I... Uh... Oh... Er

I think Cumberbatch nearly died when Ford told him he was a big fan.

Whatever happened to Indians?

I was up nice and early for work on Thursday. Or should I woke up early, dragged my laptop into bed and loaded up the Cowboys & Aliens trailer to wake myself up with.


Jon Favreau  has exceeded expectations with his Iron Man films, going as far as to change the direction that Marvel Studios is taking with all live action interpretations of their characters. Let's ignore the fact that this has resulted in 3 different actors playing the Hulk with a 7 year span, or that at least 3 existing multi-film franchises are/have been rebooted. None of this can be placed at Favreau's feet. The man has excelled in directing arguably the best superhero flicks which have so dominated our screens for the past 10 years.


Ever since I heard rumours of the development of an Cowboys & Aliens film I have been dying for a scrap of anything substantial. For now I have had to survive on the odd tweet with a quick low-res image of a set or costume - nothing that will show me what kind of film the final product would actually be. Once Comicon hit the US the internet provided me with some videos of a hall roaring their approval of Favreau and Harrison Ford's first appearance at the fabled nerdalicious event. Through the event we were provided with the first image of Daniel Craig as the 'cowboy abducted by aliens'.

It gave a pretty good impression. The newly-released trailer finally gave me a decent look at how these two very different genres will mesh together. For the most part it's a Western, but with aliens in place of the typical 'Indian Menace'. Not much may be seen of the ships in the trailer, which is what I love most about it! The initial shot feels very 'Close Encounters of a Third Kind' and 'ET'. Can't wait.

Twenty*2

Hells yes!

The Future Begins

I saw the new Star Trek film the other week and must confess that I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I am by no means a Trekkie in fact best a self-confessed Star Wars nut, which is perhaps why I liked this film more than its predecessors.

The main issue that I have had with Star Trek is that there is far too much talking and technical jargon that unless you are familiar with the universe there is no chance of your understanding completely what is occurring and taking much from the film. The generally agreed upon difference between Wars and Trek is that Star Wars is ‘cooler’ because it is for a wider audience and Star Trek is just too nerdy.

In my opinion the latest Star Trek film is far more a Star Wars movie than your typical Trek adventure – fast paced, a lot of action and no getting bogged down in unnecessary scenes that involve the characters talking about doing something that they should really be doing right there and then.

The story was solid, the special effects were amazing (ILM out did themselves once again) and the sound and score worked very well. The moments of silence I the space battle scenes as crew members were sucked into the vacuum of space (where there is no sound) worked perfectly as a quiet moment, allowing the audience to regather their senses from the overload of the initial fight sequence and take a quick breather before again diving headfirst into the action.

Chris Pine’s performance was reminiscent of Harrison Ford’s Han Solo or Indiana Jones as it was William Shatner’s Kirk (Pine has stated that he looked to Ford for inspiration on how to make the character his own) and Zachary Quinto finally stretched his acting talents beyond Heroes and proved that he is (as we thought) a talented actor who throws himself completely into a role (shaved his magnificent eyebrows for the role, as well as cutting his hair to Spock-styling). Oh and Eric Bana!!! I think I’ve said enough there.

Since I have not seen enough Star Trek films to perform an adequate comparison, this film is definitely better than Star Wars Epsiodes I-III but not quite to the standard of IV and definitely nowhere near V and VI.