Watch all the 2019 Loading Docs

Watch all the 2019 Loading Docs

The eight Loading Docs have been unveiled for 2019.

Watch them all below

2019 Loading Docs unveiled

2019 Loading Docs unveiled

Loading Docs: Power Trailer from Loading Docs on Vimeo.

Loading Docs: Power Powerful people. Powerful stories. ANNOUNCING EIGHT BRAND-NEW POWERFUL DOCUMENTARIES New Zealand’s most successful short documentary initiative takes a powerful approach to digital storytelling. Releasing today is a brand-new collection of eight short documentaries, housed onLoadingdocs.net now.

This year, Loading Docs has extended the durations of the shorts to between six and eight minutes, enabling greater opportunities for fresh perspectives and deeper exploration. Unified by the theme of power are stories that will have audiences questioning their own interpretation of power and revealing how unlikely characters can become the heroes of the story.  Celebrating New Zealand perspectives on world issues, subjects include Kiwi icons William Trubridge, Pania Newton, the ‘Nek Minnit’ guy – Levi Hawken, and revered celestial navigator Sir Hector Busby.  He Hekenga Tūhura presents the extraordinary final interview with Sir Hector Busby – in te reo Māori - just weeks before his passing. Also part of the collection is My Breakup with God, about a devoted Christian who slams the door on the Church - against her parents’ hopes - and pursues a path of sexual freedom and love. Operation: RAMBU! propels audiences back to 1980s Indonesia to meet an unlikely Kiwi action hero.  SOUL co-founder Pania Newton’s personal struggles are revealed in Mana Wahine. The documentary, providing a unique perspective on Ihumātao, was released on August 2 and featured on RNZ and The Guardian - so far being seen more than 300,000 times. “Fostering the celebration of Aotearoa’s stories and storytellers is our business,” says Executive Producer Julia Parnell. “By providing a foundation for the elevation of filmmakers and innovation, our documentaries are able to bravely reflect the drama and complexity of life. This year’s collection extends these foundations by powering eight longer format documentaries to audiences here and around the world.” Watch the collection now:  Loading Docs: loadingdocs.net/shorts/

Apollo 11: Film Review

Apollo 11: Film Review

There's no way you don't know how this story goes.

And on the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing, with timing that can only be described as fortuitous in extremis, the film festival is playing the Apollo 11 doco on the day the moon landing happened.

The film is of the kind of calibre you'd expect from those like CNN who are involved, but director Todd Douglas Miller manages to create a kind of unfussy portrait of the hours of the build up to the launch and the days after.

It's intriguing in that, despite some over-produced moments of the bombast of a score intruding and trying to provoke drama, a film takes you directly back to the era, and the ordinary everyday "heroes" of NASA, who were not called Buzz or Neil.

Camera footage early on chooses to focus on the scale of the gantry by shooting from the ground up, sets the tone by focussing the cameras on those inside the control centre, and the gathered crowds who look like they're there to be part of a rock-n'roll event; it's here Miller pitches the actual event as something that everyone aspired to be part of, and which was monumental at the time, but has slowly been dwarfed by the extraordinary times we live in, and the naysayers who try to detract from its happening or its relevance.

CCTV footage, and footage shot within the craft, along with some Asteroids-level graphics build a portrait that's selective in the imagery it presents, but one which builds a tapestry of our greatest achievement.

Apollo 11 uses footage only of the moment, archives of the time and sights and sounds to create something that is never heart-stopping but is always awe-inducing. It's a time capsule, definitely, but it's a film of its time, and also one that showcases the fearlessness of man's occasionally indomitable spirit. 

Control launches, with a charity stream and excellent reviews

Control launches, with a charity stream and excellent reviews

505 GAMES, REMEDY ENTERTAINMENT’S CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED CONTROL LAUNCHES TODAY ON PC, PS4, XBOX ONE

Supernatural Action-Adventure Game Now Available at Physical and Digital Retail

Global videogame publisher 505 Games and its partner, internationally renowned developer Remedy Entertainment, Plc. today launched the award-winning Control on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One for physical and digital retail, with a simultaneous digital launch on the Epic Games store for PC.

Set in a unique and ever-changing world that juxtaposes our familiar reality with the strange and unexplainable, Control is a third-person action-adventure game combining Remedy’s trademark gunplay with supernatural abilities. 

After a secretive agency in New York is invaded by an otherworldly threat, players will take on the role of Jesse Faden, the new Director struggling to regain Control. This sandbox-style, gameplay-driven experience built on the proprietary Northlight engine challenges players to master a combination of supernatural abilities, modifiable loadouts and reactive environments while fighting through the deep and mysterious worlds Remedy is known and loved for.

Watch the Launch Trailer Here

“Control is our most ambitious game as a studio yet,” said Mikael Kasurinen, game director, Remedy Entertainment. “We said early on this would redefine what a Remedy game is; giving our fans a more player-driven experience than we’ve ever created before, while still retaining the compelling worlds we’re known for. Everyone at Remedy is proud of what we’re delivering to players today and we look forward to continuing to expand on what we’ve built after launch as well.”

To celebrate the launch of Control, 505 Games will hosted a stream today from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. PDT in an effort to raise money for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a hospital and research facility working to change the way the world understands, treats and defeats childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases. Guests included YouTube personality Alanah Pearce, lead voice actress from Control Courtney Hope, Remedy’s Creative Director Sam Lake, Twitch personality SanchoWest and more. Donations are done via tiltify.com/@505games/505-games-for-st-jude.

Control on PC is one of the first games to support multiple ray-traced effects, including ray-traced reflections, contact shadows, and indirect diffuse lighting. Control on PC also supports NVIDIA DLSS. For a limited time, gamers will receive Control with the purchase of an eligible GeForce RTX GPU-equipped graphics card, desktop or laptop; more details here.

Also available now are the physical retail-exclusive Retail Deluxe Edition for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, with collectable FuturePak Exclusive Metal Packaging and limited-edition art cards, and the PlayStation 4 Digital Deluxe Edition, which includes all of the content from the PlayStation 4 base version as well as an extra side mission, “Isolation” and an additional exclusive outfit, Jesse’s Urban Response Gear. This version will also come with two Expansion packs, “The Foundation” and “AWE” (available at a later date). Each pack will contain new locations, story missions and mysteries for players to solve.

“We are proud to have played a role in bringing a game of this scope and vision to life in partnership with Remedy,” said Neil Ralley, president, 505 Games. “The launch today is a major moment for both our companies. Control is already well on its way to being another major hit for us, on a bigger scale than ever before, and we look forward to delivering even more to players in the coming months through future expansions and other content.”

For more information and regular updates on Control, please visit www.controlgame.com.

The Kitchen: Film Review

The Kitchen: Film Review

Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Elisabeth Moss, Tiffany Haddish, Domnhall Gleeson, Bill Camp
Director: Andrea Berloff

Melissa McCarthy digs deep once again from the well of seriousness which served her so well and nabbed her an Academy Award nomination.

McCarthy stars as Kathy, the wife of an Irish mobster in Hells Kitchen in New York in the 70s. When Kathy's husband, along with his two co-conspirators, are jailed, Kathy, along with her friends Ruby and Claire (Haddish and Handmaid's Tale's Moss respectively) decide enough's enough and look to take over business.

But their desire to do the right thing and also make some money on the side puts them in the eyeline of the police and the Mafia.

The Kitchen's approach to drama is piecemeal at best.

Whereas Widows had dramatic heft, emotional bite and weight, The Kitchen flounders in comparison.

Sadly, by dipping in and dipping out of the characters, and even with a restrained McCarthy trying to build on Can You Ever Forgive Me, The Kitchen doesn't hit any of the straps it wants to.

Opening with James Brown's It's A Man's World over shots of NYC, as well as mobsters, it's clear that this is a male perspective and those in charge are determined to smash it. But underwriting, as well as scenes that fly by quicker than they should, those involved really don't know how to construct a drama that has tension and suspense.

Shouting stereotypes and with dialogue that's ham-fisted as the characters' so-called intentions, this attempt at gender-flipping falls massively short.

Humorous moments that are supposed to be dark and gallows are delivered with such heavy-handedness they fall flatter than they should or deserve to. There's a lack of nerve, and even moments of violence, brief as they are in their brutality, fail to deliver the punch they could have.

IT's almost as if The Kitchen were too afraid to go as dark as it could, to deeply enrich its characters and to blur the moral lines that the best gangster films do - because of that, it ends up feeling inconsequential, a waste of the talents within and a flight of empowerment that's grounded before it even begins.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker “D23 Special Look”

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker “D23 Special Look”

Lucasfilm and director J.J. Abrams join forces once again to take viewers on an epic journey to a galaxy far, far away with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the riveting conclusion of the seminal Skywalker saga, where new legends will be born and the final battle for freedom is yet to come. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker opens in NZ cinemas on December 19.

The film stars Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Anthony Daniels, Naomi Ackie, Domhnall Gleeson, Richard E. Grant, Lupita Nyong’o, Keri Russell, Joonas Suotamo, Kelly Marie Tran, and Billy Dee Williams.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Kathleen Kennedy, Abrams and Michelle Rejwan. Callum Greene, Tommy Gormley and Jason McGatlin serve as executive producers. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was written by J.J. Abrams & Chris Terrio.

TOM CLANCY’S RAINBOW SIX® SIEGE Announces Free Play Week Starting August 28th

TOM CLANCY’S RAINBOW SIX® SIEGE Announces Free Play Week Starting August 28th

TOM CLANCY’S RAINBOW SIX^® SIEGE ANNOUNCES FREE PLAY WEEK STARTING AUGUST 28^th

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – 27^th August, 2019 – Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege will be available to play for free from August 28^th through September 3^rd, depending on the platform. Interested players can join more than 45 million players in the Rainbow Six Siege community on all platforms, and they will be able to experience the game for free with access to all maps, modes and play up to 20 Legacy operators.

Click the image below to watch the trailer

Players who try the game during the free week can carry over their progression and continue to play uninterrupted if they purchase the game. They will also benefit from a discount up to 70% off on the Base game (available on PC only), Deluxe, Gold and Ultimate Editions between August 28^th and September 9^th, depending on SKU and platform.*

Exact timings for Australian & New Zealand timezones for the free play week and discounts will be communicated on Rainbow 6 ANZ social channels including: Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Now live on the Test Server, the upcoming Operation Ember Rise introduces a new Attacker and a new Defender, Amaru and Goyo from Peru and Mexico. The map Kanal has also been entirely reworked with a new look and improved navigation and flow. Finally, Ubisoft announced that Battle Passes are coming into the game, with a free Phase 1 pass named “Call Me Harry” to be released later in the season.

For more information about Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, please visit: https://rainbow6.ubisoft.com.