Tracks: DVD Review

Tracks: DVD Review

Rating: M
Released by Universal Home Ent

Based on the memoir by Robyn Davidson, this is the sixth attempt to make a film of her 1,700 mile trek across the deserts of Western Australia, with nothing more than a few camels and a faithful dog ( as well as some demons from her past)

Wasikowska stars as Davidson, a woman whose dogged determination to get what she wants is clear from the start; she detests the company of other humans, preferring to connect with just her lab Diggity and the camels she's so desperate to claim as her own.
But when Davidson pitches her idea of the trek to National Geographic to get some money, she ends up being saddled for parts of the journey with a photographer called Rick Smolan (Girls' Adam Driver, all big hair, big glasses and goofy one liners), which proves to be an unwanted thorn in her side.

However, she sets off on the trek, with animals in tow - but also, a heap of personal demons to deal with among the crushing distance and weight of personal expectation.

Tracks is a terrifically shot travelogue, a piece which reminds us sometimes the journey is about the journey, rather than just the destination.

Wasikowska's cold Robyn takes a while to warm to (sample line - "Nice people confound me" - she's selfish, yet wildly self-sufficient and reliant only on what's around her in the Aussie outback and her own inner strength to try and complete the journey. She takes on an arc as you'd expect on a journey like this - and Wasikowska is totally spellbinding as she negotiates the highs and lows of the trek, making the exploits of an ordinary person seem nothing short of exceptional and inspirational.

The rapport with Adam Driver's Rick Smolan isn't an easy one and you really end up feeling for the guy as he tries to break down her barriers and destroy her reticence to other human beings. Inter-spliced with flashbacks to Robyn's childhood, Curran effectively dripfeeds the reasons why she's such a cold fish and grounds her in a level of understanding that's relatable.

Sure, there are a few oddballs among the way - but a friendship struck with an Aborigine who speaks only 3 words of English adds an odd level of kinship that's sorely needed as the film progresses on its relatively solo journey.

As you'd expect from this, the cinematography is the star with Curran catching the danger and the beauty of the outback with stunning ease; throw in a couple of cranky camels as well for good measure, a comradeship with a trusty old pooch and you've really got something a little bit special with Tracks.

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Doctor Who New Zealand airdate revealed

Doctor Who New Zealand airdate revealed

Fans of Doctor Who need hold their (Deep) breath no longer.

Prime TV has revealed this afternoon when the first episode of the new Peter Capaldi series will air.

Sunday August 31st at 7.30pm on PRIME is when you can expect to see the brand new series, starring Peter Capaldi making his debut as the Doctor and Jenna Coleman as Clara.

Five new Doctor Who images featuring Peter Capaldi as the 12th Doctor and Jenna Coleman as Clara have shown up in a new issue of Entertainment Weekly.

The shots are below for you to enjoy:

Here's your first look at the Doctor Who Series 8 Full length trailer



With the brand new series of Doctor Who, starring Peter Capaldi and Jenna-Louise Coleman about to materialise on our screens, EW.com has the first look at the 12th Doctor in the opening episode Deep Breath.

Deep Breath also stars the Paternoster Gang and as you can see from the image, appears to be set in Victorian Times.

Doctor Who hits the UK on August 23rd at a rumoured time of 8pm for the feature length episode Deep Breath, directed by Ben Wheatley.

Take a first look at Peter Capaldi as the Doctor and Jenna Louise-Coleman as Clara.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – 35min Gameplay Demo

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – 35min Gameplay Demo

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – 35min Gameplay Demo

Sit back, relax, and enjoy this 35 minute gameplay footage from The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt!

You can view the 35minute gameplay demo below:

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is scheduled to launch across Australia & New Zealand on February 24^th, 2015 and will be available on PC, PlayStation®4 and Xbox One.

The GTA Online San Andreas Flight School Update Now Available

The GTA Online San Andreas Flight School Update Now Available

You think you've got what it takes to be awesome? Want to take yourself to the absolute limit – hell, past the limit – and live to high-five on the other side? Get yourself down to The San Andreas Flight School. Grab the stick of the fast and nimble Western Besra training jet and push it to the edge of the envelope. Master absolute air superiority in 10 new solo missions that will make you comfortable in any pilot’s danger zone, including combat manoeuvring, low-flying challenges, formation flying and more.

Once it’s ‘mission accomplished’ and you’re out of your heroic new Flight Suit, spend your shore leave buzzing the skies in the luxury Swift helo, or cram your entire squad into the new 16-seater Buckingham Mil-Jet for team transport in style. Hit the silk with a collection of new Chutes and Parachute Bags, and if things get a little out of control, rely on the Reserve Parachute to give you a second chance at that soft landing – or use it to get creative with your precision dives. Later, hit the streets in the shapely Invetero Coquette Classic, available in either hard-top or topless roadster variants for whatever your sea-level speed fix.

And round up your wingmen for new Races, Captures, Parachute Jumps and more, including the three all-new VS Mission modes. Acquire Targets is a kill-the-carrier style mode where opponents fight in P996 Lazers to control one flag; maintain control for as long as you can to rack up points. In G-Rating, compete against other cadets as you fly to pick up 15 flags in both weapons hot and cold environments. Or try out Air Force Zero, where the defending team must protect an aircraft against an attacking team as it flies to the safe LZ.

​

The San Andreas Flight School Update for GTA Online is now available via automatic update 1.16 for both PS3 and Xbox 360. In addition to everything listed above, today's update also includes a number of other adjustments and fixes for GTA Online. Most notably, all Contact Mission GTA$ and RP awards have been rebalanced so that more difficult missions will earn you greater rewards, GTA$ payouts on replays are no longer reduced and all rewards are now time scaled. For a look at all the changes in this update, please check out the full dossier at Rockstar Support.

Stay tuned for more details on continuing updates to GTA Online, and look out for specifics later this week on the upcoming Event Weekend to commemorate the launch of the San Andreas Flight School Update.

Non-Stop: Blu Ray Review

Non-Stop: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Sony Home Ent

It's to the skies that Liam Neeson takes in this thriller, which promises twists and turns and suspense aplenty amid the Seatbelts sign being switched on.

A grizzly and wearied looking Neeson plays Bill Marks, a burned out veteran of the Air Marshals service, who's assigned to a flight but would rather be in his car, drinking. Troubled and definitely not a people person, Marks views his time in the air as a necessity and a distraction rather than a chance to save the passengers within from any incoming threats.

Though, his day takes a turn away from the routine when he receives a page on his secured network pager, telling him that unless he pays $150 million, someone on the plane will die. And he has just minutes to sort this - now, the clock is ticking and everyone on a crowded transatlantic flight is a suspect....

Non-Stop is a thrill ride that gets some parts right, and other aspects wildly wrong.

With shades of Passenger 57 in terms of idea, there's plenty of meat on this premise to be explored - and Neeson does a great job of selling it, committing wholeheartedly to the at times, creaking story. Along with Downton Abbey's Lady Mary (aka Michelle Dockery) as an airline stewardess and Julianne Moore as a mysterious woman sat next to Marks on the flight, the cast is incredibly solid and convincing as the story takes a turn for the absurd when the motivation for the hijacking is revealed.

Occasionally the sense of paranoia is ramped up with shades of Flight 93's passenger heroics thrown in for good measure as those seated in economy rise up and revolt against Marks' apparent paranoid delusions; and Neeson plays those scenes well. The tension's quite well held together initially as you try and work out who is responsible for what's going on - and to be frank, every possible twist is exploited and turned about as far as it can go for the benefit of the film. There also moments when Neeson exploits those particular action acting skills that he so honed on the Taken films to ensure there's an ass-kicking ahead when it's needed in among the ludicrous dialogue and growing absurdity of the situation.

Eventually though, there's an unbeatable element of silliness which creeps in - Marks makes a ludicrous offer of international travel for all for a year and a couple of other things happen which will make you guffaw, but all in all, the high flying Non-Stop just about holds it together with its 80s action thriller vibe, complete with stereotyped characters. (Just you wait until the scene where American news media gets hold of the story that an Irishman has apparently hijacked a flight...)

It just about - but barely - works due to Neeson's committed performance and playing it diabolically straight, leaving you questioning whether he's telling the truth as the layers of the puzzle are revealed; he makes the irrational seem totally irrational as the exposition comes flying thick and fast. Granted, the final reveal is a bit of a contrived out of left-field let down.

Non-Stop is very much like a plane journey - it's a claustrophobic thrill ride if you're prepared to check your brain at the departure gate; strap yourself in for the long haul and expect a lot of turbulence on the way. It's highly implausible and utterly ludicrous in parts - and the ending makes you feel a little like you were put in economy after being treated like business class for parts of the ride.

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The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared: Movie Review

The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared: Movie Review

Cast: Robert Gustafsson, Iwar Wiklander, David Wiberg, Mia Skaringer
Director: Felix Herngren

Sometimes, it's not about the destination - it's about the journey.

And that's certainly the case in this adaptation of Jonas Jonasson's book, The 100 Year Old Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared.

Swedish comic Robert Gustafsson stars as Allan Karlsson, the aforementioned OAP who's celebrating a century but whose heart belongs to blowing things up. Cooped up in an old people's home and reflecting on his birthday, Karlsson decides to simply up and leave. So, heading out the window, Karlsson heads for the bus stop and ends up, through a series of mishaps, falling into an adventure that involves biker gangs, a bag full of cash, an elephant and an angry English gangster.

But as Karlsson tells his story, it appears it's not the first time he's found himself in the wrong place at the right time.

A shaggy dog story of the highest order, The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared is nothing short of a little bit insane and quirky.

There's a vein of lunacy and quixotic humour that runs throughout this piece, which sees Karlsson bumping into some major figures throughout history a la Forrest Gump - from General Franco to Harry Truman before swapping explosive advice with Robert Oppenheimer (naturally). As the absurdist journey meanders on its merry way, how much you're on board with this cartoonish almost ACME style memoir will depend on how much you're willing to give to it.

Often hilarious, Karlsson espouses a Life is What It is theology that can really be applied to the movie itself; it's a very gentle anarchy but never really engages the heart as much as it perhaps could. It's good to see a Scandinavian film that doesn't wallow in the dark crime worlds that have become the norm, but The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared tries a little too hard in places to hit the humour, meaning in parts, the coincidental nature of what transpires feels a little forced.

That said, The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared is a ramshackle tale that will reward those who choose to simply go with the flow.

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All is Lost: DVD Review

All is Lost: DVD Review

Rating: M
Released by Universal Home Ent

It seems survival stories are de rigeur.

What with the likes of Captain Phillips, and the heady rush of Gravity in space, this latest sees Robert Redford in a more earthbound attempt to simply survive and endure.

Redford is an unnamed man who's on a solo voyage on the water. 1700 miles off the Sumatra Straits and amid calm seas and rippling water, his boat strikes a floating shipping container, ripping a hole in the side of the hull. As it begins to leak in water, the man realises his boat's been crippled by the strike, with radio, navigation and engine power gone. Despite managing to patch up the hole, he sails directly into a storm and faces a survival struggle that he'd never prepared for, having to draw on skills he could never have imagined using in this day and age.

For 105 minutes, All Is Lost is dialogue free - it begins with Redford's voiceover dictating his final travelogue, and delivering a "I tried" speech as well as revealing that he fought, though he's "not sure what that's worth." Following that, it's silence on the ocean wave, except for one extremely loud and extremely frustrated profanity into the piece.

All Is Lost succeeds on the strength of Redford's performance, a textured and nuanced turn that delivers so much despite saying so little. As you watch him battle the elements and face mortality and reality, you realise you've spent over 90 minutes watching Redford give his all, performing underwater stunts, looking rugged and older than you remember and sympathising with his frustrations over the implications of decisions he'd made. A lack of back-story is also a bonus, because the emotional involvement is here and now and instantaneous rather than due to mawkish and manipulative cuts back and forth to those missing him on land. It's a hard ask to invest initially in him when we know little about him but it's a major benefit to Redford's understated performance that we don't get manipulated both by his mesmerising performance and Chandor's pared back direction and story.A relative lack of a OST also greatly benefits the idea of man against nature in this dialogue free adventure - the sounds come from the lapping of the waves, a reminder of the calm deadliness of the sea life and how quickly change can pivot and turn when nature's involved. The sound work is utterly mesmerising and in a darkened theatre does so much to build atmosphere as the hulls creak, the storms blow and the silence hits.

All of these are components which need to be factored in - because there are no end of frustrations at some of the decisions made by the man at crucial dramatic moments in the film, which unfortunately end up being cripplingly distracting.

Redford's character never once wears a life jacket when venturing out on deck in storms, seems to make decisions that baffle the mind such as applying plasters to his face in a sinking ship and leaves equipment out when a storm approaches.

For the most part, Chandor lets the natural elements take the charge; a refusal to signpost which day is which into the endurance (he merely says it's 8 days earlier) means you suffer the disorientation of Redford's man, who's lost on the waves; one major disappointment is having done such sterling work with the soundscapes of the storm, he chooses to rely on a booming blast of synthesiser music to convey the danger rather than let the elements toss our aural tones around.

As for the ending, once again, a la Gravity, it's as if the Hollywood machine triumphed. Sure, you can argue it's ambiguous, but an expeditious edit would have delivered a crippling narrative blow that would have ensured the final scenes were left to linger. Instead, the inference is that the director didn't have the courage of his narrative convictions and the need to satiate the audience a little too much after 105 minutes of endurance triumphed.

All in all, All Is Lost is flawed in places but soars high in others; thanks to a powerhouse turn by Redford, it's a sign that even in his later years, with scant dialogue but impressive amounts to do, he can rule the cinematic roost.

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