This week I have had the chance to finally catch up on some new films both with a strong female lead, and both featuring archery.
Saw Brave at the cinema and The Hunger Games in the comfort of my own home on Blu-Ray. The sad part is I can’t say I was really blown away by either of them.
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I have been looking at the Chris Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises and all I can say is meh! While I can appreciate what Nolan is going for and the look and feel he is striving to attain, for me it isn’t what Batman is about. For me Batman is much bigger than what he is portraying which is why when I saw the trailer for the animated version of Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” I can see something I can really enjoy.
Finishing a game in 4 days is a new personal best for me, and to be honest with you if I had not had a life to distract me I am pretty sure I would have finished it on the very first day.. damn you sleeping, eating, and working. I may be finished with the story but there is still a LOT more to do and plenty more to get out of this game.
Arkham City is without doubt one of the best games I have ever played. I don’t say that lightly, I sincerely mean it. It has everything you could possibly want in a game, for starters you are Batman. But not some hobbled “I have had all my toys taken away from me and I won’t be cool till the end of the game” Batman but a “I am so freaking cool I can kill guys just by looking at them” Batman… which is nice!
You have great toys to play with and the actual mechanics of playing the game are exactly right. Fighting is at the forefront in this game and you will be doing plenty of it. But its fun, there are so many things you can do as you pound people it is just an endless joy. Then you get to throw in all your cool gadgets and you are set. But its not straight forward, do something stupid and you die almost instantly (that is a good thing as you still have to think rather than button bash).
The artwork and production value in the game is utterly stunning, the art-deco style of Gotham is extended into some weird and wonderful ideas but all of them feel at home here. While some of it is absurd none of it felt out of place. You are playing a man with no special powers but dresses up like a bat.. absurd was left at the door. On top of that the voice acting is superb, I have already mentioned my gripe so we will leave it at that. You have to praise the developers for not sticking with the established designs for the characters, they have taken some already great concepts and just improved on them with this game. It is worth playing the game just to get the the unlocks that let you examine the models in more detail (Kudos to them for including the design of Cat Woman from the animated series as a model as well).
But the standout thing here is the story. I’m not going to tell you a single thing about it that would only spoil it for you, but lets just say it was not what I expected at all and was just fantastic. There are plenty of older characters that make an appearance not just the Joker, Penguin or Riddler, and there are twists and turns all through the story. But at its heart it stays true to who Batman is and what he is about.
This is just the perfect superhero game that I don’t you could ever really do with any other superhero. You know you are playing a great game when you finish it before you wanted and you want to start it again straight away.
*I will give you one little spoiler*
I got to beat up a shark!
Where to start with this… lets just start with amazing.
Batman: Arkham Asylum was a surprise for me, I had seen it coming and it looked interesting. But when you look back at the history of super hero games it is not good. So a long time ago I gave up on hoping on a good super hero game, let alone the best one of them all Batman. How so very wrong I was, I think is has to go down as one of my favorite games of all time.. right up there with the likes of Super Mario World (SNES) and Street Fighter II Alpha 2 (Saturn).
For those that know me they know I don’t often complete games. I usually lose interest somewhere in the middle, put the game down, then never really come back to it. Arkham Asylum treads that careful line between game and cinema, an engaging story, great game mechanics, fantastic voice acting. I think between Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill you can’t not enjoy it.
You know a game is good when I have completed it a few times now and I am working on getting all of the achievements and extras.
Of course I have only had Arkham City for one day now, but it is very part the better of Arkham Asylum. Not only is the system better, new ideas have been added, but there are also all new gadgets to play with.
The city is sprawling and feels real and gritty with the various character nicely woven into it. Other reviews out there will go into the details but lets just say its great!
The only thing I am disappointed in so far is Harley Quinn. Of course the character design is spot on, it’s just not as good as Arkham Asylum. Unfortunately they have also changed the voice, in Asylum it is Arleen Sorkin the one true voice Harley Quinn. In City they have changed it to Tara Strong. She is excellent but she is just not right.
For me Harley Quinn is as important as Cammy. She is not the most important character but she is one of the most interesting.
The other day I was browsing through Wired as I often do and I came across the an article they have done on infection films, I have to admit bio-hazard films have always freaked me out which is why I enjoy watching them. For me zombie films are just an extension of the idea that a virus is out there and is ready to use you or just eat you up.. creepy.
So I was looking through the list and there are some goodies on there like “The Andromeda Strain“, “28 Days later“, and “12 Monkeys” (I have always loved the work of Terry Gilliam). But a few from the top I came across “Pontypool” and from the picture alone I thought I need to take a look at that.
It made another appearance in the current SFX magazine special on zombies at number 39 of their all time greatest zombie movies.. so it has to be worth a look.
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My work has a lot of good things and bad things going for it. Possibly the biggest pro has to be that they sent me to our Tokyo office to do some work. Oh and in case your wondering, you can be sure there are Big Giant robots involved… oh yes… and Pirate Ships too. This was business first and vacation second although thanks to my colleagues Yugo and Yuichi I managed to go to a fantastic couple of figure shops Thursday and had a great night drinking with Yugo in a traditional Japanese bar on Friday night which leads to where things really get going. Continue reading
1974′s Space Battleship Yamato is one of the most epic, legendary anime series ever made. It’s also 26 episodes long. The 2010 live action film has to compress all of that into 138 minutes and also attempts to modernise the crew and interestingly, opts to include elements from the anime’s sequel series to boot.
It is ambitious and yet somewhat successful. I say somewhat because they have turned a space opera, a slow dramatic show that at times had me as close to tears as I’ve ever been since I saw Optimus Prime die in ’86, into a Hollywood style blockbuster.
How? why? well simple really, you can’t have anywhere near as many near destruction encounters as in the original. The Yamato doesn’t get heavily damaged and fixed again many times over, there just isn’t time. The pace of the film is understandably quick and there are many things that were cut out but I enjoyed the film and as a film it makes sense even if some f the changes may be a little hard to swallow.
In the year 2199, mankind loses their final showdown in space against invaders from the Gamilas race. With huma
n tech no match for the attackers, Captain Okita is forced to retreat to the radiation soaked Earth where humans live in underground cities after the surface was hit by radioactive meteors sent by Gamilas. Earth gets a ray of hope in the form of a capsule from Iskander, it contains a map and schematics for a wave motion engine capable of warping a ship through space and powering a canon powerful enough to destroy any Gamilus ship.
The defence force construct the Space Battleship Yamato using these plans, its mission, fight past the attackers from space and travel to Iskander and retrieve a device from the high-tech culture capable of purifying the Earth. Character wise it revolves around the hotshot ace pilot Susumu Kodai, the hard hitting love interest Yuki Mori and wise old Captain Okita and his passing of the torch to Kodai.
The whole cg look of the film’s effects seems to be lifted from the 2005 Batlestar Galactica so it isn’t the best cg you’ll have seen but then this is a Japanese movie and budget-wise can’t be expected to compete with Transformers for cg budgets and effects. The music is instrumental version of the legendary Yamato theme. I’m too old school and mis the words but duing the film the music is just modern remixes of the classic theme which is perfect as the original’s music was a masterpiece up there with Star Wars.
As for some of the more noticable character changes:
Dr Sado, the Yamato’s chief doctor and drunk in the series was a small balding drunk who was always entertaining as he hung around with his cat, the analyzer robot and a bottle of sake. In the film he becomes, well a woman who doesn’t get to do much other than stand around with her cat and a bottle of sake in homage. Not really the best of changes but in this day and age you probably couldn’t get away with the old doctor.
Analyzer goes from being a red human sized robot with perverted tendencies that hangs around with the doctor lusting after Yuki to a ummm, an artificial intelligence living in a tablet pc operated by Kodai for most of the film (but this redesign is totally redeemed near the end of the film with a super baddass upgrade).
Aihara was a guy who didn’t do much in the original series (but did more in later series), him becoming a she I can live with.
Yuki Mori has undergone some sort of personality transport and goes from lifestyle officer and nurse to fighter pilot… That said, it works for the film, if you hadn’t seen the original series you’d never know. If you have, it’s hard.
Saito is a character who was lifted out of the second season of Space Battleship Yamato, he’s less obnoxious than in the series and actually a good addition.
The commander of Gamilus, Desla is a key character of the main story in the anime, in the film, yeah not much time at all and his appearance… Well he was a blue humanoid before, he isn’t now…
Without giving too much away I’ll tell you that you can quite happily watch this film without having seen the original series, in some ways it may help. What I will also say, is that because of the way it skips large events and actually takes large chunks of Yamato 2′s ending. You can quite happily watch the series afterwards and be in for a thoroughly enjoyable story and you won’t be left thinking seen all this, you won’t have because so little of the original is in here. Is that a good thing, I don’t know, but all things considered, I just don’t think it’s possible to compress the whole story into one film and have the same impact. Instead we get a highly entertaining action packed version of Yamato which is either a great introduction, or a nice alternate telling of it for existing fans. Either way, this is one anime to live action conversion that is *gasp* actually a good film! I just hope it gets an official blu-ray release in the UK or more likely the USA.
You do not want to be on the receiving end of the Wave Motion Gun
Its time to bring another big giant robot series, this time it’s The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird, an early 90s super robot show from Japan where it was known as Taiyō no Yūsha Fighbird and is the second of the Brave series – a collection of super robot shows made by Sunrise to sell toys for Takara. As such they feature cool looking robots that transform and combine.
Transforming robot and flaming sword = Awesome
That I’m posting about Fighbird now while it’s fresh in my mind and while I’m still desperate to buy all the merch which is is the sign of an anime doing its job. The plot shameless excuse for robots fighting is that the positive energy beings who make up the Space Police have come to Earth to protect it from the Negative energy being Draias. The lead good being posesses an android created by Professor Amano and becomes known as Katori Yutaro. Katori has no concept of a lot human ideas which usually ends up entertaining and being an android, gives him super human butt kicking ability – excellent. When Draias’ henchman lead by the human traitor Dr Jango bring out the heavy guns/ giant robot beasts, Katori merges with Amano’s fighter jet to become Fighbird and then usually gets his clocked cleaned until he merges with another smaller jet to become Armament Fusion Fighbird and uses the FLAME SWORD!
Fighbird has backup in the forms of Ace Baron who is a 5 mech combiner and the Guard Team who conveniently make themselves at home in the vehicles of emergency services. It’s always fun to watch Police Inspector Satsuda puzzle over his missing patrol car missing as Guard Star goes off into battle with Guard Fire (Fire engine) and Guard Rescue (Dr. Yoshiko Kunieda’s ambulance). When the going gets tough, the guard team combine into Guardion and even better, he later becomes Super Guardion! Their cries of Battle Up (insert character name) are good transformation scenes too.
There are some great things coming out at the moment that are worthing checking out.
Yet another edition of Akira you just have to buy. Talking to Sideswipe today this is this will be the firth time he has bought it, the third time for me.
A bargain too. Get it from Play for £17.99
As you may or may now know I am a dedicated lover of Akira I am very choosy about what Akira has to be in order for me to buy it. More specifically it has to be the original American dub of the film. I have seen the original Japanese version (makes a little more sense) and the improved dubbed version but I am not a fan or them. It has to be Leonardo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and most of that era or voice actors running the show. If I am not thrown back to my childhood when I watch the film I am just not interested.
What can I tell you? As far as I can tell Cameron Clarke is Keneda… that means this is the original dubbed version of the film, cleaned up, remasters and made better than ever. Check out Mr Clarkes bio on IMDB and give praise to him, he is your childhood and you don’t even know it.
Probably my favourite of all of Pixar’s work is finally coming to high definition. There is very little I can actually say about it that hasn’t been said before, it is just a great film all around and takes the usual superhero’s film and turns it on its head.
Only £15.99 from play and I think that is a deal.
Who does not love Superman on some level? For a long time I really didn’t like these films. I don’t even know why, I think it was probably because they were on so often you just become sick of them. On reflection, having seen them recently after such a long time, I have come to really love them. The special effects don’t really hold up very well, it is filled with over acting, and the stories are not very good. But that doesn’t matter, there is a joy in these films from the cheesy special effects used in the titles when John Williams score picks up and you know this is not just a film, it’s a “Motion Picture”.
Not a bad deal on play considering its 8 disks, 3 good 1 crap film. But you have to have them all. £36.99
There is a lot coming out at the moment, some of the other things I think are worth checking out:
Toaru Majutsu no Index (a certian scientific index) is one of my guilty pleasure series – no giant robots, no martial arts, not even any guns used by the main cast. I’ve just finished watching the second series and am eagerly awaiting news on when Funimation are going to get their asses into gear and finally release season one on hopefully blu-ray, if not dvd as it is a show I’d definitely get.
Why? well I like the world it is set in and the characters in that. There is both magic and psychic/espers. It is set in Academy City, a hi-tech city where those with superhuman powers are studied, and students with potential to develop powers train to develop them. Psychic powers can be manifested in many different ways, be it controlling electricity, turning invisible or teleporting themselves or other things (and many other things). Magic on the other hand, was scientifically created so normal people would have powers to rival the psychics. The world has a great balance, if Espers use magic, it causes them brutal internal injuries and if magics users use psychi powers, the same applies. The higher ups in each side would be happy to see the other side eliminated which provides the series with a range of different styles of encounters with people of different talents.