I'm going to do something different today; I think I'll review something. True, I already wrote a mini-review about There Will Be Blood, but I want to do another one.

Watchmen- Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

OK, so this is partially because I'm all excited about the upcoming film, but also because this is my favourite comic book.

Watchmen is about a group of masked vigilantes living in Cold War America after being forced to retire because of a government Act against them. When one of their group is thrown from his penthouse window one night, Rorschach, the only remaining active vigilante, suspects that he and his fellow masked avengers are being picked off one by one by the government in order to stop them interferring with the current crisis with Russia. Meanwhile, somebody is planning a way of stopping a superpower confrontation altogether...

I really dearly love this comic for it's pitch black tone and it's character development. Each chapter (each represented by a minute on the "Doomsday Clock" counting down to midnight/destruction) is centred around one of the vigilantes lives. It is only until the end that all 5 characters merge together to form possibly one of the strangest and compelling climaxes I have ever read. The real difference with this comic compared with other "superhero" comics around is that this one does not show any of the characters in a favourable light. Each one has their own secrets, fears or faults, and this really fleshes out their characters and makes each one seem real.

The best thing about this comic is that it's a really good for a first-time comic. I'd read From Hell (also by Moore) and I can tell you, I found it a bit confusing. Part of the problem with comic books is that people tend to get distracted by the pretty pictures and ignore the story, which is a shame because Moore is one of the best comic book writers. Watchmen tells its story in a easy to read format.

So, in conclusion, go and read Watchmen. It's so easy to be discouraged because of the fact it's a comic, but trust me, it's a bloody good story.

Trekkie Tantrums

(Oo-er, 3 posts in within a week)

I am going to be brutally, brutally honest here and divulge a terrible secret about myself.
Ready?
Here goes... I am a Star Trek fan! *Cue dramatic music*

Yeah, I used to be really into Star Trek when I was around 6-10 years old. I've seen the films, watched (almost) all of the series, I owned a few video games, I even went as far as going to a convention. It was that big a part of my pre-teen life. I never experienced such a thrill with anything else like I did watching those half-hour inter-galactic dramas unfold.
Sadly, I never watched it past 1o years old. It somehow lost its appeal. Star Trek doesn't appear to have such a accepted niche in society as Star Wars has, people are not shunned for being Star Wars fans. That's sort of why I stopped liking it, because I realised that none of the cool kids watched Star Trek Voyager excitedly while drying their hair on Thursday nights. Also, I noticed that after the Voyager series finished, Star Trek got really crap. I mean, seriously crap. It's almost like the writers decided to start smoking crack and wrote all the other series in underwater tanks upside-down. I never even bothered with the last series. Star Trek fizzled into nothingness in my life, and out of society.

Anyway, the reason for this little outburst is the upcoming film set during the original series next summer being done by that bloke behind Lost and Cloverfield (JJ Abrams). I'm not sure if this is a reason to be excited, because I never watched Lost and the trailer for Cloverfield made me feel motion-sick, but a real reason for me to be excited is that Simon Pegg is playing Scotty and Zachary Quinto (AKA the gorgeous Sylar from Heroes) is playing Spock. This is sort of an attempt to resurrect the series, apparently.
Pictures:


Now then, guess what all the Trekkies are writing about the most? Could it be the updated look of the ship? How good the actors look? Nooo...
What the Trekkies are moaning about incesently is the fact that Kirk is wearing a black shirt.
Yep, that's about it. Nothing could apparently be worse than a change of colour to the aged fans of the original series. They should be glad that somebody cares enough to try and update Star Trek, not a simple colour change. It's practically a dead franchise; nothing has been made from it since the last movie, nobody really cares anymore, especially anyone from my age group. Hell, I don't care about it that much anymore.
This guy sums up everything for me in a nutshell (even though I resent the fact he compares it to Star Wars).
Basically, it's ridiculous that fans of a series that can be declared "dead" are complaining about something as small as a costume change. If that is all old fans can say about the new film, then they might as well not bother going to see it because a lot more has probably been changed besides the costumes due to the desperate need to update the original series.
The problem is that Star Trek fans, probably like a lot of science fiction fans, are retardedly picky. Apparently there is a whole sub-culture within the sub-culture of Trekkie-ness where fans base the rarity and value of merchandise by serial numbers. Talk about anally retentive... This is probably what is holding that community back. Maybe this will always be the case. Maybe it is beyond saving.

Whether or not this revamping of the series will work is beyond me. I'll probably go and see it by myself secretly when it comes out and then feel all dirty and geeky for the rest of the week. I almost think that Star Trek should be left alone; it seems to be one of those things that made living in the 80s and 90s bareable if there was nothing else on, but it has no place now.

Live long and prosper.

There Will Be Boxes

Well, the moment has finally arrived. The move. No, before everyone starts panicking, I'm not moving out of the country, just to Voorschoten.



<-------- That's a whole shelf of books, all my games and a few bits and pieces. I dunno why, but I feel really depressed about the thought of packing up all my stuff and leaving the house I've lived in for 7 years. It just seems really hard for me to pack everything, you know?





Ok, well, whatever.


At the moment I'm watching There Will Be Blood, and desperately trying to figure out what the hell is happening. As far as I can say, without ruining the plot, it has a two-thread story-line; one about a oil baron trying to negotiate with a prospective oil mine town's local healer and Jesus-man (who is coincidentally completely insane) so he can develop lots of oil wells on his land, and the other story about Mr Oil Baron's son, who becomes deaf during an explosion due to a sudden release of gas from a oil well and consequentially has a struggle to hear or communicate with his father.
Now, this movie has recieved many awards for having best actor and best director, and I will be the first to admit that the acting in it is very good, the characters very believable, the dialog much the same high standard as the acting and the music, while at times a bit unrelated to what's going on on-screen, is really effective in bringing in a certain degree of tension (I will admit to having goose-bumps on a number of occasions). But it is the miandering storyline which makes this movie a bit of a trial to watch for me. It never seems to decide on what is happening, and it tries to complicate matters by half-way through momentarily introducing a character whom I can only describe as "someone who looks suspiciously like Benny from The Mummy" just to cause the audience to further question what the bleeding hell is going on.
It's a shame, really, because this had the potential to be a really great movie, but instead I finished watching the movie in a state of confusion.

If you want a really good movie, go and buy/rent No Country For Old Men. I'm not going to say anything about it except it's got plenty of gunslinging, blood, stolen money and Mexican bandits, without it being a cliche'd western movie (which it absolutely is not). In fact, it has one of the most pleasing and thought-provoking endings I have ever seen from a American movie. Take that, Clint Eastwood.