Archive for February, 2012

Oscars needs more music nominees

Wednesday, February 29th, 2012

Not enough of a challenge for him.

I fall prey to this every year, and I’m sure it happens to most (though I may just tell myself this to feel better), but the Oscars affect me.

Not because the red carpet has a lovely assortment of designer clothes (though no one looked better than Ryan Seacrest wearing the ashes of Kim Kong Il), nor was it hearing the amazing speeches by the winners. Meryl Streep, as much as she was joking about being up on stage again, didn’t resonate as much as she may have hoped for.

No, it’s the winners list. It’s essentially a ‘Best of 2011′ list that is the go-to for all your over-hyped dramas.

What film should I rush out to take my significant other out to watch? Well, the one with the most golden statues next to its name.

It’s incredibly easy to read the winners list as a safe bet, and in most cases it is. The Oscars don’t mean much in the grand scale of things (though the winners would tell you otherwise about their payrise).

A lot of films missed the cut, purely because there weren’t enough spots. But is that really the reason?

How many nominees were there for ‘Best Song’, for example? Two. I definitely believe Bret McKenzie from Flight of the Conchords fame deserved his award, but he could’ve had many more songwriters to compete with. What about the soundtrack from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2? Or the soundtrack to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? Granted, those two films are very different in terms of content (and contact), but that music was intense!

The ‘Makeup’ award definitely missed out on Jack and Jill. I know that’s a horrendous example, but just imagine Adam Sandler’s face when he thinks something from his film was good. Priceless. Side note: Jack and Jill scooped up the most awards at the Razzies.

So yes, I will go out and see Hugo and A Separation.

Later on I’ll be listing some films you may want to check out to show where some of those winners came from.

For the record, I totally called it for Jean Dujardin scooping up an Oscar. Favourite part? Him yelling “Putain!”, then reading transcripts translating something softer.

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Ever wanted more from your subscriptions?

Monday, February 27th, 2012

Mass Effect 3 multiplayer

I had only just recently cancelled my monthly subscription to Xbox Live because I wasn’t getting enough. I wanted more. I was fed up playing Call of Duty (fill in number here) and getting annihilated by someone I can only assume was my a quarter of my age.

Well, what a bad time to cancel it. Mass Effect 3 comes out next month, and the multiplayer part of it is amazing (if you haven’t played the demo, download it now). My eyes weren’t open enough to see Syndicate was supposed to have amazing co-op either. And with Street Fighter X Tekken coming…ahh forget it. I’ll be signing back up soon.

I guess it was bound to happen. Isn’t it always the same when cancelling something? Your gym membership can be a pain to end with all the fees and waiting times, only to have you feeling massive guilt for not running on the treadmill at all, instead of once or twice a month.

The same used to be with cable television. After paying for hundreds of channels with hundreds of re-runs, it’s only when you unsubscribe that new shows come back on.

I’ve also experienced this with music, believe it or not. Shihad, one of my all-time favourite bands from New Zealand, had blown my mind with their energetic stage presence and awesome tunes. They had gone through bumps and the usual wear-and-tear of a band, but it wasn’t until their newest album at the time (I won’t mention it) came out that I figured their time was up.

But NO! They had to go and make an amazing album afterwards and win my love back. Though it was tough for that brief moment when I was going through the whole I-like-your-old-stuff-better-than-your-new-stuff phase, a phrase another band I loved coined and also suffered.

Ever felt the desire to go back to something after you just unsubscribed?

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Posted in CD, Live Music, Television, games, music | No Comments »

MORE choice

Monday, February 20th, 2012

You might have noticed recently that some unexplained things have been happening on our various networks. There’s a lot of mention of ‘change’. As Garth from Wayne’s World said: “We fear change”.

But it’s worth noting that change, as we’ve been hinting through the past couple of weeks, is good. Most our favourite musicians, directors and all other entertainment heroes have demonstrated the importance of change. Times are a changin’, and specifically here.

You must be wondering what the heck we’re on about, and it is with great pleasure that we are here to announce something.

As is with the genius of regeneration with the Doctor Who TV series, we are also regenerating. But don’t worry, we’re not changing from Tom Baker to Peter Davidson. We’re more or less regenerating from Christopher Eccleston to David Tennant (or if you like, David Tennant to Matt Smith, depending on your tastes).

So what’s going to change?

We as a society demanded cassette tapes have higher quality, and so with the miracle of technology, we were offered compact discs.

We couldn’t just live with VHS anymore, so we wanted more. We wanted more scenes, more endings, more bloopers and even more reasons to watch a whole series again (audio commentaries are great).

I can’t even begin to tell you how amazing the advancement of video games has become. The pixel count in an average FIFA soccer game would melt Steve Jobs and Bill Gates’ minds if they saw it ten years ago.

Well…we’re giving you more pixels than you can shake a Pixar film at.

As of today, ‘CD WOW!’ is now…

Watch this space. It’s gonna be more than you hoped for. Intensity. Choice. More of it. All of it.

MORE music, MORE film, MORE TV, MORE Games, MORE entertainment, MORE value, MORE interaction and MORE news!

It was a pleasure serving under you CD WOW!. Your service not only to me but to our amazing supporters around the world has brought us hope. Our allegiance is now with WOW HD.

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Posted in CD, Current Affairs, DVD, Film, Live Music, Television, books, games, movies, music | No Comments »

Dogs aren’t allowed on the (red) carpet

Thursday, February 16th, 2012

No no, there's dog hair in the carpet now!

Scooping up another seven awards, this time at the BAFTAs, French-directed silent film The Artist is getting a heap of well-deserved attention.

But you’d be surprised to know that the uproar hasn’t come from their smashing of the award circuit, but that Uggie, the adorable Jack Russell dog that co-stars with Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo, is not allowed at the Oscars.

At first you would think that’s a silly request. Letting a dog in to any upper-class place seems peasant-like. Hygiene issues would be a problem, though they have let some dirty people in there too.

The Oscars, filled with very rich people who probably pay for their dogs to be taken care of, are snubbing an animal that may just be on the same level of acting depth as the rest.

Maybe it’s for competition, who knows?

I wonder if they had just as many problems getting Buddha (Clyde) in from Every Which Way but Loose, or Beasley (Hooch) from Turner and Hooch.

I’d like to give a shoutout to another famous Jack Russell, Soccer. Though it’s fair to say I only know him as Wishbone.

If you weren’t aware of this dog, it’s because it was a 90′s kid show about a dog with a great imagination, dreaming up classic tales from novels like Sherlock Holmes and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, while his young teenager owner goes through the troubles of school life and not working.

I won’t attach any more than a cute photo of Wishbone, as I know anyone who gets the theme song stuck back in their heads are in a world of hurt.

The reason why I still have good memories even after succumbing to a YouTube ‘Search of Sadness’?

Aww, look at him.

He's robbing my heart.

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Transformers 4 in the works?

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

Drill baby drill.

We could’ve said “Called it!” but it would’ve been too obvious. There’ll be a Transformers 4. No script’s written, and no cast attached to it, but there’s already a release date for 2014.

The only thing stopping it now is a Mayan prediction.

Now I’ve been harsh on Michael Bay in the past for doing silly things, and as momma always said: “If you’ve got nothing nice to say, blog about it.”

I do however have a great appreciation for the people surrounding Mr. Bay. In particular, the guys and gals at Industrial Light and Magic. They’ve done probably most of your favourite blockbuster movie effects.

If you watched the trailer for the third movie and nothing else (*COUGHmeCOUGH*), you would’ve seen the best part of the film (I’m guessing): The crumbling of a skyscraper with The Driller (the metallic worm thingy).

Apparently there were 70,051 parts that made the drilling robot, towering over Optimus Prime’s 10,701. The amount of detail and work that goes into special effects is mindboggling.

And with that, I’ve found a video that demonstrates just a little of what they do so well.

Now if they could just put a little more ‘parts’ into the script…

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It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s…three guys?

Wednesday, February 1st, 2012

Pfft...showoff...

If you were in New York City recently and double-took something in the air as a flying person, turns out you were half-right.

To promote Chronicle, an upcoming film surrounding three teenagers who get superpowers, three radio-controlled planes that were designed to look like people and flew them around the city.

It brings up those dreams we all had wishing we could just magically fly around in the air, breaking the rules of gravity with mystical propulsion with only the thought of wanting to go up.

Though I’m sure people mistook it as model planes that were oddly shaped, it was still a neat concept to sell a big part of what the movie was about -- being teenagers with superpowers.

In fact, most movies involving superpowers or unexplainable attributes usually occur around the early-to-late teen years.

This is most likely because when we’re going through all those tough times of puberty, we’d much rather be able to run super fast or see through walls than break our voices.

I remember watching the Superman movies when I was little and imagining how awesome it would be to live in the shoes of Clark Kent. That element of secrecy, and being invincible seemed so interesting. That is until I saw the old Spiderman cartoons, but that’s a whole different story.

The film Jumper highlighted the ability to travel to any place on Earth. I would’ve loved to be in Jumper (let me rephrase that, I wouldn’t want to just act in the film, just take the powers).

What film/TV show/book made you dream of having powers?

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