Pilot erroR - TV Pilots that didnt make the cut.

Before a TV channel wants to spend money on something, its usually traditional for the producers to make an initial episode or TV movie which outlines the basic plot and premise of the program.

However, not all of these projects get the green light and make it as far as getting an actual full series commission, due to the fact that they are poorly timed, excessively expensive, or just being plain old crap.

I'm going to have a look at a couple of these pilot shows that were given the thumbs down from the TV people, and give my opinion of them...oh yes.

ReWind (SyFy - 2013)
Its a bit like- The Time Tunnel,Quantum Leap, Sliders

Premise -
After a terrorist group destroys New York with a nuclear bomb, an international team of  scientists and military types assemble to make use of a top secret time travel device to subtly change history so that "bad" events (usually ones that involve mass death and so on, particularly connected to the US) don't happen. However, the time travellers can only spend a short period of time in the past as the time window created by their machine only remains open for a fixed, but random, amount of time, meaning that if they fail to get back to the window, they will be stranded in the past, and, if they fail their mission, they will not be able to try again without causing a temporal paradox!
The team are aided in their efforts by a computer called the "Panopticon", which can fairly accurately predict the outcome of changes made to the past and what their knock on effect will be in the future, however the machine is not always correct.
Finally, the time travellers and their secret base are protected from changes in the time line by a side effect of the time window, so no matter what they do to change the past, they themselves will not be changed.

Plot of Pilot -
After the nuclear destruction of New York, a team travels back in time to 1929 to kill a street punk who spends the majority of his life committing crimes. This punk will eventually kill the wife of the scientist who built the nuclear bomb for the terrorists in a botched mugging attempt, sending the scientist insane, which eventually leads him to build a bomb.
The team are briefed on 1920s culture and language and given era appropriate clothing and equipment, then they step through the portal, being the first humans to attempt time travel.
they are successful in their attempt, but find that time travel is a fairly gut wrenching experience.
Once back in the past, all of the travellers are tempted to alter events to suit their own personal needs, but decide against messing around with their own personal histories.
Back at time travel HQ, the technicians find that after the travellers have departed, the amount of time they have to get back decreases, this, coupled with the fact that the travellers get lost while trying to find the guy they're supposed to kill, and end up nearly getting killed when they have a traffic accident with a moonshine bootlegger.
Just as they think they are going to fail in their mission, they find the man they are supposed to kill, and discover that he is committing crimes in order to provide for his younger sister. They decide against killing him, instead, one of the travellers poses as the mans "guardian angel", and tells him of what will happen if he continues being a criminal. The man heeds the warning and New York is restored, however the travellers run short of time to get back to the time portal, so it becomes a race against time to get back to their starting point, which is made significantly easier by one of the historians remembering that a hidden road used by bootleggers can get them back much quicker.
With seconds to spare, they make it back to the portal, and are relived to see that New York has been restored.
While they celebrate, the military liaison dresses in a winter coat, loads a gun and steps through the portal while no one is looking, which immediately causes New York to disappear again.....

So why did it fail?
While the basic premise of the show was good, the problem was it has all been done before. Both "The Time Tunnel" and "Quantum Leap" covered the whole "time travelling to change things for the better" trope, while "Sliders" covered the whole "a team of people go about alternate Earths correcting wrongs". With such a well trodden concept, and a large budget required to recreate the past, this show, if it ever made it to a full series, would have to have been really popular to justify itself.
The plot of this initial episode is fairly bland and uninteresting, I knew as soon as it was mentioned that they were going to go back in time to kill someone that there would be a reason found for them not to abuse time travel for the purposes of cold blooded murder, and it came as no surprise whatsoever that at the end someone else found a way to use the machine to fiddle around with history and cause a disaster, so as a series, each week the team of travellers would have jaunted through time fixing problems etc etc, exactly like Quantum Leap and Sliders.

Final Score - 4/10

doorways (sic) (1993)
Its a bit like -  Sliders (see later)

 
The Premise-
Our reality is not the only reality in existence, as Dr. Thomas Mason finds out when he stumbles across a young woman named "Cat". Cat has the ability to find and travel through "doorways"(sic) , which are naturally occurring portals that allow anyone stepping through them to travel to an infinite number of alternative realities. Dr. Mason and Cat travel through these portals in an effort to keep one step ahead of "The Dark Lord", an enemy from Cats home reality who relentlessly pursues her.

The Plot -
Dr.Mason MD meets a woman called "Cat", who is on the run from someone she calls "The Dark Lord", who appears to be some sort of demon/alien from her own reality. Cat struggles to convince Dr.Mason that she is telling the truth, both due to the fact that she can barely speak English, and due to the fact that the police and the FBI are wanting to have words with her.
Eventually, Cat proves she is telling the truth by showing Mason a "doorway" to another reality, which they promptly end up falling through after the bad guys catch up with them.
Cat and Dr.Mason visit various different Earths, including one where there are no petrochemicals left and the towns and highways of America are terrorized by gangs of bicycle riding punks.
Cat has a defense against the bad guys though, in the form of a weapon she stole from her own reality, which is a sort of gun that fires explosive flechettes, or, as she describes it "Fwick!...BOOM!".
Dr.Mason faces up to the fact that he wont be returning any time soon, and continues to travel with Cat hoping that they will eventually find a way for him to get back to his own reality, however no matter where they hide, the servants of the Dark Lord are always able to track them down....

Why did it fail?
Despite the series concept being created by George R.R Martin , its timing was completely wrong. The early 90s were not a good time for Sci-Fi offerings, particularly one which was as weak as "doorways" ended up being.
The pilot episode was poorly scripted and acted (With the character Cat pretty much sounding like she suffered from some sort of mental retardation, and Dr.Mason spending most of the time acting like a confused buffoon) and the special effects were of very poor quality (even by early 90s standards), Plus, the series itself would have been expensive, as each week the travellers would have had to visit an alternate Earth, which would have required a lot of money to be spent on costumes, sets and special effects. In the end, with the main characters being thoroughly unlikable, and the premise being a tad on the expensive side, the series was given the thumbs down.
Interestingly enough though, when you watch this pilot, it has many, many, many similarities with "Sliders", which eventually got greenlit 2 years after doorways had been binned. these similarities did not go unnoticed, so much so that George Martin himself had to issue a statement to say that screenwriter Tracy Torme, the creator of "Sliders", had had no involvement with "doorways" bar his agent applying for a job on his behalf as a writer.
Another interesting note is that doorways starred a young Carrie-Ann Moss , Kurtwood Smith and Max Grodenchik , all of whom later went on to find stardom in other projects.

Final Score - 3/10

Anime Review - Cardfight!! Vanguard - Link Joker (Eps 105-163) 2013

Right then, so, I've made it to Vanguards 3rd series....Link joker... , although a more accurate translation from the original Japanese would be "Chain joker", but never mind...
At the time of writing, only 48 episodes of the 59 episode series have been Released for free viewing on YouTube in English, so this review is somewhat incomplete, however the storyline is pretty simple to understand.

So, the story takes up some time after Team Q4 are victorious in the Asia circuit tournament, and Aichi has progressed from junior high school to senior high school, but, having switched schools, this means he now only really sees the other members of Team Q4 and his circle of friends when he visits Card Capital. The first few episodes of the series deal with Aichi attempting to start a "Cardfight Club" at his new school (Japanese schools place a heavy emphasis on extra curricular after school activities as a way of increasing student socialisation and learning opportunities) , however he finds that even with his enthusiasm, plus assistance from some of his friends, the prefect of the student council opposes him at every opportunity.
Its at this point the series makes a fairly big change to the established format and group of core characters, as many characters from previous series are relegated to being supporting or background characters, even Aichi himself is missing from several episodes during the mid series, where many of the stories concentrate on other characters facing problems with the series antagonist storyline, the "link joker".
"Link Joker" is the name given to a new aspect of the Void, who was the main enemy throughout series 1 and 2. simply put, the Void has now refined its tactics for conquering the planet Cray by instead of manipulating people who have "PsyQualia" powers, it applies its evil influence to anyone it can find, simply by having a cardfighter that is has possessed beat other players, who it in turn possesses by means of a technique called "Reverse". Those who are "Reversed" generally become evil, and their personality traits become a mirror opposite of their original standing, for example, in Kais case, he goes from enjoying a good game of Vanguard to simply wanting to win at all costs, generally by annihilating his opponents through the use of overpowered card mechanics, or in the case of Kenji, he goes from wanting to spread the message of truth and justice, to becoming a despotic tyrant obsessed with power. Generally, those who have been Reversed can be identified by the fact that their eyes go "dead" and they gain red facial tattoos whenever they use their power.
Only a few people, namely Aichi and Leon, are capable of resisting the power of Reverse, which not only makes the possessed evil, it also replaces cards in their deck with evil Reversed versions of their best cards.
The only way to release someone from being possessed is to bet them at a game of vanguard, which Aichi and Leon, then later joined by some of the others start doing once the Voids evil plot has been discovered.

This series gets really boring halfway through when they go back to having entire double episodes concentrating solely on a card by card play through of games, although this time round the "action" is stretched out by having cut scenes featuring flashbacks which fill in some of the lesser known characters backgrounds, which is pretty good as through this method we find out that Tetsu originally had no interest in vanguard until he met Ren, and that Kenji was originally rather crap at the game until he met  Gai and Yuri and learnt enough from being beaten by them to increase his skills and eventually surpass them.

This series also introduces a couple of new characters into Aichis circle of friends, namely Shingo Komoi, a fan of Aichi and a pretty good Vanguard player, and Naoki Ishida, a young man who originally tried to bully Aichi but was amazed by how confident Aichi became when playing Vanguard, so much to the point that he starts playing Vanguard himself being as he has never had a proper hobby himself before and finds he quite enjoys playing the game both of these characters end up being reversed at one point, and Aichi saves them).
One interesting-ish plot development is a growing attraction between Kourin (of the pop group "Ultra Rare", now a student at Aichis school) and Aichi, something which is played on after she is Reversed and becomes obsessed with Reversing him so they can be together.


So, thus far the series is fair to middlin' in content, although the storyline is basically the same as the YuGiOh! GX "Society of Light" storyline, insofar as an outside power begins beating people at a card game in order to convert them to their cause, with the fate of the world decided by who comes out on top. it really drops the ball mid series though by returning to the long drawn out cardfights between players during which the characters exchange tense and somewhat boring dialogue, again, a departure form series 2s in game dialogue, most of which was actually entertaining and somewhat funny.

My verdict on this series is that they shouldn't have tampered with a winning formula and gone back to the ridiculously over serious tones of the original series, but nontheless it isn't a bad watch.

Sci-Fi Triple threat! - Oblivion, After Earth & Enders Game

Seeing as how I feel like shit today I decided to break with tradition and watch some modern, mainstream fillums.

Yeah I know, but I'm on some strong medication at the minute so it impairs my ability to think rationally.

So the first offering from Hollywoods organ is:-

Oblivion - (2013)

Hmm, this one is based on a "hugely popular graphic novel" (that I've never heard of) and stars Tom Cruise (bad sign right there), Morgan Freeman (hes roughing it), Olga Kurylenko and some other people, none of whom I have ever heard of.

Plot then..erm, well, first off the film lambasts us for causing a shitload of environmental damage but then says that at some point post the year 2017 we get attacked by ALEONZ!111!!11, whom we promptly beat by nuking the fuck out of our own planet, thus requiring the survivors to up sticks and move to Titan (umm, why not mars?, no seriously, it is the best prospect for human colonisation and its much bigger and closer than fucking Titan...*face/palm*).
So yadda yadda yadda, Tom Cruise does some hero shit and saves the day...if you wanna know the full plot go watch it....however, I do have the following criticisms, which are spoilers:-

#1 - Cliche-o-rama.
If you can think of a cliche, this film has it.
There's the obligatory implied sex scenes (in order to give the audience some level of titillation while at the same time making sure that it is suitable for teen aged audiences), theres an aerial chase scene in which the aircraft is flown into and chased along a canyon, escaping by flying through an impossibly narrow crack, there's a machine gun battle, there are drawn out "kung fu esque" fist fights, and at one point, Mr Cruise gets to ride a motorbike (like he does in nearly every film he is in)

#2 - "you will find this woman attractive".
Hollywood likes to tell the male audience who they should have sexual fantasies over, and in which order of preference they should play with themselves over the pieces of meat that are paraded on screen.
In this case, we are initially told to find Andrea Riseborough attractive, because for some reason she seems to spend most of the film being stereotypically British, as well as having seemingly permanently dialated pupils (a sign of female sexual arousal). She also spends a lot of time wearing just enough so that you  cant see any skin, but not so much as you don't get a hint of tit from time to time (although you get full on arse when she decides to go for random swim, however thanks to the miracle of airbrushing, there's no boob or pubic region on show - sowwee boys, but this is a 12a cert film).
All of this careful teasing though goes straight out the window once Olga character makes her appearance, in which case she becomes the main lust interest of the piece but operates under the same rules, no skin, "funny" accent and oddly enough but something I'm noticing a lot in modern films, "women go barefoot during emotional scenes"...yeah, keep a look out for it, every time an emotional scene/romantic scene is played out in this movie, the women are always barefoot, but during scenes where they are supposed to be relaxing or conducting business type dialogue, they suddenly remember to wear their stiletto heels. Hollywood has a foot fetish.

#3 - Heroic bloodshed.
The films two heroes gets to die a glorious death to save the human race, but one of them manages to come back (hint: its not the black guy)...yeah I know this should really be a cliche but seriously, its a cop out ending.

So all in all, I Give Oblivion a 7 out of 10, because although its a cliche ridden piece of cheese, its still somewhat entertaining and the visual effects are quite pretty to look at. Id have given it an 8/10, but the wooden acting and cliche shit put me off.

After Earth - 2013

So, this one is based on an idea by Will Smith himself, so he did what he usually does and casts himself and his son in the two lead roles.
I'm not gonna bother going into the plot for this one because simply put, there isn't anything really worth mentioning.
Suffice to say,t his entire film is a simple "why does my daddy not love me" story which didn't need to have the sci-fi element tacked on to it (the story could easilly have been told in modern times with father and son being out on a camping trip together or something), being as that the only real major plot element hinges on "Kitai" (Smith jr) getting his daddys (Smith sr) respect by overcoming his fear and killing a bear-monster in order to save his injured dad.

An awful piece of pseudo sci-fi trash which is obviously influenced in some manner by scientology, and goes on way, way too long to be interesting in any way, shape or form.

3/10 - simply for some impressive special effects.

Enders Game - 2013

Based on the popular sci-fi/moralising series of novels by Orson Scott Card, the film stars Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley and some kids who ive never heard of.
Essentially a "Harry Potter in space" type affair, Enders game tells the story of a young outcast who manages to get ahead in life simply by being smarter than just about everyone  around him, although that said, his childlike naivete doesnt allow him to see when he is being manipulated.

I quite enjoyed this film, out of the three I watched tonight, it was my favourite. Although some of the scenes in the film watch like bad passages from any number of "weird school" type books (which in essence is the archetype that Enders game falls into, hence why I said "Harry Potter in space"), and the film tones down the level of violence and aggression found in the original book somewhat, the main storyline manages to survive on to film more or less intact.
Harrison Ford makes a good performance as the ruthless and pragmatic colonel Graff, and even Asa Butterfield manages to play "Ender" Wiggins very well, alternating between his naive childlike state to his ruthless and sometimes sadistic state without making it seem false or forced.

The story itself is an interesting one, which essentially boils down to a tale of a young man striving for acceptance and eventually learning to firstly accept the consequences of his actions, and secondly to take an active role in controlling his own life and destiny, rather than simply tagging along for the ride as many of his contemporaries do.
The film also takes on the subject of bullying in a fairly positive way, commending careful consideration of options before taking matters into your own hands.

Yeah, I liked this film - 9/10

Film Review:- "Riddick" (2013)

Hmm, so, after seeing the somewhat lackluster "The chronicles of Riddick" many years ago (which at one point went on to become a staple filler of ITV2s late night film slots) I didn't hold out much hope of there ever being another film about the seemingly invincible ninja assassin type, save for video game entries, (none of which I have ever gotten round to playing) so, it came as something of a surprise when during a visit to my local ASDA I saw "Riddick" on sale in the DVD section.
Showing how much attention I pay to modern cinema, I wasn't even aware that this film had been made, let alone had been out long enough to be published on DVD/Blu-Ray (I don't get this newfangled Blu-ray stuff).

Now, being as I somewhat enjoyed the original "Pitch Black", and found "Chronicles" to be mildly interesting, I thought I might as well give this one a shot....

                                                                      ....Oh dear....

So, at the end of "Chronicles", Riddick seemingly got the answers to all the questions he had about his life, and became literally a king by his own hand by slaying the enemy who had put his own people to death (erm...isn't that the plot to Conan??) , so, realistically there wasn't anywhere more for the plot line to explore, however, Vin Diesel himself wasn't happy to see the character he had made his own (even more so than Dominic Toretto, who wasn't as much of a breakout character as Riddick ended up being ) get some sort of closure, so instead, old Vinny-boy decided he wanted to finance a third entry in the series, even appearing in a cameo role in "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" in order to secure the rights to the Riddick franchise for himself, then employing the services of David Twohy as chief writer to bring his ideas for the further adventures of the ninja-assassin to the screen once again.

The film starts with Riddick, still dressed in his Grand Marshall armour, being attacked by a carrion eater as he lies buried under rocks and dirt on an un named planet.
A flashback sequence tells the tale that after Riddick became Grand Marshall of the Necromonger fleet, he rapidly began to lose his power base after his refusal to convert to the necromonger religion, and thus a campaign of intrigue sees him being left stranded on the planet he is now on.
after picking himself up and dusting himself off etc etc, he finds himself being hunted by two teams of mercenaries, before he escapes the planet and heads off for further adventures.

Yeah, thats it, the films plot in a nutshell, and trust me, theres not much more to it than that.
Riddick spends about half of the film playing a "Robinson Crusoe" type role and acting as his own biographer in a series of laconic voiceovers, then after the merc guys turn up, its a predictable sequence of events as he picks them off one by one by being cleverer than them.

I'll say it, this film is boring as fuck, even the action bits are yawnsome, the "character development" as it is is bland and completely uninteresting, and while watching the film I kept thinking "something awesome is gonna happen soon..." but alas, it was not to be.

Riddick, the project financed and produced by Vin Diesel himself, is nothing but a self indulgent vanity project which falls flat on its arse, promising so much and absolutely failing to deliver, apart from you get to see Katee Sackhoffs tits...thats probably the only bit of the film I liked.

I give it 3 pairs of goggles out of 10, and thats only for the special effects and Katee Sackhoffs "celestial orbs".

Batman: Arkham Origins (2013)

Ahh, theres always something nice about popping a copy of the latest "Arkham" game into the old XboX and then spending hideous amounts of time beating random people up, just so I have an excuse to say "I'm Batmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan" after they've all been beaten to a pulp.

So having immensely enjoyed "Arkham Asylum" and "Arkham City", it was a no brainer when "Arkham Origins" came out. Now, I may not have gotten it on release day like I had planned to, due to the job I had at the time thinking it was ok to employ people to work a 60 hour week for subsistence wages, with no breaks, meal time, holiday time etc etc, so the Bat didn't a come calling to my Xbox until my birthday in December, but, was it worth the wait?...well, yes and no.

First impressions upon starting the game were generally favourable, the control system was pretty much the same as the previous two entries, the game mechanics and sandbox environment made for good non linear playability, with no nasty "forced" action turning up when you're not ready for it, and the storyline was interesting enough to make it worth not skipping cut scenes. In addition, the side missions added the extra level of play time that I had gotten used to from the previous entries.
There were however some problems, but I will address those later..

The plot itself isn't too bad, albeit not as immersive as the previous games, in a nutshell, five years before the events of "Arkham asylum", on Christmas eve, the villain Black Mask places a bounty of $50 million on Batmans head. Batman, who at this point in time is still fairly new to the superhero game, finds himself being assailed by numerous deadly assassins in the form of Deathstroke, Deadshot, Copperhead, Electrocutioner, Shiva and Bane, as well as having to deal with the up and coming crime boss Oswald Cobblepot (who has taken to giving away free automatic weapons to Gothams street punks), and a mass breakout of prisoners form the nearby Blackgate prison, then to add final insult to injury, Batman finds himself having to deal with the shadowy high tech blackmailer known as "Enigma", the rebellious terrorist "Anarky", and a new villain who goes by the name "Joker".
Aided in his very busy night by Alfred and Barbara Gordon, Batman has to put a stop to all the criminal shenannigans and convince the mostly corrupt Gotham City Police that hes only trying to help.

Right, so, as I have said,  the game plays pretty much identical to the previous games, and as such, the problems I had with them have been carried over to this game..

• Over/Under responsive and unforgiving controls - The combat system is fairly straight forward, hitting the X, Y and B buttons makes Batman launch a flurry of punches, kicks, throws and so on, then comboing them with the A, Lt and Rt buttons allows use of gadgets, combos, beatdown and takedown moves. This is all fine, however the games extensive "freeflow" combat system places a massive emphasis on keeping the flow of combat moving continuously in order to rack up the XP bonuses and to increase damage from attacks, which would be fine if it were not for the fact that it is ridiculously easy to lose control of the combat due to it being so quick and intensive, especially so when you have  a couple of shield or knife wielding thugs backed up by armoured brutes or Venom supercharged gorilla thugs thrown in there for good measure. Quite often I find ill be in the middle of a 50 odd hit combo, only to find that Batman will fail to jump in the direction I'm pointing him in to attack someone, and will instead just stand still and throw a punch at thin air, or, more worse, will fail to counter an attack aimed at him while I'm mashing the counter button in the correct direction at the right time. Missing the timing quite often leads to the Dark Night getting his head caved in.
• Playtime - From start to finish, the main storyline took me about 10-12 hours of play, and, at the time of writing, I'm about 90% of the way through picking up the side mission stuff and finishing all the "Dark Knight" side objectives. Thus far ive spent about 20 or so hours total on the game and have pretty much completed all the "standard" stuff, seems a bit short to me.
• Replay - Ok, so completing the story mode unlocks the "New Game Plus" mode, which is basically a second play through of the main story, just harder due to no on screen prompts and more bad guys. The side missions this time round though are pretty easy, the Enigma data gathering is MUCH easier than the Riddler challenges of the previous two games, and the other most wanted side missions generally consist of beating somebody or a group of somebodies up. That said though, the crime scene reconstruction missions are pretty interesting, although they too end in you having to find someone and beat them up.

I dunno, although I do like this game, it is the weakest of the trilogy, basically being little more than the "Arkham" series' answer to "Batman Begins". Its storyline, although good, is nothing compared to the others, insofar as it seems fairly bland by comparison.
Also, large sections of the game world are almost identical copies of locations found in "Arkham City", which ok, fair enough, it is supposed to be the same location, but to me this seems lazy, as literally some of the areas are carbon copies from the previous game.
Finally, a lot of the games achievments are gotten from online play, and a hell of a lot of time is spent on promoting DLC and multiplayer content *sigh*

So all in all, "Batman: Arkham Origins" isnt bad, its not great either, and could have been tons better.

7 out of 10 broken noses.
 

Anime Review - Mysterious Cities of Gold - Series 2

So, 29 years after the original series ended, the new series is finally here..finally, I mean, its not like there haven't been numerous announcements that the series would return before, but this time round, something has actually materialised.

Although "series 2" of MCoG was first officially shown in France during Christmas 2012, its only now, near Christmas 2013, that the English dub has finally surfaced, and, unusually for a series which has been so eagerly anticipated, it is being shown on an obscure satellite TV channel called "Kix!".

Contrary to what people were saying prior to its release, this series is NOT a reboot or a redo of the original, but is instead a fully fledged sequel, using the same characters, and chronicles their further adventures after the ending of the first series.

Thus far, five episodes have aired on Kix!, and, at the time of writing this, the first two episodes are available to view on their website (HERE ), but the entire series is planned to have 26 episodes.

The storyline takes place roughly one year after the original series ended. Esteban, Tao and Zia took off in the Great Golden Condor in search of the remaining six cities of gold, while Mendoza, Sancho and Pedro decided to return to Spain, having salvaged a fortune in gold from the city they found (which was subsequently destroyed).

The series prologue however shows that when Mendoza et al returned home, they had their fortunes confiscated and were thrown in prison by a mysterious robed and hooded man, who is also seeking the location of the remaining cities of gold.
The robed man sets an elaborate trap to lure Esteban and Zia back to Spain, using Mendoza as bait, after he discovers that they have come into possession of an ancient map which shows the location of the remaining cities.
After mounting a daring rescue, Esteban and company manage to decode the map, and set course for China.

As it stands, the series looks set to take place entirely in China, other than for the first two episodes which serve to move the story on from where it originally finished.
Stylistically, there series has not changed, even though the animators are now using cel-shaded animation in place of traditional (and more expensive) ink and paint, they still manage to recreate the characters exactly how they looked back in 1983.
That said, the use of computer aided animation has allowed some of the on screen effects to be updated, for example, the Great Golden Condor now looks more realistic (or as realistic as a giant flying machine made of gold and shaped like a condor can look), as the animators have included moving feathers to the wingtips, and a pair of jet exhausts to the tail.
One notable but odd change is made in the form of close ups of swords showing they have rounded, non lethal tips, but yet spears, arrowheads and knives are shown still with nice pointy stabby ends, and even at one point a man shoots at Esteban with a musket but misses, so the original series' "peril" is still present in this series, although they seem to be attempting to sanitise it.

Some slight changes in dialogue have occurred as well, for example, in the first series, Tao would refer to his people as "the people of Hiva", whereas now their original name of "the people of Mu" is used instead.

So, thus far, im quite impressed with the series, and am looking forward to the remaining episodes. It still, well, thus far anyways, manages to keep the blend of historical, sci-fi, fantasy and adventure without allowing one aspect to overpower the rest, like the original did....keep it up!

Book Review:- Strange Playgrounds (2013)

I’ll be the first to admit that the horror genre is not my cup of tea, having tried and failed several times in the past to enjoy the scribblings of King, Lovecraft, Koontz etc., I’ve mostly resigned myself to giving up on finding anything in the genre that I can find enjoyable.

I don’t know why this is, could be because I’m fairly desensitised to shock, could be because when I’m reading the books I have problems with suspension of disbelief, or it could be that I can usually figure out what is going to happen after only reading a few chapters, thus the only enjoyment I usually get from them in that instance is proving myself right, and occasionally being surprised when I find I’ve made a mistake (which doesn’t happen too often).

So, back on subject, a friend of mine by the name of George Daniel Lea recently had his first book published, and after seeing the time and effort he has poured into it over the past 18 months or so, I decided to give it a go, the end result of his efforts being the aforementioned “Strange playgrounds”.

Strange Playgrounds is a collection of short stories (although it could be argued that some of them are closer to being novellas) concentrating on the darker side of human nature, specifically obsessions, deviances and lusts.

The stories themselves are written with a number of influences, most notably the works of Clive Barker but also showing the subtle influences of writers such as H.P Lovecraft and Bram Stoker, although a couple of the stories would seem more at home as being described as being influenced by TV shows such as The Twilight Zone and/or The Outer Limits.

To classify this book as simply being a “horror” novel would do it a grave disservice (pardon the pun), as it is

Many old clichés of the horror genre are given a new twist, including new ways of looking at vampire and werewolf mythology, as well as one story which bears some of the hallmarks of being a rather nice blend of cyberpunk and psychological horror.

Unfortunately though, that said, the stories themselves do suffer from one fatal flaw.

In many of the stories, the author explores the depths of human depravity quite well, but many readers will almost certainly be put off by the large amount of sexual content, particularly of the homoerotic kind, which, and I’m going to be honest, I did find somewhat tiresome after a while, especially so in some of the stories where it had an almost “tacked on” feel, and offered no real benefit to the plot development as a whole.

While the author himself is openly homosexual (of which I have no objection to or opinion on, before anyone starts) I do feel that a lot of the unnecessary sexual content could be expunged and the storylines, as brief as they are, would suffer no detriment.

That said, the prose itself does a wonderful job of being very descriptive where it needs to be, leaving the reader to fill in certain blanks as they please, but not so much as it makes you feel like you’re the one doing all the work.

So, to sum up, Strange Playgrounds isn’t half bad for the debut publication from a new author, and although it isn’t really my cup of tea, it will almost certainly appeal to fans of this particular sub-genre of horror, but I would not recommend it to those of a nervous disposition, or for the easily offended.