At Darren's World of Entertainment - a movie, DVD and game review blog.
The latest movie and DVD reviews - plus game reviews as well. And cool stuff thrown in when I see it.
Thanks to Madman Home Ent, I'm giving you the chance to win both series one and two of the brilliant series DETECTORISTS.
Starring and written by Mackenzie Crook and with Toby Jones in fine form, this gentle comedy series is one you can't afford to be without.
Crook and Jones are Andy and Lance, two friends who find common ground as part of the Danebury Metal Detecting Club. Their dream is to uncover the final resting place of King Sexred, a wealthy East Saxon King. But while they search for the past, they must also grapple with the present.
'The Walking Dead: Michonne' Episode 2 - 'Give No Shelter' launch date is....
Conflict Heats Up in 'The Walking Dead: Michonne'
Episode 2 - 'Give No Shelter' on March 29th
All-New Video Recaps Key Player Decisions in Episode 1
Fellow Survivors,
Today we can share the release date for 'Give No Shelter,' the second of three episodes in The Walking Dead: Michonne - A Telltale Miniseries.
Episode 2: 'Give No Shelter' will be available starting Tuesday, March 29th on PC/Mac via the Telltale Online Store, Steam, and other digital distribution services, the PlayStation®Network for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3, the Xbox Games Store for Xbox One® and Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, for compatible iOS devices via the App Store, and for Android-based devices via Google Play and the Amazon Appstore. The miniseries will conclude with the third episode, 'What We Deserve,' in April.
The Walking Dead: Michonne - A Telltale Miniseries confronts players with tough choices. Today we can also share this new video above, which highlights some of the difficult decisions players were faced with in the premiere episode.
The miniseries stars the iconic, blade-wielding character from Robert Kirkman's best-selling comic books, portrayed in-game by award-winning actress Samira Wiley (Orange is the New Black). Haunted by her past and coping with unimaginable loss and regret, the story explores Michonne across a three episode miniseries event. Players will dive into the mind of Michonne to discover what took her away from Rick, Carl, and the rest of her trusted group... and what brought her back.
In Episode 2, 'Give No Shelter,' a daring escape from the floating colony of Monroe sees Michonne, Pete, and Sam running for their lives. An all too brief reprieve is soon shattered; the leaders of Monroe don't forgive and don't forget. With memories of her daughters bleeding ever further into Michonne's blurred reality, her world is becoming increasingly fractured... just at the point when she'll need all of her skills to survive.
To date, The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series has sold more than 50 million episodes worldwide, earning more than 100 Game of the Year awards from outlets including Metacritic, USA Today, Wired, Spike TV VGAs, Yahoo!, The Telegraph, Mashable, Polygon, Destructoid andGamesRadar, and was also the recipient of two BAFTA Video Games Awards for Best Story and Best Mobile Game.
The Walking Dead is set in the world of Robert Kirkman's award-winning comic book series and offers an emotionally-charged, tailored game experience where a player's actions and choices affect how their story plays out across the entire series.
The Walking Dead: Michonne - A Telltale Miniseries Episode 2 - 'Give No Shelter' is rated 'M' (Mature) for Intense Violence, Blood & Gore, and Strong Language by the ESRB.
Fallout 4’s first add-on, Automatron, is almost here, and we’re excited to share the official trailer with you today.
Automatron will be available for download across Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC, on Tuesday, March 22nd, and will cost AUD $14.95 and NZD $19.95.
In Automatron, the mysterious Mechanist has unleashed a horde of evil robots into the Commonwealth, including the devious Robobrain. Hunt them down and harvest their parts to build and mod your own custom robot companions. Choose from hundreds of mods; mixing limbs, armor, abilities, and weapons such as the all-new lightning chain gun. Even customize their paint schemes and choose their voices! (For characters level 15 or higher.)
Automatron marks the first add-on release for Fallout 4. In April, we’re expanding the capabilities of settlements with Wasteland Workshop, and in May, travel beyond the Commonwealth to Maine for Far Harbor – the largest landmass Bethesda Game Studios has ever created for post-release content. And, that’s just the beginning, with even more add-ons to be released in 2016. Stay tuned for more details on free updates like Survival Mode and the Creation Kit, which will allow you to create mods on the PC and then share and play them across all platforms, including consoles.
The 2013 action flick was, in fairness, a film about a one man secret service against the masses on a quest to ensure his homo-erotic bromance with the Prez was safe from terrorist threats.
So it is with London Has Fallen, an action film brushed with such mind-numbing formulaic touches and flat action sequences that it somehow manages to make its 95 minute run time feel like something of an endurance.
This time around, Mike Banning (Gerard Butler in straight up form) is contemplating quitting POTUS' detail because of impending fatherhood. However, just before he hits send on the email, he's called in to mind Aaron Eckhart's President Benjamin Asher, who's about to be called away to London to attend the state funeral of the UK Prime Minister, who's died without warning.
In among the gathering of all the western heads of the state, Banning isn't happy; with just days to prep a full security detail, it's clear there's danger on every corner.
And it turns out, Banning is right as a major terrorist strike takes out several of the western leaders, leaving Banning and the President on the run....
The thing is with London Has Fallen, there's a kernel of some good ideas trying to raise their head to the cinematic light and trying to poke their way through.
Social commentary on drone strikes and those who perpetrate them from their high and mighty pedestals, terrorist executions on the internet and how budget cuts are forcing security services to compromise ultimately endangering us all are just two of them jostling for creative air to breathe.
Unfortunately, they're lambasted into obscurity and battered into submission by seriously sub-par FX (which would easily be bettered on any of the next gen consoles) and by a script that pushes racism and below par comments from Banning as he dispatches the bad guys amid a hail of bullets and never once copping any single flak a la The A Team.
The worst of these offending dispatches comes with Banning telling one that he needs to "go back to F**kheadistan" without any sense of irony and with every sense of lunk-headed racism. It's essentially, Team America: World Police but without any of the subtlety. (An oxymoron I am very aware of).
Half the problem is London Has Fallen takes itself so seriously that it has to be measured by the same standards, and finds itself wanting on so many levels.
Lacking any sense of fun or even any feel of urgency, London Has Fallen may pile in the rote action sequences but not one of them stands out from the crowd, feeling like it's been designed by committee and executed by no-one with any particular flair. Explosions taking out London landmarks have no emotional weight and don't carry any of the vicarious thrill or weight that seeing the likes of the White House vaporised by an alien spacecraft can muster.
By utilising a sprawling city, London has effectively traded some of the claustrophobia from the White House that was so well used and exploited in Olympus Has Fallen.
Equally, the final sections suddenly remember there are a few extraneous plot threads which need erroneously tying up with sudden urgency. (Don't even get me started on how this world is not one for women, the majority of whom are confined to either death, being sidelined with pregnancy and looking worried or forgotten about despite initially being part of the script).\
Depressingly, it'll no doubt do gang-busters as the box office, precipitating yet another sequel, with no doubt Butler reprising his woeful John McClane impression.
While it does require some commendation for mocking worldwide perceptions and stereotypes of the western leaders (the French premier decides to be 10 minutes late to the funeral, the Italian prime minister is lustily showing a 30 year around on a private tour), there's nothing clever about the rest of the execution of London Has Fallen, an un-PC, tedious and desperately below-par action film.
I am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story: DVD Review
Rating: PG
Released by Vendetta Films
The story of Big Bird is perhaps not an original one if you've seen the likes of Being Elmo.
Amiably told, this is the tale of Caroll Spinney, a man whose dreams of being a muppeteer were made real by a coincidental meeting with Frank Oz. But his tale of success and of performing Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch is not an easy route to success; Spinney never really fitted in with the other performers and was close to leaving when he stumbled across the idea of Big Bird.
The story's pleasantly told and with plenty of input from Spinney and those around him, but the anecdotes that have the real edge (Big Bird on the Challenger space shuttle and a murder on his estate) are never really fully explored to the frustration of the viewer looking for a deeper experience.
As an insight and a jog down memory lane for those Sesame Street characters and people you remember, I am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story is perfectly perfunctory - it's never as inspirational as you'd hope, but it's certainly not a badly constructed doco.
Murderous goons meet their match in a downhome Minnesota
cop, the inimitable Frances McDormand as Detective Marge Gunderson, chirpy,
relentless and seven months pregnant. Landmark ‘true crime’ comedy from the
Coens.
The
Iron Giant: Signature Edition
In Brad Bird’s beautifully animated adaptation of Ted Hughes’ anti-Cold
War children's book, young Hogarth Hughes befriends a gigantic robot from outer
space, and hides him from wily government agents.
Deborah
Kerr and Yul Brynner are the definitive Anna and the King of Siam in the
dazzling movie of the evergreen Rogers and Hammerstein musical, spectacularly
transferred to digital for its 60th anniversary.
The Philadelphia Story
Katharine Hepburn spoofs her blue blood image as the spoiled
bride-to-be in the definitive high society romcom. Sardonic ex-husband Cary
Grant and scandal-mongering journo Jimmy Stewart vie to divert her from the
altar.
“Kurosawa’s
late-period masterpiece, transposing King Lear to period Japan, is one
of the most exquisite spectacles ever made, a color-coordinated epic tragedy of
carnage and betrayal – passionate, somber, and profound.” — New York
Magazine
Stop
Making Sense
Jonathan
Demme’s celebrated concert movie remains a conceptual and audiovisual triumph,
capturing David Byrne and Talking Heads in infectious peak form.
The NZIFF Autumn Events
Premieres are:
Bolshoi Babylon (A+W
only)
Russia’s
world-famous Bolshoi Ballet weathers the fallout from the notorious 2013 acid
attack on its artistic director. Brit filmmakers Nick Read and Mark Franchetti
gain remarkable access.
Ingrid Bergman in her Own Words (A+W only)
Actress
Ingrid Bergman shines in this compendium of her letters, movie clips, visits
with family members, and – best of all – lots of beautiful home movies, mostly
shot by the star herself.
An admiring, perceptive, richly
researched and performance-studded celebration of 60s icon and white soul
singer supreme, Janis Joplin, beautifully crafted by Amy Berg (West of
Memphis).
Putuparri and the
Rainmakers (A+W only)
(with filmmaker in attendance
at Auckland and Wellington screenings)
An
emotional journey to meet the traditional rainmakers of Australia's Great Sandy
Desert. The film spans 20 years in the life of Tom "Putuparri"
Lawford as he navigates the chasm between his Western upbringing and the need
to keep his traditional culture alive.
In
his sunniest most upbeat film yet, the activist/director of Fahrenheit 911
and Bowling for Columbine mounts a comic assault on the good citizens of
several of the world’s most liberal social welfare states.
Puritan terrors of devilry and damnation come screaming to
life in this impeccably crafted and thrillingly scary debut. “The Witch is
one of the most genuinely unnerving horror films in recent memory.” — David
Ehrlich, Time Out
And the big New Zealand premiere on Wednesday 13th April at 7pm will be TICKLED.
When pop-culture journalist
David Farrier came across a website seeking young men to travel to Los Angeles
to participate in endurance tickling competitions, he sensed a good story for
TV3’s Newsworthy.
He didn’t know he’d just bought himself a fight with a clutch of “bullies with
too much money.” That fight and the investigation it provoked make for gripping
viewing in his remarkably deft debut feature film, co-directed with Dylan
Reeve.
Thanks to Madman Home Ent, I'm giving you the chance to win both series one and two of the brilliant series DETECTORISTS.
