Lost Dimension coming

Lost Dimension coming

LOST DIMENSION COMING TO AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND IN AUGUST 2015

FOR PLAYSTATION®3 AND PLAYSTATION®VITA!

NIS America is very excited to announce that the turn-based tactical RPG, Lost Dimension will be arriving in Australia and New Zealand on 27 August 2015 for PlayStation®3 and PlayStation®Vita as both a physical and digital release!

About the game:

To subdue the threat The End poses to the entire planet, several countries create a special forces group called S.E.A.L.E.D., which is comprised of eleven psychics with superhuman abilities. Each soldier has their own talents and skillsets to use in combat, which can be expanded after gaining enough experience in the field. Bonds of friendship will form amongst the members of S.E.A.L.E.D., but be mindful of which allies to keep close, as The End mandates the player must begin eliminating teammates. Make sure to accuse the right teammate of being a traitor though – once the final battle with The End begins any remaining traitors will fight the main character alongside him.

Key Features:

A Cataclysmic Whodunnit! – Not only will players have to keep their eyes focused on strategically defeating the enemies laying in wait on the field of combat, but they need to carefully watch party members' tendencies in order to expose the traitor. At the end of every floor, players will be forced to vote and eliminate one of their trusted allies, and the consequences for choosing incorrectly could be dire...

Spoiler-Free Zone – In addition to a variety of game mechanics to help assess teammate loyalty, Lost Dimension's traitor system is randomly determined, assuring that no two players will be faced with the same playthrough. Sorry, kiddies, but it’s impossible to look up the answers this time around.

Psychic Warlords – Each character in the party is a master of a different sphere of powers. There's the girl who controls molecular behavior to burn or freeze anything/anyone in her path. There's the guy who can teleport all around (also with the bonus superpower of being satisfyingly cocky). And there's even someone with an identity crisis because all he knows how to do is steal everyone else's powers!

Keep Your Friends Close… – In between battles, players will have the option to chat with teammates and develop closer bonds with them. Juggling these friendships and keeping track of who participates in battle will be the key to sussing out the traitors and assuring that, by the time you reach The End, it won't be... the end... for you and your allies!  

Tomorrowland: Film Review

Tomorrowland: Film Review

Cast: George Clooney, Britt Robertson, Hugh Laurie
Director: Brad Bird

"Do I have to explain everything? Can't you just be amazed?"

In essence, these words spoken by George Clooney's grizzled and cantankerous Frank Walker sum up the enigma that is Tomorrowland, an engimatic mystery that promises so much and ultimately - and unfortunately -  disappoints.

The very loose story of Tomorrowland (and believe me, it's best going in unprepared as the appeal of the puzzle will be lost in endless inspection and scrutiny) centres around Britt Robertson's Casey. She's an eternal optimist, a dreamer determined to ensure the space gantry at Cape Canaveral won't be dismantled for fears of her father's unemployment. But when she's arrested and bailed for sabotage, she finds a Tomorrowland pin among her belongings. Touching the pin reveals a futuristic world to her - and she sets out to unravel the enigma of the pin, putting her on collision course with the mysterious Frank Walker.

Tomorrowland is an intriguing mix of a retro future, first pioneered by an altruistic Walt Disney who wanted the next day to be better than the last (and which ultimately led to the creation of the EPCOT centre)

And to be fair, in its visuals from Incredibles director Brad Bird, Tomorrowland certainly doesn't skimp on the spectacle, bathing the film in retro nods for the geek crowd and leaving you reminscing over 50s B movie matinees.

Every young dreamer will be taken in by the promise of Tomorrowland, a world where jetpacks are in daily use (this film launches as strong a case for George Clooney to be in a Rocketeer remake than any), monorails glide through the sky and, in one of the film's stand out FX pieces, people dive from one mid-air swimming pool to another with reckless abandon.

But ultimately, Tomorrowland is as much about smoke and mirrors as anything else.

Bird - along with co-writer Damon Lindelof  - have created a world of eternal optimism, so awash in the Disney corporate line that I'm surprised screenings don't come complete with free Koolaid to wash the "Anything is possible" lecture down. While portions of Tomorrowland extend the riddle of the central premise nicely, the ultimate reveal is a disappointment, swathed in preachy lectures of what we've done to the world, what we could do and really, what we should do in a brain-washing finale that's redolent of "I'd like to give the world a Coke"

Clooney has his moments, but his character's bitterness is never fully explained (one of the film's flaws is it doesn't exactly dump exposition on you, choosing to distract you every time a character demands to know what's going on during its 130 minute run time and leaving you clamouring for some coherent explanation of what's what); Laurie's pompous Wizard of Oz like man behind the curtain is about as unthreatening as anything Disney's ever proffered up - and it's really only Robertson's vulnerable and plucky turn as Casey which feels fleshed out, giving the film a heart and heroine which it sorely needs.

Tomorrowland is little more than the sum of its parts, a naively eternally optimistic ride that charts more lows than highs, despite the naturally dazzling visuals and cleverly comic action sequences that Bird craftily deploys.

It may end up appealing in parts to its younger audience more who have less cynicism than most, but on its occasional meandering and circuitous route to its ultimate destination, it could mean the journey isn't quite as fun and as thrilling as perhaps it could have been.

Rating:

Gemma Bovery: Film Review

Gemma Bovery: Film Review

Cast: Gemma Arterton, Fabrice Lucini, Jason Flemyng, Niels Schneider
Director: Anne Fontaine

Gemma Arterton once again becomes the cinematic muse to Posy Simmonds' writing in this latest, a big screen adaptation of Gemma Bovery, which ran weekly in The Guardian back in 1999.

Lucini plays Joubert, a Frenchman obsessed with literature - and specifically Madame Bovary - in Normandy. This baker finds his life turned around when Gemma Bovery and her husband Charles (Arterton and Flemyng respectively) move into their neighbouring house.

Struck by the literary parallels between Gemma and Madame Bovary, Joubert becomes unhealthily obsessed with Gemma, and finds his interest piqued even further when she begins to drift from her own husband and into the arms of a younger man (Schneider)...

Gemma Bovery is a breezy, light piece of French fare that's gorgeous to the eye, but light on the brain.

Simmonds' cartoon/ graphic novel was all about a woman bored with life within a rural idyll and Fontaine carries this off to maximum effect with the picturesque surroundings of Normandy, and an eye for what a perfect French life would be.

Initially, there's a humour present that rumbles along nicely - mainly thanks to Joubert's overt snobbery and literary diatribes (much to the horror of his family) - but it soon diverts into your usual story of unhappiness once the seams are picked away.

Tamara Drewe star Gemma Arterton is easy on the eye throughout, a fact Fontaine is clearly aware of, stopping just short of using soft focus each time she's on screen to convey Joubert's perception of her and the idolising he does. But she occasionally brings some of the depth needed to the character to make the actress seem less of a character from a cartoon.

Which is perhaps just as well as any supporting characters outside of Bovery and Joubert get little other than a once-over-lightly; Joubert's wife is nothing short of a harpy, his son a simpering idiot and Flemyng's Charles is nothing more than a presence rather than a partner.

As light and fluffy as a cloud in the skies above the south of France, Gemma Bovery is a forgettable flick once the lights have gone up kind of movie; it's visually appealing, but offers little to the grey matter when it's over.

Rating:

Noble: Film Review

Noble: Film Review

Cast: Deidre O'Kane, Sarah Greene, Nhu Quynh Nguyen
Director: Stephen Bradley

Sometimes inspirational stories and their subjects are failed by the leap to the big screen.

So it is with the well-intentioned but ultimately weakly executed Noble, a film that fails to inspire and live up to the legacy of Christina Noble, the Irish charity worker who underwent horrors in her formative years but began fighting the cause of the Vietnamese street children, leading to the creation of her children's charity foundation.

Moone Boy star (and also wife of director Bradley) Deidre O'Kane is the elder Noble who finds herself in Vietnam, after visions exhort her to do so. Exuding an irrepressible self-belief and confidence, Noble believes she can help the street children to better lives, despite the insistence of the authorities otherwise.

When Noble finds herself at a run-down orphanage after railing at God to lead her to her destiny, Noble discovers her work's cut out for her in among the sea of hands and wailing of unhappy children, wrecked by poverty and wracked by the after-effects of the likes of Agent Orange and abuse.

It's hard to describe the disappointment of Noble, a story that so fudges every major emotional beat and hides the true darkness of the abject horror that Christina went through. From her alcoholic father to her mis-treatment by nuns at the local orphanage, through to her gang-rape and consequent child being adopted out, Noble has a powerful story to espouse; a recognition of the strength of spirit in the face of such continued and sustained adversity.

But Bradley, who wrote and directed the piece, boils the whole thing down to its simplest moments, avoiding any of the true horrors from Christina Noble's book, Bridge Across My Sorrows, because it doesn't hold any truck with his attempts to please the crowd and manipulate them with piano-swelling music, aimed at telling you what to feel and when to feel it.

Some of the problem comes from drowning the film in too many flashbacks, from Christina as a young child in the grim settings of 1950s Dublin to the teen Christina dealing with disappointment and the evil that men do, without giving them space to breathe and us a chance to connect. The ebb and flow of the film doesn't help either with one-dimensional caricatures the only things to cross Christina's path.

Things get slightly better with O'Kane's venerable and charismatic turn as the compassionate Noble, giving the road to enlightenment and selflessness more a humane touch. But again, the latter stages of her journey only feel more grounded in her limited interactions with Downton Abbey's Mr Bates aka Brendan Coyle as a potential benefactor rather than the fight against immigration or the powers that be.

The fact Noble ends with Coldplay's In My Place ringing out as the camera pans back to reveal the creation of Christina's clinic and the signifying that her endless fighting and suffering has resulted in something speaks volumes to the biopic's blandness and muddled execution. It's a travesty to Noble's legacy and a shock to anyone who's expecting some kind of subtlety for this film - if you're expecting to be inspired, there are other films which would serve you better than this.

Rating:

David Bowie Is: Film Review

David Bowie Is: Film Review

Directors: Hamish Hamilton, Katy Mullan

There's no denying that David Bowie is a musical icon.

From Ziggy Stardust to Major Tom, his influence is everywhere.

And it's quite clear that the V &A Museum is aware of how this icon shines years after first appearing on the scene, which has led them to collecting together an exhibition dedicated to Bowie, which is currently touring globally.

So, it's no surprise then that this film is simply no more than a guided tour of the exhibition from its curators, designed to give those who can't afford to travel to the locales a chance to revel revel (sorry) in its finer parts.

The co-curators introduce the film before really conducting the kind of tour you'd normally pay cash for to see and would be given headphones for - and to be honest, your tolerance for the movie will really rely on how much you want to see the Bowie ephemera in all its glory.

It turns out Bowie is a hoarder, so with sketches, drawings, musings and material from his own archive, there's certainly plenty of material to help this tour and to immerse you in his life. But the problem is that the whole piece feels like a lecture on Bowie and a somewhat dry one at that.

A few stylistic touches impress, such as a freeze-frame effect of punters in the hallways / in front of the exhibits as the camera ducks and dives through them and weaves into the exhibits, giving the feel of depth.

But, despite the fascinating wealth of material and the clips, it's still nothing close to a Bowie biography and it's still, at the end of the day, a tour of an exhibition. It's a little too aloof to be so fully immersive and perceptive.

Perhaps more of a curio than a revelation into Bowie, David Bowie Is represents little more than a tantalising glimpse beneath the surface of the Thin White Duke rather than a full on deep-dive into what makes the man.

Silicon Valley Season 1: Blu Ray Review

Silicon Valley Season 1: Blu Ray Review

Rating: M
Released by HBO and Roadshow Home Ent

Focusing on a computer programmer in Silicon Valley, and skewering the likes of Google with its rip off company Hooli, this comedy series from HBO and directed by Mike Judge is perhaps one of the freshest surprises of 2015.

Thomas Middleditch channels his inner awkwardness as the Zuckerberg-type programmer Richard whose algorithm to compress files sparks a bidding war in the Valley and puts him on the map as a geek to watch out for.

Turning down millions and sticking with his mismatched and misfit crew of programmers who have their own social issues and working under the boorish been-there-already-done-it-lost-it boss Erlich (played with Emmy nominated brilliance by T J Miller),  Richard finds his company facing all kinds of problems as it squares up against the big players of the Valley.

Wisely choosing to go for smaller comedy moments rather than full-on eccentricity, Office Space's Judge's created a comedy that gets under your skin and demands you binge it all in one go. Funny, without being overtly OTT but occasionally being smart enough to use slapstick, Silicon Valley is a rare find, given that it's played on cable both here and abroad.

Clever without being alienating, funny without resorting to broadstroke stereotypes, it displays the smarts that you would want from a great legendary comedy.

It remains to be seen whether season 2 reaches the highs of the first, given the possibility of bringing in more characters, but as long as Judge retains that eye for his characters and character moments, Silicon Valley is the first must-see TV of the year.

Rating:

ZB review - Spy, Poltergeist and The Imitation Game

ZB review - Spy, Poltergeist and The Imitation Game

This week, it's comedy Spy, Poltergeist and on DVD The Imitation Game.

click the TV below to listen --- ooooh spooky.

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/lifestyle/movies/darren-bevan-poltergeist-spy/

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/lifestyle/movies/darren-bevan-poltergeist-spy/