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.

While AvP took my excitement,  folded it into a towel and beat me with it, Predators instead took my excitement and gently placed it to one side while repeatedly reminding me over and over and over and OVER AGAIN how much better the original was and how this film is nothing but a huge fan of it. It got so infuriating that, by half-way through I was wondering how Rodriguez and Antal could be so utterly shameless in repeatedly ripping off the John McTiernan-helmed original.

When the film starts and (what sounds like) the original Alan Silvestri-penned score from the ’87 classic kicks in, you’re taken straight back to the forbidding cloying jungle atmosphere. This is a great callback to the original, but when you’re more than halfway through the film’s 106 minute runtime and still convinced the original score has been copied & pasted wholesale the novelty value disappears and just seems like a frugal (lazy) way of saving a few bob on a composer. Apparently a different composer is involved (John Debney) and has created new music for the film, but if all it takes to be a Hollywood composer is a PC, a copy of Pro Logic Audio and pressing the Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V keys, then hell, I’M a Hollywood composer. Even if this new score IS different, it’s just too closely modelled on the original to stand on its own.

In fact, you know what? Just watch the original.

At best this 2010 ‘sequel’ seems more like an early draft of the original before it was fine-tuned and had steroids liberally pumped into it. Steroids may be bad for the health, but 80′s film scripts were awesome because of the knowingly over-the-top hulking bodies that lumped around in them killing and wise cracking their way to box office success.

When a film is so in love with its own heritage that at least 50% of it is a straight-up remake and the other half is nowhere near as memorable as that source material you have to question what the point of making the thing was in the first place, and who greenlighted what is essentially an inferior tribute act.

I won’t go into full-on rant mode and list exhaustively the similarities and, at times, shameless plundering from the original film, but here’s a few of the main offenders:

• ‘spiritual’ bloke #1  ’senses’ a cloaked predator in the trees and stares upward transfixed until someone snaps him out of it. Cut to Predator’s heat vision staring back at them invisibly.
• muscular guy has a minigun
• spiritual bloke #2 stops, turns around, ditches top half of clothes, draws blade & awaits honourable one-on-one battle with Predator
• there is another ‘chopper’ to get to.
• hispanic woman knows more than she lets on initially and eventually spills the a mass of back story to the mystified men
• muscular mud-covered leader bloke has climactic hand-to-hand battle of primal manliness with Mr. Super Predator (yes, they really called it a ‘Super Predator’).
• Mac’s whispered “Turn around” and “Over here” lines are unfathomably reused (no logical reason for this other than mindless homage)

And so the list drags on (and on) to the point where it’s so distracting it’s more like spot the ‘homage’ which just takes you out of the film completely. There are, however, brief interludes that could be rays of light where Rodriguez & Antal aren’t yelling about how amazing the original film is and instead provide originality and their own telling of the story. So what happens in these bits?

Not much.

Where the original was full of cheesy marine characters that all had distinct personalities, one-liners, muscles, sweat and a relatively believable set-up & double cross this version has nothing of note. The original team of military types were all ‘good guys’ who’d gone into Guatemala on a search & rescue mission for missing comrades. They took out an entire village of bad guys before being picked of by the Predator, therefore we actually rooted for them to survive and the film made us care when someone was taken out by how the team-mates reacted to it.

The characters in Predators are, with a couple of exceptions, all utter bastards that we want to see dead. Death row rapist inmate? South African death squad warlord? Mexican drug cartel enforcer? Yakuza member? Why should we give two shits about these guys? We shouldn’t. So it’s all down to the torture-porn nature of how they meet their creative demise.

That, at least, delivers some great & gory dispatchings of these guys but there’s no emotional impact. They were bastards, they deserved to die.

And, in the case of the death row inmate there was a moment of absolutely squirm-inducing scripting. Where he’s considering what he’ll do if he escapes, he says “I’m gonna rape so many bitches”. That line right there, I hated it. Maybe someone thought it was needed so we don’t become too fond of this guy, but the reaction of the guy he says it to is a laugh moment for the audience. That made me feel very uneasy. Then, when this guy is about to die later on, he makes a dramatic last stand, jumping on the back of a Predator and attempts to stab it to death. The rapist is given a hero’s last stand that actually makes you want to root for him. He does, of course get OWNED by the Predator and has his spinal column & skull removed quicksmart for his trouble, but that whole sequence made me feel very uncomfortable.

Lawrence Fishburn shows up in his new fat suit (oh, wait… that’s not a suit) as a loony survivor who serves ZERO purpose apart from to give some exposition on what’s going on and where they are. He’s then taken out in an appropriately inglorious manner which makes you wonder how he survived long enough to claim and use the Predator mask, cloaking device and rifle he brandishes (and which disappear off into the ether, never to be seen again).

While Adrien Brody may well have employed Christian Bale’s Batman voice coach to learn ’Generic Husky Growl #1′ anyone who’s seen the original will be able to remember most of the set-piece deaths and most of the eminently quotable script (“I ain’t got time to bleed”, “If it bleeds, we can kill it” , “You’re one ugly motherfucker” etc…).

In this film there is literally not a SINGLE memorable line. Maybe the problem is trying to make a sequel to a classic film that’s still fun and quoted 23 years after it was made. Maybe you just can’t escape the shadow of such an iconic picture? The much maligned (and, in my opinion, underrated) Predator 2 at least has its own identity, developed the premise (and the weaponry) and moved the action to the city in a credible way. The set up to this film literally drops from the sky in what Roger Ebert describes hilariously (and accurately) as:

“the first film in history to open with a deus ex machina. Yes, the entire plot and all the human characters drop into the movie from the heavens. The last thing they remember is a blinding flash of light. Now they’re in free fall, tumbling toward the surface, screaming, grabbing for ripcords on the parachutes that they didn’t know they had.”

Waking up plummeting to the surface of an alien planet is a great way to just jump into the action without having to set anything up, but in doing so we have no connection with the characters. Would it have been so bad to have a 1-2 minute back story for each person, showing where they were & what they were doing prior to their abduction?

Where the original had snatches of funny interaction in the helicopters en route to the jungle that established relationships and characters this has a bunch of people thrown together who you literally don’t care one way or the other what happens to them. Even the main guy Royce is a cold loner from the start, lacking the confident leadership and trust of his team and 95% of the charisma that Arnie had in the role.

And, say what you will about Arnie’s acting skills, but he was MADE for that role (well, that and the Terminator). Minimal talking, maximum bicep badassery. Adrien Brody is not even on the same planet (literally and figuratively) as Major Dutch Schaefer. And, by the way Adrien, soldiers don’t look like fitness models. You didn’t need to get ripped to be credible. You are a skinny guy and look ridiculous all blown up like a balloon with a six pack. In fact, don’t take roles that involve being ripped and shooting things. We’ve got Jason Statham and Gerard Butler for that, and at least they provide their gruff voices with comically bad American accents.

This film is adds nothing to the Predator story or universe; it’s entirely unneccessary. We learn nothing new.

Actually, no,  that’s not entirely true. We do encounter a captured Predator who looks just like the creature from the first film (credited as the ‘Classic Predator). Naturally, this Predator was almost invincible right to the last minute of the first two films so I assumed him being tied up was some sort of trap and wondered how it’s going to trick these silly meatbag humans, while preparing myself for a shocking ‘jump’ moment where he jerks awake and stares at them.

The shock happens, as predictably as it’s setup but, alas, the trap has been set by a different species of Predator. You see, the Predator who was such a badass in the first film is actually the weaker of the Predator species. So, the creature that so terrified and fascinated us all those years ago is actually on a similar social level in their culture as a 7-year-old Victorian chimney sweep would be in ours, spending most of the film hanging limply from a rock like a string of sausages going off in the sun.

What a fantastic way to establish a new, more terrifying villain you may think.

Nope.

What a fantastic way to kill off the mystique of one of the iconic cinema monsters on the 20th century. The Aliens Vs. Predator arcade introduced the races of Predator idea but they divided it logically into two roles; Hunter and Warrior:

In a videogame they managed to instantly establish two distinct races of a species without putting in an arbitrary ‘class war’ story that goes nowhere and just weakens the supposed ‘honour’ the race is supposed to have. As a side note, they even put Arnie’s Major Dutch Schaefer from the original film as a playable character (albeit it with a ‘cyborg’ story, but it’s him!).

The Linn Kurosawa character also seems to be Machiko Noguchi from the novels with a different name and a similar cyborg thing going on. They sure like their cyborgs back then.

Anyway, back to the review…

I know the Batman analogy is all played out and a massive cliché but there was a Batman vs. Predator crossover comic so the comparison isn’t that inappropriate; Tim Burton’s 1989 version of Batman was awesome when it came out and remained a critical & commercial success (and was the first 12 rated film I saw at the cinema, aged 11!). Then, years later, Christopher Nolan gave us Batman Begins which blew it away and left it looking a bit camp and foolish like a man standing in front of a crowd in just his vest & pants. Then, the The Dark Knight was released and made Batman Begins look inferior. It built on an already great film in every way and was a better film in every way.

THAT’S what a sequel should do. Unfortunately, Nimrod Antal and Robert Rodriguez have had the ‘Reverse Nolan’ effect on Predator; they make you realize how much better the original was.

I left the cinema knowing I’d go home & re watch Arnie many more times but probably never watch Brody ever again.

And finally,  if like me, you’d prefer to forget the AvP  films happened, either read the crossover books I mentioned at the start of this review or download MAME (Multiple Arcade Emulator) and find a ROM of the Aliens Vs. Predator arcade game from the 90′s. There’s fun in that than both films put together.

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.

Down you go,  jumping over rubble, dropping down through gaps in floors helping people as you go. Eventually you near the bottom of the (seemingly neverending) stairs with the people you’ve found on the way you get to a dead end. A sign on the wall says ‘Floor 10′ .

What do you do, where do you go? There’s got to be a way out, right?

Wrong.

You backtrack a few floors up but you’re blocked in as the building is crumbling and becoming engulfed in fire all around you. You desperately run around, coughing and sweating from the dust, acrid fumes & flames. There must be way out.

There’s always a way out in the movies, and in the videogames.

Only then do you realise there is no way out. You’re trapped in a burning building, surrounded by the bodies of a variety of people you’ve said “hello” to on the way into & out of work. The clock in the top right corner reaches the last ten seconds of it’s countdown. You look at the blocked stairs, you look at the window. Stairs, window, window, stairs.

3 seconds left.

You see the main support beams going up through the floor start to violently bend and eventually give way.

The building starts to disintegrate.You realise you have only two options;

1, Stay where you.

2, Jump out of the window.

It doesn’t matter which you choose. You and thousands of others inside and in the surrounding area of the building are dead mere seconds later. You were never getting out alive.

The next level loads.

How long before the September 11th (US) and July 7th (UK) attacks translate into game missions? Ten years? Five? Next year?

I predict that a game will contain something similar in the next ten years, maximum.

It will probably have people and politicians recoiling in disgust at the bad taste of it all (and rightly so), but it’s just the modern equivalent of games that recreate past war scenarios or acts of terrorism.

The 2nd World War was horrific for all involved, yet now we think nothing (or very little) of recreating that nightmare to entertain us because it’s distanced from us by time.

Can you imagine showing the D-Day beach landing scene from Call Of Duty to a veteran who was actually there in on the 6th of June 1944?

Not only would it probably disgust them that this is now considered a game and entertainment but how would you feel if they had flashbacks of their friends and comrades being killed all around them and broke down crying? Same goes for the similar scene in Saving Private Ryan.

Maybe that’s the perspective we need to remind ourselves of, although I do think there’s more artistic merit by recreating it in a movie to show the brutality and realism than a video game.

In the movie the soldiers don’t die then click ‘try again’ and are reset back to the save point to try again yet, in Modern Warfare 2, when your character dies the screen blurs heavily and a quote about the futility, violence,  loss or (surprisingly) the benefit of war appears;

“Only the dead have seen the end of war” - Plato

“If our country is worth dying for in time of war let us resolve that it is truly worth living for in time of peace.” - Hamilton Fish

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” – Ghandi

“A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won’t cross the street to vote.” – Bill Vaughan

“If you are ashamed to stand by your colours, you had better seek another flag.” – Anonymous

A game that, on the one hand, gives you permission to massacre innocents and puts you square in the situations where, as a highly trained special forces operative, you’re encouraged to kill non-stop will then stop to remind you how awful war is when you happen to die in-game?

It’s like the game is saying to you:

“Yeah, go on kill those motherfuckers, stab them, shoot them, blow them up. Isn’t this brilliant?! Look at all these big shiny weapons you can use to kill all these evil-doers. These people must be killed and you’re the guy who gets to do it. Quick, kill that guy over there, stab his face in, quick!!

Oh, you’re dead.

Of course if you enjoy this game then just think for a minute about how horrific war is and how many people have suffered and died. If only we as a race could learn that war isn’t the answer to anything and we should leanr to wage peace on other nations instead of war.

Still… would you like to have another go though?

Coz war is LOADS of fun and like really exciting and you get kill loads of people with guns… Go on, have another go.

Perhaps a bit of a mixed message there?

Games and movies are all about perspective though. It’s all about your point of view. We assume ourselves to be the ‘good’ guys. But do the guys we assume to be the ‘bad’ guys also thinkl of themselves as the ‘good’d guys, or at the very least the righteous or justified guys?

Part 5 of this ridiculously long and rambling thing will attempt to address this. It may be coming soon, it may not. Who knows. It’s taken me about 5 months to get 4 parts written. So tired.

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.

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.

Indeed, he addresses this point in Thou Shalt Always Kill with the line;

“Thou shalt always remember that guns, bitches and bling were never part of the four elements, and never will be”.

What Pip is an expert at (apart from growing a quite excellent beard) is the art & form of lyrics. He’s what you might call ’old school’ in his approach to writing and the execution of telling a story musically. It’s this that separates him from most other contemporary rappers. He makes political, social and economic observations that are well thought out and provoke debate.

In short, he’s a man with a lot to say and the talent to say it better than wot I cans.

Nowhere is this better showcased than on the quite stunning songs ‘A Letter From God To Man’, ‘The Magician’s Assistant’ and the eponymous title track from first album ‘Angles’ (about religion, self harm and abuse respectively). Here Pip’s ability to present multiple sides of an argument without judgement of what is right or wrong is like no other I’ve ever heard.

This is all relevant to explaining how they were live by the way! I’m explaining all this to give you my slant on them as a unit, why I like them and why I would go & see them live.

For me it’s about the lyrics first and the music second. I could listen to Scroobius Pip do an unplugged set on his own as, for me, the music is a bonus. I don’t mean that to sound dismissive of Dan Le Sac’s contribution to the whole or his ability behind the decks – he’s a mightily talented (if thin-on-top) chap. It’s a great bonus too as what they do together really forms something special.

In the venue, on the night though Dan Le Sac’s music was too loud and Pip’s vocals too low in the mix. Unfortunately this spoilt the impact of those songs where the storytelling and delivery of the vocals is supposed to be the focus.

As a band they’re extremely hard to pigeon-hole into a genre. The best I can come up with is Hip-Hop Electronica. This crossover means the crowd they draw aren’t (like me) exclusively hip-hop or electronica  lovers specifically, but a diverse mix of people who simply love good music when they hear it.

Strange then, that they amped up and tinkered with every song so the music was faster, louder & more aggressive than on record. But what they’re pitching live isn’t what drew me to see them and ultimately left me glad to have seen them live but left feeling a little disappointed.

Live they’re a more confusing prospect than any other gig I’ve been to. The crowd, while obviously loving the music seemed to be a bit confused in how to react to the majority of the set.

To be presented on the one hand with eminently danceable beats is one thing but when the lyrical accompaniment makes serious points about suicide, self harm, relationship breakdown or politics then what do you do? You could go nuts dancing to the fast & intense music or sit back & enjoy the ride the lyrics take you on. You can’t do both. And this is what left the audience in a strange kind of unsure funk.

New album ‘The Logic Of Chance’ is more electronica & dance oriented in the music and the songs will go down a storm once the fan base are familiar with them. The album had only been released two days before this gig so the new stuff got limited response.

The banter between the two onstage was great and in-between taking the mickey out of each other Scroobius did acknowledge the contradictory nature of the music & lyrics;

“So three songs in & we’ve covered suicide & self harm, that’s good going. Nice & upbeat!”

I will say though that despite this strange clash of styles it was a good gig and very enjoyable, if somewhat confusing.

Sadly support act B Dolan was a bit nondescript.

If you’re a rapper and the highlight of your set is taking off your shirt to reveal an Evil Kneviel uniform, putting on a cape and leapfrogging a squatting member of the audience perhaps you should re-evaluate your act and move into variety or cabaret.

In an amusing post script to this review, a girl stood next to me was texting a mate all the way through the gig to tell him how “sh1t hot” it was.

Obviously not sh1t hot enough to divert her attention from the phone for more than 3 minutes at a time or to stop her from nattering loudly to her equally blond mate all the time. Bloody kids.

Weird gig, all in all.

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.

Good things:

• Bald men,
• Men with turbans,
• Women with short hair,
• Women with straight hair.

All these things are very easy to cut around and generally make my working day easier to cope with. The following things are the opposite of these things.

Bad Things:

• People wearing similar coloured clothing to that of the background,
• Photographer always ensuring the presence of a huge green plant either behind or over the right shoulder of each person,
• 300 people all wanting to see the whole portfolio of their session to choose the ‘best’ photo,
• ‘Froufrou’ hair do’s (see again the above image of Mr Garfunkel).
• People looking miserable on EVERY pic and still moaning that there’s not a single ‘good’ picture of them
• Photographer (a frustrated fashion pap?) leaning into increasingly trendy angles of shot, thus ensuring 50% of pics are unusable/have no right shoulder.
• “Can you make me look younger?” requests.
• Cleavage-exposing blouse wearers complaining it looks like a page 3 shot
• In relation to the above, same people usually moan they haven’t had their hair/nails/makeup/eyebrows cut/applied/plucked (usually accompanied by a “can you just”… Photoshop request)
• People not turning up to their pre-booked shoot slot (despite agreeing to do so), then sending an irate email asking why they aren’t on the website yet.
• After being told “Sorry, but I have 300 of these to do and can’t send out pics to every fee-earner for approval. Please be assured I’m choosing the best pic for each person” getting a reply saying “I understand, but I’d still like to see them please.”
• After seeing the finished pic on the website, getting an email saying “I don’t like the picture you’ve chosen, please use this one instead” (‘this one’ is either a vastly inferior shot from the same session or some horrible low-res pic from a 1Mp phone camera).
• Explaining to people each of them has a ‘formal’ shot (tie & suit jacket for the men, suit jacket for women) and an ‘informal’ shot (no suit jacket & tie optional for the men, no suit jacket for women) then getting the “I understand but…” email (see above)
• Trying to figure out how to automate an action that takes each cropped image (300 source images) and generates 10 versions of each, each with one of our corporate colours as a background (result – 3,000 output images).
• Watching Adobe do a 2 minute long WSOP (White Screen Of Paralysis) when asked to do anything as unusual & demanding as opening or saving a file that’s any bigger than 72DPI.
• Listening to the internal fans of my PC rev up to take-off speed when performing the above two actions.

As you can see it’s about 80/20 in favour of bad over good in this situation. so if you have to do any of this stuff now you’re in the know about the realities of the job.

Fore-warned is fore-armed.

- 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’.

Go watch the films Gone In 60 Seconds, Scarface, Menace II Society and any one of the Saw films. You’ll see aspects of Grand Theft Auto in parts of those films. What you’ll also see are depictions of violence far more vivid, ‘real-life’ looking  and sadistic than anything you’ll see in the GTA video game. Indeed GTA: Vice City was pretty much a complete lifting of the Scarface film verbatim then slightly tinkered with to create an entertaining, time-consuming (and critically, a Scarface copyright-infringement avoiding) game. As advanced as any current video game may be, they’re simply not photo-realistic enough to look anywhere near as ‘real’ as actual events, actual people or an actual movie.

So could a person who looks at GTA or Modern Warfare (or any game where the primary function is violence or crime) be the same person who, without the video game would mimic events from films, TV or even comic books?

How about if all it takes is watching a movie or playing a game to trigger such a psychotic episode? Then surely that person cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality or right from wrong.. This person must then be, in all likelihood, an undiagnosed sociopath.

If it’s not a video game, a movie, a voice, a vision, a dream or a song that is the ‘claimed’ reason for going nuts it will have to be pinned on something. That person, the people around them or the media will have to place the blame on SOMETHING. No-one can just accept that things can just happen with very little conceivable reason.

When someone suffers depression some people may ask: “Well, what are you depressed about?” then proceed to reel off a list of reasons why they shouldn’t be depressed.

Well, it’s not that they’re necessarily depressed about something, they just are. It can be entirely independent of reason or ‘things’. It’s not simply a matter of the person feeling better by confronting the reason, eating some chocolate or going out & forgetting about it. Depression doesn’t have to be about something, it just is.

This whole misunderstanding has an effect and is the reason why musicians, games and movies get the blame for entirely unrelated incidents when people claim to have been violently ‘inspired’ by Marilyn Manson. This will be leapt upon by the media so they can lay the blame somewhere. The truth however is very different. Far more people have enjoyed the music of Marilyn Manson and been entertained by his music both on record and at the live venue. Still more will have been positively influenced to go off and start their own band, write lyrics and poetry or paint like Mr Manson does.

The much vilified (but ultimately utterly harmless in the great scheme of things) 2004 game ‘Manhunt‘ is another good example of media hyperbole and tabloid witch hunting for an easy scapegoat to peg societal problems on (a common implication which police always later reject after investigation)…

Most of ‘Manhunt’ is spent stealthily executing people in elaborate & ultraviolent ways with whatever bits of improvised weaponry are to hand. The people you must kill to advance in the game are also trying to kill you by the way. The person in charge of the whole thing is a producer and he’s filming the whole thing & broadcasting it to a TV audience. In fact, the whole game is basically ‘The Running Man’ put into game format (and again altered just enough to avoid any copyright unpleasantries). I’ve seen no evidence of this game resulting in a dramatic rise in the numbers of people being suffocated with plastic bags, faces being smashed off with baseball bats or stabbings in both eyes with huge shards of glass.

It’s incredibly violent yes, and wantonly so, but absolutely no more violent than a lot of gore-based horror films. And it’s not being acted out by real people and with a host of special effects to make everything look absolutely as ‘real’ as possible.

Ever seen ‘The Condemned’ starring ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin? It’s full of shocking violence and a rape scene (and is very similar in concept to The Running Man, even down to the rape scene, now I think about it). I certainly didn’t like the rape scene and thought it absolutely did not need to be in the film. But when it comes to a question of whether or not I enjoyed the film as a whole (rape scene notwithstanding), as Stone Cold himself would say; ”Hell Yeah!”

Enjoying this, or any other violent film does not make me (or you) a bad person though.

Go here and read about the film and the characters. It’s shockingly violent. Enjoyable, yet violent. Media outlets are conspicuous in their silence when it comes to the violence and rape in this movie. Newspapers aren’t going foaming dog crazy about “moral standards” with this film.

The Condemned was largely written off as ‘silly violent nonsense’ by most of the film critics and this is absolutely the best way to treat it and (similarly violent) games; silly violent nonsense.

In fact, the game Manhunt could almost be what the producers of The Condemned looked at as their inspiration. There are many similarities. One similarity the game does NOT share with the movie though is that rape scene. Even without this the game still makes headlines as being ultraviolent and disgusting. But, the film does have a rape scene, yet that doesn’t get anywhere near the coverage.

The scene itself is completely unneccessary and could’ve been left out altogether without affecting the storyline. The bad guy who actually does it is plenty bad enough already and the viewer hates him enough without adding ‘rapist’ to his portfolio of bastardry. He even rapes this woman in front of her injured husband who is powerless and unable to do anything about it. It’s really that bad.

Transpose just the violence of this film to a video game and that on its own is enough to spark an outrage. Imagine if there was a rape scene in the game too? Just imagine the outrage. The game would be banned without a second thought.

So why is it acceptable to have rape acted out in a film (and portrayed as real) but within a game (by definition not real and not close to actually looking real) that has an 18 certificate and is absolutely not marketed to kids yet it’s not acceptable?

The more you look at this example the darker the conclusion. Is the movie acceptable because people are so used to seeing rape in movies that it just passes under the radar?

I think that is the reason and that scares me. That’s an indication of a sick society.

Incidentally, the sequel to Manhunt (the imaginatively titled ‘Manhunt 2′) does (or did) have a rape scene in it. It was immediately banned. Although it was eventually okayed and released it was only after a lot of violent content was toned down, removed or reinterpreted. I’m not sure if the rape scene remained. I hope it didn’t.

I feel like somewhat of a hypocrite to say on the one hand that I believe rape in video games to be going too far when on the other I completely advocate violent video games and describe them as silly violent nonsense. I’m not sure where the line is drawn in my own head, never mind trying to write it down and describe it. Maybe it’s just a matter of what I’m desensitized to and what offends me personally.

And that’s why it’s so hard to have the discussion; it’s all entirely subjective. I may get offended at a rape scene in a video game, someone else won’t. I won’t get offended by a game where carjacking, robbery and violence is the main thrust of the gameplay, someone else will.

Neither I, nor you, have any more or less right to say what’s right or wrong than the next person. Even of the next person is a moron.

So, back to the game I’m specifically dealing with in this whole series of writings (and the game which I’ve hardly talked about so far…); Modern Warfare 2…

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.

Rammstein’s biggest flaw, in my opinion, has always been their lack of diversity of sound. They become samey after a listen through of any one of their albums (although these days their biggest flaw is that they simply aren’t anywhere near as good as they used to be, but that’s another rant for another day).

Anyway, all comparisons aside, occupying a genre of music and having a great sensibility for entertainment & theatrics (as well as the music) is not something exclusively the domain of any one band.

Reiter’s performance was both diverse (as far as sub genre influence goes) and yet they too suffered from sounding a little samey toward the end (apart from that wacky Eurovision-style ‘Metal Will Never Die’ song!).

Perhaps my lack of Germanic-language fluency goes some way to explaining why this may be. Perhaps not speaking ‘das lingo’ means I’m removed a little from truly loving the music AND understanding it (maybe in a similar way as a foreign language subtitled films) but despite having NO idea what the non-English parts were all about (and despite the singer explaining what most songs were about prior to launching into them) they were still compulsive viewing and listening.

It won’t surprise me if they’re at Download this year opening up the main stage on Friday. A larger stage will free them up to fill the space with their ideas and irrepressible energy. But, constrained as they were to the tiny Disco 2 stage, they still managed to fill both stage and venue with more performance, theatrics and charisma than most bands on the main stage upstairs manage with ten times the space.

Highlights of these shenanigans were the aforementioned fan who was invited onstage and then both serenaded and stalked by Fuchs as she danced and he belted out his enormous voice. She then spent most of the rest of the gig either stood next to Dr Pest (their gimp-on-a-swing, cat o’ nine tails wielding keyboardist), being whipped by said Doctor or set afloat in a giant (fully inflated) rubber dinghy atop the crowd, whom she surfed above of rather majestically.

The visual of seeing Fuchs brandish and wave a giant flag with his band’s logo emblazoned upon it in a huge arc was impressive to witness, not only for the visual but also for the ability to do it in on such a small stage without knocking himself, a fellow band member or someone in the audience out cold.

Theatrics and stage gimmickry only get you so far though. And when you’re not striking poses, leaning over the audience looking mean, waving huge flags or kneeling at the feet of/whipping/setting sailing to a bemused audience member you and your band have to be able to ‘go’.

Good job then that Fuchs has an awesome voice and vocal range. Guttural black metal rumblings, anthemic/epic metal soarings, menacing spoken wordings and even that Eurovision pop metal number were all expertly within his chords’ reach.

His smile infectious from the start, he, and the entire band were clearly having an absolute whale of a time.

Set highlights for me were the awesomely anthemic ‘Adrenalin’ and, to break up the set, an epic percussion instrumental.

With drummer front & center leading the whole band, they put together quite the epic drum soundscape that was as impressive as it was booming.

A bit out of place? Perhaps.

A bit of a faff logistically to get everything on & then off stage again for this one bit? Definitely.

But, as mentioned before, a larger stage (on which they’ll surely be playing on subsequent visits to these shores) will free them up to do this, and possibly even more. And, despite this slight lull and  brief loss of  momentum, they soon easily kicked it back up to the previously loud volume and full steam ahead speed. To me it all served as showcasing another string from the band’s very well-strung bow.

All in all, an excellent band, a great gig and a great way to spend a freezing cold Sunday evening.

Still not sure about that ‘Metal Will Never Die’ song though.

And look; I wrote 600 words about German music without using the word ‘Teutonic’ once!

Oh, wait a minute.

Shit.

“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.”

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…?

1, Fill With birdseed and put in your garden...
…so your garden looks like a bunch of kids have left their stuff everywhere. Just buy a birdtable. That way the birds may stand a chance of surviving the local cats.

2, Keep by your kettle to put your used teabags on…
…what are you saving them for? In case the bomb drops and there’s a rush on PG Tips? Or the economy finally collapses for good & they’re the highest form of currency? Just put them in the bin.

3, They’re perfect as snack plates for a party…
…no they’re not.

Guest:  “Is this a FRISBEE?”
You: “Yeah, great idea eh?!”
Guest: “Oh…….right….y’know, I think I’ll just have a beer, I ate before I came out”.

4, Use one as a painting palette. You can drill a large hole to put your thumb through…
…drill a large hole your own head to put your thumb through.

5, A small frisbee can be kept by the sink as a soap dish…
…no it can’t.

6, Carefully drill small holes through the middle and use to pan for gold…

…Your name isn’t ‘Billy Bob’ and it’s not the 19th century American midwest. See point 4.

7, Use as a dirty spoon holder…
…your mum’s a dirty spoon holder.

8, Paint your own design on it and hang it on the wall…
…if you’re working in a mental health occupational therapy unit.

9, Create a UFO mobile for kids, it will keep them amused for hours…
…no it won’t.

10, Use as a dog bowl for either food or water for your pet…
… and be prepared for a visit from your friendly neighbourhood RSPCA warden. A dog’s daily food & water intake should be more than half an inch deep & most of that’ll spill all over your kitchen floor anyway. Dog bowls are deep for reason.

—

10 Things NOT To Do With A Michael Frisbee

1, Make Michael Frisbee angry.
Michael Frisbee WILL exercise his constitutional rights, and it’s his constitutional right to machine gun his initials into your face & wear your ballbag as a beanie hat.

3, Throw Michael Frisbee…
Despite his name, Michael Frisbee is of limited aerodynamic value and the fun involved in throwing him is disproportionate to the effort involved.

4, Ask why, despite being a web content and graphics consultant, Michael Frisbee’s website isn’t very good.
Michael Frisbee believes, like Ted Stevens before him, that internets are next big thing and pledges to widen America’s series of tubes to double their current width, bringing download speeds of up to 8 kilowats per cubic minute to everyone in North America by 2027. Michael Frisbee  also pledges a free upgrade to Windows 3.1 for all his constituents’ IBM personal computers.

5, Tell Michael Frisbee you’re not convinced party politics is an effective form of Government and ask if there’s a more collaborative people-centred approach with which to govern a country and serve genuine need at a local level.
See point 1.

6, Take Michael Frisbee to Australia.
Remember that Simpsons episode? Michael Frisbee does, and will cite it as precedent in his defence in any court of law.

7, Offer Michael Frisbee the opinion there is in fact a THIRD option in George W Bush’s “You’re either with us or with the terrorists” divisive rhetoric.
Michael Frisbee defines ‘us’ as the people within 10 feet of his current location and ‘the terrorists’ as anyone not within the same room as he happens to be in at any one time. The possibility of a third option will result in a blue screen error and immediate shutdown & reboot of Michael Frisbee.

8, Tell Michael Frisbee That The Queen Is The Head Of State Of The United Kingdom.
Michael Frisbee was not aware Dolly Parton ruled that cute lil’ island. Additionally, Michael Frisbee only recognises one King. He is not the husband of Dolly Parton but he did have impressive hair and play a guitar.

9, Admit to Michael Frisbee that you’ve played GTA IV AND Modern Warfare 2 but not had crime/murder fantasies afterward.
Michael Frisbee watched a beatnik play Space Invaders for 5 minutes in 1980. Six months (and 20 dead hobo’s buried in the desert) later he is certain video games made him do it. Michael Frisbee pledges to ban all video games apart from Tetris and ‘Escape From The Planet Of The Robot Monsters‘ as he believes these two games provide essential training in how to survive an attack of either zombies and sentient robots and/or geometric shapes made up of four squares.

10, Comment that Michael Frisbee bears a resemblance (however small) to Bryan Butterfield.
See point 1.

—

And now it’s time for me to apologise to Michael Frisbee.

If you’re one of his constituents, a member of his family or even the man himself I mean no offense. I state in no uncertain terms that everything I have said about Michael Frisbee above is in no way true or based on any kind of factual knowledge of him (I don’t even live in the US!). I did an image search in Google for ‘Top 10 things to do with a frisbee’ and up popped a picture of him. This has been written not in mean spirit but purely as a bit of fun and no harm is intended.

But before you ask, no, I’m not voting for you. Even if I could vote in America it’d be The Green Party all the way.

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…?