Doctor Who Christmas special transmission revealed

Doctor Who Christmas special transmission revealed

Prime TV has today unveiled details of when you can see the Doctor Who 2014 Christmas Special - Last Christmas.

Read on for the announcement from the Facebook page and scroll down for some sneak peeks:

DOCTOR WHO!

Trapped on an Arctic base, under attack from terrifying creatures, who are you going to call? Why, Santa Claus, of course! Yes, it's that time of year again as the Doctor and Clara turn to the jolly man himself (special guest star Nick Frost) to save the day in the brand new 2014 Doctor Who Christmas Special!

Come Boxing Day evening tuck into your Christmas leftovers then find a comfy spot in front of the TV at 7.35pm for our evening screening of the Doctor and Clara’s ‘Last Christmas’. We also bring a little present for loyal Whovians on Boxing Day morning, a special speedy 9.00am transmission, airing in NZ just after it airs in the UK!

Assassin's Creed Unity: XBox One Review

Assassin's Creed Unity: XBox One Review

Platform: XBox One
Released by Ubisoft

The Assassin's franchise gets another outing with the first of two games being dropped this year.

It's to France this time though for the series as the Ubisoft open play world explores the French revolution with some trademark style and stealth as you'd come to expect from the series.

You take the lead role of Arno Dorian who becomes entangled in tracking down the truth of the Revolution as time goes on, taking on missions, assassinations and occasional stalking as well as some parkour to try and get to your aim.

It all begins with the apparent murder of your father in your early days (the first mission sees you stealing an apple before the death comes - a kind of innocence passage of rights) - but as ever with the Assassin's series, there is a shady organisation both in the past and in the present trying to shake things up.

There's plenty more stealth involved in this latest iteration of the game with you having to check places out before you go hurtling in-making the piece feel all the more considered rather than an ad hoc free world to explore. Emphasis is also on customisation of Arno as well, which is a nice progression for the series.

The core experience of the game is still there - hurtling across rooftops, surveying landscapes and scaling walls in an attempt to get away or just to kill the time. The world of Paris and the sumptuous luxury of the French revolution is beautifully rendered with Ubisoft crafting a landscape that's well worth stopping and admiring for all the little details and the size and scale certainly impresses.

However, it also provides a few glitches here and there from crowd issues to placing Arno in some precarious positions from time to time. Occasionally when on missions, I've walked into walls or when hiding, there's been parts of Arno's arms sticking out, which is somewhat odd to note. Ubisoft's promised a patch to deal to these issues, but early indications from the game are that these aren't just a few issues here and there. That said, it has the most realistic kissing scene witnessed so far in computer gaming technology - with tenderness and a graphical delivery that impresses.

If the storyline feels a little familiar with the usual tropes of the Assassins and the Templars thrown in, then that's fine and to be expected. This is the eighth game in the series and seems unlikely to change too radically from within. The storyline's relatively engrossing, but it's the world around that serves the best part of Assassin's Creed: Unity as that's where the sandbox open world potential opens up.

All in all, Assassin's Creed:Unity deserves to be praised for its scope, and its size with the developers clearly wanting to maximise the best potential for the next gen consoles. For that. it's unmissable. But for some small glitches with play and rendering, it merely fails to fully realise its potential.

Rating:

Grand Theft Auto V: PS4 Review

Grand Theft Auto V: PS4 Review

Released by Rockstar Games
Platform: PS4

There's no denying that Rockstar Games has pulled out all the stops for the spit'n'polish port over to the next gen consoles of its Grand Theft Auto V series.

With controversy ringing loudly in its ears thanks to The Warehouse using the game to spearhead a ban on R18 products in store, you'd be forgiven for thinking this latest incarnation of the series was the personification of the Devil in digital form.

Without wanting to wade into this debate, it has to be said Grand Theft Auto V's PS4 outing is nothing short of an ideal game. It's essentially the same game as was released last year around this time with you taking in the lives of three characters in and around Los Santos.

There's Michael, the con who got out of the game, Franklin the youngster who's about to start climbing the career rope on the streets and Trevor, the psycho who's spent too long in the wild and toked a little too hard on the pipe a little too often. Much like Pulp Fiction did, these three lives intersect in ways that are both surprising, amusing and as is the GTA way, violent.

If you've already played through the main game, you'll know what to expect of the story and the missions within. From stealing / repossessing cars to saving your son, there's plenty of story-line to explore and plenty of trouble to find yourself in if you're that way inclined.

And here's the rub with Grand Theft Auto V on the PS 4 - it's just so damned easy to lose yourself in full immersion in the world within.

From first person mode to third person mayhem, everything in Los Santos is brushed with an epic sheen that glistens the more time you spend within the world. Rockstar's done an epic job of bringing the world around them to life - it feels like you're part of a city that never sleeps. Cats roam the streets now and if you're content to just sit in a car, you can watch the whole world around you - both the good and the bad. Sure, there's controversy over the first person sex scenes (which you can see on YouTube if you want) and some of the violence within (a torture sequence is a little uncomfortable) but most of this has already come over from the original version, so it seems a touch unfair to get so wound up about it all. Grand Theft Auto will always push the envelope and I applaud it for doing so - at the end of the day, everything within the game is a choice. It's your choice to attack others or do what you will and there are ramifications and consequences of doing so.

The PS4 controller also comes to life in this with flashing colours at various moments and the speakers within making the phone calls and police chatter much closer to you than before.

Visually, the game soars - HD graphics and use of light really help it achieve something utterly incredible. Soaring over the city in the skies as part of some missions really does show how wonderfully evocative it can all be, giving each environment the visual edge it needed on the next gen console.

The thing is with GTA V, there's a whole world to lose yourself in - and with the tweaks for the next gen and online match-ups, Rockstar's done a great job of ensuring that this Grand Theft Auto is one you need to own and experience its open world once again. Thanks to the grunt of the PS4, the world around Los Santos is what shines; cars fill the streets, lives take place around you and a world goes by. It's incredible.

Forget the naysayers and just immerse yourself in Los Santos - the next generation's already provided some thrills and Grand Theft Auto V simply rises high into the sky.

Rating:

Into The Woods: Film Review

Into The Woods: Film Review

Cast: James Corden, Emily Blunt, Meryl Streep, Anna Kendrick, Johnny Depp, Chris Pine, Tracey Ullman, Daniel Huttlestone
Director: Rob Marshall

A veritable Venn diagram of fairy-tales collide on the big screen in this version of the Stephen Sondheim /  James Lapine Tony Award-winning musical, starring Meryl Streep as a blue-haired witch.

The Into The Woods review will be published on December 19th

Deliver Us From Evil: Blu Ray Review

Deliver Us From Evil: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Sony Home Ent

In the latest horror based on true events / inspired by true events to hit the cinema, Eric Bana stars as tough and wearied New York cop Ralph Sarchie.

Relentlessly working the night shift with his partner Butler (a quippy Joel McHale) on the perpetually rainy Bronx streets, Sarchie is called in to deal with a case that appears to have Satanic overtones after a series of incidents appear to have a demonic link.

Dismissive of any religious beliefs and scoffing at these claims, Sarchie finds himself pairing up with a priest Mendoza (Ramirez) as they dig deeper into the case of three former Iraqi veterans and a series of inscriptions that appear to be at every crime scene.

Soon though, Sarchie finds the case is closer to home than he would like.

Deliver Us From Evil is a lazy formulaic horror, which employs every available cliche to try and proffer up new scares.

Dark grimy streets? Check. Perpetual gloom and rain? Check. Children's toy looking shifty in the bedroom? Check. Dark basements where torches / any form of lights fail? Check. A protagonist with lapsed religion? Check. A priest who's fallen from grace? Check. Moments of creepiness and jump scares predictably sign posted from a mile off thanks to an overly bombastic OST? Check.

Every single trope and soundtrack trick is rolled out during the 2 hour run time and every po-faced moment falls flat on its face as this fight against evil begins to try to bite. The problem is there's no real pull - even the fate of a supporting character who's given a bit of life fails to hit any emotional mark as the horror starts to try and bite.

While Bana tries his best with the material handed to him, the film ends up being derivative of everything you've seen before and so wildly grounded in nothing at all that it has no unique selling points. That's despite culminating in a jail cell exorcism that could have had been so much more thanks to its relatively original premise.

Perhaps really, it should be a case of Deliver Us From Deliver Us From Evil in this formulaic horror; a lack of originality, a distinct feeling of no emotional connection and a story that's dragged as far as it can be on its fragile premise leaves you wishing you could be exorcised of everything that's just unfolded in front of you.

Rating:

Sex Tape: Blu Ray Review

Sex Tape: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by Sony Home Ent

Predicated around the idea that two people could record a sex tape, upload it to the eponymous cloud and then find it distributed around, Sex Tape, with Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz has the potential to bring some risque humour to the fore.

Segel and Diaz are Jay and Annie, who spent their youth fornicating at every possible juncture; now, with 2 kids, demands of life and scant time, the spark has dimmed a little. Jay's working in the music industry and Annie's a blogger, trying to sell her writing wares to a wholesome Mom and Pop company headed up by Rob Lowe's Hank.

On the spur of the moment, the duo decide to record a sex tape to rekindle and reignite some of the long dormant spark. However, when they discover the video's gone wider than expected, they race to recover the various iPads that Jay's distributed which houses the mucky moments within - before the damage is too great.

Sex Tape really does have promise; with Jason Segel's escalating penchant for nudity in his movies, and Cameron Diaz appearing naked (from behind) and as a Boogie Nights style Roller Girl, it appears that raunch is clearly on the cards.

But the initial bout of frolicking gives way to a rather tame piece that's neither fish nor fowl.

With copious placements for iPad at every opportune moment (including one where Segel's character, having dropped it out of a window comments on how versatile and well-constructed it is), and some rather limp raunch that barely raises a titter, let alone an eyebrow, the resulting piece is something that's more suited to a formulaic farce rather than delivering on the promise of outright hilarity.

Diaz and Segel make for a recognisable duo with the overly talkative Segel delivering the majority of the straight lines while facing ludicrously silly moments; Diaz keeps up and proves game, but there's no real bite here for anybody to latch onto, despite relatively consistent comedic chemistry that's been mined before.

The highlight of the piece is swiftly dispatched early on when Jay and Annie head to Hank's place to recover their material and end up in an escalating farcical situation which sees Jay taking on a guard dog and noticing Hank's propensity for having himself painted into various Disney movie scenes around the home.

It's the only area that proffers up something of a series of laughs in this distinctly unsalacious comedy that's more of a safe proposition and at ill odds with its title. Inevitably portions of the tape are viewed towards the end of the movie, but by then, the promise of potential laughter is thwarted by a lack of any real passion for all that's gone on - that's even with a tenacious cameo toward the end.

Ultimately, this Sex Tape could have done with a large hit of comedic Viagra.

Rating:

ZB Movie Review - Talking Alexander, What We Did on Our Holiday and What We Do In The Shadows

ZB Movie Review - Talking Alexander, What We Did on Our Holiday and What We Do In The Shadows

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/saturday-mornings-with-jack-tame/audio/darren-bevan-december-6-2014/