NAMCO'S WEB BLOG

Sorry this is a bit of a rush but I want to start the new year with good things to look forward to rather than bad things.

• Iron man 2

After the amusing and highly entertaining first one? I'm looking forward to the second one!!

• Toy Story 3
• Predators

The film is supposed to retcon Predator 2, AvP and AvP: Requiem and is a script written back in the early 90's. The plot looks sound, so here's to July!

• Tron Legacy

Jeff Bridges is back and it is not a remake but a sequel, you'll have to wait till december to see this though!

• Diablo III
• DooM 4

I really hate to start on a dampner but I may as well get these out of the way now.

• The A Team

THE biggest test of the piece is undoubtably Mr T. The guy makes the show and the person, who is portraying the godly character is.......Quinton "Rampage" Jackson. WHO??? I hear you cry. Some nobody ex-UFC fighter - already this is set for a disaster.

• Sex and the City 2

Do I need to say any more? Thought not.

• Robin Hood

Russell Crowe.

• Shrek Forever After

ANOTHER Shrek film??? Please! Enough already!

• Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight

It's dead! Bin it!

• Halo: Reach

The first one was good enough, the subsequent sequels didn't build on that and I'm not hoping that this will either

• Star Trek Online

The idea that each player will captain his/her own ship with NPCs acting the part of the crew just reeks of plaigarisic bollocks. STO will end up being WoW in ssspppppaaaaaccccceeee. It would have been better if there was an option that allowed you to have some of the major crew positions being held by the players themselves, at least that way the idea of Star Trek would remain and, to be fair, Team Speak would take on a whole new meaning of geekness!

• StarCraft 2

The removal of LAN to force players to logon to Battle.Net is a poor excuse for preventing piracy, despite what they say to the contrary, as LAN was what made StarCraft longetivity last for the time that it has. Furthering their profiteering racket is the separation of the game into 3 parts. With each part being essentially a species pack, I cannot help to see that this is what is going to hurt the sales, and possibly increase the possibility that StarCraft 2 will be a highly pirated product.

• Any prospect for a job or the economy picking up

Sorry to put a dampner on things but you know it, i know it. So what's the point in not denying it?

• The hope that the next political party isn't Labour or Conserative
• More reality shows, especially X-Factor

5: Home Alone 1/2

It really doesn't matter which one you see (as long as it isn't the god awful other sequels that DON'T feature Macaulay Culkin....oh by the way, you leave him alone because of CHICKEN POX. REALLY???? - WHERE THE HELL ARE SOCIAL SERVICES WHEN YOU NEED THEM???????) because both have that magical innocent Culkin touch, before he took drugs and took his money back from his bickering parents. They tell the story of how Culkin gets left home for Christmas (Home Alone) or ends up alone in New York, during the same said holiday period, (Home Alone 2) and his battles with the moronic robber duo Harry and Marv.

What is always fun to see was the cheeky Macaulay wisecracks^TM or the cheeky Macaulay grin^TM. Most people at my age, at the time even wanted the Talkboy (including my girlfriend)! But the annoying thing about the second film is that the shop, Duncan's Toy Chest, didn't exist.

4: Gremlins

What can be said for the Gremlins films, apart from the amusing slapstick comedy? The premise of the film being that an inventor tries to find an unusual and interesting Christmas gift for his son, Billy. This gift comes in the form of a Mogwai, which he later calls Gizmo. This Mogwai isn't just any old pet, the owner has to follow 3. Simple. Rules. Of course, those rules get broken and all hell breaks loose in the form of nasty creatures called......yup, that's right. Gremlins!

So?? Why is this a top Christmas film?? I hear you cry.

Because it's Gremlins, THAT'S WHY. Hell, if the Nostalgia Critic can have Die Hard as part of his Christmas Top 11, then why the hell can't I have Gremlins dammit!!

3: Elf

Elf is the story of a human brought up as an Elf called Buddy. As he gets older he realises that he isn't cut out to be a fellow elf and gets told as much by his adoptive father. Buddy then, after also being told about his parents, sets off to New York to find his real father.

Will Ferrel, who portrays Buddy, really steals the limelight. He makes the film fun to watch and carries the dumb innocence of his cheery Christmas loving character well. James Caan, who plays the biological father, gives a good balance to the piece, being the workaholic no-nonsense father that you usually expect in these types of Christmas films.

2: Bad Santa

Billy Bob Thornton and John Ritter play crooks who rob stores every year, dressed as Santa and his elf. Billy Bob's character is a drunken, mean spirited, lazy slob in comparison to Ritter's calm, professional level-headedness. The best thing that strikes me about this film is the way that Billy Bob's character starts to slowly warm to a kid, who he ends up befriending, as it reminds him of himself at his age.

1: Scrooged

Bill Murray is one of my all time favourite comedians. So it's no surprise that this is in the number one slot. It's more of a retelling of The Christmas Carol but in a modern setting. Well, modern as in 1988, but for the most purposes, it still applies. It's also great to see Bobcat Goldthwait (Zed from Police Academy and yes, that is his credited name) as the unfortunately sacked employee.

Film wise Star Trek has the longest running stretch in a marketable franchise, it has 11 films, to date, from the TOS (The Original Series) era, through to the Next Generation era and now back to slightly pre-TOS - I say slightly pre-TOS because it's set before Kirk's original 5 year voyage and concentrates on the first adventures of the TOS crew, during their Starfleet Cadet years. Each film has its highs and lows and the series itself has a stigma attached, as the even numbered films are generally better than the odd numbered ones.

For those that don't know, the films are:

TOS era

• Star Trek: The Motion Picture
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (aka The One with the Whales)
• Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

The Next Generation era

• Star Trek: Generations
• Star Trek: First Contact
• Star Trek: Insurrection
• Star Trek: Nemesis

Slightly Pre-TOS era

• Star Trek

As you can see it, starts off being numbered, then they drop the numbering, which can be confusing - but hey, let's just go with it as we'll know that this is the Next Gen era. Then for the 11th film they go back to the original era and just call it Star Trek, which, although I can see why it was done, it can be even more confusing given the previous entries. I really hope they come up with something imaginative for the title to the twelfth/second Star Trek film because it'll just be a repeat of the confusion with the Star Wars films, as in when someone asks you if you've seen the first Star Wars film, do they mean Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999) or Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)??

Now, I know, I did throw you with the use of "twelfth/second" and as I explained earlier, the latest film was set during the cadet days of the TOS crew.

Star Trek XI is the only film in the series that I really can't make my mind up whether I like it or not. It is seen as a reboot to the series and it makes a huge change to the continuity that has been established during the TV series and subsequent films (see above). That is, to completely change everything the fans know about the film by going back in time and disrupting events a la The Terminator.

Reasons to not like it:

• Lens flare. There is just too much of it!
• The iEnterprise, although I think the director, J. J. Abrams (Lost, Mission Impossible III) used so much lens flare that it had the adverse effect of whitewashing the walls in iPod white
• The convenient way in which Kirk meets Scotty, it seemed like the writers just gave up and said, sod it, he's here on the same random backwater planet that Kirk is marooned on, a planet that no one in his/her right mind would ever visit. The film is not for the Star Trek fans anyway and nobody is going to care....
• The engine room(?!?), even the worst Star Trek tv series Enterprise got that one right and it is set during Starfleet's first voyage (before the birth of the Federation)
• The strange flip hand phasers and the machine gun-like ship phasers

Reasons to like it:

• Zachary Quinto - he looks the part!
• The outside of the Enterprise
• Some of the action scenes were well done, like the one where the interior ship's corridor is blown up and the camera follows one woman being sucked into space
• Some of the script was ok in some areas
• Simon Pegg, even though he looked nothing like Scotty, he did successfully pull off the scottish accent

As you can see, there is, for me, points for and against, it has enough points for me to see it again (and I have), so lets just wait for the follow-up and see if it improves. Although I would have preferred it if they went from the Next Gen era to DS9 or Voyager, but it looks like that'll never be.

You can't expect miracles from Hollywood.

Some consider Michael Bay (Armageddon, Bad Boys) to be the american version of Uwe Boll (Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead) because he makes horrible "blockbusters". But I think that's a little unfair for two reasons:

1. He doesn't finance his films by the state, through insurance, and purposefully makes bad films so he can make a profit by writing them off aka The Producers
2. He is, at least, professional to criticism and doesn't resort to asking critics to a boxing match as long as they are shorter and inexperienced in boxing, otherwise Boll makes some bullshit excuse and pussies out.

Oh, and another thing while I'm on the Boll box, why do you hate Peter Jackson because King Kong didn't have a car chase? What were you excpecting? King Kong to be driving around going "Yo Yo Yo motherfucker" and gunning people down, with a gatling banana uzi, drive-by style??? Actually, knowing your incoherent films, that wouldn't be too far from the truth!

In 2007, Bay released Transformers starring Shia LaPoof (what kind of name is Shia anyway, it sounds like She-Ra's retarded cousin), Megan "wait a minute, here's yet another 3 second beauty shot" Fox, and some returning voices from the original Transformers: The Movie cartoon, like Peter Cullen who voiced Optimus Prime. The film itself was OK, not as brutal as the child scarring original where most of the Autobots were gunned down, never to return, just to promote a new toyline.

And like The Robocop post, there is always a sequel.

I was hoping, like many others, that this would build on the first film and get better.

Urrrmm. No.

I must say, that this is the first time where I spent MOST of the film trying to remember what that cheap knockoff Optimus Prime was called, when the same said character was killed, instead of watching the rest of the film. I also noticed how long this film took to get nowhere fast and then I went back to going "What the hell was that Autobot called?", the last film that made me think about it's length was The Dark Knight but it had the ability to pull me back into the action! not so for the Transformers sequel. There was just too much "comedy relief" (I crack better jokes than that and I'm not even funny!), too many characters - but like Batman and Robin merchandising is always going to make a movie.

Why, of course! Why didn't I realise that.........

Do you remember in Clerks 2 where Randall and Dante are discussing that you shouldn't go "ass to mouth"? Well Bay makes you do that EVERY FUCKING SECOND when Megan "Ooops! My arse slipped again!" Fox appears. Isn't this supposed to be a Transformers film?? Where's the cool robot fighing action, erm, I mean Bay's shakey camera action making you question your age as you just see blurry blobs on the screen throwing inanimate parts at each other. But no, this is from the human's perspective or should I say Megan Fox's rear end. You do realise that being on the big screen is supposed to make you bigger, right? Well the Widescreen Edition won't be flattering for you!

I could talk about the robot heaven scene, but that is going to be labelled as the cyborg ninja scene from Robocop 3, in the way of don't even go there! I will say one thing though, in order to get to the cyborg ninja moment Shia LaPoof had to die, SO WHY NOT FINISH THE FUCKER OFF!!!! At least he wouldn't return to further ruin the Indiana Jones franchise for me, well that should go to George Lucas, but we can't expect miracles.

I did watch the extras from the first Transformers film and I did notice one word being branded around like the latest business buzzword - you know, any bollocks taken from the scrabble dictionary that means absolutely nothing but used to score points on the scrabble board.

Badass!

Someone should remove that word from his mouth because I don't think he knows what word that means.

By the way, this horror isn't going to end because Bay is going to do Tranformers 3, and if the trailer is any good I may see it. But I'm not holding any hopes that he'll do a good film. It is Michael Bay after all!

Edit:
Just one more thing. The plot holes.

There is the bit where the oooollllddd Decepticon has the ability to transport the Autobots to Eygpt. You remember that from the original series, right? It was the highlight of their adventures..... anyway, I have a theory about that. The Autobots realised that the plot holes in the film were so large that it could carry them across vast distances without the audience noticing. All they'd need to do is to hit the scenery so hard that it ripped a hole in script-time-space. Perfect!