The guys at Epic Games showed off a cool tech demo called Epic Citadel at the Apple event this morning… and you can download and play it yourself, right now! It looks pretty damned awesome. It reminded me of an observation made recently that eventually someone would spend $1 mil making a successful app and then everyone else would see that as the new standard. Well, shit just got real!
I took my XBox 360 hard drive in to work a few days ago to play some coop Tomb Raider: Guardian of Light and show everyone how awesome it is (short answer: very). After that was done, I figured we could try a 4-player game of Geometry Wars 2 while we had the chance. If only I’d known then what was to follow.
As some of you may know, the Krome Adelaide office was put on 4 weeks notice about a fortnight ago. I had already handed in my resignation a couple of weeks earlier, so my last day will be this Friday whereas everyone else must work out another 2 weeks. As you can imagine, morale in the office is pretty low, and people are looking for any sort of distraction. Geometry Wars 2 proved to be just what the doctor ordered.
After playing the various competitive modes we eventually boiled down to just playing Pacifism, the one game mode where you don’t actually shoot. After playing that competitively to death we switch to playing coop to try and crack the 100 million point mark. It became an obsession. Various strategies were debated and decided upon and then debated again. The friendly encouragement turned nasty. Even Gentleman Joe turned into a big angry Beardface! We got close to the target a few times (I think we got to 86 million once) before (other) Joe finally broke through this morning with a score of 177,904,375. I know this even though I wasn’t yet at work because he texted me the instant after he died! When I arrived shortly after he was still shaking from the adrenaline rush.
After that epic win people started to play other games or go off to do work. Later in the afternoon, when no one else was around, I teamed up with Gayan and had a crack. After a few mediocre scores we finally topped Joe’s effort… with 514,593,925! Now it was my turn to be left shaking! And also my turn to text Joe, who just so happened to be out of the office at the time.
After the successes of the afternoon I fired up the game at home and decided to have a crack at my solo record of 73mil. You can see the fruits of my labour captured in all its glory in the image above, but let it be known that it took me many attempts to get there, and I only had a few scores that came anywhere close before I got the big one.
I don’t know if the beast will be sated at work tomorrow. I think we may have just woken a new evil; 1 billion points! To be honest, I think we could do it.
Another day, another free movie courtesy of the Contagious Network. This time we got to see Tomorrow, When The War Began a few days before its official release.
Seeing so many of these free movies can be a blessing, as sometimes you get to uncover a little gem that might have otherwise passed you by. Unfortunately, this is not one of those times. TWTWB is terrible.
It’s hard to even know where to begin. The characters are all clichéd stereotypes. The acting is uniformly bland. The story… don’t even get me started!
There are so many ridiculous moments, so many braindead decisions that the characters make, so little tension at any time. The occupying army is woefully lacking at sending patrols allowing the main characters to drive around town in broad daylight and never get spotted. The script conveniently ignores all modern military technology. Any vehicle larger than a van is somehow bullet proof. The Australian military response is virtually non existent, despite there being a foreign army in their back yard.
There are several moments where the script seems to have written the characters into an impossible (or interesting) situation, only for the director to cut away and somehow the characters are safely away from danger. In one scene a character drops a garage door as an approaching soldier opens fire. The bullets puncture the door, showing how flimsy this defence is, but then suddenly we cut to the girl safely in the cab of a truck and driving away. What the hell?
The blame for all this must land squarely on the writer/director Stuart Beattie’s shoulders. This appears to be his first directing gig and it really shows. There are so many inconsistencies and errors in the script, so many visual miscues and misfiring character moments, so many problems. What could have been Australia’s Red Dawn feels more like Tomorrow, When China Invaded Summer Bay than an actual summer blockbuster. There are so many better things to spend your money on than this film. Avoid at all costs!
Michelle and I were lucky enough to be sent to yet another free screening last week, this time thanks to the people at the contagious network.
I was actually looking forward to this movie, having read about it on slashfilm and having seen the trailer. The main actress was in Superbad and Zombieland, both of which I really enjoyed. It certainly had all the right ingredients, and ultimately it didn’t disappoint.
I knew going in that the story was more or less a modernisation of The Scarlet Letter… and that is pretty much what I got. It reminded me a lot of 10 Things I Hate About You (a modernisation of Taming of the Shrew), which is actually a good thing! Easy A doesn’t take itself too seriously and has a lot of fun along the way. The parents in the film probably elicit the biggest laughs (especially the scenes with their adopted son) but the rest of the cast each have their moments.
I was suprised at how much the film lampooned evangelistic religion. They skewer it pretty damned hard, and so when the main character heads to a church for advice toward the end it seemed a little weird. The confessional scene was a bit cringe-worthy and painfully obvious to everyone except the dude sitting in front of me who shouted “whoah, no way!” when the twist was revealed.
Other than that, the movie hits all the right teen-high-school-romance-movie notes, including a dance number. The movie was so clinical and tight that there really isn’t much to say against it, other than that all the actors looked about 10 years older than the characters they were playing!
Unlike Superbad, I did walk out of the theatre wondering if I was getting too old for these movies. Sure, it was fun, but the world they are describing is getting more and more distant to me. I am at that age now where I tend to only remember the good times, and teenage angst is rapidly becoming foreign to me. Even so, I was entertained. Any sub-25 humanoids should definitely see it. Everyone else? Maybe catch it on DVD.
Michelle and I went to see Almost Numan last night to see Thom play his final show before heading off on his 10 week round the world vacation. The sound and lighting at the Queen’s Arms was fantastic, well worth the $5 cover charge. I recorded a few bits and pieces on Michelle’s little happy snap camera, the results you can see above. Apologies to Iain, I only had one loop of him on the drums and it was from a different song! Just don’t focus too hard on the details and you’ll be right.
Thanks to the fine folks at SeeFilmFirst, Michelle and I were able to see the New Zealand Film Boy ahead of its release here in Australia. It has already become the highest grossing NZ film of all time, doing in 8 weeks what took the World’s Fastest Indian 46. So what is all the fuss about?
Boy is the story of a… well, a boy and his relationship with his dad. Actually, when you say it like that it sounds kinda lame, but trust me, the film is much more. The cast of mostly kids are uniformly excellent (Michelle particularly liked Rocky, Boy’s younger brother) and the setting of rural NZ in the ’80s definitely brought back a lot of memories. It didn’t hurt that the father in the film sports a moustache and mop of hair that looks a lot like my own dad’s!
The film has moments of great humour (and if you are worried, it is not at all like the awkward comedy in Flight of the Conchords) as well as a strong heart. It is a very sweet little film, which could easily get lost in the current rush of loud, glitzy hollywood blockbusters (I’m looking at you, Expendables), but deserves much more. It’s a movie that almost begs to be seen on a sunny afternoon, it reminds me of so many summers back home.
So don’t let this one slip by. Go on, check it out, ya egg!
Michelle and I got to see another Australian movie, Animal Kingdom, before its release thanks to the Contagious Network. Unlike the previous film, The Boys Are Back, this one was actually pretty good. It is a rather harrowing tale of the life of one teenager in a family of criminals. In the manner of all good thrillers, it keeps the tension high throughout, and in several scenes I was cringing with anticipation. A scene early on, when a couple of cops are investigating a stolen car, is masterful in how it builds suspense despite the inevitableness of the conclusion.
It’s a tough one to recommend, though, as the film has anything but a happy ending. There was no other way that it could end, really, but it is bleak and relentless, and you manage to walk away from the cinema feeling somehow less safe than before.
The acting is great (the guy playing uncle Pope is farking creepy) and the story is tight (the only bad cliche in the film is dealt with quickly and soon forgotten). It does all the things right that The Boys Are Back did wrong. As a great example of Australian cinema, I fully support it and you should too. If you do go see it, just be ready to go to some dark places.
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I finally got round to watching Kick-Ass last night. It was well worth the wait! Not only was it funny, brutal and offensive, it also featured the best performance by Nicholas Cage since…. umm, Raising Arizona? What was the last good film he did?
The only weird thing about the film was that it was rated MA15+ here in Australia. This is a film where an 11-year old girl calls the bad guys c*nts before plastering the wall with their brains. Maybe we don’t need an R18 rating for games after all if this is the standard…
Beijing, day two. We woke up reasonably early (for us) and headed off to check out the Beijing Underground City. After getting our hotelier to ring ahead to make sure it was open (no answer, but she was sure it was) we bundled into a taxi and made our way there.
After getting slightly lost and wandering around an old, decrepit neighbourhood we finally found the entrance. It didn’t impress from the outside, with the paint peeling off the sign, but we were keen to check out Mao’s folly, a tribute to Cold War era paranoia. Unfortunately, we never made it in. A lady grunted at us as we walked past and directed us to a tiny, inkjet printed sign. “The Beijing Underground City is closed”. Under that, someone had handwritten “Permanently”. Ah, crap.
So, that was the end of that. We instead spent the morning checking out the last remaining section of Beijing’s old wall. The walls used to encompass the whole city, and stood for hundreds of years until Mao dismantled them during the Cultural Revolution. What did he do with all those bricks, you ask? Why, he created a vast network of tunnels under the city to house 7 million people in case of nuclear war! That sounds like an awesome place to visit! Oh right. Damn.
After checking out the wall we headed out to the 798 art district. This is an old factory complex that has been converted (against the owner’s wishes) into an artist community. The Beijing art scene is thriving these days, and there was a lot of amazing and inspirational art to see. Michelle was like a kid in a candy shop, running left and right trying to take it all in. It was a fascinating blend of original artwork, (not so) cheap knock-offs and touristy crap. We even had lunch at a New Zealand Cafe. We had the nachos, very kiwi.
