Tag: hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

How We Got Through…..April

On By troubledproductionsIn How We Got Through

Films

Life

download

Pretty darn good sci-fi. You watch it and think “you know what would be awesome? If x happens”, and then it does happen, or something better happens. Was worried when I saw the trailer that it would be another cliche “parasitic alien takes over people”, but nope, this is an alien beating people using pure brute strength. And the ending? So harsh, absolutely perfect for the genre. Definitely need to see it again, if only to see whether the opening scene was one shot or whether it just had minimal cuts.

Boss Baby

Better than the abysmal trailers would make you think it is. Some genuine laugh out loud moments.

Scream Film Series

images.jpeg

This was the first horror series I liked growing up. I had watched a few horror films before (enough to recognise and be aware of the tropes and conventions) and it was amazing to see this film not only acknowledge them, but tear them apart as well. It seemed to fall apart slightly in the third one (which, fun fact, until I purchased the box set, was the only one I owned on DVD). The impact of the series has been lessened somewhat by the fact that everybody now does what it did. It’s like watching Seinfeld in a modern context, you think “but why does everyone go on about this? It’s just doing what every other sitcom does”. In reality the reason Seinfeld does what every sitcom does now, is because they’re all following its lead. What was once revolutionary is now standard. Will probably be the series that I blog about this halloween (because it’s good, and because I think it’s the only horror franchise I own which I haven’t already blogged about).

Their Finest

their-finest-iv

Have you seen Suicide Squad? You know that bit near the end where the fire guy goes “we’re family”, and the audience is like “how? You’ve only known each other for like a day”? Basically that happens here, certain things between characters don’t feel earned enough and feel kind of forced. Which is a shame as it’s actually a really good story, with great performances and impressive dialogue. When I went to see it there were trailers for Dunkirk, and Churchill. So that’s three films this year which are based around World War 2, oddly high amount for one year. If was World War 1 I’d understand it is 100 years since. Has some pretty good lines about truth in film, well, more accurately, the importance of lies in film.

Going In Style

A tale of two films in terms of directing. The opening section is really weirdly shot in terms of colour, kind of ugly. But once the story gets going and the heist gets going, it starts to look a lot better. The main performances are good, but Joey King, who plays Michael Caine’s granddaughter is really good in the short amount of time she’s given. Logical story, but sadly one that doesn’t have the guts to stick the knife in emotionally when it should.

Guardians Of The Galaxy, Volume 2

Did you enjoy the first one? Then you’ll enjoy this. Just as impressive, funny, and brilliant as the first one. Also it has a brilliant soundtrack, possibly the best one of the year so far. Short I know, but it’s highly likely I’m going to give this a blog of its own at some point.

Fanboys

Wall to wall Star Wars references, and I get the feeling if I had actually watched Star Wars I’d realise the references are also ceiling to floor.

Table 19

Table-19-trailer-700x300

I enjoyed it, a lot. It’s what I deem “social mystery” film. Where the audience has to work out why certain characters are who they are, what caused them to be like that. It’s like an Agatha Christie murder mystery if the victim was good manners. It’s a hard film to describe the plot about without it sounding really bad, it’s mostly just people talking. But the characters are so well created and acted that it works. A lot of people dislike this film, and I kind of see why, nothing really happens. But to me it was wonderful, one of the most emotionally honest films I’ve seen in a while.

The Belko Experiment

Not really a fan of it. For this film to work you need it to be one of two things:

  1. Really stylish and brutal.
  2. Really clever.

This is neither. It seems to run out of ideas by the end of the trailer. It would be a really good short film, but for it to be a full length feature it needs something else, it needs a twist, it needs to amaze and surprise you in the final third, it needs something, ANYTHING that you didn’t see coming. As it is….nothing.

The Night Before

Not a bad Christmas film, but not one I can imagine being needed to be seen again. Basically the film equivalent of drinking a Bucks Fizz at breakfast, acceptable at Christmas, a bit weird at any other time of the year

Madagascar: A Journey Diary

Extremely personal, and touching. Everything a short film should be.

Books

Hitchhikers Guide

Really funny, but also kind of bleak and says a lot about humanity. Which is kind of what all good science fiction should do, it should be used to hold a mirror up to humanity and expose all our flaws. Straddles the fine line between being smart and incomprehensible, in the most glorious way possible.

Music

A Poet’s Life – Tim Armstrong

A really good album to listen to in the summer, so of course I listen to it in April. Relaxing and mellow, really good to chill to.

Cex Sells – Blaqk Audio

A LOT of people hate this, probably because it’s not A.F.I. I like it though, if A.F.I is the sound of Davey Havok going through teenage rebellion, this is the sound of him having cocaine-fuelled orgies with strippers.

Blink 182

A really good album, but not very Blink. At least, not the Blink we were expecting at the time.

Dude Ranch – Blink 182

Listening to this album it’s easy to see how they became one of the biggest pop-punk bands. The melodies, the lyrics, and the occasional hint of darkness are all there. It would take until Enema before they perfected their style, but the basic elements of it are here for everyone to see. Nowhere is this more evident than in Dammit, surely one of the greatest pop-punk songs made?

 

The 5 Best Film-Based Video Games

On By troubledproductionsIn ListLeave a comment

Happy Friday The 13th everyone! Now like all of you I’ll be celebrating this most holy of days by killing horny teenagers near a lake somewhere (lake, puddle, it’s all the same). But other people celebrate it differently. Since the days of Jesus fighting a Pterodactyl in the Roman Colosseum, some people have watched some of the Friday The 13th films on this day. So it makes logical sense that I should take advantage, celebrate this by blogging about it. But I’ve never seen any of the films so instead I’m going to talk about video game adaptations of films, because there was once a video game adaptation of the film, and do I need another reason?

5. Goldeneye

GoldenEye007box

Let’s get the obvious one out of the way. This is the first game everybody talks about when they talk of truly great video games. There’s not a word missing there, that should be “video games based on films”, that’s how good this game is. At the time I’d never watched a James Bond film, and even now I’ve seen one I still think he’s a prick, he’s a sociopathic monster who probably has so many STD’s that he should pretty much change his name to Mydia, Chlamydia. But despite that, I still love this game. It has not aged well however, but that’s mainly because of the lot of the things we found innovative in the game are now standard. Before this game it was normal for weapons and ammo etc just to be laying around, this made ammo collecting logical: you could only pick up what had been dropped by people you killed. Yes, there were a few bits of ammo laying around, but your main source of it was the people you killed. Then there’s the multiplayer. There are two types of people who played video games in the 90’s. Those who spent hours shooting their friends in the head in multiplayer and obeying the “no oddjobs” rule, and liars! Dirty stinking liars!

4. Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

maxresdefault

This game comes from a different time, whereas modern games help the player, sometimes with tutorials, sometimes with guidance during the game, and sometimes with just skipping parts of it if you find it too difficult. Gaming is now focused on enjoyment, making the player have fun (with a few notable exceptions). It wasn’t always the case, however. Some video games used to make you wonder what you had done to piss off the creators. The biggest genre for this were text adventure games. Games which by their nature were quite annoying: you could spend hours trying to talk to a character before you work out the exact phrasing needed (for example: “Talk to person” wouldn’t be accepted, but “converse with person” would). This game is fiendishly difficult, but also very funny. It will make you laugh, scream in anguish, and then hate yourself, a bit like having sex with a clown. I’m not exaggerating by the way, the game is available here if you don’t believe me.

3. Aladdin

aladdin

Oh, should have mentioned, I am not doing these in any particular order, otherwise there’s no way this would be higher than Goldeneye. But it is very very good. A 2D side scrolling platformer that stands out on a console which it seemed like almost every other game was a platform game. I don’t think people can appreciate how hard it must have been for a platform game to stand out in the early 90’s. You were competing against Mario and Sonic at their peaks. The Mario games had some of the best level design in video game history, easing you into an unforgiving game with innovative gameplay that filled you with wonder, whilst Sonic went “vroom” and moved quickly. So for a game to stand out it must be truly great, and this is. I would talk about why, but I already did it here so anything I’d say would just be repeating myself. So because anything I say would be repeating myself, and I don’t like repeating myself I won’t say anything more, because I don’t like repeating myself.

2. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

gmid-315-ss8

Because rarely has a video game of a film been so faithful in tone to the film. Anybody who has played video game versions of films and television shows know that the games can play fast and loose with the themes of the film. For example: there’s a Doctor Who game where you play as the famous pacifist, and go around shooting and killing everyone. In Scarface, crime totally pays, and the Fight Club game has Fred Durst. This game doesn’t suffer from that. It’s a throwback game based on a film which loves 80’s video games. It’s not just the film it uses for inspiration, the graphic novel has a scene where two characters get beaten at the same time and an achievement pops up, if you recreate this in the game, the same achievement pops up. It’s little touches like that which are missing from a lot of games.

 

1. Alien Isolation.

alien

This game is terrifying, it makes the Alien scary again, which it should be. It should be a fearful beast, it shouldn’t be something you can handle with a few shots from a pistol. This game makes you fear it, and that’s wonderful. You know how highly regarded this game is? It put faith back into the franchise after Colonial Marines, a game so bad someone attempted to sue the makers, and won. Whereas that game had you running around shooting aliens by the hundreds (and just made them into another enemy), this game only has the one alien, and you can’t kill it, all you can do is hide and survive. This is the survival horror game the latest generation has been waiting for. I am in no way saying that the genre is not good anymore, just that it’s mainly indie developers doing it now, you don’t have many major releases anymore (I mean, P.T got cancelled for f*cks sake), most of the franchises people used to turn to for the genre have now changed into more action games, so it’s good to see a game where you’re completely helpless, a game where (contrary to video game logic) exploration and discovery will probably kill you.

 

So yeah, that’s it. Hope you enjoyed it, and Fuck You Konami

Alan Rickman

On By troubledproductionsIn Tribute, UncategorizedLeave a comment

As soon as I heard I tried to find a good clip on youtube. One which summed up his career, but it’s really really hard to find that one role which defines it. It’s even hard to do a top five  list,  it’s hard to even narrow it down to five. You’re going to have to leave one of the following out:

  1. Severus Snape
  2. Marvin The Paranoid Android (not the greatest film, but he was amazing in it)
  3. Hans Gruber
  4. Alexander Dane (from Galaxy Quest)
  5. The metatron
  6. Sheriff of Nottingham

Even once you’ve narrowed it down, how on earth do you rank them? Almost every single one of those performances could be considered a career best for most people. And each one required different skills, you couldn’t put one of the characters from one into another film (although try to picture Snape in Die Hard, it’s hilarious, and it would have meant no more sequels).

Random fact: he was never nominated for an Academy Award. People think that Leonardo DiCaprio never winning is a travesty, but Rickman, (or to give him his full name: Alan Fucking Rickman) was never even nominated. It’s just so weird to take the awards seriously knowing that, I mean, Shakespeare In Love has seven awards for f*cks safe.

I know that shot at that film may have been a bit rude, but it’s really really hard to write this. How do you sum up his career in a pithy line? How do you adequately capture what he meant to everybody? I feel the best way to do this is with inspiration. Remember this; He was a struggling 40 something actor when he was first cast in Die Hard. Nobody really knew who he was, all the things we love him for he did after the age of 40. Remember that: don’t give up because of age, because even in a young mans game, talent can still shine through. Pick up that pen and write, pick up that guitar and play, just do something. Don’t look back and thank “what if?” And don’t do it half-heartedly, write until you’ve bared your soul onto the page, play until your fingers bleed, and love until your heart hurts.

I don’t want to end this like an infomercial: but please, please donate what you can to www.cancerresearchuk.org, first Bowie, now Rickman, please give what you can to make sure there’s no third one.

 

Thank you