Tuesday 27 July 2010

You stay classy, San Diego

FANGASM! The past weekend has seen San Diego host the 41st Comic-Con, a mecca for hundreds of thousands of geeks to all perpetually jizz in their pants for four straight days. Not living anywhere near San Diego, I have not been jizzing in my pants, and have been jealously following any news I can find on twitter and IGN.

To be honest, I don’t know what goes down in San Diego other than a platform to promote upcoming comic book films. This year the main focus has been on Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, Green Lantern, Thor, Captain America, and every fanboy/girl’s wet dream, The Avengers.

Reviews of the upcoming Scott Pilgrim film all point to a win, but I suspect that anyone who has a firm grasp of reality will hate it and onlookers will point and laugh at me while I try and justify why I like it - Mary Elizabeth Winstead is hot, a good enough reason for liking anything.

I don’t know anything about Green Lantern other than what has been referenced in The Big Bang Theory, but it looks like it’s shaping up to be pretty awesome. Ryan Reynolds has the trust of every geek by reciting the oath at the con (and we know he can do action), green is my favourite colour (I‘m sure that makes or breaks a film‘s quality), and Blake Lively is pretty hot.

Also coming to a screen near you…next year, are Thor and Captain America: The American Avenging Avenger of America, or whatever they decide to call it. Like Green Lantern I don’t know much about Thor. I know he’s a Norse god, and as such he has a hammer, and he speaks all old like. Kenneth Branagh is directing, which means it will be boring, and I am as excited about Thor as I am of being raped. Natalie Portman is hot though.

I stayed until the end of the very long Iron Man 2 credits, and I all I got was Thor’s hammer in a desert. I will still see it of course, and stay until the end of the very long credits just to see Captain America frozen in carbonite or something like that.

I’m looking forward to Captain America simply because I like Chris Evans, who has bagged just about every
action role Ryan Reynolds hasn’t, and for good reason, he’s awesome. He was the best thing about the disappointing Fantastic Four movies, and was pretty good in Sunshine, Push, and The Losers. Rumour has it that he will be playing all of the X-Men, in X-Men: First Class.

This is all leading to The Avengers movie, and in a massive hurrah at Comic-Con, the entire cast came out, and even here in England we could hear the simultaneous ejaculation of thousands of geeks. We were unveiled two things that we kind of knew anyway. First up is that Mark Ruffalo will be the Hulk. Just to repeat, Mark Ruffalo. I want Edward Norton back. It’s hard to get worked up though, because it’s so difficult to make the Hulk work on screen, and he will probably have a fairly small part in The Avengers, with the big CGI Hulk likely to have more screen time.

The other “surprise” was that Joss Whedon will be writing and directing, and this has gone down a storm. I loved Buffy, Angel, and Firefly, but he has only directed one film, Serenity, so it would be premature to put so much faith into Whedon. The Avengers is the most high profile comic book film in history and they cannot mess it up. It is a very high risk project, and when you put all those heroes together it could end in disaster, remember Spider-Man 3? 3 villains and it all went wrong. It could turn out to be as much as fun as being stabbed in they eye with a pen. Still, Scarlett Johansson is hot.

I forgot about the new Tron film! I don’t care about the new Tron Film.

So that’s Comic-Con in a nutshell, essentially a extravagant piece of marketing to get you to watch Marvel films when they’re released in 2 years time. Stay tuned for the upcoming report on next month’s Rom-com-con, where we will be getting all the hype on the latest J-Lo film, due for release in 2014, where she is a successful single female lawyer, who falls in love with a pumpkin voiced by Patrick Dempsey.

***Note***
I was wrong about Green Lantern and I eventually got excited about Thor.

Monday 26 July 2010

No Shit Sherlock


About a month ago I started reading the first Sherlock Holmes book, A Study in Scarlet. On Saturday I saw that BBC had made a new Sherlock Holmes series, aptly named Sherlock, starting on Sunday night. The book is only short, but I struggle to finish any kind of book, be it The Hungry Caterpillar or The Count of Monte Cristo (I’m about 10 pages in). However, Sunday’s episode was called A Study in Pink, it’s probably exactly 100% the same as the book I thought, and I didn’t want to ruin it, so I spent my Sunday persevering and somehow managed to finish the book with hours to spare.
I didn’t really need to. Save for a few details, the plot was changed completely. Written by Coupling and Dr Who writer Steven Moffat and League of Gentleman weird man Mark Gatiss, this was written superbly as you would now expect from these two. Though I have only read one book thus far, it is still clear that both Moffat and Gatiss are huge fans of Holmes and gave it the love and care it deserves.
Benedict Cumberbatch (best name ever) is cast perfectly as Sherlock Holmes, and delivers his lines quickly and effortlessly. There is an element of Dr Who about him, but there was also an element of Sherlock Holmes about Matt Smith’s Dr Who, so it could just be that, or the fact that they are both written by Moffat. Either way, the comparison is unavoidable, but I can live with it.
It would all be for nothing if they couldn’t find a good Dr Watson, but fortunately the ever affable Martin Freeman plays him brilliantly, mixing a slightly darker side into the role that we have not seen from him before. I never watch British mystery dramas because the characters are always damp, cold and two dimensional, though Moffat has a skill in creating vibrant characters, and the chemistry between the two leads makes for an infinitely more enjoyable show.

The plot was the weakest part of the show, and wasn’t as smart as you would expect. It contained elements of the book, but completely removed what was so compelling, and changed it for something that didn’t really make sense. It was focused more on creating a story arc than a stand alone mystery, and while the series as a whole might prosper, the individual episodes will suffer. (*OBLIGATORY SPOILER ALERT*)They are clearly gearing towards a confrontation between Holmes and Moriarty, but it didn’t make sense why Moriarty would hire a demented Roger Daltrey-esque cab driver to go on a random murdering spree, assumingly in an attempt to cajole Holmes into a devious trap or something.
As for the contemporary setting, it was hit and miss. London will always be dark and gritty, and will give something to the series in any time period, even if it is mainly filmed in Cardiff. The use of mobile phones was used a bit too much, and it looked like one of those Orange ads you see at the cinema, and I would rather not see Holmes solve every case with a phone.
Despite these drawbacks, it was still better than that crock of shit Guy Ritchie made, and still has a chance to improve. Cumberbatch and Freeman are a far superior duo than the smarmy bastards Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law are. Cumberbatch plays Holmes with much more restraint than the clown Downey, Jr. plays, and dog shit is more likeable than Jude Law, so Freeman is a colossal improvement. You could suggest (and I will) that because House is inspired so much by Holmes, that you would need to mention Hugh Laurie here, and yes, if you are comparing all three, then Laurie would win hands down, as he combines genius and bastard better than anyone.
I love the fact that we are seeing more and more protagonists who are genius bastards, and hopefully Sherlock will keep this trend going. The quality of British television is slowly rising (as other aspects of it are plummeting - turn on ITV or BBC3), and Sherlock looks like it will be another hit, and if Moffat and Gatiss are kind to us, will run for a very long time (as long as it doesn't turn out to be awful).

Wednesday 21 July 2010

World in Motion


So Microsoft have announced that the much anticipated Kinect will be sold for around 150 bucks. A little exchange rate research later and I guess it will around £100 over here, which in my opinion is £99 too much.
Let’s be honest, we are all bored of the Wii. Waving your arms about like you’re being attacked by a wasp just isn’t fun after four minutes, unless you’re Ant and Dec, which is always fun as long as you’re still getting paid.
With the Wii making so much money, Microsoft and Sony have jumped on the motion cash cow, and before Christmas motion controlled gaming will be available on all three consoles. Despite it’s popularity, the Wii has offered very little to hardcore gamers apart from the odd Zelda and Mario game, so it’s hard to get excited about Kinect and Move because they will only cater for the casual gamer.
The majority of the games announced for Kinect are aimed for children, so rather than an innovative piece of technology, it is more of a sound business plan from Microsoft, aimed at attracting a younger (and older) audience to the console. There is always one bastard developer though with delusions of grandeur, and they make a brilliant game that we must all have…the bastardy bastards. The big game from E3 was Child of Eden, and will be the reason (if any) for the hardcore gamers to buy Kinect, which they will.
The problem I have with the Wii, which I assume I will have with Kinect, is that the few good games available on the Wii would work just as well, if not better, without the motion controlled elements. I’m fine with pushing buttons, it’s less of a hindrance than waving my arms about, and with the Wii you end up pushing buttons anyway. You won’t have any buttons with Kinect, and whether this is a good thing depends on how well it works.
I understand that the whole movement aspect is great because it encourages the often obese gamer to exercise, but I have found a way to sit down and play games, and not get fat, or what I have dubbed, COD fit. All you need is a console, an exercise bike, and the ability to multitask. Or you can just play games and exercise separately.
Even if you don’t want to buy Kinect, Microsoft will manipulate you into buying it eventually. It’ll just be like downloadable content, fucking devious. In the good ol’ days you used to be able to buy a game, and then play it, seem simple enough. Now, you spend £40, and then you are continually sold extra parts of the game for the next year (at least). The latest Fifa game has 2 modes on the menu screen that you need to pay to unlock, didn’t I already pay to play it? Modern Warfare 2 has released 2 map packs so far, each costing around £10 each. You don’t have to buy these, but it makes it incredibly hard to play online without them as you are kicked out of any match that features a map you don’t have. So if you want to keep playing online you have to spend a total of around £60 on one game.
It has been announced that Fable III will use Kinect, but you won’t
need it to play the game. I get the feeling that a lot of games will have totally pointless special Kinect features that you don’t need, but in some way stop us from getting the whole experience of whatever game we’re playing. So it is inevitable that we will all buy Kinect even though we don’t want to, so how about lowering the price a little?

Tuesday 20 July 2010

Spin off and die

In my head, Fringe is a Dawson’s Creek spin off. Pacey left the Creek to work for the FBI. Bones is an Angel spin off. Angel quit being a vampire (he probably regrets that because they are so “hot” right now) to work for the FBI. Cougar Town is a Friends spin off, where Monica leaves Chandler to work for the FBI (I don’t know, I’ve never seen it).
I stumbled upon a new spin off this week, Southland, where Ryan Atwood of O.C fame becomes a cop. He’s changed his name to Ben Sherman (you can make that shit up apparently) but I know it’s Ryan, I can see that seething from a mile away. If you haven’t seen Southland, then don’t bother. Now I’ve only seen the very first episode, and I’ve been wrong to judge on pilots before, but this show was terrible.
Well, it wasn’t terrible. It was ok, and that’s the problem. The pilot was structured like a cross between The Wire and Training Day, but not being nearly as good as either. If you are going to make a gritty cop drama like The Wire, then it needs to be better than The Wire, otherwise you will be thinking “man I want to watch The Wire” all the way through - which I did.
I suppose the acting was sound, but none of the characters were at all interesting, and just regurgitations from previous cop dramas. Yeah, they’re all bastards except for a few who are alright I guess. People will probably rave about how intelligent Southland is because it shows that being a cop isn’t at all like Starsky and Hutch and it’s actually pretty nasty, but that doesn’t always make for an entertaining show.
I was quite disappointed, I thought Ryan, I mean Ben, might have had a fight with a jock at a beach party, but he just threw up a little, probably as a result of all that seething. Also, if you are going to have an ultra serious drama, don’t make a reference to Ben Mackenzie being in The O.C, because if you joke about it, it makes us remember that he was Ryan Atwood and he’s not actually a cop in this “very real” drama.
I guess for now I just have to wait for future spin offs to emerge. Perhaps we’ll see Zach Braff in a new show soon. J.D solves crimes in his spare time (a bit like Dick Van Dyke) by using his special skill, falling over amusingly. Or Kim Catrall gets a job for the FBI, extracting information out of suspects by fucking them.

Sunday 18 July 2010

He's in the mood for dreaming


I remember a time when films were under two hours long. It seems that to make a successful film, you have to make it approximately two hours and twenty minutes, or even longer if you have to. Surely Avatar could have been done in ninety minutes? Go on, describe to yourself what happened in that film, and give me one good reason why it warranted what is a downright offensive run time. The next Harry Potter film is going to be in two parts, probably both two hours and twenty minutes long, Why? It’s all getting a litt
le formulaic, and we end up watching all these blockbusters because we are told to, and afraid to rebel against the system, we pretend to like them, and then watch the sequels, and it goes on and on and on.
None of these films are that good either, they just fill niches. People like pirates, wizards, vampires, robots, menopausal slags, and the film industry offers all of these in a handy two hour plus package. The blockbuster has become a cold vacuous hole in which we throw our money into, and in return are punched in the balls.
Thankfully Inception sort of breaks this trend. Yes, it’s a “blockbuster”, and yes it’s 148 minutes long, and yes, it’s got pretty people in it, but it’s actually rather good. To describe what Inception is about is to ruin the whole film, so it’s very hard to write anything about it.
I loved Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight, so my expectations for Inception were high since the first time I heard of it, simply because Christopher Nolan was directing, and it was described as a sci-fi film. Then they mention that Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt would be in it, and then I had to change my pants.
Fortunately for me, Inception lived up to my expectations. The whole concept of the film actually made sense (as opposed to the messy Matrix trilogy), and never felt gratuitously complex (as opposed to the messy Matrix trilogy), though it did take a very long time just to explain the concept, which I imagine on a second viewing, would be quite tedious.
As expected with the cast on show, the acting was nothing less than brilliant, and it’s not often we get to see an ensemble this talented that actually works well together. There is so much crammed into the script that there is only really time for DiCaprio to give a truly amazing performance (not a bad thing at all), but when given their chance, the rest of the cast do exceptionally well, even that Juno girl. We can only hope that Cillian Murphy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy will become more than supporting actors in the future.
A film is always made better by a good score, and we usually take this for granted, but this time it has to be noted that Hans Zimmer’s score is fucking insane. Making a ham sandwich would feel epic alongside this score, and it really makes the film seem bigger than it probably actually is.
The fact is that this film has to be big in every single way, because as the mind is infinite, the film has to be too. While this obviously cannot be achieved, it certainly has a good crack at it, and while appearing to be a generic blockbuster hit, there is a damn good sci-fi film underneath that should be put on the compulsory viewing list for anyone claiming to like science fiction.

Tuesday 13 July 2010

Important Things

Ignorance is bliss. Whoever said that is lying. I spend most of my life finding out about good things that I never knew existed. True, I also find out about horrible things as well, but we cannot
unequivocally write off knowledge as exclusively shit.
I say this, because I am constantly trying to catch up with the world. Its a desperate struggle, sometimes quite stressful (watching 15 episodes of Lost in one week trying to avoid spoilers), and makes me wonder if I should just be content to sit in an empty cupboard, ignoring the universe.
I am too busy watching things that everyone says you should watch, that new things that people will inevitably at some point say “you have to watch this”, pass me by completely. I spent most of last year watching the entire series of The Wire, five seasons of House, and around eight seasons of South Park, not to mention a strew of other box sets and “classic” films. Only the other day did I start watching 2001: A Space Odyssey. This makes me feel like a complete idiot. Every time I go into a shop and buy a “classic” item, especially a book, a sense of dread overcomes me as I hand the book to the guy at the till, and he gives me a look as if to say “you haven’t already read this? You stupid little shit”. Of course he probably isn’t thinking that, but I have my fears.
So with this in mind, it came as no surprise that I was completely unaware that Important Things with Demetri Martin has been back on British screens since the 1st July. 13 days I have been ignorant to this! Lets not mention it was aired in April in the US.
I am probably being harsh on myself because I’m guessing that not many people know what this show is, or who Demetri Martin is. Important Things with Demetri Martin is essentially a stand up/sketch comedy show, with Demetri Martin (as the title suggests). American comedians have a pretty bad reputation here, as we see them as loud irritating people shouting things. While this stereotype may be true for many of them, Demetri Martin is one of the more intelligent ones, with most of his routines involving word play (see his 224 word palindrome), and rather than laughing out loud, you hmm and arr, like you do with Stephen Fry, though this of course is not to everyone’s taste.
Important things looks like the first ever Indie sketch show, and this gives it a much needed charm. Without it, it would just be a young Jewish guy trying to be cool by acting smart (which some people will see the show as anyway). It is however, quirky and very fun, and all shows should at least have a go at trying to be big and clever, because as a popular carbonated beverage says, what's the worst that could happen?

Saturday 10 July 2010

Shitcom

Us Brits are funny you know, even the Americans admit it. Turn your TV on today and there is little proof of this. We supposedly have a rich history of great sitcoms (or in general: comedy shows, whatever you want to call them), but it appears that we are resting on our laurels and are content on writing what can only be described as shitcoms.

While we have made many great shows, it is becoming ever increasingly apparent that we’re not that funny anymore. Yes, there are some absolutely brilliant shows still running like Peep Show, The IT Crowd, and The Inbetweeners, but these never get the recognition they deserve. Perhaps Britain’s sense of humour has shifted somewhat.

The last two comedy shows to have really taken the Great Kingdom by storm have been Little Britain and Gavin and Stacey. This suggests to me that we bloody well chuffing love a good catchphrase. “I’m a lady”, “What’s occurring?”, ha ha ha, how we all laugh. A catchphrase is essentially regurgitating the same punch line over and over and over and over again, and when you start to hear these being repeated by what can only be described as morons it induces long and painful brain haemorrhages…for me at least.


Take the latest Nationwide adverts, we can all admit that Little Britain was funny (the first series at least), but we can also come to terms with the fact that we’ve had enough of it. Who is laughing at these adverts? And why did Nationwide think they would make us want to bank with them? Probably because they are a thousand times less annoying than any Halifax advert in the last ten years. I don’t want my bank to make me laugh, I want them to look after my money. You wouldn’t ask a clown to look after your savings, you’d tell it to fuck off.

The truth is that no one is laughing at Little Britain anymore, because we are still too busy laughing at Gavin and Stacey. While it was admittedly written very well in the sense that it had a good narrative, it wasn’t really that funny. It is fundamentally about spotting things that people do in real life, and laughing at them. It worked best when watched with someone Welsh (or vice versa), but I doubt that many English homes are sold with a complimentary Welsh person. The strange myth that James Corden is hilarious is also something I cannot fathom. We always have a pair of celebrities we love at any given time, and at the moment it is Corden and Cheryl fucking Cole. The problem with Corden, is that he is just quite cheery and chirpy, and doesn’t have an opinion of anything. Having been one of the many unlucky souls to see his World Cup show, I saw a horrific interview between Corden and former England El Capitan John Terry. Instead of asking John Terry some pretty darn important questions like “why did you sleep with your team mate’s girlfriend”, Corden went on to ask such monumental questions as “what time does the England team go to bed?” Forget Frost/Nixon, this was the real deal!

I digress, this rant is all about the state of British comedy, and ignoring the “nation’s favourite” comedies, you have to turn to the other poison that is slowly killing our reputation, and that is BBC Three. BBC Three is a finely oiled machine, exceeding in giving us fucking awful comedies (and anything else it broadcasts). One example is a show that I regrettably laid my eyes upon, Off The Hook. I envy you if you haven’t seen or heard of it. Looking like BBC’s answer to Skins and The Inbetweeners, Off The Hook followed some University student losers going about University life. This was void of…well everything. Without a doubt the worst thing I have ever seen, and the BBC will keep on commissioning shows like this, because they always have. My biggest question is “what were the writers thinking?” Surely they’d have some inkling that it was worse than shit?


It’s not all bad though, we are halfway through the fourth series of The IT Crowd, and it’s still pretty darn good. Mitchell and Webb return next week, and The Inbetweeners and Peep Show will be here before the end of the year. Why can’t all comedies be like these? Peep Show has remained consistently funny for six series (while most other shows rarely go beyond a third), yet it has never attracted a huge audience. This is probably because not everyone gets it, and this is a shame because we should have more shows like it, rather than the atrocities that are conjured up on a regular basis.

It’s sad that I can only be positive for a short paragraph, but that is the current state we are in, and we have to do something about it before the US can say they are funnier than us, and they probably already can. Even House is funnier than the majority of our shitcoms, and if we don’t act fast it will be one more thing the Yanks beat us at. What will we have left? Snootiness?

Tuesday 6 July 2010

Gay for Glee




Since Disney graced us with High School Musical along with it’s two sequels, the world has gone song and dance crazy. Talent shows have also boomed in the last few years, and this has given the entire human population the opinion that singing and dancing is the most important thing in life, more important than breathing it seems.

While performing may give some people hope of a better life, and that’s great, there is too much emphasis on the significance of it all, and it’s blurring the lines of reality. The latest craze is hit television teen dramedy Glee. On first glance this is the most annoying thing in existence since High School Musical. It’s essentially the same thing. High School students are taught that singing and dancing is more valuable than any other skill you might learn at school, and that any problems or troubles you might encounter can be solved through song and dance.

If you don’t watch Glee, you will have heard of it, probably through Channel 4’s relentless advertising, where they have dubbed E4 as Glee4, and you will have seen that there have been roughly 32 soundtracks already released, despite only being in its first season. All this exposure is too much to take, and though you haven’t seen it you hate it with a passion.

I did manage to watch the pilot, and while it wasn’t bad, it had far too many little niggles to continue watching. We now live in a climate where there are more TV shows than people in the world, and as such you must choose which ones you follow carefully, so Glee didn’t get another chance. However…

Roll on a few months, and I start to experience the aforementioned advertising and endless release of soundtrack after soundtrack. This of course resulted in me hating the show with a zealous commitment I usually only reserve for the Twilight franchise. There is a but in here, as sitting on the shelf at home was a box set of Glee. I left it untouched for a few weeks, but in the end I couldn’t resist, I took the shiny box set down from the shelf, and was ready to scathe.

I should have learned my lesson from Dr Who. I was looking forward to absolutely hating Dr Who, and I loved it. That couldn’t happen with Glee though surely? I’ve already seen the pilot and that was flawed, no, it will be shit and all will be right in the world, well apart from Glee and the notion that Stephanie Meyer is anything other than a fucking awful, terrible, terrible writer (that’s for another time).

I was outraged! I had all the fiery hateful emotions I wanted after watching Glee. Unfortunately these were all directed at myself, because I rather like Glee. They fixed everything that I thought was wrong with the pilot, and made it into an extremely likeable show…once you get it. The thing about Glee is that it doesn’t take itself seriously, but it has the exact look of a show that takes itself seriously. If you were new to the show and dropped in halfway through an episode you would be forgiven for turning feral with rage at its deceiving pretentiousness. Once I got my head around that the pomposity of the show was a joke, I found it very enjoyable, much to my dismay.

Teen dramas like One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl are often very serious and melodramatic, and when you combine this with the frivolous plotlines and “issues“, it sometimes feels very silly. While keeping in the same vain of these shows plot wise, Glee separates itself from the crowd by being light hearted and intentionally silly, and this makes for a more rewarding viewing. Despite what I previously said, it doesn’t show that singing and dancing can solve all your problems, and in fact the members of the Glee club are ostracised and bullied for their involvement.

The characters in Glee are ten times more colourful than in most other dramas, and
they are almost cartoon like in their parodies of stereotypes. The writers are not ashamed to have a cast full of complete morons and that’s what makes the show so fun. The reason why The O.C ultimately failed was that the writers wanted the characters to be cool and hip, and in the end they felt fake and contrived, Marissa being more two dimensional than an 80’s Mario.

It is the “villains” of the show that really shine, Sue Sylvester and Terri Schuester being the most dastardly and narcissistic of the show, and they rile you in a way that is actually funny, rather than just plain annoying. Like any character who becomes popular with an audience however, there is a danger of Sue Sylvester becoming less of a bitch (though she’s more of a bastard than a bitch) and one of the “good guys” as the show progresses.

Most teen dramas these days go through plots faster than you can say “Ryan is a cage fighter!”,

and Glee would do no wrong taking a lesson from The Wire. While obviously two completely different shows, The Wire was nothing less than perfect, especially the way it paced and told its story, and this is why you will hear every person who has seen it say that it’s the best TV show ever (including me). Rather than going the O.C route of going through every conceivable plot before the third episode, Glee would be wise in following The Wire and taking its time to tell a good scripted story.

I am wary of calling any show a favourite before I have seen a substantial amount, and there is a risk the show will devolve into a 40 minute cabaret act void of a script. Only time will tell which route it takes, but for now I am unashamedly gay for Glee.


***Note***


It did turn shit.

Saturday 3 July 2010

"You know, I guess one person can make a difference. 'Nuff said."

Spider-Man has finally been cast…and it’s Andrew Garfield…no, me neither, not a clue. We didn’t really know who Tobey Maguire was though, and that turned out ok, though I’m sure some people disagree. Googling Andrew Garfield was obviously the first task upon hearing this news. People may be sceptical that he is more or less English (born in the US but raised in England since he was three), but all the best heroes are Brits. Christian Bale, Aaron Johnson, Patrick Stewart, erm, Loan Gruffudd, and we could probably claim all the Australians too.

It isn’t the fact that Garfield is British that has my eyebrows raising, it’s the fact that he doesn’t look like Peter Parker. He’s too good looking for Peter Parker, and he’s got that posh Eton look about him, like he belongs in a Harry Potter film. Peter Parker is a loser, that’s what makes him likeable, and so appealing to every fan of Spider-Man, he is a character you can relate to. Not many people can say that their parents were murdered, or that they’re a billion dollar playboy genius with a drinking problem. Peter Parker works so well because we all know what it’s like to be him (to an extent), if he looks like the popular kid, we won’t buy it, and the film relies on how we all react to Peter.

That said, we don’t really know much about Garfield (apart from he likes Lasagne BOOM!), and we can only judge him on his looks for now. I’m more concerned that we are getting a reboot on the franchise so soon after the Raimi’s trilogy. After the third instalment, I think we all had enough of Spidey. Number 3 just wasn’t good, and had me laughing at certain scenes, and I genuinely don’t know if Raimi intended this.

We never got a fourth film from Raimi, possibly because of the standard of the third film, but more likely because Sony thought Tobey Maguire was “too old”. Garfield is 26, so we will probably have the same problem by the time they get to the inevitable Spider-Man 3D 3. Perhaps Spider-Man doesn’t have enough depth to last 3 movies, certainly not if you’re going to have multiple villains in every movie.

We also know that Marc Webb is directing. Having forged a career of making music videos, he made his movie debut with 500 days of Summer last year. I loved 500 days, I really loved it, but to jump to Spider-Man, and in 3D, is a huge leap, and certainly as much of a risk as casting Garfield. Still, it can’t be worse than U2’s musical version, or can it?

3D is a massive cash cow right now, and it seems like Sony are exploiting their rights to Spider-Man to cash in on the Benjamins. They are raping poor Spidey and there is nothing you can do about it. What can they bring to the franchise that Raimi didn’t? Peter Parker has to get bitten by a radioactive Spider, he has to love Mary Jane, he has to be friends with Harry Osbourne, he has to be responsible for Uncle Ben’s death, and there has to be a Stan Lee cameo. We’ve seen it all before, and this time round, my Spidey sense ain’t tingling.

Friday 2 July 2010

WHOah!

I’ve always considered myself as a “fringe geek”, not someone who likes the TV show Fringe (I do), but someone who is on the fringes of geekdom. To me, Star Wars was acceptable, as were Marvel movies, but Star Trek, Stargate SG-1, and Dr Who were just too geeky for my liking. All that changed last year when JJ Abrams had to ruin it all and make a bloody good Star Trek film. It’s ok I said to myself, it’s just one film, and I like JJ Abrams. Alias was good (kind of), and apparently he created Lost, that was good (most of the time), and he did something on Cloverfield, he was the grip or the best boy or something I think. It’s a one off I thought, I have not crossed the line into pure geekdom.

As months passed, it was time for a new series (are we saying season in the UK yet?) of Dr Who, and strangely enough, I was intrigued enough to watch it. I had seen perhaps one and a half episodes of the David Tennant Who, and I like Tennant, but I found the show very silly, and considered it to be very geeky, so I ignored it, and carried on with my life. In retrospect it was only a matter of time before I became a Who fan, after watching Star Trek and loving it, anything could happen, I read H.G. Wells, subscribed to New Scientist and bought Batman pyjamas! I was doomed to like Dr Who!

Along with a new doctor, they had a chance to introduce a whole new audience to the show, me being part of it. I think I watched it initially just to judge it. Who can replace Tennant? Matt Smith will be awful! I was rubbing my palms watching the first episode, anticipating to absolutely hate it and spit seething abhorrent bile at the TV shouting “YOUR’RE SHIT!” every 30 seconds.

I loved it. I usually resent myself for liking something that I want to hate, and for the first few episodes, I became more and more shocked that I kept on liking it. Sure it had it’s flaws, but it was fun, and its very rare that a British TV show will have a story arc throughout the series, and even have more than 6 episodes. It seems that we are finally taking note of all of those brilliant American shows out there, and taking more time in actually writing something that is more like a novel rather than just a collection of 6 short stories.
The story arc itself though was hit and miss. While it didn’t get in the way of the narrative in each episode, it eventually became very repetitive, the last few seconds of every episode showing a crack in a wall. It was a very imaginative premise, cracks in time that would end the universe and everything in it, but it didn’t seem like anyone really cared that much, and in the end was a bit of an anti-climax. As we progressed through the series, we knew that the Doctor was the cause of the cracks, so there was little left to be uncovered in the finale. We never got to find out why the Doctor was such a threat though, and this was a bit disappointing, but the writers were thinking, and for me that’s good enough for now.

The Americans love a big finale and this is what the cracks were leading up to. There were more cameos than in a Ben Stiller movie, the Daleks being the Will Ferrell of the Whooniverse (is that what we call it?), and this made it all feel a bit silly, rather than spectacular. In the end (and boy did it take a while to get to the end) everything turned out all ok, and Rory came back! AGAIN! He’s like the T-1000 in Terminator 2.
My opinion of the show’s silliness has not changed, as it is actually very silly indeed. A Scottish Van Gogh? James “look how funny I am” Corden? It actually makes the show more fun, and going the uber serious route could be very dull, replacing bow tie with a drug addiction, and the sonic screwdriver with a shotgun, actually that sounds fucking insane.

Matt Smith was brilliant, maintaining a likeability throughout the series, even while getting very angry in places, very very angry (it made me like him more). Karen Gillan was also excellent, playing the feisty can do girl, and also the damsel in distress. Gillan was criticised for being “too sexy”, I didn’t know there was such a thing as being “too sexy”, but it is BBC One. I thought the sexiness was part of the fun, and in all honesty, probably one of the reasons I started watching. Catherine Tate certainly wasn’t going to hook me in, and if the BBC should be criticised for anything, it should be for not being sexy enough.

Now that the Doctor has faced the end of the universe, and won, it doesn’t leave much for the next season (I’m just going to use season from now on), and you wonder what they can do with the character without recycling any old rivals. Though a showdown with this season’s arch nemesis wouldn’t go amiss, that cartoon Graham Norton has it coming to him!