If you haven’t heard of Sym-Bionic Titan you will soon! Then you will wonder how you ever lived without it.
This new show from Genndy Tartakovsky has only just started but it is already one of my favourite shows, fortunately for me it slots right into the “Big Giant Robot” theme perfectly.
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The Expendables may have the most pressure on it of any movie ever, just look at the cast list
Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry Crewes, Mickey Rourke, Stone Cold Steve Austin and cameo’s by Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s cast are all legends and almost all of them are used to headlining their own movies.
Question:How can you possibly live up to that?
Answer: With some good fights, lethal knife usage for brutal kills, lots of guns and a ludicrous amount of explosions. The only thing Expendable about this is the plot which is vintage 80s storytelling (i.e. the story is more of an excuse than an actual plot and you know that’s deliberate here). Oh and Charisma Carpenter has a small role in it and is still hotter than all of the explosions in the film combined.
There are some things that take you by surprise, Glass Maiden aka Crystal Blaze in Japan is definitely one of those series that does that. Ordinarily I get annoyed when an anime is so shameless in showing it’s influences, and in copying much from my favourite series City Hunter I’d expect to be scathing but they pulled it off spectacularly. Thanks to the joys of Crunchyroll and the auto next episode I watched all 12 episodes in a row, on a week night and felt the need to blog about it same night! If that isn’t the mark of a good series I don’t know what is.
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I never wanted the A-Team movie to be made, you could not better the TV series cast, each and everyone one of them nailed their character to perfection. With that said, this may suprise you, I really enjoyed the new A-Team movie. It was a fun no-brainer popcorn film, and even with my love of the original clouding my opinion, I was still able to enjoy it and want to give some credit where it’s due. Of course there are plenty of things I disagree with and I’ll get to those later but the film gets a fair amount of things right too and everyone should give it a watch.
Back on the crusade to bring more giant robots to the site and my choice this time is another blast from the past. Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs was along with Macron-1 and Robotech, a staple of my early morning viewing when I was a child.
The show is your basic futuristic western. The Star Sheriffs protect the New Frontier from Outriders, vapour beings from another dimension. Because they turn into a puddle of vapour when shot, there’s a lot of killing of bad guys which wasn’t something you’d see in many other shows of the time. Their boss Nemesis even goes as far as getting his forces to kidnap all the Wilderbeasts (think buffalo) just because he thought it would amuse him. How can you not love a bad guy with so much power he invades another dimension and kidnaps an entire species just for fun (oh and he’s voice by Peter G1 Optimus Prime Cullen).
It is no exaggeration to say the film “Akira” changed me. It must have been about the end of 1993 and Nikobe brought it round my house on VHS tape (we really did have them).
Now I was not totally new to Manga, I had seen some before but never really knew it was a specific genre all its own. Things like “Battle of the Planet” and others had been on TV and I had always loved that Japanese style. But don’t forget this was before the Internet, there was no way of finding out any of this stuff. Looking back at it now I wonder how I ever managed… but you had what you had, and I was luckier than most.
As it turns out I had seen the Studio Ghibli classic “Castle in the Sky” year before and loved it. But with no way of ever really finding out anything about it, other than its name and the fact I loved that style. If I had seen “Totoro” or “Spirited Away” at that age I would have been forced to find out more about these amazing films.
But I digress, just looking at the cover I knew I had to watch it!
After what seems like a very long wait Iron Man 2 is finally out. I was very surprised with the first film. If there are two things I have never really got they are Robert Downey Jr and Iron Man.
I don’t know what it is that has never really worked for Downey, but is has certainly re-established himself since Iron Man came out. He can carry off the narcissistic Tony Stark like no one else, and is definitely fun to watch.
The concept of Iron Man itself is one of those comics that passed me by. Of course I know of Iron Man, and a basic understanding of the story but beyond that I really don’t know how Iron Man fits into the Marvel universe. Some of that history is coming out in this film, along with references to other films in production. I counted three, but I might have missed something.
So how does this one stand-up? In short it has its moments, but overall it does not have the same feel or impact of the first.
Normally I research new games before buying them, be it reviews or wait for friends to try them. I didn’t actually pay attention to the words of the previews or reviews of White Knight Chronicles, any game with good looking anime-style graphics where you can transform into a giant knight to hack up giant trolls and ogres is going to be my kind of game. If there’s one thing I’d like to do in Dragon Age Origins, it would be exactly that (turning into a bear or spider doesn’t count – not big enough and doesn’t use a sword). For the record using the white knight is fun, not using it and getting trampled on sucks. Transforming, to a cry of VERTO (Latin for Transform because English isn’t cool enough) you turn the tide of a battle in an instant, give passive buffs to your team, crush man sized scorpions with a single strike then go toe-to-toe with whatever golem or dragon was giving you grief – marvellous.
It’s funny how some things work out. I was battered into buying Dragon Age Origins by multiple friends telling me I’d love it. Turns out my friends know me too well. I’ve spent longer playing it than most of them and only Disgaea 3 has cost me more of my life (well apart from when I was young and games didn’t track how long you played them).
Anyway, the first thing about Dragon age: Origins is the choices available. You have the usual choice between 3 races, humans, elves and Dwarves and 3 classes, Warriors, Rogues and Mages (unless you’re a Dwarf) and there’s plenty of customization to be done once you pick.
Initially you play through one of 6 different origins stories depending on your race and class. From here on the real choices that affect the whole Dragon Age world begin.
Computer animation must be a very hard field to be in. There is one company that dominates it and everything you do will be held up in comparison and rejected as not being good enough. Not because your work is bad, it is probably amazing. But compared to what Pixar do, it’s worthless.
Out now is “Cloudy with a chance of meatballs”, the latest home release from Dreamworks Sony/Columbia. Their work keeps getting better and better, the last film (Monsters vs Aliens) is probably the best they have done. But there very best just does not compare to the standard set. Gaff-tastic: My fault! I even laughed out loud when they showed the classic Columbia title screen that has brought me so much joy over the years, should have remembered that.
Cloudy is a great film, we all laughed out loud at various bits. The voice acting is top notch, the story is a lot of fun, the animation is excellent. But somehow its missing something… Continue reading