Moon On A Stick

I saw Richard Herring in the street today. He's quite tiny.

The King Is Dead?

I think Papa Lazarou may have been out-scaried by The Mighty Boosh's Cockney Eel Man.

I Did It Thirty-Five Minutes Ago

Apologies to Americans and Torrenters, but I'm watching Heroes on BBC Three, so I'm a bit behind you lot. So this is unlikely to be a ground-breaking bit of analysis to you, but I have to tell someone, as it meant nothing to Meg, as she's never read Watchmen.

But my word, the Heroes people have. We found out tonight that Linderman, the shadowy yet successful businessman, and former member of a previous generation's superhero group, wants to save the world by uniting it in a time of crisis, a crisis he's not planned exactly, but certainly knows about, a crisis that will kill half of New York City.

When the most powerful character so far turned out to be an obsessive son of a watchmaker, I thought "ooh, a nod to Watchmen" but this is full blown homage. The creator of the show says he doesn't know much about comics, and any similarities are just coincidence. I call shenanigans on that.

You've Gotta Be F*ckin' Kiddin'!

Yeah, so they are going to be remaking The Thing.

Now, on one hand, there have been two very different, and very good, versions already, so there's nothing to say that they can't go back to the source material and produce a third worthwhile film. But they're not going back to the source material; it's a "companion piece" to John Carpenter's version.

Argh.

Brushing Off the Dust

Yes, still alive, just not interesting enough to blog.

How about Halloween? I've decided I probably won't bother seeing the completely unnecessary remake. I'm a huge fan of the original, but it's not sour grapes that compels me to shun the new pretender, more that I really don't see the point. The umpteen sequels have essentially been remakes, bringing nothing new to the formula set out in the first film, and taking away plenty, and I don't see Rob Zombie managing to change that. I'll probably catch it on DVD, but I'm still hoping they'll find some way to clean up the dreadful film quality in the original.

(Halloween did get me thinking about my still-in-development God of Power Metal idea, but I shouldn't talk any more about that right now. Anticipation, and all that.)

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (I feel there should be a colon in there somewhere) is a remake done properly, however. The controls are a clever evolution of the series' traditional scheme, as well as being a good use of the Wiimote/Nunchuk combo, and the gameplay itself is very well designed, although it took me a while to get back into the essential mindset of how to play a Resi game (the last time for me was Resi2, which sucked up much A Level revision time). I'm not very far into it, but there's one great siege sequence which is a fine twist on the usual boss battle. Resi2 is my favourite of the series so far, but 4 is a fine entry, and could supplant its predecessor. It's also very important to see games like this done well on Wii, as it can only help to solidify the machine's credentials as a serious contender (rather than a niche alternative) in the current "console wars".

The job is also going very well, but I'm having the next week off in order to get some bits and pieces done that I've allowed myself to neglect. With luck, and if I don't spend all that time fobbing off my plans, I should have some things to show off over the next few days.

Too Hip to be Square

They let me in again. I've just had another article published at the Wii Virtual Console Archive; this one's about finding alternatives to the big role-playing game franchises like Final Fantasy.

Am I a video game journalist now?

Mipsrint?

Today I saw a poster for a Born in the 90's club night.

I'm not sure it's going to be a very lively event.

Bahweepgrahnahweepnineebong

Right, so Transformers then. I saw it last Saturday, and half of it is great fun. The robots (or at least the Autobots; more on that later) are really well animated, and the action scenes are stunning.

But the rest of it is a bit of a mess. One doesn't expect a Transformers film to have a great plot, but at least the original wasn't full of holes like this one. Characters go missing, plot threads go forgotten, and the less said about Optimus Prime's great plan to defeat Megatron, the better. And it was quite clear that the producers didn't know what to do with the Autobots; the general impression is that Michael Bay wanted to make Earth Versus the Space Robots, but had this extra faction of good robots hanging around for which he struggled to find a role. When the big villain is defeated by the Brave US Military™ and a snotty teenager with a magical doohickey, while Optimus Prime lounges about on the ground, something's not right. One shall stand, one shall have a lie down, apparently.

Speaking of the villains, they are hugely disappointing. After making such a big fuss of dropping Frank Welker in favour of Elrond From The Matrix, Megatron barely appears in the film, although given the horrible character design (is he supposed to be some kind of evil robotic pine cone?), it's not much of a downside. The rest of the bad guys get absolutely no characterisation, and barely any lines, with the exception of Frenzy, who's apparently on loan from Jabba the Hutt's palace.

Instead of developing the, you know, title characters, Bay and chums instead populate the film with a bunch of one-dimensional humanoids who do very little of interest throughout; I'm still wondering why the Pentagon has a teenage Australian girl in their computer security division. And then there's the excessive military-porn. If you've seen a Michael Bay film before, then you know what I'm talking about. Slow motion shots of helicopters flying in front of a setting sun, slow motion shots of tough military guys getting on and off military vehicles, etc. One wonders if Bay has a Corman-esque archive of stock footage that he uses again and again for this stuff. It obviously turns him on, but does nothing for me.

Also, Bernie Mac. No.

In short, it feels like Bay was forced, rather against his will, to include the Transformers in his film, and it's difficult not to conclude that another director wouldn't have been a better choice. That said, the bits with the Transformers in (aside from the Optimus and Friends Comedy Hour™ which is truly horrifying) were really quite good, and if there were more of the Giant Robots Smashing Stuff, and less of the puny fleshlings, I would have liked the film a lot more.

Seniority

I'm five years old again. I picked up Titan's new Transformers comic, just out of casual interest, only to discover a comic story written by Simon Furman and drawn by the mighty Geoff Senior. £2.99 is a long way from 24p, so I won't be getting it on anywhere near a regular basis, but my gosh it's great to see Senior drawing comics again. It was the original Marvel UK Transformers comic that got me interested in the medium in the first place, and Senior almost immediately became my favourite artist (which says a lot, as that comic had a great stable of artistic talent). His dynamic storytelling is still a huge influence on my own fumbling attempts at art even today, and I'm so pleased that a whole new generation is being exposed to his work.

Woo, and indeed, hoo.

Horizon Broadening

I've written an article! One about something other than about comics! But I haven't strayed too far from my usual path, as games we hope never get released on the Virtual Console is typically mean-spirited and grumpy, even if the subject matter is a bit different.