Maleficent: Blu Ray Review

Maleficent: Blu Ray Review

Rating: PG
Released by Disney DVD

Here it is -  Disney's latest Maleficent, a much anticipated dark fairytale, starring Angelina Jolie as the lead and the iconic faerie Maleficent, from the 1959 movie, Sleeping Beauty.

Maleficent lives in a world divided by two kingdoms; on one side, the magical creatures and on the other, the humans. Pure of heart and a protector of the land, Maleficent flies through the skies, ensuring harmony. One day, as a young girl, she meets the prince Stefan and falls for him. He promises to return as the budding romance grows; but as Stefan grows older, he faces another destiny; that of king and protector of his land.

Unfortunately though, that means bringing the humans into conflict with an older Maleficent (the gloriously cheek-boned Angelina Jolie) and a terrible betrayal. Slighted, Maleficent curses Stefan's first born Aurora (Fanning), signalling a darkness to rule the kingdom forever....
However, Maleficent begins to realise that she's made a dreadful mistake.....

Maleficent is an odd mix of things, a gruesome fairy tale that's extremely dark in some of its castration imagery and yet dabbles in the extremely slight and light with a plethora of CGI creatures, as well as a comedy trio of pixies.

While at times, feeling rushed, when the film stops to concentrate on its "villain", it gets pretty much most of it right. With her high angular cheekbones, piercing eyes and bright vibrant red lipstick in among the black, Jolie's whispered performance delivers the fine line between malevolent, misunderstood and mistreated. (Once it settles down from the simply shouting and wailing at the start) As she becomes more of a fairy Godmother figure to Aurora,there's bit more humour that's injected into proceedings that have been deliciously cynical so far and which feels detached from the rest of what's around. Certainly, it looks as if Jolie's been framed in every shot for a spread in a glossy magazine, with the posing and primping just right. While her arc is not exactly unpredictable, the Hollywood need to flesh out the character and their reasons is more symptomatic of the times we live in than a desire to simply leave a character black or white.

If anything, Jolie is the stand out of these proceedings, which fail to give sufficient character to those around her. Copley simply dials in a performance as Stefan, the king who becomes consumed with anger, Fanning is likeable but wishy-washy as Aurora, and the three pixies (Temple, Staunton and Manville are nothing short of comic relief brought in to keep the kids amused but which will rankle all others.)

In among this fantasy world, there's an over-reliance on the FX front with scenes of Maleficent swooping through the skies and shots of creatures feeling as if they're simply being used to show off what the designers can do, rather than adding to the world within or for the narrative. It's a shame because once again, the elements are there (even if there is yet another version of the Treebeard / Ents fight from Lord Of The Rings) - but it feels like the money was spent on the effects not on the character or story.

Maleficent is a deliberate perversion of what you may expect; an extension of Frozen's changing of the guard, a hint at the darkness behind the fairy tales and does appear to try to follow the path of the Wicked stage show and attempt to redeem one of the canon's most iconic villains (why do they always need redemption?), but, in among the sound and fury of the hollow and lacking FX-fest, it delivers a career best from Angelina Jolie. It may give us a Maleficent for the 21st century, but little else is delivered in an uneven cinematic outing.

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Grand Theft Auto V: PS3 to PS4 comparison

Grand Theft Auto V: PS3 to PS4 comparison

Hi all,

Please find below links to today’s video highlighting the extensive enhancements made to Grand Theft Auto V in its transition from the PlayStation 3 to the PlayStation 4. Grand Theft Auto V on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC has given us the chance to harness the power of these platforms to improve every aspect of the game. In addition to the all-new First Person Mode revealed yesterday, this means big technical changes like increasing the overall resolution and more than doubling the draw distance, as well as replacing every texture in the game and much more.

See more information on the new generation upgrades here

Grand Theft Auto V is available for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on Nov 18, 2014 and for PC January 27, 2015.

Marvel's Agent Carter - Extended Look

Marvel's Agent Carter - Extended Look

Get your first look here at Marvel's Agent Carter, starring Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter, Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark.

And introducing JARVIS....

Marvel's Agent Carter will air in 2015.

Grand Theft Auto V: First Person Experience unveiled

Grand Theft Auto V: First Person Experience unveiled

  

Presenting Grand Theft Auto V: First Person Experience, the first footage of the new first person mode available exclusively in the new versions of Grand Theft Auto V for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. This new mode shows players the host of changes made to the game to accommodate this new perspective, including the creation of an optional first person cover system, a new targeting system, a more traditional FPS control scheme, and integrating thousands of new animations into the existing game. It's also available at the touch of a button so you can easily switch back and forth between perspectives.

First person mode will be available in both GTAV and GTA Online.

Grand Theft Auto V for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC features hundreds of additions and enhancements including 1080p resolution at 30FPS on PS4 and Xbox One (4K compatible on PC).

Grand Theft Auto V for will be available on Xbox One and PS4 November 18^th, 2014 and on PC January 27^th, 2015.

X-Men: Days of Future Past: Blu Ray Review

X-Men: Days of Future Past: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by 20th Century Fox Home Ent

After six previous X-Men movies, including a recent reboot of the series with a younger cast, X-Men: Days of Future Past arrives at a time-bending moment for the series, complete with a return from one of its most famous directors.

Set in dystopian future where the robot Sentinels are hunting down the mutants, eradicating them and any potential humans who could possess the mutant gene, the pressure's really on forProfessor X (Stewart) and Magneto (McKellen). They've joined forces to try and prevent their kind being wiped out in a scheme which could only have come from the comic book 101 of time travel.

Deducing that if they go back in time to 1973 when Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) was about to assassinate Boliver Trask (the man responsible for the Sentinels programme), they can prevent this future from ever happening. So, Logan aka Wolverine (aka Hugh Jackman) is despatched back to the past to try and save the day - but Wolverine's got bigger problems on his hands because his trying to unite the younger Professor X (MacAvoy in self-loathing, drugged up phase) and Magneto (Fassbender) comes at a time where the pair couldn't have been more apart...

X-Men: Days of Future Past is the X-Men movie that many of the fans have been waiting for.

Stripped free of necessary exposition and explanation of the characters, Singer's deft and pacy return to the genre sees a return to the comic book action and rich emotion, which has appealed to so many (but may leave some non-fans feeling a little alienated this time around.)

Sly humour permeates parts of this action movie that teeters dangerously close to pompous sci-fi at the start. Singer brings all the players together well and adds in a few new elements to show he's still got the mutant sparkle that's needed - a dazzling sequence which shows off American Horror Story star Evan Peters' turn as Quiksilver is the pure highlight of the whole piece. Using the faster than light flippant kid to break out Magneto from under the Pentagon (where he's been imprisoned for assassinating JFK) is a master stroke of Singer's - during one brief sequence alone, Singer brings the joy back into the superhero genre which has wallowed in dour for so long. As  Quiksilver takes on the prison guards in a light speed slow-mo sequence, there's slapstick, danger and amusement in high dosage. (Though the real headscratcher is why such a valuable asset be left behind on a key mission...) Also, Singer does a great job of introducing a stand out new character into a crowded ensemble.

Which is perhaps just as well, because the older versions of the X-Men themselves are a little sidelined in the piece, with the danger never quite reaching the high stakes you'd expect. It's curious because given they face extinction, there's very little for them to do after a high-octane opening. And it's a shame given the calibre of talent involved, but when the story is as stuffed as it is, something has to give. Equally, some kind of explanation as to why Trask is so opposed to mutant kind would be good - despite Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage playing him to perfection, a murky motive is never forthcoming. And the final end sequence becomes a little heavy handed and cluttered to have too much resonance for such an iconic comic book arc.

Thankfully, though, these niggles do not come at the cost of the action, which for 7 films in adds new set pieces to entice and impress throughout. Of the X-ensemble, McAvoy, Fassbender, Lawrence and Jackman more than deliver on their characters, with each adding to their past outings. Equally, the script gives nods to the fans but doesn't alienate those willing to work through the elements of past movies.

All in all, X-Men: Days of Future Past is an X-Men movie for fans to savour; while the stakes have never been higher for the series and its characters, director Bryan Singer doesn't lose sight of the smaller, more intimate moments to provide a blockbuster spectacle that's as spectacular a winter blockbuster as you'd hope for.

(Make sure you stay to the end of the credits, to witness the first look at X:Men - Apocalypse, and your first chance to see the original mutant, En Sabah Nur....)

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Minions trailer drops

Minions trailer drops

The story of Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment’s Minions begins at the dawn of time.  Starting as single-celled yellow organisms, Minions evolve through the ages, perpetually serving the most despicable of masters.  

Continuously unsuccessful at keeping these masters—from T. rex to Napoleon—the Minions find themselves without someone to serve and fall into a deep depression.

But one Minion named Kevin has a plan, and he—alongside teenage rebel Stuart and lovable little Bob—ventures out into the world to find a new evil boss for his brethren to follow.

The trio embarks upon a thrilling journey that ultimately leads them to their next potential master, Scarlet Overkill (Academy Award® winner Sandra Bullock), the world’s first-ever female super-villain.  

They travel from frigid Antarctica to 1960s New York City, ending in mod London, where they must face their biggest challenge to date: saving all of Minionkind...from annihilation.

Interstellar: Movie Review

Interstellar: Movie Review

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, MacKenzie Foy, Jessica Chastain, Matt Damon
Director: Christopher Nolan

Pompous, po-faced, ultra-serious and disappearing up its own 5 dimensional ass over an extended run time.

These are all accusations that can be levelled at Christopher Nolan's highly anticipated new film, Interstellar, starring Matthew McConaughey as a pilot-turned-farmer-turned-astronaut, who heads to space to save the planet's future. (The Earth's barren, remote and dying after nature turned on us in the biggest uprising since those plants had a chat with Marky Mark in The Happening)

But in doing so, you also have to counter with the words dizzying, visual symphony, mesmerising, intelligent and awe-inspiring - as well as a lesson in quantum physics and wormholes that potentially even Stephen Hawking would have fun taking a look at.

Dialling down his Texan swagger but upping his considerable charm to help him spout cod trite bon-mots over how we used to look to the stars but now stare down at the ground, McConaughey's Coop and his relationship with his daughter Murph (played in early years by MacKenzie Foy and in latter by Jessica Chastain) prove to be the much-needed and occasionally absent emotional centre of this extended space-operatic meditation on love across the dimensions.

In this three hour space-set epic (that occasionally lags back down to earth), Nolan's crafted something of a scale that's reminiscent of the 70s Kubrickian look and feel of 2001: A Space Odyssey and recent Oscar-winning outing Gravity; the space interiors are a pristine dirty white and feel realistic (as if some kind of NASA video training programme) as Hans Zimmer's occasionally OTT organ-based and Tubular Bells-reminiscent score blasts from the IMAX screen, building to a crescendo as Nolan tries to orchestrate drama on earth and in space.

Along with various intonations of Michael Caine spouting Dylan Thomas' "Rage against the dying of the light" and him decrying that by the time Coop returns he "will have solved the problem of gravity", there's a danger that the script pitches its way into an overload of drama as the cod philosophical musings reach a feverish level about two thirds of the way in. To say more is to reveal spoilers and the Nolan MO is to gradually leak out moments designed for hysterical detonation as they all converge and for the internet to dissect at a later stage.

However, in among all that heavy sci-fi exposition and relativity jargon that's espoused on screen (which demonstrates how much research Jonathan Nolan did on the subject), there's a truly wondrous spectacle to behold in Interstellar.

The space scenes provoke much awe and wonder in a mix of 35mm and 70mm IMAX as the crew (along with wise-cracking robot) negotiates a black hole in a manner akin to what we witnessed back in the 1970s - but it's the emotional scenes where the McConnaissance continues and which give Interstellar its heart and soul that's lacking elsewhere in the film due to underdeveloped characters who merely orbit his Coop (no worse offender than Casey Affleck's son who barely registers - and Anne Hathaway who delivers a terribly corny speech about the values of love from high above.)

A scene where Coop views 23 years of recorded messages from his family and Nolan fixes on his tearful visage is a moment which defies you not to finally feel something as the survival instinct and sentimental love for the family finds its much needed footing (something which is left floundering in parts due to lengthy exposition and little else). It's McConaughey who carries this mission without a shadow of a doubt as Interstellar goes beyond its pro-space race / pioneers message (even taking on the theory the Moon landings were faked) and into matters of the heart and abandonment, albeit with varying degrees of success.

You can't deny Christopher Nolan's ambition with Interstellar - even though what transpires is a flawed masterpiece in many ways that reignites a nostalgic passion so lost over space exploration and yet so steeped in hokum.

But you be wrong to ignore the fact Interstellar is an exhilarating masterpiece that delivers a lot to ponder on (despite its predominantly gooey centre, potentially polarising play-out, occasionally cold core and out-there ending) and proffers up a thoughtful philosophical space-age opera and event movie that's surprisingly grounded in matters closer to earth than the stars above us.

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