The Increasing Irrelevance of High Street Retail

Arguments about pricing aside, it seems that the one remaining good feature that high street shops have is convenience. You can know all the cheapest websites in the world but when it comes to a Friday afternoon or a Saturday morning and you want something to play/watch for the weekend, then I'd wager most would absorb the extra few quid and walk into a shop to pick up what they want there and then. However it seems more and more often that I can't even achieve that on the high street...

Take the recent release of Darksiders 2, a sequel to a game that I'm still yet to play. With the hype surrounding its release I thought to myself that I'd finally look into trying the original. A search of every available game shop for a copy proved completely fruitless. I didn't even expect to find a new copy but thought I might get lucky in the pre-owned section but alas it wasn't to be. It just struck me as bizarre that I have become so complacent with this state of affairs that I'd pretty much taken a tour of the shops just to confirm my suspicions. Say what you will about high street DVD and book stores but they sure know that when you have an exciting new release, you make sure there are copies of previous and related works available for interested parties to get a few more easy sales.

However later that same day, I came up against a ridiculous inversion of this idea in HMV. I recently caught part of the second Iron Man and while it might not be the greatest film, I felt the urge to watch the whole thing again. Being the only recent Marvel film I didn't have on Blu-Ray there was also that OCD completionist aspect of wanting to fill a gap in my collection. Now while I might not expect to find every film ever made in HMV, I certainly expected them to always have something as well known and popular as Iron Man 2 in stock. But looking around I couldn't even find an empty section for it, which was true for the original Iron Man as well, with dividers jumping straight from Intolerable Cruelty to The Island.

This seemed a little bizarre so we asked the guy behind the counter when buying something else. Looking very apologetic he replied "yeah, they've recalled all of the Marvel films - apart from The Incredible Hulk and others that weren't in The Avengers. They're waiting for that to come out so they can sell them all together". I just chuckled and shook my head, so often it seems those on the front line are as much at odds with the management decisions as the public are. I'm guessing there may be more to it behind the scenes but it just seems so bizarre to negate the possibility of any sales right now to guarantee you won't run out of stock later.

Writing this up has reminded me that I still hadn't picked up either but even on a Friday I can use Amazon Prime to make sure I can get something for the weekend, making that trawl of the shops even more pointless with just a bit of forethought. Though while Iron Man 2 was easy to find it seems that Darksiders is much more illusive, out of stock in most of the places I would normally try. This suggests to me that there's a bigger issue with finding older games in general than just the High Street...

Google+ Vs. The World

Google+ is dead. In fact if you follow that link you might even find someone stating that fact right now on said dead social network. Over a year on and Google+ is still struggling to escape the stigma of being used by no one, despite a quick search of public posts showing how frequently people post. I've been a big fan of it since its inception, largely because of its well thought out privacy functions - which ironically in the end have led to me not making many private posts. While some people have legitimate concerns about it and Google's motivations/practices as a whole, it can still be frustrating to see so many fixated on the fact that no one uses it. I've often felt like writing something about just what draws me to it over other social networks so here goes...

---

Google+ Vs. Facebook

Surprisingly I'm not really one of those people who hate everything Facebook stands for. But by God they don't half try to make sure that you are. From the numerous privacy scares to the simple fact that it still won't let you see posts in chronological order consistently, I've now ended up using Facebook in a very limited manner. When the timeline view was made available I was surprised to find that I actually really liked it and went about adding lots of information to my history pre-Facebook. But this also made me even more concious of the fact that I didn't want everyone to be able to see this and I ended up locking down my account as much as possible, while gradually culling my friends list to include family and trusted friends.

I know I could have been more selective by putting people into groups and lists, a kneejerk addition after Google+'s debut, but it still doesn't seem like they really fit on Facebook. It took so much effort to try and maintain them and there was also the question in my mind over whether Facebook would eventually do something stupid and I'd see all that separation fall down. And I'm happy with the more manageable list of friends I have now, where visiting Facebook I expect to see updates from family and friends in the main. I really don't have any desire to be bombarded with information from films, games, bands etc. that I 'like' on Facebook, it just makes the site feel like a mess.

It's funny really because Google+ now serves almost the same purpose for me as Facebook did in the beginning, where everyone seemed to add huge amounts of people who they didn't really know and things that interest them. I constantly feel like I'm doing the exact opposite of what Facebook really want its users to do, I'm not sure how successful their new feature of 'subscribing' to celebrities has been but it was certainly something that I gave up on fairly quickly. It seems funny that while Britney Spears' page has over 20 million likes, she has approximately 2 million subscribers to her Facebook profile but over 4 million with her in their circles on Google+. I feel that this also goes some way to proving that Google+ is not just full of nerds, with other popular celebrities including Snoop Dogg and Coldplay.

Facebook is also starting to look like the less favourable option for companies and brands, with their recent attempts at charging to guarantee that followers see status updates. I initially believed that this was only for advertising purposes but I have discovered that this affects pages that you have liked and actually want to see posts from in your News Feed. It might be a drop in the ocean to a big company's marketing budget but for small companies and people like myself setting up a page to dispense information to friends and family, it's particularly galling to know that they might not see everything that I post. Not to mention that setting up and using a Facebook page is around 10 times more awkward than the Google+ equivalent (differences in your search results between your page and yourself is a particularly weird one).

---

Google+ Vs. Twitter

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Twitter. Some days it can be pretty quiet and easy to keep track of but on others it just gets a bit overwhelming. When I first started using it I'll admit I followed a huge number of people, including those I knew in real life, without really thinking about whether I was interested in what they had to say. This was before I owned a smartphone too, so it was unsurprising that when I'd periodically check in I would feel left behind and wondering if I'd missed anything important - usually I hadn't.

Of course fans of Twitter will perhaps say that I was clearly using it wrong and that you should only really follow those you are interested in. But by this point I have stripped down and built up my following list at least twice but still have days when I can feel overwhelmed by it. To me it seems like I reach a realistic ceiling at around 70-80 people and it boggles my mind when I see others in the hundreds. In contrast I have over 200 people in circles on Google+ and I don't believe that it is purely down to less traffic that I find it so much easier to keep up with.

Obviously Twitter has lists to group people together but they are hidden away and not very easy to use. Unofficial apps like TweetDeck may make this feature slightly more prominent but until recently I was in the position where I couldn't have them installed. When this feature is so poorly supported by its own creator, it seems unlikely that it will ever gain much traction. Again some people might suggest that the answer is to not follow those who create a lot of noise but I don't think it's always as simple as that. Often I'll find that people's posts tend to ebb and flow, where I'd much rather have the ability to hide posts or people for a short time than remove them completely.

Here Google+ is incredibly good at managing this with circles at the heart of the whole concept. If it does get busy it's so much easier to view groups circle by circle and prioritise what I am interested in. I now have no qualms in muting the odd post that holds no interest for me and have even set up an 'Incoming' circle to check on what followers I have picked up post every now and then. Google seem to have a good handle on improving this aspect, allowing you to tone down the posts you get from certain circles and now receive notifications when certain circles post, so that you don't lose posts from close friends and family in the milieu.

I do still find Twitter to be good for current events though, which is slightly weird as there is nothing stopping Google+ from being used in the exact same manner. Even I'm guilty of using Twitter more for quick, light hearted points and I'm unlikely to cross post the same thing on Google+. And when I sat down to watch the recent Olympic opening and closing ceremonies, taking part in the Twitter conversation while it was happening was pretty enjoyable.

---

I guess this kind of shows that there is a difficulty in carving out a definitive identity for Google+, or at least change how it is currently perceived - if it's not for family updates and it's not for fun, jokes and current events then it must just be high-brow discussion amongst a bunch of nerds. There is perhaps some truth to that though, in the sense that Google+ seems best suited to ideas and interests, rather than people and news. Its excellent search features make it easy to find people posting about things you are interested in and it's not all typically geeky. Photography is one area that is particularly well supported but there are lots of other interests too and I've always managed to find enough to keep me interested.

I've perhaps been lucky in my early experiences of Google+, where right from the start I've had a mixture of people I know in real life and people I don't know personally, who were largely from an online gaming forum. That meant that I never really opened my stream to see tumble-weeds drift by, people questioning whether anybody is out there. For those who don't have a way to kickstart their circles it might seem quite intimidating to just go out there and start adding people. That is really the best way to go about it though and in my experience you shouldn't be scared to do so, with most of the userbase seeming very polite. You also aren't putting any pressure on them to 'friend' you back, which sometimes plays on my mind before adding people on Facebook.

Perhaps Google+'s best chance for success in the long run is to keep doing what it's doing and try not to annoy its existing userbase. There's surely going to be a slow trickle of people who reach their limit with Facebook and Twitter, who may give it a chance and find it's better than they think. And I certainly think there's room to use it in addition to the 'big two' in social networking, especialy if your reasons for using each of them are different.

Brave (2012)

This review was also posted on ArtFist.org

'Nice' can sometimes be a surprisingly divisive word. For some people it's the epitome of average, only a shade better than okay or 'meh'. For me I don't know if it's just my 'Englishness' but it can sometimes feel like relatively high praise. I think it's quite telling though that I keep wanting to use it to describe Brave.

Whatever I think of the finished product, it feels like the trailers for Brave had done their best to convince me that it would be terrible before I'd even seen it. They seemed to suggest something on the level of an average Dreamworks film, full of dumb jokes and body humour, not to mention the potential for terrible scottish stereotypes. It didn't seem at all like a typical Pixar film (maybe discounting the Cars films, as I haven't seen any of those). As it turns out though, these trailers at least kept most of the plot secret, with me only figuring out some of it beforehand due to seeing certain toy lines in the Disney store...

The overt 'Scottishness' from the trailers did look like it would be more along the lines of how Americans view Scotland but I didn't find it too bad in the end. While Scotland is never explicitly mentioned, it is clearly set there and not some mythical equivalent as a map in it names the Isle of Skye. Some of the phrases felt a little more English and there was a distinct lack of Scottish slang but for the most part it felt fairly natural. Even if it would probably be more Scottish to say "Wheesht!", it still felt quite rare to hear someone say "Shut your gob" for example, which gave it a nice homely sort of feeling.

There was one character with an exceptionally thick accent, which you aren't meant to understand but it amused me all the same. Especially when one line is finished with "ken?", which reminded me of my days as an Englishman in Scotland. It was always those with the hardest accents to follow who would finish their sentences with "ken?" ("do you know what I mean/understand?") and I'd just nod my head hopefully. I'm not sure if this accent can be placed to a specific location, I'd be interested to find out and to hear from any native Scotsmen what they thought of it as a whole.

While most of the story is not particularly surprising, I have to give it props for being a major film that focuses around a mother and daughters relationship. I was expecting it to be yet another 'tomboy wants to prove herself and goes off on adventures with the men' kind of thing so it was a pleasant surprise how it unfolds. Most of the other characters are fairly under-developed but making the mother/daughter relationship the focus meant that this didn't stand out. I would say overall it felt like quite a short film and I'm not sure if that is a negative issue or just means that it was to the point.

The ending did feel a little contrived to me though, like it was just playing for time to make it seem more emotional. I honestly thought there was going to be more to it but then it suddenly shifts to happy ending mode. It reminded me of a couple of other films with a sudden happy ending, Tangled and Wall-E, the latter being one I watched again recently. Tangled at least gave a plausible reason for how it turned things around but Wall-E feels like it switches from an impossible situation to make it momentarily seem more sad. It's perhaps a different topic to get into on whether Pixar/Disney films can have anything other than a happy ending though.

Overall I would say that it's worth watching and should keep you entertained, unless you have a very high brow sense of humour. I saw it in quite a mixed audience and apart from one or two jump scares that might set kids off, I think it will appeal to everyone. It's not one of Pixars best and I would also say that it isn't as good as Tangled or the best of Dreamworks in How to Train Your Dragon but still better than virtually anything else from that studio. I'm not sure how long it will stick with me or how well it would stand up to repeated viewings but I still think it's a nice film - just a shame that it's unlikely to reach the dizzying heights of appreciation I have for other Pixar films.

Legends of the Dark Knight

I was inspired by Liam Ellison's recent piece on Batman's cartoon history, to write something of my own on the subject, centering around one episode in particular. Legends of the Dark Knight was an episode from The New Batman Adventures, a series which was the successor to Batman: The Animated Series and also sadly one I didn't get to watch during its original run. I'm not actually sure whether it was shown in the UK but I would hazard a guess that it was shown on satellite cartoon channels, which I didn't have access to. This episode became a cult favourite among fans though and I first heard of it via someone mentioning a sequence in it mocking the Joel Schumacher Batman films (found at around 3:50 in the second youtube video). The basic premise of it is that three kids tell stories about what they think Batman is really like, an idea which was used again in Batman: Gotham Knight.

What stands out the most about the first story now is that it's pretty much a prototype episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold and it comes as no surprise that it was drawn by James Tucker who went on to produce that show. I'm a big fan of The Brave and the Bold, which I wasn't expecting when I first heard about it. While being lighter in tone than most recent takes on Batman, it has always felt like a love letter to fans of Batman through the ages. I perhaps wasn't in on the joke when I first watched the 60's TV version of Batman but there is clearly a lot of love for his campier incarnations too. And on top of that it was full of references that would make devout fans chuckle while remaining focused on simple standalone stories. It's the kind of show that makes me wish I had kids to watch it with to see the different levels we would appreciate it on.

It also includes a variety of DC characters, some of which are less well known than others and puts an interesting spin on almost all of them. In particular, the show's take on Aquaman as a pompous, lovable boaster has taken hold as the definitive version for me and I'm now thrown off whenever I see other versions that aren't quite as "Outrageous!". I also loved their version of Bat-Mite as the ultimate Batman fanboy, regularly using modern internet catchphrases and generally acting like a real life super fan. His involvement in the epic fourth wall breaking final episode takes quite a satirical look at the whole production process and sends the whole thing off on a perfect note. No wonder my wife bought me the figurine of him shown below... and I didn't even mention the infuriatingly catchy songs of the Music Meister, as voiced by Neil Patrick Harris.

The second story in Legends of the Dark Knight is also pretty relevant right now, as it is pretty much a word for word adaptation of parts of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, which is currently being adapted into a full length animated movie. It gives a great glimpse of what we can hopefully expect from the forthcoming adaptation, something I remain cautiously optimistic about. In the recent trailer Peter Weller doesn't seem quite as good a fit for the voice of an older Batman as Michael Ironside in this short and personally I would have loved to see Kevin Conroy take on this role, which would have been a fitting end to his career voicing Bats. I've already had to start dealing with the fact that Conroy is no longer the definitive voice of Batman though, as other animated films have started to bring in a new cast.

I could actually really do with watching the animated version of Batman: Year One again, the most recent adaptation of one of Miller's stories, as I find it difficult to remember whether I actually liked it or not. It was always going to have a pretty tough time winning me over as I think Year One is probably my favourite standalone comic book of all time and I already felt like there was an animated version I could play in my head. The story itself also influenced aspects of Batman Begins and on the whole it feels more grounded than some of Miller's more over the top creations. The art by David Mazzucchelli is also fantastic, I love how it captures just enough detail, while at the same paying homage to the style of the early comics Batman was born from. As an introduction to comics for almost anyone I find it hard to fault.

The closing story of this episode finds the storytellers themselves involved with Batman, mistaking the arsonist Firefly for him and stumbling into one of his schemes. While I was a little disappointed that there wasn't another homage to a different era, this does work well in tying the whole episode together. Apparently there were initially plans for an additional story focussed on the early '70s Batman comics but it was decided that the art style of Neal Adams was difficult to adapt for animation. In the final scene, while the kids still argue over who was right about Batman, I can't help but think that it cements the idea that almost all of the incarnations of Batman have something to offer. Even the kid who thought that Batman wasn't human, might find some evidence to back up his theory...