Halo 3

Master Chief is back. It’s been a while, and to be honest I’ve never been a huge Halo fan, so I’m pretty much coming at Halo 3 as a novice.

Apparently the Covenant controls Earth, the all-consuming Flood has been unleashed and the fate if the galaxy hangs in the balance. An ancient secret, buried under the sand of Africa may hold the key to our salvation or our doom. Spartan 117, the Master Chief must uncover that secret and stop the forces that threaten us for one and for all. He is the last of his kind, a warrior born for combat, bred for war… and humanity’s only hope.

Humanity’s only hope? Sheesh, I’m not sure I’m up for that job description, but I guess I’ll give it a go.

Coming off the back of a long line of World War II shooters, jumping into the world of Halo was a bit of a culture shock – it took a while to get re adjusted and get to grips with the various monsters and the huge assortment of weaponry available to kill them.

Once I got into the swing of things however, the fun kicked in. Halo 3 is, it has to be said, is simply a first person shooter. It doesn’t try and be anything else, it doesn’t try to be original, it just does what it does, really, really well. What it lacks in interesting moves, such as peering round corners, the ability to go prone, etc, it makes up in straight forward game play that keeps the intensity tight, and shooting near constant and the addictive fun ramped up way past ten. [more]

Conversations With My Gardener

Going to a media screening at the Rialto is always a treat, you know that for a change you’re going to see a movie whose characters and storyline drive the experience and not the special effects budget. Conversations With My Gardener is no different.

A successful Parisian artist secedes to take time out from his hectic lifestyle and a marriage that is on the rocks by retreating to the home of his childhood. With his parents having died a few years ago, there is much work to do but he has little energy to do it. So the artist advertises for a gardener.

The gardener who takes the job turns out to be an old school buddy – back in the day they were best mates, but things didn’t work out when they got expelled at that was the last they saw of each other.

There lives took radically different paths, the artist finding success and experiences, the gardener finding contentment in the simple things of life. [more]

Over There

When I read the synopsis for Over There I was thinking The Unit, but set in Iraq with a regular Army squad. Alas it was nothing like it.

Instead we get a series that is very hard to get into – the characters have no lovable traits to endear them to you until you’ve spent over half the season wondering why you’re still watching – had I been watching it weekly on TV, I wouldn’t have made it past week one or two. By the end of the season you do have an attachment to the characters, but even that isn’t enough to save the series from everything else that is wrong.

Unlike The Unit, where the wives left behind worked together as a team, looked after each other and made their own viable storyline, Over There’s spouses all have their own individual problems that create far too many differing stories lines and only creates a muddle of unnecessary distraction. [more]

Rally's Dead...

Mere days after Rally legend Colin McRae dies in a helicopter accident and the GPStore puts up a headline proclaiming Rally's Dead, long live SEGA Rally.

Is it me, or is that totally thoughtless and verging on bad taste?

Hannibal Rising

The real problem for Hannibal Rising is Silence of the Lambs, as with the sequel, Hannibal and the prequel, Red Dragon, all films that follow the screen character that is Hannibal Lecter will be compared to the 1991 original. As such, none have lived up to the Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins paring.

But Hannibal Rising has another problem, without Silence of the Lambs, it has no purpose. As a movie on it’s own it is a pointless waste of time. The viewer has to already know what Lecter will become.

As a study on the creation of a monster, it is of some interest, but the movie itself seems poorly executed, as if it is just a B-grade money grabber. One could almost assume that the studio that bank rolled the movie figured that they couldn’t compete with Silence, so why bother, just church out a quickie for profit and be done with it.

And that’s quite sad, because with a bit of refinement, more focus on certain scenes, and further exploration of the central themes and Rising could have rivaled even Silence. [more]

When Homicidal Gorillas Attack!

Stranger Than Fiction

Sheer genius. It’s been a while since a movie like this has come along, a movie that blows your mind in a kind of down to earth, matter of fact way. A comedy that isn’t laugh out loud funny, but very pleasing to watch, a comedy that makes you smile on the inside.

A story so outlandishly unique that most will call it stupid, but a select few will fall in love with it. A movie that will transport you back to other movies that have left you in a similar state of mind, such as the equally brilliant Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

But it is more than just a movie, it’s a timeless tale of mans desire to meet the person who is narrating his story, the person who created him. It’s about waking up to the possibility that there is another dimension to our lives, one in which the possibilities are endless. [more]

The Zombies Would Get Me, Apparently!

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Sophie Scholl

Sophie Scholl takes a look at the final days of White Rose activist Sophie Scholl. We don’t really get to see any background on who she is, and we don’t need to. Everything we need is shown to us over the last 6 days of her life.

With her fellow activists she strove to educate the German people of what was really going on around them, not just that Germany was going to loose the war, but that the atrocities propagated under nazism would bring world wide condemnation, and that the people needed to rise up and bring an end to the Nazi reign.

Of course, even the best-laid plans can go wrong, and Sophie and her brother are caught distributing pamphlets on campus, they are arrested and interrogated. It’s here that the movie really takes off, with a battle of whits between Sophie and her interrogator. Sophie is brave, sure of her convictions and able to stand firm with a passion that bewilders her captors.

With cunning use of simple music and a compelling script, the movie manages to keep the pace tight and the tension high. [more]