First Review: Marvel’s The Avengers

This column was originally published in the Central Western Daily on Tuesday 24th April 2012.

It’s finally time for The Avengers fans to assemble. Starting with Iron Man in 2008, Marvel Studios, now a subsidiary of The Walk Disney Company, has slowly built towards this ultimate team-up movie. Brief scenes, often occurring after the credit have rolled, in The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America and both Iron Man entries have pieced together the formation of S.H.I.E.L.D., a peacekeeping organisation led by Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury. Can the silver screen contain all of these larger than life characters and satisfy casual and diehard fans of the Marvel franchise? The answer is yes, yes, yes.

Two weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend a preview screening of The Avengers. All I had to do was hand my mobile phone over to a security guard, sign a confidentiality contract and be scanned by metal detectors before I entered the screening room. Disney is obviously very aware that a pirated copy of this film could cost them millions in revenue. Not that I minded. It meant that I got to enjoy a movie without interruptions from annoying flashing mobile screens.

Written and directed by Joss Whedon, The Avengers brings Earth’s mightiest heroes together in response to an attack on humanity by Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Thor’s brother. Thor (Aussie Chris Hemsworth), Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) and The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo, replacing Ed Norton) have little reason to trust or like each other and it’s this friction which allows Whedon to work magic with his trademark witty dialogue exchanges and put downs. There are many laugh out loud moments to enjoy.

Surprisingly, every major character gets their fair share of screen time. Even lesser known heroes Hawkeye and Black Widow, only briefly introduced in Thor and Iron Man 2 respectively, get time to shine. Tom Hiddleston’s Loki is appropriately smarmy and a worthy opponent for the team. With the vast majority of characters well established in their own feature films, only Jackson’s Nick Fury seems a little thinly drawn.

I saw the 2D version and there were only a few noticeable 3D moments. I’m not a major proponent of cinema 3D (I much prefer the brighter home 3D) so you’re definitely not missing out on anything by avoiding the surcharge.

The action sequences are well captured and the CGI is convincing. Loki’s attack on the S.H.I.E.L.D. flying helicarrier is breathtakingly good. The final showdown in New York City is a little reminiscent of a similar sequence in Transformers: Dark of the Moon but again Whedon’s humorous banter between the heroes saves the scene. The Hulk smashing things up also helps.

Forget The Dark Knight Rises or The Amazing Spider-Man, there is only one superhero film to see this year and The Avengers is it. Fans of Whedon’s Serenity will be pleased with a little nod to the cult favourite (think Wash). Make sure you stay after the credits for the now standard Marvel Universe credit cookie.

Published in: on April 22, 2012 at 12:54  Leave a Comment  
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The Simpsons Tapped Out Update and Universal Movie Tycoon Review

This column was originally published in the Central Western Daily on Tuesday 17th April 2012.

Back in March I wrote about a new game launched on iTunes that was so popular that it caused a server meltdown. The Simpsons Tapped Out, a time management game similar to Farmville and My Smurfs’ Village, was withdrawn from the Apple App Store a few days after release allegedly due to high demand on the servers of the game’s producers, EA Games.

It now appears that there was more to the game’s withdrawal. The thousands of players worldwide who had already downloaded the app were allowed to continue playing the game (and spend money on premium features). Within a week or two, reports started to flood into internet forums of lost game progress, missing characters and in-game dollars and points not being recorded.

My Springfield fused with another player’s town, leaving me with a mess of streets and houses that looks more like The Rocks than the orderly custom designed town my slightly OCD mind created.

Almost six weeks after the withdrawal and initial promises of updates and patches to fix the app, EA Games has gone quiet. The game is still missing from the iTunes store and there are no signs of any relief for the players who have already dedicated hours and hours of game play to Homer and company.

It seems that The Simpsons Tapped out was rushed out for release with major flaws and little beta testing. Apple has started to refund money to players but the lack of communication from EA Games may well have tarnished the cash cow that this game was destined to become, at least in the eyes of early adopters.

The void in the “freemium” game marketplace left by the MIA Simpsons has already been filled by a new franchise, this one based on movie making. Universal Movie Tycoon is free to download and celebrates the 100th anniversary of the famous film studio. As head of the studio, players get to build sets and remake famous films, selecting from an array of virtual directors and actors.

As expected, progressing through this game is painfully slow without spending real money on the premium currency of the app, Movie Magic. Unlike other games of this type, a couple of dollars seems to go a long way. There is, however, the ridiculous option of buying 5000 Movie Magic credits for $51.99. You could buy every premium decoration, set and building, upgrade every actor and director to the max and still have credits to spare.

Unfortunately there is no social functionality which is the norm for games of this ilk. What’s the point of building your own virtual film studio if you can’t visit other nerds online and leave them virtual gifts? Initially fun, the game soon becomes repetitive and boring. It says so much about the current sad state of the film industry when a game designed to promote Universal Studios encourages you to remake the same movies over and over again. So far I’ve remade The Fast and the Furious 33 times, Despicable Me 23 times and Seabiscuit 22 times. I don’t think this game will be on my iPad much longer.

Published in: on April 22, 2012 at 12:52  Leave a Comment  
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Film Reviews: 21 Jump Street and John Carter (of Mars)

This column was originally published in the Central Western Daily on Tuesday 20th March 2012.

Despite being an aficionado of all things eighties, I must admit that I have never watched a whole episode of 21 Jump Street. I do remember how every episode ended though. The gang would be back at the station following a successful mission. Someone cracks a joke. Everyone laughs, there’s a freeze frame and then the end credits roll, complete with the Stephen J. Cannell closing logo. I must have been a big fan of the show that followed.  I’m not sure what it was. I’m thinking it may have been the craptacular Manimal or Knight Rider.

21 Jump Street is the latest in a long line of TV adaptations for the big screen. Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the team responsible for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, have taken the show’s title and basic premise to create an outrageous buddy action comedy in the vein of Bad Boys that will satisfy anyone who prefers their jokes blue and isn’t offended by copious amounts of coarse language.

The flick stars former model turned “actor” Channing Tatum (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, The Vow) and the newly slimmed down Oscar nominee Jonah Hill (Superbad, Moneyball) as recent police academy graduates who are sent back to high school undercover to investigate a drug ring. Of course, neither character wants to relive their traumatic high school years.

Not every joke hits its mark but the cracking pace of the film means that you will hardly notice. Tatum and Hill have great comedy chemistry and the supporting cast, led by a foul mouthed Ice Cube, all get a chance to shine. I don’t think that it is a coincidence that most of the actors cast as students are clearly too old to be at school.

A very unique car chase and hilarious cameos from original stars Peter DeLuise, Holly Robinson and Johnny Depp are worth the price of admission alone. 21 Jump Street is highly recommended.

Throughout the eighties and nineties, Disney utilised its other studio imprints such as Hollywood Pictures to release films with non-family friendly aspects such as nudity and violence. Lately, they’ve become more liberal and happily released their swashbuckling cash cow Pirates of the Caribbean saga under the Disney label. John Carter, with its battle scenes and alien decapitations, is the latest film from the “House of Mouse.”

Known throughout production as John Carter of Mars, the title was shortened after market research showed that the word “Mars” might turn off moviegoers who don’t like science fiction. I’d suggest that the movie poster and trailer, which both feature the red planet prominently, might also be clues.

Directed by Andrew Stanton, the man behind Wall-E and Finding Nemo, John Carter stars the serviceable Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights) as the titular Civil War veteran who wakes up on the surface of Mars with super strength (different gravity and bone density, you see) and finds himself embroiled in a four way battle between the native inhabitants.

Many of the set pieces are direct knockoffs from iconic sci-fi movies such as the Star Wars franchise but considering that Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote the John Carter books 100 years ago, it’s pretty hard to know who inspired who.

Much has been made of the film’s mega budget (US $250 million) and poor box office showing so far ($42 million over eight days with a 59% drop off on its second weekend), but don’t believe the hype. Despite an overcomplicated and confusing storyline, the visuals are fantastic and the retro-fitted 3D compliments the alien landscapes. This is the closest you’ll get to a live action Pixar film.

Published in: on March 26, 2012 at 07:35  Leave a Comment  
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Your Smurfs are dead, long live The Simpsons

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This column was originally published in the Central Western Daily on Tuesday 6th March 2012.

If you’ve been spending the last few months tending to your Smurfs’ Village on your smart phone, I have some bad news for you. You may have spent hours and hours forcing your little blue children to tend to their crops all day and night. You’ve occasionally broken their smurfy monotony by making them build new mushroom houses in order to increase your village population. Houses inside which your Smurfs will never be allowed to rest. You’ve woken up at all times during the night to play pointless mini-games to earn experience points so you can advance levels and add new crap to your virtual village. How does it all end?

This column isn’t about the rights of overworked Smurfs or the folly of wasting your life keeping imaginary creatures alive. I can’t talk. I had a tamagotchi in the late nineties and my Smurfs’ Village is up to a healthy level twenty four. However, I am predicting that we will all soon be abandoning our blue friends and replacing them with yellow ones.

The Simpsons: Tapped Out was released for the iPhone last week and immediately rose to number two on the Free Apps Chart. It has proven to be so popular that the EA Games server crashed and most players were unable to access the game. On Sunday, the app was pulled from the iTunes store and is currently temporarily unavailable.

Like its Smurfy counterpart, The Simpsons: Tapped Out is a free-to-play time management game that costs nothing to download but has the potential to become quite expensive. The game starts with a hilarious animated sequence that is worth the download alone. Homer, at work in the nuclear power plant, has become distracted at his console playing a Smurf-like game on his “myPad” which results in a radioactive explosion. With Springfield wiped off the map, it is up to Homer to put the town back together, one building at a time.

To earn experience points or XP as well as game cash, players must send Homer to perform various tasks which take different amounts of time to be completed. As you complete challenges and earn points and money, more Simpsons characters are unlocked and new buildings can be added.

Being a time management game, the challenges play out in real time. To grow corn on Cletus’ farm, it will take ninety days, literally. To overcome this, players may choose to use donuts to make time past rapidly. Donuts are the premium currency of the game and are earned very slowly as the game progresses, however, similarly to smurfberries in the Smurfs’ Village, those fine people at EA games will also sell you donuts for real money via your iTunes account. The high cost in donuts of premium buildings and features, combined with the slow rate of free donuts earned, suggests that you might be opening your wallet to spend some hard earned real dollars sooner rather than later,

The game features voices, artists and writers from the TV show, resulting in a novel approach to a familiar genre. The game controls and structure took a little while to get used to, but the lengthy tutorial should have you adding the Simpson’s house and the Kwik-E-Mart to your new Springfield in a few minutes. I managed to play the game over the weekend for a few hours before the server crashed and enjoyed it although I couldn’t help but feel like I was cheating on my Smurfs.

My prediction is that you’ll soon be ditching your Smurfs for Simpsons, however, until the game is restored on iTunes, your little blue friends have been spared for a few more weeks.

Published in: on March 6, 2012 at 07:26  Leave a Comment  
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The Reef Review, The “Spooky” Workers and TV’s Alcatraz

This column was originally published in the Central Western Daily on Tuesday 21st February 2012.

I’d like to thank everybody who washed their car or mowed their lawn over the weekend. Now it’s raining again.

I like to support Australian cinema as much as possible. Unfortunately this weekend I chose to watch The Reef, a humourless thriller involving two good looking couples, a yacht and a hungry shark. Can you guess what happens? Whilst beautifully shot in Queensland, the plodding storyline makes the 88 minute run time seem much longer. The bland characters were paper thin, making it very difficult to care as they are picked off by Jaws one by one. Just like the characters, all I wanted to do was endure the experience and make it to the end. None of the promotional material for the movie suggested a feel good film so I suppose I wasn’t deceived. After all, the uplifting tagline on the box was, “Pray you drown first.” If you want to see your favourite actors from McLeod’s Daughters and Underbelly become fish food then The Reef is definitely for you. Avoid if your holiday later this year is at the beach.

 

Speaking of scary movies, have you noticed that the Southern Cross Ten kiddie bedtime commercial starring The Workers has been reshot? A bizarre hybrid of The Wiggles, Hi-5 and The Village People, these children’s entertainers managed to film the creepiest goodnight jingle ever, complete with creepy death stares straight into the camera, toothy robotic smiles and horrible harmonies. Not surprisingly, a newly refilmed version of their ad appeared a few weeks ago. Gone is the weirdness. Instead, none of The Workers look at the camera at all, opting to sing to each other instead. So are they putting themselves to bed, or the kids at home? For my money, make kiddie entertainment come in the form of men in skivvies, fairies or singing and dancing clones. Leave occupational stereotypes for their teenage years when you put them to work at a fast food joint to pay for their Proactiv.

 

Have you checked out Alcatraz, the latest TV series from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, the production house responsible for head scratcher Lost? Starring Sam Neill (in boggle eyed, “you must eat meat” mode) and the rotund guy from Lost, Jorge Garcia, the series follows a team of investigators searching for the population of guards and prisoners who mysteriously “disappeared” from the famous prison island in 1963. As the inmates reappear in their former cells one by one and resume their former evil ways, the team have to track them down and work out who or what is behind this event. Whilst I am enjoying the show, I have some major problems with the storyline.

If the team’s HQ is underneath the prison on the island, why don’t they just close the tourist attraction? The prisoners will reappear in their cells and be caught immediately, instead of catching the ferry back to mainland to cause trouble. And why do we never see the team on a boat travelling to and from Alcatraz? If you’re not going to close the island, then why inconvenience yourself with a boat ride several times a day? Do they have to wait for the hourly tourist ferry each time? If Lost has taught us anything, only time and a polar bear will tell, perhaps.

Published in: on February 29, 2012 at 07:31  Leave a Comment  
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The Year in Film: 2011’s Worst Movies

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This column was originally published in the Central Western Daily on Tuesday 6th December 2011.

With 2011 almost done and dusted, it’s time once again to review the cinematic good, the bad and the ugly of the past eleven months and 6 days. Admittedly, I didn’t frequent the cinema or video shop as much as in previous years but that didn’t help me to avoid these clunkers. Over the next few weeks, let’s start from the bottom and work our way to the top. Here are my worst films of 2011.

There were two fighting robots movies released this year and the one you should have missed was Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Directed with the subtlety of a Jeremy Clarkson rant by Michael Bay, this sequel was more than a two hour toy commercial, it was also a sales pitch for paracetamol. Robots clashed, people ran, things exploded, people ran some more and all in eye smashing, headache inducing 3D.

Shea LaBeef and Fergie’s husband returned for a payday, alongside franchise newcomers McDreamy, the guy from Being John Malkovich and Oscar winner Frances McDormand. Megan “so hot in 2004” Fox was canned from the production for apparently saying negative things about the director. I guess I’m out of contention for Transformers 4 now too.

After several stalled attempts, The Green Hornet finally arrived in January. Written by funny man Seth Rogan and directed by the imaginative Michael Gondry, The Green Hornet was strangely neither funny nor imaginative. Also starring as the titular super hero, aka Britt Reid, Rogan was obviously overstretched as he forgot to make his character likeable. Oscar winner Christoph Waltz lazily reprised his villainous character from Inglorious Basterds and I have no idea what Cameron Diaz was doing in this film.

The Green Hornet was also presented in pointless 3D. You know your 3D is terrible when the end credit sequence looks better than the rest of the movie.

Director Zack Snyder of 300 fame is another hack who doesn’t like to let story get in the way of the action. His effort for this year, Sucker Punch, is virtually unwatchable. Featuring Aussie actresses Emily Browning and Abbie Cornish, alongside High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens, the film follows an institutionalised girl who escapes into an imaginary alternate world where she joins her fellow inmates as a team of kick ass fighters.

This misogynistic and violent tale is hard to watch and will make you want to escape into an imaginary alternate world where, well, you know the rest.

Finally, from the director of the original Twilight came Red Riding Hood. Would you like your movie with extra cheese? Starring doe eyed Amanda Seyfried as the doe eyed Valerie, this very silly film is set in a village menaced by werewolves. Torn between two suitors, Valerie seeks to unravel the source of the lycan menace alongside werewolf hunter Solomon, overplayed by Gary Oldman.

Did I mention that this film is sensual and romantic? That’s how I prefer my fairy tales. Director Catherine Hardwicke proves that lightning can’t strike twice with this retread of her previous sensual and romantic adaption of Twilight.

Published in: on December 20, 2011 at 09:20  Leave a Comment  
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Film Review: Jucy

This column was originally published in the Central Western Daily on Tuesday 15th November 2011.

At first glance of the poster, it would be very easy to dismiss Jucy as just another zany low brow Aussie comedy, along the lines of the atrocious You and Your Stupid Mate (2005), however, this new womance (the opposite of bromance) has a strong heart beating behind the humour and may well be the undiscovered (for now) gem of the year.

Directed by Brisbanite Louise Alston (All My Friends are Leaving Brisbane) and scripted by her husband, Stephen Vagg, Jucy is very loosely based on the lives of its stars Francesca Gasteen and Cindy Nelson.

Lucy (Gasteen) and Jackie (Nelson) are two twentysomething outsiders drifting through life. Working together at a Brisbane video store, the best friends are known collectively as “Jucy”. Shunned by their friends in the local amateur theatre group, both set goals to improve their lives and become more acceptable to the mainstream. That is, Lucy aims to get herself a decent job and Jackie wants a boyfriend.

Of course, their paths become complicated by both being cast in a local production of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and soon the girls’ friendship is at risk of being torn apart.

Best friends on and off the screen, Gasteen and Nelson have a fabulous chemistry. Both providing input into the script, their banter is incredibly natural and honest, with hilarious results. Any initial expectations of two dimensional sketch comedy caricatures are swept away by believable depictions of funny but flawed characters.

Also impressive is rising actor Ryan Johnson in a supporting comedic role as a self-important wannabe thespian who fakes addictions for attention. It has recently been announced that Johnson has joined the cast of US legal drama Fairly Legal.

Jucy is not just played for laughs. Adding a little bitter to the sweetness is the depiction of Jackie’s mental illness. Coming off her medication mid-plot, her situation spirals even further out of control. Inspired by actress Nelson’s real life struggle, the resolution to this plot strand is ambiguous and one of the few elements of the film that misfires.

A low budget affair, Jucy was shot in just fourteen days. Real locations in Brisbane such as Trash Video and The Arts Theatre were used, as well as the house that Gasteen and Nelson share in real life. Shot in digital with a Panasonic P2 camera, the suburbs have never looked better.

Australian cinematic offerings of late have centred on big, sweeping, historical stories. It is refreshing to be equally as drawn into a smaller story involving average folk.

Jucy has recently been licenced to a US distributor to be available through Amazon.com and Walmart. One has to wonder what your average American will make of this little Aussie film.

Jucy will mostly appeal to female audiences but there are certainly plenty of laughs for the guys too. Stephen Vagg has seemingly managed to capture how women talk when men are not around. Well at least I think he has.

Louise Alston’s apt direction wisely puts the characters before the jokes ensuring that the audience laughs along with the protagonists more often than at them.

Stars Gasteen and Nelson make an appealing comic duo and have the potential to be breakout stars. Let’s hope they continue to work together.

Jucy is currently screening in Orange and is highly recommended for anyone seeking a little home grown respite from fighting robots and toy commercial cinema.

Published in: on November 21, 2011 at 07:15  Leave a Comment  
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Movie Review: Tucker & Dale vs Evil

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This column was originally published in the Central Western Daily on Tuesday 18th October 2011.

Think about the storyline for your average horror film. Does this sound familiar? A group of nubile college students heads out to the woods for a camping trip. On the way they insult two hillbillies, who then proceed to extract revenge by killing off the promiscuous teens one by one. Yep, it’s pretty much the framework for a whole raft of slasher movies.

What if you reversed the concept, following the film from the hillbillies’ perspective? Except this time, the yokels are simple but friendly folk, and the teenagers are familiar with the rules of horror movies. Every good natured move the hillbillies make is interpreted by the teenagers as an attempt on their lives, and one by one they meet their demise through a series of hilarious mishaps.

Sounds like the perfect horror comedy. And it possibly is. The film’s title is Tucker & Dale vs Evil and it has just hit Australian DVD and blu-ray shelves after a difficult birth that saw it come extremely close to a theatrical release and possibly become a major hit.

Alan Tudyk, one of my favourite actors, stars as Tucker. You might remember Tudyk as the popular character Wash from the short lived Joss Whedon sci-fi western series, Firefly, and the subsequent big screen film, Serenity.  As Dale, you have rising actor Tyler Labine, who was most recently seen as chimp handler Robert Franklin in this year’s surprise hit, Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Also starring as college student and love interest Allison is Katrina Bowden, best known as the cute but dim Cerie in TV sitcom 30 Rock. A solid cast for sure.

The director is Eli Craig, making his feature film debut. His short film, The Tao of Pong, is available on YouTube and is great fun.

Filmed in 2009 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, the completed film premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival to cheering audiences. A subsequent screening at the prestigious South by Southwest in Austin, Texas also received a rapturous response.

A mainstream distributor became interested in the project and put the film through a test screening which resulted in overwhelmingly positive figures. Thinking that it was all a mistake, the distributor held a second screening which came back with similar results.

The final obstacle in the US film release process is the booking of movies by the cinema chain owners. Unfortunately, based on one screening, a major chain didn’t think it had potential and turned it down. And with that, Tucker & Dale vs Evil missed out on a major US cinema release. It premiered in Australia last week as a direct-to-DVD title.

I have a tendency to support the underdog, and after reading about the film’s history, I immediately rushed out to buy a copy. And I have to say that it doesn’t disappoint. Deliciously gory and hilarious at the same time, the film is a refreshing take on a worn genre.

Tucker & Dale vs Evil deserves mainstream attention. It is an absolute shame that the latest The Not-So-Final Final Destination chapter is taking up cinema screens when a much smarter and deserving film is relegated to the small screen. I guess it happens all the time.

So gather a bunch of friends, find the biggest TV that you can, buy (and don’t download) Tucker & Dale vs Evil and have yourself a great night in.

Published in: on October 18, 2011 at 22:10  Leave a Comment  
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Terra Nova: hit or miss TV?

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This column was originally published in the Central Western Daily on Tuesday 4th October 2011.

Steven Spielberg’s latest science fiction creation for television, Terra Nova, premiered this past Sunday night. A big budget affair, there are high hopes for this series from its studio Fox and production company, Spielberg’s Amblin Television.

Terra Nova begins on Earth in 2149. The polluted atmosphere is barely breathable and the law dictates that couples may only have two children due to overpopulation. Scientists have discovered a rift in the space-time continuum allowing vital personnel such as doctors, scientists and lawyers (I’m joking about the last one) plus lucky lottery winners to jump back 85 million years to Earth’s Cretaceous period. Fortunately, this Earth is also in an alternate time stream so the events of the past cannot affect the future.

In the new settlement of Terra Nova, doctor Elizabeth Shannon and her two children are secretly joined by her former cop and now prison escapee husband Jim and their illegal third child. Can they survive in a world populated by hungry dinosaurs living in a fenced village (or is it a hamlet, I can never remember) under military rule? Only future episodes and ratings will tell.

So far, things are looking up for this fledgling series. Ratings in the US are acceptable (just) and reviews have been generally positive with an aggregated score of 65% on Metacritic. Thirteen episodes have been ordered so at least we’ll get a decent story arc and season one box set to buy.

Executive producer Steven Spielberg has a mixed track record when it comes to television. He has overseen critical and popular hits such as The Pacific and The United States of Tara as well as flops such as Seaquest DSV and Amazing Stories. He is also not afraid of covering familiar ground and recycling old ideas. Alien abduction series Taken was a retread of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This year’s Falling Skies feels a lot like War of the Worlds. Band of Brothers was a close relation to Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment also produced Earth 2, a short-lived sci-fi series with an extremely similar premise to Terra Nova.

Reportedly Spielberg vetoed Terra Nova’s proposed filming location of Hawaii in favour of Queensland. Jurassic Park’s lush forest locations were mostly shot in Hawaii and Spielberg wanted to differentiate them from Terra Nova’s lush forest locations.

I’d like to suggest that it’s not the trees that would make viewers think that Terra Nova is Jurassic Park-lite. That would be the fenced compound, armoured vehicles and the, wait for it, dinosaurs.

It certainly hasn’t been smooth sailing for the show so far. The pilot episode premiere was pushed back from May to September due to delays in completing the visual CGI effects. One of thirteen executive producers, David Fury, departed due to creative differences, and torrential rain delayed filming and damaged sets in Queensland.

I enjoyed the two hour pilot episode. The no-name cast was appropriately believable, the set and locations decent and the dinosaurs menacing. My only gripe was that perhaps too much was packed into the storyline. The rebellious teenage son got himself in and then out of trouble. Dad was shunned and then accepted into the security team. We met the breakaway settlement (the bad guys) and they attacked. Dinosaurs ate stuff, including people. How could so much happen in one day? It’s a good thing the storyline has established that the time travelling is one way only, otherwise I’d be on the first trip back to the polluted future.

With a production budget of $4 million per episode, Terra Nova is one of the most expensive TV series ever. Decent sci-fi is hard to find so let’s hope it survives past one season. A good indication will be if it manages to hold onto its Sunday 8:30pm timeslot. The ominous sign of a shift to 11:30pm on Wednesday right after the Proactiv ads will be an indication that Terra Nova is an endangered species.

Terra Nova airs Sunday nights (for now) at 8:30pm on Ten.

Published in: on October 17, 2011 at 05:18  Leave a Comment  
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Transformers 3: less than meets the eye

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This column was originally published in the Central Western Daily on Tuesday 5th July 2011.

Like many movie goers this weekend, I took in a screening of the much anticipated Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Directed with the subtlety of a sledgehammer by Michael Bay (Bad Boys, Pearl Harbor, Armageddon), this 157 minute toy commercial was shot in 3D with the assistance of little known director, James Cameron. Mercifully, my session was in 2D. Whilst I was initially excited by the prospect of 3D cinema, I’m now over it completely. The glasses are uncomfortable and make me look like Buddy Holly pre-crash, plus I find the picture a little too dark and cannot follow the action.

The crazy thing about the Transformers sequels is that they are so unnecessarily complicated. I could not tell you what the storyline of the latest film is about. There’s plenty of running, explosions and shooting.  And not much of the movie takes place on the moon.

As a card carrying member of Generation X, I grew up playing with Transformers toys (I even had the opposition toy range, Machine Men or GoBots) and watching the cartoons. My dream Transformers movie would be the realisation of the battles that took place in my head and on the living room floor when I was a kid.

How about this for the perfect Transformers movie? Optimus Prime and the Autobots explore my mum’s kitchen in search of the Whisk of Power. The evil Megatron teams up with Skeletor and E.T. to locate the Egg Beater of Destiny in the second drawer down and the final battle takes place under the living room table. Chaos ensues until bedtime.

Seriously though, I’m struggling to recall anything that took place in Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Nothing has stuck. The trailer certainly made a greater impression. How sad.

And what’s with the title? Did Pink Floyd deny Paramount and Hasbro the rights to their famous album name? If that’s the case, why go with the nonsensical “Dark of the Moon” then? I guess it doesn’t matter. Considering the film is a mess, they probably should have gone with Transformers: A Momentary Lapse of Reason instead.

My recommendation is that you by-pass this holiday’s crop of mediocrity. Jim Carrey’s Mr Popper’s Penguins looks pretty dire. By all reports The Green Lantern is terrible. Harry Potter and the Cauldron of Penguins Part Seven may be the only hope for filmgoers.

If you have pay TV, stay at home and enjoy some of the landmark shows about to kick off. Boardwalk Empire, a 12 part series set in Prohibition era Atlantic City, has just concluded and was absolutely amazing. Executive produced by Martin Scorsese and starring Steve Buscemi, this gripping series was television storytelling at its best.

The next instalment in the Dr Who spinoff, Torchwood, will debut next Saturday. Entitled Torchwood: Miracle Day, John Barrowman returns as Captain Jack Harkness in this ten part season which will explore what happens when the population of Earth stop dying.

Finally, the much anticipated Game of Thrones, another big budget series and starring Sean Bean, will debut on July 17. Based on the popular books by George R. R. Martin, the show follows “kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars and noblemen as they vie for power.” I can’t wait.

Some of the best storytelling is taking place on your idiot box. With toy companies now in the filmmaking business, why not stay home and have a big night in?

Published in: on July 5, 2011 at 08:45  Leave a Comment  
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