Box Set Blues: iZombie

It's a sad fact that after a bit of a land-grab for US shows coming over the UK a couple of years back, when you could pretty much be assured of seeing everything, we've started to "lose" shows recently, presumably as they just don't pay their way. It's a bit of a vicious circle, of course, as if you wait 6 months to screen a show that would have a small, yet devoted audience, they'll have aquired it by other means by then, reducing it's audience further.  Worse, some channels have bought shows and then handled them badly, burying them late at night before dropping, as fans of Orphan Black, Person of Interest, Once Upon a Time, and Justified have all found to their cost. The metrics for streaming services are different, of course, and so Netflix, Amazon and even Sky have picked up these shows to stick behind their paywalls, in a bid to make those paywalls more attractive. And so it is that iZombie finally reaches the UK, courtesy of Netflix. 

TV Review: Game of Thrones, Series 5

I think it's fair to say that I was approaching Game of Throne's recent fifth season with a slight sense of foreboding. It's third and fourth seasons had covered events of only one of George R R Martins's novels, and at time struggled with the compression required, whereas the here we were getting ten episodes to cover events of two books, and finally bring the TV series into a position to overtake the books. They're also books where the shine started to come off A Song of Ice and Fire for me, as the narrative discipline of the early books started to fail and we got a lot of meandering around world as things fell apart slowly, with little hope of change. Room for compression, then, but also a lot of sharp cuts to do so. In the end, they (mostly) manage it, but not without some bumps on the way. 

Books Review: The Dresden Files

My reading habits seem to be rubber-banding around a little bit at the moment, mostly between factual (mostly history) stuff and then whatever popcorn paperbacks I can find to fill in the gaps between them. It leads to some interesting whiplash in both style and content, if I'm honest, but mostly I'm fine that. My most recent Popcorn obsession has become Jim Butchers The Dresden Files, in part because I've been meaning to go back after reading one a couple of years back, and partly because I'm now playing in a Dresden Files inflected Role-Playing Game. More of that in some other post, perhaps. But, the books then, how are they?

(Not a) Games Review: The Last of Us

It's been remarked on before, but video games feel like they're in an odd place at the moment, torn between increasing mainstream popularity and new-kid-on-the-block insecurity as an entertainment form. For all Angry Man Crime Simulator VII and Call of WarBattle: Explosions! and their ilk turnover enough sales to stand alongside any major blockbuster movie, gaming also seems to struggle with legitimacy as an art form, both in terms of wider acceptance as such, and in it's own ambitions. The ongoing, rolling debate within gaming about the darker side of gaming culture, and how it approaches having it's bastions challenged, is a symptom or this, I think, as the form struggles towards more complex ways of using "gamification" to tell stories or explore complex themes. Which brings us neatly to The Last of Us.

Book Review: This Book is Full of Spiders

Or to give it the full title, This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It.

So, my name is Matt, and I am an Arachnophobic.  Spiders really freak me out, in a way that pretty much nothing else does; just watching them move makes me recoil in horror. Z had to hold my hand through parts of The Return of the King, for instance, and vanquishing even the smallest crawling horror in the bathroom can feel like a major, storming-the-beachheads triumph. Whatever my rational self things, a large part of primitive monkey-man me views them as freaky aliens that have no right to live on this planet. So, reading a book who's plot involves parasitic aliens spiders that turn nest in your head and turn you into a monster may not have been the smartest thing rational me ever did.

DVD of the Week: Cockneys vs Zombies

The current wave of Zombie fiction (or should that be Horde?) has got to burn itself out soon, right? I mean, nearly every computer game seems to have some sort of zombie level in it now, TV shows regularly do some sort of "zombie homage" episode, the pop-culture-black-hole of the mash-up genre seems to be reduced to "....and zombies". Zombies. Zombies. Zombies. I've never been a huge fan of the sub-genre - with some notable exceptions - but i recognise the fun that can be had with it, and am certainly happy to paddle in the shallow end of "zombie comedy", rather than the more nihilistic "proper horror" deep end. Which brings us to Cockneys vs Zombies, a zombie comedy that appears to be happening just around the corner from Shaun of the Dead.

Comics Roundup!

I've been caught saying that I don't really buy comics anymore, having sold or given away my old long-boxes a few years back, but all thats really meant is that I now have half a large bookcase full of graphic novels and collected editions. Currently I seem to be buying a two or three a month, so apart from being easier to store the only real difference is that I'm 6 months or so behind on any given storyline. On the plus side, I tend to be able to work on recommendations, so at least I'm buying less rubbish. 

Anyway, some thoughts on my recent reading....

Movie Review: Paranorman

I'm starting to worry that I'm going to soon hit a tipping point where I see more movies with Ewan than I do with Z. This year we've seen six films at the cinema, and I've taken Ewan to see three (including Avengers, which I saw twice, one with each!) and with Ewan now perfectly old enough to watch most 12A output his demands to go to the pictures are increasing. It may also be to do with a weekend afternoon away from his little brother too! Anyway, last weekend we went to see Paranorman, a CG Horror-comedy-drama for kids.