A confusing story, pointless complexity and a reliance on shocking gore rather than brooding menace ruins this sequel making the worst of the three Blade movies by a long distance.
Author Archives: tony
I Am Legend
Short review of this one. I’d heard from a few people that the special effects let this film down, but really I didn’t find that. I feel the film was a let down, but it was the story and the structure which did that for me, there really was no obvious middle and the end appears to have been tacked on and very overly abrupt. The start is good, I really engaged quickly with Will’s character and I was really looking forward to the development of the ‘bad guy who’s getting more intelligent’.
Which is why it was such a let down for the movie to go from a thoughtful but action based story to an all-out zombie fest in the last 15 minutes.
Maybe the director needed another 30 minutes to extend the story and give us a better look at what was going on, maybe the screenplay was better before it made it to the cinema, either way I Am Legend was more disappointing than entertaining, by no means a bad movie, but no where near the quality it should have been.
Transformers
I never really got involved in the original Transformers, I was aware of it, but I was either too old or just not interested (it’s too long ago to really remember). Of course I knew about Optimus and the autobots and I knew the catch phrase (Transformers! Robots in disguise) but I never had any toys and I didn’t rush home from school to catch it on the TV. However, as should be obvious from the movies I tend to watch, I’m a sci-fi / action / fantasy movie addict, so it was inevitable that I’d get the new Transformers movie on DVD.
It’s ridiculous and yet it’s also great fun. Transformers isn’t really sure if it’s targetted at kids, teenagers or adults and that identity crisis leads to the film having a different feel at different times. Some scenes are gritty and adult and others are almost naive and rose tinted. Overall it doesn’t detract from the entertainment as long as you’re able to maintain the necessary suspension of disbelief.
If you can sustain that and you can ignore some of the more cringe-inspiring dialog, this is a good, solid adrenaline inducing action movie with some amazing scenes and some very gripping moments. The performances of the human actors are acceptable, it’s not exactly stretching, and the animated sequences are pretty breath taking. The pace is pretty good, keeping you interested and tied in throughout the story, and the story itself is engaging all the way to nearly the very end. Nearly the end because what little integrity the story has is pretty much lost when the military starts taking orders from a punk kid and we find out where computers came from.
Despite the 15 minutes of ‘WTF!’ inspired by those sections, this is a good movie, it deserved to do well, and it was exciting and engaging throughout.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
It’s 1981, the local Odean is showing Any Which Way You Can, Arthur, Chariots of Fire, Cannonball Run, Clash of the Titans, Excalibur, Flash Gordon and For Your Eyes Only. Ronald Regan becomes president of the United States of America. Bucks Fizz win the Eurovision Song Contest for Britain. STS-1 launches, the first Space Shuttle mission. The first recognised cases of AIDS are reported. Prince Charles marries Lady Diana. MTV is launched and you can buy an IBM PC for the first time, for $1,565 in America.
Oh, and Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark is on at the pictures.
That’s the context of the first movie. Three years later (1984) Temple of Doom is released. This is the same year the Apple Macintosh goes on sale, Michael Jackson burns his scalp, the 10th shuttle mission is launched, GCSE’s replace O levels in British schools. In the cinema, we’re watching Ghost Busters, Beverly Hill’s Cop and Footloose.
And then in 1989 the third Indy movie airs, The Last Crusade, alongside Batman, Honey I Shrunk the Kids and Lethal Weapon 2. Also in that year George H. W. Bush succeeds Ronald Reagan, the first GPS satellites are placed in orbit, in Alaska’s Prince William Sound the Exxon Valdez spills 240,000 barrels (11 million gallons) of oil after running aground. Seinfield airs for the first time. East Germany opens its borders, and the destruction of the Berlin wall begins.
That’s the world when the first three movies were released. A time many of us were in our late teens or early twenties. My generation. Those of us who knew who to call when we saw a ghost, knew never to mix gremlins with water, and knew without a doubt that aliens would want to phone home and lay their symbiotic spawn inside our chests at the same time.
A lot, and I mean, a lot has changed since those times. The 90’s came and went, and we’re at the neck end of finishing the first decade in the 2000’s. The world became smaller, and more cynical, and the technology of our dreams turned out to be the agonising painful support problems of our daily lives. We discovered we were really wrecking the planet like a bunch of petulant kids, and that maybe it was time to grow up and take notice.
Expectations changed, reality became so unreal that our heroes had to become doubly so to seem fantastic. The Lord of the Rings and the Matrix changed the expectations of movie fans all over the world. And we began to re-invent.
In 2005 we re-invented Batman. In 2006 we re-invented Superman.
And then there was a rumour, a fourth Indiana Jones movie, with Harrison Ford no less. Would we be seeing a re-invented Indiana Jones?
I’ll be honest, I was excited. I had memories of loving the original three films, although I’d not seen them in the cinema. I’d watched them over and over whenever I could, I loved them, they were a part of my life and my youth. I was nervous, I felt the Star Wars films had been handled badly even if they were mostly enjoyable. But we’d seen it was possible to get away with it, Batman Begins I loved and Die Hard 4 was a credit to the franchise.
So we went tonight, I took my hat but didn’t have the courage to wear it. I want to write a positive review, I want you to go and see this film, and I want you to enjoy it, as I just did, but you have to keep in mind the context. Spielberg has given us a sequel to the Last Crusade in all ways. The same style, the same dialog, the same approach. He hasn’t tried to re-invent the characters, he’s dealt with them honestly, presenting them as older but the same people. He hasn’t tried to give the story a modern context, or a modern ethic, he’s kept it tied to the 50’s and kept it in sync with the previous three.
It’s brave I think, he said he was writing this for the fans, and he has. Because compared to the three previous movies, it’s excellent, superb, entertaining. Compared to action movies of today, it’s lacking and misses the mark.
Which is a real shame, because it deserves to be enjoyed more than I fear it’s going to be. It’s fast paced, it’s got Indy’s dialog, it’s got action, it’s got good guys and bad guys and incredible artifacts of power and mystery. It’s the fourth Indiana Jones movie at its core and it should be loved and enjoyed for it. But it’s gentle and soft. There is no Die Hard 4 here, no Batman Returns, no serious danger or deadly menace. There is no adrenaline fueled fear for our hero, no doubt he will win through, just curiosity about how and about why.
So here’s some detail, too many characters I fear. We could lose three or four and the story wouldn’t suffer and the film would be tighter, leaner and better paced. We’d have more room for Indy and Mutt (Shia LaBeouf) to play off each other’s dialog, and more room for pace and movement. Instead it feels clumsy and crowded, with both Ray Winston’s character and Karen Allen’s reprised Marion taking up space on screen and giving little in return. Cate Blanchett’s bad girl isn’t convincing or terrifying at all, and I’m not sure the movie would have been much different without her. Her role appears to be a confusing combination of Arch Villainess and Deadly Black Widow but her interaction with Jones is cold and uninteresting.
The story is the most complex of the four movies, and overly so in my view, it could have done again with being tightened up and thinned down and the film would be no worse for it. It’s also the most far-fetched of the four, if that’s possible, and while I won’t spoil it for you I think it makes an attempt to tie the previous mysteries together which isn’t necessary.
With all that said, it’s worth seeing on the big screen, the action is full of action and the presence of Indiana Jones is undeniably engaging. It certainly didn’t feel like it ran for two hours, it never lost me, I was never bored, and I was always interested in where it was going next.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a sequel to movies written in a different age, for a different audience, and I fear modern audiences will be left wondering what the fuss was about. It is a good movie, you should go and see it, but it’s not great, and it’s certainly not going to be the greatest movie this year. Spielberg hasn’t let down the original fans, but neither has he delivered something younger and newer audiences will be clamouring to see.
Why does TNF Raid?
These posts are archives of forum / blog entries I made on my EverQuest guild website. The website won’t be around forever, and I wanted the posts all in one place so I didn’t lose them, this blog seemed like as good a place as any.
I wanted to write a short reminder, to myself more than anything else, about why TNF raids. With the recent changes to content in terms of flags, it’s a good time to get back to basics.
- We raid to have fun with our friends.
- We raid to see stuff you don’t get to see if you don’t raid.
- Sometimes we get some nice loot.
TNF was never a ‘progression’ raid force. We were forced into progression to meet the goals above. If we didn’t progress, we would never beat new stuff, if we didn’t do the flagging, we would never have gotten into more fun zones.
There is always an element of progression in raiding. If we just all stayed level 65 in level 65 gear, we’d never beat the latest content, we would never have beaten Sendaii if we hadn’t all worked together, to improve our toons through raiding and grouping. So we’re forced to progress – that’s the EQ model.
But there’s a false element of progression in raiding as well – faction, flags, keys. Those elements are added for several reasons, and we can argue their value until we’re all blue in the face, but it doesn’t matter. For anything up to and including the Prophecy of Ro, they’re gone.
Mostly gone …. some raids require bane weapons, some raids require special items, and those weapons and items are only obtained by raiding previous content (this applies to DoDh and PoR), so there’s still some element of scaling the content.
And of course, no one skips through to the final mob in an expansion and kills it without doing the earlier stuff unless they’re already overpowered.
Where am I going with this?
Well, the recent patch is very exciting for TNF. It opens up more content than we’ve had access to since we started raiding PoP. More targets are available to us now than ever before. More content to challenge us, to entertain us, and to show us a side of EQ we may never have seen.
We don’t know what it means for us yet in terms of week-to-week raids, what we’ll be killing, how we’ll structure things. But I do know, that there’s never been a more exciting time to be a casual raid force in EQ.
No more turning away friends who play rarely because they don’t have the flag. No more scratching around trying to find people to 85 us into zones. No more demands from myself and Sidd before a raid about ‘who’s keyed, who did this, who did that’.
Everything up to TSS is open before us, ripe, ready.
TNF – Raiding for Fun and looking Good while we do it.
Spider-queen Sendaii Spanked
These posts are archives of forum / blog entries I made on my EverQuest guild website. The website won’t be around forever, and I wanted the posts all in one place so I didn’t lose them, this blog seemed like as good a place as any.
You can thank Siddhaya for the Title! So we did it. TNF beat the five blood raids. Of course, we’ve been farming Shyra for quite a while, but our focus was Anguish and we never really stretched beyond that. The Council of Nine fell a little while back, no problem for TNF, deal with a hard hitting mob and kill timed adds – just up our street. We steamrollered Bloodeye, in fact first time through we made it harder than it needed to be, second time we just showed it a little more disdain. Draygun gives us a little more to think about, but he’s died (or re-died) like all the rest.
But Sendaii, well, she’s not trivial. Our first encounter a couple of weeks ago got us through the first two waves, but the third wave just overwhelmed us. Honestly, we were hoping just to get further through the third wave on our second go, to get a better feel for placement and the mobs.
But TNF weren’t happy with that, you guys wanted to go all the way. First two waves were flawless, wave 3 started ok, and then Sendaii joined the fun and it got hectic, but not hectic enough! Wave 3 was down, and we played with the Queen and her fake friends, and then finally, the army of spiders descended, but you weathered it all, handled it all, and beat Sendaii into little bits of spider ick.
All five blood raids down, DSK keying well underway, Vule on the horizon, Daosheen tormenting us, Theatre of Blood keying ongoing, and more targets than ever.
It’s spring, and it’s time for TNF to step up, kick some ass and start taking names.
It’s almost comical really
You can track my blog posts by when I’m on holiday. Once I’m back at work, they dry up. Go to work, come home, play EQ, avoid the world, that’s the plan.
Probably doesn’t sound very healthy I guess?
Anyway, here’s my half-year update for the 2 people left who still read the blog. Had two weeks holiday, felt relaxed, got back to work and now it’s nearly the weekend. Yay. We’ve landed on our feet with car stuff. The Mondeo is getting long in the tooth. Gear box is on the way out (struggles to go into first and reverse), we’ve banged it, scratched it, bumped it, dragged it, the boot arms can’t hold the boot open any more, the rust is starting to spread, the fan’s picked up a cute high pitched whine. Last MOT cost us a bit to get it through the emissions and I basically said then that the next major mechanical failure and we’d dump it. It’s dragged on another 10 months though, bless it’s huge two litre soul. Anyway, we know someone who sells cars (fairly recent thing), and they had a Renaul Migane up for sale, and we finally had a bit of spare cash, and the numbers matched up.
The Mondeo was due tax at the end of March and we basically managed to get it sorted so they took the Mondeo yesterday, we got the Migane, good timing and a decent car. It’s second hand so there’s the usual array of ‘little things’, but it’s mechnically sound and hopefully it’ll do us as long as the Mondeo did (seven years)!
For the historically minded, here’s my ‘blog’ post from the day we got the car,
[29th September 2001 – 20:31]
AgesOnce again, ages since the last update. But, here I am.
Still have a house I don’t want – are you sure you don’t want to purchase it? 3 bedroom terrace, Stockton-on-Tees?
Got my tax return in and done in the end, and in time for them to work out how much I owe, rather than having to do it myself. Their on-line system leaves a lot to be desired, only covers 1/10th of the forms and you have to work your tax out yourself. Hmm, might start scouting around for some tax-aware home-finance software at some point.
Got a new car, probably didn’t mention it previously, 2 litre Mondeo. Nicer than the previous cars, seems ok. Too expensive, but then all cars are.
Work alternates from being terrible to terrific in the space of 30 minutes, which is interesting. We’re moving desks at the moment, so Monday may be hectic.
Rented Shaft and Pitch Black on DVD, both of them quite entertaining, although Pitch Black was probably more enjoyable overall.
Lord of the Rings – the trailer looks amazing! I have very high hopes. I mailed National Amusements in the UK (they run our local cinema), asking if they had plans for Lord of the Rings, and got a very nice reply telling me that if I wanted tickets for the Harry Potter movie, I should simply purchase them at the right time. Oh well 😉
You should notice a theme with how that blog started!
Daosheen the Firstborn
These posts are archives of forum / blog entries I made on my EverQuest guild website. The website won’t be around forever, and I wanted the posts all in one place so I didn’t lose them, this blog seemed like as good a place as any.
Daosheen to 20% on our first visit. Sterling, amazing work from everyone. 60 minutes of fighting, over ten million hitpoints of damage dealt to him, and we just ran out of steam.
But we have his measure now. He has been tested. He will be found wanting.
Overlord Mata Muram Mutilated
These posts are archives of forum / blog entries I made on my EverQuest guild website. The website won’t be around forever, and I wanted the posts all in one place so I didn’t lose them, this blog seemed like as good a place as any.
On November 29th, 2007 I said this,
We will defeat the two heads of the Muramite army. Tunat’Muram Cuu Vauax in Tacvi will fall before us, and Overlord Mata Muram in Anguish shall lie at our feet, a broken wreck. I can not say how soon these things will happen, we still have challenges in Txevu to beat, and you have seen the trouble Overlord Mata Muram has given us, but I can promise you they will happen. TNF will beat both the Gates of Discord and the Omens of War content.
At the start of January, we killed Tunat`Muram Cuu Vauax. He’s not even really the hardest fight in Tacvi any more. However, Overlord Mata Muram is another beast entirely. He is, without doubt, the hardest fight in Anguish, and to-date still one of the toughest raid encounters in Everquest. Certainly the toughest fight TNF has ever faced, despite having beaten Zomm the Seventh Born, Porthio the Second Born, Yar`lir, Matriarch Shyra and a bunch of other encounters post-OoW.
We promised you that if we had the right turnout we’d take him on. We started Anguish late today (Hello Porthio) but we burned through the first five targets like the plague. We took on Mata Muram and we drove him down to 30%, it looked tight a few times, we had some deaths, and some sterling team work from everyone, and we took our breather.
By the time we got back to him, he was up to 86%, which was a little unexpected, and really I know many of us had doubts by then. It had hurt to get him to 30% the first time, and now we had to do it again and more. But everyone pulled out the stops, mask clickers were perfect, healing was incredible, the tank team made like a brick wall and held Mata Muram at bay, and everyone else piled on the dps until he bled from every inch of his thick ugly hide.
60% and I was feeling confident.
30% and we lost a few people.
15% and I thought we had it.
12% and I was watching the fight from my hovering soul.
6% and I was rezzed again, but it was looking troublesome. We had a dragorn loose, some Ukun were running havoc, and we were running out of enchanters and dps.
3% and I closed my eyes. So close. A wipe now would be beyond insulting.
1% and I swore in rsay.
0% Overlord Mata Muram dead, the Omens of War expansion beaten.
I’m proud to raid with you, proud to be part of the team. From myself and Siddhaya, and the rest of the raid leadership team, thank you for turning up, making it a blast, and nailing Overlord Mata Muram to the floor.
Tunat`Muram Cuu Vauax – Croaked
These posts are archives of forum / blog entries I made on my EverQuest guild website. The website won’t be around forever, and I wanted the posts all in one place so I didn’t lose them, this blog seemed like as good a place as any.
Just over a week ago, Truly Naughty Friends beat the final encounter in the GoD expansion. Every major encounter in GoD, from start to finish beaten. From the Tipt trial, to the single group Ikkinz trials, through Ikkinz 1, 2, 3 and 4. Uqua, Qvic encounters, Inktu`ta in into Txevu. Txevu we did the bare minimum and finally into Tacvi.
You can check the GoD progression chart out here and you can track TNF’s progression here if you wish!
Tacvi was fun, I hope you agree, and clearing it on our second visit was a good feeling. We’ll be back, the loot in Tacvi (weapons and weapon augs especially) is still decent and the fights are fun. It’s fairly quick and we’ll mix it up with some other targets I think. Our regular farming raid is still Anguish, the loot is too good to pass up, and we’ll head to Anguish on a regular basis for a while to come. Numbers are down still, three regular clerics, one or two regular druids, fluctuating tank numbers, no regular wizards, but we’ll continue pushing forward, doing as much as we can with whoever turns up. If we want to beat Mata Muram we’re going to need a good solid 40+ turnout though with more druids than we get at present.
Saturday gone we trounced Anguish again, although not enough to take on OMM, and we tidied up with quick and easy kills in DoN. Next weekend, something new. Nothing finalised yet, but Prophecy of Ro targets look likely at this stage. Hoping for a good turnout, see you in PoK at the usual time.