Run Lola Run

I've always enjoyed this movie, it's a seemingly simple idea on the surface but when you get right down to it a lot of though had actually been put into this film and despite it's obvious low budget I think it works really well, it certainly goes to show you don't need to spend ten of millions of dollars to make a clever and enjoyable film.

One slightly annoying thing about the Blu-ray release is the fact that the disc defaults to the English dub instead of the original language, being lazy I left it in English for about 10 minutes, it has to be one of the worst dubbing jobs I've heard in ages, I guess if you wanted a bit of a laugh it might be worth giving it a listen.

I really enjoyed seeing Run Lola Run again and it looked pretty good on Blu-ray and it was so ridiculously cheap as well, there really is no excuse for not having seen it anymore, not when you can own the movie for slightly more than the cost of renting it ( in Australia anyway ).

Westworld

I watched Westworld on Blu-ray for the first time last night and I was pretty impressed with how good it looked for a movie of it's age and despite the many times I've seen it I still enjoyed seeing it yet again, hopefully Futureworld looks as good in it's HD release.

A nice little surprise was the inclusion of the pilot to the spin-off  TV series Beyond Westworld, I'd heard the series was pretty bad and the pilot lived up to it's reputation but I've always thought it was a shame more wasn't done with this franchise.

Maybe it's time for a Westworld remake.

Beyond Westworld.

I'm a big fan of the movie Westworld and it's sequel Futureworld but one of the few shows I have never seen was the spin-off TV series Beyond Westworld.

I was perfectly aware of the show's reputation for being pretty bad but I've just finished watching Logan's Run the series and well it couldn't have been worse than that ( to be fair Logan's Run does have a couple of really good episodes, it also has a whole bunch of ordinary and some outright terrible ones.

Recently I picked up Westworld and Futureworld on Blu-ray and was pleasantly surprised to discover that the pilot for Beyond Westworld was included on the Westworld disc.

It's an odd series based on what I can gather from the pilot, it seems to take place soon after the end of Westworld and pretty much ignores Furureworld but at the same time explores and expands on ideas from that movie and yes it was pretty bad.

One day I might hunt down the remaining five episodes out of a morbid curiosity but I think most people can safely give it a miss.

Tron: Legacy

So today I found myself listening to Deft Punk's soundtrack for Tron: Legacy, this led to me watching the movie and I've now decided I rather like both of them.

It's strange how someone's opinion about a movie can change, the first time I saw the movie I thought it was ok but nothing special, I enjoyed it a little more the second time around and today I really enjoyed it, maybe I was just in the right kind of mood.

I hope it's not too long until the next film.

Marvel Zombies

I've just finished reading the first volume of Marvel Zombies, it's something I had been interested in checking out for a while mainly because of the fact it had been written by Robert Kirkman ( The Walking Dead ).

Maybe I had unreasonably high expectations for this series but honestly I thought it was pretty bad, I enjoyed the first issue but after that it was all downhill, I know there were later series so I guess the original must have been popular but for the life of me I'm not sure why.

For me Marvel Zombies was a disappointing series, I did like Sean Phillips artwork but this left me with no real desire to ever read any further Marvel Zombies stories.

Ashes to Ashes

While dealing with the dramas and hassles of the last couple of weeks one of the things I did was re watch Ashes to Ashes.

While I enjoyed seeing the show again I still don't feel that it's as strong as Life on Mars ( the proper version and not the American produced abomination ) but that being said I would have been more than happy to see another series or two of either show or even both.

Even though it is a sequel to Life on Mars I think Ashes to Ashes works well on it's own however it can be appreciated more if the viewer has actually seen it's parent series.

If you have never seen either of them what are you waiting for ?, seek them out, it's well worth it.

Logan's Run: The Complete TV Series

I remember when Logan's Run was on TV back in the 70's and I remember loving the show as a kid and it was always something I wanted to see again which just goes to show how powerful nostalgia can be, I had been sorely tempted to buy a bootleg DVD set of the series on more than one occasion but resisted in the hope that the series might eventually get an official DVD release.

As I hoped the series did eventually get an official DVD release and it's a bit of a mixed bag, the picture quality on some of the episodes including the pilot is pretty poor, I wasn't expecting anything to compare to modern television production standards but surely there were prints of some of these episodes in better condition than the versions used to master the DVDs, cramming all 13 episodes including the feature length pilot episode onto just three DVDs didn't help matters either.

Technical issues aside the show itself is also a bit of a mixed bag, I really enjoyed some of the episodes and other not so much but overall I'm glad I got these DVDs, the one thing that did shock me was how well I remembered some episodes of a show I hadn't seen in over 30 years.

Life and other hassles.

Well life has been pretty busy as of late, a few days ago my Grandfather had a rather nasty fall and while he hasn't suffered any permanent injuries he did come out of it rather battered and bruised and that has been keeping me rather busy, getting old happens to us all but over the last six months or so I've seen someone who was always vital and energetic considering his age seems to have suddenly actually become an old man and it bothers me more than I thought it would.

It must be tough to discover you can't do some of the things you used to and on occasion you may need to actually ask for help, hopefully I handle it as well as he seems to have.