I thought the casting was brilliant, Matt Damon had just the right balance of seriousness and humour, Jeff Daniels had the gruff boss thing going, Kristen Wigg was great if a little less-sweary than the Annie I was expecting. And all of the crew on board the Hermes were pretty much as I pictured them. The film had all the important bits of the story in it, it was beautiful shot, expertly crafted, and told really well - considering the source material is of a guy being stranded on Mars, talking to himself a lot, and doing a lot of maths and science to survive. Not easy to translate to the screen but handled masterfully.
It turns out our twenty minute rule is about perfect, because it stopped me turning off this film which evolved into a really good action movie. It’s got that edge to it, where it can be a bit gory in places, but Jesse Eisenberg instills the whole thing with a lovely gormless humanity, which blends perfectly with Stewart’s undercover skills.
When Pegg shows up, the fast talking kicks in and there are a lot of jokes crammed in to a short space of time. It’s sometimes hard to keep up, but that just means we’ll have to rewatch it again at least once. Overall, it’s a great story, different to the normal boy meets girl thing, and taking some unique twists and turns along the way.
Very poppy, quite an 80s feel, but really – who are these people and what have they done with Coldplay? It’s almost oppressively optimistic. Unicorns and rainbows all the way.
You know, of course, that I’m an insane Back to the Future fan. However, it wasn’t until we watched the incredible Back in Time documentary that I realised I’d missed out on an important part of BTTF fandom - Michael J Fox’s books. I picked up Lucky Man, his memoir chronicling his career and his Parkinson’s Disease diagnosis, and how the two had to fit in his life side by side, and eventually together.
I went into this with zero knowledge. I’m useless with music history, and although I like rap/r&b, my knowledge of Dr Dre extends to ‘ooh, the guy that made my headphones!’ So it was a bit of a steep learning curve initially, and the first half an hour of the film was rough going - it felt like there was quite a lot of assumed knowledge, who the people are and why they’re important - but then again, I guess most people do know and I am in the minority.
What’s amazing about this album is how you can see the effort and crafting gone in to it. Not all to my taste, but the bizarre mix means there’s got to be something to like.
I’m not one that particularly wants a Back to the Future sequel, even though I’m a huge fan of the trilogy. However, anything else we can get that allows us to spend time in Hill Valley is fine by me. I hugely enjoyed the Telltale Games episodic game series that thrust us straight back into the world of time travel and all its many consequences. I drooled over the BTTF lego set, and loved reading the movie line by line in that slightly odd Twitter project.
We’ve had this one on our list for a while, to see what all the fuss was about, and now it’s started to be nominated for awards, that made us all the more curious. I’ve been one of those that wondered where on earth this Schumacher lady came from, given that she’s suddenly everywhere, and this seemed to be the thing that kicked off her rise to fame.
We were watching the recent Back to the Future documentary when it suddenly occurred to me that I’m a huge fan of the films and of Michael J, but I haven’t yet read his books. It was easy to put that right, and very hard to put this one down. Fox has such an easy way of writing, making you comfortable with his style and grace, despite some of the difficult subjects at hand - dealing with fame, that awful diagnosis, and how illness can change you for the better.
Sadly, nothing much did happen throughout the whole thing. They were on a road trip, visiting people who we may or may not should be remembering from the first film (I definitely couldn’t remember anyone), and generally trying to figure out who they were. As a bromance thing, it was eminently watchable, but I didn’t really like the dancing so much, or the constant jangling noise Amber Heard made as she walked around.
Yep, switched this one off. I wasn’t convinced by the trailer, but hey, it’s Simon Pegg and we want to be supportive of his efforts. The real question, after watching just twenty minutes, is, why on earth did he agree to make this film?
Maggie, aka Mighty Girl, is one of the reasons I started my own Life List many moons ago, and I’m always interested to see her take on resolutions, goals and achievements to undertake. Whilst her resolutions this year may be minimalistic, they are none the less inspiring, particularly this one about putting pen to paper/finger to keyboard.
Write and write and write and write.
It’s like talking, as much as you want, about whatever you want, but no one has to listen to you!
The fact that Peter Kay’s Car Share was brilliant and received a lot of love is probably not news to many, given that the series aired in April last year. It was something that passed Mr C by, however, and whilst I watched it over and over and grew to love it more and more, I felt protective of it in that way that means you can’t really recommend it to someone. He’d ask if it was worth watching, and I’d umm and ahh whilst secretly coveting “my precious.”
I’ve caught a couple of trains over the festive period, and whilst this is not particularly exciting news, it has been a while since I’ve travelled on the railway. I wanted to test out the Trainline app, which recently updated to include in-app purchasing via Apple Pay, and my findings were thus: HOW did any of us manage to navigate train travel without this app?
From the off, it is insanely helpful. You search where you’re travelling from and to, and are presented with all the options alongside details of how long it’ll take, how much it’ll cost and how many changes you’ll have to make along the way. There’s even details of the facilities and opening hours of each station - in case you need to make sure there’s somewhere to get a coffee!
What a brilliant film! I’ve heard the words Man from Uncle before, but had no idea what the TV show was about. Was keen on watching this from the trailer, because it looked so beautiful, stylish and amusing in places. Plus, after all those Bond films, I’m jonesing for a good spy movie.
I’m aware of National Lampoon and his attempts to take a vacation, but I’ve not actually seen any of the older movies. Normally, I’d want to catch up with all the past films before embarking on the reboot, but I just couldn’t quite face it this time. Nothing against Chevy Chase, but four films about a bumbling fool trying to go on holiday seemed a bit much.
There is no one right way to blog, e-mail, or otherwise share content with the world.
No right time to post, no right combination of networks to use, no perfect font size or color.
So at a certain point you’re going to have to go back to the only true metric, the only like that matters in the end.
Yours.
Boing Boing: Escaping the new media cargo cult
In the previous post I wrote about third-party games on the Apple TV, I talked of how brilliant it was that Just Dance can be played without having to dash about the shops in a fruitless search for the correct controller for the job. That’s not the full story though. Whilst the Apple TV remote can be used for all the games that are available, it’s not always the ideal tool for the task at hand. The swiping motion is a step up from most remotes, although it takes some getting used to. However, for more involved games, the ubiquitous Playstation-style controller is ideal.
Since I started my Life List project six years ago (six!), I’ve been wrapping up how each year has gone and what I’ve experienced that I probably wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t started such a thing. The last so-called Life List Review, however, was at the end of 2013, and two years have passed since then. I made the silly mistake of taking on some exams and spent the next 24 months with my head in textbooks, papers, mock exams, highlighters, notebooks and more.
Many times, I started writing the post about my Life List challenge to complete a puzzle book but the trouble is… well, it’s boring, isn’t it? Who wants to read about someone else trying to do a puzzle? I envisaged glorious photos and regular updates, but to be frank, I couldn’t summon the energy to take any!
I completed the puzzle book (almost) at some point earlier in the year, and have only just found the time to write about it. Here’s a quick video to prove it.
I love a good old apocalyptic story, and this has all the makings of your perfect dystopian world. After a bizarre comet event leaves much of the population blind, the few sighted survivors have to make their way through a world that is falling apart - and also deal with some pretty terrifying poisonous, walking plants.
This is a quick and easy book to read, simply a list of email correspondence as our protagonist James replies to those trying to scam him out of money. A collection of some of the best conversations gathered over two years, as we start to see more of how the scams work and, more importantly, why they don’t!
It did feel as though Nina, the mother, was recklessly dashing this way and that without a real clue what she was looking for - which is probably exactly how a parent would behave, I don’t know. The trouble is, that doesn’t make for a good story. As much as I knew Nina would be the one to end up stumbling over the truth, I sort of wanted to shout at her to at least listen to the police - they weren’t deliberately trying to hinder the investigation.
One thing that had never really occurred to me about streaming music services until the last couple of weeks, is the access you have to things that you don’t need all the time. Sure, you want to create playlists of your favourite songs and you want to listen to the best band albums over and over again, but sometimes there is music you only require for a specific period of time - and Christmas is that time.
I really loved this. I’ve been reading a lot of crime fiction recently, and it was so nice to lift my head out of the murky world and instead into the slightly more frothy existence of Ms Rebecca Bloomwood. I’ve seen the film, and although the book is slightly different, it still follows the fun (if difficult) path.
One of my earliest forays into recording my voice involved working with LibriVox to create audiobooks. The site is a great place full of volunteers who help to record and gather together public domain works, creating a vast archive of audiobooks. I haven’t had time to participate in a long while, but did manage to list all the projects I was involved with. It was previously a constantly updated page on this site, but I’m moving it to this static archive for now.
The long-awaited update to the Apple TV that allowed third-party apps has been a mixed blessing. On the one hand, there are lots of new apps to play with and some of them are fan-flippin-tastic! On the other hand, usability and simplicity has taken a big knock, and there were some pretty serious niggles that are, thankfully, gradually being ironed out.
Better to dwell on the good, though, and I’ve found the apps to be a breath of fresh air. The Apple TV has always been a pretty big part of our TV/film watching experience, but now it’s added a whole new level with games. There are two easy comparisons to make with the new gaming functionality, and that’s to put it up against the Wii (casual gaming, less of a focus on graphics) and the Playstation (top of the range graphics, more expensive games).
This felt like it had elements of other Nicci French novels all intertwined together, and it was a good read perhaps because of that. The story works backwards in a sense, as our heroine has memory loss following a horrific incident. Kidnapped and prepared to die, she manages to escape and then has to try and piece back together the fragments of her life and how it went so drastically wrong.
My growing obsession with all things space and moon-like meant this book was an easy purchase. The story of Al Worden, one of the three astronauts that made up the Apollo 15 crew, it’s not an easy read. There’s controversy and bittersweet moments throughout, but that’s the life you lead when you’re doing something amazing like broadening humanity’s horizons.
On the surface, this is a crime thriller about a serial killer who is copying a previous monster’s work twenty years down the line. It goes far deeper than that, though, and ends up being a really intriguing work about what it is to grow up and survive in the wake of previous atrocities.
It’s a big responsibility and an honor to work in that huge orbiting laboratory.
Figuring out how to support life in the hostile environment of space has resulted in thousands of down-to-earth spin-offs, from temperature-regulating underwear to heart pumps that rely on Shuttle fuel-pump technology. The concrete benefits and by-products of the science we do in space have touched fields from agriculture to medicine to robotics. Data gathered on the Shuttle and ISS help power Google Maps; experiments with different dietary and exercise protocols have revealed how to ward off, permanently, one debilitating type of osteoporosis; the robotic machinery now used inside the parts of nuclear power plants that are too hazardous for humans is a direct descendent of Canadarm: the list goes on and on.
I was super excited to watch the new Jessica Jones series on Netflix. I’d not got on board with Daredevil, but this was something different. The concept appealed 100% - Marvel expanding their universe with female characters at the helm? Bring it on. Netflix allowing us to binge watch the entire series at once? I’m on board!
The trouble is, it arrived just before I got to my latest exam break, so I had the pain of avoiding spoilers and looking wistfully at the Netflix tweets about the series, waiting, waiting, waiting until I could find the time to watch.
Aw, loved this one. It took me a while to get into it, particularly because I didn’t really like the animation of the humans, so it was a bit distracting. But I also thought they didn’t really handle the explanation of how the brain and core memories and things worked particularly well, it was very much tell instead of show, which Pixar are usually much better at.
I wanted to love this, because I’m a huge Paul Rudd fan, and Marvel has rarely let us down to date. I just couldn’t quite get on board with it, though. It seemed like a great cast assembled, but they never quite gelled together in a way that the other groups have. There were a lot of good things about the film, a few funny moments, some nice action sequences, and some clever ideas. But I had three pretty significant issues with the whole thing.
As is often the way, the first part of my December downtime has been spent curled up under a duvet desperately waiting for the hour I can have my next Lemsip. This year, I tried a new tactic of supplementing the real medicine with that other thing that’s supposedly even better: laughter. There were a few new stand up shows available on iTunes, those that have presumably also been released on DVD in time for Christmas, and I was very entranced by Dylan Moran’s live show Off the Hook.
Once again, I’ve ended up reading a book that accompanies a TV show that I never saw. However, I liked the concept of this one, Griff Rhys Jones tracing his roots to find out what makes the Welsh people and their amazing country-land tick. From the highs of mount Snowdonia, to the lows of mining or panning for gold, this book really does cover a lot of ground.
I think this was aired on James Corden’s show last week, but I’ve just caught up with the video now. Love Me Like You Do isn’t one of my favourite Ellie songs, but how can you not love it done in so many different ways?
I particularly enjoy the country version, with some exceptionally dodgy accents. I’ve been listening to more and more country music recently, and not a lot of it sounds like that!
I’ve fully embraced the world of Apple Music, far more than I have any other streaming product. It’s not perfect, but considering how many Apple shaped gadgets I have, it fits into my life better than other streaming services do. It’s had quite a big impact on my listening habits, which is perhaps a story for another day, but the bottom line is I’m listening to a lot more music than I used to.
Loved it. Loved it all. From the opening scenes in which Tom Cruise actually hangs off the side of a massive plane taking off, because he can’t let anyone else do his stunts, to the closing moments with Alec Baldwin and Jeremy Renner making friends at last, it was brilliant. It had an enormous amount of action and stunts in it, but still managed to have moments of old-school drama. For example, running endlessly around backstage at the opera would probably normally be considered boring to the attention-grabbing generation, but it was stacked with tension and misdirection and all-round greatness.
For the first half of this film, I was totally enamoured with it. Jonah Hill played the stressed out journalist very well, I loved that Felicity Jones was in it, and the cinematography was stunning. I don’t even know where to start with James Franco - he played an incredible range, sometimes within the space of a few minutes: vacant horror, creepy stalker, friendly jail buddy, wronged husband, crazed killer.
I love a good Ken Follett thriller, and this was one of those - not only a great spy chase but centred around getting a rocket up into space as well! Set in the heart of the space race, this book aims to tell the fictionalised behind the scenes story of why the Explorer 1 rocket launch was delayed twice, because of the weather (even though it was a sunny day in Florida).
This was an absolutely gripping read from start to finish, a story of lustful romance gone very wrong. Even at the start, when it was the depressing details of one relationship ending and another clearly doomed one starting, it was unputdownable, leading slowly, step by step, to the achingly haunting conclusion.
