Welcome to My Nightmare

I spent the better part of this afternoon playing Undead Nightmare, the downloadable expansion to the Red Redemption Game, something strange is going on throughout the old west and the dead are rising to devour the living.

This has been a lot of fun so far and I'm kind of surprised this idea hasn't been done before, cowboys vs zombies is sheer elegance in its simplicity, ammunition is scarce as you move from town to town cleansing the undead infestation and if you thought grizzly bears were a pain in the ass just wait until you meet the undead variety.

Zombies have made a bit of a comeback in popular culture over the last few years ( it'd be hard to not to have noticed ) but in my opinion they have rarely been used well or in a creative way and I suppose that's also true of Undead Nightmare but the world they have been dropped into has made this a lot of fun, from what little I've read online I'm already approaching the end Undead Nightmare and I find myself wishing it was full length game rather than just mini single player campaign and a few new multi player elements.

Caitlins 18th Birthday

Well we survived Caitlin's 18th birthday but I guess more importantly she survived it.

I heard her arrive home at about 4:00am this morning and she has to go to work soon, can't say I'm all that sympathetic.

Sarah Jane Adventures: Death of the Doctor

When I first heard Katey Manning would be playing Jo Grant ( Jones ) again I wasn't sure what I thought about it to be honest but within about five seconds of her being on screen she'd won me over, Jo Grant was back and it was like she'd never left.

The chemistry between Jo and Sarah worked rather well I thought and the look on Jo's face when she found out that Sarah had seen the Doctor a few times since she'd left the TARDIS while he'd never gone back to see her was heart breaking, and the look the Doctor gave Sarah when she asked if his last regeneration hurt and the reveal that during The End of Time as he was dying The Doctor actually visited all of his companions, not just the ones we saw on screen.

There were some really nice Jo moments, like when she discovers the Doctor is travelling with a married couple and she tells him she only left because she was getting married and later on when he doesn't tell her that all the Timelords are dead.

507 ?!! oh how I laughed when I heard that, I just bet the fanboys are going into fits over that.

All those flashback and references, heaven for fans of the classic show.

Liz Shaw runs the UNIT (?) moon base, Tegan is back in Australia fighting for Aboriginal rights, Ben and Polly are in India running an orphanage, Harry went on to develop several vaccines and saved thousands of lives ( Sarah speaks of Harry in past tense like he's died as has Ian Marter the actor who played him ) and Dorothy ( Ace ) is alive and well ( you can't have everything ) and runs a company called Charitable Earth and has raised billions for the needy and finally Ian and Barbara are married and Professors at Cambridge who apparently haven't aged since the 60s (?).

I know Nicholas Courtney isn't well but it would've been nice to see the Brigadier, Sgt Benton and Mike Yates reuniting the surviving members of the UNIT family.

Russell T Davies has received a lot of flak over his time as writer / producer on Doctor Who but this was a lovely little gem of a story, hopefully we'll get to see some more like it and I wouldn't mind seeing the return of Jo Grant at some point in the future as well.

M.A.N.T.I.S

I guess it must be at least a year since I picked up the M.A.N.T.I.S complete series DVD boxed set but I've only just this week started to watch it, as far as I can recall the series was never broadcast in my area however the TV movie pilot was released on VHS to rent so I did get to see the pilot but that was some time ago, at least 10 years ago and I suspect it was more like 15.

I could only remember a little of the pilot movie but I do remember really enjoying it at the time, the pilot was included in the DVD set but it hasn't aged well, either that or I've gotten fussy in my old age.

I did remember that the show featured a black superhero who was in a wheelchair when he wasn't fighting crime but when he donned his exoskeleton he became M.A.N.T.I.S and he stalked the streets of Ocean City fighting crime.

There were elements in the pilot that struck me as a little odd, now this film was made and set during the 90's and in this movie the various gangs seem to be ( mainly ) a black problem, in fact the pilot seems fixated on the fact most of it's cast was black and it clumsily tries to address what I guess were issues at the time, even the hero weighs in with an opinion on affirmative action ( it doesn't mean anything unless you earn it ), maybe the writers were trying to be sensitive to race issues but that just didn't work for me.

The pilot was written by Sam Hamm and Sam Raimi but after the pilot was aired they had a disagreement with the network about the direction the show should go in so they left the project and the show went into production without them, apart from the central character the show was a reboot with it's first episode serving as a new ( and inferior ) pilot with an altered origin story, new supporting cast, redesigned costume and based on the few episodes I've watched so far worse writing.

The movie's preaching about social issues was slightly annoying but when Bruce Zabel took over as show runner the show apparently became much more of a light-hearted romp that limped on until it's cancellation at the end of it's first season.

While the pilot movie was far from perfect I felt there was a lot of potential there for a good series and I just don't understand why the producers decided to change virtually everything for the TV series, I've really enjoyed some of Bruce Zabel's other work but so far his work on M.A.N.T.I.S leaves a lot to be desired, I truly hope the show improves over the course of it's first and only season, I've read a lot of mixed things about the show online but I live in hope that things will get better before the end.

The Philadelphia Experiment

I hadn't seen the movie in at least 10 years ( probably longer ) and I'd only ever seen it on VHS so it was somewhat of a revelation to see it in widescreen on DVD, I really enjoyed seeing it again even with the leading couple's terrible acting and dodgy special effects.

The Return

Life is too short to waste on movies like this, I doubt even the most fanatical Sarah Michelle Gellar fan could find anything good to say about it, I had to watch it in three sittings it's so dull and it has a running time of less than 90 minutes.

The Host

This movie starts out well but instead of getting on with the story we get family melodrama and light comedy, it's like the director wasn't sure what type of movie he was making for a while, things do eventually get back on track but by then I just wasn't as interested as I was when the movie first started - I do think film makers need to focus on the story they are trying to tell instead of getting side tracked by different elements, there was room for a little comedy and maybe even some family melodrama if it moves the story along but when it stalls the action like it did in the The Host it only hurts the final product.


I did like the monster design and while the music wasn't bad it did seem a little out of place at the time, there have been some interesting movies coming out of Korea and this had the potential to be a great monster movie instead of merely a good one - a shame.