That’s it. This is as high as I’m ever gonna score on Flappy Bird. I’m done with this stupid game.
I kinda wanted to get to 30, but I also kinda need my iPad for important stuff, so having it broken due to blunt force wall impact trauma is probably best avoided.
Oh yeah, while we’re on the topic of awful things, I made the rather embarrassing mistake of leaving out a big entry on my 2014 most anticipated movies list last week. This genuinely would have been number 2, wedged between the new X-Men movie and Interstellar. Behold the awesome trailer for The Raid 2: Berandal:
Here we go again, with another bumper edition of pure, distilled anticipation.
Ah, 2014. How you promise such great excuses for us to use up our hard-earned time and money. Indeed, with another typically uneventful (though wonderfully relaxing) January out of the way, it’s as good a time as any to talk about what I personally am most eagerly awaiting this year. Some of these things will be disappointing, I have no doubt, but I have reason to believe most of them will live up to the hype. So exciting are the gaming and movie offerings of 2014 that I have had to expand my third annual anticipation list article to include multiple honorable mentions. I’ve also thrown some applicable trailers onto this page, because people seem to like something to look at. Here we go.
MOVIES
10. Mockingjay Part One
My excitement for the next movie in the blockbuster Hunger Games franchise is tempered by the general track record of novel adaptations that insist on splitting into two parts. It’s pretty well documented that “Part I”s tend to be a little on the unfulfilling side, as they are only ever one half of a whole story. Having said that, given the surprising quality of the Catching Fire adaptation, I’m keen to see how Francis Lawrence and co. treat the very heavy Mockingjay story.
9. Wish I Was Here
Whether you happen to be a lover or a hater of what Zach Braff did through the Kickstarter website to help his latest film stick to his vision, I can quite confidently say that I am the former. So much so, in fact, that I was one of the 47 thousand-odd backers who gave money to the project. I was a huge fan of Braff’s last writer-director effort, 2004’s Garden State, and the promise of Wish I Was Here serving as a pseudo-sequel to the decade-old indie gem is too hard to pass up. Hopefully it doesn’t suck.
8. Big Hero 6
We don’t know an awful lot about Big Hero 6 yet – only that it is based on a neglected Marvel superhero license, set in a hybrid between San Francisco and Tokyo, will be released at the end of the year, and most importantly, comes from the same wide pool of talent that gave us Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen. Expectations will be high for Disney’s intriguing next animation house effort.
7. How to Train Your Dragon 2
Speaking of high expectations, Disney’s number 1 competitor for animated movie supremacy is looking to come out firing in 2014 with the much-anticipated sequel to its super-charming 2010 hit How to Train Your Dragon. The trailers seem to indicate some real character growth across the board, as well as what appears to be a rather unconventional narrative structure for a family movie like this. But then again, you should never trust a trailer.
6. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
The next film in Marvel Studios’ ongoing lead-up to The Avengers 2 is being marketed as somewhat of an Avengers film itself, an “Avengers 1.5” if you will, considering the focus its trailers place on shots of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, Nick Fury and Black Widow. But far from being the distraction it was in Iron Man 2, this choice of direction actually adds to the appeal of the movie to me, as I happen to regard Cap as the least interesting of the four main movie Avengers. Add the appearance of characters like Falcon and, of course, the Winter Soldier himself, and you can consider me hyped.
Oh look, here’s another one. This one only just came out yesterday in Australia.
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Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Matthew McConaughey Director:Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas, The Departed) Rating:R18+ -◊-◊-◊-◊-
I would be lying if I said I had seen all of Martin Scorsese‘s movies, or even all of the movies that piqued my interest from him. Despite how renowned the American is as a cinematic legend, and for good reason, there are certain common traits about his movies – mainly their really long run time – that have impeded my desire to seek them out. I enjoyed his secret identity gangster flick The Departed and his unexpectedly competent, beautiful family movie Hugo, but both films caught me looking at my watch more than once wondering just how much longer I would have to wait until the next story event happened. The same problem ultimately hampers his latest effort The Wolf of Wall Street – at 2 hours 59 minutes it’s even longer than any of his best-known films – even if it remains so damn entertaining throughout that it almost manages to overcome the issue.
When I was in Tokyo late last year, I was understandably surrounded by more larger-than-life advertising than I could shake a Pocky stick at. Though anime, J-Pop and fashion billboards dominated the urban landscape, the one Western film that seemed to be getting enough coverage to register amongst the madness was 47 Ronin. Such a presence is understandable, as the film claims to present a fresh, more visually appealing and more fantastical interpretation of one of Japan’s most well known and highly celebrated historical legends than has ever gone before (many, many times, mind you). Yet this latest take on the beloved Japanese tale ends up disappointingly flat despite some cool moments.
Time to get started on a new year of reviews! I’ve got a double for you to start things off.
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Starring: Tom Hanks, Emma Thompson, Colin Farrell Director:John Lee Hancock (The Alamo, The Blind Side) Rating:PG -◊-◊-◊-◊-
Disney is currently in a position quite unfamiliar to the vast majority of the world’s entertainment media companies, let alone one of such gigantic size. Not only does the American monolith own the wildly successful Marvel cinematic universe, which surely has to be the most fruitful gamble of the movie-making decade, but its own traditional primary animation studio is in the midst of a notable renaissance of quality. They still have the very active geniuses at Pixar in their stable, and their recent acquisition of the Star Wars license has yet to boil over into significant fanboy argument (which it will, make no mistake, once Episode VII finally comes out). So for Disney to deliver a no-frills live action film as good as Saving Mr Banks right now is a little bit ridiculous. Surely they are only allowed so much good fortune at once.
We are well and truly on the ground and running in 2014! There is so much to look forward to this year, but if you missed any one of the 2013 countdown content I posted on Vagrant Rant in the last two weeks, here are the links to each and every one!
Happy new year to all! Episode 14 of the Mega Ultra Blast Cast hands out some totally significant awards to farewell 2013! We smash through our normal programming in less than an hour before devoting half an hour to giving out a handful of MUBC awards to various games and movies that impressed us in 2013. Listen to hear Delaney questioning expressions about lightning in bottles, talking up his dancing skills and comparing Disney films to cricket scores, Shane meowing and making puns a bunch of times and all of us discussing the merit of seeing Frozen more than once. We also answer a question submitted by a listener to close out the year in style! The awards start at 55:15 if you’re only interested in that.
If you feel so inclined, go for a run, take a scenic drive or just curl up on the couch and play some games while you listen to the opinions of three Sydneysiders who really just want to play Samurai Gunn.
You can play the whole thing right off this page if that interests you:
Here we are at the last list. It’s been an amazing year.
A combination of a resolution to finish more videogames, saving for a trip to Japan and a general aversion to piracy meant I perhaps didn’t see as many movies as I may have liked to in 2013. Though I did catch a smaller movie or two throughout the year, as a general rule I only saw films many people were having conversations about – all of which means I watched more than enough movies to put together a list several times as long as this one, but said list is missing movies like Spring Breakers, Pain & Gain, The Bling Ring and Cloud Atlas. Also, because we live in Australia and for some reason still have to wait much longer for many big American films than we do even for videogames, this list is missing movies like 12 Years a Slave and The Wolf of Wall Street because they aren’t out here yet. That also means movies released stateside in 2012 may count here because they actually came out down under this year. Finally, as with my games list, any review scores I gave out at the time of a movie’s release don’t necessarily count towards the order of the final list.
Now that all that is out of the way, let’s finish this thing:
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10. Pacific Rim
Giant robots punch giant aliens in this movie and that is pretty much all you need to know, other than that it’s helmed by acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro. The Mexican has a strong connection to the world of Japanese anime, having been raised on the stuff, and his passion for the larger-than-life storylines of the likes of Neon Genesis Evangelion is obvious in his affectionate homage to all things kaiju and beyond. The characters of Pacific Rim are hammy cartoons that prove to be endlessly entertaining to watch (although some of their accents could stand to be a bit more believable) and most of all the lengthy fight scenes look absolutely stunning. Let go of your preconceptions, relax and watch this movie if you haven’t already.
FULL REVIEW: HERE
I played a lot of games in 2013 and dare I say finished a higher percentage of them than I ever have in a single year. In fact, unlike last year’s list, I have completed all ten of the games I finally decided on as my top ten. To be eligible for the list and/or the unavoidably lengthy honorable mentions section, however, I needed to have played a game for at least five hours, unless a) the game in question takes less time than that to finish and I finished it, or b) the game can’t really be “finished” because it’s actually neverending and/or is multiplayer-only. With that said, 2013 was an absolutely killer year for games. Excitement is back in the industry thanks to new consoles, thriving blockbuster releases and better indie titles than ever. Without further ado, I present my second-last list of the year, with the platform on which I played each game presented in parentheses:
. -◊-◊-◊-◊- VR BEST OF 2013 DISCLAIMER This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. If you actually agree with me 100%, that’s scary. Respectful disagreement is welcome. -◊-◊-◊-◊-
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10. Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine (360)
2013 actually turned out to be a pretty good year for local multiplayer games, particularly co-operative experiences. I was even able to write a post entirely focusing on the juicy co-op offerings in August alone. But the best of the bunch came along a little earlier in the year – Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine. The colourful stealth game – wait, I mean panic game absolutely deserves to be played with four players. Picking the perfect combination of abilities and heading into a new top-down sneaking challenge stays consistently exciting, because you know what’s going to happen – someone is going to mess up and raise an alarm and things will get hectic very quickly, but come hell or high water, you WILL get through to the end by any means necessary.
That’s right, this is here now, which means two things:
I listened to enough K-Pop albums, and saw enough merit in them, in 2013 to be able to make this list; and
I really didn’t buy nearly enough English-language music this year to do any sort of countdown relating to it.
If listening to K-Pop is a bit of a niche pursuit in these parts of the world, which it certainly is, then indulging in K-Pop albums is like a niche within a niche. Unfortunately many K-Pop fans never go beyond watching the MVs that, to be fair, kind of define their industry, and they don’t see any reason to do so. Typically K-Pop albums can be shallow efforts to fill a track quota and make more money off the hype surrounding a single title track. My efforts to explore the extensive back catalogue of K-Pop albums in 2012 revealed as much, with some exceptions of course. Something changed in 2013, though. The general standard of albums I looked into this year seems to have raised, for reasons I won’t speculate on. I’m cool with it, though. Particularly noticeable was the output of SM Entertainment, previously one of the absolute worst offenders in this area. They released “full albums”, as opposed to the far more common and easy to release “mini-albums”, for pretty much every major group in their stable in 2013. Most of them were quite good to boot. As the number one record label in K-Pop, I would be surprised if this didn’t influence some of the other companies in some way to put more effort and creativity into their album writing.
Because they have fundamentally different structures, this countdown is actually divided into two top fives: one for mini-albums and one for full albums. An album counts as “full” for the purposes of this list if it has eight tracks or more.
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MINI ALBUMS
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5. A’s Doll House – Ailee
Korean-American YouTube singer turned K-Pop star Ailee has one of the most powerful voices in the current industry landscape and she puts her pipes to work in her second Mini-Album A Doll’s House, which manages to trump her debut 2012 effort Invitation despite only featuring one title track (Invitation had two good ones). Said title track, bombastic big band song U&I, is a perfect high-energy opener to the album, before songs like No No No,Scandal and final track I’ll Be OK showcase her mid-tempo proficiency. How Can This Be is an enjoyable 3/4 ballad, but the highlight of the album is unquestionably Rainy Day (audio below) which builds well and lets Ailee hit plenty of vocal heights. As an article on seoulbeats.com so astutely pointed out this year, the song sounds even better with the site Rainy Mood open in another tab.
