I had all these really witty titles thought out in my head for this particular post concerning the new Will Smith superhero flick. Because I’ve never been that fond of Smiths work. The problem is, when I came up with said titles, I hadnt actually seen the movie.
Now that I have seen it I’m faced with a dilema. You see, Hancock is good. Not great or even totally awesomely good, but its at least 50% good. Its almost as if its two different movies stapled together in the middle.
The basic premise is this. John Hancock ( Will Smith ) is an unhappy, alcoholic superhero who is living in his own world. He has saved numerous lives in LA over the years, but in doing so has caused widespread property damage costing the city millions of dollars. The public has had enough of Hancock, and want him to either stop or move to another city. One day, Hancock saves Ray Embrey ( Jason Bateman ), a public-relations spokesperson whose attempts to market his world-changing “All-Heart” charity aren’t gaining traction, from being run over by a train. Ray feels he owes Hancock his life, and he makes it his mission to change Hancock’s public image for the better.
Smith plays the grumpy, drunk Hancock so well that he’s actually a very likeable and endearing guy. The cleaned up version is still a bit of a departure from Smiths usual roles, but you can start to see some of the old Big Willie Stylee ( I hated typing that ) creeping through. Its around this time that Ray’s wife Mary ( played by Charlize Theron ) starts to come into the storyline in a much bigger, and unexpected, way. Which isnt a totaly bad thing as it tries to set up a backstory and offer some explination as to who Hancock is and where he came from. The thing is, it all seemed a little too thrown together. I would have been much happier sitting through the whole 90 minutes watching the flawed Hancock trying to deal with his situation while still doing his best to save the city.
All in all, the director ( Peter Berg - The Rundown, The Kingdom ) did a pretty decent job on this. Its funny, has the odd thoughtful moment here and there, and is certainly action packed. The acting really cant be faulted and it looks rather good with top notch special effects. It has also been left wide open for the sequels to come pouring in. If only they didnt want Hancock to change. I say we need more dirty, angry, washed up drunks as superheros!
Over the last few days I’ve been periodically playing Granny’s Garden for the BBC Micro. If you come from a time when this graphical text based adventure was used as some sort of primary school educational tool then you’ll know how just how basic yet somehow memorable it has become. Before my nostalgia trip all I could remember was that the game was kinda weird but I never really knew why…..now I know why. It has the most bizarrely schizophrenic narrative ever conceived and punishes you for making completely rational decisions. The third level where you have to feed the dragons would probably have confused Einstein.
My god, the first puzzle. Maybe I’m still missing something after all these years but I’ve wasted too much of my life trying to figure out which one is the magic tree. Basically the fact that each tree is exactly the same makes this task somewhat impossible. You can’t even really call this a puzzle because the answer randomly changes every time you play. This screen should have read - “Above are 12 identical trees, please type in random grid combinations until something happens.”
A correct guess of the magic tree led to what pretty much all magic trees should lead to - two white mountains, four more trees, a weird sun/planet thing and a not so secret cave. The best thing about this area was the superbly self-descriptive name - “Kingdom Of The Mountains.”
The game also gives you a first taste of its greatest feature at this point. The illusion of choice:
OK then.
Our friend the Raven supposedly has magic powers too, his greatest ability is telling you that you’ve failed miserably and must start again. Though thankfully you don’t have to pick him out of some crazy grid parade of other Ravens. He magically brings us from the Secret Cave to The Woodcutter’s House (I love this game) where we get the infamous Fig puzzle everybody remembers because it actually makes sense and if you get it wrong the game gets angry and tells you the answer. As you search for the first missing kid in the creepy house you may decide to go into the Kitchen, where there is a pot. Can’t fit a lot in a pot, no reason not to look into it, right? Wrong! Out pops the wicked witch ensembled by really loud creepy bleepy sounds, which for an 8 year old kid in the 80’s basically makes you shit your pants.
For those interested the emulator I used was called BeebEm which you can find here, google is your friend for everything else.
Now that the craze to have swept the Internet, known as Web 2.0, has died down, I often lie awake at night and wonder what horrific websites that Web 3.0, the future, will bring us.
Before I go through the possibilities, it’s important to remember that the money making re-emergence (possibly) of the dot-com bubble owes itself to the marketing genius of Web 2.0. If only there was an HTML tag for sarcasm. Let us not forget that Web 2.0 was nothing more than thinking of a name for your website that made absolutely no sense (Bebo, Azoogle, Flickr etc.), slap the word ‘Beta’ in small letters near the title and fill in the logo with some form of gradient colour change. There you have it, a Web 2.0 compliant web site.
So, with this in mind, what do the ‘gurus’ have in mind for Web 3.0? Some of the possibilities floating around the Web 2.0 concept of the ‘blogosphere’ include:
A 3-D Internet. That’s right, the Web 3D Consortium are lobbying for the concept of an entirely 3D virtual world to represent the Internet. We’re talking about a vastly bigger version of Second Life. Now, why would we want to do that?
Another, admittedly more interesting, idea for Web 3.0 is the ability to blur the line between off-line and on-line. With services already being provided by the likes of Microsoft and Google to compensate this, is this the way forward for the Internet? Are we looking at a future computing world where the offline desktop no longer has it’s place?
An intelligent Internet. This idea is again somewhat appealing but how intelligent exactly do we want the Internet to be? Contextual merchandising and targeted adverts were probably the first step towards making the Internet in anyway intelligent. Being shown adverts relevant to what you’re browsing was probably a good idea. Albeit annoying to us nerds but the non-technologically inclined people, or plebs, will more than likely find some use for buying crap online. So what’s the next step in making the Internet intelligent? I have a feeling that social networking and social bookmarking may be laying the foundations for providing a more personalised, self-catered version of the Internet, which may be the way forward for 3.0
Last and by all means least, but admittedly my utmost favourite vision of Web 3.0, comes from the man behind the world wide web itself, Tim Berners-Lee, who wants to see XML driven scalable vector graphics.
Well, that was a great insight into the future of the Internet was it not? While I may not know what direction it is going to go in, I can guarantee that it will go down the same route as Web 2.0 and be a set of pseudo-rules for websites to adhere to, only for the reason of looking cool. I mean, come on, the concept of splitting content from design is not a revelation that came with Web 2.0.
That’s it from me, though one last thing to leave you with is that I have heard rumours of the possible creation of Web 0.0. My inside sources tell me that both Al Gore and George Lucas are behind this techno-prequel and are intent on making an entire trilogy. I think I’ll settle for marquee texts and dancing hamsters.
Everyone knows horror movies are generally going downhill. Its pretty much a given. But when I finally saw the trailer for new flick Teeth :
I couldn’t help thinking the premise had been lifted straight from the Pillow Pants scene in Kevin Smiths Clerks 2. Check it out! (Warning! The Clerks 2 link probably shouldnt be viewed by anyone. Its just possible some people might find it offensive. The fools)
I’ll get this out of the way from the start. I’m a Hulk fan. The comic books, the cartoon show, even the old Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno series and movies. I however hated the 2003 ‘Hulk’ movie.
So when I heard there was a new movie in the works I wasn’t hoping for very much. I was somewhat wrong. Ed Norton does a terrific job as Bruce Banner and completely overshadows Eric Banas performance of five years ago. Indeed the whole cast is pretty much top notch. My only problem was Liv Tyler (Betty Ross) who’s entire contribution to the movie seemed to be “There there! Calm down! Everything will be alright!”. But what of the actual Hulk?
Again, its a vast improvement on the 2003 monster. They opted to not go with a likeness of Ed Norton which was the only real choice they could have made, (Unless of course they were shooting for a likeness, in which case they messed up. In a really good way) its not overly huge, and manages to convey a whole lot of emotion for a CGI green guy that isnt Shrek. And then there’s the major factor that had me won over. In the 2003 movie, you dont actually get to see the Hulk until 42 minutes into the proceedings. Which made it seem like nothing was happening for a very long time. This one seems a lot more fluid, and while it has its slow parts also, you dont really seem to miss the 2 hours passing by.
If you’re lost for something to do some evening I’d say give this one a shot. If you liked the 2003 Hulk you’ll like this too. If you’re slightly more evolved and hated it, you’ll see a vast improvement in this. And watch out for the Mr Downey Jnr cameo at the end! Lets hope they dont make a total mess of the Avengers movie!
Oh, and check out the size of the popcorn! Thats some good eatin!
Dave
(All photos are from Yahoo Movies. Except the Popcorn which is modelled by the lovely Sarah)
This is my first post here at Nerd Anger, hopefully not my last either!
Before I begin I have a confession to make, I’m not a terribly angry nerd! In fact I don’t get angry at many things at all…unless you call my mum a whore or something, then I may have to gut you like a fish before actually feeding you to some fish then catching those same fish and feeding them to your family.
Light hearted fun aside I’ve actually tried being angry about pop culture and plastic before but I only end up laughing at the absurdity of being angry at things that I don’t even have to associate myself with in the first place. However one constant shall hold true - My posts will usually have a video game theme because video games are the greatest invention of the last ten thousand years.
In a case of nothing new there then - Metal Gear Solid 4 apparently has 45 minute long cut scenes, 40 minutes of which are probably hideously convoluted Codec conversations with Snake spewing up sentences that have no relation to anything at all. He’ll get angry at the Colonel, flirt with the young hot scientist (but it’ll be ever so creepy this time coz he’s really old) and the words “Stealth Mission” will be used more than once. It’s nice to see Konami are doing their part in converging the medium of movies and games by actually turning the game into a movie.
I find it fairly awesome that Nintendo’s Wii Fit appears to be destroying fat children’s lives by telling them that they are indeed fat. The best quote from that story was from the outraged parent of a 10 year old girl -
“She is solidly built but not fat. She was devastated to be called fat and we had to work hard to convince her she isn’t.”
So basically the answer to the problem is this. Instead of Wii Fit telling solidly built 10 year old girls that they are fat, the game should tell those 10 year old girls that they are “Built like Solid Snake.”
However the use of the word “Snake” in Wii Fit may imply that your child is in fact….Satan.
I had all these really witty titles thought out in my head for this particular post concerning the new Will Smith superhero flick. Because I’ve never been that fond of Smiths work. The problem is, when I came up with said titles, I hadnt actually seen the movie.
