PS3 woe

PS3 failed last night - horrified by the deal offered by Sony so gonna try and get it fixed, if not guess I'll be buying a slim once I've found the cash. Most annoying as I'd just got to the last fuggin level of Dead Space.

Goggleboxing

Killing Room is a nice little psychological horror film. It's all about a weird murderous experiment run by a shadowy government organisation blah blah. There's some good acting and it's got plenty of tension though it's a loopy plot so I'd recommend disconnecting the old noggin. It does have this guy Stormare in it who gives good creepy.

Bigelow has a new Iraq war film out and it's not bad. The Hurt Locker follows a bomb disposal unit doing it's daily grind on the dusty streets of Baghdad. The action is well handled and it's all very realistic in a Gen Kill style and there's some terrific moments of tension. The acting is ok and there's a couple of decent cameos from Pearce and Fiennes but the whole thing kinda sputters out in the second half descending into cliches and the same old war film territory.

Virus, despite a decent cast this was a fairly tedious bit of post-apocalyptic cinema. Man-made virus wipes out the majority of the planet and the only survivors are scientists huddling in Antarctica. I watched the butchered version but to be honest I don't think it really mattered, it was just too 80's, too Cold War for me. Dunno maybe the long version does make a difference.

Another Corman and another little gem. The Secret Invasion is a little bit Great Escape and a fair amount of Dirty Dozen but is nonetheless is a great WW2 romp. A gang of professional criminals are recruited for a insane mission into Yugoslavia to rescue some Italian general. It's got a sweet cast and despite a limited budget Corman packs in plenty of action and suspense.

Batman Vs Dracula, a feature length special from the one of the more recent Batman cartoon adaptations. I've only caught a couple of eps from The Batman toon but this was a enjoyable 90 mins. The artwork is really quite nice and story managed to cram Penguin and Joker in alongside the Count. Not so keen on the look of the Joker though - what's with the teeth ?

Hiewing Vabits

Kevin McDonald's version of State of Play turned out to be quite good, comically haired Crowe was on form, Mirren does ok Nighy and they managed the complicated plot down to two hours which was a feat in itself. The only downside was Affleck, I'm not a hater, but this performance certainly wasn'this best. Otherwise it's worth a look but if you've the time I'd go for the original.

Alligator, can't remember how I ended up watching this but I was pleasantly surprised. Sure it's a cheap as hell moster movie but it works somehow, it's got some faces you'll recognise and it's a nice piece of folklore of flushed-pet-alligator-turns-man-chewer. And it's written by John Sayles, weird.

As I write I'm watching Piano Blues by Clint Eastwood again, I've seen it plenty of times before but it's got Ray Charles, Oscar Peterson, Professor Longhair, Dr John, Perkins and the Duke so it's like a panacea. Just wish I could see Piano Players Rarely Play Together, I'm sure it's gonna be worth it but it's proving elusive.

Shakey, Franks, Morons and yet another remake

Great review of a fricking awesome looking Neil Young Blu-ray box set from Metzger's nice new blog Dangerous Minds.

Bit slow on this one but if anyone hasn't seen Barney Franks slap down a moron here's the link.

And if you can stomach it here's the fools from Fox fighting back - Hannity & Bachmann are chillingly stoopid.

And still on US politics was that Heil Hitler viral a fake ?

Remake madness rumbles on in Tinseltown with Outland, the remake of High Noon getting the green light. Hymans was actually quite enjoyable and the original is a true classic, talk about an uphill struggle.

Finally something I can recommend

Just watched the last two episodes of the post-apocalyptic series The Last Train, made for TV in late 90's I can only assume I missed this as it was on ITV. It's a shame 'cause this was great, much better than the recent Survivors remake even though it treds much of the same ground. A group of stereotypical Britishers get frozen, there's a bit of an apocalypse, then they thaw out and battle through a decaying society filled with "savages". There's some ropey acting from a few of the gang but it's mostly pretty good, script is better than expected and it's much darker in tone than I'd hoped for an ITV drama. Nice and grim ending too.

odds nd sods

I love me some Panspermia/exogenesis hypotheses so great news today that NASA found some amino acids in the cloud of the Wild 2 comet. Thanks to io9 for the link.

Wow - I was just telling my non-gamer friend about the RROD problem last night and I said it was about 25%. I love my ps3 but I'm no troll I just think it's bad for everyone if a company is successful even though they're selling a defective profit. I can't imagine Microsoft will be too bothered about testing their next console.

Nice little roundup of Fortean phenomenon on Cracked.com including a few like the Naga fireballs I hadn't even heard of.

Here's a link to the trailer for the Grant Morrison scifi retelling of the Mahabarat. Looks pretty cool.

Couple of Sci-fi duds

Supernova, was pretty awful - it's got a cast full of fallen and b-list stars but this mediocre film couldn't escape it's terrible script and confused plotting. After having a squiz on IMDB trivia it seems it's had a troubled history with both Ford Coppola and Walter Hill trying to steer it to the screen.

Hardware, sadly, wasn't a whole lot better. I'd been wanting to watch this again for ages as it was based on a short story from the awesome comic 2000ad that I devoured as a child. Anyways the film is a little apocalyptic tale about a guy who digs up a killer robot from the wasteland and sells it to an artist who makes rubbish industrial pieces, robot reassembles and starts killing. It's not a bad story it just takes way too long to get to the action, the robot itself is naff and both the main actors are hopeless. Oh hum - let's hope Dust Devil stands up better.

stuff

Cool bit on Io9 bout Space Elevators - hopefully there'll be some breakthrough soon as I've daydreamed about it for years.

Real nice pic from Gawker - maybe Hubbard's plan wasn't about making piles of money and emotionally scarring people but instead it was all about giving us some real big belly laughs.

Tory dingbat, Alan Duncan, who's always seemed like at frickking tool came a cropper this week, it was only a matter of time before wheels started falling off Cameron's wagon and after his nervy, sweaty schoolboy, backfooted performance on TV to stem the damage I'm not surprised they rushed out a story about cutting ministers pay. Doesn't help that simpering berk a like Dan Hannan licked Sean Hannity arse by slagging of the NHS this week. Posh Dave doesn't look good under pressure.

thanks for pic