Author: Mosh

The Expendables 2

I’m cramming films in while my Cineworld card is still valid. Despite thinking the first one was a bit poo, I decided that as long as it wasn’t costing me anything I’d check out:

The Expendables 2

“Who next? Rambo?”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: A recovery mission goes slightly bat-**** so the gang head out on a somewhat over-the-top revenge mission

See it if you like: watching things go “boom”. And “splat”. And “ak-ak-ak-ak-ak-ak”.

I didn’t enjoy the first Expendables film. I don’t know why, but I think it was because – after it got over the ridiculous cast – it became just another action film with a poor story, worse acting and nothing to hold the interest.

This, however… this is different. This is brilliant.

Importantly, it doesn’t take itself seriously. In fact, it goes right to the end of the scale marked as “self-deprecation”, more commonly known as “taking the piss out of oneself”. There are so many bits of bad dialogue that would have been right at home in an Eighties action film that they simply must have been put there for that reason. References are made left, right and centre to well known films and characters. Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Willis play Musical Catchphrases, using each other’s best known lines with wild abandon.

The opening sequence is bigger, louder and bloodier than most other action films can ever dream of having for a finale.

This really is a film you can’t afford to take seriously. The bad guys can’t shoot for toffee and despite loosing off enough bits of hot lead to sink an island nation, pretty much always fail to hit anything other than blank concrete and glass. Apparently firing a machine gun through a glass window will cause it to shatter but won’t pepper the enemies on the other side with bullets. Firing at soldiers from elevation with ridiculously powerful weapons will not cause the deaths of any innocents stood nearby. Ever.

Importantly, though… who fracking cares?

With a cast this size (and I mean that in all respects – they must have stolen the entire 1980’s Russian Women’s Olympic shot-put team’s steroid supply), it would be easy to expect most of them to be there just to make up the numbers. But with enough in-jokes about the actors themselves, quirks, piss-takes, banter and overblown action scenes that simply doesn’t happen. They even manage to shoe-horn a girl into the group this time out. Avoiding the obvious casting of Michelle Yeoh (surely the most well-known female Asian action star in the West?), they’ve gone for Nan Yu who I honestly haven’t heard of before. She’s good, though, and kicks as much ass as any of the inflated male cast.

This is, quite simply, a must-see. At one point, several members of the (small) audience cheered out loud. And I didn’t care. I was so wrapped up and giggling that it just seemed like a perfectly acceptable thing to do.

If you even remotely like action films, you’ll enjoy this. If you’ve seen the “classics” from days gone by then you will enjoy it all the more for the cast and references. Far, far better than it has any right to be – and the first film in a long time I’ve considered going to see for a second time. That alone makes it highly recommended.

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The Bourne Legacy

With wonderful grandma looking after baby Niamh, we snuck out to catch one of the last few films we’ll see before my card expires. It’s one Gillian had had her eye on since the early trailers:

The Bourne Legacy

“Jason Bourne was just the tip of the iceberg.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Remnants of the Treadstone project are being killed off… but one particularly hardy specimen survives and is a little pissed off

See if it you like: Intelligent, well-paced thrillers with a nice dose of action

Completely not based on the novel of the same name – making it a mystery why the decided to use that title - The Bourne Legacy takes a step sideways from the first three films, continuing in the world of Bourne but without the actual character. Instead we’re introduced to Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), another agent and part of the Treadstone initiative to create faster, stronger soldiers.

The switch does freshen the franchise up somewhat and the film is very much unlike the three previous instalments. However, it does help to have seen them for background’s sake if nothing else. In essence, the plot is nothing new. The CIA, or whoever, is trying to kill off a series of experimental agents and one of them gets away. The rest of the film involves them trying to hunt him down… along with the obligatory tag-along female, in this case Rachel Weisz‘s Dr Marta Shearing.

Whereas in the first films, the plot just plodded along with the occasional revelation figured out something he’d forgotten, in this instance we have a very fragmented method of storytelling, with incidents of Cross’s memory popping up as they’re relevant. It does throw the viewer a little at first, as the jumps back and forth aren’t titled and you have to realise that we’re flashing back and the projectionist hasn’t just skipped a reel.

Audiences come to a Bourne film for the action, though, and it takes a long time for this to build. The scenes are less spectacular than in the Damon films, but also harsher and more brutal. In fact, the film has a bit of a European feel to it despite most of the more action-packed sequences taking place in Manilla.

Talking of which, the motorcycle chase is a very exciting sequence though loses itself to a few bits of rushed editing which can make things hard to follow at times. Confusing angles and cuts that are too quick for you to figure out what you’re looking at. I seem to recall having the same problem with one of the more recent Bond films. Maybe it’s just me.

Overall, not a bad film and it’s nice to see the change in direction. It would have been very easy to have “another Bourne film”. Instead we have another film within the Bourne stable, which is subtly different. Variety is good.

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Ted

For the first time in a while, I went to the cinema by myself. Gillian has let her Cineworld card expire and mine only runs for another week or so. Too many gigs coming up, and one extra munchkin in the house to look after! My first solo film was supposed “gross-out” comedy:

Ted

“Death to Ming!”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Man lives with magic teddy bear who’s a bit of a bad influence on him, but has to split up his lifelong friendship to keep his girlfriend happy

See it if you like: Family Guy with actual swear words, Bad Santa with stuffing

You can see the plot above. It’s just a play on an old favourite; a well-meaning guy caught up between single life with his best friend (who in this case just happens to be a sentient teddy bear) and moving forward with his long-term girlfriend. So far, so “seen it all before” although it’s not a bad riff on the basic scenario. Beneath all the foul language and sex jokes is a decent enough story.

Seth MacFarlane directs, script-writes, motion-captures himself and voices Peter Griffin Ted. If he were a live action character he’d be played by Zac Galafikinoiwsis. Galafikinosos. Galak… the fact dude with the beard. Or Seth Rogen. You know, the other fat guy with the beard. Mark Wahlberg, complete with rather bizarre accent, plays John – a car rental employee who’s managed to land himself a rather hot and high-flying girlfriend played by Mila Kunis. She, in turn, is being hunted down by her misogynist rich payboy boss Rex (Joel McHale from TV’s Community). Added into the mix is a rather manic Giovanni Ribisi who is on a misson to capture Ted for his own little boy and you have a couple of little plot threads.

The humour is, generally, gutter-level. If you don’t like bad language or euphemisms for female genetalia (or jokes about poo, visual sexual humour, off-colour comments about race, flippant remarks about terrorist atrocities…) don’t come in. Go and see Batman again or something. Having said that, I didn’t get quite the kick out of it that I did with the aforementioned Bad Santa that genuinely did have me bent over, laughing so hard that I couldn’t breathe at points.

It’s not that Ted isn’t as funny, it’s just that there’s no continuous bam-bam-bam joke after joke after slap after punch after off-colour-remark that Billy Bob Thornton‘s hastily-buried (by the studio – they hated it) classic managed. Aside from a couple of moments it also seems to lack the shock value, too. Perhaps I’m jaded. Bad Santa was very novel for its time. Since then, we’ve had the likes of Family Guy, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show on TV plus a fair number of bad taste comedies in the cinema.

What really did make Ted for me was the nostalgia and references to the 1980’s, plus all the little in-jokes and guest appearances. Without giving any plot details away (I hope): Ted Danson in a fake Cheers DVD extra; Ryan Reynolds in a non-speaking walk-on; Sam J. Jones as Sam J. frickin’ Flash Gordon Jones.

If there was a sad moment, it was the realisation that – judging by the type of laughter in the theatre at the relevant moment – I was on the only person in there who’d seen the original Airplane! film. Good grief.

Having a brief review at some of the reviews (a handful linked below), some have said in harsher terms what I would agree with. As a comedy it’s just not funny enough. What jokes and situations there are do hit the mark – I don’t think there’s a single fall-flat effort in there – but there aren’t enough of them.

It doesn’t detract too much from an otherwise decent film and as I said at the start at least it’s got a decent story, so you’re not sat there twiddling your thumbs waiting for the next fart joke with nothing to concentrate on. Just don’t go in expecting to be in rib-wracking pain and you should come back out having enjoyed the ride.

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Brave

I decided to take the kids to see the new PIXAR offering. I’ve not been disappointed by a PIXAR offering yet. Can they keep the record going with:

Brave

“Sorry, I don’t speak Bear.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Princess doesn’t like how her life is going to engages the services of a friendly witch to try and change things

See it if you like: Beautifully animated fairy tales

Set in historic Scotland, this is a huge departure for PIXAR. I think like everyone I have fair expectations from this particular company and usually it’s for  something bright and colourful with plenty of laughs and several layers. Brave breaks this template.

The voice cast are suitably impressive with Kelly MacDonald as the princess Merida, Emma Thompson as her mother and Billy Connolly as her dad. John Ratzenberger is, of course, present as he is in all the PIXAR films.

It’s the visuals that set this film apart from the rest of those from the same studio. Rather than just being bright, or detailed, or well animated, Brave is simply beautiful. The first obvious example of this is Merida’s hair – ginger curls that move ridiculously naturally in much the way that the showpiece tresses of Aki Ross in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within blew people’s (OK, animation geeks’) minds back in 2001.

Beyond that, the outdoor scenes are simply breathtaking. Rather than just being simple sets, life seems to have been breathed into every blade of grass, clump of moss, shrub and leaf. It all moves, even if nearly imperceptibly in cases, but enough to make it all seem to much richer than – in my opinion – any scenery in a CGI film before. The thing is, unless you’re looking for it it’s something you’d not notice simply because it is so good.

So the visuals set a new standard. How about the story?

Well… here’s where I was less impressed. It is a simple tale, and more of a traditional fairy story than any of the films PIXAR have done before. They’re usually a company to break the mould, not come up with new contents for it. There are no real twists or surprises and it seemed a little over-long to me.

Little Miss seemed to enjoy it, though Little Mister (he is 4 and the film’s rated PG) stated several times “I don’t like this film”, I think mainly as some of the scenes with the bears fighting were quite scary for him. Oh, and the witch (Julie Walters). Having said that, on another day I know he’d have been fine.

It just didn’t grip me with incredible imaginative new-ness the way that Toy Story or Monsters Inc. did which is a shame. It most certainly isn’t a bad film, but other than the staggering work they’ve done with the graphics it’s no modern classic either.

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We are awesome

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Mars Science Laboratory Guided Entry at Mars (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m not just talking about you and I, or the family or whatever. I mean us. The human race.

Look at what happened at 05:21GMT this morning. We deposited a new robot on the surface of Mars.

OK, so far so “heard it before”. But this is the largest machine we’ve placed there yet, weighing over a ton. And then you get into how we even got the thing there. It wasn’t “dropped” – it was lowered gently.

It takes about 14 minutes for radio signals sent from Mars to reach Earth, so there was no real way this could be done by some guy piloting it with a joystick. The entire thing was automatic.

In the 7 minutes it takes from the craft hitting the Martian atmosphere, it had to be slowed right down to near-stationary and its payload deposited on the surface. All without someone directly controlling it, or being able to override anything if anything happened and in an environment we can’t fully test on Earth.

This video on NASA’s website covers the details in 5 minutes, but briefly:

First off, the craft has to be guided as it ploughs through the upper atmosphere to ensure it lands where it’s supposed to. The calculations involved in this are incredible, ensuring that it starts to enter the atmosphere at the right time based on forecasting the position of the planet in relation to ours at the time we launched the original rocket from Earth so that we knew what the craft would be aiming at. The module will be jostled during its travel as it heats up to incredible temperatures while the on-board computers keep it on target using directional rockets.

The atmosphere on Mars is 100 times “thinner” than that of Earth. That mean there’s enough that the craft has to take it into account while it descends, but not enough to help with slowing the thing down to as large an extent as it would here. As a result, the largest parachute NASA have ever fabricated is put into use, slowing the craft from 1000mph to something more manageable. This parachute needs to withstand 65000lbs (29500kg) or force, yet only weighs 100lbs (45kg) itself.

Once the parachute is deployed, the heatshield on the base of the unit “pops” off exposing RADAR equipment which takes speed and distance readings for the next stage of the landing.

The parachute does a great job, but only slows the unit down to 200mph. Still far too fast for a safe landing. Instead, rockets will be used to slow its descent over the final stages. The parachute is detached and the rockets first of all push the main unit sideways, away from it to ensure that the two don’t become entangled.

While still ensuring the lander is travelling towards the designated site, the rockets further slow the descent to something more manageable.

However, we have one final problem. Mars is covered in very fine dust. If the rockets were used to take the actual exploratory unit right down to the surface, so much dust would be kicked up that visibility would be nill and there would be a significant risk of the mechanics and electronics being damages.

This is where it gets really cool.

At 20m above the surface, safe from kicking up that cloud, the rocket unit hovers. Then lowers the actual wheeled exploratory unit on a “skycrane”, winching it down to the surface at a slow speed. It allows it to touch down and settle, then disconnects and flies off to crash elsewhere so that it won’t get in the way of the planned examination of the planet’s surface.

All of this automated control is the result of 500,000 lines of computer code.

We did this. Human beings did this.

We foresaw every possible problem. We built rockets and units and mechanics and a host of other devices and bundled them into a package the size of a small truck. We then shoved a means of generating power, sensors, RADAR, propulsion and more into a unit the size of a small hatchback car. And then we flung the whole lot into space, managing to land it on a pre-determined spot the size of our back garden a distance of 140 million miles (250 million km) away.

We worked all of those final stage problems out to the extent that we could give instructions to a computer to handle everything. 500,000 lines of code sounds like a lot, but when you consider all the calculations and instructions necessary to hit the levels of precision necessary it’s paltry.

In a week that also sees the Olympics going on, the geek in me is overjoyed to see science grabbing the headlines for a few hours. I’m convinced the landing was scheduled for the early hours so it wouldn’t have to compete with any of the events at the Games!

Between both events, they demonstrate the pinnacles of human achievement both physical and intellectual.

I say again. We – Are – Awesome.

As a race, we are capable of so much. We waste a lot of our potential or expend it on stupid things like wars, but when we actually put the effort in these are the things of which we are capable. To be able to point at the staff of NASA, or the athletes breaking record after record, it gives our children something to go “wow” at – and hopefully the desire to emulate and exceed these achievements.

[Please excuse any glaring inaccuracies in the numbers in this post – I’ve used very rough figures and averages for some of them, and any cockups will be mine]

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