Posts tagged ‘film’

It may have become obvious that I haven’t been writing much about things here. This, naturally, is because I’ve been too busy playing/watching/reading the things that I should be writing about. Thus, a quick catch up is in order, on some of the more interesting things that I should have been writing about recently…

Heroes

Heroes has just begun in Australia, but through the usual channels, I’ve been following the American broadcasts. At first, I must admit, it looks like it’ll be a snorefest a la LOST, but there’s one or two key differences that become apparent as time goes by…

For a start, most of the questions tend to get answered, and replaced with new questions. There’s none (or not much) of the ‘unanswered thread escalation’ that one gets in The X-Files and such. Most of the mysteries are simple “How did he get here?” sort of things that don’t stretch out irritatingly. The “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” arc actually finishes (to an extent) halfway through the series or thereabouts. Which is nice.

Also, because all the characters are split up and moving in different directions, if there is a plotline you don’t like, often it doesn’t stink up the rest of the show. Like, hypothetically, if the Nikki/Jessica plotline was really, really dull, you can kind of deal with it.

Wii

My brother got a Wii. Finally. I’d been playing me a bit of the old Wii tennis, and thought I’d put my Pro Tennis Mii onto the Wii remote and show him off to Andy. Irritatingly, it turns out your Wii Sports information is not kept in your Mii, or at least not the bits that come along when you put the Mii on a Wii remote. Unless I did something wrong.

That was a confusing paragraph. The Wii is fun though. A quick variation on the anecdote that everyone’s been telling; my Mum has been playing Wii Sports and loving it, despite almost never playing a game ever before. That’s how good Wii Sports is. Excite Truck is also good.

Stargate SG-1

Still patchy, this show. And it’s sneakily come back in other countries before Battlestar Galactica has finished. So you can’t expect Andy to start reviewing it again. After all, he’s busy not reviewing Battlestar. Maybe he’ll get to it later. Last week’s show, ‘Family Ties’, was particularly disappointing. I don’t know what it is about shitty character actors that so enthrals the makers of the show. It’s as if they see this actor mug for the camera, do an irritating voice, and completely fail to bring any sort of believability to the part and think “Yes. Yes. There’s a story about him. I can see it now. It’ll be completely unbelievable and irritating. How cool is that?”

The Fountain

Do you like overwrought emotion, long periods of silence and a general lack of drama? Then this film is for you. I can see how The Fountain could have been an awesome film. Bits of it are exciting, bits of it are beautiful. As a whole, though, the word “ponderous” comes to mind. I doubt I’ll review it, but someone else might.

An interesting point about The Fountain — the space backgrounds were done not with computer generated effects, but with particles in water being filmed in slow motion. An interesting point about going to see The Fountain — if you don’t know that, you assume it’s computer generated, and it goes completely over your head.

Firstly — go see Pan’s Labyrinth. If my review hasn’t convinced you then I have failed, but don’t make my failure yours as well.

Woah. I’ve been tagged! By a meme. For those who don’t read many blogs, getting tagged by a meme is like receiving those irritating emails that ask you to answer a bunch of questions and pass it on. Except memes are better. Bloggier. Usually. This one isn’t bad.

But before I get to it, some quick, incidental news; there’s now one handy feed for all updates at atypicalreview.com. Reviews, blog posts and notables, all included. For the 3 people who actually subscribe to the feed, I’m sure this will be helpful.

Now, let us proceed to five things you don’t know about me. Luckily I haven’t been blogging as much as reviewing recently so this should be easy.

1. Part time work at AMES isn’t as boring as it used to be. There’s new people about and a slightly happier attitude. In short, it’s starting to shake off that “we’ll be shut down by the end of the year” feel. Having said that, of course, I assume we’ll be shut down by the end of the year.

2. I’m playing one of the lead roles — Caldwell B. Cladwell in a production of Urinetown. Some people do know this but it’s already becoming apparent that I’ll be stretching to get five things.

3. I used to have dreadful night terrors about near-infinite tasks. Not actually infinite, mind — the scary thing (somehow) was that I knew I could do it but that it’d take, say, a few years non-stop work. The most public example was when I woke up at school camp convinced I was going to have to wash billions of dishes, and consequently looked like a big whimp.

4. I have never watched any of the Terminator films, and until recently had never seen any of the Alien films. I’m probably the first person to watch Alien and think “Gosh, this looks so much like ‘The Impossible Planet’ rather than the other way round.

5. I hate seafood, but I ate a baby octopus at a yum cha the other day and it wasn’t bad. Until I ate the legs. They were gross. In conclusion, seafood has some redeeming features, but ultimately still stinks.

It’s traditional to tag more people to do the meme now. Luckily (coz I really don’t know that many bloggers) this here’s a group blog, so I don’t have to look far. I tag Jackson, Andy, Andrew and Sam.

The upcoming Halo movie got itself a new director recently, but lost a script. My hit-sensing senses are still wavering. There’s no reason why a Halo film shouldn’t rock to high heaven but people screw things up all the time. Let’s look at the history of the project.

Way back in June last year, Microsoft sent out scripts to studios, carried by men in Master Chief outfits. Classy, huh? Many folk were not keen on the script, but Universal picked it up anyway. It’s unclear whether there were giant spiders in it but you can probably find the script online. I mean, I could have, but I found a bunch of links already. What do you want from me? The Wikipedia page on all this is way more informative than this post. Why do I even bother?

Ahem. Sorry. Sometimes it just gets to me, y’know?

Anyhow, things got way way way cooler when it was announched that Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh would be producing. I’ve gone on record against their insatiable addiction to slow motion and unhealthy Warg obsession. But hey, a bit of slow mo would suit Halo to the ground. Also, Weta will be doing the effects. Say “From the Makers of The Lord of the Rings,” push the adventure aspects and some cool shots from Weta and you’ve got a hit.

But then they go and change the script, in the sense that they drop the old one and get someone to write a new one. This could be an improvement, but I get nervous when scripts get switched and sorted on big films. Before you know it you’ve got seven people writing it and touch-ups from Joss Whedon and Tom Stoppard. Where’s your artistic vision then? Hmmmm?

And today the director was announced. His name is Neill Blomkamp and he hasn’t actually made a motion picture before, BUT amongst other things he made a short sci-fi film called Alive in Joburg, which you can download here (77mb). It’s pretty cute and has quite a Halo-ish sensibility about how it treats its aliens. He also made that cool Citroen commercial with the dancing transforming car. So this is probably good news too. For one thing, he’s not Uwe Boll.

The way I see it, this film has the chance to be the best sci-fi action film in the history of everything. No pressure.

Oh, and Denzel might be the Chief.