This is a hash -> #
This is a hashtag -> #hashtag
This is not a hashtag -> # <- it’s just a hash.
I’m sick of people on TV and/or radio saying, “Send us a tweet using @someone hashtag funnysaying”. No. It’s either, “Send us a tweet using @someone hash funnysaying” or “Send us a tweet to @someone with the hashtag funnysaying”.
Get it?
Hash -> #
Hashtag -> #plussomewords
Finished Gears of War 3 yesterday after a long hiatus (in which I basically finished Dead Space 2, Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2 again, and some other stuff). Playing GoW3 after finishing ME1/ME2 reminds me of the major difference between third person shooters and third person shooters with roleplaying elements.
GoW3 is relentless. Kill your way through a bunch of the enemy, moving from cover to cover with the odd moment of heroic full on battle charging thrown in, watch a 2 minute cut scene, and then rinse and repeat. During the scenes you are an observer, not a participant, watching a scene take place from some eye-in-the-sky camera.
This isn’t a complaint by the way – just an observation (an obvious observation). I had to take a 5 or 10 minute break after most of the long set pieces in GoW3 just to break that relentless feeling of bullet-powered progression. It’s probably the exact feeling the game designers were going for.
With games like Mass Effect, there are long stretches of combat (more so in ME2), which can feel pretty relentless, but thrown in you get periods of dialog in which you control the direction, and I think that’s the key about why I prefer those games over just standard 3rd person shooters. You are more invested in the character, you do feel more part of the story rather than an observer of it.
Anyway, Gears of War 3 was fun, I took too long a break to really say if it was gripping and I can’t say much other than it was pretty much like the first two. Fun, frivolous and entertaining, but on a different engagement level than Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Fallout, etc.
Mass Effect 1 and 2 are old hat, been out ages, surely no one in their right mind would start talking about them now when Mass Effect 3 is just around the corner? Well, I’m not in my right mind.
Grete played (plays?) ME1 and ME2 to death on the PC, she loves them and the Dragon Age games. I had ME2 on the Xbox 360, played it one and a half times, and then sold it on to fund more games. I promised myself that’s what I’d do with nearly every game I bought, new or second hand. I didn’t want to end up with a huge pile of games, played or unplayed. Anyway I never bought or played ME1. With ME3 around the corner, Grete wanted to see ME1 and ME2 ‘on the big screen, with surround sound’, so she picked them up super cheap for the Xbox from the local store.
I picked up the DLC’s for them both (the ones I didn’t already have for ME2) and thought I’d give ME1 a shot. It’s pretty good! It’s odd playing ME2 before ME1 for a couple of reasons. First, you kind of know where the story is going, but the flip-side is you go through a lot of ‘aahhhhhh riiiggghhhttt’ moments when you discover stuff that leads to things you did in the second game. Secondly, the mechanics change a lot between games, and having to handle a million equipment upgrades in ME1 was not fun, especially knowing ME2 gets rid of that mechanic almost entirely.
But what really sets ME1 and ME2 apart from the general gaming population is the story and the characters. I love it and them, and ME1 proved no less enjoyable than ME2. In fact, I got 60 hours of game-play out of ME1, and another 45 hours out of ME2 even though it was my second play through. ME2 straight after ME1 was a much better experience than previously, and being able to bring the ME1 character along made some of the decisions more personal.
I love the setting, the Space Opera style and the world building. The little details and the massive scale work really well together. I’ve spent the last two weeks feeling like I want to write a huge epic space opera story myself, although to be honest, what I most want to do is all the world building that goes into it. Never could find a story inside myself I wanted to tell enough to actually write anything.
Mass Effect 3 demo looks good – very interesting approach offering three play styles. Story mode – reduced combat involvement, full dialog options; Roleplaying which is the same model as the previous games; Action which reduces conversations down to cut scenes (I’m guessing you can still pick Paragon or Renegade using the triggers) but provides the full combat experience. If more companies can pick up that approach, offering just as much content but with a range of roleplaying levels it would be excellent. I’d love to play Modern Warfare with a significantly improved roleplaying feel.
Not sure how the multi-player will work out – and I hope the ME3 mechanics (which look to be somewhere between 1 and 2) don’t overwhelm the play. I’m sure we’ll find out.
Either way – the Reapers had better watch out, I intend to convince the entire Galaxy to make a stand, and Hold The Line.
I gave up one of my domains a few months ago, the one relating to David Gemmell. I won’t repeat the domain here for reasons which will be obvious in a moment. Last night, I wondered wistfully if anyone had picked the domain up. A quick whois showed it had, and so I visited it in my browser to see what they were doing with it, hopeful it was being used to bring David’s fans together.
Sadly, rather than that, someone had basically taken my David Gemmell eulogy, and a brief bio, combined them as the only post on a WordPress install and stuck adverts between each of the paragraphs.
Maybe if it had been something less personal I would have simply ignored it, but that eulogy was very personal to me, despite me posting it to the web. It was still mine. There was no attribution on the post on the site in question, and although my eulogy finished with “I will miss you ….” the way it had been re-posted just to generate advertising revenue made it meaningless.
The whois entry didn’t give a contact e-mail address, so I tracked down the web host (same company as the domain registrar) and sent a polite e-mail to their support department, showing the original content on my blog, explaining that it was my copyright, and asking if they could please speak to the owner of the site.
In their defence, they replied in a few hours saying they would contact the owner, and this morning when I rechecked my content had gone. To be replaced by a generic Eco Advice post, interspersed with adverts. That same content is all over the web, including one site lovingly titled “ArticleSnatch”.
I sort of feel like writing back to the web host and saying the owner is doing it again, but this time they’re using generic content designed to convince search engines to send traffic their way, but frankly, I can’t be bothered. Now they’re not stealing my personal content, I can’t work up the enthusiasm to say much, and I guess the text they have used doesn’t belong to anyone specific.
Funny old world the web these days. A few years ago we were told you couldn’t run a site off ad revenue alone, and now some ‘enterprising’ individuals basically make a living delivering nothing of value with advertising thrown in.
This post is half aide-mémoire and half public service announcement! I use nmon at work to gather performance data, and I use customised version of nmon2web to graph it. nmon2web relies on rrdtool, and I do a lot of my UNIX stuff these days using Cygwin. Rather than use the Windows rrdtool binaries, I wanted to compile the latest version to run directly under Cygwin.
I’ve done this a few times now, with different Cygwin installs on both Windows XP and Windows 7, and every time I have to fight against various compilation issues. I’ll cut to the chase, I hack at options and compiler settings and configure flags until it works, and I turn off most of the additional stuff to get it in. But, it does work.
All of the libraries and pre-requisites you need can be installed directly within Cygwin. You’ll obviously need the regular development stuff (gcc, make, etc.) and you’ll also need the various libraries used by rrdtool. Rather than worry about what you do and don’t need, I just whack on everything. This is what I’ve got installed for each of the pre-reqs.
I’m certain that’s overkill, I had some of those installed already and installed a few extra libraries to get the compile working, but better safe than sorry!
The next step is working out what options to pass configure. Some of these are required (on Windows 7 there are issues if you don’t use -no-undefined)
configure doesn’t seem to find the pango and cairo libraries under Cygwin unless I add these.
export CPPFLAGS="-I /usr/include/pango-1.0/pango/ -I /usr/include/cairo/cairo/"
and as I said, you need to prevent any undefined symbols in the libraries,
export LDFLAGS=-no-undefined
and then I basically turn off all the additional modules (perl, tcl, python, ruby) as well as mmap which doesn’t seem to work well under Cygwin anyway. –prefix here is optional, it defaults to /opt, but I prefer everything under /usr/local.
./configure --disable-mmap --prefix=/usr/local/ --disable-tcl --disable-perl --disable-ruby --disable-python
Once that’s done, you can go for the compile.
Run the usual make, you’ll get a whole bunch of warnings. Such as,
warning: ‘optarg’ redeclared without dllimport attribute: previous dllimport ignored
No idea what they mean, but they don’t seem to break anything.
You’ll get a bunch of these,
*** Warning: linker path does not have real file for library -lstdc++. *** I have the capability to make that library automatically link in when *** you link to this library. But I can only do this if you have a *** shared version of the library, which you do not appear to have *** because I did check the linker path looking for a file starting *** with libstdc++ and none of the candidates passed a file format test *** using a file magic. Last file checked: /usr/lib/libpthread.a
because of the -no-undefined flag. But again, doesn’t seem to break anything.
On Windows 7 (can’t remember if I got this on Windows XP) you’ll also get,
CCLD rrdupdate.exe ../libtool: line 8354: ./rrdupdate.exe: Permission denied CC rrdcached-rrd_daemon.o
and you won’t be able to use rrdupdate.exe. Running it gives the same permission denied error. I’m not sure why yet, but I don’t use rrdupdate so it’s not been a big issue yet ((this only appears to be an issue with 64 bit Windows 7)).
Finally, after it all scrolls by, you can do a make install.
In /usr/local/bin you should end up with,
-rwxr-xr-x 1 User None 332K Jan 19 23:39 rrdcached.exe* -rwxr-xr-x 1 User None 428K Jan 19 23:39 rrdcgi.exe* -rwxr-xr-x 1 User None 641K Jan 19 23:39 rrdtool.exe* -rwxr-xr-x 1 User None 14K Jan 19 23:39 rrdupdate.exe*
and rrdtool should work quite happily.
So, know a better way? Know why some bits still don’t work? Know a sure fire way of fixing the warnings (if necessary), or getting rrdupdate to work, or being able to compile the additional modules? Let me know!
So, I know it’s early days, but NetFlix has just opened it’s doors in the UK and quite frankly, I thought they would have had a better line up to open with.
For the most part, the TV selection falls into four categories – old stuff of varying quality (Cracker, Fawlty Towers, 12 episodes of Men Behaving Badly), huge amounts of Kids TV and Animated stuff (Moschops, Thomas and Friends, X-Men), TV comedy shows like Saturday Night Live and a small, tiny amount of ‘new’ stuff (Dollhouse).
The movies don’t fare much better. It’s not easy to list every movie, but here are the 2010-2011 movies on Netflix in various categories (this is every movie the interface returns, in that category for that year).
Maybe I’m missing something? I mean, Blitz shows up on the main page which is a 2011 movie, but I can’t get it to show up on the basic lists, so perhaps I am missing something, but it still looks like a pretty lame opening gambit from NetFlix. Unless they significantly improve the content very quickly and provide a more comprehensive way of listing movies (such as the simple LoveFilm A-Z view), I’ll be hard pushed to justify signing up.
Update: Aha, typically, after posting this I worked out what I was doing wrong. You have to tell it to list things you’ve already seen in the summary lists. I’ve added some items into the list, in italics, where they were missing first time.
My first post of 2012 was a bit whiny, so I thought I’d give you a slightly less whiny update!
Grete got her second set of corrected new glasses on Friday, and she’s very happy with them. They look great, are very lightweight and have super thin lenses. She’s much happier!
And now it’s a lot better! Still painful, but getting back to her ‘usual painful’ level which is as good as it gets I guess.
Tidied up and resolved so far. Everyone gets hacked eventually, such is the way of things.
Meh.
Well you already know she came back as if nothing was wrong, and she’s maintained that stance. She’s still being bullied by Fizz but that whole relationship is weird anyway.
So that’s all good. For fun though, the little Atom PC I bought last year from Novatech decided to die at the end of last week (internal 2.5″ drive now making mechanical ‘I’m not happy’ sounds). I mailed Novatech, and they’ve given me a returns number. So, we’ll see if they continue to live up to my expectations of them.
… of 2012 anyway. If the quality of your year to come is inversely proportional to the quality of the first 14 days, we’ve got a stonkingly awesome 2012 to come. To be fair, as with all things, the ups and downs in life are all relative.
Grete’s glasses broke at the end of 2011, she can’t see much without them. Although she had a spare pair, they were tinted and not really suitable in the house or driving in Winter! Thanks to the holiday period it was pretty fraught trying to get to an optician, but we did. Sadly, they messed up and the glasses she eventually got have the wrong prescription, so now she’s waiting for them to be redone. The original glasses broke at the joint between the arm and the spring, so I was cello-taping them together every day and Grete was living with nightmarish headaches. The opticians we went to, to get new glasses, said they couldn’t be fixed – however when she went in to the local one to see why the new glasses were terrible, an older optician there was able to temporarily put a new arm on the broken ones while the correct new ones are being delivered. All-in-all, a pretty stressful start to the New Year, which you can appreciate if you have vision which absolutely requires glasses.
Grete has a bad back, has had for a long time, which she copes with day to day, but every now and again she’ll get a muscle spasm and be basically unable to stand-up. She got one on Saturday night, worst one for a few years, so we’re dealing with that! She managed to get to the doctor today and has some pretty impressive pain killers, and they’re starting to help.
Yesterday, the VPS I host these blogs on was not responding. It happens sometimes, the server doesn’t have a huge deal of memory and every now and then the Linux OOM Killer will kill something unimportant like apache2 or mysql. So I recycled it via Gandi.net’s control panel thing and it came back. A cursory check suggested everything was fine, and I went about my business. Today I logged on briefly and found a lot of weird mail. Turns out the server was hacked a few days ago – using an exploit in a PHP module a slightly out of date template on WordPress was using. Fortunately, they hadn’t done too much damage, and were mostly using this server to attack other servers. I got a nice abuse report from Gandi (which was polite, but forceful) while I was actually cleaning up the mess, encouraging me to clean up and reminding me of my legal obligations. Anyway, I think it’s sorted, but I feel kind of bad, somewhat violated, a little paranoid and sorry that something I manage was used to attack other sites. But it’s the Internet, everyone gets hacked eventually. My top tip? If you’re not using a plugin or theme, delete it. You’ll forget about it otherwise, it won’t get patched, and just because you’re not using it, doesn’t mean the file isn’t there to be presented by the web browser when the right attacker comes along.
There’s some work related stress, which I won’t talk about, because I try not to on my blog, but it’s there, lurking.
Then finally for the first 9 days of 2012, there’s Bubbles. She went out at around 11am yesterday. As you know, it’s been Super Mild other than the wind here. Yesterday was the first fully dry day for ages, and Bubbles has been stuck indoors. I think she must have decided it was Spring. By 22:15 there was still no sign of her which is normal in Spring but not Winter. So we did the concerned cat owner thing where you shout like an idiot at your back door for an hour. After that didn’t help, I walked the streets for another hour. I got back, shone my torch down to the bottom of the garden ((I was waiting to get arrested, walking the streets around here, at 11pm, with a torch in my hand, up and down dead end roads, but it never happened)), and I could see her eyes glaring back balefully. Even then she didn’t come in, and we got to spend the rest of the night wondering if I’d mistakenly seen another cat ((second tip, don’t watch Sherlock’s The Hounds of Baskerville before you walk the streets in the dark looking for animals)).
I was pretty sure it was her, but if you love your pets there’s always doubt.
Anyway, she’s always there in the morning when she does this – ready to come in and eat – except not this morning. So we’d started thinking the worst. Grete was in pain, trying to organise a GP appointment, we left the house wondering where she was ((yes, I made Grete drive me to work when she can barely stand)). When Grete got back from the docs, initially there was still no sign, but as she got to the kitchen door, Bubbles came running up from the garden, her flabby little tummy swinging from side to side. Grete swears she could hear Ride of the Valkyries playing in the background. Bubbles then promptly ate half a bowl of dried food, drank half a bowl of water, and has been sleeping all day since. Little shit.
So, all in all a pretty stressful start to 2012, which is a shame because 2011 finished pretty fucking well to be fair. Sorry it’s a bit of a whiny start to what I hope is going to be a year blogging more than last year. Twitter really has sucked the blogging desire from me, just because I end up writing down what I was thinking in a couple of 140 character tweets instead of a 1000 word blog post. I suppose the world is actually better off as a result.
Anyway, here’s to the rest of 2012, may it improve for us, and be awesome for you.
Here it is folks – the trailer. And my analysis.
My analysis: WOOT!
This is my yearly round-up of ‘Genre’ movies coming out in the next year (this was the 2011 one). Genre is pretty loose and translates to ‘anything I thought sounded interesting’. It includes films that are already out in the other parts of the world but haven’t made it to the UK yet. Most of the info is gathered from a few web sites I hang out on, so it’s a really narrow subset of everything coming out but hey, watchya gonna do.
Oh, and it looks like Joseph Gordon-Levitt is officially in every movie in 2012. Or 3 of them anyway.
The Darkest Hour (January 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1093357/
http://www.thedarkesthourisnear.com/
Alien invasion movie with a Russian slant (In Russia, Invaders Alien you!) Aliens travel across the universe using incredible amounts of energy in order to invade our tiny planet and steal …. our energy. Might be nice to get another non-US-centric slant on the alien invasion trope but I wish someone would make up a better reason for them being here. Maybe they want our MP3 collection?
Haywire (January 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1506999/
Covert operative must hunt down the people that betrayed them, using deadly and impressive skills, in order to protect their family. With a twist! It’s a Woman! Oh, we did that with Salt? Well, anyway, guns, women and kick-ass moves, I’m in. Trailer looked cool too. Shallow much?
Chronicle (February 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706593/
Teenagers with telekinetic powers go mad, handy-cam ‘found footage’ indie movie which sounds like it might be a nice contrast to the shiny superhero stuff littered throughout 2012. If you can stop yourself vomiting when presented with another horizon-shake-fest.
The Woman In Black (February 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596365/
http://www.womaninblack.com/
Harry Potter travels to a remote location and ends up investigating mysterious goings on that hint at something dark and dangerous. Oh wait, sorry, Arthur Kipps (played by Daniel Radcliffe) travels to a remote village and ends up investigating something mysterious, well you get the point.
Hotel Transylvania (February 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0837562/
Animated comedy, a sort of who’s who of hammer horror monsters, in a hotel run by Dracula. With a love story thrown in.
Premium Rush (February 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1547234/
A chase movie – on a bicycle. Really. It’ll be adrenaline fuelled and full of psycholist action. Not really genre, but I wanted to be able to use ‘psycholist’ so there you go (google it).
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (February 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1071875/
Really, they’re making a fucking sequel? God help us.
Dr Seuss’ The Lorax (March 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1482459/
What can I say
a movie a film
with voices and action
and all nice and trim
Animation and graphics
and wonderful sights
No doubt a huge hit
with those troublesome mites
The children.
John Carter (March 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401729/
http://www.johncarterarrives.com/
Avatar, but the big aliens are green. Unfair? Maybe. Based on the John Carter of Mars pulp stories, the movie has dropped the ‘of Mars’ because Mars based movies suffer from the kiss of death. Much like Russian Mars based space missions. I’m not sure people will ‘get it’ but we’ll see. If it’s fun and light it might catch an audience.
The Wrath of the Titans (March 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1646987/
Oops, left this off the list first time around. Should probably be called ‘The Wrath of the Fans of Clash of the Titans’. The trailer looks good, bonus points for the trailer soundtrack, and they seem to be going full-on mythical beast war, which might work out for them. Hopefully without the ‘constraints’ of having to remake the first one, they might achieve something more entertaining.
The Hunger Games (March 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392170/
http://www.thehungergamesmovie.com/
A book adaptation! How unique! Televised death matches, love stories, kids pitted against other kids, utopian world ‘supported’ by horrific practices? Nothing new here so I hope the implementation brings something exciting.
The Croods (March 2012 -maybe, other sources say 2013)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0481499/
Animated prehistoric fun! With fun!
American Reunion (April 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1605630/
http://www.americanreunionmovie.com/
It’s not a genre movie, but come on! Another actual, legit movie in the American Pie series starring everyone from the original cast! How can it not be awesome? Hopefully full of knob jokes, wanking allusions and Finch having toilet incidents.
Lock-Out (April 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1592525/
A Luc Besson action thriller? I need to hear no more. It’s sci-fi you say? I think I need a change of pants.
The Avengers (May 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0848228/
http://marvel.com/avengers_movie
This is probably it. Make or break for Joss Whedon’s big movie career. If he pulls this off, the universe is his oyster, he’ll be able to make anything he wants until he fucks up big. But if this turns out to be a huge, complex, over-busy steaming pile of shite, then he’ll be back to having to make tea to pay the bills. (To be fair, he seems to have made 2 other movies on the sly while making this, so I guess Joss will be okay whatever happens, but a bit of hyperbole never hurt anyone). Iron Man! The Hulk! Thor! Captain America! It’s Testosterone On Speed On Acid! It’s gonna be busy, and I hope it works, I really do.
Frankenweenie (May 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1142977/
Tim Burton brings us a movie about death, resurrection, children and dogs. So, nothing really new.
Battleship (May 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1440129/
http://www.battleshipmovie.com/
‘Inspired’ by the game, in the sense that it has ships in it, Battleship may find itself in erm, shallow water? Maybe. Some people in big ships attack some unknown ships to work out what those ships are doing – i.e. shoot first, ask questions later.
Men in Black III (May 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1409024/
http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/meninblack3/
Time Travel! I predict an overly complex and untidy plot, intermixed with childish jokes about weird looking aliens, Will Smith looking confused, Tommy Lee Jones being reserved and Josh Brolin getting all the acting awards. I’m in. (Oh, and BFG’s)
Prometheus (June 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1446714/
Ridley Scott wheels out an Alien Sequel that’s a Prequel that’s not an Aliens movie but contains Aliens that aren’t Aliens and some Geiger artwork. Who the fuck knows what it’ll be about – but it’s Ridley Scott, and it’s sci-fi, so a) it’s on this list and b) we’ll all see it.
Jack the Giant Killer (June 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1351685/
Like Gremlins (don’t get them wet) only bigger! Much, MUCH bigger. Another modern day take on an old world fairy tale, not sure from the trailer if it’s a young adult movie, comedy or action flick, but quite entertaining by the look of it. Can’t wait to see that beanstalk erupting from the screen in 3D, no really, can’t wait. Honest.
Star Trek 2 (June 2012 – now delayed, out in 2013)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1408101/
Delayed for various reasons, millions of casting rumours, nothing concrete. Can J.J. pull it out of the bag a second time? Hopefully, no red matter in this one when it finally arrives sometime in 2013. Also, the rumour is this time, Wil Wheaton is doing *all* the voices, not just the Romulans. Can’t wait to hear his Kirk impression.
The Amazing Spider Man (July 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0948470/
http://www.theamazingspiderman.com/
Mixed bag – a ‘teaser reveal’ in the trailer, for a character that’s already been in 3 recent movies seems a bit weird. Recent posters seem more intriguing but I think the franchise might be in trouble, Spider Man the untold story is hard to imagine given the years of content. Good luck.
The Dark Knight Rises (July 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1345836/
http://www.thedarkknightrises.com/
Meh, I’m getting bored of the endless ‘LATEST DARK KNIGHT PHOTO’ and the stuff about Bane. I fear I may be suffering Batman fatigue. This better be more awesome than an awesome day in awesomeville or people are going to be peeved. I hope it’s just me, and that the fan base isn’t growing jaded. Oh, and Bale’s voice, /sigh, not looking forward to another 120 minutes of him chewing gravel.
Ice Age 4: Continental Drift (July 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1667889/
Do I need to say anything? The only good thing will be the nut jokes.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (August 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1611224/
I’m pretty sure the title has everything you need to know. Seriously.
The Bourne Legacy (August 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1194173/
It’s Bourne, without Bourne. Same universe (er, the real world?) but with a different undercover blackops blacklisted CIA operative who will probably have to do stuff, and put himself at risk, to save something. Without the ‘I don’t remember who I am’ schtick isn’t this just Mission Impossible: Solo or Bond #24?
Total Recall (August 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1386703/
http://www.totalrecall-movie.com/
Total Remake! Will it bring something new? Will we get a fat headed special effect saying “Twwooo weeekkkss” and giving me nightmares for 10 years? Who knows. I’m quite excited despite myself. The original, as with many of Arnie’s sci-fi movies, was heavy and lumbering despite my enjoyment of it. I’d love to see an agile, light-on-it’s-feet remake which injects some pace and intrigue into this story. Also, hoping for some hot chicks in latex to complement the plot (Len Wiseman, don’t let me down now!)
Dredd (September 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1343727/
Karl Urban, keeping his hat on. So it’s already 90000% percent better than the Stallone version. I have a lot of hope for this, and I’m nervous. I want Karl to rock. I want this movie to do well.
Looper (September 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1276104/
Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the same movie. Guns, time travel, the mob, confusing paradox based plot? Yes, yes, yes and hell yes.
Taken 2 (October 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1397280/
The kidnappers are stupid and out for revenge, so they kidnap the dude that killed all the kidnappers and hope somehow to turn that to their advantage. Dumb. Anyway, people loved Taken, I felt it was weak in parts, but hopefully this will improve the position. I’ll not hold my breath.
Cloud Atlas (October 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1371111/
The Wachowski’s bring their talent to a sprawling story set over six different periods in time, hoping to tie them all together into an overall tale. It’ll either tank, or it’ll be a cult hit that eventually makes billions, maybe. Oh, and check out the cast!
Gravity (October 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1454468/
If I said, “The lone survivor of a space mission to repair the Hubble telescope desperately tries to return to Earth and reunite with her daughter” would you be interested? If I then said, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney would you change your mind? I might. Bit of a weird one.
Skyfall (Bond #23) (November 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1074638/
Apparently, Quantum of Solace was impacted by the writers strike, wasn’t meant to be as much of a sequel to the first one as it turned out to be, and people weren’t happy with it. I thought it was okay personally. Anyway, this one is going to be AWESOME honest with AMAZING action sequences and HOT women and INCREDIBLE gadgets. I guess 007 will find himself out on a limb, have to fight his way back into everyone’s good books and solve some entirely obvious crime at the same time (involving the theft of air, or some other easily obtained resource).
Superman: Man of Steel (November 2012 or 2013)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0770828/
Zack Snyder – not an amazing directing record. 300 I loved, but it wasn’t widely loved by others. Watchmen was soggy in the middle. Sucker Punch took a beating (see what I did there?), and was confusing, despite the fact that I loved it (I think). Yet here he is, making a Superman-reboot reboot. Will Zack’s visual style bring us closer to a Superman we can get behind and find exciting? Can Superman ever be exciting? Will there be a love story? Does the viewing public even care any more?
Rise of The Guardians (December 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1446192/
Like The Avengers, but the bedtime story version. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Sandman and the Tooth Fairy team up to save the world from the Bogeyman. Nice voice acting cast.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (December 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903624/
http://www.thehobbitblog.com/
Need I say anything? This is it. The Film He Said He Would Never Make. The Movie That We Thought We Would Never Get. The start of it all. The journey that gave us Lord of the Rings. The tale that gives birth to a legend. The story that enthralled a generation. Bilbo steps out of his front door, and nothing is ever the same again. Beards, dwarves, wizards, pipes, hairy feet and Middle Earth. I’ll be there. I’ll be there if the reviews say it stinks worse than dragon shit. I’ll be there no matter what.
Snow White and the Huntsman (December 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1735898/
http://www.snowwhiteandthehuntsman.com/
Continuing the trend of remaking fairy tales, which started out dark, then got Disneyfied, into dark movies, we have Snow White. A different slant, and hopefully, a female role model who doesn’t believe her own self worth is based on who she marries. Instead, she’ll be a trained killer with ninja-like instincts.
Django Unchained (December 2012)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1853728/
Tarantino’s next outing – is a Western that Won’t Be A Western. But the cast looks good, maybe I’ll give it a shot. Maybe. Perhaps he’ll just give us the end of a shoot-out in a street, and then 80 minutes of people arguing over which coffin to use.
World War Z (January 2013)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816711/
Based on the book, the film seems to have the same premise (recounting of first-hand reports during a Zombie war). I know nothing about the book which is supposed to be very good, but hopefully the movie will be quite enjoyable. It’s almost 8 hours since we had a Zombie movie, so you know, plenty of room for another.
The Hobbit: There and Back Again (December 2013)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1170358/
http://www.thehobbitblog.com/
I’ll be here as well. No doubt.
Notable mentions:
Two crowd-funded movies with potential,
Iron Sky
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034314/
http://www.ironsky.net/
Lunar bases filled with invading Nazis? What’s not to like. The small budget (in relative terms) has been stretched to cover some pretty grand concepts, let’s hope it works out for them.
The Cosmonaut
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1935261/
http://thecosmonaut.co/
Another sci-fi movie funded by donations and advertising, but this one is going to be available on the Internet and not shown theatrically. The Soviets have lost a Cosmonaut en route to the Moon, but he finds himself returned to a deserted Earth.
Information for this post gathered from Den of Geek, Empire Online, SFX and IMDb.