Full details of PS4 update unveiled

Full details of PS4 update unveiled

PLAYSTATION®4 USHERS IN THE FUTURE OF PLAY AS SOFTWARE UPDATE VERSION 2.50, “YUKIMURA,” GETS READY TO LAUNCH

Sony Computer Entertainment New Zealand (SCE NZ) has today revealed full details around the imminent PlayStation®4 (PS4) System Software Update Version 2.50, “Yukimura,” making the world’s most powerful system, more socially connected than ever before. The first major update of 2015 will become available soon, and will see the arrival of a range of new features and improvements, including the arrival of the much anticipated Suspend & Resume functionality, allowing players to suspend and resume games near-instantly at the touch of the power button. Other key features include 60fps streaming for both Remote and Share Play and improved trophy integration. In addition, “Yukimura” will also see the arrival of Facebook friend finder features and the ability to share PS4 footage directly to Dailymotion. ”Yukimura” makes it more convenient than ever to play on the world’s most powerful console with the introduction of System Suspend & Resume functionality. This feature allows Players to seamlessly suspend their PS4 during gameplay and resume playing from exactly where they left off*1 at the touch of a button, putting PS4 into standby mode without interrupting long sessions of play. Another standout feature of the update is the ability for Players to stream both Share Play and Remote Play at 60 frames-per-second*2. This jump in streaming quality offers Players with high-speed Internet connections a loss-less experience when playing through a secondary device, maintaining the lightning-quick performance that Players have come to expect from PS4. Making all aspects of gaming a more social experience, ”Yukimura” improves trophy integration by automatically capturing a screenshot at the moment each is earned, making it easier than ever for Players to share their greatest gaming moments on PS4 with friends. This process has also been streamlined with the ability for trophies to be shared via a press of the Share button on DUALSHOCK®4 wireless controller. Another major addition for “Yukimura” is the ability for subaccounts to be promoted to master accounts via PS4 for those Players who are over the age of 18, giving full control to the account holder whilst retaining their existing PlayStation®Network profile, complete with trophies and entitlements. Players who turn 18 will be prompted via the PS4 UI to provide the updated information required to graduate to a master account. Ensuring PS4 is the most socially connected console experience; “Yukimura” also introduces the ability to import your Facebook friends directly onto your PS4 friends list, giving players greater opportunity to find each other and play together. When sharing standout PS4 moments via the Share button on DUALSHOCK®4, “Yukimura” also allows Players to upload directly to Dailymotion, providing more choice of services and options to share their PS4 game play moments. "Yukimura" also introduces a wide variety of supporting features designed to heighten the user experience on PS4, including inverted colours on screen, text to speech, enlarged text, a bolder fonts, higher contrast user interface options as well as the ability to zoom for displayed pictures .　Users will also be able to assign custom button configurations for the DUALSHOCK 4 wireless controller to suit their particular needs, ensuring all Player’s have a control setup that fits their habits and play-styles. The PS4 System Software Update Version 2.5, codenamed “Yukimura” will be available soon to players in New Zealand.  For more information and a full list of features please visit http://nz.playstation.com.

NZIFF 2015 Autumn Events unveiled

NZIFF 2015 Autumn Events unveiled

Bertolucci, The Beatles, Kubrick and Pinocchio. NZIFF presents giant screen classics at Autumn Events.

Putting spectacular cinema classics onto spectacular cinema screens is one of the great pleasures of working at NZIFF. Every winter we relish the challenge of breaking out the new, but there’s something strangely refreshing about revitalising the tried and the true every autumn. For the third year our Autumn Events Classic Film screenings aim to provide the perfect supplement to the popular revival screenings at the annual mid-winter festival. Walt Disney’s Pinocchio and two very different Kubrick epics – Spartacus and2001: A Space Odyssey – all come to us in freshly minted studio digital transfers, while new digital restorations give us the best possible reason to celebrate A Hard Day’s Night and Bertolucci’s ravishing The Conformist. As the HD era continues apace, the choice of great films in digital formats expands. Films conceived to be projected on the grand scale are a priority for us – and no one ever accused Walt Disney, Bernardo Bertolucci or Stanley Kubrick of thinking small. We also love the sense of occasion that gathers around films best seen in a crowd: Beatlemania works so much better as a group activity. You don’t have to have been there the first time around to know that. In fact I’m a little envious of anyone encountering these films for the first time at these screenings: they will be looking astounding and sounding terrific. Go straight to our site or scroll down for links to screening details for all five films. And because giving is what we like to do, you’ll find an extra March giveaway at the end of this extra March newsletter. Bill Gosden Director NZIFF Autumn Events Classic Movies in Auckland screen from Thursday 16 April through to Sunday 19 April at The Civic. NZIFF Autumn Events Classic Movies in Wellington will screen across three weekends in May at the Embassy Theatre. Tickets will be on sale directly from the Embassy Theatre. On sale date to be advised. NZIFF Autumn Events in Dunedin screen from Friday 17 April to Sunday 19 April at the Regent Dunedin. Tickets are now on sale directly from the Regent Dunedin. NZIFF Autumn Events in Christchurch will screen across three weekends in May at Hoyts Riccarton, starting on Saturday 2 May. Tickets will be on sale directly from Hoyts Riccarton. On sale date to be advised. Classic Movies screening at NZIFF Autumn Events 2015 2001: A Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick’s looming monolith of sci-fi spectacle needs no introduction. But can you say you have truly seen 2001 if you haven’t seen it on a giant cinema screen? “It feels as intelligent and provocative as ever, bearing years of conceptual dreaming. Until today’s equivalent of novelist Arthur C. Clarke commits a hefty chunk of time to envisioning the beginning of human civilization, as well as the far ends of the future, there will be no new film that supplants it.” — Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York Spartacus Young Stanley Kubrick stepped up to filmmaking on the grand scale to direct the most literate and enjoyable of all Hollywood’s ancient-Rome epics. Producer/star Kirk Douglas is forever remembered as the shirtless rebel slave, but it’s the rest of the cast who give the film its zest. The immortal “I am Spartacus” aside, it’s the villains that have the best lines in writer Dalton Trumbo’s sly characterisation of the decadent and divided slave-trading one percent. The Conformist Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1970 masterpiece is a psychological-political thriller set in Mussolini’s Italy. A monument to art deco style, The Conformist intoxicates with its exultant design and chills with its furious, contained energy. This new release is the result of a 2011 restoration from original source materials, supervised by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and approved by Bertolucci. Pinocchio It takes a giant screen to reveal the wealth of detail literally drawn into every frame of this 75-year-old Disney wonder. With battalions of animators at his disposal, Disney transformed Carlo Collodi’s fairy tale about an obnoxious living puppet into an action-packed moral fable about a gullible one – and a virtuoso example of pure cinematic storytelling. A Hard Day's Night “A glorious new 4K digital restoration with a remixed and remastered soundtrack produced by Giles Martin (son of longtime Beatles producer George Martin). The movie certainly hasn’t looked or sounded this good since 1964 and the net effect is one of wonder and revelation.” — Andrew O’Hehir,Salon.com

Still Life: Film Review

Still Life: Film Review

Cast: Eddie Marsan, Joanne Froggatt
Director: Uberto Pasolini


The wonderful Eddie Marsan stars in this beautifully poignant drama.

Marsan is John May, a quietly unassuming man who's spent his 22 years at the South London council trying to help those who've died alone. His job is finding next of kin and trying to get them to funerals that he's organised. But in many cases, there is nobody - so John is the one who stands there alone, writing eulogies and farewelling those who have moved on.

But, despite the thoroughness and the attention to detail with which he runs his world, the council decides his job is no longer necessary and makes him redundant. He's given three days to close his last case - and prepare for the inevitable...

Still Life is an utterly wonderfully English film that reeks of sentiment and heart. thanks to the carefully measured and precise performance delivered by Marsan. Each case is meticulously investigated and every lead pursued with the forensic precision of a criminal investigator. With his gentle touch, nuanced performance and ensuring every single moment counts, Marsan is a tragic joy to watch in this. Every sequence with him aches with pathos and heart - and it's all down to the work done by Eddie Marsan.

While the investigation of the last case perhaps inevitably heads toward a saccharine conclusion, it still doesn't lose any of its power and certainly the last act had me wiping away a tear as the speeches, reflections and observations on life continue to hit him time and time again. It's also the eye for the details as well which hit perfectly - from a flat of the deceased that's got drying laundry hanging from everywhere to a head impression in a pillow which will no longer be used, every last moment is perfectly positioned and executed.

"You're a rare thing, Mr May" is one of the lines uttered in this piece, and it could be said of Eddie Marsan, who delivers an unassuming tour de force in this. 

Recommended as a reminder why life counts and why the small man is an ambition to aim for. 

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Chappie: Film Review

Chappie: Film Review

Cast: Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel, Hugh Jackman, Sigourney Weaver, Watkin Tudor Jones, Yolandi Visser, Jose Pablo Contillo
Director: Neill Blomkamp

Director Neill Blomkamp keeps the South African flag flying with another flick that's a curious hybrid of sci-fi, violence and comedy set in and around the ghettos and slums of Johannesburg.

(Chappie's the extended version of Blomkamp's own 80 second short film from 2003, which you can view below)



In Chappie, it's the not too distant future and Jo'burg police are losing the fight against crime. Thankfully, an armed force of robots (designed by Dev Patel's local tech boffin Deon) is helping bring down the scourge from the streets.

But Deon's simultaneously working on an Artifical Intelligence programme to help evolve the cyber cops to the next level. When one of the robots is slated for decommissioning and against the word of CEO Michelle Bradley (Sigourney Weaver, who barely features) Deon takes the robot for his own scientific plans.

However, when Deon's kidnapped by a group of thugs (South African rappers Die Antwoord Ninja and Yolandi), the AI's injected into the robot who becomes a mild and meek child-like creation called Chappie - and the lynchpin in a battle between good and evil / nature and nurture begins.

Chappie is not the film perhaps you'd been expecting from the visionary director of Elysium and District 9 Neill Blomkamp.

Which is, in this case, a good thing.

Mixing in his trademark documentary opening style, with some incredible mo-cap work from Sharlto Copley and the CGI wizards at WETA, the robot (as in Johnny Five's Short Circuit) is the centre of the emotional core of a film that juggles some all out guns-blazing Robocop style violence, Terminator musical stylings and some utterly loopy logic that forgoes any kind of sense in favour of a lunatic riff on Transcendence (ironic for a film that's about a robot and AI).

It's Copley's film by half with his overly eager, child-like and catchphrase quotable droid ("Chappie wants his book") providing the laughs -and heart - in what could only be described as a cartoon-like riff on parenting and growing up in the visually appealing ghettos of South Africa.

Inevitably, the tropes of the genre are all infused into this occasionally day-glo pulpy styled film - will the robot follow the creator's ethos or those who raise him just being one of the sci-fi cliches that's rolled out in a fairly simplistic story, that defies logic and belief as the end rolls around. (Complete with character choices and actions which seem out of place from all that's gone on)

Hugh Jackman growls and scowls as the khaki-shorted, mulleted frustrated and sidelined former soldier who advocates more for a shoot them all philosophy from his droids but does little else, Dev Patel brings a degree of warmth as the Frankenstein creator who wants to teach Chappie to paint and read rather than become a gun-toting, chain-wearing, mother-funking gangsta and Sigourney Weaver barely warms the screen as the number-crunching bottom line espousing CEO.

It's perhaps the rappers who offer the weakest one-note performance with Ninja's self-named gangster appearing to think he's in Grand Theft Auto the cinema version and who borders on R-rated parody as he shoots everything around him. Yolandi gives it a little more heart as the mother but ultimately ends up a little too bland to stand out despite the day-glo clothes and coloured weapons they all tout.

In among the action sequences, Blomkamp's eye for detail and co-ordinated chaos comes to the fore again; but it's just a shame that Chappie's intelligent ideas are thrown out of the window in favour of typical action blockbuster fare - the philosophies of nature/nurture are ditched to make way for an R rated fish out of water comedy that humanises the robot and demonises a large percentage of the human population.

Granted, Chappie is, to be fair, a little scrappy.

However, it's also a truly disposable piece of bubblegum blockbuster whose simplistic story, occasional robotic cuteness and execution subverts some of the sci-fi norm and audience expectations, but which wears its disarming heart and humour on its robotic arm.

Rating:

GTA Online Heists Now Available

GTA Online Heists Now Available

Heists, a brand new 4-player cooperative gameplay experience for Grand Theft Auto Online, giving players the chance to team up and pull off a string of intense, multi-part heists, raids and robberies across Los Santos and Blaine County, is now available for free inside Grand Theft Auto Online.

Plan, Prepare, Execute – Online Heists span numerous missions featuring new gameplay, vehicles, weapons, and scenarios to test a team’s full set of skills: from computer hacking to stealth infiltration, precision driving to aerial dogfighting, sniping, skydiving and much more.

4-Player Teams, 4 Ways to Play – Choose your roles and strategize to complete each stage of a Heist, with tight communication and coordination the key to success. Some missions will require the team to work as a single unit, while others will break the team into separate roles to complete key objectives. Replay each Heist to experience a different perspective on the action, and complete Elite Challenges for extra cash.

Additional New Adversary Modes – Brings new kinds of competition to GTA Online while new Daily Objectives and other Freemode activities bring chaos to the streets of Los Santos and Blaine County.

Assemble Your Team – Create a Crew or join existing Crews at the Rockstar Games Social Club to earn additional RP rewards as you play.

Play Now – Heists are now available for free inside Grand Theft Auto Online for PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One (PC players will also get Heists as part of their GTA Online experience when GTAV launches for PC on April 14th). To get it, just start up GTAV from your online-connected console and follow the update prompts on screen. For a complete list of all of today's updates, check out the official notes at the Rockstar Support site.

A Little Chaos: Film Review

A Little Chaos: Film Review

Cast: Kate Winslet, Alan Rickman, Matthias Schoenaerts, Stanley Tucci, Helen McCrory, Steven Waddington
Director: Alan Rickman

It's off to the palace of Versailles for this the second directorial outing for Alan Rickman.

It's Paris, 1687 and Winslet plays Sabine de Barra, a landscape gardener who's on the look out for her next commission. So, with the weight of expectation not in her favour, she attends an interview for a commission to build in the palace of Versailles and in an ironic twist for the time, manages to convince the man in charge Andre Le Notre (Rust and Bone star Schoenaerts) that she's the right man for the job.

But her appointment causes all manner of problems; from the work force who won't take her seriously to the back and forth between her and Le Notre, as well as wrestling with her demons, it looks as if De Barra is on a hiding to nothing.

Winslet is the rock and foundations of the somewhat disjointed A Little Chaos.

Her underplaying of De Barra stands in stark contrast to Rickman's relatively frenzied zig-zagging direction. The film's constantly being derailed in terms of its flow by the stop-start stutterings of the story and De Barra's flashbacks (pointlessly inserted in from time to time in way that over-eggs rather than nourishing the whole piece).

There's a plodding pace to the film too, which Rickman fails to fully grasp and exert some kind of control of; moments of nuance from Winslet are counter-balanced with moments of a relatively emotionless Le Notre and end up cancelling each other out. (In another world, the Le Notre role of brooding would have been played by Viggo Mortensen).

There are some moments of humanity and heart where a levity of touch proves a welcome tonic to proceedings - nowhere more so than when Rickman's King Louis is incognito in a garden and De Barra mistakes him for a seller rather than royalty. It's this single scene that breathes some life, passion and emotion into the proceedings and sees this drama bloom and blossom. Equally, a veritable cameo from Stanley Tucci as the King's brother in law only serves to highlight what exactly the film is missing in one single scene.

One major problem is the romance between the two leads which suddenly feels abruptly shoe-horned in and doesn't inject any of the gravity or passion that's clearly hinted at throughout, leading to a conclusion and romance that feels forced and unnatural.

All in all, A Little Chaos could have benefited from a little more order; Rickman has moments that work well but they're suffused with too much that doesn't quite work as well as it should. A touch more pruning at the script stages could have meant this flower would have smelt a little better and blossomed for a little longer.

Rating:

ScreamRide: XBox One Review

ScreamRide: XBox One Review

Developed by Frontier Developments
Platform: XBox One

Build it up, then tear it down.

It's an ethos which works incredibly well with ScreamRide, the roller-coaster simulator which is there to push the limits of both the characters on screen and also those behind the controller.

Essentially, set in a future world where humans have become disenchanted with the virtual thrills on offer (perhaps a warning from the future here?), the pressure is on to entertain. Step forward, Screamworks, a group determined to push the limits and thrill like never before.

Which is where you step in.

Over three different modes (Screamrider, Demolition and Engineer) and six different locations, you can harness the power of the pulse-pounding adrenaline - and send humans hurtling towards fun times.

Screamrider mode sees you flinging a quartet around in a rollercoaster, pushing the boundaries and buttons by going as fast as you can - and even flinging the machine off the rails to pursue your level target which secures progression to the next round. Hugging corners, pushing the speed limits and timing everything out to perfection, precision is the key.

Demolition is perhaps the more fun one though - as it's simply a case of hurtling humans in a testpod into buildings, through hoops and into explosives to wreak all manner of chaos. This level is all about precision, a bit of maths and a lot of timing as releasing the pod can have different effects - especially if it's done at the wrong time.

Engineering is all about building your own coaster and trying to defy gravity and humanity. It's easy to use and it's fun to see your creations in full flow. Though it's not much varied than the sandbox mode which sees you creating your own worlds as well.

Graphically, it's nothing sensational, which is perhaps a surprise for the XBoxOne format - there's no real sheen or shine on it all and when buildings collapse, it all looks somewhat blocky and retro. It's a surprise that the cameras don't do more in these moments to take in the scenery as it crumbles and you're allowed only a touch of rotation as you whirl around.

The thing with ScreamRide is that it's easily accessible and playable no matter how much time you're willing to invest into it. If you fancy a few rides around a track, then it's all good - and if you fancy flinging people into buildings, then it's all good too. It's from the makers of Zoo Tycoon and Rollercoaster Tycoon but there's less emphasis on curating the place, merely simply getting on with it all and avoiding the daily nitty gritty.

Easy to control and simple, ScreamRide is a fun disposable title - whether it's got longevity depends entirely on your tolerance for a quick game, a game that provokes stupidity rather than depth and while that may seem like a minor insult to those involved, it's actually a compliment - it's equal parts destruction as well as construction. Granted, the UGC will appeal to many and you can imagine elements of Minecraft coming into play as the creations get more grandiose.

Screamride is a blast - it could have done with a touch more polish for its platform but it's definitely worth taking a ride on.

Rating: