The Mist & COD:MW2

So taking a break from my horrendous binge of Lost I watched The Mist. Continuing Frank Darabonts seemingly exclusive Stephen King bumming he again adapts another one. Something a bit different to The Green Mile and Shawshank though and refreshing for it. Think Lord Of The Flies meets The Fog meets Evolution. Its clever and entertaining, bringing you a few shocks and scares along the way. What must be said though is that the ending is horrible. Not in perhaps a predictable gross out horror way but more in a disturbingly empty way. It feels a little bit like when you watched Requiem For A Dream for the first time. Still, a decent watch and it feels nice not to be hearing the string stabs of the Lost soundtrack for a while.

I don't know why I've decided to do this to myself but I've taken it upon myself to investigate the hype around Modern Warfare 2. There's two sides to it really and I'm not sure which I dislike more. Firstly you had the "glitzy" premier of the game. I say glitzy, when they're limiting shots of fans lining the red carpet you have a fair idea what's actually happening. But in the defence of the people who went, the stars did show. Vernon Kay, Goldie and the array of ex-Eastenders actors who voice the game. I can see why the game got the attention it did. Its the biggest media launch in history after all. But it all just looked a bit shit didn't it? Pretend soldiers, posters for the game, hot girls dressed as soldiers. It was a very tacky way of doing it really. But I also don't like film premieres for the same reason, so I can't complain about that. The second side is "No Russian" and the ensuing debate. This is where it gets really frustrating. People are obviously calling for Infinity Ward to be shot and the game to be banned, this was inevitable. However, the defence is either "Its a game, I shot those civilians in the face and I'm fine!" or "Actually, that bit was kind of nasty, still the rest is a great game". It kind of begs the question, why is it in there anyway? For the story? I thought it was justified, that was until I played through the story. It ranks with Die Hard 4 for realism. Its essentially James Bond starring Jason Statham and directed by Micheal Bay. Its explosions, madness and shooting people in the face. Which is fine. But the airport scene adds a weight of depth that is never really accounted for. Which makes the game harder to defend when its standing up and practically provoking the other side. They may as well chucked in some paedophilia and the corpse of Princess Diana just to really rile up the tabloids. I love the game. I really do. But its given my past time a bad name it doesn't deserve. Although funnily enough everyone has stopped talking about the Wii and the inane parade of mindless tat that gets Grandma waggling her wrist like she's turning tricks in Soho. So silver linings and that.

The Lost Room & Lost

I like it when people recommend new shows or films to me. Especially stuff that would never have entered my peripheral vision otherwise. The Lost Room is a prime example of this. The effort it was going to take to watch it all already paid off when I realised there was a Fanning sibling in it. Yeah that's right, another one. Who knew? There's also that bloke from Six Feet Under. That show that you never get round to watching. That and The Sopranos. Probably will make some time for The Sopranos though. Anyway, the premise of the show is this; a motel room in the 60's disbanded from reality creating a host of "objects" with special powers. For example a watch that cooks eggs or glasses that prevent combustion. So there's a key to this mysterious room that floats in another dimension or something and the bloke from Six Feet Under has it. He then loses his daughter in it (mini Fanning) and thus proceeds on an epic quest that takes him all over America (well the shit places like New Mexico and Texas) to find objects to rescue his daughter. Of course its all guff, with characters falling over themselves to help the protagonist and handing over helpful tit-bits with little to no coercion. I even thought that characters constantly stating "But its all I have!" when they hand it over would bare some significance at the end but it did not. Still, I sat through the entire four and a half hours in one sitting as it is enthralling and very entertaining. That bloke from Six Feet Under is also very good and likable in it too, I'm sure he was in Six Feet Under as well but I doubt anyone bothered to watch it all. Anyway, definitely worth picking up and proof that the Sci-Fi channel does more than poor quality Bigfoot movies.

Speaking of Lost I've also been watching Lost. Lost, Lost, Lost. Just felt I needed to write it a few more times there. I'm about halfway through season two now. Although I got up to the end of season two when it was first broadcast on Channel 4 however many years ago. I don't think it was that many. But I remember I was single and still living up in the Midlands. So we're talking at least three years ago (just checked on wiki and 2005/2006 is the date). The funny thing is that I can't really remember what happens more the reactions I felt to what happened. Such as the episode where it shows the other survivors first 48 days and I remember how I found the episode pretty boring and annoying. Surprisingly I felt the same second time round. I've also started to get frustrated by the flashbacks to everyone's old lives, I just want to find out about the island stuff now. I couldn't give a shit if your wife left you, even if it does show more about your character's reasoning, etc. I'll keep ploughing through though, safe in the knowledge that I've got three season of unseen surprises to come afterwards.

Lost & Blue Dragon

I kind of fell out of the loop with Lost after season one. So its been a while since I watched the show. I'd been waiting for the show to arrive with great excitement but somehow when it did I wasn't as keen as I expected to watch it. In fact it took me a good few days (and a good few beers) to pluck up the courage to dive in. I can understand why my sub conscious was against me now, the deja-vú is pretty horrendous. He's on smack, he dies, ignore the polar bear. The lessons from the episodes I've already seen showed through very strongly. If only I could apply that ability of recollection to my academic studies. Still, I'll persevere. Two episodes down. A lot more to go.

Oh dear. Its happened. I've not only got into Blue Dragon. I've let it consume me. I'm currently bathing in the blind joy of getting to disc two. Its been frustrating, confusing, boring and down right annoying at times. At other times its been alright. I've not really enjoyed much of it so far. For some reason they introduced this small yellow shouty thing into the game early on. I sat and let the solitary tear run down my face as I knew that little crap-shit was going to be with me for the rest of the game. Eight hours maybe he's been screeching in cut-scenes and wobbling in the battle field. I hate to blame the Japanese for this but what is it with crazy-ass annoying side-kicks? At least Western media has the wise-cracking one. Its annoying but at least its not that annoying. Anyway, disc 2. Undoubtedly I'll have sunk another 12 hours of my life into it by Tuesday. I hope not. But its inevitable.

Various Titbits #2

There's been a lot of those hyped American shows lately. Like a constant stream of them. Do we blame Lost? Yeah probably. Haven't been with it for a while now though, I'm going to try and slip back into it. Anyway, True Blood is the latest in this line. Its about vampires, which makes me shiver usually in thought of the gothic HSM shit casket that is Twilight. Werewolves are now cooler than vampires because of that crap pile. Tru(e) Blood though puts a different spin on it though, with vampires coming out of the coffin because a synthesised blood equivalent has been discovered. Which puts an surprisingly sane view upon preceedings. Undoubtedly it being a product of HBO helps this and I'm thankful for it. Its refreshing to see some sci-fi kind of television that isn't completely shit (Charmed, Buffy, Angel, Supernatural - there's a great many more than those too). I'm excited about episode two, Channel 4's fantastic catch up service is also a great blessing.

I really thought that I'd enjoy Generation Kill more than True Blood being the rabid Wire fanboy that I am. But the late time-slot, the crappy stream and the same unforgiving atmosphere as The Wire made this a difficult one for me to slide into. I'll give it another go over the next few days, as its going to be worth watching for just the 8 or so episodes that it is. I guess you forget what it was like watching those first few episodes of The Wire where not much was happening and you're debating why you're there. Looking back, it seems silly that you could have ever comprehended such nonsense.

Its been a really long summer this year for me. My relative inaction was a main contributer to this I guess but television did not help my stupour. But thankfully now its Autumn and animations favoured child has returned. I refer of course not to the horrificly misjudged shit fest that is "The Cleveland Show" but of course to South Park. Starting exactly where you'd expect, they're ripping into Micheal Jackson. Only through the medium of The Sixth Sense. Now I'm guessing that this one may have been in planning for a while, MJ's fate is not fresh by South Park standards. But still, to make shows so consistently funny in such a short amount of time should be applauded. God I've missed you South Park.

Squeezed a viewing of Dead Man's Shoes. A wonderful little film, disturbing all the way through thanks to an amazing performance from Paddy Considine. Its my favourite Shane Meadows film mainly thanks to its simplicity. It gives no other impression than being a story of revenge, a simple tale just well told. I highly reccomend it, its probably one of the better films set in the north of England.

I finish of with my induction tonight into the syrup filled delight that is The Evil Dead. Inspired by the gross-out brilliance of Drag Me To Hell I thought I'd pick up this trilogy and give it a whirl. Its pretty much what I expected, disgusting, hillarious and cheap as hell. Great fun though, you can see why its garnered cult status. I'll see how quickly boredom gets induced in me these next few days to find out about the rest of the trilogy. Considering Swapgame have sent me Guitar Hero 2 instead of any of the 5 games above it on my playlist this seems likely.

Max Payne, FlashForward and How Not To Live Your Life

Video games are pretty much my passion. They were a guilty pleasure but with an increase in spare time there's been more than a little increase in gaming. One of the first things I check in the morning is Eurogamer (which is great by the way) so I think that says it all. Due to this I always get a mixture of excitement and dread when a video game adaptation is announced. Max Payne was one I'd been waiting for since it was first rumoured to be knocking around, which was when the games first came out. Which was around what 8 or 9 years ago? The thing is though, the games were heavily cinematic themselves so a film was somewhat redundant already, a comic book of the cut-scenes may have served better as fan service. Although what the film definitely wasn't was fan service, it was more a boiled down version of the basic clichés which lay within the game. The drug was definitely a missed opportunity, bringing in some random Norse mythology nonsense from Too Human and ripping off the visuals of Constantine. The Sin City style was quite nice to look at, but the rest of the film fell by the wayside really and overall doesn't do justice to what is one of the best third person shooters there ever was.

FlashForward (I'm not sure how we're "supposed to be" spelling it, you know they always get funny about that stuff) is from the same stable as Lost. Not sure if it's by the same people but they're certainly leaping onto that bandwagon with this. Only a few years late, but you know whatever. A strange cast is assembled for it, Joseph "Not Ralph" Fiennes, Harold (No Kumar in sight), Steve from Coupling and Peter Griffin. Yeah that's right, Peter Griffin a.k.a. Seth Macfarlane is in it. I know that's weird isn't it. He isn't just a disembodied voice and a loose hand for drawing the cartoons. He's a person too. No wonder Family Guy got shit, he's off gallivanting in epic TV now. Anyway, something about people seeing the future all at the same time then everyone trying to work out what it means. It's a nice plot idea because you can explain it to someone in around 45 seconds unlike other shows of this kind. It's got all the hall marks of absorbing telly, random animals, glassy-eyed stares, everyone has a cut on their face at some point. Still, early days and if Five's on demand service is as shockingly slow at buffering as it was today I may just give up and try and Derren Browning the lottery numbers for my predictive fix.

Finally, How Not To Live Your Life is a little sitcom on BBC Three. Unlike most BBC Three sitcoms I actually feel like living is worth it after watching an episode. It's basically about Don who lives in his dead grandma's house with the butler and an attractive female housemate. Then stuff happens generally involving Don being an idiot. It's pretty standard fair is what I'm saying really, but it's easy viewing. Few laughs in each episode, and the "4 things Don shouldn't do now" device is a real winner for me and brings a bit of surrealism to an otherwise standard affair. Worth watching as it is on BBC iplayer all the time and repeated on BBC Three around every two hours as well.