Authors include Matt Hilton and Stephen Leather, plus a smorgasbord of other established talent and a bunch of newbies like me.
It’s a bargain at £2.56 (Kindle only, I’m afraid), and for the first month of release Matt is donating 50p per copy sold to the rather worthwhile Help For Heroes charity.
All good things must come to an end, and the American Pie series has been good. OK, except for maybe The Naked Mile. And Book of Love. And Beta House. Hmm.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: The class of ’99 have a 13 year reunion, featuring a return to the days of debauchery
See it if you like: the original films… but you’ve grown up a bit
I’d heard very positive things about this film from the handful of people I know who caught it on the opening night (or even earlier, at the world premier in Australia). As mentioned above, the three theatrical films in the series to date have been pretty good managing to maintain a good level of humour without digging the same hole over and over.
I’m glad to say that American Reunion manages to maintain this drive, and doesn’t fall into the trap of rehashing old joked the way the straight-to-DVD episodes did. What makes the difference above all else? The cast and original characters.
Our story begins 13 years after the original, which did indeed come out in 1999. There are plenty of references back to it, but our characters have moved on a lot. Some are married, some are successful, Jim and Michelle have a baby boy, Jim’s dad is a widower… quite a few changes.
Oh, except Stifler. He’s still acting like he’s 14.
As the film goes on, more and more of the original cast make appearances. It really is like being reintroduced to old friends yourself as the characters meet up and exchange memories.
The plot is superb. There’s no shortage of gross-out humour and the opening 2-3 minutes is as full of giggles as the original. Somehow writer Jon Hurwitz has managed to find a thread of originality and uses it to string a handful of ****-smeared, boobs-out, bondage-gear-wearing sequences into a story that ultimately has a real feelgood ending.
It’s always tempting to say that Eugene Levy is the star of the moment – his character is wonderful and the show of weakness that comes in as we discover he’s lost his wife really adds a new dimension. However, though he’s not upstaged by anyone else, the improvement in storyline and depth added to the other characters stops the film being just about him. He does, however, get the best line in the film – hence why I’ve used it above!
I don’t think fans of the originals will be disappointed. People’s senses of humour change as they age, and this fourth (and final?) film has taken this into account. All for the better.
While not being as rib-achingly hilarious as the first film was, it’s probably actually a better film overall as a result. Definitely worth seeing.
A surprise trip out to catch the film on the night of release. Carefully avoiding the crappy 3D version, and not being able to afford the IMAX we settled on the tiny-old-cinema-screen-with-dodgy-sound experience.
Marvel’s Avengers Assemble
“I have a plan: attack!”
Plot-in-a-nutshell: Superheroes team up and fight bad guys. Well, dur.
See it if you like: Low-brow superhero flicks with too many characters.
There’s no denying the huge hype machine for this 142 minute effects-fest. With four films supplying the lead-in as far as story goes (more if you include the two Hulk movies) it has a lot to live up to. But does it manage it?
Well, as far as scale goes it’s pretty good. There’s a nice central bad guy and a nice huge threat towards the end to make it all larger than life. However, I found it somewhat messy with a couple of the characters virtually sidelined. Don’t expect the same level of cover for Black Widow and Hawkeye (Chris Evans) as for the other Avengers. In a way, it’s a good thing as they’re definitely weaker characters, certainly in this script. Scarlett Johanssen, for instance, just doesn’t convince me at all in her role, especially as the films plods on. She looks positively weak trying to wield two handguns.
On the flip side, there’s a great dynamic between Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) and Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and the banter between characters overall is pretty good. Snappy one-liners and a good dose of humour lift the film in just the right places. In fact there’s one very brief sequence – it involves Hulk and that’s as much as I’ll say – which had the audience roaring with laughter.
I wasn’t a fan of the Thor movie, but he’s much better in this. He’s just two dull to be the focus of a whole movie, but works well as part of the ensemble. I still don’t get how he’s a Norse god, but speaks with a posh English accent though.
The effects are predictably top-notch, with a good blend of live action and CGI. It looks like the effects masters are finally getting this right. The explosions are suitably meaty, and there’s plenty of destruction to keep even the most child-like of minds happy.
There’s not a huge amount in the way of plot – bad guy wants to take over earth, superheroes stop him (sorry if that spoils it for you) – and it does go very slowly in places. I confess to being a little tired on the evening we went, but I still didn’t expect to catch myself almost falling asleep. I did. Twice. One it got past this (around the hour mark), thankfully things picked up pace and I began to enjoy it more.
Overall, the two Iron Man films still stand out as the best recent offerings from this particular canon. The third in that series is coming up soon, and there’s also a teaser in the end credits of this film for more forthcoming action. Whether it’s a hint for Iron Man 3 or a second Avengers film, though, I don’t know.
You know sometimes you get to a gig, hear the support and think “I should have got here a little earlier”? Well, that happened tonight.
King Tut’s always have a late doors-opening time, around 8:30 when most venues are nearer 7:00. As such, I never know when to get there and by the time I should be leaving the house I’m actually starting to wind down for the night and thinking about getting a cuppa. Yes, I’m getting old. I’m dealing with it, so you have to as well.
I got to the venue around 10:00, picked up my Sacred Reich ticket from the bar (No booking fee! **** you, TicketMaster!) and walked upstairs with a pint of the eponymous lager. The place was packed as Finnish deathers Insomnium played melodically towards the end of their set. There were plenty of appreciative cheers from the crowd for the two songs I heard and rightly so. Definitely a band I’ll be checking out soon.
I’ve been following Paradise Lost for some time now – since my uni days in Bradford, in fact, around the time that Shades of God and Icon came out. The first time I saw them was at the Queen’s Hall, if I remember correctly, where I got in free as I was with the university radio station. The next time I saw them, or at least Aaron Aedy, was when I was glass-collecting at Rios and he wished me happy new year.
Paradise Lost (Photo credit: Iain Purdie)
That, for me, sums the guys up. You meet them once as a studenty fanboy, and they remember you enough to say “hello” several months later when they’re shitfaced at a new year party. Hell, I saw him a year later when I was working in PC World (dark days indeed) and I think I sold him a computer. The next time they played Bradford I was sat next to Aaron’s mum up in the gods at the St George’s Hall. The downside of guest lists is you often don’t know where they’ll put you!
Anyway, as the years went on (pretty much post-Draconian Times), I kind of lost track of Paradise Lost. I rediscovered them a few months ago and was pleased to see they were still doing well though mainly abroad. This was emphasised by the fact that they were playing a venue as small as King Tut’s on their tour. Great place, but it is tiny.
So on to the gig. With a little over an hour to fill, they managed quite a variety. Of course, I know the old stuff best but there’s nothing wrong with the newer material as I discovered. I think there were only two tracks off the newest release, Tragic Idol, which came out… erm… today! Along with those were a handful of others I didn’t really recognise, but quite a few I did.
“Widow”, “One Second”, “As I Die”… all great songs and as with many artists, these older numbers were the ones the fans cheered the loudest for. Nick introduced each track with his typical style of humour mixed with a dash of “miserable bastard”. Let’s just say that Jack Dee has some competition.
It is great to see a band play when the core has been together for so long. The only member currently with them not to have been there since 1988 is drummer Adrian Erlandsson. The other four are founder members and have never left the band, even temporarily as far as I can tell. To work and tour for so long with the same guys says a lot about them, and they’re very good live as a result.
Aaron is constantly banging his head a-la Scott Ian, Greg (still with long hair, the bastard) poses as he plays the high notes, Steve keeps the rhythm going on bass and Nick leads from the front. Having seen them at Download some years back, they’re as confident in front of a festival crowd as a couple of hundred drunk Glaswegians and it’s good to have had the chance to see them in front of such a small crowd.
Definitely worth taking my slippers off for, and I’ll be hunting for the new album in the morning.
“Here’s an apple. And a gun. Don’t talk to strangers – shoot them.”
Plot-in-a-nutshell: improperly (or was he?) convicted secret agent person must single-handedly save the President’s daughter from a prison. Which floats in space.
Based on an idea from Luc Besson, Lockout starts with a bang (actually, lots of them) and just doesn’t let up. It’s fast-paced, funny, utterly daft and thoroughly entertaining as a result. There are threads from many genres mixed up in the plot and the characters and dialogue are as over-the-top as you could hope for.
Guy Pearce plays our lead, be-muscled secret agent Snow caught for (allegedly) turning traitor and killing another agent, then disposing of the secrets he was supposedly stealing. As luck would have it, prisoners break out on board the floating space-prison to which he’s just been sentenced and he’s given a chance to earn his freedom in exchange for rescuing the President’s daughter (Maggie Grace) who conveniently happens to be up there.
This is a relatively low-budget film and comes out opposite the titanic Battleship (see what I did there?) against which it’s surely going to look like a tugboat. However, despite being a much “smaller” film in all respects, it holds its own in the entertainment stakes and most definitely deserves your time. The plot is more focussed than in the larger film with everything following our two main protagonists, and the sharp dialogue – mainly from Snow – is wonderfully dry. James Bond wishes he had this line in humour.
There’s nothing to complain about regarding the quality of the special effects either, although a couple of the speedier sequences are hard to follow as they pan and flip from angle to angle far too fast for these old eyes to follow.
Every action film needs a decent antagonist, and Lockout has two particularly nasty ones in the forms of mastermind Alex (Vincent Regan) and utter nutjob Hydell (Joseph Gilgun). They play off each other and offer two sides of the overblown lunatic that one central bad guy would have entailed.
While there aren’t any real surprises in the storyline, there’s nothing to stop the viewer going along for the ride and thoroughly enjoying the antics of anti-hero Snow. He’s a great character and I’d not mind seeing him in some kind of follow-up.
Incidentally, random link between this and Battleship? Grace played Neeson’s daughter in the awesome Taken (co-written by Besson), a sequel to which is due out later this year. Both actors are due to reprise their roles.
