February 2012
27 posts
7 tags
You've Gotta Respect The Theatre
As things go, I’m not usually one to profess a particular love of the theatre. Games, naturally. Films, absolutely. But when it comes to dealings with the stage, I’m usually not so forthcoming. Often, it’s because it’s expensive. Sometimes, there’s too much else going on. Regardless, the sense of occasion that comes with going to see a show is merited, because...
14 tags
Film Review: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close...
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is what happens when you try to ride the 9/11 gravy train and birth a touching story from a national tragedy - and fail on all counts. The real problem isn’t that the events of September 11th or the defining photograph and legacy of The Falling Man are used as a vehicle for the story of 9-year-old Oskar Schell, nor is the issue with young Thomas Horn,...
19 tags
Film Review: The Artist (5/5)
That The Artist is making waves across award ceremonies should not be put down to the fact that it is a silent film and is, in 2012, something of a novelty. Instead, it deserves every accreditation it receives because it is not just a silent film, but an extremely good one at that. It stars Jean DuJardin as George Valentin, a hugely successful silent movie star in 1920s Hollywood, who finds...
16 tags
Film Review: The Muppets (4/5)
Above all else, The Muppets is a trip through time, a complete nostalgia-fest for the grown-ups. That is is an entertaining, if occasionally lightweight family movie is secondary, and you’ll probably be too busy laughing to really appreciate how able the film is at multitasking to entertain all audiences. Save for an array of made-for-TV specials and the occasional cinema release - the...
4 tags
My House is Full of Crap: An Epiphany
Tomorrow, as I have mentioned previously, Lou and I are off to London to commemorate a year of acknowledging each other’s presence in a way best described as Beyond Casual. It is, for her, the first time in the Big Smoke; for me, the first visit in years in which I get to be a tourist, a shopper, a fun-haver. And I’m looking forward to it a lot, but I’m acutely aware that I...
7 tags
Michael Fassbender: Already 2012 Man of the Year
Last Sunday saw long-running automotive entertainment program Top Gear feature Michael Fassbender as its guest in regular segment “Star In A Reasonably Priced Car”. The segment has guests drive a Kia Cee’d around the Top Gear test track near the English village of Dunsfold, all the while shamelessly promoting whatever it is they have out. In Fassbender’s case it was...
16 tags
March of the Gimmicks: Cineworld introducing...
Today, the day after I wrote of 3D cinema’s recent decline in popularity, I have discovered that Cineworld are installing D-BOX seats in a Glasgow screen for the release of Disney’s upcoming sci-fi action flick John Carter. Confused? In other words, your average cinema trip is being turned into riding on Star Tours. It’s a Disneyland experience for a Disneyland price tag,...
22 tags
3D in 2012: A dying husk soon to vanish
[[posterous-content:pid___0]] Bad news, blog-reading friends: 3D in your local cinema is still very much alive. It’s writhing on the floor, bleeding a little, but it’s still going, existing, getting in the way of your film with some dull-tinted polarising lenses and hipster-thick frames. It’s still upping your ticket price, rummaging in your wallet for your spare change and...
13 tags
I'll Take The Tram: A Story of Ill-Fated Time...
I’m not sure if I told any of you about my recent experiences in time travel, most notably with a man from 1934. Through methods which I will refuse to disclose here for reasons related to butterflies, I managed to take a little trip to the era of The Great Depression, the end of Prohibition, Canadian independence from Britain, and the onset of the Nazi regime in Germany. However, none...
4 tags
So I was Probably Wrong about Birthdays
Let it be said for the record that I’m not really a Person for Birthdays. Come the age of 18, now some three years ago, the celebration of the day of my birth has mattered less and less as the years go by. The whole concept of a birthday is a bit silly, a little self-indulgent, and a little too much fuss for just one day of the year. From a very young age, birthdays have never mattered much....
16 tags
Film Review: A Dangerous Method (3/5)
A Dangerous Method is part psychology study and part history lesson, and is at times as interesting as that sounds when you’ve turned up at the cinema with a jug of Coke and an oil drum of popcorn. Based on the true story of two of the founding fathers of modern psychology, it’s a twisted tale of infidelity, repressed sexuality and genuinely intelligent thoughts regarding the human...
6 tags
Drink Fanta (If You're Friendless and Want To Be...
Lately, I’ve been going to the cinema lots, in case you couldn’t tell from the droves of film reviews creeping up on here every other day or so. Every single time, I am educated in the latest advertisements to the point of subconscious penetration. I can tell you about every single Big Idea Condensed for the new Audi A1 Sportback, exactly why a McVitie’s Quirk is Special On...
15 tags
Tales from the Caspian Border: Learning to fly in...
I’ve recently been writing about discovering my inner FPS fanboy on Big Red Barrel - or, to be specific, I’ve been discovering Battlefield 3. I’m several months late, but it was a treat to myself in the sales and since it arrived I’ve been completely sucked in. Clocking in an hour or two each day of shooting people in the face and running around with similarly minded...
19 tags
Regarding SAD, Anti-Valentine's Day and Tomorrow...
Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. If you haven’t noticed the endless television and newspaper adverts, if you’ve dodged the endless rush of shop window signage and if you’ve managed to avoid noticing the men clutching roses on the train home, rosy-cheeked with equal parts pride and embarrassment, I’m telling you it now. Tuesday is February 14th. St. Valentine’s Day...
11 tags
Film Review: Young Adult (4/5)
Young Adult is what happens when the power duo of Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking) and Diablo Cody (Jennifer’s Body) work their Juno magic on a more dismal, dank human comedy. It examines a thirty-something writer returning to her Minnesota hometown from the big city to capture the heart of her high-school sweetheart. The only snag is that he’s married and a new father - not...
12 tags
Film Review: The Woman In Black (3/5)
Hammer Films’ reimagining of 1980s ghost story The Woman In Black is a horror picture which, to put it bluntly, does alright. It will not hang around in your memory for long after its fairly brisk 95 minute run time, nor will many of the cast strike you as particularly interesting. It dabbles in the cliches and spring-loaded spooks that the Hammer name is renowned for, and delivers a...
9 tags
Fixing Ten O'Clock Live? Don't. Just shoot it in...
2011’s Ten O’Clock Live was the result of some brainstorming at Channel 4 to produce something that would air at the same time as Question Time and Newsnight on BBC but bring a more youthful ethos to the proceedings. Brandishing the success of Alternative Election Night in one hand and the comedy supergroup of hosts it had in the other, Channel 4 prayed for a miracle. And they...
16 tags
Looking to spend a tenner today? Don't spend it on...
Today, something wonderful has happened: Double Fine Productions’ Kickstarter project raised its target $400,000, allowing the brilliant game developer to create (and film the creation of) a brand new point-and-click adventure game. From inception to target, the process took just 8 hours, heralding the beginning of a new project which will surely embrace everything Double Fine is about...
13 tags
Film Review: Martha Marcy May Marlene (4/5)
Martha Marcy May Marlene is a film of three parts, each revolving around the same young woman (Elizabeth Olsen) from different angles. Martha is her real name, the one her aunt calls her before she runs away from home. Marcy May is the name given to her by the leader of an abusive cult (John Hawkes) which she soon calls home. Marlene is the name the women of the cult give on the phone by...
14 tags
Advice For Anti-Piracy Advertisers: Stop Lying,...
In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been to the cinema a lot lately. 5 times out of 10 the film has been preceded by not only the usual adverts - I could tell you what a McVities Quirk is better than anyone else on Earth - but by an anti-piracy ad featuring Aardman Animation’s upcoming nautical thieves from The Pirates!: A Band of Misfits. The ad, about a minute in length,...
14 tags
Film Review: Carnage (3/5)
Carnage is a film which aims to postulate, very subtly, about the selfishness of human beings, the irrational nature of arguments, parental pride, politics, modern civility and the catalyst effect of alcohol. Adapted from the play “God of Carnage” by Yasmina Reza, it only half-succeeds in its mission, reeling off some occasional laughs but mostly gentle chuckles, despite some...
Doing the Tourist Thing
At the end of the month Lou and I are off to London to commemorate a year of putting up with each other in a formal relationship. For both of us, it’s a first trip as part of a couple; for her, it’s a first time in the big smoke; and for me, accustomed to travelling there for various gaming events, it’s that rarest of things: a chance to actually see London as a city, rather than...
6 tags
Remembering Split/Second
2009’s Eurogamer Expo was, as things go, one of my first real tastes of writing up games at large scale events. I was pretty naive at the time, getting photos with anybody and everybody I vaguely recognised, but there was still a real sense of knowing what looked promising and what didn’t. It was at Eurogamer 2009 I had my first look at Heavy Rain, in an underground tunnel below...
8 tags
Cinema as it's meant to be can be found in Perth
It’s nice having the ability to crank out film reviews a-plenty with an Unlimited card at Cineworld and a smattering of preview invites - zero exponential cost a month and a constant output of writing. That said, I’ll admit there’s one occasion on which I really don’t mind paying, and it’s when I visit the Perth Playhouse - a properly old-fashioned cinema with...
12 tags
Film Review: The Grey (4/5)
The Grey is a Joe Cornahan-directed, Ridley Scott-produced chronicle that details the struggle of seven men against nature. At the centre of the tale is Ottway (Liam Neeson), a depressed gun-for-hire working in “a job at the end of the world”, as a sniper for an oil company. He spends his days prone, waiting to take down local wolf packs with deadly efficiency, and his evenings...
9 tags
Film Review: Chronicle (4/5)
Appeared as it has in the form of unexplained trailers and viral features, and with its cast of faces unknown outside of the world of TV, it’s easy to compare Chronicle to that other handicam-style marketing machine, 2008’s Cloverfield. But to compare directorial newcomer Josh Trank’s movie about three superhuman teenagers to J.J. Abrams’ pet filmmaking experiment would...
16 tags
Film Review Roundup: January
Hello! I decided to start writing film reviews on here to ensure I wrote a blog every day. In January, I reviewed 9 lovely films. Plenty of them are still in the cinema should you care to, y’know, go see a couple or whatever. Here’s a round-up of all of the films I saw last month. Each title is clickable, leading to the full review. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol -...
January 2012
35 posts
Anonymous asked: Someone clearly didn't get many luvs on bebo.
5 tags
When streaming services go to war, nobody wins
Netflix has been on the scene for about a month now - for £5.99 a month, you’re given unlimited access to a frankly mahoosive array of TV shows and movies. I’ve been using it religiously lately, and the fact that it’s unlimited is a massive advantage. Contrast that with LOVEFiLM, a company I’ve been using for a couple of years now, who give me four hours of viewing time...
1 tag
Rest in peace Bebo, you egregious pile of shit
Hello there. Good to meet you all. We are gathered here today to remember our dear friend Bebo, who has passed into the ether as we know it, accessible only from the Internet Archive forever more. Many of us will remember it dearly, some of us less fondly - but crucially, all the same, we will remember it. Bebo, you were a beautiful animal. You were created as “a very good version of...
12 tags
Film Review: The Descendants (5/5)
The Descendants isn’t, despite its initial pushing of the ancestry of Hawaii resident and 25,000 acre land trustee Matt King (George Clooney), a film about one’s family past. Rather, it is about King examining his current and present situation, and making amends for his until-now lacklustre attempts at being a father and a husband in order to prepare for the future. The catalyst in...
3 tags
Hitting the occasional wall
After leaving the Global Game Jam last night, I found myself feeling a little hollow and a little purposeless. Attending last year’s Jam was a voyage of great purpose, very little sleep and paranoia, delusions, anger, sadness and unbridled joy - simply because I was there to sketch out a 20,000 word script which would, over the coming months, become a completed and published book. This...
9 tags
A lost pilgrim in an unknown land
Arriving at this year’s Scottish Game Jam was a more surreal experience than I may have expected. 2012’s Jam is, for me, a serving of salad rather than a full fat roast. There’s no book to write today, just a passive pair of eyes with which to observe. The Global Game Jam began in 2009 and is a driving creative force in the developing games development market - especially...
6 tags
Note To Self: Remember To Not Procrastinate
I can’t think of anything to write today. This evening, I’ve prepared a couple of articles, reviews, what have you for the sites I’m writing for at the moment, and have been awake since 1pm after getting home at 3.30am this morning. I have spent the entire day sat on my ass playing Soul Calibur V. To some, this is living, and for today, it was - braindead, soulless,...
6 tags
Advice For The Aspiring Games Writer: Get a Day...
I’ve been writing about games for about four years - and by “writing about games”, I don’t mean on a professional, reliable basis. I’m not a powerful voice in the community, nor am I the most formidable of writers around - but I still find myself writing whenever I can about them, because I love them to bits. I’m not sure what I’d do outside of writing...
11 tags
Film Review: Coriolanus (4/5)
Coriolanus, a modernised adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy, marks Ralph Fiennes’ debut cinematic foray into classical dramatics and his first shot at sitting in the director’s chair. Taking charge as the lead, a great and commanding Roman general initially named Martius but later adopting the honorary title lent to the film, Fiennes makes well on both acting and directing...
6 tags
It's 2012. Why am I still playing Gran Turismo 5...
I’ve been noticing something in my gaming habits lately. Despite having an unplayed gaming pile of shame the width of Calcutta and more spare time than a watch 11 hours slow, I always seem to find an hour or so in my day - if not more - for a spot of Gran Turismo 5. A game more than a year old, forever drowned in multi-hundred megabyte patch downloads and about as current and as popular as...
9 tags
Film Review: Goon (3/5)
For all of its team spirit, brandishing of sticks and puck-smashing, Patrick Dowse’s Goon is not a film about ice hockey. It’s a film about “enforcers”, the biggest, burliest, meanest players on a team, who live to take and throw punches in the sport’s popularised mid-game punch-ups - rather than ever aim for what some might consider real glory. In particular,...
6 tags
Tiny Tower: A checklist of how to suck at...
It’s finally happened; I’m free! I’ve been too-long under the curse of digital tower-building crack, snorting the freebies and smoking the complimentary slow-burn dope up to the point that I’ve decided I just don’t want to ride the rollercoaster anymore. I’ve uninstalled Tiny Tower. Like all bad trips, Tiny Tower is a lesson in mediocrity that starts out...
12 tags
Film Review: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows...
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is a well-endowed, expertly crafted and savvy action flick, twice the film of its original brother. Taking place across a pan-European array of settings and dazzling set-pieces, it betters upon everything Guy Ritchie’s original had to offer and throws in a more formidable and enjoyable bad guy for equal measure. A year has passed since the events of...
7 tags
Film Review: Shame (5/5)
Director Steve McQueen and Michael Fassbender reunited last year for their second joint project since 2008’s Hunger. Their new collaboration, Shame, is an intense and unapologetically graphic examination of a sex addict and his insatiable obsession with his habit. Fassbender plays Brandon, a man carefully maintaining and cultivating his straight-laced work image in order to disguise...
4 tags
Flow: The perfect state of mind, detrimental to...
There’s a moment of alcohol intoxication in which your brain hits its prime, in which everything becomes concentrated into the single moment in which it occurs and everything, at that exact second, is precise, certain and solid. It’s referred to in the programming world as the “Ballmer Peak”, an exact moment in a precise curve at which a computer programmer is able to code...
10 tags
Film Review: Haywire (3/5)
Haywire is an effortlessly stylish and fast-paced espionage thriller straight from the mind of Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s Eleven, Che). The famously versatile director has lent his weight to an action film that is equal parts smooth spy work and down-and-dirty Bourne-esque fisticuffs, and handles both halves with equal aplomb. The less said about the messy and incoherent plot that...
5 tags
Sabotage, stamps and after-school telly: The Truth...
If you didn’t know by now, I work in a toy shop. When you work in a toy shop, as with any shop, you soon learn a lot about everything you sell. If you’re creative enough, you might even be able to deduce things you weren’t sure you would’ve known otherwise. Things like the fact that Bob the Builder, Fireman Sam and Postman Pat are all CONMEN. Ripoff merchants....
6 tags
Film Review: War Horse (2/5)
[[posterous-content:pid___0]] War Horse is a two and a half hour schmaltzy jaunt through World War I from the point of view of Joey, a thoroughbred horse bought on a hunch from a farmyard auction by Ted Narracott, a boozing old farmer with a bad leg (Peter Mullan). His son, and star of the film for the first hour and final 30 minutes, Albert (Jeremy Irvine) takes to the horse and it takes to him....
6 tags
Film Review: War Horse (2/5)
[[posterous-content:pid___0]] War Horse is a two and a half hour schmaltzy jaunt through World War I from the point of view of Joey, a thoroughbred horse bought on a hunch from a farmyard auction by Ted Narracott, a boozing old farmer with a bad leg (Peter Mullan). His son, and star of the film for the first hour and final 30 minutes, Albert (Jeremy Irvine) takes to the horse and it takes to him....
2 tags
How do you convert a technophobic to Blu-ray?
Yesterday, I tried to convert my girlfriend to Blu-ray. Not literally convert her into a disc-based format, obviously, but just turn her to the side of super shiny, deep-colour, razor-sharp movie goodness. Naturally, it didn’t work. With my laptop on her knees and a TV in front of her, I simulcast Transformers (it was the first thing to hand) on DVD and Blu-ray, having her look at...
3 tags
Why Monopoly Is The Ultimate Psychological Test
There are many ways for a modern day, 21st century psychologist to determine a patient’s psyche: the classic Rorschach inkblot test, personality tests and self-assessment tests like the Beck Depression Inventory (which, as far as I can surmise, does not involve listening to Beck for as long as one can take it before falling into a deep, incurable sadness). Each of these methods is robust,...
4 tags
Ode to a Yoghurt Pot: A Poem
Oh dear, oh dear, poor yoghurt pot, What have they done to you? Abandoned here on this here train, With nary a thing to do. Whilst travelling on my commute so, From the cinema to my home, I stumbled on your empty shell, All eaten and alone. What happened to you, poor yoghurt pot, On what journey do you go? At which stop do you disembark, And does your future glow? ...
9 tags
Just another day in Skyrim for the Ladies Air...
VIDEO0105.3gp Watch on Posterous It’s fantastic that, when I finally come across a bug in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, it’s hilarious, so perfect, and neither maddening nor game-ruinous. Presenting: the Ladies Air Swimmers.