Just a quick update as I'm keeping my eye on this one - it's the remake of "Let The Right One In".  As I mentioned before, I really don't see the point of this other than to prevent the dumb from having to read subtitles, which is the stupidest excuse I've ever heard.  However, the first trailer seems to have the right mood, but again it seems to just be a shot-for-shot do-over.  If they went back to the book for more inspiration that's one thing, but being the US market you can guarantee that the will omit *that* shot which was a major shock in the original (hope I've made you all curious enough to check it out now, heh) as it would be too controversial.

Having said that, it does feature a couple of very good child actors, Chloe Moretz who has already proven herself fearless in "Kick-Ass", and Kodi Smit-McPhee from "The Road", who has the same odd look as the boy playing Oskar in the original.  I may be wrong.  I'm not holding out hope though and if I hear too much negative I'll give it a miss rather than tarnish the original.

Anyway - trailer:

Tags: geek, opinion, rant, vampires, trailer
Categories: Geek | Movies | Opinion | rant | spoilers | trailers | vampires

So my beloved TV Tuesdays have come to an end for another year - well, for a few months until things start up again anyway.  I figured I'd get some of my thoughts down about what has gone by and what is to come, and besides I'm putting off doing some real work so this seems as good an excuse as any!  I've been spotting ex-BSG cast quite regularly this year too, popping up in various guises, so just for fun I'm keeping a tally - let me know if I've missed any. 

When you're done here, check out my good friend Captain Kibble's take on all things TV - funnier and with pictures! Kibblemania

24
This one hasn't quite finished in the UK yet.  It's Jack Bauer's final TV outing, and as I've never been able to watch 24 week-to-week as it's just too damn tense, I saved it all up and watched it over 4 days after the finale became available online.  Have to say it's one of my favourite seasons up there with 1 & 3; yes it's still really silly and unbelievable and they did decide to push Jack completely over the edge this time, but they did a great job with the direction.  There is a terrific shot in one of the finale 2 eps (forget which one) where they don't even bother showing you Jack fighting, they just pan across a room showing the trail of destruction and dead bodies, which just tells you everything you need to know.  And I have to say they have set it up well for a movie I think.

BSG rollcall: 2


Caprica
I was quite surprised by Caprica.  Seemed to be as far away from BSG as you could get but it turned out to be very well written and actually some of the best "real" science fiction seen on TV for a long time.  Both technically and philosophically it hit the marks and I can't wait until it comes back.


Castle
Just got better and better - Fillion and Katic make very charismatic leads, the writing is solid and it gives you exactly what you'd expect.  Yes it's very much light drama but sometimes that's all you want and it's very easy to get this mixture wrong, but it's been consistently great.  Picked up for a third season, so roll on Autumn!

BSG rollcall: 1


Chuck
Chuck was really very clunky for a good half of the season I thought - they bought in Brandon Routh (seemingly just to be able to make the "Who do you think you are? Superman?" joke) and kept him around WAY past his sell-by date.  Terrible actor.  I know Chuck is not going for serious thespian performances but even so...  Second part of the season was lifted by Yvonne Strahovsky constantly wandering around in her underwear and Sarah Lancaster getting even more gorgeous, and Julia Ling re-appearing!  Works for me!  It ended strongly, with a surprise introduction for next season.  Not sure if the new character has been cast yet, but going on Chuck's previous form of playing to the geeks I'm hoping for Mary McDonnell.

BSG rollcall: 1?


Dexter
I touched on this in a previous post so I'll be brief; brilliant show, best season yet, and the final 4 episodes were the best 4hrs or so of TV I've seen this year full stop.  Genius.


Flashforward
They cancelled it.  Damn, just as it was getting good!!!  Admittedly it probably killed itself with the first half-dozen episodes where everything was happening without any explanations and it was lumping character upon character, but after the hiatus it cam back strongly with a terrific double episode which just threw the doors wide open, and carried on from there.  I guess that the audiences didn't come back with the show.  I am so pissed off that this has been cancelled while "V" gets another season.

BSG rollcall: 1

Heroes
They cancelled it.  Thank God.
I'd sit there watching every week, wondering WHY I was watching.  The show was great until the finale of the first season which was one of the biggest let-downs in TV history.  I think I (and seemingly millions of others) kept watching in the hope that maybe, just maybe it could get back to where it was.
But no.  I think it ended in a good way, where they could close the door and let you imagine where it would go but without a massive cliffhanger.  It doesn't need any TV movies, please just let it end there.


House
Confusing season, confusing ending.  But oddly I think this may be the one season that I'll want to re-watch.


How I Met Your Mother
Running out of ideas.  Barney is really the only reason for watching this now and even he isn't the same as he was.  Maybe has one good season left in it I think.


Stargate Universe
For the love of God someone push Chloe out of an airlock.  Even stranding her on a planet only lasted 2 episodes before she came strolling back through the gate in an occurrence that is still not being explained...
Other than that it's been pretty good, and I feel that the writers have some good ideas in the wings.  I will keep watching.


The Big Bang Theory
Slightly hit and miss this year, but for the funniest show on TV that still leaves it way ahead of the pack.  Totally worth it just for the physics montage and Sheldon in the ball-pit.

BSG rollcall: 2

The Pacific
Not a patch on Band of Brothers.  Rambling, too talky, overly gory when there was actually some action, and it explained very little about the actual campaigns.


V
I'm getting the "Heroes" vibe with this one.  NOTHING happens, nothing is explained; unlike the 80s series where you knew why the aliens were here and exactly why they were a menace, all they've done so far is heal a lot of people.  I'm sure the writers were trying to convey them as being cold and emotionless but it's really not coming across.  Elizabeth Mitchell lights up the screen whenever she's on it but all the others might as well be played by shop window dummies.  It had better all kick off in a big way when it comes back or I'm off...

I've saved up some shows to fend off the summer drought, so I have still to watch "Treme" from David Simon who wrote "The Wire" and "Generation Kill"; "Breaking Bad" is now in season 3, and going on the first 2 seasons there is little to worry about, fantastic show.

And coming up?  Well, "Burn Notice" is back and has been given 3 more seasons, making 6 in total which is fantastic news.  "True Blood" is back this month, as is "Entourage", hoping for more good things from those.  Biggest thing on the horizon is of course "The Walking Dead" from AMC, who also make Breaking Bad.  More on that as it gets closer.

Tags: awesome, geek, opinion, rant, reviews, sci-fi, spoilers, tv, vampires, zombies
Categories: Geek | Opinion | rant | Reviews | spoilers | TV | zombies

I should prefix this by saying there are a few minor spoilers if you haven't seen the movie, but nothing that will completely come as a surprise or ruin a first viewing.

I held off seeing Avatar until almost a month after it's release for a few reasons.  Main one was I've become much more hype averse over the past 5 years or so, seemingly my brain has caught up to the notion that it's usually in the media's interest to go on and on and on about something even (or sometimes especially) when it's below par.  Secondly, after my original thoughts when the trailer came out I was waiting to see if it did actually fall on it's arse.

It didn't.  Guess that told me, eh?

I'm very, very glad I saw it in IMax 3D.  This is really the way the film is supposed to be seen, and I really cannot knock the design or execution of the effects at all.  It is genuinely mind-blowing at times.  I did have a problem with the 3D at the very start and in the initial sequences in the base, every object seemed to be demanding attention from my eyes and it was quite tricky to follow things at first.  This did change a lot in the forest, and the effects really come to life (excuse the pun) there.  The plant life is astonishing both in design and look, and the 3D really works perfectly.  Best examples are the anenome-like creatures floating around, and the ash falling in the aftermath of the first major battle.  Beautiful.

We are so close now to having digital actors it's untrue - many, many times during the film it seemed that Zoe Saldana's Neytiri was just her wearing prosthetics and makeup, it looked that good.  They've fixed the dead-eye problem too.  I did feel that the other Na'vi weren't quite as good but that is to be expected I suppose as even a $500m movie has to constrain somewhere.  Sigourney Weaver's avatar looked spookily like her but this meant that it looked to me like more of a caricature rather than a believable creature.

Being able to achieve all of these remarkable effects is the very reason James Cameron waited 14 years from original idea to finally being able to realise his vision.  It sure as hell can't have taken 14 years to put the story together - in fact I would love to see the original idea notes for the film from way back then as I would be surprised if it wasn't a massively different plot, certainly not the bundle of old ideas he's put together here.  It seems as if in the past decade spent filming in remote areas and underwater JC has developed a healthy respect for the Earth but also a massive loathing of humankind.  It's fair enough to produce a film dealing with environmental issues and taking a swipe at the blood-for-oil mentality, but it is another to try and pass it off as something original by wrapping it up in (admittedly astonishing) special effects.  It felt at times as if the film was just a big 3D shovel with "Humans Bad, Nature Good" written on it, hitting me in the face.

There are enough posts on the web pulling the plot apart and showing that it's just a rehash of "Pocahontas", "Dances with Wolves", "Fern Gully" and so on, so I'm not going to bother with all that.  I will say I found the story very predictable at every stage - not once did I think "wow, really didn't see that coming", everything from Jake being accepted into the tribe, to getting the girl (and how he did it), to what came thundering out of the forest to finally see off the troops at the end of the battle.  The "Noble Savage" thing has been done to death, but in this the Na'vi were just protrayed as SO GOOD it was untrue - even when it became clear to the main Big Warrior Na'vi that this fake half-breed thing was going to take his bird he didn't do anything about it!  No demands of a fight to the death or anything!  Then when all the tribes (which had only been vaguely mentioned once in passing until then) were visited there was not a hint of any bad-blood between them.  What are the chances of that?  Even if you look at untouched tribes on Earth that's not realistic, they're still animals for pete's sake.  Or is it just me being cynical?  The people who feel suicidal that they can't go and actually live on Pandora would probably disagree with me, I'm sure...

Obviously people go to see films for different reasons, some just want a firework show which they go back to see again and again because it's so pretty, but I like to think back a week, month, year later and think "That film was just great, the character of xxxx was so great", and remembering dialogue or set-pieces.  I've thought almost nothing about Avatar at all over the past week except for today when getting ready to write this.  It's mostly gone from my mind already, which is a real shame for something that is actually an important moment in cinema.

Still, I didn't actually pay for the ticket, and I can't complain about losing 3 hours of my life or anything.  I think people should go and see it, but only in the way it was intended.  I doubt I'll see it again, and definitely won't be getting the Blu-Ray.  That just won't work until we have 3D TV - I'm kind of reminded of the Simpsons episode where Homer quits drinking and tries to watch a baseball game while sober, "I never realised how boring this game is...".

Anyway, I'd like to see the following things happen next:

1 - It should clean up the tech awards at the Oscars, but definitely NOT get anywhere near the Best Film award.
2 - JC makes "Battle Angel Alita" next before (or instead of) 2 more Avatar sequels as he has threatened.
3 - Give David Fincher the money and this technology for him to go and take another run at "Rendezvous with Rama".  That story actually deserves the treatment
4 - Keep Michael Bay and Roland Emerich the hell away from this tech, on pain of death.  At least Cameron knows how to direct an action scene.

8/10 in IMax 3D.  5/10 if I'd seen it in 2D or on DVD.

Tags: awesome, fincher, geek, movies, opinion, rant, reviews, robots, sci-fi, space, spoilers, weapons, tech
Categories: Geek | Movies | Opinion | rant | Reviews | Sci-Fi | spoilers | tech

Like an idiot (a particularly *bored* idiot) I decided to venture out this morning.  TV and radio had told me that people weren't attending the sales - or at least hadn't been thus far.  So, as I said, being bored and an idiot out I go.

It's hell out there, people.  I was lulled into a false sense of security by the roads leading to the massive out-of-town retail park being reasonably quiet, and by the way I got a parking space quite close to the door at Ikea.  Then I actually got inside...

Nothing is actually on sale.  Nothing you'd want anyway, sure you can get a pack of 8000 tealights for £3 now instead of £4, but not really what I was looking for.  Was the coffee-table I was after reduced at all? No.  How about the small 2-seat sofa?  No.  And being Ikea I wasn't about to head off with the mooing herd to the underground cavern of wonders that lay between me and the exit, oh no, I've fallen for that before!

So I went back.  Now, if you've ever tried to follow anything but the proscribed path in Ikea you'll know what I was up against - it's like batting a raging river of people.  You're dancing around tables and between beds and chairs trying to stay off the main path - I was tempted to roll a 12-sided dice to see if I could use a +50 shelving unit to clear the way...  Finally you get to the main stairs and have to go down while everyone coming up is wondering what the hell you're doing.

Anyway, I finally escaped.  In retrospect it was quite lucky that I didn't buy anything as I found the boot of my car was frozen shut, so I'd never have gotten anything in anyway - you can see how well planned this excursion was. 

Negotiating the roads *away* from the shopping centre is like escaping the seventh level of hell.  To quote Dante:
"The violent, the assasins, the tyrants, and the war-mongers lament their pitiless mischiefs in the river, while centaurs armed with bows and arrows shoot those who try to escape their punishment. The stench here is overpowering."
I can only assume that people either lose the ability to drive, or the people who normally drive every day to work decide they can't be bothered and leave the driving to the elderly, infirm, blind, or just plain mental cases.  How there aren't more accidents I will never know.

So I finally escaped, and having learned my lesson I went home to read a good book... HA, just kidding, that would be no way to end this would it, lord no, I WENT TO BIRMINGHAM!!!

Why? Why did any part of my brain think it would be a good idea to do that?  It's probably a good thing that I didn't actually find a parking space, but just did a lap of the city centre like a depressing Monaco Grand Prix, and then went home.  On the bright side all the roads out were clear, as everyone else was no doubt trapped in the One Way system passing the same half-dozen multi-storey carparks again and again and again.  I'm sure they're still there now, or maybe they have actully made it inside the great hallowed halls of the Bull Ring only to find that the sales are a lie, but to justify their time and effort they have to buy *something*, even at the same price it will still be next week.

I should have known.  I used to work in retail.  The days after Christmas we knew full well that people only came to the stores to get away from their families who they had been cooped up with for more than a few hours.  It doesn't matter if you have anything good on sale, they will come anyway.  I don't know what I was thinking, but this is what boredom does to me I guess.

Tags: rant, opinion, zombies
Categories: General | Opinion | rant

As a bit of a geek, I've been quite looking forward to the two-part Doctor Who adventure being broadcast over Christmas and New Year.  I don't watch a huge amount of TV, but there are some things I will take the time out to sit down and watch.  Ideally I'd like to be able to watch this with no preconceptions but I've been prevented from doing so by an almost pathological insistence by the media and the internet to tell me almost every detail of what is going to happen.

I've noticed this getting worse over the past few years. One of the worst offenders in my realm of interest has actually been Doctor Who - Russell T Davies seems completely unable to contain his excitement about what he has just written, and how clever he is, and how every Who fan is going to be excited that just about everyone to ever set foot on a Doctor Who set would probably get screentime at one point or another.  The BBC cannot stop releasing teaser trailers, taking full-page ads in Radio Times, spilling info to the red-top press, etc.

By June (at the latest!) you usually know who the Big Bad in the Christmas Special is going to be.  This year we knew that the Master was coming back, and so were the TimeLords (no, no, not the KLF spinoff).  Previous years it was the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Cybermen (again) plus the Daleks (again), Davros (guess who he brought with him?).  Does any of this actually make you want to watch and heighten the experience when you do?

I'm not sure it does.  Having almost all the information about a show presented to you well in advance doesn't make you sit and think "I can't wait, I wonder what will happen".  No, what it does is make you mentally fill in the gaps, then almost always be less than impressed when the missing pieces are different from your imaginings, or even worse, don't make sense.  This is fine when you only have one or two pieces of information about the show or movie because you cannot formulate the entire story, but when you have 80% of the story, plus speculation from the internet, plus interviews of the actors and writers and you only have bits left to fill in the capacity for being disappointed is increased immensely.

I had the inverse experience a few weeks ago while watching the latest season of Dexter.  In case you're not familiar, Dexter is an American TV show about a blood-spatter analyst working for the Miami Metro police department, who just happens to be a serial killer on the side.  He only kills other killers who escape the justice system, so that's alright then.  It's a terrific show and I recommend it very highly.  From previous seasons of the show you know that Dexter will usually be pursuing a killer or other bad guy throughout the series.  Of this I knew in advance only that John Lithgow (from Third Rock from the Sun) was signed up to be the Big Bad, Dexter's nemesis for this season.  Nothing else.  No other tidbits.  I watched it week-to-week, and it was one of the most tense things I've ever seen.  A couple of episodes literally left me staring open-mouthed at the screen as it faded to black.  Astonishing stuff.

The one single time when this was broken was when I accidentally caught a trailer for the next episode.  This was edited to include what turned out to be the MASSIVE cliffhanger at the end of the next episode!!!  I mean, what the hell is the point?  I really wish I'd not seen it as the effect it had was for me to sit watching that next episode waiting for it to hit all the points in that trailer.  I told friends who were also watching Dexter to make sure they avoided it, as it really took the edge off.  Admittedly, it does give you a frisson of excitement at the point you're watching it, but that is only diluting the effect that the show itself will have.  Surely something good is worth waiting for?

I also believe that with the right kind of personality (ie, mine), spoilers heighten your cynicism.  Recent example, Avatar.  I've still not seen it.  I'm not that bothered precisely because of the trailers, spoilers and hype.  I've heard from people who's opinion I trust on films that it is actually pretty good, but I know I'm still going to go in there arms folded thinking "right, impress me then Jim!".  It's kind of depressing.  All because I know (or think I know) too much about it.

As usual I blame the internet.  Forums, blogs, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook - too much instant in-your-face information which reveals far too much even at the most cursory glance.  It's back to the Information Overload thing I wrote about a while back, which is both a blessing and a curse.  It's all about having things right now, not having to wait, and the short attention span effect that has, such that we have to keep being shown more and more to make us actually pay attention to the final product.

I have some more to say about this but that will have to wait until another day, in a post I'm working on about procrastination - oh wait, sorry, [SPOILER].

Tags: geek, opinion, sci-fi, tv, rant, spoilers
Categories: Geek | Movies | Opinion | Sci-Fi | TV | rant | spoilers