A whole bunch of junk...

Just a random update today. Last weekend, as mentioned briefly on Brother Chris' blog we had friends over and took part in an almighty film night. See the poster below.


The night began in the early evening with Clifford. Now this film was a bit pants. The bizarre concept basically didn't hold us interested for the whole film. It is quite bizarre, due to the main fact, as mentioned before, that Clifford is played by Martin Short who at the time of filming was 40 years old. YES THAT'S A 40 YEAR OLD MAN PLAYING A 10 YEAR OLD BOY. This and the fact that it's only available on Region 1 DVD or Xbox Live Marketplace adds the bizarre nature of the film. So what began well, became tiresome.

We followed this with Collision Course. This is the super team-up of former Tonight Show host Jay Leno and Mr Myagi himself, Pat Morita. Why this was thought to be a good idea, at any stage I don't know. It was pretty hard to understand either actor with Pat Morita's few English words, and Jay Leno's squeaky accented voice didn't help matters. However things blew up, towards the end there were some collisions and it all peaked with a deadly serious ending with some Karate from Mr Myagi. So things were building quite well for the real headliner, SHAKMA.

Shakma is not without its faults, but was everything I expected it to be. There was a crazy baboon going mental at doors, and a lot of death. There was way too much walking around empty corridors, and as the building was empty, and they spent a lot of time in stair wells, you couldn't help but wonder why they didn't just leave. Anyway, they didn't so they died. There's a lesson in there somewhere. Basically that's all I have to say. The trailer delivered.

Finally, as a wind down film we watched Skinned Deep. This was strange. On the one hand it was terrible. Acting was bad, film quality was bad and the plot wasn't that great either. On the other hand though it did have a good consistent design to it. The bad guys/creatures were all cool and there was enough to hold our interest. The highlight was definitely Warwick Davis as Plates. A guy who throws plates at people. He even had a random monologue half way through as to why he enjoyed his past-time. Bizarre indeed.

So a pretty successful event was had. Whether we'll be able to hold another film night in the future is debatable, our credibility may have been seriously reduced.

In other happenings, I'm slowly building up to filming the music video. I'm collecting stuff to make the "set" and I need to work on one of the characters a little more to get that Tenniel look. I hope to start filming next week.

Finally as I thought I had nothing to blog about I saw this video for the game WET on Xbox 360 and PS3. I've posted the trailer below. I think it looks pretty cool I like the pseudo Grind house style. I think it could be a fun game to play. That's if I ever get through the long pile of existing game I already have.

WET Game trailer

Wet at IGN.com

Finally completed Half Life 2 Episodes 1 and 2. I can't decide which one I preferred. I liked the extension element of Ep1, where as Ep2 is more like a new game. Once again it ends with a cliff hanger building up the Half Life story and world. I am looking forward to Ep3, if it even exists, which I'm sure it must.

Let's get back on track...

So as I was saying I'm not much of a writer. I'm not going to try and block myself into a certain niche of blogging. If you read this blog you can pretty much expect to read about anything. I'm not going to be going into anything personal. I've had a pretty crappy week but you either know me, and therefore already know, or you won't care.

Everything else is fair game. Whatever I feel at the moment of sitting at the computer and start to type. What films I care to comment on, what music I've listened to, what games I've played. Generally whatever I've been up too. Anything that I feel needs to be said, reviewed or commented on. And probably many rantings inbetween. And with that, I think I've stated my case. I'll try to update as often as possible, depending how much fuel there is for the fire.

As a closing comment, I'd just like to say I've just completed Half Life 2 on the Xbox. Yes the original Xbox, I fell into quite a large backlog of games and have yet to join the current generation. But anyway, Half Life 2. This is one o the best games I've played of late, and is bay far more enjoyable than is prequel. Gone are the hordes of chicken headed scientists (there be a few left to annoy you) gone are the annoying, teleport in and electricute you insect men. And gone are the majority of other annoying aliens. In its place are evil men with guns, and the odd zombie. But the ideas for levels. That's what makes the game. A whole level of driving a hovercraft thingy. A level of driving a stunt buggy thingy. A level clearly inspired by Tremors (although this does provide some annoyance). A Gravity gun, which by the end becomes your sole weapon, that pulls in objects to be fire away at great force.

I know my description may not make it sound that impressive. I can't really explaining what it was exactly. Maybe level design, character development, story. Probably all the above. But what I do like (SPOILER - Is the fact that at the end of the game, just when you've defeated the evil bastard behind it all, the game freezes, and the very same smartly dressed man from the original takes you out into the ether, waiting to start another adventure. This at first annoyed the crap out of me, but quickly I realised how cool this whole setup was. Gordon Freeman becoming some sort of Space/Time Adventurer like John Ratzenberger in House 2)

But where do I go from here. Half Life 2 is complete, but I doubt the next game I play will be as entertaining.