Hebburn (2012)

While there'd been a fair amount of local radio buzz about this show, I only really made the connection the day before its first episode (or rather my wife did) that it was written by a stand up comic we'd seen recently. Written by and featuring Jason Cook, Hebburn is a comedy inspired at least partly by his own life in the South Tyneside town. I went to see Jason as part of a charity night along with a great line-up of other comedians, so not really being familiar with him I made sure to look him up online beforehand. I have to say that some of his previous TV appearances didn't really prepare me for how vicious he could be as part of an unreserved stand up gig - one heckler put down I'll always remember seemed to sum it up quite well: "Shut up or I'll fucking destroy you with words".

Unsurprisingly there was little of this trademark venom here, with his character Ramsey being something of an ineffectual rogue; selling pirate DVDs bought from a kid who had moments earlier decried him as a 'Wazzock'. The show promises to focus on the family of prodigal son Jack (played by another North East comedian Chris Ramsey) and his Jewish girlfriend/secret vegas bride Sarah. Some of the build up to the show described it as being like a North East Royle Family but (and I mean this with no hint of malice) it didn't really feel in the same league as that. While the Royle Family took itself very seriously and you always felt that the characters could be real, this established quite early on that it would be much larger than life and tend to exaggerate some stereotypes in the quest for comedy.

Despite this, I felt that it was most successful when dropping in very well observed little nuggets of real life. As an adopted Geordie Son myself, the immediate warm family welcome for Sarah felt very familiar. As was the assertion that somewhere as close as York was a vaguely exotic 'Southern' place (apparently Liverpool isn't in the North West). Perhaps best of all was the simple resolution to a discussion about helping out with the family, with Jack realising immediately that his father asking for help meant the situation was important enough to just get done, no questions asked.

Vic Reeves (using his real name Jim Moir) was a bit of a revelation to me as the father of the family. I've never been the biggest fan of his brand of comedy in general, so along with numerous reports that he could sometimes not be the nicest person in real life, I had kind of been a little soured towards him. But here he seemed to play the role pitch perfect, reigning in his personality just enough to create someone who was clearly still a joker but knew how to be serious too. I think sometimes you have to remember to try and divorce an actors individual performance from what else you know or expect from them, which suggests to me that he has done very well in the role for me to overlook all of that.

Watching it a day after it aired, I couldn't avoid hearing impressions from the local populace on the radio in the meantime. While it elicited infectious cackles from some, it seemed to draw the ire of the town's local councillor at the very least. I couldn't quite decide what to make of his viewpoint, on the one hand wondering if he had a sense of humour at all but also guessing that even if it had blown him away, he probably couldn't say so publicly. I'm not sure exactly how much I'd agree with his opinion that it just played up to false stereotypes - especially being written by someone from the area, I don't doubt that most characters had some basis in truth. I think it showed enough promise that it would be foolish to dismiss it so early on and given Jason Cook's description of the show as a whole, hopefully the heart of it will be the positive connections that people have - even if he did rather deliberately subvert this by the end of the first episode. Given that I never really expected it to be something I would feel compelled to write about, I think it must be doing something right though.

Picross 3D (2010)

I seem to have backed myself into a corner recently, where I've only really felt like blogging about films or story based games. I've felt at a bit of a loss for what to write about, having seen no new films since Looper and not really playing any big games either. That's not to say that I haven't been playing games at all though, in fact I have been almost completely addicted to Picross 3D. Y'know, that kind of overplay where you try to get to sleep afterwards and end up playing a made up game in your head for about half an hour and then dreaming of cubes...

Console gaming has pretty much been relegated to weekends at the moment, so through the week the only gaming I really do is late at night on my DS. I can't say I've always been a big fan of logic puzzles but ever since the Sudoku craze swept the nation in around 2005, I was introduced to various kinds of puzzles like Slitherlink and Picross. Picross and its variations like Pic Pic/Colour Cross have always been among my favourites as the reward of a hidden picture always felt like the icing on the cake to the logical satisfaction of finishing a puzzle.

Picross 3D takes that concept one step further, revealing a 3D object made of cubes that you gradually chip away. It received great reviews when it first came out back in 2009 and it was always something on my list to pick up but as is so often the case, it became hard to track down a short while after its release. Browsing pre-owned sections and even asking in stores would only lead to disappointment and confused looks. But I eventually set up alerts via Gamestracker.com and CheapAssGamer.com, so when it finally showed up on TheHut.com for just over £20 I finally snapped up a copy. It immediately replaced Puzzle Quest in my DS slot and hasn't left the device since.

There really is very little to quibble about with the game - it does perhaps have quite a steep learning curve, despite a very competent tutorial. I found myself struggling quite early on and wondering if I was missing some essential technique (though I think on occasion I was just forgetting how to deal with rows split into multiple groups). There are points where it can feel like you have to make a guess between two possible cubes but I know that there should always be a logical way of figuring it out.

That's why I normally prefer Picross games to remain silent when you make a mistake, so that you can't just guess your way through the puzzle. Here there are penalties for mistakes but after thinking about it I believe this was necessary given how you chip away cubes. If you realised that you'd made a mistake, how exactly would you go about filling them back in? The penalties also turn it into a completionist's dream, with stars and additional puzzles unlocked by completing puzzles perfectly. So often when I finish a Picross game I will tell myself that I will go back to improve my times but the desire to do so generally fades. Here, the additional stars for completing within a time limit gives you a tangible goal and also a sense of how well you are doing in comparison to the 'par' times.

It's also a game of startling size; while I can wade through most Picross games in a matter of weeks, here I am yet to graduate from the 'Easy' level puzzles, with at least two more levels remaining above that. The 'collections' that each individual puzzle is part of are a great motivator too, pacing their completion just right to keep you hooked and sometimes providing some much needed context to some of the more unfamiliar objects.

About the only other issue I can think of is that I would have liked to see a 'cross-section' view available on all three axis but that's a very minor issue. I would advise any DS owner, puzzle fan or not, to snap up a copy of this while it's currently readily available.

Looper (2012)

This was one of those films where I was keen to see it as soon as possible, scared that I might end up having bits of it spoiled otherwise. After seeing it I'm not sure it's really the kind of film where knowing the final twist or resolution would spoil the whole thing, though I will try to keep my thoughts here as spoiler free as possible. I'd say it's a great all round movie and that the journey through the film seems just as important as the end.

I think I did benefit from knowing very little about it going in though, which kind of felt like the reverse of Dredd, where it's trailer was so on the nose about what was in the film. Here the trailer didn't really give much away other than its basic premise and left me with the impression that it would be set in a time not that different to ours. Instead, it's near future setting portraying a strange crumbling society with a mixture of modern and futuristic elements made it immediately engaging.

Right from the start I was impressed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt's efforts at channelling Bruce Willis, in the rather measured way that he spoke and acted. Surprisingly I barely noticed the additional prosthetics and make up he had, which have been a stumbling block for others. Even knowing what Willis looked like in his youth, JGL's look still felt like a valid version of him so to speak. Willis too was on better form than I've seen in a long time, even if he gets a lot less screen time than I expected.

Another surprise to me was the film's sense of humour, when I was perhaps expecting something darker and more serious in tone. From the perfectly placed slapstick of someone being hit by an opening door to its almost fourth wall breaking jokey tone when dismissing the need to explain things. I initially thought that its method of sending a message to your future self was amusing but this gradually became quite horrific once you realised how far this was going to go.

This also set out the films own rules for time travel, with changes affecting your instantaneous situation and not taking into account how that would have affected your life up to that point. I think I've had enough arguments about the practicalities of time travel in my life, so while I might have quickly pondered if it's approach was possible, generally I was just happy they picked a method and stuck with it. The film kind of reinforces this point when JGL and Willis finally sit down for coffee, with his older self stating that debating the principles of time travel isn't really important.

I also loved how scenes which were revisited multiple times usually had a slight twist the second time around. Willis' escape from his former self, so familiar now from the trailers, had a great simplicity to it when shown as one take in real time. This also helped to keep things moving when repeated sections in time travel based films can sometimes make things drag.

Despite having some humour, the film does go to darker places as well, especially when it comes to the idea of killing off people who could become 'The Rainmaker' - the film's antagonist from Willis' point of view. Here you could say that there were some similarities to The Terminator but with the important distinction of our time traveller not being an unfeeling robot. The film makes it clear that Willis' actions have an impact on him and I wasn't sure if he is supposed to experience a change in his memories after killing someone, hinting that he is changing his life for the better and forcing him onwards in the attempt to achieve his goal.

When it came to the end, it may have seemed slightly predictable but I felt it was a strong finish and you could tell what the film was trying to say. While Willis initially accuses JGL of being selfish, by the end you can tell that Willis has become the more selfish of the two, blindly trying to restore his life with no care for the consequences. While his younger self could perhaps have resolved the situation differently (I'm trying to stop calling things that a character could have done plotholes), the important thing was that he was now prepared to make sacrifices for others, something Willis learnt much later in life. You could perhaps look at both of them as representing the two sides of the nature versus nurture argument, asking whether the Rainmaker was destined to exist or if his path could be changed.

I'm always unsure of whether to read other reviews before writing my own, in case they influence my point of view too much. For the most part I've avoided anything about this and I'm now quite looking forward to delving into others impressions to see what I didn't pick up on. Even things like its focus on mother and father figures wasn't something immediately obvious to me, which I think shows that it will have a lot of value in repeated viewings. But like Inception, it feels to me that understanding these extra themes isn't mandatory or vital, with your first viewing still giving you enough to appreciate it as a whole and understand its basic premise.

No Love Deep Web (2012)

This review was also posted on ArtFist.org

I sometimes wonder whether the music I like can be affected by the knowledge that others won't like it. I don't think it's deliberate but I can sometimes listen to something and find myself thinking "Oh so-and-so would hate this" and get a rather juvenile sense of enjoyment out of that fact - without actually subjecting said person to the music. And I can probably think of a lot of people who wouldn't like Death Grips.

I started writing something about them a while ago but with the release of their newest album No Love Deep Web via Soundcloud I thought it was time to finish it. While strictly described as a hip-hop group their musical influences come from all over the place, mashed together with an almost Punk aesthetic that suggests a complete lack respect for the rules of music. Their first album/mixtape Exmilitary shows its punk influences quite clearly with samples from Bad Brains, Janes Addiction and the Beastie Boys but also includes more diverse choices like David Bowie and the Pet Shop Boys. Their official debut The Money Store is much more electronic, while still retaining their signature chaotic production.

Tying it all together is MC Ride, who is hard to describe in terms of other artists, perhaps on occasion sounding like Wu-Tang Clan's RZA at his most furious. To someone who dislikes hip-hop I could imagine him seeming like the summing up of everything they think they hate about rappers. I feel confident in saying that there are technically better MCs out there but the simplicity and bluntness of his approach is part of the appeal to me. It all adds up to create very visceral music, where I don't have a clue what most of it's about but I find it very compelling at the same time. It does however put him in the unenviable position of being disliked by hip-hop purists and critics alike.

I don’t often get to spend much time just listening to music these days, so my first few listens to this new album have been during work, where I didn't feel it made that much of an impression on me. This might seem obvious but their previous albums have made it quite hard to do anything else at the same time. After a few more focused listens I think there are a few tracks that are a little more forgettable, or at least they haven't fully convinced me of their importance yet. It also perhaps follows the template of the last album (if you can call it that) and doesn't have as much impact as the new sound of each of their other records.

There's still a lot of great stuff here though, including the opening track Come up and get me. This takes its time setting the tone before any vocals come in and I find it quite strange that it manages to create a different feel each time it comes back to the same repeated sections with lots of filtering. Lil Boy starts off feeling like the kind of simplistic electro that I don't really appreciate but it builds on this to keep it interesting. I particularly like the synth lines that sound like they have digital errors from a dirty CD surface, perhaps the modern equivalent of deliberately adding vinyl crackles to create that period feel? This is something I thought again later during Lock your doors, which seemingly uses digital clipping to suggest that the music can barely be contained in its chosen medium.

Forming half of the album title, No Love is one of my early favourites. It starts with deep synthetic bass drums, which you expect to set the tone before a whole new level of insanity is layered over the top of it. I found myself unable to stop nodding my head to this one, the whole song feels like a sustained breakdown from a metal song. It just keeps coming back again feeling tougher when you think you've heard everything from it, something really enhanced by the addition of live drums as it goes on. I'm not sure if they're supposed to be related in any way but Deep Web comes much later on the album, with relentless bassy synth lines dominating the whole thing, punctuated by Ride's furious yells.

Weirdly enough, I did actually find a couple of songs amongst all this chaos which felt a bit more chilled out than those surrounding them. Black Dice alternates between a relaxed dreamy intro and darker sections with short sharp synth stabs and harsh vocals. Later on, Pop starts with dizzying synths and retro drum machine cowbells and rimshots, switching to these blissfully chilled out sections that remind me of The Future Sound of London. As the track continues they start to morph into a slightly more intimidating feel and on the whole I would say that this is one of the songs with the most progression on the album.

I'm not going to go into detail about the rest but I will at least say that while there are tracks that have kind of passed me by there are still other great tracks to discover, like the madcap cut up drums of World of Dogs. It's final song Artificial death in the west is a welcome change of pace, with the much slower tempo allowing for a more gradual creation of atmosphere, with bass lines that seemed reminiscent of a John Carpenter soundtrack. It's also the only song that seems to come to a gradual end, allowing the album to wind down slightly after so many songs with rather abrupt endings.

Overall I think it's a solid album but it has perhaps had less of an impact on me than their others, not really having a stand out "what the hell am I listening to?" moment that seemed to define them for me. This was probably inevitable though as they start to get into a groove for the kind of sound they want for the group. In a way I feel like I could reach the end of my love affair with them here or start to get into them even more. To be fair I've barely even scratched the surface of their lyrical content (I've always been a 'music first' kind of person) but I've still found their other work pretty compelling while letting the vocals just become part of the music as a whole. So who knows where this album will end up in my estimation a little while down the road.

Doctor Who: The Angels Take Manhattan (2012)

My first piece of disappointment with this episode came even before the title sequence. I'm going to launch straight into spoilers but before the show aired I heard rumour that a certain New York landmark would be revealed as an angel. This sounded like a great idea, with the fact that it had never moved before being covered up by the fact that under normal circumstances there would always be at least one person watching it. Others suggested that perhaps some kind of city wide blackout would finally allow it the chance to move, which the episode would slowly lead up to (or alternatively it would never actually move, remaining a disturbing threat). But in the end there was no clever reasoning, no justification for the entire city missing the Statue of Liberty taking a stroll up the Hudson river, showing that not much thought had been put into it past the original idea. The final words of the opening's Private Detective really sum the whole thing up - "You gotta be kiddin' me!"

While this particular aspect went against everything we already knew about the Weeping Angels (and seemingly served no real purpose), the Angels still worked well for most of the episode. The last episode to feature them seemed to abandon their penchant for sending people back in time so it was nice to see this idea revisited, with the additional caveat that they didn't always have to send people back in time. Mostly they lived up to their usual creepy nature - I could watch almost any situation you could think of where keeping them in view is somehow difficult and find it terrifying. Rory's ordeal with a packet of matches was especially good, even if it should probably have lasted a much shorter time (possibly down to the baby angels seemingly mischievous nature).

How Rory ended up in this situation was a little confusing though, with River Song's sudden appearance in 1938 seeming rather inexplicable. She also initially felt more like her brainwashed incarnation, either being ignorant of Rory's fate or deliberately putting him in danger for no particular reason. You could say that she was just playing up to her pulp novel role but at this point she had no idea she was going to be the star of the story she would write later. It could also perhaps be put down to her inquisitive nature, which lead to her finding herself in the clutches of a chained and weakened Angel.

Bringing the group back together again required a rather ingenious trip to ancient China, which like some of the short trips in the last episode I liked its rather throwaway nature given how convoluted a plan it was. This seemed to be the last great plan the Doctor had this episode though, afterwards seeming almost paralysed by the knowledge of how future events must play out. His joy followed by disappointment at River's method of escape from the Angel was quite believable. I'm not sure I always like the strict view the show takes about pre-ordained events but it perhaps leads to a more consistent universe than one where changing the future constantly splits us into a whole new parallel universe.

However the events that follow see Amy and Rory determined to change his fate, as the Angels plan to trap victims in an endless time loop to feed off their potential life energy. Rory witnesses his future self dying, with his aged counterpart surviving just long enough to see Amy again after years alone (a nice reversal of 'The Girl Who Waited' I thought). In a way I was kind of surprised that this section was still effective given the amount of times that Rory has seemingly been killed off in the past. Needing to create a paradox to break the Angel's cycle, the only way out seems to be for Rory to take his own life, creating the impossible situation of him dying twice. With no guarantee that this plan will work or that they will survive it, Amy eventually decides to take the leap off the building with him, as the Doctor and River look on.

As it turns out they do survive the creation of this paradox but any happiness is short lived, as a surviving Angel zaps Rory back in time, literally setting his death in New York in stone. The smug smile on the Angel's face suggested to me that it knew it would gain a second victim, with Amy unable to leave Rory to die alone, choosing instead to be touched by the Angel and be re-united. I felt that this was always the way Amy and Rory needed to step out of the show, that as long as they were together they could live without the Doctor but sadly I think its implementation left an awful lot of plotholes in its wake. The dialogue surrounding this felt very rushed and confusing, personally I thought that the Doctor meant he could never visit New York again in any time - before taking a jog through Central Park to retrieve his last book page. And there's probably any number of alternate ways that Amy and Rory could have met up with the Doctor, even if he couldn't make it back to New York circa 1938. It has to be said that I didn't immediately think of them seeking him out again though, instead having the opinion that they might take this opportunity to go on and live a relatively normal life.

The question is whether it needed to give that false hope of them surviving the paradox, especially when it had already made the same point earlier about the impossibility of changing your fate once it is known. I think some simple changes could have resulted in an ending that essentially said the same thing but would feel less jarring. Perhaps just have the Doctor reappear in the graveyard after the paradox, with the gravestone now listing Amy and Rory's names together. It's strange that so many of this seasons episodes have been criticized for resolving too quickly, when this one perhaps didn't need this extra twist. I think it would have been better to spend more time on the Doctor's grief and also give a glimpse of Amy and Rory's life in the past, just to highlight that it was more of a bitter-sweet ending to their story. In fact, someone has written an excellent obituary imagining the rest of their story, which may not be canonical but certainly seemed fitting to me.

In the end it seems slightly strange that this episode was such a standalone one. Watching the previous episodes many people picked up on aspects that seemed important but did not have any relevance on the Pond's final exit. For me, the extreme fear the Doctor showed in previous episodes didn't fit right and I'm left wondering if perhaps this season's episodes were not in order from the Doctor's viewpoint. This could actually tie together with him perhaps cheating time and fitting in one more adventure with Amy and Rory - while also thinking about starting up a gang. That's not to say that I think we will see Amy and Rory again, their exit seemed very final and should probably remain that way. If anything it's perhaps been a shame that there wasn't more for them to do this season, feeling more and more like they were being dragged back in to the Doctor's world, when being set up with a nice house and a Jaguar E-Type already felt like a rather natural end to their story last season.