Here's where you good people get the chance to express your opinions on movies, books, games whatever. Review something recent or go over old ground or champion the cause of something you feel that has been overlooked. To kick things off, here's a review of the new Tim Burton production of Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street by my good friend, Glenn James. Over to you then mate:
Strewth indeed. It aint one for the faint hearted, old friend, I can assure you.
The very titles show blood falling like rain on Sweeney's shop, and making its way through his Barbers chair, down through the meat grinder and the Ovan to the sewers and the Thames. But although the throat slitting is downright graphic, the blood is a painty fire-engine red, and somehow helps to make it less real. This is part of an overall look of the whole film, in a tribute to Hammer, and the colour of the haemoglobin is what Christopher Lee lovingly referred to as "Kensington Gore."
It looks stunning, but it's quite a ride, and the ending is as blood and thunder as you can get.
By Glenn James
Game Review: Burnout Paradise City : All formats
Fancy a game that for once doesn't rely on 'pimping' your ride and tweaking performance until you have the ultimate ride? Fancy a game that takes you on a vast, and we mean vast cityscape with fully integrated AI controlled traffic? Fancy a game that just requires you to put the pedal too the metal and smash, grind and crash your way too the top with over 60 races plus the ability to challenge friends and strangers on line? Well if all of the above ticks all the right boxes with you, then Burnout Paradise City is the game for you!
Pink slip races, straight demolition derbys plus that old favourite the crash junction all feature on this game in glorious detail that will make your eyes bleed. Add to that a frame rate that beats the previous games hands down, too the extent that you can almost feel the whiplash if you slam the brakes on hard, then you have the ultimate, on line, thrill ride. GTA this ain't, Forza Motorsport it isn't, it's a good old fashioned, balls too the wall race for the line battling for position against the AI or online players. This game is sweet, graphics are eye popping even without HD backing it up (I can only imagine what this bad boy looks like in High Definition) and I can guarantee you won't complete it in a hurry or get bored either. Race for pink slips and even create an on line crew to race that brings echoes of Juiced 1 back loud and proud. (Though Juiced alas is not yet 360 compatible, c'mon Microsoft sort that one out!)
This is one of the best racers of recent times that topples Need for Speed Most Wanted and Underground off of my number one slot. This game is not just good, it's great, trust me.
So strap yourself in and get tearing up the streets of Paradise City where the grass is green and the girls are pretty.....
Rating: *****
REVIEW BY PAUL HOBBS A.K.A OLD FART
HAS BBC DRAMA LOST THE PLOT?
BY KENNY D
What makes me ask that? I hear you cry. Bare with me reader and all will be revealed.
As one series ended, another began almost straight afterwards. As BBC 1 said goodbye to Bone Kickers, BBC 3 said hello too Spooks: Code 9 and both of which had heavy promotion before the release of either series and well I wonder why. Lets take both series seperately shall we.
Bone Kickers was mooted as being a bold and exciting series, packed with mystery and intrigue etc etc. However it became clear from the get-go that that wasn't quite the case. Apart from having a solid cast list the series was packed with cliche after cliche from episode 1 and things didn't improve afterwards either. Take the characters shall we? A stereo typical obsessed mature archaeologist with hang ups,a young pretty new comer that sparked jealousy in the older woman, a guy that was clearly the ex lover of the older woman and still carried a torch for her and a gruff but allegedly likeable, slightly sexist, beer loving older maverick. Ho hum...been there done that.
And with a plot hook that was as subtle as a Tyson left hook, what was she obsessed with? A sword, no wait, the sword as she put it in part 2. Yup Excalibur, bloomin' obvious to a blind man from episode 1 and reminders were thrown at us every chance they had in case we somehow had forgotten. Don't get me wrong, there were moments that at least amused and caused some excitement, but all the items they were after were a case of hang disbelief on the hook as you come in will you? The bones of Joan of Arc? (Ironically this was the best episode of the series) The Round Table and a piece of the cross that Jesus had been crucified on. Please what the heck were they doing?
I suppose if it was like Time Team the drama then it might have been a tad duller but one can't help but feel that by going down the Indiana Jones trail of fantastic artifacts to make it all the more exciting, they went a little too far. For me this series just didn't quite gell and I wonder what the heck they might plan for a second series, although there are no whispers that there are plans for a second series as yet. If so how will the older woman and the newcomer get on now that they know they are sisters? (something that I had worked out mid way through the 2nd episode) Will the older guy go tee total? Who knows and to be frank who cares? I won't miss the series if it gets buried after series one, although I may be curious to take a peek to see if things have improved but something tells me that series 2 might be a case of bolting the stable door after the Trojan Horse has bolted.
And then we move into the near future for Spooks Code 9. It's 2012, nine months or so after a small nuclear device has obliterated the center of London and society has obviously gone down the toilet. Civilains are crammed into mega city one style containment zones, and MI5 has been forced to relocate outside of the city as Thames House got destroyed (alas that leaves the cast of the original spooks watching the calender and wrist watches with impending doom!) and no Harry (sniff sniff) to watch over the new MI5.
The premise is given us that terrorists are getting younger so therefore the ones fighting them should be younger too. And here we go, the new Spooks are gathered from members of the surviving society and hey here we go again, cliche time! A reforming criminal, a maths genius that now finds himself as the head of the team, a girl dying of radiation sickness, an ice cold blonde that maybe has the hots for the maths whizz kid (and would be the better leader if you ask me) and a young doctor that may not be all that he seems.
We allready know that theres a traitor at large as their former boss was shot and killed in episode one, (pity I would have liked to have gotten to 'know' the character better before they offed her) and now they all struggle to cope and come to terms with the upcoming fight against terror. Now don't get me wrong, I'm no expert but surely one side effect of a nuke, even a small one, would be an electric magnetic pulse, or E.M.P which would wipe out mobile phone signals, computer memories and hard drives? Now wouldn't that wipe out the world wide web, and the data base for police and emergency services? But now nine months after the blast, they have mobile phone networks, and the world wide web and the data base up and running with no gaps in the knowledge and full web services? Err I don't think so. OK they may have been able to reestablish some sort of data base with outside help, but to restore what they have so quickly? It doesn't seem plausible.
It's halfway through the series and to me it isn't working that well at all. I know they would want younger guys but this team look like they've walked right out of college or the local job centre. They are just TOO young for me. And so back too the original question, are BBC drama losing the plot?
Well heck no. They still provide excellent drama in the form of New Tricks, Mutual Friends (started last night) even day time drama like Doctors (yes a guilty pleasure) but Spooks code 9 and Bone Kickers aren't exactly in my mind, steps in the right direction. But the above examples and of course, the mega successful relaunch of the good Doctor (to which this site is dedicated) prove that the Beeb can still do it. But Spook Code 9 and Bone Kickers....errr no, not for this casual viewer, sorry Beeb.
So any one agree or disagree with me? Let's see if this can't get the forum active.
HEAD TO HEAD: MEDAL OF HONOR VS CALL OF DUTY
ARTICLE BY TOMMY ELLIS
There was a time when game designers and software publishers shied away from the idea of a FPS (first person shooter) set in World War 2. Real time strategy games were there a-plenty, Sudden Strike for example, and indeed Hidden and Dangerous. True there had been Castle Wolfenstein but I don't count that as it was a Doom spin off and therefore not realistic enough to be counted. No I mean someone taking proper influence from that time period and making it historically accurate in terms of hardware, weapons and the like.
Then came the day when back in the heady days of Playstation 1, Electronic Arts announced they were going to release Medal Of Honor, a first person shooter set in World War 2. And the gaming fans took too it like a duck to water, and it wasn't long before the PC conversion followed and the sequel Medal Of Honor: Underground. Underground was not only a sequel but a departure from the first game as instead of an enlisted soldier, you played a female member of the French resistance movement. Despite good sales they never brought the character back in a starring role. And Medal of Honor continued without cometition until Activision announced they were going to shake things up with the release of Call Of Duty.
Call of Duty was a PC exclusive and captured the imagination in a way that Medal of Honor never quite achieved. MOH was a great game, don't get me wrong, but Call of Duty had a level of intensity in the battle segments that hadn't been seen before. After the initial training mission, our lone hero gets dropped into the middle of a huge fire fight that culminates in a battle to defend a church and town with captured German artillery. But wait it didn't end there. The mission segments ends and instead of resuming with the same soldier, lo and behold you find yourself also D-Day bound with an English soldier, complete with the official equipment, weapons etc etc. Then when that chapter is over you find yourself with a Canadian soldier. But the game takes you to Stalingrad and the battle of Berlin with again, three different perspectives. Indeed how many games do you know where you play a Soviet soldier defending his homeland?
Meanwhile Medal of Honor continued and for diversity it changed the conflict zone. After Underground saw you fighting to liberate Paris, the clock got turned back, and with MOH: Allied Invasion, or under it's PC alternative title MOH Spearhead (by the way this was the first MOH to hit the PC) the main hero was pitched right into the middle of D-Day complete with beach head attack, seeing you facing machine gun bunkers and strafing German fighters. Still pretty intense and visually impressive (I actually own the Game Cube version and what an under rated console that was/is!) and it could stand up tall and proud. However along came Call Of Duty with an exclusive PS2 release entitled Call Of Duty: Finest Hour. This was a clear warning shot too MOH that there was a contender too their title of best WW2 based game. Could MOH respond in a positive fashion? Alas no...
Despite the impressive opening sequence with our hero manning a deck gun of a battleship during the attack on Pearl Harbour, it soon goes down hill and fails to deliver on the potential offered by the opening sequence. It becomes another FPS with no real innovations. In the meantime Call Of Duty developers took their time before releasing their official sequel, The Big Red One. Now we are in North Africa at the start and it's as blisteringly as hot as the real desert. Almost exclusive at first to consoles, it soon came to PC too. But it was a slap in the face to Medal of Honor who could only respond with the lack lustre arcady feel of MOH Allied Assault which actually had spinning icons on the map to show you where ammo and health can be found. It's more objective based than the others and although a brave attempt and being an improvement on Rising Sun, it still couldn't hold a candle to Call of Duty.
If Big Red One could be counted as the body shot, then MOH had time to prepare itself to come out of the corner it had been backed into. But could it? People knew that the next COD could be the knock out punch. People waited with baited breath for MOH's replying salvo. They held back converting Underground for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance and then the SP (Actually a GOOD conversion with extra content thrown in for good measure) and then came the announcement, they were going to unleash MOH Vanguard.
Vanguard fired back quite strongly, especially as Activision announced that there would be a delay on the release of Call of Duty 3. MOH developers at EA must have been elated, but it wasn't going to last long. Call Of Duty 3 hit the XBOX 360 and then exploded onto the newly released Playstation 3 (No I don't have one...yet!) and it almost was the knockout blow that MOH was dreading but then came MOH Airborne and that for the first time offered 'sand box' exploration and open ended routes in and out of battles as where you parachuted into the battle zone influenced mission objectives and had an influence on your success/survival rate. What could C.O.D. do to combat that?
They announced that the next C.O.D would break the mold, and it did. It took the brave decision to step away from World War 2 completely. C.O.D Modern Warfare hit the scene. Now it seems that they were NOT only engaging MOH in a head to head war, they are now firing warning shots too the likes of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter! And it works, BIG time. There has been no announcement of a new MOH since Airborne so what now? Nobody knows what lies in store for MOH now as C.O.D has all ready announced that C.O.D World at War is coming, this time set in a frighteningly plausible near future. MOH remains quiet. Is it a dead franchise now?
Rumours are beginning to circulate that MOH will turn away from World War 2. It may follow the route of games like Shellshock: 'Nam '67 or Vietnam: Purple Haze and go too the Vietnam war. It may go to the way of the Conflict series and go too the Gulf War for inspiration or indeed Korea (echoes of the M.A.S.H theme go through my head) but there has been no news....at all. I think MOH could be dead. I think that C.O.D may have won the war, BUT that means nothing. Airborne reinvigorated the series strongly so there may be life in the old war dog yet, so watch this space. I say watch and wait, for NOW C.O.D. may have won the battle, but the war is far from over. Indeed other pretenders are out there now and offering challenges to BOTH franchises, especially one of my personal favourite rivals, The Brothers In Arms series with it's squad based action, and Hour Of Victory and Bad Company also opening with their own salvos.
But for now it's C.O.D thats the winner. Watch this space to see if MOH can and indeed, will fire back.
And I now stand corrected as MOH has just released MOH: Heroes for the PSP and Nintendo DS and from all reports it's a decent enough game that it's going to be converted to the 'parent' consoles, i.e PS3 and 360 and Wii sometime later in the year. I'm going to wait and see what happens on this with baited breath!
