Three Hundred and Sixty!

If you read that in a deep, over dramatic voice you probably played too much Destruction Derby as a child.

Which is your own fault really, because that game was crap.

Anyway, so I finally got my X-Box 360. I don't know if I'm impressed with the service I got over that or not. On one half, it took them several months to send it to me, I had to collect two bills and send them off and had to hunt down the mailing address through the royal mail because their website had got it wrong. Oh, and no contact e-mails or phone numbers on their website were correct either.

But, on the other half, it was free and came with a pretty decent phone at £25 a month. Which is good. I've decided to opt for 'I don't care' and just enjoy being able to finally play the only set of games I've missed out on (thanks to my brother already owning the Playstation 3).

The thing that impressed me with it so far is that a lot of the games (at least the ones I've tried on it) are suprisingly original. The basic way I've seen the different consoles so far is that the Wii is for people who don't know much about games, or like innovation, the PS3 is for people with lots of money (or, more fairly, people who want something that will do more than just play games), and the 360 is for the type of gamer who likes very traditional, stereotypical games, such as your standard shooters.

So far the main two games I've played are Dead Rising and Eternal Sonata. Dead Rising is the most traditional of the pair, being a survival horror game. Except, this is a survival horror game where there's no real 'horror' to be mentioned. It's more of a 'survival comedy'. After all, any game that gives you an award for 'knocking 30 zombies over with a parasol' isn't aiming to be gritty. And one where one type of offence is to stick a bucket over your enemy's head so it can't see is brilliant.

The other, Eternal Sonata, defies explanation. With a graphical style that is somewhere between Japanese anime and a French painting (the characters look painted, but unmistakingly Japanese), and several stereotypical Japanese RPG tropes mixed in the setting of being inside 18th Century composer Chopin's final dream as he lies on his death bed in Paris it's...just a little bit strange.

Add to that an actually rather subtle storyline, and some suprisingly dark themes (I mean, the main character is about to die for christsake, and the game opens with the sappy annoying typical RPG girl commiting suicide) and it's so bizarre you can't argue it's not original.

Wierdly, it's also a very good addictive game, despite being so strange it somehow recaptures that time when games were so wierd you had no questions about a fat plumber stomping on animated turtles or a hedgehog who for some reason was fighting robots at super sonic speeds.

And yet I thought the 360 was unoriginal.

I also thought it had a reputation for doing badly in Japan because it had no RPGs on it. Yet there seem to be a lot. More than Playstation 3. That's confused me as well.

Sadly, my brother had to go and crush my 'buy only original games' quest by buying Gears of War for it. Luckily, I continue on my quest to be the only X-Box 360 owner in the world who doesn't own Halo 3. Hopefully my brother won't fuck that one up too.

Fire Ruins Everything

Having your place of work catch fire. Surely that's one of the big dreams. Not quite the big dream, I mean, compared to winning the lottery or bonking the Hollywood actress of your choice, but pretty high up there, right?

Well, apparently there are all kinds of technicalities when it actually happens.

For example, contary to the popular belief you get time off, you're actually more likely to have to work overtime. Except you won't be doing your job. You'll be 'tidying'. In the dark. Because why would your company pay for a clear up team when they can make their loyal employees do the work? And you won't get as many days off, because it's not 'real' work, is it? You don't need two days off a week when you're only cleaning all day. It's not like you're doing a real job. Apparently. Oh, and you'll have to work in the dark. Your power generator will probably not be working, especially if it's the thing that caught fire in the first place. This is especially bad if you work in a shop that's actually a large metal box with no windows, because you can't see anything. Don't worry though. Your company will provide the 6-for-£4 torches to help out. And hey, you might even have to climb inside a skip at some point to retrieve some rubbish that has to be thrown in another skip. That's always fun.

Of course, this is without focusing into the fact if you typically have a chance to earn any kind of bonus (especially if this happens during the Christmas period) you lose it. So you even lose money too. And more money when you reopen if it's a shop and you do a stupid thing like promise every customer you turn away special discount when they come back...

So, what does this have to do with anything?
Guess.

Things That Are Annoying - A Film Review

Despite everything, I've never really reviewed a film before. I mean, in a normal review. And that's not going to change. This isn't a review of film, because that'd be boring and nobody's listening. Instead, I'm going to use a film to highlight what annoys me in films. Quite often, it's things that other people miss, but I suppose, studying film at university does that to you. You start thinking about the why behind each thing you see in a film, and sometimes, if there isn't one, it can begin to bug you.

The film in question is Quantum of Solace, a title I've put in itallics to make me feel more like a real reviewer and less like I'm trying to waste time. If you're curious, it didn't work. Anyway, if by some miracle you're reading this (and apparently haven't already had the film spoiled, despite the fact it's being advertised on everything from coca cola to random video cameras), I'm going to try and avoid spoilers about the plot, but there are sequences I'll mention and it might ruin it for you. So if so, well, I don't care. You were warned.

Let's start with the opening. We pan across to a road from out at sea, and see a car chase. It's shakey, hard to follow, and overall, looks like somebody saw a midnight showing of the Bourne Identity on a flight once with the sound off and thought 'hey, that's a good directing style, let's do that'. Ironic, since the second unit on the Bourne films, famed for such sequences, are also the second unit on Quantum of Solace, but there you go. Maybe they thought 'how can we make this different from our Bourne movies?' to which they replied 'What if we make it even harder to follow?'. I don't know, but that's not what this point is about. I've sadly come to accept shakey, 'realistic' camera movements as part of 21st Century films, no matter how much I hate it.

My actual point is in the first part I mentioned. We pan across to a road from out at sea. First shot. Now, this is a James Bond flick, so what are we missing? Oh, yeah, the typical walk-on-shoot-the-gunman bit. But that's okay. Casino Royale cut it out too, only to work it in to the title sequence in a way that was so clever it was the moment that made me swallow all my cynism and realise I was going to love that film. (And love it I did, it's now easily my favourite Bond).

Except, it doesn't happen. Okay, that's a little wierd. I mean, the opening shot is blatantly the type to follow on from the gun barrel sequence, it follows all the conventions, the pan to a road, of other Bond films. I suppose they're just trying to be edgy and un-Bondish. Even if it counters the point of the ending of Casino Royale, being that Bond has now become the James Bond we know. That's just film jargon anyway, so it can be ignored.

Only, at the very end of the film, we get a moving final shot (that would be perfect for a oh-it's-a-tad-pretentious-but-it-works credit scroll over) which suddenly cuts to... the gun barrel sequence. Why?

My best assumption is that it's the film makers deciding they need a 'yay James Bond!' moment to rival 'the name's Bond...James Bond...' from Casino Royale. Except here, it doesn't work at all. It comes out of nowhere, and seems like such a cheap attempt to imitate that it seems blatantly hollow. Plus, the point in Casino Royale was that Bond had now become Bond, in this film, he'd spent his whole time playing the Casino Royale-esque Bond and not changed at all, so it has no real message. At least nothing relating to Bond. Instead, it seems pretty obvious they took it from the intro at that last moment to give the ending a punch instead of a downbeat yet effective ending they could have. Basically, there's no why for doing it except someone somewhere thinking 'yeah, that'd be cool'. And I hate that.

Film makers always have to make decisions, and they're conscious. Films don't just happen. You have to think about every single shot, because they don't take themselves. You have to think about every single thing your actors do, because they're not robots, they do what they do for a reason. You have to think about every piece of set and costume because it doesn't just happen. Things don't just occur. There is always a why, and that why should always make logical sense. Despite being such a minor thing, here it didn't, and that's why it really bothered me.

Moving on from such a small criticism, let's focus on a bit of what this means. It's part of a tension in this film between being "Look, it's James Bond!" and "Look, it's not James Bond!". This crops up all over, the film spends plenty of time establishing itself as gritty, 'realistic' (...in a world....where nobody owns a tripod...) but then throws in blatant Bond cliches that just don't fit. For example, inbetween every scene, we get a stylistic caption telling us where we are. For example, 'London' is written on the road as a black taxi drives over it (ohhh, how British!). Very un-James Bondy though, so I suppose it suits the style of film they were going for.

Only then, we get things like the gun barrel sequence, a truly iconic death based on Goldfinger (the Daily Mail ruined it for me in a big photo on their magazine cover before I saw the film so anybody I can ruin it for too in revenge makes me feel better) and the biggie, a completely out of place character.

At one point, Bond meets 'Agent Fields' (Strawberry Fields, apparently, she's even got the ridiculous Bond name, which they do make a relatively creative gag out of when she refuses to tell him). Fields is apparently from 1961. She speaks with an accent you can only describe as as 'plummy', and I never, ever use the word 'plummy'. She seems to be from 'the BBC Television Centre' of the 60s (and again, in the 60's, you have to call it 'the BBC Television Centre'), and acts like a stereotypical 60's Bond girl. She even says 'Oh my gosh!' at one point....

Seriously. She couldn't be more out of place if she was wearing a nike tracksuit, a burberry cap and scarf and at a Star Trek convention.

And yes, I get it. Ohhh, it's a homage to old Bond movies! How clever!

Except, no. No it's not. It's out of place and wrong. Do you know what's clever? Casino Royale, and James Bond telling his new female friend her undercover name is 'Sydney Broadchester' to which she protests. That's a sly wink. Giving at least half an hour to an over the top stereotype character is not a clever reference. Especially in a film that otherwise is being as serious as Quantum of Solace.

It would be like if Arnold Schwarznegger as Mr Freeze appeared in The Dark Knight as a throwaway villain. Yes, it's referencing old Batman films and how camp they were! No, you don't fucking belong here, get out. It wouldn't work. Or hell, even from the 'popular' era of Batman, we could have an exploding shark! It still doesn't fit in, does it? Putting one in isn't a 'clever homage', it's an out of place wierdo.

Agent Fields is an exploding shark. She doesn't belong. It's not clever. It's just out of place. And it makes me just sit there and think 'make up your mind already' on what kind of film they want to make. Either do a typical Bond style adventure that homages the old ones (and we'd have Die Another Day, despite everything, I liked Quantum of Solace, I just didn't love it, but Die Another Day can go and have an ice castle fall on it after it got shot by an intergalactic laser gun because hey, that was the plot of the movie) or do a cutting edge modernisation in the vein of Casino Royale (and prefrably as good).

Why go through all the effort to cut the Bond trimmings (bye bye Q and Moneypenny) to only stick them in again at the points where they stand out the most?

And that's why Quantum of Solace irritates me. I'm not even that bigger Bond fan. I don't care if it has or doesn't have Bond elements in it. I just hate it being wishy washy and I hate illogical film making, where it feels like the director didn't sit down and think about it.

Despite all that, I liked the film enough to enjoy it. It just also made me angry. A film that makes me apathetic, now that's a bad film.

And the dog fight was awesome. They even used REAL planes. And that always deserves bonus points.

The (Hopeful) Death of a Salesman

Well, it's been a while. I've had little to post about lately, because, well, my life has been repetitive and crap. And I don't like posting when things are crap because that's just emo.

Seriously though, as most people probably know, I've been working at Curry's for the last five months or so, and generally hating it. As a full time job, it's really soul destroying, being a salesman. Forcing products on people, generally being hated by the entire public, having to sell insurance (sorry, 'cover plans') every sale and getting measured on how well you do, it's unpleasant. Especially full time, when there's no escape from it. Unfortunately, fresh out of uni, I need to be making money, and I don't have time to do nothing until I get my dream job, so I took it, I did it, yes, I hated it, but I had to do something.

I've made a lot of friends doing it too. Just because the job's shit, doesn't mean the people are. But, after five months of trying, I've been offered a new job, and would be crazy not to accept it.

The thing is, it's a new job that I haven't got offically confirmed yet. I've only talked by phone, so I'm nervous something will go wrong, but everything should be okay. I'm going to be working for the NHS, at Derriford Hospital, filing, delivering and finding medical records. But once in the NHS, there are lots of careers. Enough to maybe stop me leaving Plymouth and instead seeking a career within it. Yes, okay, the NHS has a shitty reputation up there with salespeople, but something about actually helping an organisation that heals people and saves lives rather than helping an organisation that screws you out of money appeals to me.

The main reason I decided to ressurect this was to write that, so in a month or two whereever I end up and whatever happens I'll know what I was thinking before things got to change. If in a month or two I'm still at Curry's and this job didn't take...

...fuck.

(Oh, I also ressurected this because I want to see how long it takes people to notice. I'm betting a good few months).