Predators Review

Director: Nimrod Antal

Adrien Brody – Royce | Topher Grace - Edwin | Alice Braga – Isabelle | Walton Goggins - Stans | Oleg Taktarov – Nikolai | Laurence Fishburne – Noland | Danny Trejo – Cuchillo | Louis Ozawa Changchien -Hanzo | Mahershalalhashbaz Ali – Mombasa | Carey Jones – Berserker Predator / Tracker Predator / Falconer Predator | Brian Steele - Black Super Predator / Falconer Super Predator | Derek Mears – Classic Predator

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This film excited me with trailers and hype and my own anticipation.

Then I saw it.

Now?

Now I just want to watch the original and remind myself of what it was like to have a great Predator film.

When I first read Robert Rodriguez was doing the next Predator film I was sure the franchise would be in safe hands. He’s an accomplished director with a distinctive style and no stranger to hugely creative and over-the-top gun fights (guitar case rocket launcher!). As it turned out, Rodriguez wrote and produced the film with directorial duty handed over to the curiously named Nimrod Antal. Still, Rodriguez wrote it so not too much to worry about.

Then, after reading a three star review of the film on Empire’s website my excitement (and expectation) was curbed a little but I was still convinced I’d see a worthy rebirth and/or advancement of a franchise that had captured the imaginations of viewers and had an established universe thanks to some fantastic novels (‘Prey’, ‘Hunter’s Planet’ & ‘War’) yet had been criminally short-changed in the TERRIBLE Aliens Vs. Predator films.

Sadly, Empire was right. Predators is utterly unambitious and sits squarely in the exact same ‘fun-mindless-action-watch-once-and-forget’ genre of cinema occupied by its AvP forebears. It’s by no means as bad a film as either of the AvPs but it is big disappointment for anyone expecting originality or, at the very least, some development of the Predators culture and character.

The State Of Modern Warfare Part 4 – Devil’s Advocate

So, back to Modern Warfare 2 and that level where you gun down an entire airport terminal’s worth of innocents.

A question arises:

Where, after an airport massacre of innocents do you go next in a game?

What atrocity could you ‘top’ that with?

Well, you start taking real-world historical events and making them the subject of or a level within the next game. But, how far back do you go? How recent would something have to be before it’s considered distasteful?

Most wars have already been covered by one game or another. You can’t move in video game shops for titles set in various bits of the second world war, vietnam, the middle east, medieval and napoleonic times. No games about the Falklands though. Guess that one wasn’t big or bloody enough for the developers.

As I write this in 2010 would 2001 be far enough back in history yet to be the possible subject of Modern Warfare 3?

If so maybe it’ll be part of the game to have you and 3 others sneak weapons onto a commercial airliner, hijack & fly it into a building called something like ‘The World Finance Centre’.

The game could then switch to the point of view of someone caught in the building and you have to guide them out before it collapses (there’s a countdown clock in the top right of the screen). Then, after making your way past dead and dying colleagues and tourists you find the staircase.

When I Remove My CAPS LOCK Key I Want It To STAY Removed Thankyouvery-Bleddy-Much

Ok, so ages ago I decided that the irritation of accidentally clipping the CAPS LOCK key when hitting the SHIFT key was too much to bear anymore.

I levered the key off my keyboard altogether because, after all, how often do you need to WRITE MORE THAN A FEW WORDS LIKE THIS?

It now sits on my monitor stand so it doesn’t get lost and I’ve been getting on just fine with this arrangement.

Until today.

When I came into work this morning I discovered somebody has replaced the key on my keyboard.

Who was it? Who thinks I’m incapable of making the decision to remove this pesky thing from my keyboard?

I reckon it may have been a cleaner thinking they were being helpful. They weren’t.

HEY, CLEANER; leave those keys alone!

All in all it’s just a..
‘nother key in the board.

Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip – Rescue Rooms 17/03/10

I was initially made aware of Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip after hearing their most successful song (Thou Shalt Always Kill). Zane Lowe played it on his Radio 1 show while I was driving at night.

In particular it was the line “Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry” that pretty much instantly made me a fan. I did a bit of research when I got home & had the album a few days later.

And WOW, what an album.

Le Sac’s catchy infectious beats are delivered in his own unique rhythm and fashion but it’s the be-pseudonymed ‘Scroobius Pip’ who stands out. As a formidable, observant, succinct and entirely original lyricist he contradicts most what it means to be a successful hip hop artist in 2010.

Now, I quite like Sir Mix-A-Lot and a few other bits & bobs but I am no expert on hip hop, not even a fan of it really (so I speak here in broad strokes). Despite the genre’s decline into a seemingly never-ending line of hideously blinged-up wannabe gangster clowns in big jackets and silly hats yelling about guns, bitches and yet more bling Pip is the antithesis to this predictable and samey ASBO-by-numbers approach.

The Perils Of Cutting Out FrouFrou Hair In Photoshop & Commissioning Photo Shoots

I’ve had to give many a hair-do a haircut & blow dry in Photoshop throughout the last year.

The website of the company I work for has a profile pic & short biography for each employee & I’ve had to cut out every single one of them from a professionally shot source image.

The Magic Wand tool has been my friend through some trying times (it selects colour variants within a defined tolerance so with a single click you can sometimes select the whole background & delete it simply). I also gave the magnetic lasso a go, but does not like. It detects edges as you draw but isn’t very good at subtle colour/texture variance.

I also discovered & refined a method to make cut-outs have a softer edge without making them look obviously cut-out from whatever background they will then be pasted onto. I bound it to an F-key and got myself a system.

Then I created an automated action that generates 2 layers – one entirely black, one white to check for ‘Art Garfunkeling’ prior to saving:

This is all good and allowed good productivity gains by automating tasks where possible.

I now present the good & the bad from this whole process in the hope it may help anyone ready to avoid some of the pitfalls I’ve fallen down, but somehow managed to grab onto the edge of the pit mid-fall to narrowly avoid getting speared on the sharp spikes of death below.

The State Of Modern Warfare Part 3 – Silly Violent Nonsense

“10 people will fight, 8 people will die.
You get to watch.”

- tagline for the film ‘The Condemned’

Picture the scene: you get home from work & switch the TV on. It’s the news.

A notorious, yet elusive, illegal immigrant with known gang connections and a chequered history of crime & prison time back in his own country stole a car earlier today. He ran over 12 pedestrians, caused 3 serious road accidents involving other vehicles and finally rammed the (now almost completely undriveable) stolen vehicle into the side a house. Bloody, bruised and shaken up he emerged from the wreckage and made a break for it. He was chased on foot by police officers, a police helicopter joined the pursuit, along with a news helicopter from the local news station.

Despite being relatively lightly armed with a handgun, he and fired several shots at his pursuers, killing two officers and 3 innocent bystanders before being taken down by a SWAT team lying in wait a couple of streets away.

What I just described is pretty much Grand Theft Auto IV; the basic game formula is ‘steal this, go there, shoot that’.

These kinds of highly criminal and destructive acts are, in real life, the pursuit of a tiny minority of society’s bastards. If someone in real life strung together all those things in the above paragraph it would no doubt be called a ‘REIGN OF TERROR’, ‘A RAMPAGE OF DEATH’ or some other similarly formulaic tabloid headline. It would make news around the world (and quite rightly so).

In the non-reality of gaming however (and GTA IV in particular), doing these things is not only possible, but encouraged and rewarded. If you can do all these things then escape the scene, lower your ‘wanted’ level, lay low and eventually let the heat die down you can go about Liberty City as if nothing ever happened the next (in-game) day.

If I escaped and did this or was actually caught & shot by the police after the events described above I certainly wouldn’t wake up stood outside a hospital a few hours later, all my wounds having been miraculously healed and free to go about my business as if nothing had happened. GTA IV is deliberately not life-like (well, not for most of us), it’s not trying to tell you what is right or wrong. It deliberately allows you to indulge in being a ‘bad guy’.

Most importantly though, it’s just a game. It’s just ‘silly violent nonsense’.

This game (and Modern Warfare 2) has caused outrage.

But why? They’re both just ‘silly violent nonsense’.

Die Apokalyptischen Reiter – Rock City 21/02/10

Wow. What a band.

Before being asked by my mate Joel if I’d like to be his +1 (he reviewed the gig for the Nottingham Evening Post, which is here if you’d like to read it!) I had never heard of this mob.

With the brief, but succinct (and entirely accurate) description: “If you like Rammstein you’ll probably like them” I was well up for it.

Die Apokalyptischen Reiter have the songs, the musicianship, the creativity, the diversity and the charisma to stand on their own merit alongside any of their contemporaries and compatriots.

The great thing about the most obviously comparable band, Rammstein, breaking out as big as they did is they’ve opened the ears and sparked the interest of non-German speakers to foreign-language music, paving the way for bands like Reiter to have a wider audience to play in front of. Bloody good thing too.

WWE Unplugs Survivor Series’ Life Support.

So WWE has decided the Survivor Series concept is dead and beyond help.

Well, in truth it’s been dead (as far as the original concept goes) since the mid-90′s.

Like ECW in the late 90′s, WWE has put it through the ‘Vincer’ and changed it to be so far removed and unrecognisable from the original idea that the original unique selling point has been lost & it’s simply become a neglected, directionless and ultimately aborted project.

Lance Storm has made an AWESOME point on his fortnightly guest spot on Figure Four Daily (at www.f4wonline.com) which is proof this man should not only be booking WWE but running it too:

“Instead of saying the Survivor Series concept is dead, why don’t we just say “the concept of shitty building to a PPV is dead” instead? Let’s deal with the real problem.”

And he’s right; it’s not that the original concept is dead, it’s a HORRIBLE build up to the event that can kill most PPV’s. And, like I said above, the Survivor Series has gone from being a unique offering to just another shitty show with just another shitty undercard and just another shitty Orton/Cena / Triple H match probably as the headliner.

10 Things To Do With A Frisbee, 10 Things NOT To Do With A Michael Frisbee.

Where to start?

First of all, fuck off with your Comic Sans and have strong words with your layout artist. If it were possible to catch migraines or epilepsy I’d now have both as a result of looking at this.

So here’s those so-called ‘top tips’ again. But are they actually as ‘top’ as they claim to be? Or are they actually middle? Or perhaps even bottom…?

Damage Limitation, A Negligent Father & Nipple Clamps Are For Slags

When I look at the last time I posted something here I feel ashamed and prostrate myself in front of the literally 9 of you who read this thing.

I am chastened & bowed for my lack of contact and if this blog were my child then the CSA would definitely be sending burly cockerneys round my gaff to kick down my front door, call me a slag and try to convince my lower intestine to start shitting £50 notes or it’s time for the vice, the hammer and the nipple clamps (if the CSA even exists anymore, that is).

It’s not for a lack of ideas that I haven’t updated anything, It’s a lack of time.

Actually, as I typed that I realised it’s a lie and, like Loreal tells us all; “You’re worth it” (or whichever souless cosmetic company uses that as their tagline). Or rather, to paraphrase; you’re worth not being lied to.

I’ve got at least 6 things either drafted or in my head to write but haven’t. There may be a content frenzy over the course of the next two weeks, there may not be. But there will definitely be at least two three things in the next week for sure, or for those of you reading who speak jive: fo’ sho’.

For a start I need to finish off this immense gaming thing I’ve been writing. Maybe it’s time to stop fiddling with it & just click the ‘Publish’ button. I can always go back & redo it.

It’s not gone unnoticed either that during my absence this blog celebrated it’s year anniversary and, like a father who’s child tells a counsellor how his dad was never there for him when he was a kid, I was nowhere to be seen.

Seems little point in celebrating now as it’s about five weeks since the actual ‘birthday’ so to speak. And still, like an absent father, I can’t even be bothered to remember it’s birthday.

I’m a horrible person. No, I’m not.  This blog is NOT a child and if anything I’m just a bad admin. This blog will not one day be describing my negligence to Google. Not unless the machines get all ‘self-aware’ & take over.

Which they almost certainly will. James Cameron doesn’t lie.

I think the main change since it started has been the gradual change from it being something I do ritually regardless of what’s going on to something i do whenever i get the chance/can be bothered.

Setting aside time to write every day would be ideal if I was a self employed writer and didn’t have a ‘real’ job and a hundred other things to do or think about. Then again, my life and reality are whatever I choose them to be so if I really wanted to, I could find the time.

I remember this time last year ranting and moralising about how we wouldn’t do anything if we didn’t find the time and now I should go back & read that to give myself a kick up the nose. See, this blog is useful for something! If only to me.

Once.

In over a year.

Still, I have to go, there appears to be two burly men knocking on my door. Wonder what they want…?