Washed Out is back

I’m so glad this guy is back I’ve been waiting for ages for some more chilled outness from Ernest Green. From what I’ve heard so far this one lacks any of the funk from his first EP Life and Leisure, I’m thinking mostly of Feel It Around here, but its still a keeper. Green and his cohorts style has be dubbed chillwave which sounds pretty perfect to me. He’s been somewhat quiet of late so this is a welcome return. This is going straight on the summer playlist.

My Nether Drake!!!

I can’t believe that I forgot to mention this at the time but I finally earned my Nether Drake on WoW. It only took me like 3 months on and off. I’m not sure how long it actually took in game, I’d rather not no. But anyway here he is…

His name is Onyxian but I shall call him Toothless, the Nightfury.

I also suck at Starcraft 2

So I picked up StarCraft II again the other day as I was bored to death of all of my xbox games. I wouldn’t say I’m regretting the decision but I’m so bad at StarCraft and RTS’s in general that its starting to get me down. I’m playing it on a mac which may not be the best config as the keys are all weird, you might be able to change it but I’m not sure. So my main problem is that I don’t know any of the keystrokes that would make my life much easier, you know like shortcuts. I think this is why I enjoyed Halo Wars because it was simplistic. This is driving me insane. I also don’t think the Terran’s are that good, I’m sure some uber StarCraft player will pull me up on this but I only seem to be able to win with Protoss. So in light of my shoddy abilities I’ve started watching Cynical Brit’s I Suck at StarCraft vlog to see if I can pick up any tips. I can honestly say he’s about as bad as me and I suffer with many of the issues that seem to be standing in his way. So I guess I’m hoping that this will help me improve to a state where I’m at least competitive and don’t roll over like some limbless nercomorph. I’ll let you know how things progress. To give you an idea of where I’m at now…  I CAN’T EVEN BEAT THE AI ON MEDIUM. Laugh all you want but I will get better if it gives me an aneurism, figuratively speaking of course I’ve heard those things are pretty bad.

Transformers, an obituary.

Michael Bay may well have killed off the Transformers for a while with this latest installment, and I have to say I’m relieved. Don’t get me wrong I love Transformers, I used to watch the original series when I was little, but this is just pure shite. The worst part is I knew it was going to be horrible but I’d prepared myself for that eventuality but not for what I was about to endure. This may well be one of the worst films I have ever seen. Like I said I was prepared for it to be rubbish but in a good way, just pure eye candy with some semblance of plot (enough to keep me vaguely interested would be fine) a little bit of the A-Team with some Expendables thrown in with giant robots and I’d have been set.

Alas there is nothing about this film that I liked… at all! I even missed parts of the hour long action seen at the films climax, I say climax but thats a contentious word to use for what happened at the end, because I nodded off. The one redeeming feature (possibly) that may have saved this sorry excuse for a film made me so bored, almost to death, that I dosed off for parts of it. I blame this in part to the films ridiculous run-time, all 157 minutes of it and in part to the films stupidly incoherent narrative. This problem could have been rectified by completely cutting the first hour from the film.

I sat throughout the first hour of this film turning to my friends gesturing and muttering various expletives to the general theme of WTF! Why Michael Bay, are we watching Sam Witwickey, who lets face it is a whiny little bitch, carting himself around Chicago looking for  a job. And why is it that he suddenly, over a three year hiatus, has managed to replace one incredibly hot girlfriend with another, how is this a) fair and b) believable. I feel almost sorry for Rosy Huntington-Whiteley’s character. She has to endure whining on an almost biblical scale from Shia, who screams constantly about his predicament. After all he did receive a medal from Obama.

And what’s with the embarrassing cameos. John Malkovich’s performance was horrendous and from an actor who’s appeared in several Coen films it’s just unfathomable, Frances McDormand, another Coen stalwart was the only one who managed a passible performance. But even she was limited by the poor writing. Alan Tudyk’s no slacker either, he’s been in Serenity which was pretty damn good. Ken Jeong’s (that Asian guy from The Hangover) role was perhaps the most bizarre addition to the cast. In the first Hangover film he was mildly entertaining but I just don’t get this. I’m guessing he was meant to gloss over the dull exposition that was going on during his screen time, something about him discovering that the Decepticons wanted the Autobots to go to the moon to retrieve those pylon thingies, which was pretty damn obvious.

Characters from other films are the only thing that Bay seems to have recycled. It appears half the locations and even some of the CGI from his 2005 film, The Island seem to have been re-used. Not only is that plain lazy Bay but its also stupid, that film sucked as well. I just hope that if he decides to make another, and that seems likely given its opening weekend box office, he gets someone in that can do a decent job of writing it. The first film was a nice surprise but when you consider the writers also worked on the new Star Trek revamp and Lost then you can see why. Michael Bay may be good at action but subtlety is definitely not his strength.

If like me you were going to see this film in that hopes that it would be so bad its good then I’m sorry but you going to be pretty damn disappointed. Its actually just so bad its bad. If you’re up for a summer blockbuster then I implore you, avoid this at all costs. Go and see X-Men First Class, it’s got all the frills and spills with a plot thrown in for good measure. Here’s hoping the Coen’s decide to remake this franchise a la True Grit.

Here’s an article from the Telegraph if you want to read more about The Island/Transformers similarities.

More alternative film posters…

Ok so it appears I’m a bit slow on the uptake but a friend recently introduced me to Olly Moss, for those of you who are unfamiliar with this gentleman then I suggest you check out his artwork. Heres why…

Retro Game Film Posters!

Not sure how I came upon these but they look sweet! I might have to order me a print or two. You can get them from…

http://penneydesign.imagekind.com/

Magic, a gathering.

So this weekend marks the 4th, I think, Game Day. Which basically involves myself, ChoccyR and Hand Springs getting together to play some Magic, go see a shed load of films and set the world to rites. As I’m writing this it occurs to me how much of a geek I really am, I’ve become one of those people I used to take the piss out of at school. But I’ve got to admit, I’m kind of reveling in it, the geek culture that is not the bullying. Magic aside getting together with some old friends is perhaps what its all about. And as for Magic the Gathering, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. There’s nothing better than fucking somebody over when they’ve backed you into a corner and pulling our some mind blowing combo to wipe the smile off their face, even amongst friends. When instances like these do occur we kind of have this hushed reverence for the player that pulled it off, a look I guess that just says ‘well done sir, well done’.

So ahead of this weeks marathon I decided to freshen up my decks. This is a lot more fun than it sounds, deck building is perhaps one of the most enjoyable and cathartic things about MTG. I managed to make a few more decks but ended up having to buy another deck builder  because I ran out of lands. Oh and there is nothing better in this world than opening a booster, its like Christmas. I’m sure that’s a belief widely held by most Magic players but I had to put it out there. I’m not a massive player, I don’t go to Friday Night Magic or anything, mainly because I’m afraid of getting my ass handed to me by 12 year olds, but I do like a game.

The thing that really got me into it was, aside from my Pokemon phase back in the day, I picked up Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Plainwalkers on Xbox Live Arcade.

We (ChoccyR and Hand Springs) decided we might give it a bash in RL, and that little anecdote has led me to this point. We took a bit of a break from it for a while in between the release of the first arcade title and Magic 2012 which was released a couple of weeks ago. Picking it up again reignited my passion for it, Chocs as well I think, as we bother went out and bought some new cards. We’re still waiting on Hand Springs but he’s been mentioning it.

We’re going to be watching a couple of films this weekend as well: Transformers 3, Bridesmaids and maybe Green Lantern. I’m not expecting great things from either Transformers or Green Lantern but Bridesmaids looks hella funny. I’m looking forward to Kristen Wiig’s performance (she was awesome in Whip It) as well as Jon Hamm’s cameo. I’ll report back once I’ve seen them.

The ArchAndroid steals the show…

So, Glastonbury is over and unfortunately I wasn’t able to go this year, because I’m stoney broke and also because I’m pretty sure I was somewhat underwhelmed by the headliners, with the exception of Beyonce (she’s someone I would probably never actually see live) and given her other halves amazing performance the other year she was bound to put on a show. But thanks to the BBC, I did manage to catch a lot of the acts on T.V which was awesome. Myself and ChoccyR had ourselves our own festival via Xbox Live which was fun. The one performance that sticks out for me however, was Janelle Monáe. I’ve been listening to her stuff for a couple of years, I think her first ep, Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase), was out in like 2007. I think the first reason I picked it up was the cover actually, who says you can’t judge a erm… album by its cover. Obviously it resonated somehow with me, perhaps because of its reference to Fritz Lang’s 1927 film. I loved the film so I thought ‘if this lady has good taste in films then she must be a pretty sweet artist’. And alas my somewhat roundabout theory was proved right. I think the other thing that I liked so much about it was that it was a concept album. In the opening track, March of the Wolfmasters,  Monáe announces in an plastic jovial tone:

Good morning cy-boys and cyber girls.
I am happy to announce we have a star-crossed winner in today’s heartbreak sweepstakes.
Android Number 57821, otherwise known as Cindy Mayweather,
Has fallen desperately in love with a human named Anthony Greendow.
And you know the rules!
She is now scheduled for immediate disassembly!
Bounty hunters, you can find her in the Neon Valley Street District on the 4th floor
At the Leopard Plaza apartment complex.
The droid control Marshals are full of fun rules today,
No phasers, only chain-saws and electro-daggers!
Remember, only card carrying hunters can join our case today.
And as usual, there will be no reward
Until her cyber-soul is turned into the star commissioner.
Happy hunting!

March of the Wolfmasters, Janelle Monáe 

This is probably one of my favourite openings to a song. It reminds me in some ways of the chase scene in Blade Runner where Deckard chases Pris through the dystopian cyberpunk streets of Los Angeles. Obviously the circumstances in the film a slightly different but I think you get the idea, thats just how I see it. Anyway, I digress, back to Glasto. Janelle’s performance on West Holts was easily worthy of a place on the Pyramid stage. She is an incredibly dynamic and accomplished performer. The crowd seemed to be lapping it up and I would imagine that a fair few of them had never even heard of her. It is a testament to her talent that after her appearance at Glasto her album, The ArchAndroid, made it into the top 20 on iTunes (it’s currently sitting at number 13). So I guess what I’m trying to say is that you should go check out the album and her ep, I guarantee at the very least that you’ll appreciate what she is trying to do but hopefully you will love it.

Anyway its getting late so I’ll catch y’all on the flip-side.

Thrash Hologram

Day One…

I’ve been mulling it over recently, thinking about whether or not this would be interesting to anyone and decided that I don’t actually care. I’m going to do this whether or not anybody reads it. I’m guessing a few people will, my nearest and dearest (ChoccyR, Hand Springs, splendidsquirel and Dirty Chocobo) to name but a few. Ok the only few, but as far as I’m concerned that’ll do. I read a little bit of what Choc accomplished with his blog so I’ve got a feeling about how these sort of thing play out and I’ve been reading gaming blogs and websites for as long as I can remember so I’d like to think I’m somewhat qualified for this, if not literally then certainly figuratively. So the next thing that I was thinking about was what exactly I was going to put into this. I had a great idea to document my exploits in Gears of War multiplayer as I’d had some run ins with some pretty interesting characters (Marvel and Destiny Warrior) with whom I traded some delightful correspondence. My favourite being ‘I f**ked your mom, im ur dad’ which needless to say was a surprise to me to say the least. These exchanges thankfully are a rarity, but I think perhaps that’s what makes them so delectable when they do rear their ugly little heads, I have to admit that I love them. Antagonising people in multiplayer gaming is like some sort of sweet nectar. It’s like plasmids to the citizens of Rapture. Alas in my haste, and perhaps anger, I deleted said messages so am unable to relay them to you in all their grammatical and profanity strewn glory. So that’s that. I think the best course of action is to wait for Gears of War 3, which I hasten to add looks remarkable. The only problem with that is that with the added and long awaited advantage of dedicated servers would almost definitely remove the occurrence of mind numbingly annoying host issues that occur in Gears 2 and as a result, may put a stop to these fracas’. Let’s hope that’s not the case. I’ll keep you updated as to the goings on of my gaming exploits in the mean time, there’s plenty to keep me going until then, not just games. I happen to have ears as well as fingers and eyes so a little bit of music and film may creep in from time to time. We’ll call it a pop culture blog or something to that effect.

Anyway

Peace Out

Thrash Hologram