Main Menu
Menu

Show posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Show posts Menu

Messages - Bongo Jack

#211
Film & TV / Re: Wolfman
01 August, 2008, 07:27:11 PM
Is there anything less scary than a werewolf?  Vampires, I suppose.

Trailer looks good, then cheap, then a retread of American Werewolf, then Malcolm McDowell shows up and hope starts slipping away.
Del Toro - blech.
#212
Film & TV / Re: Robocop remake
01 August, 2008, 12:35:22 AM
Quote from: "Jim_Campbell"Now try to mentally strip out the music and imagine it with a bog-standard late 80s/eary 90s drum machine and synth soundtrack on.

Such is the joy of our irony-free Zack Snyder-remake-helmed times that you won't have to imagine such a thing, Jim - Zack and the CGI boys who gave the robots from Transformers such warm and human character will imagine it for you to an Aphex Twin soundtrack.

These reimaginings are more necessary than you think, as I work with people who won't watch films if they have subtitles or aren't in colour - and these same people are actually proud of this.  It's expecting too much of modern audiences to pay attention to more than three minutes of film that doesn't have someone shagging, dying in slow motion, or crying while emo-pop shit plays in the background.  Preferably all of the above in the same scene if you make Torchwood or Hollyoaks.
After explaining why I thought Casablanca was a great film because it was about love, sacrifice, letting someone go because you love them and getting closure in the fact there was a greater good to be served, all I got back was "But when they were in Paris, he  shagged her, yeah?"

The remake is for that guy.
#213
Games / Re: Soul Calibur 4
01 August, 2008, 12:03:25 AM
Hey, non-nude clothes-fall-off cheesecake sounds great and I am a simple man of simple pleasures - but my goodwill for Soul Calibur has been exhausted by the technical shortcomings of the third installment.  I paid good money for a product to work like it says on the box and it couldn't even manage that much, making me swear to never again buy something that didn't work to a basic standard without fucking up in some way.  And then I bought an Xbox 360 - b'dum-tish! (although, seriously - is there anyone who's bought a 360 that hasn't tanked?)

I might rent SC4, but I'm [spoiler]fucked[/spoiler] if I'm paying for it after the bad taste the last one left.
#214
Games / Re: Soul Calibur 4
31 July, 2008, 09:00:58 PM
This series utterly lost me with #3's save issues.

 4?  Feh!
#215
Film & TV / Re: Batman: GOTHAM Knight DVD
30 July, 2008, 06:56:57 PM
The screenplays for all the segments are written under a single pen-name to disguise the fact that every story came from the 1990s Batman animated series, but have been 'reinterpreted' by big names in comics like Brian Azarello and Greg Rucka (who each get a 'story by' credit).  Shameless recycling or affectionate homage?  Given the patchy results, I'm going with the former - the Azarello-penned segment is particularly clumsy and full of pseudo-philosophy that misses the point of the original story and ends with an almost hilarious "I can't!" from Batman.
It could've been great, but as it is, it's like all the other direct-to-dvd DC universe stuff - rushed and unremarkable.
Justice league: New Frontier is worth a look before this, I think.  The Golden-Age character designs have a real charm to them, and the story is decent enough.
#216
Film & TV / Re: X-Men Origins: Wolverine teaser
29 July, 2008, 11:39:17 PM
A good place to look for such trailers (and cameraphone-captured easter eggs like the Iron Man stinger) is Photobucket.
#217
Film & TV / Re: BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT NO SPOILERS
29 July, 2008, 11:34:55 PM
I've yet to experience Imax, but I wouldn't mind seeing Incredible Hulk again in that manner, just for the opening vistas in the South-American city, which was a stunning locale (though I wouldn't like to be their postie), and still has me wondering if there was some CGI compositing going on.
#218
Help! / Re: HELP! It's too hot...
29 July, 2008, 08:32:47 PM
I have the same problem with the glass front on the Cintiq.  If you can find anywhere that stocks the thin cotton gloves animators use (the ones to stop pencil-streaks), I'd reccommend you try those.  In the meantime, shop about for streak-free window cleaner, but don't spray it directly onto the tablet, just spray some on a rag and wipe the tablet with that.
There's a reliable getaround for both these solutions, however - if it's that chuffing hot, you should be outside and not indoors faffing about with Illustrator.
#219
Nuns are scary.
#220
Books & Comics / Re: Kirkman's Invincible
26 July, 2008, 08:39:37 PM
Invincible is a fave of mine.  Kirkman has done the whole thing as a homage to how you remember old-school Marvel, as opposed to how old-school Marvel actually reads through the cynical eyes of adulthood.  Some good running gags and a nice line in long-haul storytelling, but by God, someone should make Kirkman read Strangers In Paradise so he knows that drawing love-triangles out forever can kill a book.
"Damn it Grayson, just bang the redhead already!"

If you want to read something in a similar vein, DC's Blue Beetle is a fun romp, with one of the last issues I read having all the text in Portugese.
#221
Film & TV / Re: BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT NO SPOILERS
25 July, 2008, 01:39:16 PM
I loved Johnathan Ross' petulant review that basically berated Dark Knight for taking the escalating Bat-mangstathon to its logical conclusion - some vocal bat-fans (Ross among them) want Batman to be some super-grim ultra-realist thriller, and when they get just that, no-one will admit they preferred it when he was slightly camp and ridiculous, surrounded by Tim Burton's plastic gothy sets, and devoid of moral complexity beyond "he's the good guy but teh copperz are chasing him - Q3D!"
It goes into the lengths that a superhero's would-be nemeses would have to go to just to get attention as something beyond a common thug (and by the time he finally registers on Batman's radar, the Joker is referred to as a domestic terrorist), but by and large, it reminds me of a really good season finale of something I've been enjoying, even if the payoff/setup for part 3 leaves Batman in a situation we've seen about a million times before in the comics, cartoons, tv show, and at least three times in the various movies of the last twenty years.  There are shortcomings - Two-Face's relatively brief screentime, Batman borrowing Ben Affleck's Daredevil-vision, and Batman becoming a complete pussy in fights and not being able to find the Joker in a slightly-dark room being the main standouts.
It doesn't have anything like the race against the clock (and the evil mastermind's doomsday device) in the third act that critics berated in Begins as being 'too comic-booky', and that's what seems to grate with Dark Knight for some, I think - no mad rush and big showdown on a moving object to finish things off, just some blokes arguing by a Liverpool dock.
Ledger seems to have caught everyone off-guard with his performance, too, as he doesn't even attempt to out-manic Nicholson, he just plays a guy playing the part of a maniac, acting as opposed to overacting.  It works very well, too, as going down the scenery-chewing route would probably just have attracted comparison to Nicholson, or derision as being a bit too obvious and played-out - the Joker giggling his way through yet another creative homocide has been done to death by now, surely?
I liked it, all told.

As for suitability, there isn't really any standout creepy moment, and even the more violent stuff isn't terribly graphic - you'll have seen as bad (often worse) on the likes of Smallville.  Two-Face isn't as grusome as you might think from the leaked photos, either.
#222
Suggestions / Re: 'Free' Megazine GN Suggestions
23 July, 2008, 10:43:16 PM
Zenith and/or Big Dave, just to see the apoplectic look of fury on Grant Morrison's deep-fried heroin pie-eating bald face.
I'd also volunteer to wipe my arsehole with every last page of Final Crisis, but Morrison has beaten me to the punch.
#223
Film & TV / Re: Watchmen Trailer now...
23 July, 2008, 10:30:39 PM
Vaguely related for the following paragraph:
Other infamous episodes that have occurred during the couple's 18-month relationship include Tillich's August 1999 insistence that Jensen listen to all of side two of the Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat, his January 1999 failure to talk Jensen into visiting the grave of Philip K. Dick during a Colorado road trip, and his ongoing unsuccessful efforts to get her to read Alan Moore's Watchmen, a 1986 postmodern-superhero graphic novel she described as "a comic book about a big blue space guy" and that he calls "nothing less than a total, devastating deconstruction of virtually every archetype in the genre's history."

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38820
#224
Film & TV / Re: "Y: The Last Man" Film
23 July, 2008, 09:34:50 PM
It's possible to just read the first and last books and view it as a flawed classic.  It's when you read the rest of it that you realise there's probably better things you can do with your time.
#225
Film & TV / Re: Wall-E
23 July, 2008, 09:32:29 PM
It's a strokes and folks thing, I guess.  I saw Incredibles for the first time last night, and yeah, it was great, but Wall*E was better in my mind.  Up until the bit with the garbage disposal (how they could be throwing so much away when they were an isolated environment in space begs the question where new materials were coming from) and the little cleaning robot, the whole thing was more just a series of events escalating out of Wall*E and Eve's control, but then came a few engineered payoffs to earlier events and it got more 'conventional', but while it was one mad rush about, it was like one lengthy scene that took an hour, then some sort of sequel when real dialogue started.
On reflection, it was the Tom And Jerry stuff I liked most.
Wall*E appears in the short "Your Friend the Rat" driving a bus on Mars, for those just watching Ratatouille like myself.

As a humourous aside, there was an 11 year-old kid in our cinema who tried to pronounce 'reboot' aloud while asking what "rebot" meant.  LOL: Illiteracy!