Category Archives: Movies & TV

A Toe in the HD-Pond

14/10/2006 Olly 2 Comments

Look what I got in the post yesterday!

Yes, there’s a few weeks before the Xbox 360’s HD DVD drive comes out to say hello but I wanted to get these purchases out of the way before I’m buried under a deluge of new games. Serenity is an obvious choice and when I first saw HD DVD I was blown away by the video quality in The Last Samurai. Batman Begins is on the way across the Atlantic as we speak (can’t wait to see those beautiful glaciers in HD), and when you add in King Kong I’ve got a nice early library.

I won’t comment on the mental health implications of buying discs that I currently have no way of playing. Surely I’m not the only one who’s done it? In any case there’s a format war to be won this time and I’ve done my part to ensure victory for the HD DVD format. Take that, Blu-Ray!

Games, Movies & TV, Nintendo, PC games, PlayStation, Sega, Xbox

This is Getting Silly

06/10/2006 Olly 6 Comments

I make no bones about how annoying I find the tendency of the games industry to pile all their big releases into the Christmas period and leave an incredibly lean summer. I understand why they do it but for those of us to whom picking up the latest releases is an obsession – part of the growing Xbox Live mentality where you have to play what all your friends are, I suppose – it’s tantamount to torture.

I went through various release lists and worked out all the games and hardware that I intend to buy before the end of the year. Take a look:

October

Contact (US DS)
Final Fantasy XII (US PS2)
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (US PSP)
Power Stone Collection (US PSP)
Pro Evolution Soccer 6 (UK 360)
Splinter Cell: Double Agent (UK 360)
Tony Hawk’s Project 8 (UK 360)

November

Call of Duty 3 (UK 360)
Elite Beat Agents (US DS)
F.E.A.R. (UK 360)
Guitar Hero II (US PS2)
Football Manager 2007 (Mac)
Final Fantasy III (US DS)
Final Fantasy V Advance (US GBA)
Gears of War (UK 360)
HD DVD drive (UK 360)
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (US Wii)
Lumines II (US PSP)
Rainbow Six Vegas (UK 360)
Wii (US)
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (Mac)
Yoshi’s Island 2 (US DS)

December

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (US DS)

Throw in a few HD DVDs and all the summer movies that are hitting DVD and you have some serious wallet rape going on here. The average person isn’t going to be able to afford to spend a tenth of that on games alone so surely this practice of all saturating the market at the same time can’t be beneficial.

I’ll bet that there’s more than a couple of European gamers out there who are silently thankful that the PS3 was delayed.

Life, Movies & TV

So Long, Mate

05/09/2006 Olly 2 Comments

Steve Irwin

So I’m sure you’ve heard by now that Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, was killed yesterday by a stingray while filming a documentary. If you hadn’t somehow, now you have. I suppose everyone kind of expected him to get mauled by a crocodile or something one day but it’s still a shock when it happened, but at least he had the fortune to die doing what he loved most.

What’s made this strike close to home for me is that he was diving off Port Douglas in Queensland when it happened, which is exactly what I was doing almost three weeks ago. Admittedly I wasn’t provoking dangerous animals for the purpose of entertainment, but it’s a humbling idea that nature isn’t all cuddly and friendly and this could happen to anyone. Just sad that it happened to such a fun guy who did so much good work (both on TV and in conservation) and had a young family. One day after Australian Father’s Day, no less.

I guess you never know how well-liked someone really is until they die. Irwin’s always been popular but there’s just been a mass outpouring of grief. It’s been the banner headline on the CNN and Fox News sites for the past two days, a treatment that’s generally reserved for the Hollywood glitterati and major world leaders. Speaking to friends in Australia, it’s like they’ve lost a national hero which, in a way, they have.

Rest in peace, mate.

Impressions, Movies & TV

I’ve Seen Clerks II…

28/07/2006 Olly Leave a comment

…and it’s not even got a release date here yet. Shh!

I’m not usually down with this piracy lark but when a film that I really want to see doesn’t even have a UK release date (as of 28/7) I’ll be damned if a little thing like copyright law is going to stop me. This is a film I want to support so I’ll see it when it eventually comes out and buy the DVD, but honestly…don’t DVD players that play XviD files from discs just encourage this behaviour? I’ll bet there are less disciplined people who’ll download it and then not pay for it when someone eventually decides that we’re allowed see it.

Flimsy moral justifications aside, I really liked it. It could well end up being my favourite Kevin Smith movie and although I thought a sequel to Clerks smacked of a post-Jersey Girl panic and rush back to familiar ground, but it works. It’s got the expected humour (oral sex stories, for example) and actually goes further than previous ones, but it’s actually more mature and has a real ending. No shooting the lead character because he doesn’t know how to end a movie here.

In places it’s funny as fuck – the Silence of the Lambs spoof is a howler, as is Jay and Silent Bob’s feeble rationale for turning their lives around, and Elias’ endearing mixture of Jesus freak and Transformers/LOTR nerd is a predictably good basis for Randal’s bullying.

Overall I give it a “better than Jersey Girl”/10. I hope Kevin Smith sticks to the geekery and ribald humour because it’s what he does best.

Movies & TV

World Cup 2006

09/06/2006 Olly 5 Comments

FIFA World Cup Germany 2006

Hooray! The biggest sporting event in the world is underway and I now have at least 96 hours of football (the real one; not armoured rugby) to watch over the next month. I’m one of the 1.8 billion people watching Germany play Costa Rica at the moment (2-1 to Germany with 35 minutes played at the moment) and I’ll be switching over to Poland/Ecuador in a couple of hours. The real moment of truth for me will be tomorrow when England play Paraguay.

Either way don’t expect me to talk about too much else in the meantime. It’s not like there’s much to play at the moment, and even so I’d be dropping everything for this. Maybe I can hold a controller as I watch and pretend that it’s next-gen Pro Evo.

Anyway, in my experience it seems that even in countries where football is the meaning of life, gamers are generally one of the more apathetic groups towards it. So is anyone else out there planning on watching all that they can, just watching their team, or avoiding it like the plague? Being American is no excuse.

DVD & Blu-ray, Games, Impressions, Movies & TV, Tech

Logitech Z-5400

07/05/2006 Olly Leave a comment

Logitech Z-5400

I’ve got a decent TV, a decent DVD player, and decent cables connecting everything into it, but the slightly incongruous link is my sound system, an Interact DSS-900, which has served me well enough for a few years but just isn’t that great. It only cost me as much as three of the digital coaxial cables that I use though, so I suppose it’s been good value.

It’s been loud enough to annoy my parents on a regular basis (late night Call of Duty 2 is a particular sore point) but it only supports Dolby Digital and Dolby Pro Logic II which has left DTS on DVDs inaccessible and it doesn’t have a remote which means that even with my lovely Harmony I have to get up to turn it off with the rest of the system unless I want a low hum 24/7.

Anyway, with a student loan to blow I decided it was time for an upgrade, so I went for the Logitech Z-5400. It has a remote and supports DTS which is two of the criteria down immediately, it’s more powerful and so can keep family members awake even more effectively, and it has support for seven devices at once (up from three) while negating the need to flick an optical/coaxial switch hidden away on the back when I want to change between DVD and 360. At a shade under £150 I’d say it’s even better value than the £100 spent on the old one, and just look at the white-on-black LCD. Look at it. That’s worth the money alone. Continue reading Logitech Z-5400 →