SUPER DRAGON BALL HEROES WORLD MISSION ANNOUNCED FOR SWITCH AND STEAM IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

SUPER DRAGON BALL HEROES WORLD MISSION ANNOUNCED FOR SWITCH AND STEAM IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe has announced the worldwide release of the highly anticipated SUPER DRAGON BALL HEROES WORLD MISSION on Nintendo Switch™ and PC Digital via STEAM® - the first game in the series to be released in the West when it arrives on April 5^th, 2019.

SUPER DRAGON BALL HEROES WORLD MISSION takes place in Hero Town, an alternate reality where a Dragon Ballcard game is the most popular form of entertainment. Players take on the role of Beat, the protagonist of SUPER DRAGON BALL HEROES WORLD MISSION, and follow his journey to become the world champion of Super Dragon Ball Heroes. However, when the antagonists from the virtual game world appear in Hero Town and start wreaking havoc, Beat jumps into the game world and teams up with famous Dragon Ball characters to restore peace in the real world.

SUPER DRAGON BALL HEROES WORLD MISSION is a card battle game featuring fighters from across all the Dragon Ball universes, transformations never seen before, and a brand-new character designed by Toyotarou, the mangaka (manga creator) of Dragon Ball Super.  The game will feature a gigantic roster with 350 fighters available, and over 1000 collectable cards.

TOM CLANCY’S RAINBOW SIX SIEGE Esports Expands Into New Zealand With First Ever LAN Event

TOM CLANCY’S RAINBOW SIX SIEGE Esports Expands Into New Zealand With First Ever LAN Event

TOM CLANCY’S RAINBOW SIX SIEGE ESPORTS EXPANDS INTO NEW ZEALAND WITH FIRST EVER LAN EVENT

The LPL PRO Six Oceanic Cup NZ Qualifier will be held in Auckland

Today, Ubisoft announced that Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege esports will expand in the New Zealand market with the first ever LAN event in Auckland. The LPL PRO Six Oceanic Cup NZ Qualifier will be operated by LetsPlay.Live, marking the first time the tournament operator and Ubisoft have worked together.

The LPL PRO Six Oceanic Cup NZ Qualifier will commence next month with online open qualifiers taking place Saturday 16^th and Sunday 17^th February, 2019. A prize pool of NZ$1,000 will be on offer, with 1^st place taking home NZ$750 and 2^nd place taking home NZ$250. Registration is open to Australian and New Zealand players aged 15 years or older. Teams will be required to have at least three out of five players be residents of New Zealand in order to compete. An offline LAN Final will take place at LPL Studios in the Sky Tower in Auckland the weekend commencing Saturday 23^rd February, 2019. The top 2 teams from this event will qualify for the Six Oceanic Cup in March. Teams and players can register for the LPL PRO Six Oceanic Cup NZ Qualifier via https://letsplay.live/lpl-pro-six-oceanic-cup-nz-qualifier. The LPL PRO Six Oceanic Cup NZ Qualifier can be watched live at twitch.tv/rainbow6anz andyoutube.com/c/rainbow6anz.

Duane Mutu, LetsPlay.Live Director, said, “LPL is delighted to be supporting Ubisoft in bringing competitive Rainbow Six Siege to New Zealand for the first time. The LPL PRO Six Oceanic Cup NZ Qualifier will be an incredible opportunity for our regional gamers to bring their skills into the spotlight and offer a potential pathway into competitive esports.”

The Six Oceanic Cup will be a 2-week, single elimination, best-of-3 tournament featuring 8 teams and will commence with the online quarter finals on March 16^th and 17^th, 2019. The semi-finals and grand final will take place in Auburn, NSW on Saturday 23^rd March, 2019. More details about the Six Oceanic Cup, including the prize pool and ticket availability will be shared in the near future.

For more information about Rainbow Six Siege esports please visit rainbow6.com and follow us at https://twitter.com/rainbow6anz. All Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege ANZ esports content can be enjoyed live at twitch.tv/rainbow6anz and youtube.com/c/rainbow6anz.

Halloween: DVD Review

Halloween: DVD Review

Michael Myers is back.

And you can just forget about all the other sequels spawned post the 1978 launch of the first Halloween, because this latest cares not one jot for the middling to trashy quality of what was launched after.

In the latest, with a script from Danny McBride amongst others, babysitter murderer Michael Myers (Castle, non-speaking and menacing in shape) is about to be transferred to another jail - on October 31st, 2018.

And this being a horror film, you can guess what happens next....

Halloween is a film of two halves.

An utterly gripping finale caps off what is a fairly average thrill ride throughout.

The narrative seems to fall into a mesh of wanting to bring some storyboards to vivid life creating more iconic images of the masked one as he goes around ruthlessly killing and putting him on the inevitable collision course with Curtis' Laurie Strode.

It's in the second half of this execution that the film's more successful, largely thanks to Curtis' performance, which encapsulates both the terror of knowing what's coming, and the bitterness of having a life ruined by four decades of post-trauma. In many ways, this Halloween is a paean to those left behind by crimes, and who have to endure - and Curtis, with her mix of resentment and recalcitrant approach, more than rises to the challenge, without ever resorting to cheap acting.

Equally Castle's embodiment of the unstoppable unemotional shape once again captures what an effective Boogeyman is - as Strode says " An evil like his never stops, it just grows older. Darker. More determined." Castle turns Myers into myth, and there are genuine terrors when the impassive 
mask stares at the screen and menaces Strode and her daughter in the finale.

Elsewhere along the way, the film flounders, throwing together a kids in peril plot with a kids rowing over love plot that never gels, and merely provides more slashing fodder for Myers' knife to sink into. It's never interested in providing deep characters outside of the core trio, and potentially never really pretends to.

It may be evocative in parts as it crosses through the tropes and thanks to the perennially chilling song from that score, but Halloween only works best when it's stripped down to basics.

If you're willing to weather the ride, the finale more than rewards you with a housebound showdown that simply personifies the primal terror of the Boogeyman. 

First Man: Blu Ray Review

First Man: Blu Ray Review

The story of the first Man on the Moon is not one that needs to be told.

Everyone knows how it happened and that it happened (unless you subscribe to the conspiracy theories), so Whiplash and La La Land director Damien Chazelle didn't really have his work cut out convincing us of what happened.

However, once again, as he explores the nature of obsession (as with previous films), Chazelle's occasionally slow but neverless than thrilling First Man is the Neil Armstrong film you didn't know you needed.

Gosling's almost automaton-like turn as the pilot turned astronaut anchors the film - though in truth, the connection with family is actually at the core of this space flick. Taking in the years 1961 to 1969 and threading in the death of Armstrong's daughter, First Man looks at the human cost of the space race, the desperation of defeat from the Soviets in parts and those left behind.

It's an interesting concoction, a mix that's slow to brew at times, and that never jettisons pace for necessity of narrative.

But in its space capsule sequences, and its adaption of practical FX (where possible - you'll be hard pressed to find any line), Chazelle, along with sound effects editor Phil Barrie, creates something utterly nerve-shredding.

Clever use of silence (aside from the actual launch for the Moon mission, the one aural misstep where a bombastic OST ruins the atmosphere) and a concentration on the rivets and creaks of the rocket's capsule make the pilot sequences both claustrophobic and thrilling.

Everything rattles - including your teeth - giving you a psychological insight into what the pilots must have felt inside, not knowing what's coming or if this is the end. It's further exacerbated in one sequence where a thump and puff of smoke viewed from outside is utterly devastating.

Simply put, if the use of sound in First Man doesn't secure some kind of award, the system is broken.

Elsewhere, Gosling's touches give Armstong an aloof icy detachedness - you're never quite 100% sure you get to his core, and there are questions about one final sequence on the moon. However, small subtle moments add to the unfolding tension. And Foy's support swerves unnervingly from solid to faltering under the pressure; again, both Foy and Gosling make the best of their slightly under-served arcs. It's not 100% convincing that you leave First Man knowing massively more about the man himself, though it's not entirely clear whether that's the film's MO - and certainly, those who knew Armstrong say they never really knew him.

Equally the politics of space-race are sidelined in favour of the simplicity of the drama; this is not a film where great speeches are dispatched extolling the virtues of why it's important, how small man is etc.

But it's in the thrill and terror of this technically adept biopic that proves to be enthralling; you can understand the joy of what NASA achieved and how they felt, even if the script fails to fully place it into words for you.

And that's perhaps Chazelle's greatest achievement here - a clinical commitment to the nuts and bolts (literally) of NASA and the rush to space that proves First Man is gripping from beginning to rather abrupt end.

First Man is one giant leap for space cinema in many ways. 

Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot: DVD Review

Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot: DVD Review

A heady mix of life-affirming biography, swirled in with a truly chameleonic performance from Joaquin Phoenix as Oregon slacker John Callahan, Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot shouldn't really work.

After all, it's the usual trappings of a illness TV movie of the week - guy wrecks his life, guy tries to put his life back together. But what it is about Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot that works is simply, Phoenix.

Callahan was paralysed after a car accident at the age of 21, in which the driver, a fellow alcholic played with anarchic glee by Jack Black, walked away scot free. Callahan was not so lucky, choosing to go down the path of self-destruction before ultimate redemption, and discovering a penchant for black-humoured cartoons.

A patchwork portmanteau start sees Van Sant messing with timelines, a twitchy holding-you-at-arms-length approach which takes some getting used to. But as the story treads its familiar route, it's peppered with such warmth and disarming moments of humour and reality that its sentiment wins you over (even if it dangerously veers close to overdose at times, and showcases some of the lesser written characters, such as Mara's carer / girlfriend).

Thankfully, Phoenix delivers another stunning performance.

Whether it's Callahan going hell for leather in his wheelchair through the streets, or making his own denials about what his mother did to him, Phoenix takes every moment and makes it his own, overcoming the script's occasional weaknesses and the somewhat sanitised view of life in a wheelchair.

It's impossible not to feel something for Callahan in this, and Phoenix is the main reason why, along with the anarchic tones and touches deployed throughout. Solid support comes from an early unrecognisable Jonah Hill, whose Jesus Christ-like hippy sponsor becomes central to peripherary proceedings.

Never stronger than when it uses some deftly off-kilter touches to develop the film from above its overtly familiar roots, Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot trades a careful line between inspiring and irritating.

In the end though, Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot works, and hits a level of affecting which is as surprising as it is moving. 

You Were Never Really Here: DVD Review

You Were Never Really Here: DVD Review

Director Lynne Ramsay's thriller is bathed in brutality, but also beaten down in humanity.

A hooded, hulking and haunted Joaquin Phoenix is Joe, a hitman former veteran, whose specialty is saving children from sex rings.

Aside from the repugnance of his day job, Joe spends the time outside of the job looking after his mother, who's ailing and in need of care.

But when Joe's called in to a kidnapping of a US senator, what he believes is a cut-and-dry job turns into something a lot more personal - and potentially fatal.

Based on the 2013 Jonathan Ames' novel, Ramsay's sparsity with the camera work and the hallucinatory material within works masterfully for You Were Never Really Here.

It's aided by a sterling turn by Phoenix, whose intensity is suited to the anger contained within Joe as he dispatches his law-breakers with a hammer. But Phoenix also makes a case for real tenderness in terms of his interaction with his mother and also the victims of the child sex rings.

It's these touches which lift You Were Never Really Here out of the darkness that it inhabits.

Ramsay (who did We Need To Talk About Kevin) keeps things taut and interesting throughout - rather than fixating on the violent means of despatching, she angles the camera away from proceedings.

When Joe breaks into a hotel to free his victims, CCTV footage shows the scene but cuts just before the method of murder is revealed; equally a desperate fight on the floor is depicted through a ceiling mirror - it's impressive stuff that's not too showy, but very effective.

It helps with the disorientation too, as You Were Never Really Here has an overall feeling of thrilling wooziness as it plays out.

Greatly enhanced by a turn from Phoenix that keeps you riveted as the conspiracy plays out, You Were Never Really Here is as much of a trip for the audience as it is on screen.

It may be a trip to a seedy underbelly, but thanks to Ramsay and Phoenix, it's a trip that's well worth taking.  

Venom: DVD Review

Venom: DVD Review

As tonally schizophrenic as its star talking to its symbiote, Sony’s attempt to bring anti-hero Venom into the 21st century stumbles into cliched exposition land but never fully finds its feet.

Hardy is Eddie Brock, a crusading internet reporter whose show The Eddie Brock Report champions the wronged

But when Brock loses his job and his fiancée (Williams, in a phone-it-in turn) because of his refusal to be a patsy in his interview with Riz Ahmed’s tech giant Carlton Drake, he spirals down.

Offered a chance months later to find out what Drake has been up to at the LIFE institute, Brock’s life is changed when he’s infected with a parasitic alien creature aka Venom.

With the LIFE institute after him to retrieve their “property”, the Brock/ Venom hybrid goes on the run as they try to stop the conspiracy.

Venom feels like a curious hybrid itself - and much like the symbiote struggles with its prospective host, director Fleischer struggles to deliver something that feels nothing more than a garbled, rushed mess.

A hastily assembled opening 20 minutes barely gives any characters chance to breathe and dispenses swathes of emotionally necessary narrative for the hell of it, leaving you gasping to care for what unfolds.

Meshing body horror with a bizarre buddy comedy, Hardy gurns and mumbles his way through the film, giving Brock scant moments of humanity here and there. Plenty of the film sees him pacing and talking to himself before the CGI elements kick into play. It's a shame as Hardy's more than committed to the role, whatever it demands.

The comedic elements are fine and hint at what could have been had the PG bloodless approach been jettisoned for something darker and more twisted. If anything at times, Venom shows a troubled production and hints at a fear of going further than it could.

Some decent FX aside (the twisting rotating creatures are well done, as are scenes of the symbiotes being rejected) much of the action passes by in a blur;, and in parts looks like children flinging and flailing around wet coloured spaghetti; certainly a creature feature finale looks messy and garbled, with neither element standing out, nor the singular triumphant moment emerging at the end.


Ultimately, and sadly, this Venom lacks bite - it's not as bad as you're expecting, but it's not as good either - ironically, this venom is not the cure to the cinematic poison of anti-superhero films.