Doctor Who - The Rings Of Akhaten (2013)

If the start of this episode suggested anything to me, it was that while this series may still have overarching mysteries about Clara, that other unknown aspects would not drag on for too long. We join the Doctor as he investigates Clara's mundane but tragic past and discover why the leaf from her diary is 'Page one'. Seeing her whole life so far in flashback may put some people's theories about her re-incarnations to rest, though I'm still considering whether it could relate to The Doctors Daughter, even if she can't be her.

The Doctor must put this out of his mind for the moment, as well as avoid giving away the fact that he's effectively stalked her for her entire life so far. As is so often the case, for their first planned TARDIS trip Clara suggests that he surprise her with "something awesome", which is provided by the titular rings of Akhaten - a series of impossible planetoids orbiting a huge sun.

It was hard to ignore the influence of Guillermo del Toro's take on Hellboy in this episode. From the moment the Doctor and Clara step out onto this bustling alien world I was reminded of the Goblin market from the sequel, though the cramped nature of a much smaller set was very evident. Plus the ominous creatures later named as the Vigil were also reminiscent of Karl Ruprecht Kroenen, the clockwork Nazi from the original. I liked the fact that the variety of aliens had gradually been constructed in sculptor Neill Gorton's spare time, as they would not have the time or budget to create them specifically for one episode.

The meat of this episode centers around the myths and rituals of this group of worlds, which to its followers is the origin of all life in the universe. The Doctor dismisses this kindly as a 'Nice story' and initially shows little concern at the 'Festival of Offerings', a ceremony designed to keep an ancient god from awakening. The hymns that are meant to accomplish this are very simple and literal but I wondered if that was supposed to be a consequence of the TARDIS translating an alien language into English. It got me thinking about how so many Sci-Fi shows feature some kind of universal translator but you never really come across aliens with a really strange turn of phrase or lack of rhyming/subtlety that might result from a simple translation.

As you might expect, the ancient god does turn out to be real and the hymns and rituals were never enough to keep it asleep, instead it's normally pacified via a thinly veiled human (alien?) sacrifice. I thought that the way this was revealed was a little difficult to follow, right on that line where some more explanatory dialogue could have helped but would have stood out at the same time. The Doctor throws himself into saving the child chosen for the sacrifice, with little concern for whether he'll be able to deal with the consequences of doing so. I liked that he showed at least a little reflection on this decision when his initial conclusion was proved wrong, showing that he's not infallible.

Sadly the simplicity of this episode's resolution, that the power of a god could be undone by a Timelord's memories and a dried leaf, made it feel a little disappointing again. Almost any story you can think of that features some kind of ancient god usually revolves around preventing it from awakening, because if it can awake and then be defeated then how much of a threat was it in the first place? I did enjoy the misdirection about just what the god was, especially since the bizarre mummy like creature had featured prominently in the episode preview at the end of last week's episode. It's true form was a little underwhelming though, which again probably couldn't have lived up to anyone's imagination - I felt the same about the unnecessary reveal at the end of The Cabin in the Woods.

Others perhaps got more out of the episode than me, I liked the Badass Digest take on it, even if their description didn't seem to line up with how good I felt the episode was. That piece also highlighted the idea that the episode was almost anti-religious in a sense, which is quite an accomplishment for a mainstream piece of Saturday night entertainment.

Doctor Who - The Bells of Saint John (2013)

So Clara did manage to survive an episode - well technically she kinda died twice but the important thing is that by the end of the episode she was still around and able to consider the doctors offer of travelling through time and space. I say consider as she was characteristically cagey about the whole thing, not giving him a straight answer or jumping on board the TARDIS instantly. I can't recall another companion who's acted like that, so it was a nice little distinguishing factor.

But anyway, back to the start of the episode, which began with a slightly ill-fitting montage of people connecting to Wi-Fi, with an internet conspiratist warning not to connect to a network with strange symbols, lest you find yourself dead a few days later a la The Ring. I found myself wondering how this person came across his information but it's eventually revealed he's already doomed, which I'm not sure makes any more sense. The basic premise reminded me a little of the David Tennant era episode 'The Idiot's Lantern' but something about its approach to modern technology made me cringe a little.

We then join the Doctor at a monastery in Cumbria in the year 1207, where the meaning of the episodes title is revealed. I thought this might be a dual time stream kind of episode but the Doctor quickly returns to the present when contacted by Clara via the TARDIS' external phone. I'm was sure that River had called in this manner before but I can only find references to it ringing in 'The Empty Child'. Either way I wondered why this episode treated it with complete surprise and it also begged the question of just who is setting Clara on her way towards the Doctors 'helpline'. The Doctor is all set to ignore her request for tech support until he hears her repeat her last incarnation's final words as a mnemonic to remember her Wi-Fi password.

Turning up dressed as a monk is not cool though and a quick costume change leaves Clara vulnerable to the 'uploaders'. It's revealed that the Wi-Fi users have been uploaded by a subconsciously camouflaged robot, which had somehow made its way into a locked house, I assume on the off chance that someone connected to the Wi-Fi. I understand that Steven Moffat wanted to make an episode that would play on the omnipresent nature of Wi-Fi but it hardly seemed like it was necessary to their plans.

The Doctor intervenes and saves Clara's life - or brings her back to life, not quite sure - leading the uploaders to attempt to wipe them out. They go about this by lighting up Clara's neighbourhood as a target and incapacitating the crew and passengers of a plane so that it will hit them. The Doctor's response is to land the TARDIS on board and bring it out of its dive, despite not knowing how to fly a plane. This whole sequence was probably only a few minutes long but I loved every second and if I wasn't already sold on Clara, she cemented her position by holding onto and drinking a cup of tea throughout the whole process.

They then take a short Tardis trip to next morning, in an attempt to frustrate the uploaders and discover their location. I wasn't entirely comfortable with the Doctor being totally tech literate in this episode. Watching him engage a keyboard war with elite hackers just didn't seem to suit him and he's often shown more bemusement at Earth technology than anything else. While it can often be a lazy magic bullet that can do anything, this is one occasion where I would prefer to see his sonic screwdriver used to solve some of these problems.

Clara seemed much more at home with technological wizardry though, after receiving an unintended 'upgrade' after her first encounter with the soul sucking robot. It perhaps did seem a little unlikely that someone of her age would know nothing about computers to begin with, but I enjoyed her use of them, including a clever plan to track down the uploaders using social media - a rare example of such networks being referenced that didn't feel tacked on. But once again the Doctor leaves her alone while enacting this plan, giving a robot disguised as him the chance to upload her fully.

What followed from this was another great scene, with the Doctor breaking out his anti-gravity Motorbike to storm the Shard, which wouldn't have seemed out of place in a Platinum game. He cleverly undoes their plans by subjecting their leader to the same fate as Clara, prompting her to order everyone's release. The Doctor was in fact still sitting with Clara sipping a coffee, hacking the uploading robot to enact his plan remotely.

While this episode initially reminded me of  'The Idiot's Lantern', its resolution also reminded me of last years 'The Power of Three', due to its last minute undoing of the soul storage. It was perhaps a little darker than that though, as characters state that many of the uploaded minds won't have a body to return to, giving the episode an implied body count at least. I can't have been the only one pondering whether any would return to a body that had already been buried or stored in a morgue?

The uploaders are also revealed to have only been working for the Great Intelligence, last seen in 'The Snowmen', with Celia Imrie's character reverting to a childhood state, clearly under the influence for a disturbing amount of time. I felt a little cheated that we didn't get Ian McKellen voicing the Intelligence again but it was instead represented by Richard E. Grant's character from 'The Snowmen', suggesting we may see more of them both.

Overall I think I enjoyed this episode, though it definitely had some issues. The slight lapses in logic and its tech angle feeling slightly out of touch was generally outweighed by the fun snappy dialogue and surprisingly good action sequences. Steven Moffat has stated that this was intended to be an action episode above all else, so while it's a partial success in that respect, it's a shame it couldn't have had a slightly better premise. I'm still feeling pretty positive about this second half of the season, which is a world away from my feelings at the end of the last half. I think it just proves that Amy and Rory's involvement had run its course and that a new companion can give the show some life again.

John Carter (2012)

I missed this in the cinema and while I thought I might catch it one day, I couldn't not read Film Crit Hulk's take on its script. I didn't remember every detail from that article (in fact I would say it doesn't really spoil much) but the concept of him having a slowly revealed tragic backstory certainly stuck with me and I wondered if that knowledge might help overcome some of the film's perceived problems. I can't say that was the case though and re-reading that article, I wondered if Hulk was talking about the same film. With his opening criticism being that the script tries to answer every question the audience could have, I suddenly felt rather dumb for spending most of the film confused.

Right from the opening scene establishing the warring factions on Mars (or Barsoon as the natives call it), I was easily wrongfooted. In time the bad guys and good guys are almost comically identified as red vs. blue but this first confrontation is very confusing. I don't think I was being too presumptuous in assuming that a ship ambushed by superior numbers likely belonged to the 'good guys' but it doesn't make any great attempts to convince you otherwise - apparently the two factions saw no problems with sharing almost identical ship designs. This conflict is abruptly halted by a god like being who grants Dominic West's red leader (sorry, I mean the Jeddak of Zodanga) near unlimited power for some vague reason - I guess leaving you to assume this God is the real villain by virtue of being played by Mark Strong.

Anyway, as Hulk mentions, none of this matters for the first 50 minutes or so. You're then introduced to John Carter twice, with a weird mix of a few scenes I found funny, intermingled with his brief cryptic flashbacks. When we finally make it to Mars (which happens instantly and seemingly by accident), I gathered that he was able to jump so far due to the difference in gravity but in no way did these scenes look like someone coping with low gravity. In fact it looked exactly like someone being pulled up by wires at random intervals while they scrabbled around to prevent themselves tipping forward. Combined with some unconvincing blending between CGI and real life I was worried about how much more of it I could take.

Thankfully things gradually started to improve and for a while you can just follow along with John Carter's experience, learning what's going on just as he is. There are some funny scenes, some good action scenes and there's even some semblance of a general goal if you can follow all of the Martian terms. I still felt like it didn't need to be this cryptic though, like with the whole Red Vs. Blue war and whether the Reds were truly evil - there's a place for a story which looks into the grey areas but this just didn't seem like the place for it. Since it seemed to be aiming for a simple action adventure it should have avoided overcomplicating things and had a clear goal from the start.

It's eventually made clear that the God-like Therns are the real villains but by this point it just felt too late for me. If this had been clear from the outset I might have felt that it was heading somewhere, I could imagine a slightly different opening narration that would touch on the Therns attempting to control the destiny of planets and feed off their followers. You've then got the idea that they're the overall villains and everyone else is just a pawn, before diving into John Carter's tragic backstory and how he ends up on Mars.

Once things did start to become clear, the film seemed to accelerate towards the end very quickly. I was particularly surprised by how short the gladiatorial fight with the white apes was, given that this seemed to be one of the most iconic parts of the movie. After so many whispered references to them throughout the film, it was pretty anticlimactic but also surprisingly violent - if it weren't for the fact that the Martians have blue blood. The same could be said of the final battle too, with missing limbs and crushed skulls that would otherwise be quite horrific.

Without spoiling too much, there is a slight twist at the end that is perhaps the only time that the more mysterious nature of the film works. In the end I think you can lay most of its problems with the script, though I haven't even mentioned the fact that it's two main characters are pretty unexciting - maybe that's why I was initially drawn more to the 'evil' characters, that seemed to have a little more to their characters in comparison.

What I did take from it though was that I might just have a little faith in Disney taking on the Star Wars franchise. While the plot was a bit all over the place, the actual design, some characters and the action was quite fun and more enjoyable than the prequel trilogy at the very least. It's definitely not the worst film I've ever seen, strangely it also felt like it might have been more enjoyable in a different medium, with a few scenes making me imagine a version from the minds of Studio Ghibli for example. In fact a cartoon adaptation might well have been a good way of getting over the strange clash between human and alien characters, it's a shame that it's very unlikely we'll see anything based on these books again.

Wreck it Ralph (2012)

In recent years I've sometimes forgotten how long it used to take for films to come out in the UK after the US. Many of last year's blockbusters even had their premières in Europe, with others being released only days or weeks apart. So in the lead up to Wreck it Ralph's release, I never really considered that I'd have to wait so long to see it. I'd watched its trailers, got excited about it, saw it released to mixed reviews but only then discovered its UK release date and felt my enthusiasm for it gradually drain away over the following months. Even the bonus of its groundbreaking preview short 'Paperman' was somewhat neutered by its release on YouTube. And to top it off, this post has been hugely delayed due to the arrival of my first child.

So it came as quite a surprise that when I did finally get to see it, I loved every minute of it. I knew of nearly every criticism that had been directed at it but that sense of expecting the worst meant that none of it really bothered me. Formulaic plot with a rift developing between the characters before making up at the end? - that may be the case but I didn't see the reason for this coming and in the end a story needs some kind of conflict. Vanellope von Schweetz was too annoying? - it hardly felt like she was in it long enough to really start to grate and you'd have to be fairly cold hearted to not feel something for her situation by the end. Sags in the middle and spends too long in one game? - None of it really dragged and the 'Sugar Rush' world was always interesting even if it wasn't really like a game (okay, I just wanted to chew the ground).

Any fear I had that this might just be cramming in game characters for the sake of it evaporated pretty quickly, as you could tell it was made by people intimately familiar with games. There's just so much to see in the background that you could never catch first time, which will make it a mandatory Blu-Ray purchase. I've heard that they started the project assuming that they had free reign to use any characters that they liked and that they would sort out permission later, which you can definitely see from how much fun they had with it. In fact the only character notable by their absence was Nintendo's moustachioed plumber - though he does get a shout out at least.

While Litwak's Arcade probably couldn't be found in the real world any more, it looked totally convincing and was probably created with the same yearning I have to see arcades popular again. Although having to pump 8 quarters into the modern shooter 'Hero's Duty' was a familiar trend from real arcades that I'd like to see the back of. I liked the fact that your main human focus in the real world was a little girl who would happily play anything, not concerned with whether the game was aimed at her. I also had to chuckle at the offensive teenage boys monopolising the day-glo pink kids racing game and ignoring the rules of 'I Got Next'.

Most of the story takes place late at night when the arcade is closed, with the characters free to travel between different arcade machines. Ryu and Ken leaving for a root beer at Tappers was probably one of my first laugh out loud moments and it's finally revealed where the bad guys go for their group therapy session. For rather obvious reasons, leaving your game while the arcade is open is a strict no-no and Ralph threatens the future of his machine in his quest for a medal in 'Hero's Duty'. Despite the name, I wouldn't say this game is really a reference to the Call of Duty series but is more of a mix of Gears of War and any modern lightgun game you can think of.

Very little time is spent in this game and while I could have stood to see more, there's not really much to it - true of almost any rail shooter you can think of. Jane Lynch's badass commander does stick around for the rest of the film though and her teaming up with Fix it Felix was another unexpected bit of fun. Her tragic back-story was hilariously clichéd but it did feel exactly like something you'd see in a game - possibly a direct reference to the Gears of War series but I haven't played past the first one to be sure.

As I said earlier, 'Sugar Rush' didn't really ruin the flow for me but I can kind of see why many have picked up on it. You do spend a lot of time here and it kind of stretches the concept of being part of a video game to breaking point. I still thought there were some very imaginative uses of sweets and candy, plus I'm a sucker for bad puns and there were quite a few here that made me chuckle. When you finally see the game in action I couldn't help but be impressed by how right they've got the feel of a karting game. I also liked their spaghetti-like representation of a game's code, which was accessed via a method all gamers should be familiar with.

I can't decide if someone not familiar with video games would get the same level of enjoyment out of it as I did. There's certainly gamers that didn't enjoy it as much as me too, which I can sort of understand if you expected it to feel more like being part of a game or have more involvement from existing characters. I think that the way it has turned out is pretty well balanced though, with plenty to interest gamers but little prior knowledge required that would alienate other viewers and an interesting story with a few surprises at its heart. I'm just happy to be in that middle ground where almost everything worked - perhaps I'm just easily amused but it just left me feeling that it was a film made just for me, right up until the gorgeous pixelated end credits.

Have action movies seen their day in the Cinema?

One of last year's saddest movie stories was how much of a flop Dredd 3D was at the box office. I wasn't personally its biggest fan but I could appreciate what they were doing and would have liked to see it developed more in a sequel. But making nowhere near its meager $50m budget pretty much sealed its fate as a stand alone film. There seems to be a similar feeling about The Last Stand this year, only recently released in the UK but already consigned to its flop status in the US, with Stallone's Bullet to the Head not looking particularly healthy either.

However, once Dredd was released on DVD and Blu-Ray it has done incredibly well, despite criticism of the 2D Blu-Ray's picture quality. It was top of the Amazon charts for a fair while and has become the biggest seller so far this year. Clearly there were people out there who want to watch it and I've heard from many others who would have picked up a copy straight after seeing it in the cinema if it was available. Others have taken a chance on it via LoveFilm and the like, pleasantly surprised after not being aware that it was unconnected to the 90's Stallone version.

The Last Stand was covered in the recent episode of Half in the Bag and while I was slightly surprised by Mike and Jay's negative reaction compared to some other critics, they also made some good points. In particular Jay's disappointment at watching it in the cinema as opposed to at home with a bunch of buddies, who could laugh and poke fun at it more freely. There are still occasions where being in a theatre full of strangers cheering or laughing at the same thing can be a great experience but that more mocking tone of criticism is something best left among friends as you never know who might be offended by it. It would also be especially awkward in a near empty cinema that I would expect for these films.

I look back at the golden age of action movies in the 80's and question if the people watching in cinemas then would still go out to see films now. Looking at people of my generation, we were likely never part of the cinema audience anyway, as I'm sure many teenagers discovered classics like Commando on VHS, with friends whose parents would look the other way. If you're grown up thinking of action films as a great group experience, it becomes more difficult to organise a group trip to the cinema as friends get older and start their own families. The Expendables films have somehow managed to tap into this nostalgia factor and convince enough people to put up with exorbitant prices and stale popcorn to get that 'cinema experience'.

So would most action films be better out of the cinema - or at least with DVD and digital distribution options available simultaneously? It's not just action movies that people want to have available at home immediately but it does seem like a particularly good fit in this case. Sadly there are still many business hurdles to work out for this to come to pass and I imagine film producers would see it as lost revenue to only make one DVD sale compared to a ticket for each viewer. This might be true in some cases but I'm sure there are plenty of examples of watching with friends and word of mouth leading to people buying their own copies.

This is all hard to prove though and there could still be future films that do incredibly well in the cinema. The Last Stand and Bullet to the Head may have actually deserved to fail from a quality perspective, though Dredd still feels like it didn't deserve its reception at all. All I can say for sure is that I would personally much rather be able to watch films at home more easily and I wish there was less of a stigma to a title going 'straight to video' - whatever the video format may be.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

If I learnt anything from my abandoned posts last year, it was that films I didn't feel strongly about were the ones that tended to get left on the shelf. I could already see this film fitting into the same sort of category and I knew if I didn't do something with it soon, it would probably end up in next years wrap up post.

I guess I'm finding it difficult to bring anything to the table that hasn't been said already. I didn't see the HFR version so I can't comment on that (even though as a gamer and someone generally interested in tech, I was quite intrigued to see it for myself). I've also not read the book for a long time, so I don't really have any insights on how well it's been translated or if it justifies a trilogy. And Devin Faraci already summed up my feelings on it pretty well - The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is perfectly okay, which isn't exactly a great starting point.

With that said, while the film gets a lot of criticism for how long it takes to get started, I did enjoy the very first scenes giving a history of the Dwarven stronghold under the Lonely Mountain. It was a good idea to give you an idea of what the Dwarves were fighting for from the beginning as opposed to just seeing everything from Bilbo's point of view as he's dragged along. I've also been a fan of the Dwarven architecture and design throughout the Lord of the Rings series, so it was nice to finally see some of it in all of its geometric glory while it was still in its prime as opposed to mere glimpses of long abandoned structures like the mines of Moria.

Sadly straight after this is where the film really puts on the brakes and spends an unnecessarily long time getting up to speed again. I found myself thinking "Yeah, I get it, this scene is directly before the start of Fellowship of the Ring, get on with it". I'd much rather we'd got to Martin Freeman's Bilbo quicker, even if the final transition between the two was nice. But once it got this out of the way there is something incredibly comforting about settling back into the world of Middle Earth - something that I probably wouldn't have felt if I had to wear uncomfortable 3D glasses for 3 hours.

Despite most of it feeling fairly familiar, the company of dwarves helped to give the film a slightly different character from the Lord of the Rings series. It's nigh on impossible to remember all of their names but there was fun to be had as they ate Bilbo out of house and home, with a slightly out of place musical number rounding it off. I also liked how "Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold" became the main theme of the film, although neither the vocal or orchestral version had quite as much impact as the blend of both that was used in the trailer.

I'm finding it hard to place the films events in order and a lot of them didn't really have any impact on me. I enjoyed Sylvester McCoy's madcap Radaghast, though he was involved in some of the worst looking CGI in the film as he attempted to provide a diversion that the dwarves completely squandered. The fighting mountain giants was something else that left me cold, especially given how much it had been built up in some reviews as being inspired by Shadow of the Colossus. The scenes with Gollum I couldn't really complain about, they looked great and were pretty much spot on from what I remember of the book.

Sadly I found that it was starting to drag soon after this, as I had no idea where it was going to end and so found myself wishing that it would. I think I remember the 'out of the frying pan into the fire' nature of the book after Gollum and the Goblins and obviously the separated factions needed to join up again but I really needed a break by this point. Perhaps it needed a pre-defined goal for this individual film so that it didn't feel like it had no idea when it was going but then in the Fellowship of the Ring I didn't really know where it would end either. The end of Fellowship at least felt like the distinct end of an act, whereas in this I would say that getting the ring and escaping the Goblins felt like a natural end, so to continue on from there made it drag a little.

The whole trilogy might come together as something that will be an event to sit down and watch at home, with the ability to take breaks and still see it all in close proximity. But right now, without the rest of the films it was very clearly only part of a story and left you feeling that it had taken so long to get nowhere in particular. I think people will forever wonder what Guilermo del Toro would have come up with and could he have created a tight one film adaptation.

The Perils of Nostalgia

If you'd told me 5 years ago that there'd be new versions of Transformers, ThunderCats and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I'd probably have rolled my eyes in disbelief. If you'd then gone on to say that they'd almost all be miles ahead of their rubbish originals I'd probably have punched you. But one by one these have come to pass and I've slowly been forced to accept it (I'm of course thinking of Transformers: Animated when I write this, not the feature films).

Turtles has been the most recent revelation, as I've been quite enjoying the new computer animated show on Nickelodeon. This new series has been accompanied by a wave of nostalgia for the original series and a box set of the first two seasons was among my Christmas presents. To be honest I was stunned at how bad they were.

In my mind, The Shredder had always been an intimidating, badass villain but in the original series he's reduced to an incompetent villain of the week. Plus it's really hard to not hear Uncle Phil in his voice now. The Turtles themselves have very little consistent characterisation, Splinter is largely useless and the writers might as well have been flipping a coin to decide who wins each battle.

People always say that kids are pretty sharp and won't be fooled by rubbish products but in this case I think we were. The Turtles mania at the time was insane and we probably latched onto the design of the characters more than anything else. We would have made up our own stories and had fun with the toys while being drip fed an episode a week, with perhaps just a few people aware of their true comic book origins in those pre-internet days.

I'll accept that there have probably already been better versions since the original series but there just seems to be something special about this new series. I don't remember watching the mid-2000's cartoon as I would have just finished University and while the CG movie from a couple of years ago was okay, it's not really stuck with me. Here the character of each turtle is defined so well, especially when you compare it to the shallowness of the original series.

I'd always been a Donatello person in the past, with him basically being a geek like me but he now gets uncomfortably close to some of my own personality traits. Raphael's hot headed personality seems much better balanced than other incarnations so that he's still likeable and even Michaelangelo's goofy charm seems to work well here. Leonardo would probably come across as a bit of a dick if it wasn't for the fact that his whole inspiration is a Captain Kirk type figure from his favourite TV show. And perhaps most importantly of all, Splinter comes across as a true martial arts master, who wouldn't be out of place in a Kung fu film or Kill Bill Vol. 2.

The new ThunderCats has been an even harder pill to swallow as I was a huge fan of the original and learning later on that those involved with it went on to form Studio Ghibli, it had a pretty good pedigree when you think about it. I'd watched the entire thing again about a year before the announcement of a new series and it still felt like it held up reasonably well (though there were a few cracks). Similar to TMNT, they had a very scatter shot history and a lot of the characters didn't really have many defining traits.

When I saw the new series I had to gradually accept that this was a much better realisation of these characters, with a cohesive whole to its world that made a lot more sense. Oh and Snarf was sooo much better without a voice. I saw the show in fits and starts thanks to Cartoon Network's irregular schedule but it became very compelling and I saved a lot of the later episodes so that they could be watched in order. I really enjoyed how they pulled in other familiar characters and I was pretty satisfied with how the whole series ended.

I think in a sense it's logical for kids TV shows with a toy line to try and appeal to adults too, as they are the ones controlling the purse strings. I bet I must have pestered my parents for toys back in the day but if they sat down to watch the associated shows they would probably think "this is garbage" and they'd be right. It's surely an easier sell if everyone can find some enjoyment in the series toys are based on - heck, my wife keeps asking me if I want the new figures after hearing I led a deprived childhood of knock off Turtle toys.

It makes me wonder whether those making the shows look at it in this cynical kind of way or if there's just been a concious effort to make better shows. Either way I've learnt not to look back at childhood cartoons with rose tinted glasses, so I won't be instantly dismissive of the next reboot to come along. Unless it's Bucky O'Hare of course - that was legitimately awesome.

In My Humble Opinion

IMHO. It's an acronym I've used for years and for almost as long as I've been aware of it I've heard people say that it's a redundant expression, because obviously if you're writing something it's your own opinion. I've always seen it as more of a courtesy though, something you add after a potentially controversial statement to show that you're being polite. Especially on message boards and forums you never really know who'll have a reasonable discussion with you and who'll descend into a gibbering moron.

But after reading an article recently on how to edit your own writing, I've started to think about its final piece of advice more and more. I've sometimes read through my work and it's felt like quite a slog but I wasn't quite sure why. I now realise just how often I repeat unsure sounding phrases like "I think", "I believe", "It seems like" etc. I guess I've always put them in because I thought I would sound arrogant otherwise but especially on a blog it starts to seem pointless, as if you can't express your honest opinions there then where can you?

I've noticed an immediate difference in my writing by homing in on these wishy-washy opinion highlighters and just cutting them out. Things seem to flow better and it's less of an effort to read back, which is really the desired end result for people reading your blog too. I've also found it an easy place to start when editing, as it can sometimes be difficult to figure out the simplest form a sentence can take. Pulling out the "I think"s makes you examine what remains and ask whether it still reads correctly or if any other parts of the sentence are unnecessary.

Maybe it will make me sound arrogant in the long run but at the moment I'm a lot happier with my writing after being completely ruthless about these phrases. I think that in a sense it's not about being arrogant, it's about standing by what you believe in and showing that you care about your subject matter.

A 2012 Wrap up

My friend Stu recently posted a very honest look at his abandoned game projects of 2012. For one reason or another, I seem to have ended up with a lot of unfinished draft posts over this year - not exactly the same thing but I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what I haven't published and look at why I didn't feel like they made the cut. Hopefully it will also allow me to feel like I've aired my thoughts on these subjects, so that I can let go of the half finished versions cluttering up my post history. So without further ado...

This Means War

I saw this film quite early in the year and I think at the time, I was perhaps ready to give it an easy ride. It made me chuckle a couple of times and I wasn't quite sure how to criticise a comedy that's at least done its job once. Looking back on it after seeing more comedies this year, it pales into non-existence when you can count the funny moments on one hand.

In the end I think I didn't publish this because the film felt so slight overall. It didn't feel like something I could totally tear apart (though I did think they were lazy with Tom Hardy's character in the end) and there wasn't a huge amount to recommend about it either (Tom Hardy's paintball scenes were a clear highlight and the main part that made my wife and I laugh). A middle of the road film lead to a middle of the road write up and I guess I just didn't see the point of sharing it.

21 Jump Street

This was a film I really enjoyed at the time and was leagues ahead of This Means War in the laugh stakes alone. I kind of wasn't expecting to like it, situations where characters spend most of their time narrowly avoiding being found out more often than not just make me cringe. The way the film mocks the premise of adults pretending to be high school students perhaps helped to make it more palatable (and in a way is also making fun of so many actors playing characters much younger than themselves *cough* Amazing Spider-man *cough*).

I guess I got a bit hung up on what I didn't like when writing about it though, which seemed like very minor niggles. Firstly that the film couldn't seem to decide if it was trying to mock hollywood cliches and show that they're just not true in the real world or to completely live up to them. It spends a lot of time trying to set up the idea that it is set in reality and that ludicrous action scenes don't really happen and then forgets about it as the film goes on. You could say 'that's the joke' but it just felt a little lazy to throw away the real world consequences of these crazy actions when the repercussions could have been funny too.

It also seemed to have mixed messages about drug use - the whole premise of the film is that there are negative consequences to them but after setting things in motion they are never shown in a bad light again. The hilarious but ultimately tragic youtube video that introduces you to the effects of this new synthetic drug was constantly revisited for comedic effect, which felt slightly... disrespectful, even though it wasn't real. The film also seemed like it was building towards someone else suffering similar consequences from taking the drug but the situation never materialised. I couldn't decide if it was trying to make some kind of point about the drugs themselves not being intrinsically bad but that their illegality has more of a negative impact due to the people involved in their trade. I imagine I'm over thinking things there though and it was just done for what was funny.

Again, these all seem like minor issues and there was a lot to like in the film, including a surprising performance from Channing Tatum. But I just felt like these minor things detracted from the film as a whole, when it could have been more focussed and turned it into a really memorable film. Just perhaps not worth a whole blog post to whine about them.

Bridesmaids

I didn't actually start to write anything about this but it's been on my mind to mention it in relation to this years comedies. Obviously it's not from this year but it's certainly the funniest film I've seen all year. On top of that I just couldn't really find fault with it - working well as a cohesive whole and not overstaying its welcome. I have come across a few people who don't care for it but it seems to be an almost universally liked film and I feel slightly disappointed that I can't bring to mind much more detail to support why I thought it was so good.

A review of games reviews in the 90's

A trip home to pick up any remaining childhood belongings lead to me finding a large stack of old gaming magazines, mostly Sega Power and PC Zone. After reading though a few, I had the idea of writing about them in the same style - firstly attempting to create a mandatory 'hilarious' intro. I thought that I was trying too hard and that it wasn't really funny, though in a sense that may have been the perfect tribute.

I don't know that I had any great insights on what they included in reviews back then, they often seemed very vague and didn't really get across what made games fun. I also noted that 'those programmers' would always be the ones to be criticised for failings or praised for good features. This was probably not far from the truth back then but it did stand out in statements like "that animation must have taken some clever programming".

I was also surprised by how biased some of it seemed, with the hobbled Mega Drive version of Street Fighter 2 still scoring 94% and the future of 'full motion video' gaining Night Trap 84%. It's funny to look back on those 'photorealistic' games that had everyone so excited, when more average scoring games late in the system's history are the nuggets we'd remember today and almost anything on the Mega CD now looks like garbage. I was also going to question how much games journalism has changed in terms of heavily biased scores, with the events of last year proving 'not much at all'.

One Album Wonders

This was an idea for a regular feature so to speak, where I could go back and listen to records by bands who only ever made one album - or who only had one that was good at least. I suppose it's something I could still do, though I really don't get around to listening to music in depth anymore. You could also perhaps say that Jon Croshaw kind of stole my thunder, with his website Keep or Cull covering quite a similar idea with less of a narrow focus.

It was prompted by wanting to listen to One Love by Delakota again but when I finally got around to it, I found it a much less impressive record than I remembered. My youthful inexperience of Hip-Hop had perhaps left me with fonder memories than it deserved, with most of the album resembling a jam session over chunky beats. However 'The Rock', which was the song that brought them to my attention in the first place, still seemed as good as it ever was. I also discovered that their drummer now plays with the live incarnation of Gorillaz, which seemed kind of appropriate.

Expendables 2

Looking back I wrote more than I thought on this. I'm not sure if I didn't think what I was writing was good, if I felt like I'd missed the right moment to post about it or again if I just didn't care enough about it to finish it off.

I did feel a little out of step with critics though, with most suggesting that this was moving in the right direction compared to the first film. There's not much in it but personally I liked the first film just a little more - despite its rather slow and serious feel, when something did happen it seemed to stand out more. I think there was a better sense of cause and effect, with most of its little plotlines leading to a satisfying conclusion, whereas the sequel just felt like a bunch of stuff that happened.

Okay, so I suppose the death of Chris Hemsworth's character was supposed to be the main motivating factor in everything that followed but it was so blatantly telegraphed he might as well have had "Shoot Me" stuck on his back. This was kind of like the first film's Oscar reaching, tear jerking performance from Mickey Rourke, where it was trying to build up this big emotional involvement that it didn't really need. I can understand they wanted to show that Jean-Claude Van Damme was a right evil bastard but they should have had the balls to kill off someone in the main team who would have been unexpected (again, they wussed out on killing off Dolph Lundgren's character in the first one).

I'll always look back to Commando as the perfect 80's action film, how it manages to have constant action and quips throughout but still build up to an even more explosive ending. Expendables got the ending right and the sequel had more action throughout but it was definitely flagging by the end. Hearing that there wasn't originally going to be a final fight between Van Damme and Stallone seemed ridiculous, even Van Damme himself realised that getting blown up on an escaping helicopter wouldn't be a satisfying conclusion. As it stands, their fight wasn't bad but it certainly felt limited by what they could both do physically and didn't feel like Stallone got the upper hand fairly.

All of this lead to me being a bit disappointed by Van Damme's role, having had it built up to near legendary status beforehand. There's no doubt he was the best thing about the movie but he just wasn't in it enough, seeming to disappear for huge chunk of the movie. Maybe I'd appreciate his role more on a second viewing but I'm not exactly champing at the bit to see it again, nor am I holding my breath for Expendables 3. If I'm ever craving a classic action film then there's already plenty in my library.

Sinbad

This was a TV show that showed some initial promise but then went downhill really quickly. It's difficult to explain why I stuck with it to the end, I'm not sure if it was to see if it could redeem itself or if my wife and I were stuck in a chicken kind of situation, with neither of us wanting to speak up in case the other was committed to seeing it through.

The first warning signs came in an episode that tried to cram in backstory for every crew member at once. It made for a very confusing and unfocused story when a simpler concept was just screaming to be used - maybe it just needed to bump up the running time. There were a lot more episodes after this that had no clear purpose.

My biggest issue with it was that it did everything it needed to do, saw Sinbad go through a character arc of redemption and come to a dramatic series finale... but then just carried on going. The rest of the episodes felt pointless and lead to Sinbad going back on what he'd learned as the series continued. The actual end of the series should have been somewhere in the middle, as he should have come to terms with the death of his brother before he could even consider forgiving the man who killed him and in turn taking responsibility for the wrong he'd done.

Of course I don't think he had really done any wrong in the first place, with the mysterious Taryn (played by Orla Brady) hinted to be responsible for everything. There were plenty of occasions where her acting seemed to be totally abysmal but her bizarre shifts in character probably didn't help matters. By the end of the series she'd stacked up a fairly impressive body count but you were still expected to feel for her because she'd done it all in the name of returning her daughter from the land of the dead. Other characters would have been well within their rights to kill her earlier on in the series and it would have saved them an awful lot of trouble later on.

I feel bad to pick her out specifically though as in general none of the regular cast were anything to write home about, with their wildly varying accents not given a second thought. Even Timothy Spall guest starring as Death himself seemed to get dragged down into their milieu of bad acting. I'm not sure if it will get a second series but I certainly won't be watching.

Final Thoughts

At least a few of these posts I never quite finished because I felt like I'd waited too long after the event, which I've already decided I'm going to try and cut out from now on. Others I perhaps thought didn't quite warrant a full blog post and were only for my own satisfaction, so from now on I think those kind of things will either be scribbled in a notebook or on 750words.com. That way if I do think they're worth sharing I can retrieve them but otherwise they're effectively thrown into the Abyss. Hopefully some of that might have been of interest to someone and at least there probably won't be another one next year...

Doctor Who: The Snowmen (2012)

As I started thinking about writing something on this, I found it hard to recall much about it plotwise and on the whole it felt pretty simple. But I knew that I found it enjoyable and it somehow gave me more hope about future episodes than anything so far this season. It was full of great moments that would make you chuckle but didn't exactly stick with me (though others remembered more than me, I was later reminded of such great lines as "If you try to escape I will obliterate you - may I take your coat?").

We initially find the Doctor withdrawn from the world and vowing to never help people again after the loss of Amy Pond. I never really bought this idea but in a sense you just had to treat it as a starting point and go with it. And you could say that while the Doctor has lost companions before, Matt Smith's incarnation has always had Amy, so who knows how he would respond this time. If this little mini-arc was already planned out then it also perhaps explains the overly tragic nature of the previous episode.

It's actually probably a good thing that there was plenty of preview footage around to make you aware of this episode's focus (including the 'minisode' shown during Children In Need), otherwise I might have spent more time questioning it. If you saw the Children In Need segment, Jenna-Louise Coleman's matter of fact 'Yes' response to Matt Smith's question of whether he would save the day made me laugh as we all knew it would be true.

The episode as a whole wasn't completely predictable though, as it gradually gave out hints about Jenna's recurring role in the series. For a little while it seemed that she could be a completely different character to the one seen in 'Asylum of the Daleks', a little like Freema Agyeman's first role in 'Army of Ghosts'. The gradual hints of her former self were well placed and added some intrigue to the proceedings. As it progressed I started to wonder whether she would survive the episode and I'm still wondering whether she will ever survive one.

I thought that she worked well as a counterpoint to the Doctor, with some good lines that marked her out as unique among companions (her dragging him around and asking unexpected questions when the Tardis is finally revealed). Much of the episode focussed around her since the Doctor was unwilling to interfere and I would agree with some people's suggestion that the Doctor should have almost been absent from it entirely, only making an appearance near the end.

So on the whole it was a slightly strange episode that feels hard to justify liking. It's ending wasn't exactly what you'd expect from a Christmas special but it turned a tragic situation into something positive. Even the fact that the ending came about almost totally by accident couldn't put a dampener on it for me. A new Tardis design, Richard E Grant, killer snowmen and a fun cast of aliens - what else could you ask for an enjoyable post-Turkey distraction?