Unfairly Unmentioned
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.