So last sunday I had to get up at 6:45 am (bearing in mind I only got in from work at about 2:00 am), in order to go and paint the hallway in my flat in southampton. My faithful tennents asked if they could have it a different colour from palest blue, so we opted for magnolia. We also needed to cover the signs of water damage that had been left by the upstairs flat's leaky bathtub.
Now, the week before that, I'd been in southampton again, just to see my friends from uni, hang out and revisit old haunts. Also nice to know that in both the property I rent for myself and the property I own, I have to sleep on the sofa. There are no beds for me, it would seem. That's as aside, however. I got to see Macina, Will, Coates, Kerry, KC, Mel and Nick, so good times.
Makes me wonder, really, how much do I miss my three years at uni? When we were at kareoke night, the faces were all pretty much the same, nothing had really changed. Me and Will went for a walk around the uni grounds and they haven't really changed at all. The Fat Cat is the same, Cineworld is the same, Forbidden Planet is the same, my flat is still the same (cluttered and not really mine).
So, do I miss it?
Yeah, guess I do.
I wanted to leave uni and have my life change, wanted to make the most of the education that I'd spent the last three years working on. Instead, I came back home, did the same two jobs that I'd been doing before, it's just this time I was living with friends, rather than family. And now that I think about it, life has changed. I'm a different person to what I was before I started uni. My Dad even commented so, and if he says it, it must be true. So I'll take what I've learned and maybe I'll get to put it into practice. For now, I'm coasting along.
Just like when I was at uni...
ROCK OF AGES
Heh. Heheheh.
That's about all I can really say to sum up this movie. It's good fun, it's worth a watch, but don't expect to be blown away by it. Your standard Glee dropout lead boy and lead girl are about as interesting and well acted as a wooden bedpost, the plot is pretty pants, but all in all, it's actually quite enjoyable. Why is this? This is for the music.
There's a lot of really, really good music in this film, as you'd expect. There's a lot of really, really unsuspecting people singing that music, as well. Catherine Zeta-Jones, Russell Brand, Alec Bawldin, Mary J. Bligh and Tom Frickin' Cruise are all rocking out the tunes in this one, and even though half of them clearly can't sing all that well, it's good.
To be honest, the Cruise Missile is the reason to see this movie, I mean, awesome performance as well from Paul Giamatti (for he is the master of his own face), but yeah, the Cruise sells this one and fair play to him. I recommend it just to see him playing a jaded, alcoholic rock star with a devil face codpiece. ('I am on stage'... priceless moment).
So yeah, that's about all I can say about it, other than they probably didn't need to put Walt in it. Bryan Cranston, that's who I mean. Yeah, kinda unneccessary.
Next time: MEN IN BLACK 3
Saturday 30 June 2012
Saturday 23 June 2012
Fathers and Other Irritances
So yeah, my dad's down to visit. I should reiterate, my Dad's a good guy, he's worked hard throughout his life, he's always been very responsible, dedicated and widely travelled. This aside, he and I get on much better when he's in Scotland and I'm in Newbury. We're just very different people from very different worlds and we tend to get on each other's nerves.
Take this weekend. He turns up on thursday and has basically taken my bed (since I mostly sleep in the living room, where my brother sleeps in the bedroom). This means that I've gone back upstairs and my brother has been forced out to stay in various friend's houses. He's then comandeered my laptop so that he can use it because he didn't feel the need to bring his own.
This annoys me in many ways, because I haven't been able to complete my writing schedule over the last couple of days. Now, those of you know me well enough should know that there's nothing more in life that I hate than not being able to do my writing. Does he care? Of course he doesn't. Does he sit and judge me for watching Stargate in my pyjamas in the morning? Of course he does.
It's just... irritating.
Still, he's leaving on monday morning, not after me and him have to go to southampton for sunday and repaint the hallway that suffered from water damage. Anyway.
PROMETHEUS
You know... I'm still vaugely on the fence about this movie. The effects are good, some of the early story is pretty good, the cast is fairly awesome, but overall... I dunno, there was this big, wishy-washy Lindelof feeling to the whole thing that made me turn off it. That opening scene?
And man, how much was I looking forward to this. I mean, the return of Sir Ridley to the genre that he helped define in cinema? Alien and Blade Runner are still held as the standards that people are judged against. And just how ill this movie fit with the thing it was supposed to be a prequel of?
The film this most reminds me of is Sunshine, although I'd like to reiterate that I found Sunshine to be more awesome than this. It starts off with all the deep, probing, philosophical edge to sci-fi and the inter-personal relations of the crew (hats off to Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender, as well as Idris Elba, you guys were the fo-shizzle), but about half-way through we were suddenly subject to the standard android-backstabbing and ridiculous body horror that just came out of nowhere, just like how Sunshine turned into a slasher film 40 minutes from the end.
Do I recommend it? Not really.
Am I disappointed? Hells yes.
Should they just have made the sodding Alien prequel that they promised us originally? Of course they should. Hiring someone like Damon Lindelof to rewrite the script was a disasterous move, leaving far too many unanswered questions and jammied expositionary fuck ups. This should have been a much better film.
Next up:
ROCK OF AGES
Take this weekend. He turns up on thursday and has basically taken my bed (since I mostly sleep in the living room, where my brother sleeps in the bedroom). This means that I've gone back upstairs and my brother has been forced out to stay in various friend's houses. He's then comandeered my laptop so that he can use it because he didn't feel the need to bring his own.
This annoys me in many ways, because I haven't been able to complete my writing schedule over the last couple of days. Now, those of you know me well enough should know that there's nothing more in life that I hate than not being able to do my writing. Does he care? Of course he doesn't. Does he sit and judge me for watching Stargate in my pyjamas in the morning? Of course he does.
It's just... irritating.
Still, he's leaving on monday morning, not after me and him have to go to southampton for sunday and repaint the hallway that suffered from water damage. Anyway.
PROMETHEUS
You know... I'm still vaugely on the fence about this movie. The effects are good, some of the early story is pretty good, the cast is fairly awesome, but overall... I dunno, there was this big, wishy-washy Lindelof feeling to the whole thing that made me turn off it. That opening scene?
And man, how much was I looking forward to this. I mean, the return of Sir Ridley to the genre that he helped define in cinema? Alien and Blade Runner are still held as the standards that people are judged against. And just how ill this movie fit with the thing it was supposed to be a prequel of?
The film this most reminds me of is Sunshine, although I'd like to reiterate that I found Sunshine to be more awesome than this. It starts off with all the deep, probing, philosophical edge to sci-fi and the inter-personal relations of the crew (hats off to Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender, as well as Idris Elba, you guys were the fo-shizzle), but about half-way through we were suddenly subject to the standard android-backstabbing and ridiculous body horror that just came out of nowhere, just like how Sunshine turned into a slasher film 40 minutes from the end.
Do I recommend it? Not really.
Am I disappointed? Hells yes.
Should they just have made the sodding Alien prequel that they promised us originally? Of course they should. Hiring someone like Damon Lindelof to rewrite the script was a disasterous move, leaving far too many unanswered questions and jammied expositionary fuck ups. This should have been a much better film.
Next up:
ROCK OF AGES
Saturday 16 June 2012
Lists (3)
Video games that I've actually played lately and what I thought of this. Is this just me reviewing more stuff? Possibly. Is this all I have to talk about? Possibly also.
1) Space Marine
You know, this was a button basher that many people dismissed out of hand, but you know, I frickin' enjoyed it. The combat system is actually threatening and very fun, the selection of weapons could have used a re-think (why is the lascannon a sniper weapon?) and the lack of vehicle section is actually refreshingly good. Violence, violence and more violence. Bring on some more!
2) Oblivion
So even though there is a copy of Skyrim in my house, I haven't actually played it yet, 'cause I wasn't really finished with Oblivion. Can one ever finish Oblivion? Of course not, but I still haven't done all that it offers. Is it all that immerseive? No, but it's the best way I'll get to play D&D without all those pesky players messing it up all the time.
3) Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Yeah, I'll never escape from this game, it's just so well crafted. It doesn't really matter how many times I play it, but the huge amounts of story options there are to get through make it pleasingly huge, yet familiar every time. The story is fantastic, with a plot twist worthy of the original Star Wars trilogy. Shame that rather than making a trilogy, Bioware made an MMO.
4) Cursed Treasure: Don't Touch My Gems!
Internet tower defence game that's annoyingly addictive but very well thought out. Look it up, it's free to play. Upgrade the Orc towers first.
5) Dragon Age: Origins
Much as I generally like Bioware Role-Play Games (as evidenced by KotOR's inclusion), this one kind of annoyed me. I'm always fine with the standard elves and dwarves fantasy, but there's a large section in the Realm of the Sloth Demon where being a dwarf makes it almost impossible. So yeah, decided against liking it too much. Maybe I'll give it another go sometime soon.
I should probably play more games... anyway.
EPISODES
Have you been watching Episodes? It's brilliant, trust me. The basis is one that taps into a British mindset, why do the Americans keep remaking our shows? I mean, it's not like they can't come up with good stuff, I mean, Stargate SG-1 alone...
Anyway, a pair of Bafta-winning comedy writers are swept off their feet to go to Hollywood and transform their quaint public school based sitcom about an erudite and portly teacher into an Americanised sitcom about a hockey coach.
Starring Matt LeBlanc.
While Sean and Beverly, our two transatlantic writers, slowly watch their lives and work fall apart, the show goes from shaky starts to even shakier middles. The whole production appears to be a disaster fuelled by the incompetence of the US network system.
The strange thing about this show is that it's a sitcom, but it's serialised, rather than episodic. It's not a done-in-one as all sitcoms are. The story is developing much more like a drama, despite the intrinsic comedy.
The cast is pretty awesome, our three leads are Stephen Mangan, Tamsin Grieg and Matt LeBlanc, who is playing a fictionalised version of himself.
The relationship between these three is pivotal to the series and is the highlight, really. It's very well acted and very engaging. Especially LeBlanc.
Is there more to say about it? Probably, there's a fair amount of commentary about how the US TV networks actually make their shows, which is all very interesting, as well as how it feels to be a Brit living among colonials (as we like to call them).
Is it worth watching?
Of course is it, fool.
Next up: PROMETHEUS
1) Space Marine
You know, this was a button basher that many people dismissed out of hand, but you know, I frickin' enjoyed it. The combat system is actually threatening and very fun, the selection of weapons could have used a re-think (why is the lascannon a sniper weapon?) and the lack of vehicle section is actually refreshingly good. Violence, violence and more violence. Bring on some more!
2) Oblivion
So even though there is a copy of Skyrim in my house, I haven't actually played it yet, 'cause I wasn't really finished with Oblivion. Can one ever finish Oblivion? Of course not, but I still haven't done all that it offers. Is it all that immerseive? No, but it's the best way I'll get to play D&D without all those pesky players messing it up all the time.
3) Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Yeah, I'll never escape from this game, it's just so well crafted. It doesn't really matter how many times I play it, but the huge amounts of story options there are to get through make it pleasingly huge, yet familiar every time. The story is fantastic, with a plot twist worthy of the original Star Wars trilogy. Shame that rather than making a trilogy, Bioware made an MMO.
4) Cursed Treasure: Don't Touch My Gems!
Internet tower defence game that's annoyingly addictive but very well thought out. Look it up, it's free to play. Upgrade the Orc towers first.
5) Dragon Age: Origins
Much as I generally like Bioware Role-Play Games (as evidenced by KotOR's inclusion), this one kind of annoyed me. I'm always fine with the standard elves and dwarves fantasy, but there's a large section in the Realm of the Sloth Demon where being a dwarf makes it almost impossible. So yeah, decided against liking it too much. Maybe I'll give it another go sometime soon.
I should probably play more games... anyway.
EPISODES
Have you been watching Episodes? It's brilliant, trust me. The basis is one that taps into a British mindset, why do the Americans keep remaking our shows? I mean, it's not like they can't come up with good stuff, I mean, Stargate SG-1 alone...
Anyway, a pair of Bafta-winning comedy writers are swept off their feet to go to Hollywood and transform their quaint public school based sitcom about an erudite and portly teacher into an Americanised sitcom about a hockey coach.
Starring Matt LeBlanc.
While Sean and Beverly, our two transatlantic writers, slowly watch their lives and work fall apart, the show goes from shaky starts to even shakier middles. The whole production appears to be a disaster fuelled by the incompetence of the US network system.
The strange thing about this show is that it's a sitcom, but it's serialised, rather than episodic. It's not a done-in-one as all sitcoms are. The story is developing much more like a drama, despite the intrinsic comedy.
The cast is pretty awesome, our three leads are Stephen Mangan, Tamsin Grieg and Matt LeBlanc, who is playing a fictionalised version of himself.
The relationship between these three is pivotal to the series and is the highlight, really. It's very well acted and very engaging. Especially LeBlanc.
Is there more to say about it? Probably, there's a fair amount of commentary about how the US TV networks actually make their shows, which is all very interesting, as well as how it feels to be a Brit living among colonials (as we like to call them).
Is it worth watching?
Of course is it, fool.
Next up: PROMETHEUS
Saturday 9 June 2012
Structure-Tastic
The problem with doing a weekly entry is that I get the feeling sometimes that I just don't have anything to say sometimes, and one of those sometimes is now. I look through other blogs and I wonder where people get their inspiration for random musings from. That being said, many people have asked me how I do the writing that I do, so I guess it's fair game.
I'm all about structure, really. I structure all of my stories with spreadsheets and notes and at least several years tweaking to those spreadsheets and notes before I begin writing them, mostly, thus when I do get round to writing them, they pretty much just pour out, because I know everything that's going to be in it already. Take Resistance for example.
I'm writing the scripts for Resistance (which I talked about back in December) and that takes the form of 42-page episodes, 13 to a season and I always plan to 5 seasons. Why? Because J. Michael Strazynski told me too (not personally).
So with 41 of those pages being the full 51 lines and the 42nd page being 9 lines, that's 2100 lines per episode. In order not to go too fast or too heavy, I do 255 lines per day, which is 5 full pages. So an episode is less than 9 days.
Then, since I figured that pages are best broken down into 3 tracks (each track lasting 3 to 4 minutes, simply make a playlist every month or so and listen to it every day), that's 17 lines per track (a third of a page). So I can write a page every quarter of an hour. This has taken years of discipline to achieve, but it now passes like nothing every day.
So, long term. A season is 2100 x 13, which is 27300 lines, which is 107 normal days of 5 pages each (which gets us to 27285), and then one final day where I just do the remaining 15 lines to get us up to 27300. So, 108 days to write a season, which is less that four months. And there are five seasons, so that means that by the 22nd of November, I'll have spent about 540 days of my life writing for an hour or two to create 2684 pages of post-apocalyptic super hero action.
Still with me?
This is how I organise my life, you know. My finances are all on a spreadsheet as well, I'm sure it wouldn't surprise you to learn. My brother says that I'm trying to achieve some kind of robot perfection, to leave the random chaos of humanity behind, but the way I see it, I do all this stuff, get the structure down, done and efficient, that it takes an hour or two per day to do this. Then I get the other 22 to myself.
LIP SERVICE
(A BBC Series)
So, what can I say about Lip Service? Other than BBC3 were really rather keen to get themselves some softcore lesbian porn and call it artistic? Actually, that's pretty unfair, it's a pretty decent show, very well written, very well acted and full of talented cast members.
It's just had its second season, and I'd be interested to see a third, but I'd also be concerned for Fiona Button's career. I'm all for writing out a main character every now and again, but the changes to the line up in the second season were incredibly drastic and I'm not sure they were right.
However, the basis.
Glasgow, Frankie's been living in New York after fleeing a messy relationship comes back home to her aunt's funeral. There's something about her parentage that she needs to discover, while at the same time, we're following Cat, her ex-partner who's finally ready to move on, and Tess, the adorable girl next door who just wants to be an actress.
We follow their heartaches, their tears, their tantrums, their flings and their fears. All the while there's a really, really good supporting cast in the form of Jay (Emun Elliot) and Ed (James Anthony Pearson) as their straight bloke friends, one of whom is in love with one of our lesbians.
Now, not knowing much about lesbian culture and how to really percieve homosexuality as it's depicted in film and tv... I'm not really sure how accurate this representation is. But that's just due to my staggering ignorance and fear of offending anyone in relation to this subject matter.
Are all Glaswegian lesbians that damn attractive? Because if so, I think I'm moving up there. Mind you, a depressing few actually have Scottish accents...
However, following on from my earlier comment, by halfway through the second season, we've lost two of the three main characters and Jay departs after about five minutes screen time, leaving us with a half-reconstituted cast, a whole slew of new faces and the feeling that if this show goes on, we'll be looking at even more in the next season.
Like with Skins, where all the partying and drugs and stuff got sickly sweet and you just wanted them to give it up, all the softcore lesbian action may actually end up driving more of the audiance away after a while, despite it being the main titillating selling point to the whole thing. Hmmm.... anyway, that's about all I have on that.
Watch it, it's good.
Next up: Episodes
(yeah, another BBC show)
I'm all about structure, really. I structure all of my stories with spreadsheets and notes and at least several years tweaking to those spreadsheets and notes before I begin writing them, mostly, thus when I do get round to writing them, they pretty much just pour out, because I know everything that's going to be in it already. Take Resistance for example.
I'm writing the scripts for Resistance (which I talked about back in December) and that takes the form of 42-page episodes, 13 to a season and I always plan to 5 seasons. Why? Because J. Michael Strazynski told me too (not personally).
So with 41 of those pages being the full 51 lines and the 42nd page being 9 lines, that's 2100 lines per episode. In order not to go too fast or too heavy, I do 255 lines per day, which is 5 full pages. So an episode is less than 9 days.
Then, since I figured that pages are best broken down into 3 tracks (each track lasting 3 to 4 minutes, simply make a playlist every month or so and listen to it every day), that's 17 lines per track (a third of a page). So I can write a page every quarter of an hour. This has taken years of discipline to achieve, but it now passes like nothing every day.
So, long term. A season is 2100 x 13, which is 27300 lines, which is 107 normal days of 5 pages each (which gets us to 27285), and then one final day where I just do the remaining 15 lines to get us up to 27300. So, 108 days to write a season, which is less that four months. And there are five seasons, so that means that by the 22nd of November, I'll have spent about 540 days of my life writing for an hour or two to create 2684 pages of post-apocalyptic super hero action.
Still with me?
This is how I organise my life, you know. My finances are all on a spreadsheet as well, I'm sure it wouldn't surprise you to learn. My brother says that I'm trying to achieve some kind of robot perfection, to leave the random chaos of humanity behind, but the way I see it, I do all this stuff, get the structure down, done and efficient, that it takes an hour or two per day to do this. Then I get the other 22 to myself.
LIP SERVICE
(A BBC Series)
So, what can I say about Lip Service? Other than BBC3 were really rather keen to get themselves some softcore lesbian porn and call it artistic? Actually, that's pretty unfair, it's a pretty decent show, very well written, very well acted and full of talented cast members.
It's just had its second season, and I'd be interested to see a third, but I'd also be concerned for Fiona Button's career. I'm all for writing out a main character every now and again, but the changes to the line up in the second season were incredibly drastic and I'm not sure they were right.
However, the basis.
Glasgow, Frankie's been living in New York after fleeing a messy relationship comes back home to her aunt's funeral. There's something about her parentage that she needs to discover, while at the same time, we're following Cat, her ex-partner who's finally ready to move on, and Tess, the adorable girl next door who just wants to be an actress.
We follow their heartaches, their tears, their tantrums, their flings and their fears. All the while there's a really, really good supporting cast in the form of Jay (Emun Elliot) and Ed (James Anthony Pearson) as their straight bloke friends, one of whom is in love with one of our lesbians.
Now, not knowing much about lesbian culture and how to really percieve homosexuality as it's depicted in film and tv... I'm not really sure how accurate this representation is. But that's just due to my staggering ignorance and fear of offending anyone in relation to this subject matter.
Are all Glaswegian lesbians that damn attractive? Because if so, I think I'm moving up there. Mind you, a depressing few actually have Scottish accents...
However, following on from my earlier comment, by halfway through the second season, we've lost two of the three main characters and Jay departs after about five minutes screen time, leaving us with a half-reconstituted cast, a whole slew of new faces and the feeling that if this show goes on, we'll be looking at even more in the next season.
Like with Skins, where all the partying and drugs and stuff got sickly sweet and you just wanted them to give it up, all the softcore lesbian action may actually end up driving more of the audiance away after a while, despite it being the main titillating selling point to the whole thing. Hmmm.... anyway, that's about all I have on that.
Watch it, it's good.
Next up: Episodes
(yeah, another BBC show)
Saturday 2 June 2012
DVD Roundup (Tim)
A while back, Tim leant me more DVD's than I can shake a stick at, and since I hadn't seen any of them before, I figured that I'd talk about them here. Because apparently I have nothing more to say in life than how many movies I watch?
CARNIVALE (season 1)
Ooooh, it took a long time to watch through this show. Beautifully made, jawdroppingly sumptuous to look at, it didn't half drag through barely imagined mysticsm about the death of magic in the American Dust Bowl of the 1930's.
CARNIVALE (season 2)
Cut short just when they were trying to get somewhere, this season flowed better than the first. True to form, the background characters were actually far more fun than the leads, although hats off to Clancy Brown for keeping a striaght face.
THE FALL
While this film is intensely beautiful to look at, I still can't see why it's worth watching, really. The story isn't up to much, but there are a few amusing moments.
HUMAN TRAFFIC
While supposedly not serious at all, I feel that this jaded view at the 90's actually took itself far too seriously, going full circle as it were. Not convinced by its merits.
THE FISHER KING
I'm not a Terry Gilliam fan, I find his work too off the wall for me, but this particular film seemed to acknowledge that and be less whacked. Also, Jeff Bridges, so good times.
MAD MEN (season 1)
Yeah.... I can see why so many people love this show, but I found it particularly difficult to give a crap about all these cynical, unfaithful, constantly smoking arseholes. It's slick, sure, and Christina Hendricks looks particularly amazing while wearing that decade, but unless someone develops a soul in that foetid quagmire of social depravity, I'll pass.
I think he actually lent me more than what I've listed there, but it was a short while back and I can't really recall... never mind, on with the film review.
IRON SKY
Now I talked about this film the other week, about how it was made by fan money and so on. Basically, about 10% of the funding was fan contributions, who clubbed together to make a trailer. This trailer was then shipped around film festivals until about twenty or so small film companies clubbed together to produce the movie. And produce it they did.
In 2018, to aid her failing publicity, the President of the United States (not named as such, but a blatant parody of Sarah Palin), sends a black model to the moon as a stunt. While up there, they're also searching for Helium-3, an element used in fusion that's had a few sci-fi outings in the past. But you know what they did find while up there?
MOON NAZIS.
Oh yes, for back in 1945, seeing defeat, a contingent of Nazis fled the Earth and set up camp on the Moon, building a garishly huge Swastika fortress and a war machine called The Gotterdammerung. There should be some umlauts on that. Anyway, the model dude, Jack Washington, is captured and sent back to Earth in order to aid his captors in harvesting incredible computer power. In the form of Apple devices. Oh yes, an iphone can end the world. The sense of satisfaction is overwhelming.
This movie is far from perfect, the story is farcical and over the top, the acting is questionable at times and there's a character played by Peta Sergeant that I'd happily murder, but any film that can include the American's first deep space exploration vehicle; The USS George W Bush, gets my frickin' vote. With all the space combat and steampunk Nazi tech and ridiculous plot turns, this is a very silly, but very awesome film.
Also, we left before the end of the credits, but apparnetly do stay for that, as we missed something. Yes, this is a recommendation, it's just hilarious.
Next review: Lip Service
(another BBC tv series)
CARNIVALE (season 1)
Ooooh, it took a long time to watch through this show. Beautifully made, jawdroppingly sumptuous to look at, it didn't half drag through barely imagined mysticsm about the death of magic in the American Dust Bowl of the 1930's.
CARNIVALE (season 2)
Cut short just when they were trying to get somewhere, this season flowed better than the first. True to form, the background characters were actually far more fun than the leads, although hats off to Clancy Brown for keeping a striaght face.
THE FALL
While this film is intensely beautiful to look at, I still can't see why it's worth watching, really. The story isn't up to much, but there are a few amusing moments.
HUMAN TRAFFIC
While supposedly not serious at all, I feel that this jaded view at the 90's actually took itself far too seriously, going full circle as it were. Not convinced by its merits.
THE FISHER KING
I'm not a Terry Gilliam fan, I find his work too off the wall for me, but this particular film seemed to acknowledge that and be less whacked. Also, Jeff Bridges, so good times.
MAD MEN (season 1)
Yeah.... I can see why so many people love this show, but I found it particularly difficult to give a crap about all these cynical, unfaithful, constantly smoking arseholes. It's slick, sure, and Christina Hendricks looks particularly amazing while wearing that decade, but unless someone develops a soul in that foetid quagmire of social depravity, I'll pass.
I think he actually lent me more than what I've listed there, but it was a short while back and I can't really recall... never mind, on with the film review.
IRON SKY
Now I talked about this film the other week, about how it was made by fan money and so on. Basically, about 10% of the funding was fan contributions, who clubbed together to make a trailer. This trailer was then shipped around film festivals until about twenty or so small film companies clubbed together to produce the movie. And produce it they did.
In 2018, to aid her failing publicity, the President of the United States (not named as such, but a blatant parody of Sarah Palin), sends a black model to the moon as a stunt. While up there, they're also searching for Helium-3, an element used in fusion that's had a few sci-fi outings in the past. But you know what they did find while up there?
MOON NAZIS.
Oh yes, for back in 1945, seeing defeat, a contingent of Nazis fled the Earth and set up camp on the Moon, building a garishly huge Swastika fortress and a war machine called The Gotterdammerung. There should be some umlauts on that. Anyway, the model dude, Jack Washington, is captured and sent back to Earth in order to aid his captors in harvesting incredible computer power. In the form of Apple devices. Oh yes, an iphone can end the world. The sense of satisfaction is overwhelming.
This movie is far from perfect, the story is farcical and over the top, the acting is questionable at times and there's a character played by Peta Sergeant that I'd happily murder, but any film that can include the American's first deep space exploration vehicle; The USS George W Bush, gets my frickin' vote. With all the space combat and steampunk Nazi tech and ridiculous plot turns, this is a very silly, but very awesome film.
Also, we left before the end of the credits, but apparnetly do stay for that, as we missed something. Yes, this is a recommendation, it's just hilarious.
Next review: Lip Service
(another BBC tv series)
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