Archive for the 'Entertainment' Category

Joss Whedon’s latest effort “Serenity” – the movie adaptation of his cruelly cut-short TV series “Firefly”, is a fantastic movie – one of the best scifi movies I’ve seen in a long time. It’s right up there with StarWars episode 1 – and the acting is arguably better, and it’s a darn sight funnier too!

Well worth the effort in my opinion.

I will admit to being a completely biased Joss Whedon groupie – a month or so back we finished an 18 month effort to watch every single Buffy and Angel episode, in order – that was something like 254 episodes. But I honestly think most people will enjoy Serenity – no geek or fanboi status required.

Go see it – you won’t be disappointed.

Went and saw Revenge of the Sith yesterday morning – got up early so I could get to the 9:30am showing at Westfield Chatswood – good thinking really, parking was easy, only a 5 min wait to buy tickets, and I got a good seat – the cinema was less than a quarter full (which is actually unusally busy for that time of the morning !).

It was a great movie – and it joined up the saga nicely, filling in a lot of the gaps between Episodes I & II and the original Episodes IV, V & VI. The action sequences were amazing – especially at the beginning with the seige of Coruscant – but it’s the lightsabre duels we all go to see, and these don’t disappoint at all.

Some noticable bits – the character Obi Wan seemed to have enormous confidence as he takes on foes such as Count Dooku (Darth Tyrannus), General Grievous, and of course, the epic battle with newly appointed Darth Vader. Was a pleasure to watch him in action.

General Grievous was not as menacing as I expected – especially after seeing the Clone Wars animated series from the Cartoon Network. Darth Tyrannus died with not much more than a whimper. The battle between Yoda and Darth Sidious was pretty cool. Padme was a bit of an “extra” – not really adding much to the story (other than causing the whole mess in the first place by being the love interest that causes Anakin to go off the deep end!). Artoo rocked with a lot of cool attachments – showing a lot of personality and heroism.

Overall – a great addition to the saga. Now I can’t wait for the upcoming TV series George Lucas is about to start filming here in Sydney – will be set to fill in some of the 20 year gap between Episodes III & IV (with the development of the Empire and the rise of the rebellion obviously feature storylines). Lots more StarWarsy goodness to come !

New series of Dr. Who starts this Saturday – 7:30pm Ch2.

From what I’ve read, it gets really good reviews in the UK – so I’m looking forward to it.

Went to see HHGTTG on the weekend – went in with pretty low expectations (the adverts we had seen looked pretty lame). Was actually pleasantly surprised.

Remember that this screenplay was written by Douglas Adams himself – he had been trying to get a movie version made for nearly 25 years.

It’s not a reproduction of the radio or TV series or the books – the storyline is roughly the same, but there are some divergences (they did have a time limit in the movie format).

I think if people go to see it expecting it to be like the books or the series – they will be a bit disappointed. Just watch it for what it is – a movie of its own right.

I must admit that there were some bits that most people who haven’t read the books or seen/heard the series will probably just not get, but it’s just a typically zany British comedy really.

I think it’s worth the effort – really quite a sweet movie, and quite a bit of fun.

We especially liked the intro – hillarious.

… and don’t forget to stick around through the credits – there’s a little bit more for those people (like me) who remember Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and always stick around just in case !

Got up early and caught Robots at the movies before we did our grocery shopping – 10am session (nice to almost have the cinema to yourself !).

I quite liked the movie – much better than their earlier effort in Ice Age, although Leanne wasn’t all that impressed – she put it on about a par with Ice Age. I thought Robin Williams did a fantastic job as Fender – very Genie-esque if you remember his role in Alladin.

Even the fart jokes were funny !

Very well created, and worth the effort in my opinion.

Still not quite Toy Story though – the original and the sequel are still two of the best of this genre in my opinion.