First look at PlayStation 5 Unreal 5 game engine

First look at PlayStation 5 Unreal 5 game engine

Epic Games has unveiled a first look at what the PlayStation 5 can do.

Unreal Engine 5 empowers artists to achieve unprecedented levels of detail and interactivity, and brings these capabilities within practical reach of teams of all sizes through highly productive tools and content libraries.

Join Technical Director of Graphics Brian Karis and Special Projects Art Director Jerome Platteaux (filmed in March 2020) for an in-depth look at "Lumen in the Land of Nanite" - a real-time demonstration running live on PlayStation 5 showcasing two new core technologies that will debut in UE5: Nanite virtualized micropolygon geometry, which frees artists to create as much geometric detail as the eye can see, and Lumen, a fully dynamic global illumination solution that immediately reacts to scene and light changes.

Also present in the demo are next-gen features already available in Unreal Engine 4.25, such as Niagara VFX improvements, Chaos physics and destruction, animation system enhancements, and audio advancements. Unreal Engine 4.25 also includes support for next-gen consoles.

Spaceship Earth: Film Review

Spaceship Earth: Film Review

Director: Matt Wolf

Granted, there's a timely nature to this documentary release about how 8 men and women lock themselves into a biosphere for a two year "scientific" experiment.

In the 1990s, Biosphere 2, along with its self-sustaining ecosystem, was supposed to be the answer to a question that would become more urgent in the 21st century. However, Matt Wolf's documentary spends more than half of its time building background up than getting to the real meat of the inevitable conflict that would always show up in such an experiment.

Genial to a point of failing to really pick its subjects apart, the film begins with something reminiscent of a Galaxy Quest photoshoot as the group readies themselves to enter the Arizona-based dome and their rose-tinted perfect future.

While early elements hint at a sort of cult developing by a group of people who come together via theatre, the idea to build a ship and sail on leads to the development of the dome and the dreams of their apparently benevolent leader, John Allen.

And while Spaceship Earth uses a great deal of archive footage to demonstrate the bond between the initial players, the doco spends too long prevaricating with the background of its subjects, and not enough time examining some of the reasons for the cracks and their fall out.

It lacks a eureka moment that truly grips, and Wolf uses more candid moments to hint at the problems ahead - tensions over trying to even close the door to start the experiment show more than a contrived narrative could.

It may be "trendy ecological entertainment", but the hints of public deception charges, claims of help from outside, the negativity starts to showcase the fact there is a cracking story somewhere in the Spaceship Earth story - and the arrival of Steve Bannon late in the piece only seems to ramp up the more insane elements of the story that would have made a truly compelling and jaw-dropping story.

Instead, Spaceship Earth provides an intriguing peek inside what was going on, but it assumes a degree of familiarity with the subject and goes along with the idealism. Should there have been a little more of an intrusive interviewer edge, the film could have had a bite and veneer that's impossible to shake.

Spaceship Earth is streaming now on Docplay.

The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole: DVD Review

The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole: DVD Review

Released by Madman Home Ent

In the 80s, Sue Townsend's novels were iconic - and on the 80s TV circuit in the UK, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole was equally iconic, even if it was title star Gian Sammarco's biggest ever role.

In these six episodes, Mole is back with the love of his life Pandora as the Falklands War, and negotiating the passage into adulthood.

Sure, it doesn't shine as much as it did in more innocent times, but there is a purity of heart about this short run series.

It's not as good as the secret diary of Adrian Mole by a long shot, but for a short blast of nostalgia, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole will suffice.

Even if the tribulations faced by this teen feel like something out of yesteryear, with nary any technology in sight to mar this teenager's life.

Hex: The Complete Series: DVD Review

Hex: The Complete Series: DVD Review

Released by Madman Home Entertainment

Packed over 7 discs of varying quality, Hex: The Complete Series is one of Michael Fassbender's earliest roles.

Starring Christina Cole as Cassie and set in a school, this show dabbles in the supernatural, the sexy and the obsessions of teens. Desperate to fit in, Cassie finds herself the target of a fallen Azazeal (Fassbender, in a wooden performance) who becomes obsessed with her.

The only one who can try and save her is roommate and ghost Thelma (Jemima Rooper, in one of her early roles) - as the battle for souls begins.

Riffing on the older man / bad boy love story, Hex is less than original in its later series, but its first series delights in atmosphere, and its soapy edges.

It still doesn't set the world alight, and shows the Brits determined to plough another furrow at the time of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Hex may not cast a lasting spell, but it certainly does bewitch in parts.

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood: DVD Review

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood: DVD Review

The latest from the director of the much underrated Can You Ever Forgive Me....is less about the US icon Mr Rogers and more about the surrogate father relationship that springs up between Hanks' seems-too-good-to-be-true TV icon and a jaded reporter Lloyd Vogel, played by The Americans' Matthew Rhys.

When Vogel is tasked with a 400-word profile piece on Rogers for a heroes issue of a magazine, he feels it goes against every fibre of his cynical being to deliver a puff piece. However, when he meets Rogers, he finds the reality of the man somewhat different to his expectations and begins to reflect on his own fractured relationship with his own father (Cooper, outstanding in a predictable role.)

It's easy to be dismissive of A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood's intentions. 

Its desire to showcase a nice guy (played by Hanks in a quietly disarming role that at times veers dangerously close to feeling like a serial killer) and make you realise that good can always win out is almost cloying in its grab for sentimentality.

It helps little that at its core, this film is once again about the relationship between a father and a son - and that it does little differently with the narrative flow of what transpires, pushing Vogel more into the mentor counselling a disturbed and emotionally destroyed male.

Where it does present a point of difference is in its disarming framing of the film.

From having Rogers narrate an episode of his alarmingly honest US show and centring in on Vogel, the film wrongfoots you from the get go, drowning everything in a meta-sheen that's more creepy than charming.

Matters get more surreal on the visual presentation later on, but director Heller uses this, along with model shots of Rogers' toy village as cutaways, to disorienting affect throughout.

Ultimately, it's Rhys who deserves the most praise here, as Hanks' Rogers is more a sidelined character than the centre of a full biopic - little is unveiled of Rogers' life outside of the show other than some tossed-off tidbits that hint that his seemingly-perfect veneer is not all you'd expect.

If you're looking for an in-depth take on the man, A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood is not the film for that as it's more concerned with other dynamics than deeper analysis.

Midway: DVD Review

Midway: DVD Review

One-note, thin characters and some dialogue that's purely about gung-ho jingoism rather than deep insight, B-movie Midway is exactly the kind of film you'd expect from disaster movie director Roland Emmerich.

Based on a true story and a sequel of sorts to Pearl Harbour, Midway is the story of what happened next as the Americans scrambled to prevent another attack from the Japanese after December 7, 1941.

In the wake of the attack, a group of fly-boys, led by Ed Skrein's Dick Best scramble to take to the skies, while Patrick Wilson's intelligence team tries to work out where the next attack could come from.

Midway has potential - Emmerich certainly knows how to effectively present disaster on screen, with his Pearl Harbour attack channeling some of his Independence Day roots with ease.

But the script sends the Japanese to one-note villains, dressed in black and huddling to contemplate their next move (it's alarming the Chinese have backed this film so heavily) and it elevates the Americans to do gooders with whiter-than-white intentions. It could be hagiography, if it were deeper and more insightful in its character realisation.

However, as it stands, what Midway becomes after an interesting opening, is simply a series of attack scenes, which jump around the different viewpoints from within the American world. Much like levels of a video game, Midway doesn't have time to go deeper than the surface to get to its action.

CGI and jeopardy mix hand in hand, and granted Midway never aspires to be more than a computer-generated spectacle. Yet, with Wilson's stoic work, a practically wasted Eckhart, and Harrelson in a wig, the film wastes its best assets on the exploits of the gum-chewing, chiselled jaw jutting, rule-floutin' Dick Best, who's embodied by Ed Skrein with all the delicacy of a paper cut out; there's no nuance in this real life flyboy, merely a hollow shell filled with the script cliches, and brimming with nothing else.

All in all, while Midway delivers on its spectacle early on, it soon becomes clear that the bombast and bombing raids are all it has - narratives are dropped and ignored, only to be resolved right at the end, robbing the film of an emotional edge, and a human element to cheer for in one of America's darkest days. 

Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls: DVD Review

Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls: DVD Review

Released by Madman Home Entertainment

Jim Carrey's Ace Ventura returns in a sequel which is a do-over for Carrey, and a bit of a dud for the audiences.

This time around, Ventura's called in to rescue a bat from Africa. The downside - he's not a fan of the bats at all.

With Simon Callow and Ian McNeice, the film tries for a bit more acting class, but this time around mines more of the crass than is necessary.

A little bit of the diminishing returns rather than the comedy of the first, the novelty of Ace Ventura does wear a little thin, but the film once again benefits from Carrey's total commitment to the role.

Again, like the first film, check your brain at the door - and then laugh without feeling guilty.