DVD of the Week: Whiplash

It feels like it's been a while since I wrote up a movie night, for a couple of reasons. The first is that we've managed to wangle a couple of saturday nights out, most notably for the Cambridge Folk Festival, which is all to the good. On the negative side, we only got to watch Gone Girl for about an hour until the damn disc stopped working, so a review of that will have to wait, and we've also seen Lucy, which is rubbish. I don't want to spend too much time on Lucy, but in short it's a pale pastichse of the Asian Action Genre with no idea of what makes that work, and even within it's own risible storyline the plot logic makes no sense whatsoever. It has a few moments when it's daft fun, but even they are far too breif. So, from the ridiculous to the sublime with this weeks film, Whiplash. 

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. 

Book Review: Children of Time

As a famous archologist almost said, "Spiders! Why did it have to be Spiders?!". Yes, I am mildly arachnophobic, and yes, I am mildly embarrased aboout it. After all, spiders are cool - they're diverse and biologically interesting, ecologically useful, mostly harmless to humans at least in the UK, and oh my god look at all those legs and eyes and argh, argh, get it away!!. Yes, I know it's not rational, but thats why it's called a phobia! Adrian Tchaikovsky however loves Spiders, so much so that he called his latest book, his first foray into full-length Science Fiction, Spiders are Better Than People.  Sorry, I mean Children of Time.

Movie Review: Inside Out

Sometimes the critical world generates a negative consensus around a show, or production company that can get quite annoying in it's unwarrented persistance. I'll probably rant about this a bit when I come to write up True Detective, but it also swirls around the idea of "peak Marvel", or the Doctor Who, or countless other examples.  Another recent recipient of the old "oh it's lost the plot now!" cliches has been Pixar, who have been written for a while now. Sure, Cars 2 is a pretty weak sequal to the weakest of their original features, but there has been a generally downbeat reaction to everything after 2009s Up. And yes, Brave is flawed, and Monsters University is fun but forgettable, and even Toy Story 3 can be written off as "not as good as Toy Story 2" if you really want, but dropping from such an insanely high standard is hardly terminal decline. Even so, Inside Out has  been billed by many critics as Pixars comeback picture, and boy is it a thundering broadside from a studio that still knows how to reduce grown adults to quivering emotional wrecks. 

TV Review: Penny Dreadful

I'm slightly wary of the ongoing fascination with the high Victorian era. Its a strange time - not yet modern but containing a lot of things that will lead into modernity, and social constructs - the clothes, the language, the locations - that are very familiar, but also different enough that we can be comfortable that it's horrors are safely in the past. There is chocolate box London that you see in so many adaptations, cloaked in snow and poverty, and the grinding mechanical technology so beloved of the Steampunk aesthetic. Its an era at the dawn of most of the modern fiction genres, which probably helps, and right there, mining out  it's dark heart for the horror fans, is Penny Dreadful, now returning for a second season. 

Movie Review: Ant-Man

I can't shake the feeling that there is a body of opinion that is waiting for Marvel Studios to screw up. On the critics side, it seems to be the usual sort of critic that doesn't like big summer blockbuster season by it's very nature, and sees the MCU as a sort of poster-child for it. On the audience side, I think there is a relic of the DC-Marvel rivalry (the longest and stupidest fan-rivalry in comics, which is saying something) and also a wariness at seeing about 2 billion superhero flicks scheduled and feeling some odd obligation to see them all. Wherever it comes from, it seemed to circle Guardians of the Galaxy last year, before that turned out to be huge, and then focused on Ant-Man, after some high-profile behind-the-scenes changes and y'know, being about Ant-Man. Who is small, and commands the Ants. 

Games Review: The Talos Principle

Remember Portal? Portal (and it's sequel) felt unique; a first person puzzle game with simple mechanics leading to ingenous solutions, coupled with an interesting and engaging story. In fact, it pretty much was unique - puzzle games lean towards the abstract rather than the immersive, and even there the balance of challenge and frustration is tough to get right. After all, you want your players to beat the puzzles, don't you? Part of the joy of the game is the buzz you get from working it all out. Even so it's surprising that Portal didn't spawn a host of imitators, but whilst there has been a handful, none seem to have nailed the balance quite so brilliantly as The Talos Principle.