Film Guide

Fuel is a mostly offroad racing game set in a world where large parts of the globe have been ravaged by climate change brought on by decades of environmental abuse – yes it’s a racing game with a subtle environmental conscience! Oil prices have rocketed as fossil fuels have become scarce and the sensible portions of earths population have moved to sustainable living in the major cities. But in true Mad Max style, a new era of racers have claimed the wastelands as their playground. Racing their scrapheap challenge vehicles against each other in flag to flag races with no rules, they compete to win all important fuel supplies. Read the rest of this entry »

Disney/Pixar’s UP is magic. It stands head and shoulders above the rest as this year’s best family film.

For several reasons last year’s Wall-E failed to move me, Ratatouille didn’t impress me as much as it seemed to everyone else, but Up ranks right up there with Finding Nemo and Monster’s Inc. as one of my favourite Pixar films.

Up breaks the mould in terms of family entertainment as our hero and main character Carl Fredricksen is a grumpy, not particularly attractive old man.  Read the rest of this entry »

Jerry Bruckheimer’s going to war.

The producer has snapped up feature rights to the graphic novel “World War Robot” from IDW Publishing.

Story, penned by Ashley Wood and recounted in war-diary form by participants on both sides, centers on a small band of humans and robots facing off in a battle on Earth, the moon and Mars.

Wood and IDW topper Ted Adams are expected to exec produce.

Deal for the rights closed during Comic-Con last week in San Diego. Bruckheimer, as usual, hasn’t commented on the pact. Read the rest of this entry »

First off let me state that Dogtooth will appeal to a limited range of viewers. It contains material that many viewers would find distasteful and possibly a little sickening, and hence it comes with a well deserved R18 rating – something that a few festival viewers failed to notice when considering their film choices this year. Now, for those with a strong constitution and a bent towards black humour and the bizarre, Yorgos Lanthimos’ oddly titled Dogtooth has some nuggets of gold to be found within.

Basically a fable of parent/child roles gone horribly wrong Dogtooth is the story of a Greek family whose father has taken over control of everything in his children’s lives. They have never been allowed to leave the family property (which is surrounded by a thick hedge and high fences) and have been fed misinformation about both the outside world and also life within their compound like home.  Read the rest of this entry »

Mighty Ape has finally put their money where their mouth is and named a price for the Prestige Edition of Modern Warfare 2, placing it firmly in the sub $300 bracket at $279.99. The standard version is priced to go at $119.99 (as apposed to EB’s ridiculous $149.99) but the Ape is yet to lay a price down on the hardened version. Of course none of these prices have yet been confirmed by Activision’s New Zealand distributor, so it’ll be a gamble to lay down any money yet, unless of course you’re desperate to get your hands on the Prestige Edition, then you might want to pre-order just in case these bad boys fly out the door. At $279.99 I’ll be making a detour around the Prestige Edition and looking at settling down with the Hardened Edition.

According to Wikipedia, the 20 July plot of 1944 was a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, inside the Wolfsschanze near Rastenburg, East Prussia. This was made to take power by means of an emergency plan called Operation Valkyrie (Unternehmen Walküre). Colonel Claus played the key role in the plot and was in charge of Operation Valkyrie. Because of his position, von Stauffenberg was allowed access to Hitler to make reports and for carrying out the other intended use of Operation Valkyrie.

The 20 July plot was the culmination of the efforts of the German Resistance to overthrow the Nazi regime. Its failure, both in Hitler’s “Wolf’s Lair” (Wolfsschanze) Headquarters and then in Berlin’s Bendlerblock, led to the arrest of at least 7,000 people by the Gestapo. According to records of the Führer Conferences on Naval Affairs, 4,980 people were executed which ultimately led to the destruction of the resistance movement.  Read the rest of this entry »

For a comedy based very loosely on a true story I was expecting it to clock in at around the 90-minute mark, but instead it runs a massive 130 minutes. Not that this is a bad thing as The Boat rocks along at an enjoyable pace.

The film attempts to convey the historical feeling of a time when the British Government tried to keep the airways clean and proper, whilst pirate radio, broadcasting from international waters tried to give people what they wanted: rock n roll.

Of course the film never really comes close to portraying the real events, but does a great job of poking fun at the conservative British government of the time and making the Pirate DJs out to be larger than life heroes.  Read the rest of this entry »

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