A Dark Knight

It’s a little late, but with everything else going on in my life, I am sure you will forgive me.

Film Review!!!  I managed to see the Dark Knight last Saturday and I wanted to see if this one was going to live up to the hype, whether Heath Ledger was really deserving of the calls for an Oscar nomination, whether 2 1/2 hrs was really the right length for this film and finally whether the 12A rating was the correct one based on some of the comments I had read.

So lets deal with the hype factor first, IMO this is one film that does not disappoint as far as the hype goes, the story line is spot on, the action is fast and furious, there are twists galore in this film and no one should really leave the cinema feeling that they have been let down.

Heath Ledger’s Oscar nomination should be in the bag.  When Jack Nicholson played the Joker, his performance was aimed more at the Joker character from the camp Batman film and TV series where the jokes were fast and plentiful with lots of Biffs and Kersplats to go around.  Heath Ledger’s Joker comes from the Batman comics of the latter years, his Joker is dark and deadly.  The facial expressions that come from him fit perfectly into the character and the film certainly seems to miss him when he is not actually on-screen.

The length of the film actually seems right, however I did feel that in the end the fact that we had Two-Face making an appearance in the movie, it took too long for him to appear.   Maybe slighty speeding up the beginning of the film or moving some of the story around to give him a little bit longer to play the character.  Other than that, the film is certainly not too long and does not drag at any point.

The 12A rating,  hmmmmmm this is not a tough one as far as I am concerned, this film should have been a 15.  The comment from the BBFC that they didn’t want to remove the film from the large number of younger fans is a fair comment, but in that case they should have requested cuts to be made.  The excuse that a lot of the violence is implied rather than seen is true, but that doesn’t make any difference, the view knows it’s happening and the imagination fills in the blanks.  And come on the bit with the pencil how can that be allowed in a 12A.

Overall this is one cracking film and there has to be a sequel to this, the question has already been posed as to the identity of the villan of the piece and the over-riding opinion seems to be that “The Riddler” will be making a return and by the sound of it Johnny Depp is potentially being lined up to play Edward Nigma.  If that is the case then Batman 3 should certainly be good, the question is can it come anywhere close to the level of The Dark Knight.  I would say that you have to go and see this film, however given the Box-Office no.s both over her and on the other side of the pond, the vast majority of you already have.

Hancock

Well I managed to see Hancock at the weekend and this is one worth seeing, John Hancock, played by Will Smith, is a drunk, depressed & lonely super person.  I don’t think hero really qualifies, yes he catches the bad guys, but when the damage caused in the capture runs into the millions of dollars, it’s difficult for the public to see him as a hero.  When he saves Ray Embrey, played by Jason Bateman, a public relations spokesman, Ray offers to attempt to give him an image makeover.  What follows is a well told story dealing with Hancocks attempts to find out who/what he is and his attempts to get the public to appreciate him.  Overall the film is a little short but there is a good story that whilst it does sometimes get lost in the second half of the film is worth persisting with.  The standard Will Smith humour is toned down which really I feel was a mistake as this would have been a perfect vehicle to have the self-loathing characters deal with others with the quick witty put downs.  Overall this is a box-office hit, even if the critcial reaction has not been good, it’s a real nice no-brainer movie with a few nice plot twists thrown in for good measure.

Film Review : Prince Caspian & Hitman

Ok so one Cinema trip and one DVD viewing.  Cinema 1st

Prince Caspian.

Ok, so the first Narnia film was good, a well known story and great film-making, this one was a step into the unknown.  Having only ever read “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” all of the other films were going to be more interesting to me and this one, having read the reviews, was more up my street, “Darker and more battles” seemed to be the theme running through the various reports in the papers and online.  So the question is what did I think???  Well this film was completely spot on, we have the new character, Prince Caspian along with the 4 kids from the first film, rumours had been going round about some kind of friction between the actors playing Caspian and Peter over who was the lead actor and you could almost feel it coming through the screen.  Obviously this is a crucial part of the story with Peter having been High King expecting to lead and Prince Caspian who has drawn an army together himself also expecting to lead.  The film is long, around two and a half hours, however the time seemed to fly past and it certainly did not seem time when the credits rolled.  Without going into the details of the story, the next film “Voyage of the Dawn Treader” should continue the story of Narnia and is scheduled for May 7th 2010, a long time to wait.  I think that off the back of these 2 films, reading the whole series is something that for me is now long overdue.

Hitman.

Hmmmm, for me a computer game tie-in to a film is always something to be avoided.  A Film tie-in to a computer game is not always a good move.  This time round, hmmmmm, not too bad.  Timothy Olyphant plays the title character of Agent 47, a child trained to be one of a group of perfect assassins.  The action in the film is non-stop as Agent 47 tries to uncover why a man he whos he has killed is apparently still alive, whilst being pursued by the FSB (Russian Special Police) and by one dedicated Interpol agent.  Agent 47 finds himself in running gun battles with both of these forces as well as other members of his “Organisation” that appear to want him dead.
Overall an entertaining film, not quite up there as something I would say “You have to watch this” but significantly better than your average game tie-in film.  One to Rent.

Ok Ok, I know it’s been a little quiet round here….

Yes it’s been over 2 weeks, would like to say I have been busy, but it would be a big fat lie.  The wife and I went away for a rather relaxing stay with her mum & step-dad, unlike many people I get on very well with the in-laws and really find I relax when we are down there.  Given the holiday also co-incided with her birthday and a rather nice spell of weather things were great.  Spent time on the beach, ate some nice meals (also tried squid for the first time, something I will definately do again) and generally relaxed.  I had planned to spend a lot of time writing my novel, however with the weather going from what had been forecast to be a wet few days, the laptop stayed off most of the time.  However now I am back Chapter 8 needs finishing.

Anyway hopefully I will get back to regular posting and writing now.

Couple of things to review currently, firstly lets start with Civilisations Revolution for the 360.  I am really having a hard time with this game, I love it and enjoy playing it, but every time I finish a game I feel un-fullfilled.  It’s just too small and too short, it’s still really good and Deity level is bloody hard, but it’s still not as much of a challenge as say Civ IV feels because of the complexity and scale of options.  With Civ IV I can have a game that takes months to play due to the the size of the maps, no. of units etc, but Civ Rev can be over in a couple of hours.  My recommendation is that if you have never played Civ before (shame on you) the get it, it’s great fun, if you have played Civ before and enjoyed it, get it you will love it.  If you a Civ nut, then probably get it but it’s going to leave you feeling like something is missing.

Film Review : Shoot-em Up

Ok so the plot goes like this, people fire guns at Clive Owen, Clive Owen fires back people die.  Simple premise and little other plot for some time into the movie.  If you like action films this one is not going to disappoint, the stunts are amazing although so far past  un-believable it’s untrue.  Not the worlds greatest film by some miles, but it certainly is the best film for having a “I’ve been killed and a carrot was involved” body count running into double figures.

Cloverfield – Take 2

Yep Cloverfield came out on DVD yesterday and it wasn’t exactly a difficult decision to buy it, after enjoying it immensely at the cinema back at the start of the year.  The big concern I had was how it would translate from the large screen to the smaller (well 32 inches isn’t really that small….) screen, the answer was very well.  The cgi effects still look awesome and ‘Clover’ really looks impressive, yes as a second viewing there is a definite lessoning of the shock factor, Melina’s standout moment was hardly a surprise.  Having said that the oppotunity to watch various sections of the film again, pause and also slow-mo forward really displayed the skill that the film-makers had used to get the effects they did.

I am currently wading my way through the film extras and it’s amazing to see the difference between this and other films from the behind the camera perspective.  In most films you re-shoot every scene from multiple angles to get different lighting/perspective, in this there were re-shoots, but it was simply a variation from the one single camera being used.  Watching the way that certain effects were achieved with cameras, literaly being thrown around, was quite a marked change from the locked off cameras that and cameras on tracks.  JJ Abrahms is decidedly making his mark in both the TV and Film arenas and this will I hope be the first of many great films (Star Trek XI has a lot to live up to!!!).

Book Review : The Blue Zone

Okay, I know I did a book review yesterday, but I’m kind of steaming through books at the minute and The Blue Zone by Andrew Gross had been part read for a couple of months, so after finishing Red Seas under Red Skies I decided to dive back in.  This is Andrew’s first solo write, however he has spent time collaborating with James Patterson on a number of novels and the writing style has definitely rubbed off on Andrew, now given JP is one of my favorite authors this is certainly not a bad thing.  Up until yesterday I had only read about 100 pages of the story, basic premise is :

Father of the family, working for one of the crime families to launder money is arrested by the FBI he and his family are taken into Witness Protection when he agrees to give evidence.  However his eldest daughter who is about to get married does not.  2 years later, the father goes missing, the agent in charge of their case is murdered and someone is threatening the life of the eldest daughter.

From a slow start this book became a real page turner and to be honest I was not exactly surprised that in the end I finished the rest of the book in a single sitting.  The twists and turns of the plot kept you guessing and whilst I was able to spot one of the more obvious twists the rest were a surprise to me.  This is one author who has just made it onto my “I must buy every book this guy writes” list and I look forward to reading his next book when it comes out.

Book Review : Red Seas under Red Skies (Scott Lynch)

Having read the “The Lies of Locke Lamora” by Scott Lynch because both Chad and DM recommended it to me and then loving it, picking up the second book Red Seas Under Red Skies was a bit of a no-brainer.  I must admit it did sit on the shelf for a little while, but then again at over 600 pages it was not going to be a quick read.  In the end it did take me some time to plow through it as the story did take a little while to get going, however like the previous book, the story of Locke and Jean is as convoluted as ever and their schemes to get rich as wild as before.  This time round things decidedly do not go quite to plan and the schemes intertwine before the final page is finished.  In the end I did really enjoy the book, although as I said it’s slow to start, however the next book The Republic of Thieves due out in Feb 2009 is already pre-ordered along with the three other books he has planned, set in the Gentleman Bastards Universe, but following some of the other characters from the first 2 books, either before or after the events of the books.

A Tale of 2 Cinemas

Well that’s another Bank Holiday weekend done and dusted, another 3 days of rain and rain and high winds. It was certainly one of those weekends where going out for a walk/picnic/anything else outside was certainly off the agenda. In the end though it was a rather interesting weekend for my film side as I will explain.

Friday evening we had a phone call from a couple who although effectively “Friends of my Parents” are certainly friends of my wife and I as well, we end up over there a couple of times a year and they come over and suffer my cooking as well. Anyway, to cut a long story short, they had a couple of spare tickets to a special screening of Sweeny Tood, the Johnny Depp version, and would we like to come with them. Well neither my wife or I had actually seen the film, however it was one we had wanted to see and would have actually bought it a couple of weekends back if the shop assistant had not suddenly realised that although it was on the shelf it wasn’t released until the following day, Darn that pesky kid!!!

Anyway this all ended up with the four of us at Pinewood Studios on a wet Sunday night to watch a film, Frank had told me that the room we would be viewing the film in is usually used to show dailies from the films being made on the lot, but that the club he is a member of at Pinewood have regular showings of movies, not the films that are necessarily out at the cinema now, but more usually those that haven’t made it to DVD quite yet, having reviewed the listings, films such as Atonement and Juno were being shown in the next few weeks. When we arrived at the building, we were ushered into a bar area where the standard non-alcoholic and alcoholic drinks could be bought to enjoy during the film, however I was disappointed to note that the large Soft Drink and Popcorn were not available. After collecting our drinks we walked down a corridor that made you begin to pickup on what a different experience this was going to be as this corridor was Noise dead, no echos at all, you could hear peoples footsteps and voices but there was a strange sense that they were not quite normal. When we arrived in the cinema, this had to take the record of the smallest no. of seats for a screen that I have seen, however by no margin was this the smallest screen or room. We weren’t talking reclining arm chairs here, but they were close, loads of leg room and width, each chair had it’s own 2 arms, rather than sharing with the person next to you and also a cup holder for you to put your beer in. How bloody civilised!!!! The best thing though was the sound system, to say it blows the socks of any cinema I have been in is an understatement and if I win the big lottery jackpot, ie. Euromillions, rolled over 3-4 times until it’s around £50-60million, then I’m getting one of these in my mansion!!!

Anyway the film was great, I had been put off seeing it before because it’s a “Musical” and having been forced to watch Evita (in the end even my wife got fed up after about 10 mins) where everything was sung (at least in that first 10 mins) I was not too sure. However this was a lot better, but then again whenever Johnny Depp and Tim Burton start working together, the words “Box Office Hit” are never far behind. Without wanting to spoil it too much, they sing and he kills people. Worth renting the DVD in my opinion, but if you get the chance to see it at a special screening in Pinewood do not say no!!! Anyway lets just say that my membership of the same club is high on my list of things to do!!!

So let us jump forward to Sunday and to our local Showcase Cinema, crap seats, squashed in, no leg room, reasonable sound system, huge screen and the incredible “Indy 4″ to watch. Now I am not going to spoil any plots here, but Russians, Crystal skulls and &%$£@s. Oops, looks like the spoiler filter caught me there, this is a different Indy from who we left at the end of “Last Crusade”, he’s suffering from the fact that both his dad and Marcus Broody are now dead, he’s old and he’s done some things between the two films that he’s questioning. Cue lots of Russians, ancient burials and enough chase scenes to make anyone happy, the ending ticked all my boxes and was bizarre enough to make me wonder if maybe this one was a step too far, having said that the ending to “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was probably on the same level. Anyway this one gets a 4 Whip cracks and 5 Fedora Hats rating, ie. turn off you computer, go get in you car and go and see it!!!

Circle the date on the Calendar

Yep, this is 2 posts in 2 days, prior to that, I think it was 2 posts in 2 months.

Not a huge amount to say really, but can I just say that GTAIV is the absolute dog’s gonads.  I mean this is just the perfect balance of single and multi-player gaming. The more I play it, the better it gets, the story line is interesting and moves you through the game, however the way that missions open up is decidedly un-linear which is likely to make for a different experience for different players.  Can I just confirm the “go buy it” message from yesterday.

Anyway on the Novel front, Chapter 5 has now been written, although it needs a couple of review sessions.  I will be posting at minimum, Prologue & Chapters 1-3 somewhere online this weekend I will keep you posted.

Shhh be very very quiet, this blog is sleeping

HHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Hmmm, maybe that will wake it up, it’s been a little quiet round here and for that I apologise, life is kind of tough to cope with at the moment and for those of you who know and have offered support, you don’t know how much we appreciate that.  Any how trying to drag myself out of the mire that I feel like I am stuck in, we shall start with a round the houses look at the brighter points in my life at the minute.

Firstly well done to the Chairboys for making it to the League 2 Playoff final, it’s probably going to go hideously wrong from here, but it’s been a real change to have a season where the last couple of games haven’t really meant much.  I did at the start of the season have this silly idea that we might get auto promotion, but then again I’m an optomist, play-offs was really the more likely option, but I will be pleasantly surprised if we get through to the final.  However it’s nice to have a season where we have someone banging in the goals and we are not constantly looking over our shoulders for someone to come in and give us a stupidly low offer for them.  Anyway more on the Chairboys as the  play-offs unfold.

This month has been a bit of a gadget fest if I am to be honest, I have bought an Iomega Screenplay 500Gb Drive which has now replaced the defunct DIVX player I had there, it’s now just a question of filling it.  I also splurged out on the ridiculously extravagent Vuzix iWear AV920 which allow me to do my Geordie LaForge impressions when watching my iPod at lunch time.  Both are proving very useful, even if I look like a bit of a twit using the headset.  We have of course also seen the release of GTAIV and all I can say is WOW!!! Yep this game is really living up to the promise IMO and I fully recommend anyone who hasn’t got it (and is over 18, and not buying it for their kid) to get a copy, it’s huge, it’s interesting and according to every PC nimwit out there it’s going to turn us into mindless killers.

Went and saw IronMan at the flicks on Sunday and thoroughly enjoyed it, unlike other superheroes, this was one film where I knew nothing about the backstory of the character and whilst the story was updated to modern times, setting it in Afghanistan rather than Vietnam, from what I have read since the backstory holds true.   At a little over 2 hrs long the film is cut just right, although it did seem to me that the climactic final battle was over fairly quickly.  All in all well worth a viewing.

And finally I will be posting my story online soon, probably not here, but on one of the many online story sites.  I will post a link to it soon.