Category: Review

Murderdolls / Black Veil Brides, Glasgow O2 ABC

Murderdolls
Murderdolls

[More photos of this gig on my Flickr feed]

I wasn’t 100% certain about this gig, partly as it was on a Thursday night. This is awkward for me as I live and work just outside Edinburgh and my other half lives in Glasgow. Basically this means driving to Glasgow on a Thursday evening, seeing a gig, driving back to Edinburgh… then heading back to Glasgow on the Friday after work.

Well, Gill bought me the ticket for my birthday which kind of made my mind up for me!

Due to traffic congestion I missed the opening back (Defiled?) but was in good time to catch Black Veil Brides who I was looking forward to. Their current album’s not that bad and their live show matches up musically.

They certainly had a decent fan base a few rows deep at the front, though the screaming sounded a little too much like a crowd baying for the latest boy band to come on. The band themselves are of the “look how filthy and covered in scars drawn on in mascara I am” ilk, and their repartee was limited to “we don’t care if you don’t like us – we like us” which is fair enough.

For an opening act, they put on a decent show with a fair bit of variety in the songs. Nicely silly, good music – good luck to them.

The Murderdolls came on at 20:30 precisely and played a great 90 minute set with a balance of old and new material. Towards the end “Welcome to the Strange” was dedicated to the recently deceased Paul Gray of Slipknot fame, which earned a lengthy chant of the former masked metaller’s name by the crowd.

Wednesday 13 is a great front man. Despite the language, the attitude and the subject matter you can’t help but feel he’s just a guy having fun who’d be awesome to share a drink and a laugh with. The whole band looked like they were having the time of their lives and the audience didn’t calm down for the entire set – barring a small unscheduled interval when someone went down the in the pit and didn’t get up again. Security quickly spotted this and help was rushed in. Hope they’re OK.

As I said right at the start, the Murderdolls aren’t a band I’m massively into though I enjoy them. On this showing, I’d definitely recommend them as a good live act. They absolutely don’t take themselves seriously and the music was top notch.

This was my first visit to the O2 ABC, at least as a concert venue. There’s every possibility I was there to see a film back when it was a cinema and I was tiny. After the support and into the headline act, the one thing I’ll say is – great sound. There was no problem making out the vocals to either act, the drums were thumping and the guitars clear as a bell.

The security staff were also from the same stable as those used at the O2 Arena down the road. In other words, they were great.

Definitely a venue I’ll look forward to visiting again.

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Black Swan, NEDS and Tangled

Three films this weekend and certainly some variety in them. WARNING: this review contains the word “****”.

Black Swan

“I just want to be perfect.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: ballet dancers vie for the prized rôle in Swan Lake while the director bashes the audience’s brain with a marmalade-smeared herring.

Black Swan has had some impressive reviews and I believe is up for OSCARs. Darren Aranofsky isn’t exactly known for making run-of-the-mill films and this certainly isn’t a change in direction for him. Natalie Portman plays Nina, an incredibly skinny young girl and a promising ballet star, under the watchful eye of trainer Thomas (Vincent Cassel) and domineering influence of her mother (Barbara Hershey).

After landing the part of the Swan Queen, she finds herself in a confused friendship/rivalry with Lily (Mila Kunis), a more happy-go-lucky character.

That’s about as far as the regular plot goes. Leading on from this, the plot goes ever so slightly Fight Club. Only weirder.

One thing I will say – every performance is superb. the acting is simply brilliant right across the board. The story, however, just didn’t grip me. I guessed a couple of the “odder” parts before they happened so despite the twisting freakiness, I never felt surprised.

This may make me pretty unique in the film viewing world, but I just didn’t enjoy Black Swan that much. As I said, a great piece of work but just not one that grabbed me. Gill – on the other hand – loved it!

NEDS

“What the **** are you looking at, you wee ****?”

Plot: A young boy grows up in Glasgow and changes from promising student to psycho thug. Pretty much a documentary, really.

If you want hard-hitting, this is it. NEDS is brutal, unrelenting and unforgiving. In many places it’s rather uncomfortable to watch (although never quite as much as The Kid).

Conor McCarron plays John McGill, a young boy leaving primary as best-in-class and entering secondary school where expectations change from academic to thuggish. His brother’s reputation as a NED (non-educated delinquent) precedes him and other people’s expectations of how he might turn out push him towards the Dark Side.

For a bunch of amateur actors, the performances are well above par. The dialogue certainly helps gain the movie it’s 18 rating with more “*****” than a building full of senior bankers. It’s pretty violent as well, including some domestic incidents on top of the street brawls. This is not one to watch with grandma.

John’s descent seems pre-prescribed, especially once people find out where he lives and who his brother is. The message buried within certainly hinges around whether nature or nurture is at the heart of how a person turns out.

If there’s a weak point in the film, it’s the ending. After some strong incidents and emotional story, writer/director Peter Mullan doesn’t seem to know how to round things off. A shame as it spoils an otherwise excellent example of low-budget locally-made cinema.

Tangled

“Frankly, I’m too scared to ask about the frog.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Rapunzel with a PIXAR twist.

Yes, I know this isn’t a PIXAR film – it’s traditional Disney – but John Lasseter is a senior producer and it shows in the humour. Apparently this is the most expensive animated film ever made. Much as it is enjoyable, I just can’t see where the cash went. It doesn’t look much better than anything else recently. Having said that, Disney went to extraordinary lengths to create a CGI film that looked like a traditional hand-painted one. Developing new technology is always a big investment.

The story is fairly simple. After all, it’s geared at the younger audience. We took two 9 year-old girls and a 2 year-old boy (who was very well behaved!). The girls enjoyed it, but did seem to get a little bored close to the end. At 100+ minutes it’s a little longer than most animated films these days.

With some witty banter between characters, there is something there for the grown-up, too. However, the two best characters in the movie are Maximus the horse and Rapunzel’s pet chameleon – both non-speaking parts. This says a lot for the quality of the artwork.

I’m not a fan of films with spontaneous singing, so I switched off when the characters burst into song. With the exception of the performance in the grotty inn, most of the song/dance sequences don’t have much going on on-screen to while away the time.

Overall, not a classic but not too bad. As I said, though, the kids enjoyed it – and that’s the main thing.

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The Mechanic

Original poster
Poster from original 1972 version!

Gill couldn’t join me at the cinema this week as we couldn’t get a baby sitter. As such, I skipped the arty stuff and went to see something nice and Neanderthal. Ladies and gentlemen:

The Mechanic

“*BOOM*”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Hired killer gets stuck in a plot involving other people being killed. People die. Things explode. More people die. Come on, it’s a Jason Statham film – what do you expect?

With the exception of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Statham’s output has been fairly formulaic. Big explosions, car chases and ass-kicking has made up everything else he’s been in. The quality, however, has varied. For every Transporter 1 there’s a Crank. The Mechanic fortunately falls into the “good films” camp and is actually fairly low-key with the action sequences.

That’s not to say that there’s not a lot of action.

The film is set in the world of contract killers. Statham plays “Arthur” (probably not his real name), who is coerced into doing a job he doesn’t really want to, and then has to deal with the consequences. The nature of his chosen profession dictates that he has to be sneaky rather than all-out spectacular and this is reflected in the action scenes. They’re fairly short, tight and well-choreographed – no time wasted.

There’s also a lovely touch of gore to them with some nice blood spatter from the gunshots and plenty of bits to make you go “ow, bet that hurt”. Nothing up there with Saw, but gruesome all the same.

It’s not a bad story, either, although once the details have been set down it’s fairly obvious who the real bad guy is and what’s going to happen by the end. Regardless, it’s great entertainment and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Possibly Statham’s best all round film to date.

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Morning Glory

Unusual title for a film. Gill thought it was rather funny, though why she reckons green weeds used in Asian cooking are amusing is beyond me. We actually saw this as a “back up” when NEDS filled up. With neds, funnily enough. I’ve never seen so many shitty tracksuits in one place outside of SportsDirect.

Morning Glory

“He’s the third worst person in the world”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: busy-bee producer takes over beleaguered breakfast TV show and tries to turn its fortunes around.

I love an unexpected gem, and Morning Glory turned out to be one of these. It follows the same basic plot lines as any “small fry against the big guy” movie, and the two competing hosts who hate each other (Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton) story has been done plenty of times before.

Rachel McAdams plays the small fry, Becky Fuller, unexpectedly sacked when she expected promotion. She finds herself in at the deep end with another network, heading a show that’s about to sink.

So far, so predictable. Then enter Ford as the excessively grumpy Mike Pomeroy. A man who doesn’t want the job he’s forced into and who hates his co-host Colleen Peck (Keaton). Ford doesn’t actually turn the film around, the script just happens to go up in tempo when his character arrives on the scene.

The surprise star of the show, and the character who definitely gets the belly laughs, is Ernie Appleby (Matt Malloy). There weren’t many in the cinema, but everyone we could see was bent double with laughter at the point where Becky makes a desperate grasp for a ratings increase and Ernie the weatherman becomes her weapon of choice.

It’s predictable, it’s been done before, but it’s a great little movie. Ford and Keaton are simply superb – and Jeff Goldblum‘s near-cameo as the studio exec is a peach.

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iomega iConnect review

I just posted the following to Amazon after a few hours tinkering with the new toy. The iomega iConnect is a “wireless data station” that’s designed to allow you to share up to four USB drives (maybe more with hubs attached – not tried) or printers. The main reason for us buying it was to stream media to the Xbox in the front room and to two laptops (gran and daughter) elsewhere in the house.

The ideal situation would be to keep “mature audience” films separate from the “whole family” ones. This is do-able if the films are accessed by users over laptops, but not via the Xbox. Details in the bumph below.

It’s not a bad device, but it’s a shame it builds itself up with a load of features that don’t live up to the hype.

OK, this is a nice idea but as other reviews have stated the device fails on the little extras that make it so appealing in the first place – and due to some hidden charges.
First up, the interface is slow and clunky in the way that too many web-based front ends are. It can be a pain finding sections you’re after.
The claim that you can secure certain “folders” is incorrect in as much as the system calls any volume (i.e. hard drive partition) attached a folder. You can only restrict user access to each of these, not to the *actual* folders underneath. If you need to do this, look elsewhere (like a file server).
To stream media to an XBox or PS3, you tell the system to make all media available for streaming on a per-folder/partition basis. This means that if you have kids in the house, you’ll have to store your “mature audiences” films on a separate drive and log into the interface to enable/disable media streaming as and when you require it via the console. This is also the only way to block them from the content using the “security”.
Torrent download is a complete waste of time. Only one torrent at a time, and the speed is ridiculously slow. I attempted a couple of downloads. On a PC attached to the same network I was getting 250+Kb/s. On the iConnect, I peaked at 3Kb/s. THREE. Estimated time to completion was over a week. Just forget this feature – it’s pointless.
The ability to access the device from outside the home seems fine, though when you enable it you find that after 12 months, you have to cough up each year to keep it working. The system employs a 3rd party web service which checks your external IP address and logs it on a web site with a personalised URL. You go there and it redirects to your iConnect. This helps get around the issue of dynamic IPs as usually issued by home ISPs.
There *may* be  way round this by using a service such as no-ip.org. Keep a machine on at home running their service (free) and check the IP address when you need it by pinging your no-ip address. Then use the URL https://YOUR-IP/index.html?t=1
This may not work if the iConnect itself decides to disable the system after 12 months. I have no idea if it will or not and won’t for 364 more days!
I’ve also set the system to email me with any faults that occur. This seems to work fine, but it worries me that it’s mailing so often – usually claiming it can’t access the remote server that stores the external IP address.
Oh, the available volumes frequently vanish from the supplied management client software meaning that you can’t manage them using it. Having said that, you can get round this by going to the iConnect’s static IP address (make sure you give it such an address on your router!) directly. This issue doesn’t seem to affect the volumes being displayed and accessed through your Explorer – you just can’t administer anything.
Overall, nice idea but let down by rubbish unreliable software. Having said that, it (sort of) accomplishes the main task we had for it which was to stream media to the XBox and kids’ laptops. A shame the security wasn’t better on it so that we could restrict things more easily although I recognise that due to the fact that the Xbox can’t “log in” as such, the media either streams or doesn’t. Just a good job we have a little girl who’s trustworthy!

OK, this is a nice idea but as other reviews have stated the device fails on the little extras that make it so appealing in the first place – and due to some hidden charges.
First up, the interface is slow and clunky in the way that too many web-based front ends are. It can be a pain finding sections you’re after.
The claim that you can secure certain “folders” is incorrect in as much as the system calls any volume (i.e. hard drive partition) attached a folder. You can only restrict user access to each of these, not to the *actual* folders underneath. If you need to do this, look elsewhere (like a file server).
To stream media to an XBox or PS3, you tell the system to make all media available for streaming on a per-folder/partition basis. This means that if you have kids in the house, you’ll have to store your “mature audiences” films on a separate drive and log into the interface to enable/disable media streaming as and when you require it via the console. This is also the only way to block them from the content using the “security”.
Torrent download is a complete waste of time. Only one torrent at a time, and the speed is ridiculously slow. I attempted a couple of downloads. On a PC attached to the same network I was getting 250+Kb/s. On the iConnect, I peaked at 3Kb/s. THREE. Estimated time to completion was over a week. Just forget this feature – it’s pointless.
The ability to access the device from outside the home seems fine, though when you enable it you find that after 12 months, you have to cough up each year to keep it working. The system employs a 3rd party web service which checks your external IP address and logs it on a web site with a personalised URL. You go there and it redirects to your iConnect. This helps get around the issue of dynamic IPs as usually issued by home ISPs.
There *may* be  way round this by using a service such as no-ip.org. Keep a machine on at home running their service (free) and check the IP address when you need it by pinging your no-ip address. Then use the URL https://YOUR-IP/index.html?t=1
This may not work if the iConnect itself decides to disable the system after 12 months. I have no idea if it will or not and won’t for 364 more days!
I’ve also set the system to email me with any faults that occur. This seems to work fine, but it worries me that it’s mailing so often – usually claiming it can’t access the remote server that stores the external IP address.
Oh, the available volumes frequently vanish from the supplied management client software meaning that you can’t manage them using it. Having said that, you can get round this by going to the iConnect’s static IP address (make sure you give it such an address on your router!) directly. This issue doesn’t seem to affect the volumes being displayed and accessed through your Explorer – you just can’t administer anything.
Overall, nice idea but let down by rubbish, unreliable software. Having said that, it (sort of) accomplishes the main task we had for it which was to stream media to the Xbox and kids’ laptops. A shame the security wasn’t better on it so that we could restrict things more easily although I recognise that due to the fact that the Xbox can’t “log in” as such, the media either streams or doesn’t. Just a good job we have a little girl who’s trustworthy!

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