Raithe

For another upcoming thing... Apparently Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie are going to be sharing screen time on a 6 part mini-series adaption of The Night Manager in the new year. Based on the book by John Le Carre (the man who gave us Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy among many others), so a post cold war espionage tale that gets described as more bromance than outright thriller..

The Revenant. Well made, good acting, great visuals of the landscape but it's.. hm. It's a very slow paced thing. Not to put a spoiler on it but the first hour sets up events, the 2nd hour is DeCaprio surviving, and then the last half an hour is the resolution.

io9 - How to make people fall in love with your ridiculously competent hero

He Never Died. A nice little twist of horror, drama and comedy wrapped up in a noirish bundle. Henry Rollins as 'Jack' a social outcast, living in a rut battling depression with a mysterious past and a slight supernatural twist. Until one day, a daughter he never knew about turns up on his door and is promptly kidnapped by some local organised crime element. Hard to describe without leaving spoilers, but it has a fairly strong supporting cast to that mix of blood splattering violence all done with that slightly surreal comedic edge.

It was good. Silly, but good. And the last episode was really well done.

Hm, I have to admit while I'm waiting to see how much this shapes up there are a few small irritations. Every time I log into RSI I have to request a new password, because it apparently forgets what my password is. Or rather it continuously tells me I'm using the wrong one. I reset it, it'll work for a day, and then the next day "this is not the correct password". Which is also annoying since I can't test out the Star Citizen launcher. It always tells me its an invalid login.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhCWw0E_mVY

I can't really get in the right frame of mood to play anything at the moment. I should have another poke at TOR, I just need to get the contacts from 18 to 20, so that's like a weeks worth of heroics to be done. And I have GTAV to complete at some point if I can carve some time to go through it.....

So obviously USA Today wanted to go with the nerdbaiting..

Abrams said in a recent interview that one of the things he most wanted about Kylo Ren was for him not to be a fully formed, complete Villain. But much more of a work in progress, someone who is still kind of using the training wheels and on the path to becoming a complete villain. So that there would be the potential of the new trilogy showing that growth as much as you see the heroic characters evolve. I guess in many ways it'll be hard to judge until you have all three to watch together, whether the complete trilogy will satisfy the potential flaws if this had just been a solo film meant to stand on its own merits rather than as just the first third of a story.

It does capture a lot of the magic of the original films. It is good in its own right. But I find I can't qualify it as great due to the lack of appropriate music and that it is so much of a re-tread of what has been done before.

I'm guessing that whole Vader as the big, strong, enforcer type who was helping bring order to a chaotic and corrupt galaxy. Not someone distracted by petty weaknesses, but ruthlessly capable kind of thing. Think about it, you're a confused adolescent who found out you have this great power.. Your mother is this heroic member of the government who is always busy saving other people, and your father keeps wandering off for excitement with his best friend. You get dumped on your uncle to train, but you're struggling with self-identity, worried about being considered weak, and then along comes someone to tell you about your grandfather. The man who was an iron fist and provided stability and was respected by the people he worked with.... Edit: Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPV9NNvtL20

I think Kylo Ren does make an interesting character. Taking a step back to look at it all, He is a conflicted character. He feels the good inhimself, but wants to be Vader. It's why he loses to Rey. He's not fully commited, trying to convince himself he's as badass as Vader, but isn't. He can't handle adversity. When an enemy he expects to be a push over holds their ground, he's afraid. Rey has that moment where she connects to the force, and it's from that that she pushes back and he loses his confidence. Before that point, he was using the pain of his wound to feed into his anger and force use. When his confidence shakes, he loses that and gets his ass kicked. When he has the helmet on, he's pushing the whole Vader vibe. But when Vader would have killed a nearby Imperial for failure, he just throws a tantrum and damages the room he happens to be in. Very much the adolescent style. Whenever you have those scenes where his helmet is off, it's deliberately showing him as that more humanised, young, not as confident as he tries to appear. Edit: And for the other Star Wars related news.. Something David Prowse mentioned:

And from Abrams.. Also for those that might have missed it, Daniel Craig was the Storm Trooper in the cell who gets mind tricked into dropping his blaster...

It's not really grumbling over it per se. It's more.. I think if they'd blazed a completely original story it would have made it better than simply a "good but.." sort of film. I

Just saw it as my first Imax experience. It was that... hm. I'm conflicted. It has that "good but.." vibe. As a general movie it was good. On most things a lot better paced, acted and looking than all of the prequels. However, as has been mentioned now, it also basically re-runs a lot of A New Hope with little twists. But the one major problem I have with it.. is the music. Sure, the blended in pieces from the original trilogy are nice call to emotions and events, but there is not one single stand out piece of recognisable music that is The Force Awakens own. At least the prequels did have that nailed, even if you didn't like the music, you had bits that were distinctly recognisable and tied to each film.

I like how people have stopped using spoilers when mentioning direct points of the film rather than general impressions...

Since we're diverting from Star Wars slightly...