Chindie

In the last couple of days I've watched the second Sherlock Holmes film, and Contagion. I really liked the first RDJ Sherlock, was a surprise hit with me as I'd expected it to be crap. The second one is a less enjoyable, it's a weaker film with a pretty flawed plot (best example, at one point a bomb is used to cover up a assassination... an assassination of a bloke in the same room as the bomb. Which kills a few people anyway... why bother to shoot the bloke?!) and Noomi Rapace (who is not a good actress, sorry) appears to be in the film because they wanted to give Noomi Rapace some work - she's a hideously superfluous character. And Jared Harris is... weird as Moriarty, it's not that he plays the role badly it's just something about him himself that is... odd. It's still good fun though, it has some nice action and Jude Law/RDJ still spark off each other, and the whole thing is a far bigger spectacle than the previous film. It's just not as charming as the first, not as funny, not as... taut. But worth a watch all the same. Contagion was decent enough. It suffers (or benefits, depends on your point of view I guess) for it's structure - the film concerns a pandemic of a deadly virus and is interested in portraying a fairly accurate representation of how such a scenario really would play out, and because of this, it chooses to hop around 5 or so different perspectives of the situation. You end up with a curious end product - theres not a narrative as you'd usually expect, beyond what you could consider the virus itself narrative, it arises, it spreads, it kills, the world goes to shit, eventually a cure is discovered. You do end up with these 'micronarratives' that arise from the perspectives it uses to tell the story b ut I never felt particularly invested in any of them. It's a good watch all the same though, it has the obvious similarities to things like Outbreak but ends up being a more interesting watch thanks to the decision to take that slightly different focus. It's also a slightly scary watch - the virus' origin and it's initial spread and outbreak is based a real disease. You'll be wary of someone coughing for a couple of days after. Oh and a final bonus, Dredd's Comic-Con appearance has brought with it a new, and rather gory, clip. With a couple of instances of slow mo bullets through jaws and faces, not for squeemish

I think he's right. In the same way that we'll be playing in Wales this year Ha, yes, Berwick of course.

Yep, acquitted. Was always going to be the outcome.

I think you'd be wrong.

Been assigned to division 3.

The guys behind it have plans on (what else?!) a trilogy - theres a rough outline of the second film seeing Dredd having to go out into the Cursed Earth and then a third film seeing an existential threat to Mega City 1 from the Dark Judges. Apparently to make a second film viable this one needs to do $50m. Won't happen, the property doesn't have much traction outside of Europe (and arguably the UK really), and as a hard R in the US (according toa couple of the reactions, very hard R) it can't expect to do big money anyway. So big grand ideas but they'll never see the light of day.

Dredd got screened at a Comic-Con preview last night so some reactions are coming out. Every one so far adored it.

New shots. Apologies for massive.

Such a great jersey will help our players have a clutch season.

Have you had a shit yet? That followed the feeling of Beelzebub himself trying to claw his way out of my stomach via my belly button. I think stuff from a previous life was seeking the exit come the end or something.

Went out for a curry last night with the mates, really enjoyed the curry had never been to the place before but really liked it, had a couple of drinks afterwards all good fun, got home, went to bed full and satisfied... ...woke up at 1.30am feeling like my stomach was trying to turn itself inside out and devour my own intestines, felt ropey ever since and now feel a little apprehensive about going out for a mates going away drinks. Goddamnit.

No. Marvel own the rights to the Avengers movies, Sony own the rights to Spider-Man. EDIT: This is while Spider-Man pretty much had to be rebooted fairly soon and it's why there's going to be X-Men related movies made on a fairly regular basis (Fox own the rights to X-Men stuff), because if the licences are not used for X amount of time, they go back to Marvel. Indeed, although apparently the seperate studios are getting more comfortable with acknowledging each others' work. The Avengers came very close to having the OsCorp building in the skyline of New York at the climax of the film when Sony (who got the rights to the OsCorp name and associated characters with Spider-man) approached Marvel suggesting it would be a cool easter egg for the fans to catch a glimpse of a building so intrinsically associated with Spidey. In the end it wasn't placed into the skyline as it was too late to add it in but it seems neither studio had any problem with a little nod to their products in the another's work. It's unlikely that Spider-man himself would appear in a future Avengers, without Sony losing the rights (which unless another film they do bombs, isn't happening), but it looks like you might be able to see little nods to him and his world in a future film. And vice versa perhaps.

And therein lies why I think TDK is by far the better film. In my opinion. Fair enough. I don't personally agree. I don't think a film needs to be 'worthy' to be particularly great. And saying that, TDK's 'worthiness' isn't all that anyway, it's underlying message(s) aren't terribly profound or anything. Or even particularly laudable depending on the interpretation. But yes, it's a great film that has it's flaws. So is the Avengers, albeit for different reasons, imo.

X-Men First Class isn't as good as the ratings would have you believe imo. It suffers massively from being 2 potential films chucked together. It has really good moments and really crap ones as well. It would have been far, far better a movie if they'd chopped the kids/crews of each side from it (i.e. the entire basis for the First Class film they wanted to make), and built up the aspects of other movie they were going to make (X-Men Origins: Magneto) more. Fassbender (until he goes all Irish at the end, Magneto'Malley, fnarr) is great, and James McAvoy is pretty good too, and they could have made a lot more of Bacon's character with no effort at all. The kids are all shite, they picked hopeless characters and got hopeless actors and you end up not really giving a shit (I actually cringe whenever the Banshee kid is on screen). Instead they fudged it together and it suffers from it. It got the critics going because it was a period superhero film imo, getting 'it's a bit different' brownie points.

Tony Stark is meant to be abrasive, his confidence and arrogance are supposed to rub people up the wrong way, as does his apparent inability to take things seriously. RDJ does a fairly good interpretation, although they (until the Avengers) never really managed to get that side of the character down as people, generally, rather liked the playboy cocky bastard attitude. Tonyh29 is also correct that, in the comics anyway, the drinking didn't help and in a way, the whole persona is a charade covering the fact that he knows he's intensely flawed and has, at times, done things wrong (he basically becomes a full blown prick in the Civil War storyline in the comics for instance). I unashamedly like the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. They are cheesy but I kinda like that, they are (by and large) comic book films that are not ashamed to be comic book films. There was a push, for a while, for comics to become darker and darker and more serious, began in the late 80s and eventually permeated the films as well. It suits some characters, Batman in particular has basically become defined by his dark brooding nature over the years. The MCU is an antidote to that, and the Avengers is the ultimate showing of it, it isn't afraid to be a bit silly, it's not afraid to have bright colours and bold silly characters and just have fun, without any great message to it all or any particular worthiness to it all. I think it's up there with the Dark Knight as the pinnacle of 'comic book films'. They represent 2 sides of the same coin, one serious, darker, with a certain worthiness, largely excellently made and with care, the other pure popcorn entertainment made very very well and clearly by a bunch of people having a great time and really enjoying their work.

Another TV Spot. 'The Journey' trailer Listened to a little of the OST, don't want to be overly spoiled on some of the film that hasn't been shown yet, the track 'Why Do We Fall?' is a proper spine tingly bit of music and I imagine the scene it'll accompany will be a corker.

Filling out some forms and things at the moment for a potential job. Got sent them via email, usual guff fill it out sign it return it. Annoyingly one of the forms is incredibly unclear as to what they want on it, it has 4 sections and loads of jargon and no instructions beyond 'Complete this form'. The first 2 sections to my knowledge can't be for me. So I've had to send an email to the bloke handling the application asking what could be a silly question - 'Can I leave those bits blank?'. His reply? 'Yeah, those refer to us, you can leave them blank'. Would it really be that hard to make that clearer, or even just not put them on the bloody form?

I did mine with a company that primarily worked as a contractor/consultant for Severn Trent. I got to experience working in the office and out and about with site teams. I quite enjoyed it although it was a bit haphazard, the plan at first was for me to spend week 1 out of the office doing meter verification and then water sampling out and about around the Midlands, and the second week in the office being, in essence, an office dogsbody. What actually happened was I turned up at the office and got told what the day involved when I got there. Meter verification, since I was unqualified to do it, largely involved sitting in a van driving around Worcestershire in gorgeous weather (lovely part of the world) and handing equipment down to the bloke I was assigned to whilst he was in a hole, and reading map print outs that were always wrong, and lots of waiting. Water sampling was dumped on me one day when I was supposed to be in the office, I ended up opening up hydrants and getting covered in dirty water in Leicester whilst wearing a shirt and tie. The office consisted of data entry, updating schematics (glorified colouring in), and being made to realise that assumptions about people will lead to embarrassment - I was sat next to a bloke who never spoke to anyone, unlike the rest of the office, and would occasionally just turn towards me for a moment, look at me slightly expectantly, then turn back. At the end of the fortnight the boss asked me what I'd made of my time there and how well I'd done, and I just happened to mention, jokingly, that the non-talky bloke was a bit weird. Stony faced the boss just said '...he's deaf.' Turned out it was an office prank they play on everyone or something but I wish the earth could have swallowed me up. Oh and unlike all my friends, I didn't get paid for the experience. I was allowed to keep a pair of work boots, which were terrible.

For future reference, don't be too concerned about broken cases. It will vary shop to shop but we were never that bothered, provided the case was still largely in tact (i.e. it worked as a case) we didn't care. Some shops might be more stringent but I doubt they'd be too concerned about a loose disc. They might even just switch the case themselves, we did that a few times.

The violence in Drive was purposefully done to be uncomfortable viewing. The director specifically asked another director (I want to say Cronenburg) who is renowned for very full on gore how he would do the graphic violent scenes, as they wanted violence that would shock the audience, it's a pretty integral aspect of the film imo.

Huge banner that reveals a first look at Beorn amongst other set pieces in the film Shock horror - he's a **** bear.

Won't make any difference to piracy. The usual tactic in China etc for piracy from the studios that I last remember hearing about was a push on putting out really fast home releases (sometimes releasing a copy that isn't really all that much better than a pirate copy IIRC), and I'm not sure it's working. Nothing will in all honesty - 3d is in part an attempt to combat piracy for instance. My guess is, and it is a total guess, that it's just one of those things that films release in those regions on a certain day of the week. Over here movies and games come on Fridays, music on Mondays, in the US films open on Friday, games release on Thursdays usually. Australia etc might just do Thursdays.

Australasia on further inspection seems to be getting it on the 19th. Might be just the done thing over there I guess, like how films usually open on a Friday in the UK.

Specifying 'Batman' specifically, I think you're right, in films at least. He's left Gotham loads of times in the comics and other media.

Batman Begins has Bruce in 'Unnamed Foreign Prison populated largely by Chinese blokes', and also visiting the League of Shadows HQ in what is presumably the same foreign country. I can't remember if any of the other films have any out of Gotham action but TDK wasn't the first at least