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One for the Veggies of the board

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk:80/1/hi/business/6653175.stm" target="_blank">Bastards!

I'm a bit late to the party with this but I'm on Case FIles 3 and just want to throw a few impressions in.

It's a long time since I've read any of these early stories (except the Cursed Earth) so I was a bit shocked to find how much hard going it was.

I reckon the first year of Dredd was pretty awful.  It's almost like they don't know what they have on their hands.  It's (almost) fun to watch the number of wrong turns they make with the character.

* All of the attempts to humanise him.

* The very broad humour (often provided by the inexcusable Walter and Maria).

* The fact they keep sending him away from the city (now, undoubtedly as much a character as Dredd).  

* The amount of times Dredd makes stupid mistakes.

* The amount of times Walter or Maria does something bad but Dredd lets them away with it.

It all makes pretty grim reading.  

Things liven up in CASE FILES 2 with THE CURSED EARTH and JUDGE CAL (it's almost like Mills made Wagner up his game) but there are still plenty of misfires.

CASE FILES 3 seems to be getting more like it. CITY BLOCKS, MOPADS, OTTO SUMP and 87% UNEMPLOYEMNT all making their debuts but we still have stuff like Vienna and L'il Judge Ralphy Bryce to make you wince.

Art-wise, the usual suspects (Bolland, McMahon) get plaudits but I'm and I never thought I'd say this) rediscovering the delights of Ron Smith.  Sure, he draws people in the most bizarre positions. Sure, he hasn't got a clue what a Lawgiver looks like and sure, having mouths like that must hurt most of his cgharacters but he nails the madness of the Meg almost as well as Gibson or Kennedy.

The two mini-epics of FATHER EARTH and BLACK PLAGE remaing some of my favourite tales to this day.

Oh and what a world we'd live in if Gary Leach could draw ten times as fast as he does...

Does anybody remember the widowmaker pump shotgun thingy from JUDGEMENT DAY?

Anybody got a picture of it, please?

Lovely people, BOLT-01 and RAC have brought out the best in a little Dreddheads thing I dreamt up.

Why not pop over to 2000ADreview and check it out.
 

Link: http://www.2000adreview.co.uk/index.shtml" target="_blank">http://www.2000adreview.co.uk/index.shtml

http://www.2000adreview.co.uk/fiction/2007/dreddheads/dreddheads3detail.jpg">

I know of lot of people have started subsrcibing to the revisionist theory that ALIENS is rubbish but I reckon it's a pretty much perfect slab of science fiction action from the eighties.

As such, for £3-00 only getting the special edition in HMV seems a bit of a bargain.  No strings, just three quid and it's yours.

And if you spend more than £20 (which I happened to - ELO: "Out of the Blue" and Best of Haircut 100, a memory card and some headphones, if you ask) you can also pick up CALAMITY JANE for £4-99. This is a film that should be in everybodies collection and as such is a bargain.

My old PSION REVO is on it's last legs and I want to replace it.

I'm not thinking of a smartphone (I'm not a massive fan of all these converging technologies) - I'd rather have an organiser (diary, contacts etc.) that will let me collect and send my emails, write word type documents and do XL type spreadsheets and browse the web.  I like using a keyboard (which is why I've hung onto the REVO for so long).

Not too fussed about watching movies or telly or playing games (that's what my DS is for) but it should have room for a memory card so I can stick the odd bit of music on it (I know, I've just contradicted my converging technology statement).

Max budget £250. Preferred spend £150.

Any suggestions or anyone know a reliable comparison site (the magazines I've bought for research seem more obsessed with technology and bells and whistles for the sake of them).

I got this for Christmas but due to a mix up, it actually only arrived the other day.

I find it hard to express my thoughts about it adequately.

On one hand, I see all the documentaries, all the references to Peter Jackson's love of the original and the amount of care and craft that went into the production and I think: "Yeah, this is actually pretty good!" It probably helps that I've watched it in short chunks more like a mini-series than a bum numbing experience. The main set-piece where Kong fights THREE T-REXs is a fantastic bit of action cinema but also contains some fabulous writing in the way the fight and the danger builds and builds yet even manages a plot/character point where Anne pro-actively chooses KONG for protection rather than legging it. Great stuff.


On the other, I just think "For fecks sake GET A MOVE ON!"  It's painfully slow.  The script and director often mistaking drawn out shots of characters looking pained and/or wistful as character development. Chock full of so much unnecessary padding and special effects for the sake of special effect it actually makes me squirm at times.

e.g. the brontosaurus stampede - in the documentary they actually say "It looked great when we had the two Mumakil bump into each other in RETURN OF THE KING so surely it would be ten times as great if we have twenty dinosaurs bumping into each other".

e.g. the insect pit is just too long and unbelievable (I'll believe dinosaurs are still alive and that there are giant insects but not in using a Tommy Gun to accurately shoot the giant WETA off Jack)

e.g. the last half hour - which should be the moment of poignancy just had me thinking "New York looks good."

And I still maintain NOBODY can deliver THAT last line in a convincing manner.

Picked this Dave Gibbons book up in Forbidden Planet in Glasgow (it was only eight quid).

I quite enjoyed it - there's some particularly lovely art in it and, despite all the violence, I thought it had a slightly gentle pace to it.

The ending was a pretty good reversal, I thought he was going to go straight but I'm a sucker for a happy ending.

My only quibble, and it's a pretty big one, was that the slightly futuristic setting added nothing to the story (it added plenty to the art and design but nnot actual plot or character choices).  Now, I know you have to take comics as a whole (i.e. the art and design being futturistic should be enough to justify the tale being futuristic) but I did feel slightly short-changed.

But again - worth a punt at eight quid even if all you do is ogle the art.

I'm on a training course in Dublin next week and would like some recommendations for nice, inexpensive places to eat in the city centre (they don't have to be that inexpensive as I'm on expenses).

I've got homework and an exam so don't think I'd be able to make it out to play on most nights but if two or three of you are gathered in Tharg's name, I'll try my best to make it out for a pint.

Name me some good comics, written by women, that have all the usual superhero hullaballoo in them?

Name me some good comics, written by women, that have all the usual superhero hullaballoo in them?

Can anyone recommend a site that's good for seeing movie trailers?

One that isn't clogged with adverts, me having to download new things every two minutes and generally safe?

I know at risk of offending anyone who has a kitten here but I thought it was funny and need to use it in a newsletter explaining what we got my (adult and responsible enough to look after one) for Christmas.

Caught this on TV tonight - saw it years ago.

I actually thought it was pretty good stuff; fairly brave by Hollywood blockbuster standards to show the corruption at the heart of the US GOVERNment (and to leave the ending open).  Don't think they'd make a film like that now.  (Unless of course it's really like PLATOON where the WAR IS HELL message is actually subverted by the "wink-wink, but we love it" sub-text)

Plus I like Harrison Ford and that attack on the convoy, the laser guided bomb and how Ryan and the bad guy come to the same conclusion through different methods are all great.

Even John Legizmo is less egregious than usual.


Plus that great big robotic arm you see in the background of one scene (where the bloke is figuring out passwords) - I sold one of those to an insurance company once...

We had our electricity cut off for about five hours.

I ended up chopping more logs for the fire, lighting every single candle in the house and playing Hungry Hippos with tiny tips so it actually felt like a fun time rather than storm trauma a lot of you may be suffering.

Well, I've just finished watching Season 2 of Balltester Galactica and yet again I was quite impressed.

Probably some

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below.

Unlike the first season it did have a couple of distinctly duff episodes - the film crew documentary one, the Apollo undercover and with a who-er one, the seige in the bar and the "I'm all fixed now because of Cylon DNA" cure for Roslyn.  And the more I think about the SCAR episode, the more I think it was a more than a bit crap (though in theory, it shouldn't have been).

But on the plus side, we had lots and lost of Baltar and Six (I could watch the pair of them all day), a fine (if short) PEGASUS storyline where Adama is outranked.  I know the PEGASUS is still around but they lost a very good source of tension by bringing it under Adama's command.


I also liked the cylon centred episode DOWNLOADED and not just because it inviolved three hot chicks in a room all dirty and sweaty.

I think the most amazing thing was the season finale though and the caption "ONE YEAR LATER".  Takes the show off into completely different area and I've no idea how things will kick off for SEASON 3.  Unless of course, they have another caption that says "ANOTHER YEAR LATER" and everybody walks around going "Phew, that was lucky we managed to overthrow the cylon occupation of new Caprica without too much trouble".

It really is a starange thing to do - I honestly can't think of a similar example in televeison other than the DALLAS "And Bobby walks into the shower and it's all been a dream".

Discuss.

Picked this up last month in G-FORCE in Glasgow for a bargain £15-00.

Absolutely fantastic turn based tactical squad game.  Highlights so far include

- the shock I got when I discovered that robot drones aren't expendable
- the level where you have to defend a base against oncoming hordes of the green baddies (such good fun setting up the fields of fire)
- getting Ruby to be a stoke killer with the sniper rifle
- the shock I got when the Frylar start burning up the place with their laser blazer pistols.

It really is fantastic fun and proof, if further proof were needed, that graphics aint the be all and end all of games.

Also, I can't imagine it being half as much fun if translated into first or third person mode - the isometric maps are great (and remember of the first time I discovered them playing Tornado Low Level on my Spectrum).  But feel free to give me a recommendation if there are any titles out there (I quite enjoyed the little bit of REPUBLIC COMMANDO I played)

There's a bit of an annoying wankfest article with Warren Ellis, Joss Wheedon, some comedienne and, I think, Bryan Hitch shooting the breeze.

But Mister Ellis, I think, does make one rather good point about 2000ads success in the late seventies. "Given a choice between Superman rescuing a kitten and a dinosaurs mouth full of chewed up cowboy, what do you think an eight year old will read?"

Note to self - stop buying SFX, it just annoys you.

Not posted for a while but I thought it worth pointing out:

Tesco and Sommerfield both seem to be flogging the shiney new Bond Ultimate Edition DVDs at a marvellous Buy One Get One Free for £13-95.

This works out about £7-00 a pop which is a bargain even for unmitigated shite like Die Another Day and Diamonds are Forever.

But imagine - Thunderball and From Russia With Love for £13-95.  

Marvel at lines like:
"Isn't this a woman's gun?"
"Ah, Mister Bond, you know a lot about guns"
"No, but I know a little about women".

or just go yum, yum whenever Daniella Bianchi walks on screen.

I was in the car with Tiny Tips the other day listening to Jeff Buckley's Grace and when "Hallelujah" finishes, he says "Play the Shrek song again".

And I thought "Yeah, it is on the Shrek soundtrack isn't it?".

A quick check revealed we've got four or five different versions of the song in the house. Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright from the Shrek soundtrack, a different version on the actual Shrek film, the original(!) Leonard Cohen and a version by John Cale on a rather tasty Leonard Cohen tribute album punningly called I'M YOUR FAN.

How bizarre, I thought.

Then I got to looking. I don't even like TOM HANKS and we've managed to end up with half a dozen or so of his movies on our DVD shelf?

How does this happen?  Anybody else an accidental collector?