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.
So intones the voiceover that bookends the 2018 version of Robin Hood, a quite frankly baffling piece of film that seems intent on making a Call Of Duty version of the myth, and setting it against a backdrop of 80s rock video pyrotechnics.
Egerton is Robin of Loxley, a Lord of the manor of Nottingham, whose life is changed when he's drafted up to the crusades and torn from the love of his life Marian (Hewson, at times channelling a younger Emily Blunt). On returning injured from the Crusades, Robin (Rob to his mates, bizarrely) finds he's been declared dead - and teaming up with Foxx's John, he begins to rob from the Sheriff of Nottingham's war taxes to help.
But John advises him the best way to upset the apple cart, is to cosy up to the sheriff...
The 2018 version of Robin Hood is a film that's more about the fast cuts, and action than the subtlety and nuance of other versions.
Mixing comedy as well, Robin Hood feels like a hybrid of so many different elements from its Iraq war style Crusades opening through to its death-metal pyrotechnics; nothing quite gels as it should.
And while Egerton delivers a variant of his Kingsman character, and gives The Hood some vigilante justice elements that wouldn't feel out of place in a CW series, there's very much a feeling of Foxx playing Alfred to Egerton's Bruce Wayne in the start of Batman Begins.
There's a hint of Bathurst playing fast and loose with style here and trying to set up a sort of Robin Hood cinematic universe (implied by its end), but what transpires is a film that flounders for any identity of its own, other than a downpat action wannabe.
It's set up well as an idea, but Robin Hood fails to hit the mark as much as it should, making it feel like a splendid misfire more than anything else.
DiRT Rally 2.0 | How important is an experienced co-driver?
DiRT RALLY 2.0 TEAM CONDUCT COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS STUDY TO QUANTIFY IMPORTANCE OF A PROFESSIONAL CO-DRIVER
CODEMASTERS PITTED A SEASONED CO-DRIVER VERSUS A NOVICE TO MEASURE THE IMPACT OF EXPERIENCE ON RESULTS. THE RESULTS WERE... INTERESTING
Codemasters has today revealed the results of their study into how a professional co-driver influences driver confidence and overall speed. The DiRT Rally 2.0 team conducted an experiment earlier this month with the only variable being the co-driver, all in order to discover the exact impact a trained navigator has on overall stage time.
Each co-driver was given one chance to guide Codemasters’ rally driver Jon Armstrong through a single stage at the London Rally School. Experienced co-driver Noel O’Sullivan helped Jon hit a time of 2 minutes 32 seconds. Novice Chris Codey assisted Jon to complete the same stage in 9 minutes 44 seconds – one of the slowest times seen at the Bicester-based track.
Jon Armstrong said of the experiment: ‘it was extraordinarily difficult trying to string a few corners together with Chris as my co-pilot. He couldn’t tell his left from his right, and spent his eyes closed for the vast majority of the run. The closest instruction he gave was “watch out, there are bends”... Not ideal. It would have been easier if I’d have used Google Maps. At least Google Maps doesn’t scream.’
Dr Jasmine Masters, lead researcher on the study, concluded: ‘with a staggering time difference of 7 minutes 12 seconds – the equivalent of taking 284% longer – the importance of a capable co-driver cannot be understated. Heck, even a coherent co-driver helps. It’s a good job that Codemasters used a number of world class co-drivers to create the pace-notes and co-driver calls for DiRT Rally 2.0 – if we’d have left it to Chris, then in my professional opinion, we’d have been screwed.’
DiRT Rally 2.0, including official licensed content of the FIA World Rallycross Championship presented by Monster Energy, launched on the PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system, the Xbox One family of devices including Xbox One X and Windows PC (via Steam) on Tuesday 26th February 2019.
Red Dead Online Beta – New Gameplay, Weaponry, Clothing, Emotes, World Enhancements and Much More
Red Dead Online Beta Update Out Now
[STILL FOR NEW VIDEO]
Today, the Red Dead Online Beta gets its first big batch of updates including new gameplay, weapons and clothing, additional balancing and a slew of community-requested improvements thanks to responses to our player feedback page. The update is live in-game now - see below for details.
Earn Gold Nuggets and XP for completing Daily Challenges, a new series of wide-ranging objectives covering everything from skinning animals to finding treasure, winning feuds and more. Pull up the Player Menu to see your 7 Daily Challenges that will rotate each day, each challenge earns Gold Nuggets and XP and completing all 7 earns you a bonus.
Starting next week, compete with rival teams and Posses in the new Free Roam Event Fool’s Gold, where players fight to wear a protective suit of Golden Armor. Take down the current wearer to earn the armor and points, then turn the tables and rack up kills against the opposition.
And looking ahead, new game modes will arrive in the Red Dead Online Beta each week. Put your highwayman skills to the test with Target Races as you race other players on horseback to take down targets with speed and accuracy. Proficiency with a bow and arrow will give you an edge, take advantage of weapon and horse stamina pickups where you can, use your limited bullets wisely to remove targets or your attack your competition.
Take on friends and rivals in new Fishing Challenges. Opt in to a challenge to receive the appropriate equipment and bait, head to the water’s edge and start reeling in the big ones. For added ease, use Eagle Eye to pick a spot full of fish. Remember, you’re trying to catch the highest total weight of fish to win – which could be achieved by hooking several smaller fish or angling for one large catch - so keep everything you reel in.
Also coming soon: three new Showdown Modes where players and teams compete to capture and deliver bags, steal loot from each other and survive. Stay tuned for more details around Up in Smoke, Spoils of War and Plunder. With the addition of these new modes also comes the Featured Series blip - visit the Featured Series sign post or from the Quick Join menu to play the latest modes.
The Rare Shotgun is a beautifully engraved, faded brass version of the powerful, double-barreled longarm and is available today. Coming soon, be sure to get your hands on the Evans Repeater - a high grade, high capacity rifle that is devastating at medium and long range. Both weapons will be available via the Wheeler & Rawson Catalogue and from local Gunsmiths.
Treat yourself to a range of new Outfits, Boots, Coats, Gloves, Hats, Vests and more. In addition to all the clothing that will be available for purchase at your leisure, keep an eye on the shops and the Catalogue for Limited Time items that will come and go each week.
Express yourself with a new set of emotes including new reactions, greets and taunts. Like all Emotes, you can tap once for the standard emote and double tap for a more exaggerated expression. You can find new Emotes in the Wheeler & Rawson Catalogue then add them to your Emote Wheel through the Emote Wheel Management menu.
Updated Player Radar and Visibility: We’ve reduced the visibility of players blips over longer distances, so now your location won’t display to other players unless you are nearby – minimizing the likelihood of being targeted across the map by more aggressive competitors. This includes limiting voice chat to near proximity rather than players from across the map. Overly aggressive players will be highlighted from the map with a progressively darkening dot. If your style of play becomes more hostile, your map position (including your Posse members) will become darker and visible from further away.
Easier Parley and Feuds: Turn quarrels with other players into timed mini-deathmatches with easier to trigger Feuds, which can be initiated against a rival and their Posse after one kill. Alternately, instigate a temporary truce quicker after one kill with similar updates to the Parley system.
Enhanced Law and Bounty System: If you stir up enough trouble to earn a high bounty, you’ll increase the chance that a cadre of NPC Bounty Hunters will be out to get you. The higher the bounty gets, the more persistent your pursuers will become… so watch out!
Please keep the feedback coming as these new features arrive each week. In addition to new content, stay tuned for new weekly bonuses such as this week’s care package to help you tackle Daily Challenges and your other ongoing adventures across the five states. Head into the Red Dead Online Beta any time before Tuesday March 5th to receive a complimentary delivery of goods at your Camp’s Lockbox or at the Post Office consisting of:
-2x Potent Snake Oil
-2x Potent Bitters
-2x Potent Miracle Tonic
-2x Horse Reviver
-2x Potent Horse Stimulant
-8x Poison Arrows
-10x Explosive Slug
Starting today, PlayStation 4 players will have early access to the Jawbone Knife, a unique melee weapon with a handle artfully carved from the remains of a slain animal’s jaw, as well as a range of new clothing options and three new emotes. In the coming weeks, PlayStation 4 players will get the Special Series that launches them directly into the latest early access mode starting with Open Target Races where you compete in an open space to take out the most targets on horseback.
Stay tuned each week for new content, bonuses, limited time clothing and more coming in and out of the Red Dead Online Beta and keep an eye out for more updates as we continue improving and growing the world of Red Dead Online.
These words, coupled with Harry Dean Stanton's "I'm scared", sum up the general feeling of many on their deathbeds, but often go ignored or long buried.
Such it is with director Amanda Millar's Celia, a documentary about the impassioned social advocate Celia Lashlie, known more colloquially as Ces to her friends.
And yet, despite some powerful touches within, Celia feels a little too drawn out to achieve the power it desperately wants - even though it is really a rallying cry for a change.
Some of the problem with Celia is that it assumes you know Celia Lashlie before you go in; and therefore fails as a doco in general about her for the uneducated masses - how would a foreign audience see this subject is one niggle worth pondering on viewing and after.
Even though it's well-shot and the director's got the best of the single 90 minute interview she was able to achieve before life cruelly intervened and Celia Lashlie died, the film feels a little eclipsed by its own archive material and by its subject itself.
Stripped of too much of Celia's back story (one suspects further interviews could have added a lot more), the film relies a lot on the facts it deals with over social injustices in New Zealand, the mothers' place to raise children and prevent future criminals and an intriguingly didactic news doco.
Complete with shocking stats on a darkened background while slow mo reenactments follow after, the style of the doco is primarily one which feels suited to a TV news expose, rather than a fuller portrait of what the woman involved was.
It also relies way too much on nature shots for segues, and feels a little strung out in parts as the pieces are tied together.
And yet, when it uses the right material from the one 90 minute interview Millar got combined with archive footage, it shines fiercely and brightly; a towering beacon lit under our collective asses thanks to Lashlie's no prisoners taken approach to the truths society is sometimes too cowardly to face.
But there's humility in Celia's courage in the face of death and, much like Stanton's simply delivered line "I'm scared" in Lucky, her regrets so late in the day hit a level of poignancy that are powerful and undeniable.
Even through it all, Celia's humanity and the simplicity of her universal struggle is deeply affecting - Millar manages to capture that via moments of honesty rarely committed to screen and by non-intrusive interviewing.
Celia could be a useful as a change piece for government agencies and those looking to educate, as was Celia's vision for the film - an extension of her crusading work inside and outside the system.
Yet one can't help but side with the film commission and TV execs who advised doing it differently, even though I'm not privy to those discussions or director Amanda Millar's desire not to do so. (She divulged these early on in the pre-presentation of the film.)
One suspects, given the fullness of the auditorium and the fact extra screenings have been put on, Celia will find a life that it needs to - though potentially, its best life lies not on the big screen, but rather within the smaller screen within institutions.
Lashlie herself says near the end "If you're standing at my funeral, then my work is done" - and given the attendance at the festival, one quite easily can attest - and agree - to such thoughts.
But on reflection, Celia could have used an expeditious edit in parts, a trimming of some of the obvious stylings which become a narrative crutch.
It should also be said that a little more context to her own past and life would have fulfilled many of the questions foreigners may have.
Celia will have a life as a teaching document, but as a wider piece of cinema, a documentary to inform, it is unfortunately wanting - even though in parts, it easily and powerfully confers Celia Lashlie's ideals and attitudes for change.
Touted as Robert Redford's cinematic swansong, and marketed thus, the latest film from A Ghost Story's David Lowery uses Redford's undeniable charm to maximum effect in his take on a true story.
Redford plays Forrest Tucker, a career criminal who used a smile, an apparent gun and a suit to rob banks. Never anything other than unflappably polite, Lowery's tale follows Tucker post-robbery as he encounters Spacek's Jewel, broken down on the side of the road. Striking up a friendship and romantic spark, Tucker resists Jewel's attempts to find out what he does, claiming he's a salesman.
However, on the side, Tucker continues to rob banks with minimum fuss, engaging the interest of ennui-ridden's Detective John Hunt (Affleck), who's hit 40 and is tired of the life he leads.
Piqued by the case dubbed the Over-The-Hill-gang (and more specifically the thrill of the chase) Hunt and Tucker engage in a cat-and-mouse game throughout the years.
The Old Man & The Gun is an intriguingly relaxed film, one that feels like a 70s caper, but resists the smash-and-grab thrills of the heist genre.
Whilst its jazzy score leaves a little to be desired throughout, and is never quite successful in underscoring the atmosphere, the gentle charms of Lowery's piece are curiously affecting in ways that would work even if this were not Redford's farewell.
It may feel like the characters are underwritten in parts - certainly, in Tucker's case, there's nothing but a sort of admiration for the general ballsiness he has to carry out his robberies; but in truth, Redford imbues Tucker with a sort of affection and charm that is more affable rogue than psychologically-scarred inveterate criminal.
It's suited to the way Redford's played his career in many ways, but Lowery's also smart enough to ensure he doesn't overplay the edges, and still adds in some levels of suspense, where really little exists.
There are attempts to flourish the film with 80s-style montages and quick split-screen cuts, but in truth, The Old Man & The Gun is anything but flashy, preferring instead to lay out the threads, subtly tie them together and then have them coincide unexpectedly.
It's not all entirely successful - certainly Elisabeth Moss' cameo seems at odds with the rest of the film, and hints at a darkness that's never fully explored or explained, which would have added further depths to Tucker's behaviour and make-up.
Spacek and Redford have a rapport that's hard to shake, and certainly Jewel's attempts to straighten him out over the years when their paths collided are exerted in subtle moments from the script. Plus there are long shots of the duo simply talking or engaging in daily routines which are seldom seen on the screen these days.
Gently cruising through its 90 minute run time, The Old Man & The Gun works in many ways, and fails in some. But as an almost-shaggy dog story unfolds, it does wrap you up in its charms, and provides you with a poignancy that's hard to shake.
Starring: Sophie Turner (Game of Thrones), Jennifer Lawrence (X-Men franchise), James McAvoy (X-Men franchise, Glass), Jessica Chastain (Molly’s Game), Michael Fassbender (X-Men franchise), Nicholas Hoult (X-Men franchise, The Favourite)
Synopsis: In X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX, the X-MEN face their most formidable and powerful foe: one of their own, Jean Grey.
During a rescue mission in space, Jean is nearly killed when she is hit by a mysterious cosmic force.
Once she returns home, this force not only makes her infinitely more powerful, but far more unstable.
Wrestling with this entity inside her, Jean unleashes her powers in ways she can neither comprehend nor contain.
With Jean spiraling out of control, and hurting the ones she loves most, she begins to unravel the very fabric that holds the X-Men together.
Now, with this family falling apart, they must find a way to unite -- not only to save Jean’s soul, but to save our very planet from aliens who wish to weaponize this force and rule the galaxy.
The new games feature a more detailed 3D art style compared to the Let’s Go games, and include a wide variety of locales in a new region called Galar that appears heavily inspired by the UK. Naturally, there are also new monsters, including a frankly adorable trio of starters called Grookey, Scorbunny, and Sobble
