Review: The Imitation Game

I was lucky enough to get an advanced screening ticket to see The Imitation Game (staring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightly) and honestly, I don’t think I could rave about it more.

 The film follows a segment in the life of Alan Turing, the man who broke the Enigma code and shortened World War II by at least two years. Benedict Cumberbatch is actually fantastic as the arrogant but brilliant Turing, surrounded by an amazing supporting case and the story itself is compelling regardless of how little or how much you know.

For a little non-spoiler review, follow me under the cut.

Gravity Review

I love Hollywood blockbusters as much as the next guy. The US Summer movie season is my favourite part of the year but by the time September rolls around you're getting a little fatigued and looking for a little more substance. Thankfully this is the time of the year when we get a slew of high quality films that are a little less explosiony.

Gravity is a movie I didn't even know existed until a month or so ago. The trailer on it's own was genuinely gripping. Spacewalking astronauts caught in a disaster and left adrift in space? Terrifying. It had me in the palm of its hand straight away. This film immediately jumped to the top of my most anticipated list.

Did the final product live up to that fantastic teaser?

Television Roundup #2

Here we are again rounding up some new shows I have tried out recently. As before, I haven’t necessarily finished these shows and am giving a small snippet of a review of them based on whether or not I think I can continue!

This round's picks? Elementary, Vikings, Lost in Austen, Miranda and Suburgatory.

Hit Girl Comics Review: Utter Mayhem

Firstly, Mark Millar seems to be some sort of twisted genius. If the dark undertones of Kick Ass, entwined with the sharp gutter humour and eyeball exploding violence are anything to go by, this should be evident. But it could have been a one hit wonder, a stab in the dark that produced something both unique and fantastic. Then there was Kick Ass 2, and it was every bit as good as the first comic series. We were pulled again into the lives of Kick Ass and Hit Girl as they take matters into their own hands, and slice a few hands off at the same time. The recently released Hit Girl comics bridge the gap between Kick Ass and Kick Ass 2 and are every bit as rewarding as the series they have spun off. In one word; Hit Girl is AWESOME.

But if you are inclined towards more words, follow me under the jump.

Review: Gears of War: Judgment!

There’s a very good reason why this game isn’t called Gears of War 4. I think of the Gears series as high octane, constantly ratcheting, episodic, interactive action movies where the gritty boombox-breasted protagonists are siphoned from one horrible situation to another. Traversing broken cities and strange lands, they’ve been inside a giant bug, battled light-sensitive bats, and even dodged a downpour of broken glass. Gears of War: Judgment, on the other hand, doesn’t have any of these things. Instead we get an almost real-time tour through... a museum, a college and a courthouse? Hmmmmmm. So what DOES it have?

Find out why it still kind of works... after the jump!

Avengers vs. X-Men Comics

In late 2012 Marvel put out the Avengers vs. X-Men series, sparking rumours (and honestly some fangirl and fanboy high hopes) that this would lead to an Avengers vs. X-Men movie. The reality of course is that the two franchises are separately owned and it would take a hell of a lot of cajoling to pull something like this off, even though The Avengers was a very successful film and the X-Men First Class movie was great.

I finished these comics recently and was struggling with words to review the series. It was a lot more enjoyable than I had originally expected. Many were raising eyebrows and expecting this to be pretty lame. While it wasn’t the best series I’ve read, it certainly had its high points, including The Scarlett Witch and Hope Summers, and also the wonderful art work, including some by Jim Cheung.

Join me for a little more discussion under the cut.

Being Human UK Series Analysis and Review

Being Human, the UK series about a Ghost, a Vampire and a Werewolf house sharing in Bristol has come to an end. I have to say, there is a big part of me that is devastated by this. I loved this show, and despite what you might think given the cheesy premise, it was full of heart and character.

Not to be confused with the US remake of the same name (what I would actually refer to as a hack job – I read the wiki and sneered at what they had done to it, and I had the misfortune of catching fifteen minutes of an episode once... shudder) the UK Being Human was unique for its time. It offered something new to the world of fantasy and the lovers of shows with a supernatural theme. It was by no means perfect, and often required the viewer to suspend disbelief as the supernatural plots became more extreme or far fetched, but the heart of the show, the characters and their struggle with humanity remained engaging throughout and the ability to introduce new and interesting characters was a gift.

Over five seasons we saw the characters grow and change, we fell in love with them, we felt their plight. Maybe some became disengaged, for my part; this was one of the shows I enjoyed until the end, though season five was a little weaker than the others.

Follow me under the jump where I talk at length about all five seasons of the show, the things that I loved and loathed and the final send off.

The Fault in Our Stars: Book Review

To be honest, I am totally at a loss to describe this book with any coherence at all. I recently discovered John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars through a friend. She had gone holidaying in the State’s at the beginning of 2013 and all over the internet there was talk of these two brothers and their show An Evening of Awesome. She went, I read about it, Neil Gaiman appeared out of nowhere to do a surprise reading; it was very interesting and exciting to watch. What was this in aid of? The one year anniversary of this little book that John Green had written, about a girl dying of lung cancer and a snapshot of her perspective of life, love and death. It was moving people to throw a party to celebrate it. I wanted to know why.

Join me for some reflection under the cut, I’ll warn before there are any spoilers for people who haven’t read the book yet, but in case you want to be careful, read the book. Please read the book. It’s fantastic.

Review: Hot Toys Lt. Jim Gordon (S.W.A.T. Version) Sideshow SDCC 2012 Exclusive!

Our pals at Sideshow Collectibles had three exclusive 1/6th scale Hot Toys for SDCC 2012, my favourite of which is clearly Lt. Jim Gordon in his S.W.A.T. uniform from The Dark Knight. Jim Gordon, or Jimbo Gordo as Bruce often calls him, is portrayed by the steely eyed, take-no-crap, grizzled mega-actor Gary Oldman, who I have attempted to strip of his dignity with the following pose...

But as you can see, taking away Gary Oldman's dignity is impossible (even though Luc Besson tried really hard in The Fifth Element). The man has GRAVITAS. And that's why this 1/6th scale collectible figure is more than worthy enough for your collection.

See all this and more... after the jump!

Review: Nanoblock is like Microscopic Lego!

You know what? I have never seen these before - most probably because they are really, really small. You would need to be physically shrunk by Rick Moranis to see them properly. You would need to be 35 years-old to get that reference.

I'm (eventually) talking about Nanoblock, building toys that are a lot like Lego (Denmark's primary export), but micro-sized for micro hands and eyes. And ants. And unlike Lego instead of building things like Avengers and Gandalfs, you get to build giraffes and electric guitars:  

Stylishly packaged, they are manufactured by Kawada, which I assume roughly translates into "Extreme Choking Hazard". To find out just how small they are and how much fun I had... join me after the jump!