Category: Entertainment

Gaming extremes

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Prestige Edition
Yes. It comes with night vision goggles. Seriously.

I still follow the gaming press though I play about 2 hours of computer games a month right now – and that only when I visit my folks and load up Guitar Hero. There’s a bit of a buzz around about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Specifically, an early level which features some fairly “disturbing” content.

First up, folks – SPOILER. Don’t read on if you’re waiting for the game and want to be shocked by this bit. On your own head be it if you continue past this point.

Now, I’m pretty laid back. I see a game as it is. A game. But then, I’m not mental. And neither, very importantly, am I a parent. Some kind soul has uploaded a complete video of the offending level of the game. It is available from this linky-bit here. Again, don’t go and watch it if you’re bothered about spoilers.

The first thing that struck me is how incredible the gaming experience has become since I last bought a title for my PC. As I’ve been using laptops for the last 4 years or so, I’m not used to 3D graphics of that standard. When I did use my PC, I was topping out on the likes of GTA3. Graphics have come a long way in three years. Remember that the PS3 and Xbox 360 didn’t come out until after I’d packed all my stuff away and gone backpacking.

So what’s the furor about? Basically as part of one of the missions you have to shoot a lot of civilians. A lot. A whole airport full of them. With guns and stuff.

Now is this so bad? I mean, it’s fake isn’t it? Is it any worse than watching a disaster movie, or someone going on a rampage in a town in some violent film or other?

To me, the answer is no. But would I want a 12 year old to play the same game as me? Not in this instance, no. I may be getting soft in my old age, but there is a point where fantasy is obvious and this isn’t it. The game in question is grisly and this level in particular completely blurs the line between fantasy and reality.

I’m all for the likes of war games where you’re a soldier fighting other soldiers. With the atmosphere possible in today’s gaming environments it’s almost educational and the fact that teamplay and communication starts to enter into it actually appeals to me as far as providing them to kids is concerned. When your actions have consequences and there are reasons for performing them then it can pass on some kind of moral message – even if that message is “attack my country and I’ll shoot all your soldiers”.

However, running rampage in an airport from a terrorist’s viewpoint isn’t really conducive to a balanced view of life. While it’s still “just fun” it does cloud that moral viewpoint that sees to be hard to instil these days.

I’ve watched that video right through and all I can say is that it looks like a fun blast, but they still haven’t solved one flaw that’s been in games for ages – “living” characters just walking through corpses on the floor as if they were ghosts. I know it’s a nightmare if you make each corpse “solid” as they you have to jump/dodge round them. But how about some animation for just stepping on or around them that doesn’t involve the player having to hop around like a pogo stick?

I guess that’s the limit of my personal issues with it. The game has an 18 certificate. It’s there for a reason. It’s adult scenes and adult subject matter so it should be played by adults – or younger kids with parental discretion.

I really don’t see what the fuss is about.

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Film Saturday

Just for a change, a Saturday visit to the picture house and what a change it made crowd-wise. While I much prefer an empty theater (as people are generally selfish, noisy buggers in this country) it is good to see that the cinema is still a popular place to go. The queue was pretty big at 1pm, and by the time I walked past at 3pm I was glad I’d picked up the ticket for my second film in advance – the queue was out the door and up the street!

The Men Who Stare At Goats

Weird title, weird film. Apparently based on a weird book – which I actually remember seeing in the Popular Science section of Waterstone’s many years ago.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: a journalist with a failed marriage heads for Iraq to write a war story. On the way he encounters a retired soldier who claims to have been part of an elite psychic soldier outfit. And this is apparently based on a true story…

The main cast is astounding: George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey… Robert Patrick is headlined, but he’s only in it for five minutes. They’re all damn good as well. McGregor managed to pull off a decent American accent without sounding stupid while Clooney pulls off stupid without looking… well, stupid.

This is a film about complete mentalists. It’s hard to tell where the line is drawn between docu-drama and complete fiction. I’d guess that the book is the same, partly as it just seems to far-fetched. Yet how unlikely is it that armies were throwing cash a potential psychic “weapons”?

There are laughs a-plenty, most of them quite dark. The fact that McGregor’s character ends up in a quest to become what the psi-ops regiment called a “Jedi” is not lost on the viewing public either.

Overall a good film that doesn’t outstay it’s modest running length.

Jennifer’s Body

The last decent female-based teen horror film was Ginger Snaps and that was released ages ago. Jennifer’s Body goes more down the “monster” than “werewolf” route but does it well with some great black humour. And two hot girls snogging.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Town bike Jennifer turns from slut to blood-hungry psycho, requiring the blood of scared teens to survive. Her best friend is the only one to know her secret and she doesn’t like it.

When I saw the trailers I thought “rubbish – move on”. Then I saw some reviews, and not just from the likes of Baz Bamigboy and Jonathan Ross‘s far less talented sibling who will say anything is the “Best film of 2009” if it gets them a free bag of popcorn. The schedule fitted in with my free time so I took a chance.

The film opens after the end of the main plotline with one of the characters putting us into the scene. The story then jumps to the beginning and is more or less linear from there except for a brief jump back to explain exactly what happened to Jennifer (Megan Fox). Fox, incidentally, is hot. Scorchy hot. I-would-give-a-limb hot. But credit must also go to co-star Amanda Seyfried who plays the frumpy best friend, Needy – “frumpy” in the sense that as soon as she takes off her glasses and shakes out her hair she’s also typically sexy.

Everything happens at a good pace with the characters not being too stereotypical. The gore isn’t over-the-top and the effects are good. What I liked most, other than the humour, is the way the two main characters act opposite each other and how Needy develops.

You can pretty much guess what happens, it’s the ending that’s fairly original. Although not a huge twist, it’s definitely well written.

Don’t avoid this film just because it has obvious eye candy in. Don’t get me wrong. Fox isn’t that great an actress, but her hotness is actually useful in this film. And you get to see her with her tongue down another hot chick’s throat. Admittedly this scene was made somewhat less erotic by one numpty in the cinema crying “YAY” in a dull monotone, resulting in a huge outburst of laughter and a smattering of applause.

Still, that’s a throwaway moment in the film in my opinion. The main reason to see it is Seyfried’s performance. And the poor jokes.

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A quick “well done” to Cineworld

Cineworld
Not my local one, but I have been here!

A few weeks ago I emailed Cineworld to ask why they didn’t encourage people to re-use their 3D glasses. With the number of 3D films coming out now, it seemed daft for thousands of pairs of the things to be thrown away when they could be used time and time again.

Recently I noticed “recycle bins” for them appearing at the cinema. A cheapskate approach as it meant the cinema would save money by re-using them but not pass the saving on to the customer with a reduced cinema ticket if they brought them back in.

Lo and behold… on the recent newsletter I just got from them it states that glasses are now down to 80p a pair and if you bring your own back in again then there’s no additional charge on your ticket. I believe the 3D films still cost more to see (in fairness, they cost more to make), but you do save a little cash by recycling.

Well done, Cineworld.

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The Merchant of Venice

William Shakespeare
His friends called him "Billy-boy". Maybe.

[There are loads of adaptations of this play – the version I watched is detailed here on the IMDB and here at Wikipedia]

The what now? That sounds like a Shakspeare play or something. Which it is. And this is the film review category which means I must have watched it. Which I did. Which is weird. Which it is.

That’s a lot of whiches. More, perhaps, than Macbeth. Watch it, though, I did.

Like it? Kinda.

I have a deep-seated loathing of Shakespeare. It’s nothing personal. I didn’t know the guy and he didn’t seem to stand for anything I disagree with. It’s predominantly to do with the complete ****er of an English teacher I had at school. The man had the ability to take something you held dear and make you loathe it with a passion simply so that you wouldn’t agree with him.

Imagine the sliminess that exudes from Nick Griffin. Put it into a character who looks more like a stretched tall English butler and you have an idea of what I’m getting at.

As a result, I built literary brick walls between myself and the Bard. And Chaucer as well, but in fairness that really is gobbledygook. This is a shame as, despite being in overly-flowery language, Shakespeare’s not that bad. You’d be amazed how many turns of phrase we use regularly that come from his plays.

One prime example – as it’s from The Merchant of Venice – is “a pound of flesh”. This is the payment that Shylock (itself a generic term for “Jew” which is somewhat less commonly used now) demands of Antonio should he default on a loan. We don’t use it for quite the same reason in the modern day, but the fact that a phrase used by a playwright over 400 years ago is still coined today – and by people who won’t have even heard of the work, let alone read it – is pretty impressive.

Now I’ll be honest. While watching the film, had I not been given a rough idea of the storyline and had a (prospective) English teacher sat with me pointing things out I would have missed a lot of the detail. The story itself isn’t too hard to follow, but for the uninitiated Shakespeare’s flowery dialogue (I guess scholars would call it “detailed prose”) is still hard to follow.

What this did allow me to do was something I don’t often manage – to concentrate on the performances. On how the words were delivered. Given that it was often hard to grasp their meaning, it was left to the actors to convey the emotions.

For that reason, this has to be one of Al Pacino‘s finest displays. I’ve always rated him. Like Morgan Freeman, he can be in a complete dud but you’ll always remember the parts with them in as they’re simply superb actors.

He plays Shylock in the adaptation I watched – the 2004 film directed by Michael Radford. Pacino’s monologue (“If you prick us, do we not bleed?” – that one) was positively wonderful. Jeremy Irons as Antonio is, again, a great actor though he really comes into the limelight during the final courthouse scene.

Would I go out of my way to watch another Shakespeare adaptation? Or even pay £30 or so for a theatre ticket? I don’t know. I still like my entertainment to be “easy”. I don’t mind thinking about something while I’m watching it, or afterwards. But having to read or be told about what happens prior to viewing so you can follow it still seems like too much hard work.

I have to thank Kat for convincing me to watch this one, if for no other reason than the aforementioned Pacino scene. It’s certainly given me a little more respect for the little bald guy with the ruff (Shakespeare, that is), and I’ve enjoyed doing some reading on Wikipedia about the play. I still think, though, I prefer my dramas in modern language.

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Film Thursday

9-movie-official-poster-fullsize 400x592
9

My last “Film Thursday” for 6 weeks as I’m on placement from Monday. Argh. It wasn’t as busy as I was hoping, with only three films making the “can be arsed going to see” category.

Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant

The trailers for this looked good and it didn’t disappoint, despite almost being an overlong trailer for an upcoming series in its own right.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Two best friends end up becoming vampires by different mean; one a “good” vampire, the other a “bad” Vampaneze. Begin Blade-style “them against us” plotline.

Having had a quick scan through the related Wikipedia articles, there are definitely some differences between the film and the two source novels by Darren Shan. In fact, the two books which give up most of their content to form the plot for the film are Cirqu du Freak and The Vampire’s Assistant. They in turn are the first two books in a trilogy, itself the first of four such trilogies. So you can see that Hollywood would be begging for the rights with so much pre-written story to adapt.

As I’ve not read the books I can’t comment on how “good” an adaptation it is, but as a film in its own right it’s certainly enjoyable. There is enough revealed about the background world in which its set to certainly get the imagination going and I do hope they start work on a sequel or three. Mainly as I don’t have the time to read another twelve novels.

It is a little violent and there’s a smattering of bad language, but it’s suitable for the young teens and up in my opinion. The humour is quite dark (as it should be) with some good slapstick and gruesome effects.

Oh, and Salma Hayek is still hot, even with a beard.

9

Coincidentally, the second film of the day shares an actor with the first. Mr Crepsley from Vampire’s Assistant and “Number 5” from 9 are both played by John C. Reilly. However, in this wonderfully designed animated feature only his vocal talents are used.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: The world has been destroyed and all that’s left are some little sentient dolls and a very scary mechanical dog. But what happened? And why?

I was really, really looking forward to 9 and I have to admit to being a little disappointed. Mainly in the story which just doesn’t seem to be deep enough. Visually, however, it is a complete and utter treat. It’s not been so much sketched out and drawn, but mechanically designed. This very much appeals to my inner geek.

It is still a very moving film with some wonderful characters and a lovely ending. The journey to that ending is superbly crafted, but it just seemed to be missing a little something for me. I couldn’t tell you what, annoyingly enough.

There is no denying the Tim Burton influence in the freaky designs, though there are even shades of the scary hybrid toys from the first Toy Story movie. Only with engines and snippy bits and laser eyes and stuff.

For the pure visual wonderfulness, I would recommend 9.

Fantastic Mr Fox

I am so going to get it in the neck for this one, but I have my issues with this film… like 9 it is beautifully made, though the animation is far more simplistic. The voice acting if pretty good, though I think 9‘s was better (and yes, that’s even taking into account George Clooney). It’s the story, of all things.

Plot-in-a-nutshell: A fox family move into a shiny new tree, but soon find themselves the centre of a pest-control war waged by three mean farmers.

So what’s my problem with the story? Bear in mind that I love Roald Dahl and everything he stood for, but for a kids’ story the morals on this are all messed up. The foxes start off fine. Mr Fox decides he wants to steal loads of stuff, which he then does. The farmers get a bit peeved at this and decide they don’t want him living next to them – who would?

But guess who wins?

Yes, kids. Steal stuff, annoy people… and you’ll get away with it if you have a cool (read “annoying”) trademark whistle and a way with words. Actually, in fairness it worked for our politicians for long enough.

I have to confess I’ve never read the book. It was one of the ones I just didn’t get round to as a kid. I couldn’t tell you how many times I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. I absolutely adored them, but now I feel almost glad that I didn’t read Mr Fox as it actually seems a bit weak.

Please tell me that the book didn’t have the “whistle-click” trademark in it? That’s just awful. As is some of the dialogue. I’m really hoping it’s just been destroyed in adaptation as I can’t believe Dahl would have been so trite in places.

But as I said: it looks fantastic. However overall it’s more kind of “Passable Mister Fox”

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