Reviews
Iron Man 2 – a few thoughts
I took myself off to the big leather seats of the Embassy Theatre here in Wellington last weekend to check out Iron Man 2.
As you can tell from the trailer this movie is pretty unabashed and it’s title character is also convinced of his own greatness.
I enjoyed the explosions, Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey Junior and the total over the topness of the whole thing. I thought they were a little heavy handed in the way they tied it all in with the upcoming (and potentially Joss Whedon directed, though that’s a whole other blog post) Avengers movie.
For a bit of mindless fun about a narcissistic genius who dons a shiny suit and flies around, you should totally go see it.
1st DragonAge review
By Game Informer. It’s of the PC version when Soph and I will both likely get the 360 version, but it’s very good! 70 hours sounds like quite the time sink… As far as I can tell this is the first review, but there will be more!
House creation in A Song of Ice and Fire roleplaying
A few weeks ago my long running gaming group sat down with the new Green Ronin A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying rules to make a House and characters. I had read the rules, but not actually put them into play yet so was really looking forward to how this very collaborative part of the game panned out.
To start with the World this house is going to inhabit is not George R R Martin’s Westeros. I’d decided a while ago that as two of the players hadn’t read the books and as I wanted them to have as much freedom as they wanted to mess up the world that I’d make my own setting, which borrows very heavily from George R R Martin’s masterwork. So I filled the players in a little on what to expect, and then we lept straight in with total random rolls to let the dice decide the history of the House.
Dollhouse – the end?
As promised some time ago I haven’t been blogging weekly about Dollhouse, the latest show created by Joss Whedon. However with the final episode being shown last week in the US (not to forget about the 13th episode, but the season is over) and the likelihood of a second season remaining slim I thought I’d try to digest my thoughts on the show. If you are staying spoiler free don’t jump below the cut as I’ll be talking about the season as a whole, and won’t spare details when needed.
Wedding Knight – scenario for A Song of Ice and Fire RPG
Green Ronin have just released their first adventure for the A Song of Ice and Fire RPG, call Wedding Knight. I downloaded it today and was very happy that I did. As I’m likely to run it (at least in part) I won’t go into any detail but here are some initial impressions.
Firstly it is only 17 pages long, but they are really good quality. The adventure contains the main NPCs, a location and a well thought out number of plot hooks and potential events which all surround an imminent wedding between two houses.
The thing that really struck me was that as an adventure it was a quick easy read and I didn’t spend my whole time thinking about how much unneeded material there was. The NPCs were well fleshed out with good belivable back stories. The reasons given for why the PCs would even be there plausible and most importantly (for me at least) the writter wasn’t trying to tell me how to run the game or spoon feeding when each event would happen. This lack of rail roading meant that I would be able to slip this adventure in at any point that I felt I needed a week off, with out needing extensive re-writes before use.
Adventures at this length feel like they would take between 3-4 hours to play through, which is exactly the length I want my pre-written adventures to come in at. So I was really happy that I picked this up and I hope this is indicitive of things to come.
You can get the adventure through Green Ronin’s store for US$4.95.
Sydney geek shopping (or not)
So I was in Sydney this week for work and decided that I could do something along the lines of the Brisbane geek review I did last time I was there. Unfortunately, my trip to Sydney was a lot more geeky. In Sydney I just managed to hit The Tin Soldier before heading to the airport.
The Tine Soldier
The Tin Soldier brands itself as ‘Australian’s greatest games store’. I’m not sure that’s true but they are pretty good. I’m not sure if it started as a wargaming shop, but that’s certainly the emphasis. And unlike most wargaming shops it’s not all about the Warhammer and 40k minis. There’s a big range of historical minis here, including stacks of really impressive painted ones for sale. There’s a decent but not overwhelming selection of RPGs and a few board games and the like. It’s a nice open shop as well, and the staff are friendly and helpful.What is pretty impressive is the collection of military history books they have in the second room. It’s huge and seemed very comprehensive with lots of things ranging from popular stuff to the Osprey range to serious scholarly works.
I didn’t buy anything (pay day is next week) and it seemed slightly on the expensive side to me but I havent done an exact price comparison to be sure. Upon reflection I’m sure it’s not Australia’s best games shop, although it might be Australia’s best wargames shop and it’s almost definitely Australia’s best historical wargames shop. It is however the sort of gaming shop you’d want to live near – solid and dependable.
A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplay – First Thoughts
It’s been awhile in coming but I have finally managed to have a bit of a read through of my new shiny PDF copy of Green Ronin‘s Song of Ice and Fire Roleplay (or ASIFRP for short, which is good ’cause it gets a bit wordy). So I’ve decided to sit down and dissect it a little for those who might want to know. › Continue reading
Yet another Watchmen blog post
It’s been couple of weeks since I went to see the Watchmen and it’s taken me this long to work out how I feel about it. As a bit of background I have read the comic, but only once, and I thought it was very good.
However this isn’t a review of the source material, but the movie that was made from it. I think that’s an important point about Watchmen – The Movie. It is not based on or inspired by the comic, it’s made from it. It has tried to so lovingly recreate the book that in many places it seems to have stifled the end product.
Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t hate it. I though that it was extremely well done, and as Nick says in his post, if they were going to make a movie of the comic, this was about the best movie you could make. However despite the obvious homage and great casting and respect held by the director and everyone involved it felt kind of souless to me. The fight scenes were fun but the under current of darkness and hopelessness that flowed through the comic just didn’t seem to be there for me. It also leads me to wondering why they had to make a movie of it in the first place. Comics by their nature often seem like very well actualised story boards, and in Watchmen it’s like they skipped that part of the movie making process and just used the comic (with the exception of a few scenes).
I’m also starting to kind of understand why Alan Moore might get so pissy about these movies mad from his comics. After all they don’t really add anything new, so why bother?
I also have to say that while I generally love comic book movies (even the bad ones) I am starting to get a little tired of the fan boy, wankfest sex scenes that always turn up. I’m just saying…
Despite that though I find myself wanting to see it again, though I might wait for the DVD. So I guess I didn’t hate it that much.
Watchmen – I watched them.
So last night I finally got to see Watchmen.
It was good – not great, but not horrible and certainly the best Alan Moore adaptation so far done. While totally overscored, the acting was pretty good, the look/design of the film was astonishingly loyal to the comic, as was the casting and direction. Most importantly, while the plot was shorn of side stories, it was also (with one fairly major exception) ripped almost entirely from the page.
But that’s a big part of the problem. When you film a book you are interpreting prose description visually – one of the reasons that the Lord of the Rings movies were so loved by so many people was because they managed to make our imaginations live on screen. the Watchmen film just took the pointers from a visual source and recreated them on screen. And ultimately that seems a little empty. Why bother to do that? I’ve already seen the comic and the illustration that accompanies the plot – I don’t really need to see it again, especially when there is so little reinterpretation of anything – themes, characters or story.
Where they did change things, there were mixed results. The comic is much less violent than the book. At least one major and brutal fight scene in the film is covered in four cells in the comic and the violence is largely implied. And from the evidence of the comic, Laurie doesn’t stab a gang member in the neck with his own knife and then use his body to shield herself from gun fire.
The violence in the comic is much more sparing and with the exception of Rorschach and the Comedian’s sections of the story, actually fairly tame. It’s two-fisted silver age superhero comic book stuff, not the sort of violence that came after Watchmen. And violence in the movie is graphic – to me, it seemed out of character for Nite Owl and most of the other characters. The violence was well done and fun to watch (in the fight scenes at least – Rorschach and the Comedian’s violence was largely horrifying), but it jarred with me thematically.
That leads me to another point. To me, Watchmen is largely a mediation on what the world would be like if people really had dressed up in costumes and fought crime. What sort of people would do something like that? And what effect could it have on the world, especially if some of them really did have super powers? Perhaps necessarily, the movie doesn’t delve into that, but there’s not a whole lot of mediation on the thematic themes of the story.
One thing I did really like about the movie was how much it made me appreciate the comic. I’m now three ‘chapters’ in to my reread and I’d never previosuly noticed how filmic some of the scene changes and the like in the original work were.
It also did manage to take a sprawling, complex and dense plot and par it back to essentials. The ending, as has been widely reported, has been changed. It needed to be because the original ending is reliant on pages and pages of foreshadowing and sie plotting that needed to be cut form the film, but the new ending is clever, well put together and thematically appropriate which was probably the biggest surprise of the whole evening.
Watchmen was a good action film based on vastly better material – as Ciaran said as we left ‘if it had to be done, I’m glad it was done like that’. I’m glad I saw it.
Dollhouse – Nick’s take
So the second episode of Dollhouse has aired and so I thought I’d offer my opinions on it. Overall, I’m jsut not that impressed. I find the premise slightly creepy, Dushku’s acting exactly what I feared it would be and it’s just not very Whedon.
This last point is particularly important – I understand it’s on purpose but I like the snappy dialogue and quips and without those it’s a substandard sci-fi thriller with a very pretty but slightly crap actress in the lead role.
I trust Joss so I’ll give it a few more weeks, especially given the first line in this week’s Onion A.V. Club episode review where the review says
the line [Dushku] was pushing on the show was that it really kicks into gear starting with the sixth episode, which is written by Joss Whedon.
But after six weeks if I don’t give a crap still, I’m gone until ‘teh interweb’ tells me I’m making a mistake.