May 2012 DVD Roundup!

Its that time again, when I ramble on about the DVDs we've seen in the last couple of months. With the weekends being slightly quieter, coupled with a raft of films at the 12A rating and below, so we can watch them with Ewan, we've got through quite a few.

The Secret World of Arrietty
It seems wrong to be underwhelmed by a Studio Ghibli movie, given the fantastic track record they have, and the lavish attention to detail they bestow on their productions, but truth be told Arrietty, whilst beautiful to look at, feels strangely hollow. It may be over-familiarity, both of the visual style and the storytelling beats, but after a while I just sort of phased out, opened a book, and started reading. It's hard to pinpoint why though - there is nothing wrong with it as a film, and it's a solid adaptation of the classic "The Borrowers", but I thought the BBC adaption that was on over Christmas, whilst taking far more liberties, was superior in pretty much every way. And after a few recent so-so productions, I really am starting to worry that Ghibli is losing it's edge.

Cowboys and Aliens
OK, so what to expect with Cowboys and Aliens? Well there should be cowboys, right, and Aliens, right? and they fight. and, um, thats it. C&A has a good cast which is clearly enjoying itself, and makes a pretty fun tour around every Western cliche they can find en route to the showdown against some pretty generic Aliens (seriously, do they all shop at the same "space alien weapons and starships" store?) but in the end this is pretty popcorn lightweight fare that makes you smile without needing to engaging your brain.

Heavy Metal
Me and Z were chatting some time back about Heavy Metal - the 80s animated concept movie we'd both heard of and never seen, so we stuck it on lovefilm to have a watch. It's horribly dated of course, not just the animation but the obsession with blood and boobs, but its fascinating to watch and you can imagine the impact it would have had at the time. As a series of vignettes the quality can be pretty patchy with some stories stronger than others, and in places its magazine roots show through more strongly than others. But its definitely worth a view.

Horrible Bosses & Bad Teacher

I'm going to mention these two together as I feel pretty much the same way about both. They both aspire to be black adult comedies, both feature a strong cast giving game performances, and both are, actually, pretty funny in places. But in the final analysis they both fail to be black, or adult enough, and end up just sort of middling when their conceits and casts could probably have delivered something more if they took a few more chances. If you look at something like Bridesmaids, or The Hangover, both have hugely sentimental finales and both work hard to keep the characters mostly sympathetic, but both allow the jokes to be sufficiently outrageous to match their basic premises. Like i say, fun, but they both feel like a missed opportunity.

Green Lantern
I've seen some real hate for Green Lantern around the place, and certainly it's not a patch on any of the recent Marvel superhero films, but really it just suffers from an excess of mediocrity. For starters, it feels like it can't quite decide what tone it wants to set - are going for four-colour or are we going gritty here? - and the costume and set design speaks of that conflict. Similarly it can't decide with its characters either, with odd loops of progression going seemingly nowhere (why establish that Carol is a great pilot only to relegate her to damsel in distress for the finale?) and too much setup for future films they are now unlikely to make because the first one doesn't really work.

Cars 2
Finally, a film that I suspect would get a far easier ride if not made by Pixar. Cars always felt out of place in the Pixar line up, a decent but oddly derivative film and Cars 2 looks on the outside like a commercial, rather than artistic choice of project. That said, its not just a rehash of the earlier film and clearly comes from a desire to make a Spy homage, rather that the first films NASCAR homage. And it's mostly successful; quickly paced, decent script and polished to a shine. Unfortunately, when I see the Pixar logo, I just expect more, and Cars 2 is merely good entertainment...which may be a harsh verdict, but there you have it.

As you can see, there is no real stand outs here, but a lot of solid, middle-of-the-road entertainment. I guess sometimes that's enough...

March 2012 DVD Round Up!

Seems to have been a while since I did a DVD round up, even though we are still watching through our lovefilm list with a good speed. A lot of these films have been 12 certificate too, which means we are OK with Ewan watching them (supervised) which makes for some nice family afternoons through the cold spells we've been having. Not going to go back too far, but some quick thoughts on the last couple of months movies follow after the cut...

2011 in Review

Well we're now six days into 2012, and who remembers 2011 eh? That's the fast moving world of the internet for you but I still wanted to put out some sort of thoughts on the years entertainments, and after a brief delay caused by the year starting with the house being broken into, here it is.

I've got to start with the podcast. Dissecting Worlds has now put out nearly 40 episodes and not only have I had a fantastic time making it (because arguing with one of my oldest friends is always fun!) but I've also met a lot of new people and been pointed at a lot of new media to try. I've still little to no idea how many people actually listen but meeting the few who approached us at Thought Bubble was a great (but slightly weird-feeling) experience. And this year we've had a load of guests on, and they've all been great, lovely people. Cliched but true!

Entertainment wise the best thing we did the whole year was quit World of Warcraft. Not out of any real antipathy for a game me and Z have played a lot, and will almost certainly go back to in the future, but simply because we ran out of things to do that seemed worthwhile, and just eased away from it. What it did do it turn me into a much wider consumer of media, and my reading, TV and gaming consumption shot up through the back half of the year, so we've caught up on a lot that I suspect we'd otherwise have missed out on.

That said, I'm not sure it's been a year that anything leaps out at me as particularly outstanding. I've become completely hooked on Fringe, for instance, but I've seen nearly it's full run in the last 12 months so it's hardly a 2011 revelation except for lazy catch-ups like me. Similarly I've discovered A Song of Ice and Fire and Atomic Robo and the HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast this year after somewhat criminally letting them pass me by in earlier years. Stuff new to this year? Nothing quite so striking.

On the other hand, on the gaming front there is possibly more striking and interesting games than I can successfully differentiate, especially only the indie gaming front. Bastion was great, for instance, and the number of hours I've ploughed into small titles like Dungeon Defenders dwarfs my time on the big AAA games like Uncharted 3 or Arkham City, both of which were great in their own ways. That said, if I had to pick a Game of the Year it would have to be the moody, atmospheric, thoughtful, and ever-so-slightly flawed Deus-Ex: Human Revolution, just I just found deeply interesting and compelling just to be in that world, even if my view of it was largely from hiding behind a desk.

For the sake of completeness I think I'd better mention the disappointments - largely the personal one that I didn't produce enough material for either this blog or for the commitments I made over at Geek Syndicate, a problem caused mostly by going back to college in the last quarter of the year and finding myself generally a little over-extended. I fully expect to make the same sort of error this year!

So, that was 2011. Here's looking forward to 2012...

State of the Blog: September 2011

Well the autumn is here, the schools are back and the rain is hammering on the window, so I guess I should post up a general update of stuff I've been doing.

August saw us start the new series of Dissecting Worlds in which we cover Leaders and Leadership as our main there, starting with King Arthur. We're recording episode 2, on Star Fleet Captains (the oldest argument on the internet, so that should be fun!) over the weekend, and the sort of subject I've been unconciously researching since I was about 8 years old!

Review-wise I've managed to keep contributing over that main Geek Syndicate Site, who continue to be highly tolerant of my waffle. The Dark Futures series takes up a lot of both my reading time and reviewing time, and I've managed to squeeze out reviews of The Handmaids Tale, Children of the Dust and The Postman, and am currently half-way through The Children of Men. The big moral of all of these is that a) the future could be really grim unless you're a furry mutant hippy, and b) the Kindle is an awesome piece of kit.

Also on the review front I covered Falling Skies - still not entirely sure what I make of the series as a whole, so may have to post something up trying to pull my disperate brain-threads together. I'm increasingly feeling the urge to have a rant about Torchwood, but I'll at least let the series run itself to the end first!

And thats about it for now, I think.

State of the Blog: July 2011

Well, I've had this blog for just over a fortnight and managed to post several times, which is an improvement over what I expected. I should shut it down now and call that a win! So I thought I'd do a quick update on what is going on with me when I'm not writing short essays on whatever crossed my mind on the commute to work. 

Well, over on the Geek Syndicate site I'm steadily working my way through a year-long reading list of Dystopias and Apocalypses called Dark Futures. GS have been very tolerant of letting me spout off about books over the last couple of years, and they are also letting me cover the new TV show Falling Skies for them. I've also volounteered to help out with their upcomming (and pretty exciting looking) Summer of Indie which starts next week.

All of which is eating a little into my free time, including, ironically, the time to do research and reading and gaming in order to have anything to write about in the first place.

So what am I working on at the moment? Well I was struck the other week, when one of our rare-because-we-have-kids opportunities to go to the cinema came along, how little enthusiasm I could muster to go and see any of the stream of Superhero movies that are about this summer, and let the wife drag me to see Bridesmaids instead. I'm not quite sure why, but I'm trying to put it into words. I'm also planning on joining the rest of the internet in writing about A Dance with Dragons when I get my hands on it next week.

All of which is more than enough to be getting on with.

So I Guess Introductions Are In Order

Um. Hello.

I'm Matt, and I'm a Geek. (Hello, Matt). Actually I've been one for a while, and even kept a blog for a few years, but it's mostly personal, freinds locked and full of dull things like photos of the kids and what I did last weekend and so on. But it's a little unfocused, and so I've set up a new home as a space to let me post longer rambles about wider geeky issues that interest me. And it seems prudent - and polite - to explain a little.

For the last 18 months I've been the co-host of the Dissecting Worlds podcast, whose main focus is to take a sideways look at various Geek Fiction, from any genre and any source, and fit into the real world a little bit. We look at inspirations, real-world equivalents, and try and fill the gaps around the material where we find them. I'm very proud of it, not only because it is fun to record in itself, but because its put me in touch with a lot of new and interesting people in the Geek Community.

It's also shifted my perceptions a little bit; I find it hard to watch something now without analysing it, peering into the cracks a little bit, and that needs an outlet other then boring the wife and kids with it, which is were this blog comes in. There's already a handful of posts I've moved over from my old blog and hopefully more will come when the need to write long-winded commentaries overwhelms me, as well as any reviews and other comments I feel compelled to write up.

But thats all for now, back to tinkering with the design tools.