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We went to see the new Star Trek movie last night, and as per request I’ll post my thoughts about it here (spoiler alert!).

It started a little dubiously, with an action sequence that while impressive, was so saturated with excessive horizontal lens flare, shaky cam and fast pans that my first thought was “Oh no, it’s going to be another Transformers headache-a-thon”. Luckily the director apparantly laid off the amphetemines shortly afterwards and it became more manageable.

Let’s get right to it: the best thing about this film is the characters. That’s entirely appropriate, since that’s exactly what was good about the original series anyway, and clearly the creators realised that and focussed heavily on it. All of the major characters are nigh-on perfect for their roles; Kirk is appropriately swaggering, arrogant, womanising and reckless, and yet somehow still likeable, Spock is infuriating because you know underneath that forced exterior there’s a party animal bursting to get out, Bones is gruff and to the point with a healthy dose of acerbic humour. Simon Pegg does far better as Scotty than I could have imagined, managing to be even more likeable than James Doohan and having by far the best lines. The other characters don’t really get much screen time so apart from looking right and having the right kinds of accents (although Chekov seems a little overdone – but it’s funny anyway) there’s not much to say there, but I guess that’s all they really needed to be, and they’ll be looking for more in future sequels.

The plot – well, I read about how J.J. Abrams had introduced his Lost experience to the franchise with some good twists, but by the end of the film I was still waiting for them. The core twist is that because of the events at the start of the film, this is an alternate timeline and therefore things are similar, but different to the original series and films. This is a very smart move, since it totally frees them up creatively to do whatever they want, and again concentrate on just the core characters and inventing whatever new history they want around them. It’s also a wonderful silver bullet for silencing the more obsessive fans when they do something inconsistent. So, top marks for taking that route. However, the rest of the plot seems entirely contrived around that core premise, and to include Leonard Nimoy’s cameo part, and the need to get the characters ‘in place’ for future sequels. Little of it makes very much sense – so a rogue mining ship captain decides to follow obsessively Spock through time to destroy his entire planet (and Earth), just because he didn’t get there in time to save Romulus from a natural disaster? Okaaay – sounds pretty psychotic and illogical even for a grief-stricken Romulan.

But, it doesn’t matter that much. The characters and the incidental events nestled in this fairly ludicrous overall arc are entirely satisfying in their own right, so you can forgive them that. Barring the occasional misfire – such as a Scotty’s ‘tube ride’ and his weird familiar-like friend – the scenes are in themselves entertaining to watch and I would definitely be up for seeing more of this crew in the future. Definitely recommended.

As a gamer, I pay a lot of attention to what game critics say – I might not agree with all of them, but in the main my views tend to fall into line with average, relative opinion of what are the games to look out for within a genre. However, I was struck recently by how much this really doesn’t work for me with films in a lot of cases.

For example, we recently watched Hancock, which was in general panned by the critics (RottenTomatoes score 39%), but my wife and I really enjoyed it. It’s not the deepest of films, but it brings its own unique elements (what if a superhero was a drunken bum?) and I thought it was totally worth my time. It’s not the only film that’s had average or lower reviews that I actually quite liked.

It got me wondering – obviously lots of ‘average’ games get bought by the truckload and people presumably enjoy most of them (unless they’re unlucky enough to get a real stinker), despite the critics and ’savvy’ gamers shaking their heads in dispair – and I often join them. It occurred to me that when it comes to films, I’m in the opposite camp, one of the ‘regular Joes’ – that is to say a little more relaxed about my selection criteria. I don’t seek out Oscar winners, lauded art-house films etc particularly, unless they’re also appealing to me in other ways. No doubt film critics look at me and shake their heads in dispair that I watched Hancock instead of something like Revolutionary Road.

So it’s all about perception – next time I have the urge to deride someone for buying averagely-rated games, I’ll remember the fact that I liked Hancock and think twice about it. As experienced critics and officionados of a particular medium we sometimes get a little too snobby about these things.

I experienced my first Uwe Boll film last night, and I have to say, despite the guy behaving like a complete tool on the Internet, if In The Name of the King is anything to go by, critics are a bit too hard on him. One thing he does seem to deliver is entertainment, although perhaps not of the kind he intended.

Now, time for a disclaimer here – I love trashy fantasy films. I like good ones too – Excalibur and The Lord of the Rings have a very prominent place in my relatively small DVD collection. At the same time however, I adore the belly laughs that the likes of Deathstalker and Hawk the Slayer can provoke. For me, there’s a dangerous middle ground between classy high-fantasy films, and trashy fantasy films – it’s ok to be great, but if you can’t manage that, don’t hold back – go nuts and aim for the completely ridiculous. Anyone who didn’t burst into fits of giggles when the Hawk the Slayer ‘magic effects’ start kicking in (involving silly string, glowing rubber balls and other classics) has no soul.

In The Name of the King doesn’t quite reach those heights, mostly because it actually has a budget, and the CG effects are actually pretty good in places, which is in danger of distracting you from the rest of the silliness. Luckily their budget didn’t go that far, and they had to rely on guys in rubber suits for the main enemies, which Uwe inexplicably chose to shoot in broad daylight for much of the film, thereby reducing the effect to something out of Power Rangers – on the entertainment scale, this is a plus point. I also loved how despite needing to do battle scenes, they didn’t have that many extras, so did wide-angle shots with obviously CG duplicated ranks of soldiers interspersed with close ups transparently chosen so you couldn’t see more than 10 people at a time.

Somehow the film contains a large number of recognisable faces, like Ron Perlman, John Rhys Davies, Ray Liotta and Burt Reynolds, but the plot they’re given is laughable and full of holes, which is of course half the fun. Throw in a few random elements like ‘forest women’ swinging madly about on magic vines, and the king’s personal guard who appear to have been lifted with no explanation directly from the extras of Crouching Tiger, and some thoroughly absurd stunts that make Legolas’ Oliphant surfing look frankly plausible, there’s plenty to chuckle at.

It’s not a ‘good’ film, but a film doesn’t have to be good to be entertaining. Quite the opposite in fact – overreaching tat can deliver some damn good fun sometimes. I say stuck-up critics should get off their high horses and stop giving Boll such a hard time, we need more trashy game/fantasy films to laugh at.

I don’t watch a huge number of films, but I do enjoy watching them occasionally and I’ve been using LoveFilm for the last couple of months after a friend recommended it. It’s especially good for catching up on films you didn’t have time to see when they came out. This week we had Super Size Me through the letter box, which another friend had recommended to me a while back.

I like documentaries generally, at least the informative ones anyway, and this one was simultaneously informative, funny and utterly disugusting in equal measure. I have to admire the guy for putting his health horribly at risk in the name of research, although I think everyone involved was surprised at just how much damage he could do in 30 days.

Some of the stats were interesting – I really didn’t realise that in the USA (allegedly) 40% of meals eaten by the average person are bought rather than made at home (that includes restaurants, take-out and fast food). To me that’s an incredible number – in comparison in our house I’d guess over 95% of the food is made at home.

But then, I’ve never really understood fast food. I can count the number of times I’ve eaten at McDonalds on one hand (in the 20ish years I’ve been an adult), and it’s always a very, very last resort – usually in airports at 3am when I’m jetlagged, but in recent years even that bastion has gone really thanks to decent airport restaurants being open 24/7. Our Island must be one of the last places in the world with no McDonalds – we did have a Burger King for a few years, but it shut down and is now a cafe / bistro. And don’t get me started on KFC – quite how you can take something as potentially delicious and healthy as chicken and turn it into a greasy, MSG-laden monstrosity I’ll never know (we don’t have any of those either, thank goodness). Probably the most decent food I’ve had from a fast-food joint is In-N-Out Burger (you were right Eric) – I actually saw them peeling real potatoes and mincing real beef, which is certainly a plus compared to the factory processed garbage most of these places use. Even so, I wouldn’t choose to eat it if I had an alternative.

As a bizarre coincidence, I read today that Activision is setting up a promotional partnership between Guitar Hero and KFC. Ugh.

Anyway, worth watching if you haven’t seen it already. Look out for the extras on the DVD, they’re very interesting – they did a decomposition test on ‘real’ food versus McDonalds, and it seems that even bacteria refuse to eat McDonalds french fries because they lasted for 10 weeks in a jar with little to no decomposition. That’s scary.

Now to await the UK follow-up – the health effects of eating nothing but take-out curry for 30 days Or maybe the fish & chip diet; although despite the unhealthy cooking mechanism, at least the ingredients in your local chippie are usually fresh & local, rather than being heavily factory processed like McD/KFC. The curry diet is almost certainly more entertaining though

Oh…..my……God.

I stumbled across this for the first time ever today, and I’m left completely horrified. I thought it was only relatively recently that George Lucas had jettisonned his quality filter into deep space – sure, I could see the beginnings of his lunacy in Return of the Jedi’s Ewoks, but it was forgiveable (just). Then, I saw this TV monstrosity created in 1978 of all times, between Star Wars and the pinnacle that is the Empire Strikes Back and starring all of the major characters. Warning: this is a truly horrifying experience for any fan of the original movies, so brace yourself!

I’m not surprised Lucas tried to bury this, but now it’s back thanks to the magic of the Internet. It allegedly aired only once on US TV and once in Australia, which might explain why I’ve never seen it (I’m just not hardcore enough to be on the bootleg circulation list). This is only the first and last parts (out of a total 10); I couldn’t even bring myself to watch these 2 in their entirety. If you make it through them, congratulations, but I’d advise seeking professional help.

I’ve never been a fan of the Metal Gear Solid games, and one of the reasons is that the frequency and length of the cutscenes drove me nuts. I can’t remember which one I last played, I think it was MGS2, but even within the short time I played I wanted to get up, fly to Japan, and shake Kojima vigourously while telling him to go become a bloody movie director already instead of interrupting honest gaming all the damn time. It’s all horses for courses obviously, many people love the MGS franchise for the cutscene laden story I know, but for me, playing a game that seems like 50% movie was hugely infuriating.

I read in the news today that at least one of the cutscenes in MGS4 runs to 90 minutes long. For a second there I had a double-take – surely they meant the total runtime of all the cutscenes (which IMO would be bad enough)? But no, they really did mean 90 minutes for a single cutscene. And the implication seems to be that there’s more than one like that. I can’t even get my head around the idea – being interrupted mid-game to watch a full 90 minute film? Bonkers. I’d be hitting the skip button within about 90 seconds, never mind minutes. I don’t know whether they mean cutscene in a traditional sense, or some kind of interactive scripted event, but I get the impression that they really do mean a regular cutscene.

I heard in related talk that MGS2 actually had one 45 minute cutscene, which I didn’t realise because I gave up on it way before I encountered it. Some people obviously loved that game, so maybe Kojima is justified in feeling he can take it up a notch with all that Blu-Ray space available. Personally, I can’t help but feel utterly disconnected from the concept of a game being made better with more & longer cutscenes. I don’t like to be interrupted with a film when I’m playing, any more than I’d like to suddenly stop and play Pac-Man in the middle of watching a film. But, clearly some people want this level of movie indulgence in their games? I can’t fathom it.

Never mind, I guess that’s why I’m not an MGS fan, right?

We went to see Transformers at the weekend – I wasn’t particularly hopeful that it was going to be that good, despite the trailer doing quite a good job of selling it, but I went along anyway just to see. The first half was actually pleasantly surprising – some good, well proportioned action scenes and some semi-Ferris Beuller styled comedy. Cheesy, but it knew it and went with it, and it worked as a fun film.

For me where it all fell apart was when all the major big robot action kicked in. Sure, the robots looked great, but there were several things that spoiled it for me. Mostly it was action fatigue and lack of imagination – the film was way too long to justify itself and after the twentieth time you see giant robot A take chunks out of giant robot B in generic action film situation C it all gets a bit samey. The director seemed to be trying to keep it interesting by using the most exaggerated MTV cuts, excessive camera-shake and motion blur, but really it just got to the stage where that was pissing me off. Yeah, I get that it’s fast-paced action already, thanks – I don’t need yet another headache-inducing sequence where I can hardly see what’s going on, really. Maybe you can keep the camera pointed at one place for more than  half a second for once, huh? What it really needed was some imagination, not just bigger explosions and faster cuts. When it came to the action, that’s what this film lacked the most – I think any 8 year old could have thought up the set pieces they came up with, and they certainly made as much sense as that. With dull, predictable and repetetive ‘boss fights’ and woeful attempts at giving the robots themselves characters, the last 45 minutes were a major letdown.

Yeah, big dumb fun films can be enjoyable, but they have to know how far they can go. Chop this film down in length and actually come up with some interesting climax set pieces instead of an incredibly lazy ‘robot city fight’ and it might have been good, as it is it’s very forgettable.