March 10th 2010 seemed to come around awfully quickly.  I remember back in when Sue bought the tickets (or rather I bought the tickets, Sue decided that they were going to be my Christmas present) that the date seemed an awful way away.  The idea of seeing a full orchestra live, playing iconic music that I’d grown up with excited me.

I was looking forward to this until I’d seen a few comments on the web and read a review which prepared me for the worst.  I know this instilled me with some preconceptions but I’m glad I had them – I wanted to go in there expecting a poor show and being suprised.  Knowing there were going to be one or two issues with things lessened the impact whilst I was there.

We got pretty decent seats – I say decent seats when I mean the seats were terrible and my back really suffered.  They were positioned very well though; We were in the front block closest to the stage, 4th row back in seats 13 and 14.  Not a bad view really, especially since the two people sitting in the 3rdr row directly in front of us didn’t turn up.  Got a nice view of the stage, the orchestra and Anthony Daniels.

The orchestra were absolutely fantastic, they brought the John Williams masterpieces to life with such enthusiasm and gusto, it was hard at times to ignore the goosebumps and hairs on the back of your neck standing up.  There were two large cranes which were set up to provide video of the orchestra and conductor as they played.  Despite these sometimes getting in the way of the view of the stage,  it was fascinating to watch the conductor and to watch the video footage of them playing.  The rest of the time, the giant HD screen displayed montages of footage from all six Star Wars films.

The lights dimmed, the THX sound came through the speakers and then the orchestra started to play the 20th Century Fox fanfare.  It took me back to 1999 when the lights dimmed in the cinema for my first viewing of Episode 1.  The hairs on the back of my neck were on end, I had goosebumps the biggest smile on my face ever.  The orchestra burst into life with the familar Star Wars theme.

After the theme, something broke, there was a pause and an announcement went out that we were taking a break for a brief technical reset.  It interrupted the flow of the show but everyone maintained their composure.  Anthony Daniels wasn’t on stage by this point but he arrived pointing out the disturbance in the force (ho,ho).

Unfortunately the Star Wars montages caused me a lot of problems.  The way they were trying to use the footage and music was as a narrative overview for the movies in order I through VI.  Which is fine – until you have footage from the Phantom Menace with Anakin Skywalker a 9 year old boy interlaced with footage from Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Jedi Starfighter arriving at Genosis 10 years out of time sync.  Just because Geonosis is a similar colour to Tatooine it doesn’t give artistic license to mix the two segments up.

This happened all the way through with footage from the prequels being mixed in with the Original Trilogy.  The problem for me was that you had these iconic John Williams pieces from my childhood that were soiled with images of Jar Jar Binks and other prequel failures.  I don’t mean that – I’m not a prequel hater, I like the movies and I can watch them.  I see them as two seperate sets of films from two different times with a story arc that stretches across all IV movies.  I can forgive most of Lucas’ meddling with the OT (Except Han not shooting first) but for someone to put together footage from movies to show alongside an orchestra playing it was in parts really rubbish.  The only parts that worked were the character montages – Leia’s video footage in particular worked okay, despite jumping from ANH to ROTJ and back to Empire.

I’m being overly critical but I feel at £65 + £6.50 booking fee I have the right to.

One part that was pretty cool and was then dipped into a swamp on Degobah was the part where Obi-Wan hands Luke his father’s lightsaber.  We see a flashback to Anakin fighting in the Geonosian area, with a green lightsaber.  The spare lightsaber he’d been thrown by another Jedi since his own lightsaber at the time was broken in the droid factory.  That was sloppy.  There were plenty of occasions in ROTS where he uses the blue saber that they could have used.  Speaking of which I realised that the lightsaber Obi-Wan does give to Luke is the same one that was used to cut down the Younglings.  Creepy.

They messed around with lines too – when Vader and Luke are facing off in the throne room, Luke on the platform, they injected “It’s too late for me, Son” which is from the shuttle station on Endor shortly before their return to the Death Star.  More meddling.

At times I closed my eyes and just listened, other times I watched the orchestra and ignored the giant screen.  I’d go and see them again because it was fantastic and I take my hat off to the orchestra for doing a sterling job, the art direction/whoever was responsible for the footage needs to go back to the drawing board.  There’s nothing quite like hearing those pieces of music live.

Anthony Daniels was good with narration, he got a big round of applause for a couple of C3P0 quotes – the biggest being for the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field (I wanted to shout out “Never tell me the odds!’)

Merchandising – they were selling programmes for £20 and small light up lightsaber keyrings for £12.  They had a small stall selling t-shirts for £20 and hoodies for £45.  Unfortunately these all said “Star Wars in concert” rather than just Star Wars.  I know I can get better t-shirts when I visit the states so I held off.

If you get the chance, go and see this fantastic orchestra playing the Star Wars music live.  If you’re a die hard Star Wars fan who knows that interlacing parts of the Naboo Battle with footage (and music) from Endor then close your eyes and listen.  As if it wasn’t bad enough with Ewoks – they’ve added Gungans to the same montage!

**Spoiler Warning**

The following article may contain plot spoilers.  If you wish to remain spoiler free, please do not read any further.

It’s been quite a year in terms of cinema visits for me.  Compared with last year where I went to the cinema to see one movie (albeit 4 times – it was The Dark Knight).  I’ve been at least 5 times this year already if not a few more.

If I remember rightly I only went to the cinema once back in 2007 and that was to see Transformers.  We ended up in the Cineworld in Castleford in one of the VIP screens and it was fantastic.  The 7.1 surround system combined with there being only 12 or so seats in the little room at the back of the auditorium rocked!

Back on topic.  We went to see Revenge of the Fallen on Friday night, it was a 23:10 showing so quite late on.  I’d heard that there had been a few mixed/negative reviews but had purposefully avoided them.  I was determined that I was going to enjoy the movie no matter what.  I’d jokingly written I was going to watch Megan Fox, I remember joining a facebook group along the lines of “I went to see Transformers but all I saw was Megan Fox….” – She is gorgeous and has great acting ability but Megan aside as great as she is, the movie itself was great also.  The second movie is no exception.

Basic plot surmise is that ancestors of the robots from Cybertron (the Primes) have visited earth before in the search for energon (an energy source, required by the robots).  There was a rule that they would never harvest the energy from an inhabited system due to the process effectively killing the sun.  One of the Primes (The Fallen) decides to go rogue and wants to set the harvesting machine going.  The rest of the Primes take him out before sacrificing themselves and burying themselves and the key required to start the machine – the “Matrix”.  The knowledge on where to find the key is inadvertently burned inside Sam’s head when he picks up a shard of the allspark that was in an old item of clothing. Sam struggles with the knowledge and goes into mental breakdown which is alleviated by him writing the symbols down. Later, Optimus Prime is killed and we learn that the Matrix may also be capable of resurrecting him.  Thus ensues a race to find the Matrix between the Decepticons who want to blow up the planet and Sam and friends who want to save Prime.  There are a bunch of subplots that I won’t give away here, it’s all great – go and see it!

From start to finish I was hooked, plenty of action, plenty of laughs and plenty of geek-goodness.  In fact there was so much in the way of geekdom that I didn’t get most of it, it’s made me more interested in the franchise though and I’m really interested in getting hold of comics and original cartoons to catch up on some of the lore.

There were a lot of twists in the story, things I didn’t expect and a lot of humour.  Right from the start with Sam’s mum and dad cavorting around before leaving for Uni and her eating the hash cake.  Pure genius and it helped to break up the story a little bit.  The bond between Shia and Megan is so beliveable I was almost at the stage of welling up and when he didn’t show up for the webcam chat, my heart broke.  Poor thing! You really believed that these two were together and Megan has this amazing ability to convey so much emotion through her eyes.

Same with the bond between Sam and Bumblebee.  To say that Shia was working with invisible robots, you really believe that you’ve got a boy and his best friend, the bond is strong and you really get the feeling of a strong, protection almost big brother type bond between the two.

It was interesting to see how things had progressed in the break between the two movies, the autobots working alongside NEST, finding and taking down decepticons was a pretty cool and well thought out concept, I had a giant grin on my face when Optimus Prime took out most of them single handedly in a fight before getting ripped in half by Megatron at which point I was almost crying again (you can imagine what a movie like Marley and Me would do to me, I think I’m getting a little over sensitive in my old age).  Same thing when Bumblebee was kicking ass later in the film.

By far the best line for me was when Agent Simmons was on the pyramid under Devastator

I’m currently located beneath the enemy scrotum

Due to the noise going on in the movie at that precise moment I think most of the audience missed that line, I giggled.  It was funny just how often the entire cinema laughed out loud though, I don’t remember the first film having as many laughs as this one did.  I was hysterical when Sam was in Bumblebee with Alice and ‘Bee slammed her face against the front of the car.  My only concern with that was – how did he not know she was a decepticon?

I’m guessing theres backstory/a reason for it, possibly her not emitting the same sort of radiation/masking that radiation.

Aside from a couple of niggly issues I really loved the film, it had a long running time but I never felt myself wishing for the end, quite the opposite, I knew we’d been in there a while and I didn’t want it to end – I knew there was a fair bit of story still to go and didn’t want it to finish.  One thing that wasn’t explained – Sam’s great grandfather went crazy due to seeing the same thing/getting the same imprint of knowledge as Sam – as a result of Sam getting all the symbols written down, out of his head – does he avert this or is it a conveniently forgotten plot point?

The new autobots – especially the twins were fantastic.  The little digs and putdowns they kept coming out with were great and the whole audience was in hysterics.  When ‘Bee kicked them outside to shut them up later in the film I had to physically stop myself from shouting “wooo!”

Something I did notice was that they referred to the President by name and it was Obama – Its not often that you see movies doing this sort of thing, you either never get to see the presidential face or they create a fictional president for a fictional time.  Orders were coming from President Obama though, very interesting indeed.

As with most Michael Bay films, it was jumping and bouncing all over the place.  It’s something I’ve come to expect but when you combine that with the large screen I don’t get a chance to marvel at the detail on some of the robots.  I’ll have to wait for the blu ray release for that oppertunity.  I love the whole cinema experience, I just wish the picture was that little bit sharper!

I want to go and see it again, I probably will go and see it again in the next week or so, it depends what everyone is doing.

On a scale of 1-10 I’d give Transformers : Revenge of the Fallen a solid 8.5/10

Autobots….Roll Out!

This review will not contain any spoilers.

So, last night I decided that I really wanted to go and see Star Trek.  If we weren’t visiting Sue’s parents in York I would have been going with Jamie and Lou tonight at the very nice VUE in Leeds.  There’s a VUE in York (it used to be a Warner Bros cinema) so I decided that I really wanted to go.  I fancied a quiet seating so set my sights on the 11:30 showing.  Sue really didn’t like this idea, I was all set for going on my own – she really wanted to come with me so we decided on the 9:30 showing instead which was on a smaller screen.

The cinema itself was fairly poor, past the fairly grand lobby we walked through the door to screen 6 which might well have been a wormhole to 1989 – terrible seats, terrible layout and a really strange cup holder on the back of the seat in front of you that sat at a 45 degree angle.  The armrests were wooden!!

The cinema was nowhere near half full – there were maybe 30 people in there, there was a showing at 8:30 so a lot of people would have been in for that, it was a bigger screen too.  The floor was lino and was sloped downwards towards the front of the auditorium, a couple that had plonked themselves on the end of our row accidently dropped the 1l cup of coke on the floor, it rapidly spread to the underside of the seats in front and people were jumping up moving seats all over the place.  Pre show entertainment ftw!

Thankfully, once the droll of adverts had finished and we got into the trailers (Drag me to hell, Harry Potter, Terminator Salvation) I soon forgot about the seats and the surroundings.  Once the film started, even more so.

I’d heard some very good things about the film before I went in – pre release reviews and comments on twitter from people like Jonathan Ross had all been positive.  It was hyped up to the max, J.J Abrams had done a fantastic job, they said.

The biggest problem with a film being hyped like this is that you go into the cinema with heightened expectations – if the film isn’t fantastic, it can be very disappointing.  Thankfully, this wasn’t the case at all.

The pace from the outset is fast and exciting, the musical score seemed to be a little lacking in places but it wasn’t really noticable – I’ll pick that up more on the next viewing.

Weighing in at just over 2 hours in length it was one of those films where you really don’t feel the time at all – I knew I’d been watching it for an hour or so, I was willing it to carry on forever more – it was that good I could have watched a 3/4 hour epic.  I’m not sure Sue would agree with me, we’re lucky if she can make it through a 2 hour film without a trip to the loo!

The cast worked really well.  Chris Pine didn’t try to emulate Shatner, which is good – he tried to concentrate on the more rebellious and youthful side – it worked well and he made a good leaading man.  Zachary Quinto played Spock really well – never once did I think “Oh – there’s Sylar”.  Considering we’ve seen him on our television screens in that role for 4+ years this was no mean feat.

The stealer of the show for me is a toss up between Karl Urban playing Dr. “Bones” McCoy and Simon Pegg playing Scotty.  Urban has all of the mannerisms that Deforrest Kelly did so well – I was really impressed.  Pegg makes a believable Scotsman and you can really see elements of the original cast there.

The fact that I spent nearly all of the 2 hours 7 minutes with a giant grin on my face tells you I enjoyed it – it had me giggling in parts. There were also quite a few emotional scenes which nearly had me in tears.

To someone that has always considered himself more Jedi than Trekkie it was impressive – I never really got into the Original Series, the Next Generation was more my game.  I liked the Star Trek 1-6 films, but original series wise I wasn’t too interested – I might have to pick up series 1 when it hits blu ray.

I spent some time whilst the credits were rolling thinking to myself as to whether or not this was the best film I’d ever seen.  The Dark Knight last year held that mantle as far as I was concerned, after seeing Star Trek I think we definately have a new contender.  The plot, flow, humour, actions, effects and cast are flawless.  I can’t wait for a sequel.

Go and see it.  Now.

Kirk Out.

I always planned to do some review writing once my blog was up and running properly.  It’s quite fortunate that I can write a review about a game I really like so soon after release.

I started out with the training missions, it’d been a while since I’d picked up a lancer (with built in chainsaw) and I needed to blow out the cobwebs before getting started online.  The training missions were excellent – showcasing the different multiplayer gamemodes whilst also allowing you to get to grips with some of the new features.

Completing the 5 training missions gives you an achievement (woot).

The campaign mode of the game starts off from pretty much where the first game left off, the Locust are moving forward at an increased rate - mounting massive assaults against entire cities.  I won’t spoil any of the key plot points, save to say that the entire game moves at a very good pace and it’s just like watching a really good film (movie, for the folks in the USA).  It’s like one of those books that you just can’t put down.

I powered through the campaign with my brother in less than 9 hours total playtime on casual difficulty – we’ll be going back and playing it on the harder modes over the coming weeks.  I wouldn’t say that I was disappointed with the length of the game, I know that as we up the difficulty it’s going to get harder to complete and the longevity with the first came with the multiplayer modes.

Speaking of which – the new ‘Horde’ gametype pits you and your friends (up to five of you) against an oncoming onslaught of locust scum.  After about wave 6 it starts getting hard.  Wave 10 is nigh on impossible if you don’t have the right sort of map with which to barracade yourselves in.  The good news with that is that it goes right the way up to 50 waves.  I can’t even begin to imagine how insane that will be with 5 people.  Tried it with 3 and it was very enjoyable.

Gears 2 is the first game in a long time that I’ve just wanted to play right the way through.  Sure Fable II and Fallout 3 are good and I’m enjoying them – it’s just Gears has that extra something for me, its difficult, it’s fun and its downright dirty.

It’s got extra gore and the chainsaw and other finishing moves add that extra umph to it.

All editions of the game come with a code for 5 extra maps from the original game that EPIC have reworked to add something extra.  The Collectors Edition comes with an Art book, bonus DVD and a gold plated lancer (ingame).

I did encounter a few problems when playing the game in co-op.  In one instance the game developed a glitch where the two main characters should have gone up in a lift together but one ended on the top floor and one ended on the floor below with no way to continue.  There was another glitch with a sealed room where JACK was supposed to cut throug an iron door – JACK disappeared and I had to restore the game from the checkpoint in order to progress.  Other than this, everything was fine.

The gameplay is much improved from the first game.  There was a repetitive feeling to the original game which had you running around all over the place with grubholes forming around every corner.  It’s refreshing to see that the game is different in that the different things you get to do (you’ll see when you get there) make it very fun to play.  Theres enough variation to make replaying the game through a pleasure.  It also didn’t feel as impossible as the first one tended to do in parts.

Summary:

Improves over the first game in every way.  Adds some impressive new features and I can see the multiplayer modes providing months of fun.

9/10

List of achievements for GoW2:

http://www.achieve360points.com/game/gearsofwar2/

Buy the game from amazon.co.uk::

Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360)

Gears Of War 2 Limited Collectors Edition (Xbox 360)