Superbowl

I'm not in any way bothered about the game itself. However it is of course one of the most watched events in the US and therefore it's prime advertising space. This brings us lots of new teasers and trailers for upcoming films. There are some good looking films on the way. There were updated trailers for Pirates 4, Thor, Battle LA, Cowboys & Aliens and Transformers 3. Although more importantly were the first trailers for Super 8 and Captain America. I'm sure all the Marvel ones will be good but I'm most looking forward to Cowboys & Aliens and Super 8. Watch for yourself here:

Cowboys & Aliens
Super 8
Captain America: The First Avenger
Thor
Battle LA
Transformers: Dark of The Moon
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Ghost Box

A new story and a new location for the X-Men. They've got themselves a new base, this time in San Fransisco. After being called in to an investigation by the SFPD they find themselves travelling all around the world looking for clues which lead them in the end to a threat from a parallel world. Just like aliens, parallel dimensions area big thing in the Marvel universe but again left out of the film adaptations to try and keep the attention of a wider audience. I've always been a fan of alternate universes to I found this an interesting story. Although we don't actually see much from the alternate world it's just there is a threat from there. After reading the first 24 issues of Astonishing X-Men drawn by John Cassaday the first thing I noticed here was how different Simone Bianchi's drawing style is. It happens a lot I guess but I'm still fairly new to the world of actually reading comics. Dark Horse's old Buffy & Angel runs are the only long running series I've read the entirety of. So artist changes happen and it's fine once you've adjusted, it's just this one seemed particularly striking. Overall I liked the story but my favorite part was the four shorts at the end. These quick tales from alternate Earths are not constrained by continuity and could go to new places, a couple of which are quite dark. I look forward to reading the next one but unfortunately the paperback doesn't have a release date yet.

Unstoppable

The final batch of comics in Joss Whedon and John Cassaday's run on Astonishing X-Men is a great conclusion. It gets to go somewhere the films could never take a mainstream audience and deals with alien planets and spaceships. I know (mainly from the cartoon version) that these things have always been part of the Marvel universe. However with the exception of Fantastic Four 2 it's a concept that has been largely left out of the film adaptations. When it comes to the comics this is the first one I've read that takes place away from Earth. There are prophecies and sacrifice but I won't spoil the plot. I guess most interested people will have already read them but I can't be the only one who is getting around to them late. It ends with a giant crossover issue featuring more Marvel heroes than I know the names of including Spiderman, Iron Man, The Fantastic Four and Storm is back too. So this story comes to an end and overall it's been excellent. Of course it's not the end of the Astonishing series, that continues with a new story written by Warren Ellis and drawn by Simone Bianchi. I'll talk about that tomorrow.

Characters & Avatars

I've been wondering as a gamer what our characters and avatars say about ourselves. In the comments Fiona said that my updated Eve character looked a bit like me and yet personally I don't see it, that was not the intention. I wonder is it a sub-conscious thing that we can't help putting ourselves in these characters? I've often got an intention behind a face or character but I wonder if that ever actually shows. I re-use names sometimes (I'd forgotten too that I actually just called one of them Doon) but I usually try to keep them fairly unique, of course that's easier for non-humans. I decided I'd put together a gallery of my recent characters and see what people thought. These are only from games where you have a reasonable control of facial features and ones that I currently have installed. Oblivion is the oldest game represented, if you go much futher back than that there wasn't as much control. The most you got in the mid-era of gaming was a selection of different heads and hairstyles which you could mix and match. The first thing I noticed when putting them side by side was how similar my two Shepards were (Mass Effect 2). I hadn't realised that before. My Fallout characters are quite close as well but that's for two reasons. First is the hats and glasses but that's a roleplaying reason, they live in a nuclear desert wasteland. Second the Fallout character system doesn't have as many options as some of the others. So what do my avatars say about me?

The Green Hornet

I briefly mentioned it in my recent video but I've never really talked about it here. That is my intention to make an effort to see more films at the cinema rather than waiting for other options. Not only do you get the big screen and quality sound you're properly supporting the industry as well. I started with TRON: Legacy a couple of weeks ago and now earlier this evening I continued with The Green Hornet.

Now The Green Hornet is not something I've ever really known a lot about. I know the name but that's about it. I understand it originally started as a radio play. I think my main reason for having any knowledge about it is the fact it gets confused with The Green Lantern. A mistake I have made in the past and I'm sure others have too. In fact I read a rumor that the release of The Green Hornet was moved so that very confusion would be avoided when the film version of Green Lantern comes out later this year.

The film itself was not perfect but was quite enjoyable. It had been shot in 2D and then post converted to 3D with was a bit lame but there was no 2D screening option at my cinema. So other than a handful of FX shots the 3D was mostly unimpressive. Seth Rogen gets quite a lot of press but I've never really seen a lot of him personally, in fact I've only seen him in two other films. Here he seemed to do ok in the lead role but I felt more attached to Jay Chou as Kato in the end. Christoph Waltz was fun as the villan and it's always great to see Edward James Olmos in pretty much anything. The least impressive part of the cast was Cameron Diaz I didn't connect with her at all.

If you're looking for fun and superheroes you could do worse but there are probably better films you should see first.

Moments of Gaming (January 2011)

The video turned out okay this month but not quite as well as I had hoped. I had footage from two and a half games. I say it like that because there was footage from two different Dragon Age modules, Awakening & The Darkspawn Chronicles. I decided early on to leave out The Darkspawn Chronicles as it was too similar to Awakening. If I'd had a few more games to break things up I might have considered it but I couldn't think of a way to include it this time. So that left me with Dragon Age: Awakening & Eve Online and the majority of the Eve footage was from the new character creation system. The plan from there was quite simple. I'd play the Dragon Age footage as chronologically as possible and split the scenes up with clips from Eve. I found some music which was all over the place (in a good way). I wanted something that had some quiet parts as a lot of RPG game play is dialogue and that can be tricky to fit over a music track, still I didn't use a lot in the end anyway. It started off quite well I thought but later I realised I'd got to the mid point of the music track and I'd barely used any of the Dragon Age footage, I was still in the opening section of the game. At that point I probably could have gone back and started again but I decided not to bother. That was only the first problem, getting towards the end I ran out of Eve footage to inter cut with. By that point it was definitely too late to go back to the beginning, these videos are not that important. So the video ends with me rushing through what Dragon Age footage I'd got left. Luckily the music trails off and slows down at the end so it almost makes sense, but I have to admit that was not intended. My two favorite/best videos have been where I had a theme in mind and choose the games on purpose rather than just making a video from whatever I felt like playing. I think I might have to try that again.

See what you think, view the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxpJLBc_Xes

TRON: Betrayal

Thanks to its vast profiling system Amazon knows me quite well. So when I bought Daft Punk's TRON: Legacy soundtrack CD its response was "Hey, did you know there is a graphic novel prequel to the film we thought you might like it". As usual my response was "Actually yes I would like that thanks". Curse you Amazon and your upsells, I always end up buying more than I originally intended.

TRON: Betrayal is a graphic novel which briefly re-tells the story of the original film and then goes on to cover some more of the story which took place in the twenty years between the films. I won't go in to any more details of the story as it wouldn't make a lot of sense without having seen the films, also I've not finished reading it yet. I've swapped my plan a little as I needed something to post about today. Still what I've read so far has been good and the artwork is great too. Sometimes in a long running series certain pages can look a little rushed, but with a one off like this the artists can take their time. I look forward to reading the rest tomorrow.

PS. January's Moments of Gaming is nearly done but not quite there yet. It's getting late and it would still need to be rendered and uploaded. So I will post that tomorrow.