had to settle to watch it on a measly 42inch screen. Not only that, but Blockbuster didn’t have the title in Blu-Ray, so the whole high def stuff also went out the window. I mean fate must have had it in for me, because I had also just missed a free showing on Virgin 1 and ended up paying £3 to rent it. Why all the hassle? All because I listened to someone who said that the film was a disappointment, not worth me going to the cinema for it. I almost missed out on a film that ranks high in my top 10 favourite films ever.

So what is it that I am raving about? Well, it’s no other than Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto. I mean, fair enough its subtitled, but I was so engrossed in the humorous antics of Israel Ríos as Cocoa Leaf, the bloody scenes (and from a diehard fan of horrors and action films, there is a lot of cringe worthy scenes), and also the sad bits that I didn’t even notice I was reading the dialogue. This film has a little bit for everyone – except those who are under 18 (obviously!) – and I think Mel Gibson is an amazing director, writer and producer! His Passion of the Christ is the only film that’s made me cry near enough continuously and he has just gone and outdone himself again.

So what’s it all about? Well, it’s set in ancient Central America, during the declining period of the Maya civilization. Apocalypto depicts the journey of a Mesoamerican tribesman who must escape human sacrifice and rescue his family after the capture and destruction of his village. He is then taken on a perilous journey to a world ruled by fear and oppression where a harrowing end awaits him. Through a twist of fate and spurred by the power of his love for his woman and his family he will make a desperate break to return home and to ultimately save his way of life.

Mel Gibson only cast actors of Native American descent who were not known so that they could not be linked to previous roles, and it has Yucatec Maya dialogue.

All I’m saying is… please visit a Blockbuster near you and watch this.

It’s been 2 whole weeks since I’ve had my Media Temple grid service hosting account and so far I’m loving it. Although I did have a few problems with my Urchin stats from the start of my service (500 error page), a (mt) technical assistant was able to have the issue sorted out within 24hrs of when I sent out an email to them which is quicker than my other hosting provider (not naming names) has responded to emails.

The control panel is intuitive, well layed out, easy to navigate and beatiful. They have a great designer or team of designers at media temple. The only down side I’ve found with the account centre is that it can be very slow, I mean annoyingly slow reminiscent of the days of dial up. Well, maybe I’m exagerating a little there but it could seriously do with a little boost.

The one touch install is just brilliant, saves you a lot of time and effort configuring files especially for users who don’t have the knowledge to manually install the relevant sites or blogs offered but would like to use them.

Being a web developer, it also gives me a lot of control over what I can do with the websites I build. It doesn’t give you as much control as you’ld have with a dedicated server but you definately get a lot for the money you pay and for most people, it definately gives you more control than you can shake a stick at. I’m eagerley anticipating the launch of the (cs) Cluster-Server in Q4 of 2008(any day now) which will be the successor to the grid-service and hopefuly most of the issues currently on the grid-service will be ironed out.

Another plus for the grid-service is it allows you to host upto 100 domains in one account without any extra charges and every one of those domains can have a database each, allowing you to host all your sites, your friends sites and even client sites if you wanted too. I don’t know about you, but I have a number of websites which are hosted by different providers and for the same services (often less) that i get with the media temple grid service but are a lot more expensive. On average, I’m paying near enough the same amount of money if not more every month for the hosting of one domain than I am for multiple domains on the grid service.

I took a gamble when going for the media temple grid service as I had read a lot of bad reviews online about website downtime and other issues, but liked the look of the site so much and wanted to give their control panel a go. So far I haven’t experienced any downtime on my site (hoping it stays that way) and the customer service has been absolutely phenomenal, a lot better than expected.

Media Temple grid service if far from perfect, but which hosting provider or package is? For the amount of goodies you get with the (gs), although I find the account centre (control panel) slow, $20 dollars a month is a bargain and well justified.

For now, I’m loving the hosting and (mt) definately get my vote.