I watched Vampire Wars ]last night and it was interesting, the hero (?) is former KGB agent who was committing terrorist acts in Japan before he went into hiding in France where he is blackmailed into working against C.I.A. operatives in Europe by the French Secret Service who are hunting people who attacked a NASA facility and seem to be vampires, the vampires are actually aliens who are looking for a way to revive their leader and chaos ensues.


Definately not one for the kids and there was a lot going on but it was worth a watch, I have no idea if there were any sequels made but it was open ended enough to be continued, it's the sort of thing I wouldn't go out of my way to see but if you can catch it on TV or borrow the DVD from a friend then check it out.

Superman 2 ( Original Theatrical Version )

I watched Superman II this afternoon, it's been ages since I've seen the Richard Lester version of the movie and while I prefer The Donner Cut ( even though it's an incomplete movie ) I enjoy them both.

The extras for this disc are the same as the 2006 DVD release and they are all in standard definition, the movie itself looks pretty good for a film of it's age, there is some film grain and minor blurring in a few places but overall it looks pretty good, the one unfortunate side effect of presenting the movie in Hi-def is that you can really see the faults in some of the special effects sequences but overall the movie is a worthwhile upgrade on Blu-ray.

Superman Returns

I've just finished watching Superman Returns, there were complaints about it's original Blu-ray release ( although I didn't notice any problems myself ), this new Hi-def print certainly looked and sounded impressive, unfortunately it's now much easier to spot the CG Brandon Routh in some sequences but this disc would make a great Blu-ray demo disc.

It was nice to see the Return to Krypton sequence included in the deleted scenes, given that it had been completed and was basically a 5 minute special effects sequence I'm not sure why it wasn't used in the movie, especially since it explained where Superman was returning from.

Superman Returns is certainly a flawed movie but there are parts of it that I really like and I think it's a shame that Brandon Routh didn't get to revisit the role of Superman again.

Friday the 13th Part 3

After being pretty impressed with the picture quality on the new DVD releases of Friday the 13th Parts 1 and 2 it was disappointing to see a very noticeable drop in picture quality for Part 3, the lack of any real story was also frustrating for me, this was more like a bunch of different scenes thrown together in the hope they might somehow form a movie.

When this movie was made it was shot in 3D and the version I saw was in 2D but it only took  a few minutes before I was getting tired of things being thrown at the camera to highlight the special effects ( such as they were ), I'd forgotten how the movie ended and I did think that was interesting, it's a shame about the rest of the movie.

The Adventures of Superpup

I've started working my way through the Superman Anthology Blu-ray boxset, I began with the extras disc and the first thing I watched was The Adventures of Superpup pilot which was one of the worst things I've seen in ages, I find it hard to believe a pilot was produced based on that idea let alone the possibility it might have become a regular series.

Slayers Return

Lina and Naga agree to help free a small village from the oppression of a secret society and it's demonic henchmen who are using the town's inhabitants to dig up an ancient Elven artifact that will give them the power to rule the world.

I enjoyed this movie more than Slayers: The Motion Picture, in this film the characters get on with the action straight away rather than wondering around with no real purpose for ages and while there was some funny moments they didn't feel as forced as a lot of the jokes in the first film.

I'm sure this sort of fantasy / comedy isn't to every one's taste but I enjoy it and I think Slayers Return is well worth checking out.

Slayers: The Motion Picture

The further adventures of Lina Inverse, the small breasted, bad tempered and always hungry sorceress.


I hadn't seen Slayers: The Motion Picture in ages, I'm a pretty big fan of this anime franchise and I enjoyed seeing this movie again, it's a little slow to get going and they were a little heavy handed with the comedy in the first half but it's still enjoyable.

Silver Surfer: The Complete Series

Over the last two days I've watched all 13 episodes of the animated Silver Surfer TV series, I had never seen the show before and I really enjoyed it, I remember reading that the show was being made in the 90's and thinking that the producers would have to "dumb down" the character in order for it to work as an animated series aimed at younger viewers but fortunately that didn't happen ant the result was a fairly intelligent cartoon series.

The only real disappointment I had was that this excellent series only ran for 13 episodes and ended on a cliff hanger but despite this it's still well worth checking out.

Friday the 13th Part 2

I watched Friday the 13th Part 2 last night and again I was pleasantly surprised by the picture quality on the latest DVD re-release, I'm hoping they keep the quality levels up for the rest of the series

It's Got a Death Curse ( Friday the 13th )

After the horrid weather of the last few days I haven't really felt like doing much outside so I watched the two disc special edition version of Friday the 13th this afternoon and I was pretty impressed, it seems for this release they've used a better quality print to master the DVD from, while there was some dirt and mild scratching this was the best looking version of the movie I've seen, most of the special features on disc 2 aren't really all that special since they often repeat the same information but the brief feature showing how Tom Savini achieved various make up effects was fun.

The movie itself was clear ( almost crystal ) and the colors really stood out in some of the outdoor scenes, the audio was nothing special but the DVD does feature Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Stereo soundtracks.

I know the movie has been released on Blu-ray, given it's low budget origins I'd wondered if there could be any real benefit in a high definition release of this movie but based on the DVD I saw today it just might be worth checking out.

Burnout: Paradise

I'm not a fan of serious racing simulations, in fact they bore me stupid but Burnout: Paradise has been a huge time waster over the last week or so and for an older game it still look pretty good.

Burnout: Paradise is by no means a classic but it is a lot of fun.

Wicked City

I watched Wicked City on DVD this afternoon, I guess the intention behind it was to shock, confront and maybe horrify but I found it boring, so very very boring.

Tremors

I've always had a soft spot for the horror / comedy Tremors, sure it's cheap and cheesy but I think it's a lot of fun.

I had previously seen the first sequel which I thought was OK but I'd never bothered seeing the two following movies in the series, as it happened a few weeks ago I was talking to a friend of mine about various science fiction TV series and he asked me if I'd seen Tremors: The Series and I had to admit I knew they'd made it but I hadn't seen an episode of the show.

Well I went home and looked to see what the series cost and found it was pretty cheap but I thought you can't own the series and not the movies so I ordered them as well.

Winter is settling in down under and I've found myself confronted with some very miserable weather lately so yesterday I sat down and watched all four of the Tremors movies, the original movie is still a lot of fun, the DVD release is just horrible ( I've since ordered the Blu-ray which is apparently an improvement ), at times you could be forgiven for thinking you were watching a bad VHS copy of the movie and the three sequels all received far better quality releases, while the first two sequels were just OK I really liked Tremors 4: The Legend Begins, in fact I'd nearly go so far as to say it was my favorite film in the series.

As far as B-Grade horror / comedy movies go the Tremors films are worth a look and I think now I'm ready to dive into the television series

 

Dirt 3 - Very Disappointing !

Last week I bought the much anticipated Dirt 3 on PS3, and while it's a fantastic looking game the game play is pretty uninspired, it's really just more of the same and while the multi player part of the game looks like it might be fun over the short term I think it's something I would quickly get sick of.

What I really don't like about this game is the requirement to register the game online to access some of the offline single player content, this is simply about greed, for some time now game publishers have been looking for a way the get a piece of the second hand game market.

I'm sort of OK with them wanting you to register your game to play online and if you've bought a second hand copy of a game paying a minimal fee for a new registration key to play online but it pissed me off to no end to have bought a new full priced copy of a game and constantly be told I couldn't use certain cars in some events because I hadn't registered my game and at the time I couldn't register it because the PlayStation network was down but what if you don't have an Internet connection or don't want to play online ?, you still pay the same price but don't get all the features the person who has his PlayStation ( or X-Box 360 ) connected to the Internet - this seems to me to be rather unfair.

I will be returning my copy of Dirt 3 tomorrow and in the future I will no longer be buying any console games that require online registration, this isn't about piracy or providing a better service to the consumer, it's about greed and I'm not going to be part of this latest type of scam.