Robocop ( 2014 )

I remember when I heard that there was to be a remake of Robocop, I was a huge fan of the original film but I thought OK this could be really good or it'll really stink.

Time passes as time often does and the remake is finished and I saw it in the cinema with one other person, that was it, there was two of us in the cinema and this was during the movie's opening week so I assumed the movie was really bad even before it had started.

The end credits roll and I walked out of the cinema and I didn't hate the movie but I wasn't impressed either, honestly I thought it could have been much worse, later the movie was released on Blu-ray and I picked it up on sale being obsessive when it come to movies and such, even though I didn't love the movie I still wanted to own it just so I could say I had all the movies, I eventually rewatched the Blu-ray and I thought it was better than I remembered, nothing special but better than I remembered the movie being when I saw it at the cinema.

Today I happened to see the movie again and I found myself thinking it was actually a pretty decent movie, of course it doesn't measure up to the original movie but it's a decent reasonably entertaining movie.

It only took me three viewings to come to the conclusion the remake of Robocop is actually a decent movie.

Finders Keepers

I used to be an avid reader of Stephen King's book, as soon as he released something new I had have it as soon as possible but at some point something changed and there were three or four books in a row I didn't really enjoy all that much, they weren't awful but they weren't really fun so like when all things stop being enjoyable I stopped reading them.

Years passed by and many a new Stephen King novel came and went and I found no real desire to read any of them, I would occasionally think I should pick up some new book of his out of curiosity but it just never happened, well until recently anyway.

I was talking to a friend of mine sometime ago about the television mini-series based on The Stand, personally I didn't care for it but think afterwards it might be fun to revisit the book at some point or maybe some of King's other books I had enjoyed but for some reason or another I just never got around to it, finally I decided I would go pick up a copy of The Stand but no bookshop I visited had a copy in stock and few of them had much of King's earlier work in stock either, what they did all have was copies of the recently released Finders Keepers so I took a chance and bought that instead.

Finders Keepers wasn't exactly what I expected but I found I rather enjoyed it, at times the book referred to events that had happened to characters previously and after doing a bit of research online I found that it was the second book in a series but all the information the reader need to know was contained in the book so there wasn't any risk of not understanding what was going on, I guess what surprised me a little was that there were only minimal elements of the supernatural in the story ( although I suspect that is going to change in book three ) but instead Finders Keepers was a well written thriller and having completed it I was more than happy to purchase the first book in the series Mr Mercedes which I am currently reading and also enjoying it immensely.

I don't know what it was about those few Stephen King books I read that I didn't like now, I can tell you that Gerald's Game and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon were tow of them, maybe I just didn't enjoy the subject matter, I guess it really doesn't matter now but I can say Finders Keepers was well worth the read and Mr Mercedes is shaping up to be the same, the plus side of all of this is even though I am somewhat behind the times there are a whole bunch of Stephen King books out there I haven't read and I'd like to think at least some if not all of them will be pretty damn good reading.

The Multimedia Chronicles

I was looking for a video review of a recently released Doctor Who Blu-ray boxset, as I suspected YouTube was littered with them, most of them well, they weren't horrible as such but they weren't interesting either.

As a result I stumbled across The Multimedia Chronicles which is a video podcast that pretty much covers all forms of media, basically it's a guy talking to camera about stuff he likes and he would seem to like a lot of the same things I do.

If you are a fan of comics, books, video games, movies and television shows it may be worth a look when you have a moment to spare but be warned there are an awful lot of episodes covering a lot of different subjects, more than any new viewer could reasonably hope to get through.

OK so when did that happen ?

Perhaps the more appropriate question might be OK so why did that happen ?

I've been pretty quiet on the blog front for a while now, life just gets busy sometimes but weirdly that's when my page views spiked, when I wasn't writing anything, perhaps the internet is trying to tell me something.

I don't usually check blog statistics but I got a notification of something that needed my attention and while I was attending to it I noticed an increase in viewing figures, not an Earth shattering increase but for a while there the numbers were higher than I ever would have expected to see.

No doubt it's all down to web-bots, web-bots and Space 1999 fans apparently.

Hawk the Slayer ( Blu-ray )

If I can say one thing in the defence of Hawk the Slayer it's that you can see the people are genuinely trying to make a good movie and sometimes despite a low budget and lack of production values cast and crew rally together to make a movie that is greater than the sum of it's parts, sadly in the case of Hawk the Slayer that didn't happen.

Most of the performances given by cast members were wooden to say the least with the exception of Jack Palance and I honestly don't know how to describe his work on the movie but I can truly say it was a unique performance and seldom have I seen anything ti rival it in modern cinema.

Hawk the Slayer has reputation for being a terrible movie but I don't think that is entirely fair, it's certainly not a good movie but it is strangely entertaining.

I have seen a couple of different DVD releases of the movie and I think it would be fair to say the new Blu-ray release is the best looking version I have seen, it seems like no restoration work has been done on the movie and in this case that adds to it's charm.

Hawk the Slayer isn't for everyone but I enjoy it, perhaps I enjoy it for the wrong reasons but it make me laugh.

Wyrmwood

So what do you get if you cross Mad Max with a low budget B-grade zombie movie ?, well I'm not entirely sure myself but Wyrmwood might be a good guess.

Wyrmwood is a low budget Australian horror / comedy or at least that's how I describe it that was filmed over a three year period and at least partially crowd funded through Indigogo and while the end result might not be densely plotted the movie is bat shit crazy and a lot of fun.

I never heard about Wyrmwood until after the movie was completed which is a shame because it's something I would have supported when they were fund raising, there are rumors of a sequel and if that goes ahead I'll be more than happy to put some money towards the production.

If you like guys in cars, zombies and disco tunes this just may be the movie for you.

Check it out !

Porco Rosso ( Blu-ray )

I know most fans of Hayao Miyazaki's movies will probably disagree with me but I think Porco Rosso is probably my favourite Miyazaki film.

I find that while most of Miyazaki's films are based on enchanting ideas they tend to be a little too long and things seem to drag a little in the middle of some of his films, Porco Rosso doesn't seem to do that, it's 94 minute running time seems to be perfect, it introduces the characters and story and then things move on at a decent pace until the end, things don't seem to be rushed at all and there is no checking to see what the time is or how long them movie has left because the viewer finds themselves wading through a slow bit.

As for the story itself, a cursed World War 1 fighter pilot who fights sky pirates and hides out in Milan while his plane is being repaired and then hate to fight a duel over the fate of a girl, there is of course more to it than that but you get the idea, this is pure light hearted adventure.

On Blu-ray the animation looks truly stunning and the sound is at least to my somewhat deaf ears crystal clear, Porco Rosso looked nice on DVD but it is stunning on Blu-ray.

Most of Miyazaki's movies are clever and engaging but I don't know that I would consider them all to be essential parts of any movie collector's library however Porco Rosso is definitely worth purchasing.