Chindie

Crikey the Greeks are terrible.

It's nice to have a tournament that actually has atmosphere again. Bloody vuvuzela.

That's the thing with him though isn't it? For all intents and purposes, 99% of his movies have been him showing his love for film and it's genres. He's a guy that lives and breathes cinema. He just occasionally needs to come away from being a fan to concentrate on being a director and writer. Like I said though, i've always been a fan. Yeah the appeal of Tarantino is obviously in his love of cinema (and his eagerness to show it off) but the problem comes when he can't... let it go. It's less of a problem with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction but as he grew more confident and accepted it gets worse. Kill Bill, great film(s), I personally like them, but even as someone who appreciates that film it's self indulgent in the extreme. Inglourious Basterds suffers from it too, again I like/love the film, but it's a film that could have been trimmed with ease, there are many scenes that are allowed to just run and run. I think you can already see Django suffering from similar, even in that trailer. Hopefully his problems with the cast (which in 1 case at least has supposedly lead to 2 characters being melded together in the script) have forced him to be a little more taut.

I do love how obviously plainly everyone has stated how this is likely to be one of the worst opening matches of a tournament in recent memory. Slim Poland win. The Greeks are here to keep the score down. The Poles at least have some serious quality in their ranks, even if the team as a whole doesn't set the Earth alight.

I'm quite convinced he's shit, so the other clubs are welcome to him.

I kinda like Tarantino. His biggest failures are the films where he's unable to contain his enthusiasm for genre - It's that kind of thing that sees Kill Bill be a step down from Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown's heights, and then Deathproof being a further step down. I don't massively dislike any of his films besides Death Proof, but theres a clear decline when he gets a bit self indulgent. Django, from the likes of that trailer, looks like he's finding a groove he likes again, theres a lot of Inglorious Basterds in that trailer imo. Not necessarily a bad thing. I may have just gotten a bargain - Avengers Steelbook is available for preorder on HMV today, looks like it'll be a HMV exclusive (I wanted to go for a non-UK edition, to avoid the 'Assemble' thing... but the hassle is too much for me to bother with), £15.99... however they've also got a 20% off voucher doing the rounds and that knocks it down to £12.79, which is a great deal for a new big release bluray anyway but for a steel as well, fantastic.

Nothing wrong with that these days, I myself am fond a good granary some evenings...

Fantastic deal. Meat Boy in particular needs to be experienced. Bastion is one of the most curiously overrated games ever imo but you can't complain at that money with all the awesome in the bundle.

Indeed. We (government and public, imo) want our cake and to eat it, with the forces. We play at being a power, while increasingly lacking the conviction or justification.

The thing that gets me with all the bean counting cost saving is that the money we do spend, we tend to spend less than smartly. We've known for a while, even before the government cuts, that military spending had to be curtailed. But then we do things like get into a series of wars in a desert environment against a guerilla force using IEDs. Our kit wasn't particularly prepared for the roadside bomb, given how much we've relied on the 'Snatch Landrover' over the years (and with good reason, it did the job we needed it to and it was comparatively cheap), so we spent an absolute fortune on land vehicles that had improved protection against IEDs, to the point that over the next couple of years a large swathe of our infantry carrier vehicles (recon etc included) will be these exact devices, like the Mastiff, and the Foxhound. And that sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do - we had something that we'd used for years, it came up against a problem that it had no answer to, so to save lives we invested in vehicles that go some way to answer the problem. Unfortunately, you can't really think like that. In 10, 20 years, when these vehicles are all still in service, we could be up against a proper armed force on frozen tundra. In which case all the money spent to solve that problem went to waste. We'd have a force of exceptionally heavy vehicles with no benefit to their designs, as we'd be unlikely to face hidden tankshells rigged to blow, or fertilizer bombs hidden in ditches. What makes this a little worse, and it reveals a couple of things about the way the military should think and also a problem with having a smaller force, is that we made this decision on a comparatively minor problem. IEDs are dangerous, we've lost a lot of troops to them, the biggest threat to troops in fact in Afghanistan. But the losses are nothing compared to the ones you'd find in a 'proper' war, the numbers would be incomparable - we've lost 400 troops in 11 years in Afghanistan, for example. We were losing that per day in other conflicts. But because the numbers are small enough to get the publics head around, it was poisonous for morale (not helped that mines are morale sappers amongst troops anyway, thats part of their point) for a war we didn't particularly care for anyway, so they felt forced to do something about it. And they were further forced to do so because, with our force shrinking, each loss, each casualty, hurt us more than ever. It's a decision a military wouldn't have otherwise made, especially given the cost when compared to how much money we have, imo. Militaries rarely react to to problems that are so specific. Had we discovered that... Iran lets say, had chanced on a new type of missile that completely flummoxed our defences, you can be sure we'd be justified in spending money across the board to upgrade and protect against that threat. IEDs are a different story, they're a very specific threat and not one likely to be encountered in every war. Other examples are the obvious like the aircraft carriers - we build massive aircraft carriers, then are unable to properly use them because we run out of money to put aircraft on them (to the point we can't even decide what fittings these carriers need for said planes), and are unable to provide the 'flotilla' of support the things need, because an aircraft carrier without support craft may as well have a big target painted on it. The carrier itself isnt the bad idea there, power projection is fantastic. The problem is subsequently bottling it making the investment pointless.

I genuinely don't understand the clamour that seems to be around Diame. It's a name I associate with being shit, frankly. All that stands out of him this season for me is sitting on a terrible Wigan sides bench, missing about 3 sitters in the space of a month at the death, and scoring a screamer. Don't get it.

First trailer for Tarantino's latest, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUdM9vrCbow. This has been absolutely plagued with people signing on and leaving after a few days shooting, but even so... that looks great. Leonardo diCaprio looks like he's just going the scenery chew at every opportunity.

Playing devils advocate, it is arguable, in a realpolitik way, that pretty much all the wars we've waged recently were in our interest. Immoral, illegal... but have benefits to us. Iraq, if you accept it was about oil and oil alone, made sense for those involved - wage a war in the name in humanitarianism to gain access to a commodity we simply need, either by simply taking it or, to save face, in the hope of creating a 'client' nation we were able to trade with more easily. Afghanistan allowed similar, we hoped to remove an avenue for a threat to us (albeit a threat that, on the scale of things, isn't that dangerous), and also afforded us an opportunity to try to combat the supply of drugs, as well as hopefully provide an avenue for stability to grow in that region which would, perhaps, prove to prop up the region a little. Afghanistan whoever also represents a folly, but hey - we're nothing but arrogant. And so on. As said, a devils advocate. I don't personally believe that justifies it all but some would argue otherwise. As for technological advantage bridging the gap left by a smaller force... it doesn't work like that, more often than not. We use technology to solve problems (bunker busting, for instance) or to improve efficiency (the PR side of 'smart bombs' is that they reduce collateral damage, something important for modern wars waged in civilian populations (unless you're the Israelis, but never mind), the reality is smart bombs theoretically let you do more damage more effectively with less effort, i.e. less ordinance). Even if you argue 'Oh, but UAVs mean you don't need a pilot! Thats less men!', you'd be wrong - all the drones flying over the Pakistan border are piloted by some chaps in Virginia (our ones are often flown by guys on the ground 'nearby'). The only difference is he's not sat in the thing. Even the logistical edge doesn't really change - the thing still needs maintenance, it needs fuel, the man still needs feeding and care. We already make use of the technological advantage we have... but you still need a large force behind it. The US army is the most advanced on Earth - it's the only country able to put out a 5th Generation fighter plane, no-one else thus far as been able to, for example (our 'best' plane, the Eurofighter, is a 4.5 gen plane and rather flawed), and it leads the way in 90% of the worlds military technology. They also still maintain one of the largest armies on Earth, too... because you need those men. You cannot win a war from the air alone. A ship cannot hold territory alone. You need men on the ground, and the more you have the more capability and flexibility you have. By reducing numbers, we risk what we can do, ultimately. And eventually, we will regret that.

You can't think like that in military terms. You have to be prepared because it's not possible to react to changes faster than they happen. We don't know the future. We don't know what will happen in 10 years. The EU could fall apart and the continent could return to it's traditional state of actors fighting for dominance (many argue that Germany, for example, is basically destined to do this forever, to strive to be the continental hegemon). We will need an army then, even if it's just a defensive force. We would need boots on the ground - you can't win a war solely with UAVs.

I must admit that one of my aims in life is have a room, a den like Mike says maybe, that I'd have set up for my interests. So a dirty great top quality TV, a good amp and speakers, console, maybe a top line PC hooked into at all as an entertainment centre with a bit of power behind it for the top PC titles. Chuck some film memorabilia about the place, good chairs... ...one day. I wouldn't do it out like that though - bit ostentatious. I couldn't do a room like that with Villa stuff.

That is a good selection really... Darksiders is a decent play, especially if you like Zelda - it's basically what would happen if someone decided to set Zelda in a comic book take on the Apocalypse of popular memory. Warhammer you'll get more out of if you love the franchise but is a half decent, pretty hack/slash/shooter. Gets tedious the longer it goes on though. Renegade Ops is what happens if you give the guys who made Just Cause free reign to make a twin stick shooter. Outland is a cool puzzle platformer, I didn't get on with it but it's reasonably rated. Infamous is rated. Not so sure about the rest, but you can't complain really. I don't think theres a truly bad title in there.

Successfully avoided it again. Winner.

That doesn't fill me with confidence, seeing as Kingdom of HEaven is one of my least favourite films ever. The Kingdom of Heaven Directors Cut is a better film, for sure. Prometheus is a film where characters do things that make no sense at all because the plot demands they do. It's a film where the dialogue is to the standard where a character will just tell you something you either a)already know, because you just saw what happened, or could have learnt through better characterisation. It's a film where a character, out of nowhere, makes a revelation as to what they've stumbled on that is neither explained, or particularly justified. It's a film where a character makes what you expect to be some sort of massively important revelation, but does it with dialogue and acting that would disappoint you in a secondary school play (someone in my screening laughed at this revelation), and then uses it for a single section of the film that is curiously underplayed despite being horrific. It's a film where you're told there is a crew of 17, but you only ever come to recognise, at most, half of the crew, and the rest appear to be there to die at one point - but even the bit where they die feels like it was put in to have an action scene. It's a film with a plot device driving it at the start that, once you sit there and think about it, isn't explained enough for you to walk away satisfied. It's a film that nods and winks at the Alien series but serves only to ask more questions of things about that series than it answers. It's a film that reeks of creating a franchise to high heaven - there is nothing preventing the creation of a prequel that ties into Alien perfectly, but unfortunately it'd leave little room to make more money out of it, so they extrapolate backwards and add in a massive narrative that ultimately isn't satisfying (or particularly interesting). It's a film that confuses people who've seen Alien because it expects the audience to just remember a quite small detail from that film to not end up scratching their head at the end. And yet, I kinda like it. It is gorgeous. It's somewhat interesting in a curious way, because if you think about it it disappoints because theres holes and flaws you could drive the titular space craft through, but you still end up sat there going 'Oh... ok... yeah well that means...'. It keeps the attention. There's a great performance by Fassbender. Some of the action is decent. It has some half decent body horror. It's fun. For what it's worth I think there will be a directors cut, despite Ridley swearing it's his vision and theres no enforced cuts in it, but it won't save it. Too much of the dialogue and the plot is beyond saving, beyond making it into something great, at best you might bridge some of the great leaps of faith the film demands of you, and perhaps sort some of the pacing out, as it's a film that really lacks tension, which in turn tears the horror out of it. It ultimately feels like a film that could have done much more, but needed a different writer to the bloke behind Lost, and needed a couple of rewrites of whatever script they ended up with to tighten it up. I'd say, go see it. Despite all the problems, despite it feeling like a terrible exercise in cynicism, it's pretty and at times fun and theres just enough of the Alien universe in it to make an Alien fan whet their lips, or infuriate them.

The Wonderbook thing is one of the worst things I've ever seen in an E3 conference. You have to wonder, did nobody, nobody at all, at Sony, not look at the thing and say 'You're ****' kidding right? Burn the plans and bury the ashes, and consider yourself sacked. You - you're in charge now. Make a good platformer, for ze children'. They used **** Move. Nobody has a Move. Nobody cares about Move. Theres a reason for that.

I'm sure I read somewhere that the Last Guardian wasn't being shown, from a while ago, now I come to think of it. As for GTA - Rockstar basically don't need to bother anymore. They can do their own thing with GTA and be justified in doing so. I'm still struggling to get my head round just how weak that Nintendo conference was... If that takes off, I'll be shocked. I didn't see a system shifter there, a killer app. Wii Sports sold Wiis. It captured the imagination instantly. Nothing with the Wii U does that at all. They needed to have something simple that sells the machine to the mass market. And to get the hardcore on board, they needed to release details of one of their big hitters. Didn't need to be a launch title, didn't need even need to be *spit* 'Launch window', it just had to be something that had Mario or Zelda in a proper big deal game. And they didn't.

Just walked back in from it myself. Er... I dunno what to think to really. My expectations were low and there is a considerable amount of it that is weak - I think the allegations of a fairly weak script are deserved. But it's good still. It's absolutely stunning to look at, the look of it is just... right. Even some weaker moments in the art design don't let it down too much. The music is fairly anonymous, it's just constantly there, theres nothing that grabs you and it's often overblown, but even that didn't stop me enjoying. It's basically daft. There are questions and holes all over it, we drove back just pulling questions from it but we all still fundamentally enjoyed it. Go see it.

That controller could turn out to be a fairly effective tombstone for the Nintendo we know today. Nintendo needed to blow people away here. They needed incredible proof that this thing is what the gamer community wanted but also could bring the casuals that stopped buying Wiis, back. And it does neither. Casuals won't buy that. They got the Wii, they played Wii Sports and maybe a dance game and it comes out for Christmas. And the hardcore audience got nothing to sell the console to them. Nope... Nintendo has made a huge mistake there.

...they **** up big time.

If this minigame compilation is what they're ending with, they've **** up big time. They've spent 7 minutes explaining a completely unamazing Nintendo minigame collection.

It's been poor. On this showing, the Wii U is not good enough.