Surprising I haven’t done a review for Shanghai Noon, of which this film is the sequel, and is a film which I rate extremely highly!
Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson star once again, this time the action is displaced to London, and Jackie is joined by his ‘sister’ (the highly watchable Fann Wong).
There’s nothing really wrong with this film (although some of the ‘in jokes’ are laboured), but it also doesn’t hit the spot. Where Shanghai Noon succeeded, this somehow fails to capture the magic again. I wonder if Jackie is just getting a bit too old for this physical stuff – the fights and stunts just look choreographed, and I never once found myself ‘lost’ in the action; I could follow all the moves easily.
Somehow the spontaneity was missing, and that’s a gret shame.
Still, worth renting out from the video shop I’d reckon. Seen at Ster Century, Leeds.

From the makers of Jak and Daxter comes a game that’s just possibly even better!
“Like J&D with guns” is how I’ve heard it described, and that’s not far off, but it doesn’t do it justice. Synopses and the storyline of the game are ubiquitous on the net, so I’ll only add my personal opinion.
It rocks! I have played this, and played this, and played this. Straight after finishing it once I went back to the start and played it again (it lets you restart the game with all your guns and some special items). Perhaps I need to explain a little – as the game progress you get the chance to pick up or buy weapons, all of which have their specific strengths and weaknesses. My favourites are the suck cannon (which sucks in little enemies, and turns them into explosive projectiles) and the morph-o-ray (which turns the enemies in chickens?!?). But the gameplay again is pitched perfectly – perhaps a little easy for some, but I never found myself stuck for too long, even though some parts were quite challenging.
All in all an awesome game, well worth getting hold of.

Very enjoyable film, although the friend who lent it to me led me to believe there was a romantic/emotional subtext involving a woman, which I spent the whole film looking for!!

An astonishingly violent film, but with highly compelling acting and screenplay, and the nice concept of ‘Gun-Kyoto’.
Very heavily influenced by 1984, all emotions have been banned (this ban being implemented by the use of drugs), as have art, music, and so on, and it is the jobs of the clerics to enforce it. The clerics are highly trained martial artists, who have statistically analysed gun battles to work out the sequence of moves which minimises their chances of being shot while maximising their chances of shooting their opponents. It also apparantly extends to punching and the use of swords.
My favorite part of the film is when our protagonist (a cleric who has escaped from the drugs) enters a room at the end to confront the arch-baddie. 15 clerics appear from being pillars bearing swords, the arch-baddie looks highly smug, and our protagonst dispatches all of them without breaking a sweat. The camera switches to the baddie as the last cleric falls, and his smug smile drifts into realisation that he’s in big trouble…
So I did enjoy it, but it was essentially a film about violence (and bloody violence at that), which is never my favourite type of film.

Seen at Ster Century, Leeds.

This was a lovely concept (an monk who must protect a scroll for 60 years, and in return doesn’t age and recovers from any injury inflicted on him), strongly influenced by Jackie Chan, Crouching Tiger, and a bit of Matrix – but sadly heavily let down by the script and acting (in places).
It’s a good fun film – the action is great (but more please!), and the main actors hold their own – James(!?!) King as Jade rocks, as does Seann William Scott. Chow Yun-Fat breezes through the physical stuff, but comes a bit unstuck with the english dialogue. The rest of the cast are actually pretty poor (although the Nazi dude does have a good screen presence), looking like actors from a 2 bit American soap.
Oh yes, and the ‘twist’ at the end is not worth holding your breath for.

Seen at Ster Century, Leeds

What a riveting year this has turned out to be, eh? Almost halfway through, and only one diary entry. Still, that’s probably good news for my PhD (only 19 weeks until submission day!). I start writing up properly next week, although I’ve still got quite a bit of research to do.
Spoke to an old friend last night (the friendship is old, not the friend) – his daughter (I was at school with the guy, and he’s got a baby!!!) is being baptized on Sunday. We’re going down to see them, but still ended up chatting for hours on the phone. But it did bring to my attention that I’ve not done anything with this site for months. So I decided to have a little spring clean.
I’ve mainly put up a few more reviews, and updated my ‘to see’ list. Actually that list is quite depressing – for every film I manage to knock off it, another 3 get added! Really must start going to the cinema more.
Still excitements that are going on – just 5 or 6 weeks to the new Harry Potter book, I’ve been accepted for a conference in San Diego in August (my first international one!). House is coming along – bedroom and sitting room are all but finished, bathroom just needs tiling. Oh yes, and our ‘outdoors’ is completely finished – got a lovely patio now. Of course it’s rained non-stop since it was finished, but that was only to be expected.
That’s enough for one day – better go and write these reviews.

H’mm – February before I made a diary entry.. Not good!
Nothing really to report – most exciting thing that happened recently is the announcement of Harry Potter 5 (Order of the Phoenix), which is being released on 21st June.
Yes, I’ve already ordered it!

PS Happy New Year.

A very odd game, with a lovely concept that’s let down by it’s implementation.
You control a mosquito who lives in a japanese family’s house, and the idea is that you have to suck blood from the various family members, in order to stock up for the winter.
Of course, they’re not too happy, and if they see you will enter into ‘battle mode’, where upon you have to calm them down by hitting various points on their body.
There’s three main problems with the game – the first is that the graphics are fairly poor, nowehere up to scratch for the PS2. The second is that the controls are just too hard and unresponsive – this is supposed to be an insect! The last one is just personal taste regarding the barely concealed sexual overtones – fancy sucking some blood from a teenage girl having a bath, or perhaps from her upper thigh while she lies on her bed in hot-pants? Perhaps I’m just prudish, but I could’ve done without that.
Probably a game to miss.

This is a fun, if bizaare, game where you have to manipulate the controller in time with the beat in order to conduct the virtual orchestra properly.
In practice this means tapping the ‘x’ button with the correct strength at the correct time, and it’s a bit tricky! But there’s lots of well known pieces, and it’s actually quite compelling!

I absolutely LOVED this film – Best action film I’ve seen for *ages* – equal in calibre to Spiderman, and has to be one of the best Star Trek films.

It’s been a while since I’ve come out of a film raving about it – but it had it all… I laughed, I cried (well nearly anyway. I’ll leave it as saying that we suffer a major loss in the film), I held my breath.. well you get the idea.
Really was edge of seat stuff – but with all the old characters we know and love. There was a certain finality to it, however, and the rumour is that this is the last TNG outing.
But anyway, I loved it, hugely enjoyed it, and would recommend it to anyone. Well, actually it helps if you’re into Star Trek!

Seen at Ster Century, Leeds