Doc Edge Festival preview

Doc Edge Festival preview

The 12th Doc Edge International Documentary Film Festival hits its home straight with the Auckland leg of the festival starting this week.

Over 49 films and 20 shorts are being showcased in the annual event at Auckland's Q Theatre, which will have its gala opening with Whitney: Can I Be Me? documentary maker, Nick Broomfield in attendance.

As ever, there's a wide variety of films on show, and some shorts that have had airings already, but many that are definitely worth re-visiting.

Whitney: Can I Be Me?

Whitney: "Can I Be Me?", the opening night film, will be a draw card for the many fans of the songstress whose life started out in the gospel world, but whose rise to fame and subsequent fall was due to the power of her voice.

Starting with the 911 call on February 11th 2012, the film seems to be going for a chilling vibe, but draws its own strength from the unseen footage Broomfield and Rudi Dolezal have secured. Taken from a 1999 tour of Hamburg, the behind the scenes, unfettered nature of that footage says more about Houston than anything else could.

Whether it's holding the audience expectations in her hands before belting out the final bars of I Will Always Love You to giving you an insight into the pressures on the star, the film's shiny surface is all about Houston and a clutch of people around her.

The back half of the doco becomes more compelling as you see Houston fall under the influence of malevolent forces, but one can't escape the feeling that Broomfield's insight into the star isn't as in-depth as Asif Kapadia's excoriating and emotive look at Amy Winehouse, which truly set the bar for music docos.

That said, fans of Whitney will appreciate and be lining up for its premiere in Auckland.

Mattress Men

Elsewhere, the Irish recession and the impact on society forms the surprising backbone to the immediately quirky looking Mattress Men.
Mattress Mick is an internet sensation, a sort of grey-mop haired potential embarrassment of a man whose business has been transformed by the power of the viral video.

But the charming and actually heart-breaking doco is more than a laugh at the man involved; it's a poignant heart-breaking demonstration of how the economic times we live in are destroying the souls of those on the front line.

Choosing to follow Mick's co-worker Paul Kelly, a man who feels he deserves more credit than he's getting for his role, the film has elements of I, Daniel Blake via way of The Office's tragi-comedy as darker forces threaten to overwhelm. And while there's a definite feeling that it's a testament to the power of positive though, this doco quickly moves past the quirky to embrace the humanity of those facing darker times.

It helps that it's set to the background of a terrible music video being made (Mattresses, Back To The Future, a Shaft star who's cringe-worthy), this is one of the surprise stand-outs of the festival, a salute to the common man, and proof that life finds a way.

Thank You For Playing is not an easy sell. Playing for free at the festival and with the subject in attendance, this story about a video game's genesis has its foundations in heartbreak.

Thank You For Playing

That Dragon Cancer is a game that will be known by some, but not others; dealing with the death of a child from cancer, it's a game about the universaility of grief and the journey, but its foundations come from father Ryan finding out that his son Joel has the disease.
There are moments when it's not an easy watch, and the frank honesty can occasionally be emotive kryptonite, but that is all to the documentary's powe. Ryan makes the film feel honest with the good and bad being captured during the process, and while it'll take a hard heart of stone to avoid misty-eyed syndrome, Thank You for Playing deserves commendation for never once being mawkish, sentimental or milking its audience.

One other documentary looking to start a conversation and probably likely to succeed so is the relatively short 2016 TV doco Making Good Men.

Not many may know that Hobbit and Arrow star Manu Bennett and former All Black Norm Hewitt were victim and bully respectively back in the day. Threatened by Manu's joining of Te Aute college he was at, Norm powered into Bennett and beat him to within an inch of his life.

Making Good Men

After years of their respective journeys taking them on different paths, both Hewitt and Bennett had a chance reunion in a Koru lounge.

The doco gives each the chance to recollect their stories and their various prior lives before it all happened with pieces to camera.

It's here the film's strength works as the unflinching raw honesty is hypnotic and challenging.
But the main power of this piece is that it may make many re-think their life choices, and begin to muse whether they were smart decisions as this anti-violence piece plays.

There's a wide range of topics covered in the festival - for cinephiles, there are films that look at the shower scene in Psycho, to examining the role of Indian movie houses; for those concerned about our times, there's the effect of screens on our society and there are stories of Syria and refugees as well.

If anything, the 12th Doc Edge International Documentary Film Festival feels like a very contemporary festival that deals far and wide with its subject matter, and will provoke plenty of discussion once the lights have gone up.

The 12th Doc Edge International Documentary Film Festival kicks off in Auckland from May 24th to June 5th.

The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier' Reaches Season Finale on May 30

The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier' Reaches Season Finale on May 30

Critically Acclaimed  'The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier'  Reaches Season Finale on May 30 Series Concludes with Episode 5: 'From the Gallows' Arriving For Download on Tuesday, May 30th

Fellow Survivors, Today we can share the official release date for the critically-acclaimed The Walking Dead: The Telltale Series - A New Frontier's upcoming Episode 5: 'From the Gallows.' Beginning Tuesday, May 30th, players can download Episode 5: 'From the Gallows' on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC/Steam, iOS, and Android-based devices. The episode will also download for all users of the special Season Pass disc for consoles, which includes the critically acclaimed two-part premiere episode and grants access to all subsequent episodes in the five-episode season for download as they become available.  Episode description: In Telltale's most tailored episode to date, Richmond teeters on the brink of collapse as chaos reigns from all directions. The lives of its citizens and all those closest to Javier hang in the balance. The decisions you've made and bonds you've nurtured across the season will determine which characters now trust Javi to safeguard all they hold dear as the crisis pushes every relationship past its breaking point... ============================================================== The Walking Dead: A New Frontier acts as both a new beginning for players fresh to the series and unfamiliar with Clementine, as well as a continuation for players who have experienced Seasons One and Two. Players new to the series are able to start a story that is tailored to this new beginning. Players continuing onward from prior seasons have multiple options for quickly configuring their tailored backstory, or importing past save files from various platforms. Episode 5: 'From the Gallows' is rated 'M' (Mature) for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, and Strong Language by the ESRB. Future content in the season is yet to be rated. 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, and GamesRadar. It 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.

Tekken 7 - Everything will end in death

Tekken 7 - Everything will end in death

A NEW DRAMATIC STORY TRAILER FOR TEKKEN 7

Everything will end… in death

Leading interactive entertainment company BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe is today releasing a new TEKKEN 7 dramatic story trailer showcasing the feud of the Mishima family and its footprint on the rest of the world. From honor, duty, vengeance, all their fights are personal. In a final showdown filled by blood and anger, what began in death will end…in death: 

In TEKKEN 7, all fights are personal! Prepare to enter the ring as TEKKEN 7 will be available for the PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system, Xbox One, and STEAM® for PC on June 2nd 2017. To find out more about Tekken 7, please head over to the official website Tekken.com.

Win a double pass to see Baywatch - The Movie

Win a double pass to see Baywatch - The Movie

Starring Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Priyanka Chopra, Alexandra Daddario, Jon Bass, Kelly Rohrbach, Ilfenesh Hadera, Baywatch is coming to cinemas June 1st!

BAYWATCH follows devoted lifeguard Mitch Buchannon (Johnson) as he butts heads with a brash new recruit (Efron). Together, they uncover a local criminal plot that threatens the future of the Bay.

“Baywatch” has not yet been rated

To win a double pass all you have to do is enter simply email your details to this  address: darrensworldofentertainment@gmail.com or CLICK HERE NOW!

Include your name and address and title your email BAYWATCH!
Competition closes June 1st

Good luck!

LocoRoco Remastered: PS4 Review

LocoRoco Remastered: PS4 Review

Platform: PS4
Developed by Japan Studio

Colourful and occasionally annoying in its brightness, LocoRoco Remastered feels like a mix of the Lums from the Rayman series got integrated with Sounds Shapes.

There's a loose story to LocoRoco involving the Earth being attacked and it being upto you to save the day by collecting Lums-style critters to create a massive spacehopper style creature by the end of the level.
Not being familiar with the 2006 PSP version of the game, LocoRoco Remastered is actually a pleasantly colourful surprise that leaps off the screen with real gusto.

It has an innate charm as you use L1 and R1 to negotiate your way around the simple side scrolling levels, controlling the environment and making them roll. Despite each of the short levels growing a little trickier every time, there's a real re-playability to this remaster. Vibrant primary colours spring off the screen, and look crisp and zesty as the game goes on.

It helps there's an annoyingly irritating set of songs (made largely of nonsense) as the game goes on, but the nonsensical nature of this part of the game mean it's likely to greatly appeal to the younger generation plonked in front of it (in much the same way the Teletubbies scored a career out of their sparse colourful lunacy).

And at random points in the remaster, the singing will take place in the vicinity of the controller's speaker, meaning that in small ways, the game tries to come to life.

It's a major plus that the game is so colourful to behold, but yet somehow also manages to feel squishy and malleable on the screen. Every time you inadvertently lose one of the critters you've collected, it feels like a body blow, and only encourages you to play the level again.

And speed's quite common in the game as well, with each of the 40 levels feeling enough of a challenge and yet brief enough to engage on all levels and with all ages.

There are mini-games to experience too, but it's the general game itself with its cutesy touches that makes LocoRoco Remastered a lo-cost game to invest in.

LocoRoco Remastered is proof that when remasters are done with a bit of care, and no real tinkering to the game's MO, the experience can feel fresh again. Pleasingly disposable and yet presenting enough of a challenge here and there, this is worth frittering away an afternoon on during the upcoming winter months.

Split: Blu Ray Review

Split: Blu Ray Review

Despite being burned by audiences who spurned his ongoing obsessions with twist endings, director M Night Shyamalan returns to his "classic" mode with this reasonably taut psychological thriller that's anchored by two stunning lead turns.

Abducted by James McAvoy's character and imprisoned underground (shades of potboiler thriller 10 Cloverfield Lane in more thematic ways than one), a trio of girls (The Witch star Taylor-Joy, Edge of Seventeen's Richardson and Skins actress Sula) try desperately to escape.

But it turns out that McAvoy's kidnapper is just one of 23 personalities trapped within his body, each acting on the machinations of the other but all serving a greater purpose - the coming of The Beast....

Less about the practicalities of a siege mentality and more about the mysterious journey and subsequent story, Shyamalan's new film is very much a return to form that's greatly enhanced by Taylor-Joy and McAvoy.

While Taylor-Joy's stoically passive and yet determined outsider Casey seizes the intellectual initiative of the situation and tries to bond with her captors, it's McAvoy's turn as the incarcerator that really stands out.

Easily flipping between the many personalities with the subtlest of touches and slightest nuancing of facial expressions, McAvoy's ferocious and fluid acting out of multiple personalities shifts Split away from feeling like a film that stigmatises mental illness and scoffs at its subject for cheap laughs.

From a slight re-arranging of his reactions or an altering of facial features to the use of accents makes his characters seem both distinct and unnerving as the claustrophobic atmosphere plays out.

Make no mistake, Split is McAvoy's film from start to finish.

Though he's well-supported by the impassive Taylor-Joy who conveys as much with a simple look as she managed during The VVitch.

Perhaps less successful are some of the other elements of the narrative.

At times, Shyamalan seems to lose focus on juggling the puzzle pieces in the air and more focussed on heading toward the end game. Certainly, a back story feels extraneous and using a therapist to convey medical exposition slows Split in the middle part.

And at times, some of the dialogue feels forced and unnatural. Equally, a final hurdle run into full horror territory removes Split of some of its relative freshness and more macabre edges, sullying the work done to get to this point.

Granted, it's not a Shyamalan film without an audacious final narrative gamble and there'll be plenty of debate once the curtain goes up, but to say more is to rob you of the experience.

Ultimately, Split avoids cliches and a large degree of risibility thanks to its superb two leads, imbuing what transpires with an emotional edge that's as tense and compelling as it is uncomfortable and suspenseful, and ensuring once again that Shyamalan has returned to a character piece and form that's not been witnessed since the denouement of The Sixth Sense. 

Hidden Figures: Blu Ray Review

Hidden Figures: Blu Ray Review

The space race and the fight against racism combine in this based on a true story wannabe feel-good flick from the director of St Vincent.

It's the story of Katherine G Johnson (Empire star Taraji P Henson), Dorothy Vaughn (The Help's Octavia Spencer) and feisty activist Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), three black women working in the predominantly white NASA space programme.

Johnson's a numbers genius (as an early flashback to her childhood heavily sign posts) and when she's assigned to the unit run by Al Harrison (Costner) she inadvertently puts the cat among the pigeons. Not least because of her colour, but also because The Big Bang Theory's Jim Parsons' sneery Paul Stafford is running the team and doubts the veracity of her maths.

Equally, Vaughn's desperate to be given the chance to become a supervisor and sassy Jackson's keen to become an engineer - but both face discrimination, prejudice and societal expectations as threats.

With Octavia Spencer already nominated for a Golden Globe award  the film's trajectory is on the up, even if parts of its execution remain firmly grounded in mawkish predictable civil rights sentimentality.

Despite a relative career best turn from Kevin Costner as the boss of the unit charged with getting astronaut John Glenn into space to keep up with the Russians and the Sputnik space programme, most of the rest of the cast give solid performances that are dictated to unfortunately slide into stereotypes as the civil rights led story plays out.

From segregation to romance and racism within the workplace, all the tenets of this style of Lifetime dramas are here and everything orchestrates to an entirely predictable conclusion that wrings out every ounce of crowd-pleasing eyes weeping obviousness as you'd expect. The second half of the film aims for tearducts, but with the outside work elements not faring as well as the space race interest and story, they fall flat and fail to be fully moved.

There's no denying the story here and the struggle being real, but the TV movie style execution of it means Hidden Figures is more a case of a story that needs to be told, rather than one that needs to be told well.

It's an important distinction for this piece about the hidden struggle and breakthrough of the women and while the film may hold stratospheric aspirations, the race for the glass ceiling never quite reaches the heights of anything other than spectacularly solid and occasionally manipulative.