TV Shows-
Prison Break- Season Four (2008-2009)
Prison Break; a nice idea for a series, with just enough effort (or budget) put into it to fool audiences into believing that it might at some point become good. After finally reaching the fourth series (after taking a massive break between two and three, then powering through the latter though it was not good at all), I was encouraged by the first round of episodes. Unlike previous series, where the characters' joint focus was on achieving one big task (like escaping prison for example) that they failed to do over and over again until the final episode, the writers smartly broke up the character's goals into episode-size portions, at least for a little while. Having finally pushed themselves smack bang in the middle of the mysterious conspiratorial events, the main group of characters are offered immunity from prosecution if they just help out the CIA (or FBI, or whatever, I can't remember) in bringing down the evil Company and procuring the mysterious Cylla device.The existence of Cylla was like a carrot dangling on a stick for the audience; just what the hell is it? To this extent I enjoyed the first ten or so episodes of this series more than I'd ever enjoyed the show before, thanks to some decent characterisation and fast-moving action. Well, I say 'decent characterisation', but what I mean is 'decent characterisation if you imagine this is a new show', because as long as you're able to ignore just about every prior relationship between them prior to this then it's quite good. At the half way point of the series though, it just falls off a massive, massive cliff where it seems like the writers run out of prepared material and so instead come up with a bit of cliched nonsense ('oh nos my family were behind everything in the first place'), followed by another ten episodes of character juggling, where the regulars run around from place to place to waste time, until they reach the final episode and everything is resolved in the most anticlimactic way possible. Oh, then at the very end they jump forward for a short scene six years in the future, where it's revealed that the important character who viewers were supposed to be caring about ten minutes earlier is dead now.
Oh yeah, and there's a feature length DVD-only episode called The Final Break an episode showing the fate of the surviving characters and giving them one last heist to pull off. It also resolves the mystery of what happened to the aforementioned dead character, and not-surprisingly the answers are boring and worthless. Pretty much Prison Break in a nutshell, actually.
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Red Dwarf II (1988)
Though I don't think the first series of Red Dwarf blew anyone away upon first release, it was popular enough for the BBC to quickly commission a second. Red Dwarf II returns to the scene of the last human, a hologram, a senile computer and a humanoid life-form evolved from a pet cat, flying through space three billion years from home. While it's not one of my favourite series on an episode-by-episode basis, creators Doug Naylor and Rob Grant wasted no time in developing the show further from origins, coming up with more varied ideas for episodes that allowed the crew to get off the ship. Red Dwarf I was very funny, but heavily focused on the character relationship between Dave Lister and Arnold Rimmer set on the mundane early ship sets, while series two brings more adventure to the forefront.The first episode begins with that mindset, as the crew get off the ship in order to answer a distress call. There they meet the bumbling mechanoid Kryten, who leaves again by the end of the episode but who'd be back for good come series III. The next episode, Better Than Life shows the shows desire to vary up the scenery, but also their limited budget, as despite having a virtual reality compute game that can fulfill a person's every desire, the crew still somehow end up at the English seaside; probably the least likely destination for unbridled fantasy that I can imagine.
Queeg and Thanks for the Memory are two funny if limited episodes that lack the inventiveness of future stories, but go back to the formula of the first season, focusing on the character relationships in the face of misery. Stasis Leak is probably my favourite of the season, an imaginative time travel episode that adds a little more detail to the events that sent Red Dwarf three million years into deep space. Finally, Parallel Universe completes the season with a dash of continuity, following up on the series one episode Future Episodes to explain the mystery (or continuity head-ache) of how Dave Lister would manage to create two sons despite being the only human left in the galaxy. Not a great episode by any means, this one, probably the worst of early Dwarf. It doesn't set much of a stage for Red Dwarf III, but Grant & Naylor were ready to move the show into a more exciting direction upon its eventual return.
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Films-
Total Recall (1990)
Another in a long list of movies I'd been meaning to watch since forever, Total Recall was mostly fun to watch but also somewhat disappointing, considering my lofty expectations. Like many I'd enjoyed director Paul Verhoeven's other two famous sci-fi movies, Robocop and Starship Troopers, and a couple of years ago I'd seen the 2012 remake of this film starring Colin Farrell and Jessica Biel. The remake was a piece of typical throw-away modern sci-fi in that the leads were as bland as it's possible for a human being to be, and the direction was... I can't even remember, so let's go with unmemorable. I did like the idea behind the plot though, and I had full faith that Vehoeven's original would make much better use of it.Unfortunately I didn't count on the power of Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's not that I don't like Schwarzenegger's performance in this film, because I do. He's a crummy actor, yeah, but he has amazing screen presence and a kind of dull idiocy that allowed me to believe that he really was confused by the strange identity-questioning plot of the film. The problem is that Schwarzenegger is obviously a massively famous action film star, and so about halfway through this film it transitions from an interesting post-modern sci-fi story to a normal Arnold Schwarzenegger film, with everything that entails. Again, I usually like typical Schwarzenegger films, even if they're objectively bad it can be easy to switch off your brain for 90 minutes, but in this case it seemed a waste of potential.
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)
In a move bound to make me popular amongst film fans on the Internet, after slagging off Total Recall I'm going to talk about how much I enjoyed the most recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film. It's really just down to my expectations; I expected a lot from Recall and expected less than nothing from Turtles, and was pretty hesitant to even bother trying it beforehand. Honestly, I though I'd hate Turtles, especially with Michael Bay's name attached (the first Transformers is the only film I've ever walked out of the cinema on, and I've never seen the sequels), but in the end it was basically just a decent version of an early 90's Turtles cartoon bought to life with computers. It was juvenile, very simply plotted, and had some suspect humour, but that's kind of what I want from a Turtles cartoon, so it was fine.
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L: Change the World (2008)
I put off watching this, the third installment of the live-action Death Note anime franchise films, for a long while, since on the surface it seemed an almost utterly redundant concept. For those who haven't seen anything from the Death Note series, it was a successful Manga comic which was then adapted into an even more successful anime series, and then in to the live film versions. The first two Death Note films adapt the story fairly closely, and I found them to be quite enjoyable. The story of Death Note, by the way, consists of a highly intelligent but unfortunately psychopathic high school student named Light coming into possession of a Death Note; a small blank notebook formerly owned by a Japanese spirit of death that has the power to kill anyone whose name is written in it. Light is both the central character of the plot and the villain, and his nemesis emerges in the form of the young detective genius named simply L.
L: Change the World (2008)
I put off watching this, the third installment of the live-action Death Note anime franchise films, for a long while, since on the surface it seemed an almost utterly redundant concept. For those who haven't seen anything from the Death Note series, it was a successful Manga comic which was then adapted into an even more successful anime series, and then in to the live film versions. The first two Death Note films adapt the story fairly closely, and I found them to be quite enjoyable. The story of Death Note, by the way, consists of a highly intelligent but unfortunately psychopathic high school student named Light coming into possession of a Death Note; a small blank notebook formerly owned by a Japanese spirit of death that has the power to kill anyone whose name is written in it. Light is both the central character of the plot and the villain, and his nemesis emerges in the form of the young detective genius named simply L.
Through the course of the two films L eventually manages to outsmart Light, but only at the cost of his own life- though just not immediately. This third, spin-off film explores the final days of L where, during the final days of his life he becomes tangled up in a web of events involving a domestic Japanese terrorist group attempting to forcibly lower the population of Earth through a devastating virus, before taking over what's left. The key to understanding the virus lies within the prodigal genius mind of its creators' young daughter, who injects herself with the only sample of the virus in a fit of anger/stupidity. Much of the film consists of L and co. running around the suburbs of Tokyo, trying to outsmart the fairly generic bad guys, and to be honest there's not much else to add to that generic plot.
The key to the film though is the performance of Kenichi Matsuyama as L, who is intended to be the ultimate oddball maverick detective. Matsuyama's performance dominates every scene, full of idiosyncratic quirks very much in the manner of Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow, to the extent that it's impossible to take your eyes off him. It's necessary, because without him the film offers very little but genericism, but Matsuyama's distracts all attention away from that. Without the dominant Death Note storyline hanging over him, the character of L is given more room for emotion and compassion, and Matsuyama takes advantage of L's terminal condition to add more gravitas to the character's every gaze. That said, despite the quality of his performance and strength of the character, there simply wasn't enough quality anywhere else in the film to make it seem worthwhile.
The key to the film though is the performance of Kenichi Matsuyama as L, who is intended to be the ultimate oddball maverick detective. Matsuyama's performance dominates every scene, full of idiosyncratic quirks very much in the manner of Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow, to the extent that it's impossible to take your eyes off him. It's necessary, because without him the film offers very little but genericism, but Matsuyama's distracts all attention away from that. Without the dominant Death Note storyline hanging over him, the character of L is given more room for emotion and compassion, and Matsuyama takes advantage of L's terminal condition to add more gravitas to the character's every gaze. That said, despite the quality of his performance and strength of the character, there simply wasn't enough quality anywhere else in the film to make it seem worthwhile.
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The Lost Boys (1987)
To follow-up on my disrespectfully disappointed review of Total Recall above, I was also thoroughly unimpressed by The Lost Boys, having again raised my expectations too high. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting an all-time classic, nor even just a horror-classic; I was after some genuine alternative-80's teen-punk action, and with The Lost Boys I was hoping for something in the mold of The Crow, or a John Carpenter movie. What I saw instead was a pretty confused film that didn't quite know if it wanted to be scary, cool, edgy or ridiculous, and as such felt like a disjointed mismatch of conflicting styles.
My biggest problem was with the performances, which I suppose tells you I was about twenty-years too late in watching this film; what's lovingly regarded as cheesy but iconic by the people I know who love this film, I found to be really substandard and unappealing. I hated pretty much every kid and adolescent actor in this, especially that stupid little ten-year-old kid who conspired to try and ruin every scene he was in by seemingly being the character The Simpsons writers based Poochie on. The thing is I can imagine that if I were the same age as the kid when I first saw the film then I'd probably have loved him, generally as a point of wish-fulfillment, but it was that kind of character design that clashed with the horror undertones. While I know The Lost Boys was never trying to be The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, any sense of danger is quickly averted by the sight of some annoying little kids successfully fighting the supposedly bad-ass vampires.
Anyway, as I said I think I saw this film far too late in my life for it to effect me, and by the time I did it reminded me too much of aspects of other films for me to take it seriously. I will say I did quite like the revelatory reveal of the true villain near the end, and found the portrayal of the teenage biker vampires to be fairly cool early on, seemingly influential in the design of a certain 90's television show starring a slayer of vampires (of which I have the '92 movie lined up to re-watch soon). It probably deserves another chance one day, but then again life's too short.
The Lost Boys (1987)
To follow-up on my disrespectfully disappointed review of Total Recall above, I was also thoroughly unimpressed by The Lost Boys, having again raised my expectations too high. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting an all-time classic, nor even just a horror-classic; I was after some genuine alternative-80's teen-punk action, and with The Lost Boys I was hoping for something in the mold of The Crow, or a John Carpenter movie. What I saw instead was a pretty confused film that didn't quite know if it wanted to be scary, cool, edgy or ridiculous, and as such felt like a disjointed mismatch of conflicting styles. My biggest problem was with the performances, which I suppose tells you I was about twenty-years too late in watching this film; what's lovingly regarded as cheesy but iconic by the people I know who love this film, I found to be really substandard and unappealing. I hated pretty much every kid and adolescent actor in this, especially that stupid little ten-year-old kid who conspired to try and ruin every scene he was in by seemingly being the character The Simpsons writers based Poochie on. The thing is I can imagine that if I were the same age as the kid when I first saw the film then I'd probably have loved him, generally as a point of wish-fulfillment, but it was that kind of character design that clashed with the horror undertones. While I know The Lost Boys was never trying to be The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, any sense of danger is quickly averted by the sight of some annoying little kids successfully fighting the supposedly bad-ass vampires.
Anyway, as I said I think I saw this film far too late in my life for it to effect me, and by the time I did it reminded me too much of aspects of other films for me to take it seriously. I will say I did quite like the revelatory reveal of the true villain near the end, and found the portrayal of the teenage biker vampires to be fairly cool early on, seemingly influential in the design of a certain 90's television show starring a slayer of vampires (of which I have the '92 movie lined up to re-watch soon). It probably deserves another chance one day, but then again life's too short.
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In the twenty years since its release, the first graphic video game adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Discworld universe has gained a reputation amongst hardcore adventure game fans as fun, but too off-puttingly difficult to be considered a classic of the genre, a general opinion that I completely understand. When I first played the game it was on rental from a local video store, and on the Sega Saturn of all consoles (a vastly under-appreciated console that I have fond nostalgic memories of), and anyone who's played this game will know that the concept of playing this game as a rental and hoping to complete basically any of it walkthrough-free is completely laughable. Even a few years later, when I did find a copy for Windows, it didn't take me a huge amount of time to eventually give in and find a walkthrough. As an aside, if there's anyone reading this that thinks it's lazy to do that in order to complete a game then I agree, you're completely right- but life's too short for me to spend forever trying to work out those godforsaken puzzles.
So before I get into the Discworld aspect, let's get the admittedly-negative gameplay analysis out of the way. Discworld is a straight-forward traditional 2-D point and click adventure game, in exactly the same vein as LucasArts games like Monkey Island, for example. The structure of the puzzles is almost identical too, working around an expanded version of MI's 'The Three Trials' concept, where each act of the game requires the player to gather a certain number of important objects (the opening act requires you to gather the items needed for a dragon-detecting magic spell, for example). In the case of this game, the developers put so much effort into the construction of each set of puzzles that it's both creatively very impressive and annoyingly overwhelming, essentially defining the game as a whole. On the one hand, looking back at the incredibly convoluted series of puzzles after not-long completing them shows them to be very well-crafted, having surely taken a long time to design and implement, but on the other hand the level of intricacy surely must deter the average player.
It also doesn't really help (from a difficult standpoint, anyway) that the solutions to the vast majority of the puzzles are almost entirely composed in the manner of typical Discworld humour, to the extent that I seriously doubt a player without any prior Discworld puzzles would be able to to figure them out. Some of the most fiendish are based around in-jokes from the novels that are barely hinted at in the game itself, and, again, the level of intricacy in figuring out not only how to solve them, but when and where are incredibly frustrating. I don't mind admitting that even when using a walkthrough some of the puzzles are so damned awkward that it's a joke in itself- especially considering that massive amount of inventory items are available to gather early on (most of which don't hint at their purpose), and there are a huge number of locations to discover, many of them which have their own sub-screens.
At the same time, the level of difficulty and content that makes this an annoying adventure game actually make it a superb window into the Discworld universe, and it was only during this recent playthrough that I realised how dedicated the developers were to rewarding hardcore Disc fans. It's release in 1995 makes it the same age as Maskerade, the eighteenth book in the series, but in style and content it seems more inspired by earlier installments in the series. It's an out-of-continuity story, since it's actually mostly a re-write of the plot of Guards! Guards!, where a bunch of idiots named the Elucidated Bretheren of the Ebon Night call forth a full-size monstrous (and snarky) dragon to the city of Ankh-Morpork. In this game Sam Vimes and the Watch have been removed as lead characters and been replaced by original Disc hero Rincewind (and the luggage, who acts as a walking inventory). The rest of the plot is adjusted accordingly, and essentially becomes just a backdrop excuse for the game to take the player around the Disc.
There are a huge amount of cameos and side-roles for popular Disc characters, and other thematic references to various Disc books, all of which gave me great joy. It's by no means encyclopedic (there's no Twoflower, Cohen, Granny Weatherwax or Vimes, for example), but there were enough well-timed references to make me very happy. The graphics are obviously antiquated, but the retro-style visuals are assisted by some very nicely-drawn backdrops. The voice cast is limited to five which does become repetitive, but includes Brtish comic stalwarts Tony Robinson, Rob Brydon and Monty Python legend Eric Idle (as well as former Dr. Who John Pertwee). The amount of dialogue is also extensive, with long comic conversations taken from and inspired by Pratchett himself, so overall the game doesn't shortchange Discworld fans one bit.
With two sequels following, Discworld must have sold well enough with the ever-growing horde of Pratchett fams despite its fiendish difficulty. Twenty-years on it's not any better of a game and there are dozens of better adventures out there old and new for fans of the genre, but for big fans of Pratchett's fantasy universe it's highly recommended as an interactive tour, with enough charm and detail to make the effort worthwhile.
Video Games-
Discworld (1995)
Perfect 10 Productions (PC)
Perfect 10 Productions (PC)
In the twenty years since its release, the first graphic video game adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Discworld universe has gained a reputation amongst hardcore adventure game fans as fun, but too off-puttingly difficult to be considered a classic of the genre, a general opinion that I completely understand. When I first played the game it was on rental from a local video store, and on the Sega Saturn of all consoles (a vastly under-appreciated console that I have fond nostalgic memories of), and anyone who's played this game will know that the concept of playing this game as a rental and hoping to complete basically any of it walkthrough-free is completely laughable. Even a few years later, when I did find a copy for Windows, it didn't take me a huge amount of time to eventually give in and find a walkthrough. As an aside, if there's anyone reading this that thinks it's lazy to do that in order to complete a game then I agree, you're completely right- but life's too short for me to spend forever trying to work out those godforsaken puzzles. So before I get into the Discworld aspect, let's get the admittedly-negative gameplay analysis out of the way. Discworld is a straight-forward traditional 2-D point and click adventure game, in exactly the same vein as LucasArts games like Monkey Island, for example. The structure of the puzzles is almost identical too, working around an expanded version of MI's 'The Three Trials' concept, where each act of the game requires the player to gather a certain number of important objects (the opening act requires you to gather the items needed for a dragon-detecting magic spell, for example). In the case of this game, the developers put so much effort into the construction of each set of puzzles that it's both creatively very impressive and annoyingly overwhelming, essentially defining the game as a whole. On the one hand, looking back at the incredibly convoluted series of puzzles after not-long completing them shows them to be very well-crafted, having surely taken a long time to design and implement, but on the other hand the level of intricacy surely must deter the average player.
It also doesn't really help (from a difficult standpoint, anyway) that the solutions to the vast majority of the puzzles are almost entirely composed in the manner of typical Discworld humour, to the extent that I seriously doubt a player without any prior Discworld puzzles would be able to to figure them out. Some of the most fiendish are based around in-jokes from the novels that are barely hinted at in the game itself, and, again, the level of intricacy in figuring out not only how to solve them, but when and where are incredibly frustrating. I don't mind admitting that even when using a walkthrough some of the puzzles are so damned awkward that it's a joke in itself- especially considering that massive amount of inventory items are available to gather early on (most of which don't hint at their purpose), and there are a huge number of locations to discover, many of them which have their own sub-screens.
At the same time, the level of difficulty and content that makes this an annoying adventure game actually make it a superb window into the Discworld universe, and it was only during this recent playthrough that I realised how dedicated the developers were to rewarding hardcore Disc fans. It's release in 1995 makes it the same age as Maskerade, the eighteenth book in the series, but in style and content it seems more inspired by earlier installments in the series. It's an out-of-continuity story, since it's actually mostly a re-write of the plot of Guards! Guards!, where a bunch of idiots named the Elucidated Bretheren of the Ebon Night call forth a full-size monstrous (and snarky) dragon to the city of Ankh-Morpork. In this game Sam Vimes and the Watch have been removed as lead characters and been replaced by original Disc hero Rincewind (and the luggage, who acts as a walking inventory). The rest of the plot is adjusted accordingly, and essentially becomes just a backdrop excuse for the game to take the player around the Disc.
There are a huge amount of cameos and side-roles for popular Disc characters, and other thematic references to various Disc books, all of which gave me great joy. It's by no means encyclopedic (there's no Twoflower, Cohen, Granny Weatherwax or Vimes, for example), but there were enough well-timed references to make me very happy. The graphics are obviously antiquated, but the retro-style visuals are assisted by some very nicely-drawn backdrops. The voice cast is limited to five which does become repetitive, but includes Brtish comic stalwarts Tony Robinson, Rob Brydon and Monty Python legend Eric Idle (as well as former Dr. Who John Pertwee). The amount of dialogue is also extensive, with long comic conversations taken from and inspired by Pratchett himself, so overall the game doesn't shortchange Discworld fans one bit.
With two sequels following, Discworld must have sold well enough with the ever-growing horde of Pratchett fams despite its fiendish difficulty. Twenty-years on it's not any better of a game and there are dozens of better adventures out there old and new for fans of the genre, but for big fans of Pratchett's fantasy universe it's highly recommended as an interactive tour, with enough charm and detail to make the effort worthwhile.
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