The paddle can shoot a marvelous display of laser bullets.

Shatter is also free with a PlayStation Plus subscription which is how I found it. Which, by the way, so far has been a good deal at $18 for three months or $50 for a year. I’ve downloaded dozens of themes and tons of free games since I subscribed in August. Of course, you can’t keep the games when you stop PSN+, but most of the games aren’t worth keeping either. Except Shatter!

Now mind you I have read three of the four books and watched the first two movies so I had expectations for this film and on some levels you could say I was disappointed.

Story
In an attempt to cram every last bit of the book into a two-hour film, it seems the writers overlooked the fact that watching this all at once is a tad nerve racking. You’re never given a moment to think because there’s always something happening. Depending on your taste, this is either good or bad.

It may be good due to the fact that the movies are primarily for those whom have already read the books and are expecting every last bit in the film.

On the other hand if you’ve only ever watched the movies or are just jumping into the saga for this film (which I strongly urge against) you may not be happy with all the story being thrown your way at once and it’s possible you’ll be lost at times.

Choreography & CG Animation
I’m not going to lie the action sequences were intense. It took a good portion of the film to build up for the finale but it was well worth the wait for an incredible battle that easily made it’s way on my top ten.

Now it wasn’t necessarily the battle itself that was so amazing but more so it was the delivery. The sound effects, animations, choreography, and editing were perfected leaving you with an ultra-realistic battle royale. I could go on about it but it really has to be seen to be appreciated so I’d advise you to check it out when you have the chance.

Soundtrack & Score
The soundtrack and score of the Twilight Saga films have always matched their corresponding feature perfectly and Eclipse is no exception. I was only disappointed that Muse’s track recorded solely for the movie was probably played for about ten seconds and in the background no less. To whomever chose the music sequence for the movie, have some respect for Muse.

So to sum it all up, I liked the movie, I expected more but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. They were high expectations to be honest and because of them I probably didn’t enjoy the movie to its fullest extent which is why I’ll be checking it out again. I’d recommend it anyone, there’s actually a more than decent film behind all the ridiculous criticism the franchise gets for its portrayal of vampires and overload on romance, but that’s what this series is about so I don’t see any reason in pointing out the obvious. So if you’re going to hate on the franchise at least give it a chance, don’t just senselessly follow the crowd.

8/10

Reposted from: TechVoo

London’s current rendition of the musical sees a few modifications to bring it up to the times: a reference to George Bush is changed to a reference to BP, alongside a few minor removals of comments deemed slightly too racist for the show – although, as explained in the song “Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist”, perhaps people are taking the show a bit too seriously if they find it racist. After all, the performance is largely carried by puppets, albeit extremely expressive ones. It’s hard to describe the visual aspect of Avenue Q; suffice it to say that it’s seamless and filled with character.

Despite the use of puppets, the show remains targeted at a mature audience, not at children; repetitive use of profanity and one explicit puppet sex scene (including a variety of types and positions) should deter you from bringing any children younger than 13 to the show, even if there is no real age restriction. All in all, I recommend Avenue Q to anyone with an open mind and a great sense of humour: it’s officially my favourite musical and it was one of the best live performances I’ve ever seen (and while I can’t speak for the Broadway production, I’m sure it’s just as good, if not better). See it now!

The plot involves Jim Sturgess as Jude, a young man from Liverpool who illegally moves to America to see his estranged father. While doing this, he runs into Max (Joe Anderson), who introduces him to rich college life — knocking golf balls through windows, running away from people, going to pubs, singing about true love, and smoking pot. This, of course, turns Jude and Max into fast friends, so Max invites him over to his mansion for Thanksgiving. There, Jude meets his love interest, Max’s sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood). Max drops out of college and decides to go bohemian in New York with Jude, moving in with the aspiring singer Sadie (Dana Fuchs), her guitarist Jojo (Martin Luther), and yet-another-Beatles-reference Prudence (T.V. Carpio). Soon thereafter, Max is drafted into the Vietnam War, and the movie follows the hippies into a long drug-laden anti-war message, with Jude as the tortured vaguely-apolitical artist who just wants to be with Lucy.

Obviously none of the Beatles songs in the film were written with this plot in mind, so it’s all working backwards from lyrics written almost fifty years ago. With that in mind, I think it does an incredibly good job. Yeah, it doesn’t always make a lot of sense, but that’s more the writing than anything. The actual plot does make sense, it just sort of gets lost under all the music. Watch the movie a second time if you don’t understand it the first; trust me, there are going to be things you missed. There are only a few songs that really seem forced, I think. Most of the music is incorporated very well into the story, and the fact that it’s often only tangentially related to the movie kind of makes thematic sense — this is, after all, a trippy movie about the sixties.

Cinematography is gorgeous overall. The dance numbers all seem very well choreographed to me, not that I know anything about dancing. The singing is very good, doing admirable justice to the original songs while still changing them enough to befit different voices (women, most obviously). Special mention goes to Sturgess’s hair, which beats Mia Wasikowska’s Alice in Wonderland style for the Bran’s Favourite Hair award. Seriously, I’m drooling on my keyboard over here.

Here’s a little rundown of the songs, since they’re so important:

Girl: Strong choice to open the movie on. It functions like the chorus in a classic play, summarizing some of the key plot points of the movie. Very effective.

Hold Me Tight: This is just used to introduce Lucy early, before she’s met Jude in-story. For some reason the soundtrack disc excludes the bass that’s in the movie, which makes the song a lot more like the original — and thus, a lot less interesting. If you’re going to cover a song, make it different, otherwise why cover it at all?

All My Loving: Ironically used by Jude to console his British girlfriend. The fact that he breaks all the promises in this song makes him 1) an asshole, and 2) an honest portrayal of long-distance relationships. Zing!

I Want to Hold Your Hand: Sung by a woman despite the “I want to be your man” line, which gets turned into a joke about heteronormative relationship values being applied to homosexual relationships. (I might be reading too much into that.) It’s not especially important to the movie, but it’s still a pretty decent musical number.

With a Little Help From My Friends: Kind of a lame cover, but used quite well in the film to show Jude and Max bonding. Drugs are absent from the movie until this song, when they suddenly appear two seconds before the relevant line in the song — am I only one who finds that hilarious?

It Won’t Be Long: Lucy’s equivalent to Jude’s All My Loving, but with less blatant lies. Fairly bland.

I’ve Just Seen a Face: I like this cover way more than the original Beatles song, which had sort of a country feel to it. I wish it was a bit longer in the movie, but oh well. It’s really catchy and highlights Jim Sturgess’s amazing singing talent (as if the rest of the music didn’t already do that).

Let It Be: Pretty sure I’m the only person in the world who doesn’t like this song. The original is boring pretentious shit and this version is no different.

Come Together: The lyrics have nothing to do with anything, but what did you expect from a song with stuff like “He got monkey finger, he shoot Coca-Cola”? The cover is pretty good and is used in the movie to introduce Jojo as a soulful musician — for that purpose, it does a great job. I’m still waiting for someone to use this song for a sex scene, though.

Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?: Used mostly as background music in a pub that Jude and Lucy go to. Nothing to really say.

If I Fell: Again, nothing to really say. It’s just Lucy falling in love with Jude.

I Want You (She’s So Heavy): Not an especially great cover, but used amazingly in the movie. “I want you” refers as much to lust as it does to the military Uncle Sam posters. “She’s so heavy” shows the soldiers carrying the Statue of Liberty. There has never been a less subtle anti-war message, but that’s what makes it so great. Your mileage may vary on the music video; I love it, but I can see why it would be unpopular. The only complaint I have is that I wanted more of that famous guitar riff in the song.

Dear Prudence: Nothing to say again. It’s a pretty good cover, but not really relevant to the plot at all.

I Am the Walrus: Sung by Bono as a shameless expy of Ken Kesey, while driving the gang across the country in his psychedelic van. Everyone is on LSD by this point (seriously), so the lyrics actually kind of make sense. Bono’s character is irrelevant and just used as an excuse to show off the hippies; I would have preferred it if the movie had come with an excuse to show the Vietnam war instead, but at least this song is good.

Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!: Absolutely terrible cover of a song that wasn’t really that great to begin with. Makes no sense whatsoever in the movie. Bad in every possible way.

Because: More irrelevant stuff from the LSD trip. This and Mr. Kite should have been cut from the movie entirely.

Something: The cover isn’t nearly as good as the original, but at least we’re done with the LSD trip by this point in the movie. I don’t know why we need yet another song explaining how and why Jude loves Lucy, but this is the right place to put it, right before their relationship starts getting turbulent. Good musical number overall.

Oh! Darling: Sadie and Jojo play this song on-stage. It’s pretty good.

Strawberry Fields Forever: I’ve always liked this song, but this cover is even better. This is without a doubt the best song in the whole movie. Jude sings it while designing a strawberry logo for Sadie’s band, intercut with Max in the war singing with him. The strawberries are used as a metaphor for hearts and grenades, with the juice (the blood) being related to both of them. I’m not normally a big fan of the “true art is angsty” tone that it has, but it really does work here. It’s hard to explain without seeing the movie, but suffice to say: this one is incredible.

Revolution: Another great song, sung during a fight scene with no trippy effects added in post — very effective. I think Jim Sturgess could stand to sound a bit more angry, but oh well. The Chairman Mao line is just as clever as always.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps: Just used to show Jojo going solo with his music. A decent song. Not much to say.

Across the Universe: Very emotional, about on par with the original. I was expecting this to be a big song, given that the film is named after it, but it sort of just gets glanced over. It doesn’t even end properly, as it gets mixed into the beginning of the next song.

Helter Skelter: Way worse than the original, and used quite badly in the film. It gets mixed into the ending of Across the Universe (the song) and just comes across as really dissonant and anticlimactic for a scene that’s probably supposed to be the climax. The lyrics are used entirely as a metaphor for chaos; the actual Helter Skelter slide doesn’t appear in the movie.

Happiness Is a Warm Gun: Reinterpreted really effectively to be about a character’s morphine addiction. I’m not a fan of the ridiculous dancing in the movie, though.

Blackbird: The lyrics are completely irrelevant as far as I know, but it’s still an emotional song that’s used effectively to show someone’s sadness.

Hey Jude: It takes a long time to get to Jude’s song, but it’s worth it. The song is exciting and uplifting after all the sad/angry songs that lead up to it. If the original still gets stuck in your head, this one will too. Icing on the cake: the lyrics make perfect sense in the film. I’m going to guess it was one of the songs the plot was specifically built around.

Don’t Let Me Down: Not a lot to say. This one’s mostly in the background, just to set up the last song.

All You Need Is Love: I’ve honestly never really understood why everyone likes this song so much. It’s not bad, but it’s not that special either — the Beatles have definitely made better songs. Still, its use in this movie is pretty strong and finishes the story on a high note. Jim Sturgess injects a lot of emotion into the first few verses before the others come in, which really helps.

Across the Universe is a movie with a great context and a lot of subtext, but very little actual text. It’s an emotional film that can make you feel something if you let it. It’s just not the kind of movie you can really quote to your friends. I recall the first time I saw the trailer for Across the Universe in theatres, my friend Robin yelled “What the fuck?” across the room. That about sums it up.

The completion of this task, the so-called “inception”, is vital for team leader Dominic Cobb; unable to return home to his children because of legal complications, he is forced to stay on the run, taking jobs to attempt to buy his way back home. Client Saito’s job offer is irresistible: a powerful figure in the energy market, Saito promises to use his connections to let Cobb return home, presuming the inception is successful. What is already a difficult task is complicated by the presence of Cobb’s subconscious projection of his dead wife Mal, seemingly intent on sabotaging his missions to convince him to stay in the dream world with her forever.

Cobb and Mal’s relationship and the circumstances surrounding her death are key plot points in the film; explained through dream sequences, snippets and emotionally charged flashbacks, Nolan does an excellent job of teasing us with the details and leaving us to guess the rest as he returns to the mission. Perhaps most interesting about the situation is that Mal is only a projection of Cobb’s subconscious, and her anger and attempts to trap him are influenced primarily by the guilt with which he is wracked over the notion he is responsible for her death. His physical conflict with her in the dream world represents his internal turmoil; reconciliation would be akin to coming to terms with her death, and the plot accurately depicts the difficulty involved in forgiving oneself.

A definite master of intrigue, Nolan’s primary policy appears to be that of hiding the secrets until the very end; he lets the film become serious and dark before adding a dash of humour to bring the audience back into the action. There’s no break for thinking: in flashbacks, you’ll be lost in the plot, deeply analytical and trying to guess the meaning; then you’ll be thrust back into the action and the accompanying state of awe as we enjoy fast-paced, gravity-defying fight scenes rivalling those unreal, carefully choreographed scenes seen in The Matrix. His preference for practical effects over computer-generated is admirable; even the most complex fight sequences were patiently shot over and over, take after take to match his artistic vision. There’s nothing trivial about the 100-foot motorised hallway set built in-studio, turning at a speed of eight revolutions per second to simulate shifts in gravity; this is the way special effects should be done.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt skilfully navigates the spinning set, throwing his armed assailants against the wall as gravity changes to his advantage; his character is Cobb’s curiously-mannered point man; perhaps even more curious about the character are the similarities in his mannerisms to those of Gordon-Levitt’s last role, Tom in Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer. Undoubtedly a unique and talented actor, it is somewhat interesting to note that he isn’t engaging his full potential here. The fight scenes are awe-inspiring and epic, but in brainstorming sessions it’s easy to forget you’re meant to be watching a trained extractor and point man, not a smitten greetings card writer.

A better example of acting talent well explored is in the case of Ellen Page, perhaps best known for her role as the eponymous heroine in 2007’s drama-comedy Juno, who portrays architect Ariadne, hired to design the levels within the dream to create the impression of realism for the subject they are attempting to deceive. Nolan’s idea here is wonderful; the world, designed by the architect, is populated by projected manifestations of the subject’s subconscious after they are drawn into the dream. However, if the dreamer changes the world of the dream too much, the subject will subconsciously attempt to find and eliminate the dreamer through whatever means possible. In some cases, the subconscious projections are militarised thanks to training by another extractor, making the process more difficult.

Inception is, without a doubt, the best film of the year so far, and is far more impressive than Nolan’s last work, The Dark Knight. Combining a clever plot with strong, emotionally-charged acting and some breathtaking action sequences, Inception will probably go down as one of my favourite recent films. If you haven’t already seen it, see it now; if you have seen it, you’ll know exactly why I’m such a fan of this film.

Matthew Vaughn, someone I’m totally unfamiliar with, does a good job directing. The action scenes are colourful and inventive in a way that’s awesome rather than just silly — though it is a bit silly in a way that’s appropriate for a film that’s mostly a spoof of the superhero genre. The film has a very modern look without turning its action scenes into an incomprehensible series of blurry close-ups like so many movies do nowadays. It also features a voice-over from the main character (a narrative device I’m in love with for some reason, so bias ahoy). The movie is technically very well-made: Big Daddy’s big action scene, in which the camera zooms through a security recording and smoothly pans across a large rectangular room, is particularly memorable both as a technical achievement and as an ingenious storytelling device (allowing us to see the entire room without being confined to the security camera we’re supposed to be looking at, without losing coherence).

The story takes a leaf out of Christopher Nolan’s idea trough, following Dave’s transition into the masked vigilante Kick-Ass, how he gets known across the city, and how he takes on the mob first and a supervillain second. Like Batman, the movie keeps to a sketchy sort of “realism” which is just barely realistic enough to fit the theme. Kick-Ass gains worldwide popularity through a MySpace page and a shaky YouTube video, becoming famous in the course of a few weeks.

If you asked Bruce Wayne how he picked his costume, you’d get a vague, “Well, bats are kind of scary I guess.” If you asked Dave Lizewski, you’d get the more succinct, “I dunno.” Keeping in mind that the movie is not supposed to be especially serious, I give it points for cutting the crap and getting right to the point. In fact, that’s the main thing I like about this movie. It really doesn’t mess around at all. Dave becomes a superhero less then fifteen minutes into the film, flatly cutting through that “first hour of the movie is an origin story” bullshit that every other superhero movie does.

The only thing that bugs me about it is the last fifteen minutes. After a startlingly effective tonal shift from comedy to drama during the rising action, the actual climax of the movie is very disappointing. Instead of resolving any of the movie’s themes or being at all consistent, we have a huge fight scene that isn’t even focused on the main character — instead, it’s focused on Hit-Girl, now playing the role of Steve Urkel. It’s okay until the last few moments, when the movie suddenly remembers that Hit-Girl isn’t the protagonist, at which point Dave spontaneously appears out of nowhere, having now gained the superpower of not going deaf when firing two Gatling guns on either side of his head.

Funny? Sure. Awesome? Okay, sure. Consistent? No. Annoying? Very much. I know I’m probably in the minority here, but this climax is so paint-drinkingly stupid that it completely stops the movie from being “great”, in my eyes. Don’t get me wrong: it’s fine for a movie to be stupid. The problem here is that, even though the movie is a comedy, it isn’t that kind of comedy. This isn’t Spongebob Squarepants. The movie, except for this scene, sticks to that aforementioned barely-plausible realism that gave it a very specific theme: “If people tried to be superheros in real life, they would suck.” It’s fine to show Hit-Girl being an unadulterated badass and mowing down legions of mobsters with assault rifles — precisely because she’s Hit-Girl, the character we all know to be completely unrealistic and silly. Dave Lizewski — even when he’s Kick-Ass — is supposed to be this ineffectual nerd who gets his ass handed to him in every scene. Turning him into a badass totally ruins the theme of the movie; at least, it ruins the theme I thought the movie would have.

With the climax taken into account, what is the theme of the movie? “Be a superhero because superheros are totally awesome”? Might as well watch The Dark Knight.

Even when it derails Dave’s character for the sake of a great action scene, it squanders the potential that could have had. Watching Dave murder a bunch of people with his testosterone guns is cool, but not nearly as cool as any of Big Daddy’s or Hit-Girl’s action scenes. His later fight with the supervillain is flat-out boring, basically amounting to a couple of sissy punches in a small nondescript room. Nobody even gets injured; they just knock each other out and fall asleep together like a couple of gay lovers.

There’s a lot of nits to be picked if you’re into that sort of thing. Many references are dated in a very head-scratching way. I understand that the movie is based on a comic book written by a 40-year-old man, but surely someone in the cast and crew must have used the internet in the last five years and realized that no one uses MySpace anymore. The film’s story takes some rather huge liberties in adapting the story as it is, so a minor change like that should hardly be a problem. And what world do these characters live in where everyone has YouTube and iPhones, but comic books are considered a huge phenomenon? The comics industry is dead and has been for a very long time, as much as the writers would try to deny it; the fact that the movie doesn’t even attempt to acknowledge this fact is sort of a missed joke.

Overall, you probably think I hate this movie, but I really don’t. If I was asked to review my favourite movie of all time, I’d still find something to complain about. At the end of the day, Kick-Ass is hilarious, exciting, and very much worth your money. I just think it could have been a bit better.

Ben Affleck stars as Holden McNeil, an uptight comic book artist who makes his living on “dick and fart jokes” while he tries to think of better comic ideas. He lives with his inker, Banky Edwards (Jason Lee), who is totally satisfied with the dick and fart jokes. A running subplot in the film concerns Banky’s desire to turn their comic books into a cartoon series, which Holden is reluctant to do because he feels it will make him into even less of a “true artist”.

During all this, Holden falls in love with fellow artist Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams), who draws a less successful but more artistically-fulfilling comic book. Unfortunately for Holden, he only finds out after falling in love that Alyssa is a lesbian. They can only be friends, so Holden tries to let it go and do just that. He fails, as anyone would, but so does she. Even though she’s supposed to be a lesbian, Alyssa falls in love with Holden and the two start dating.

The rest of the movie is a really harsh and realistic look at relationships, sexuality, and art, which I won’t spoil here. The characters are engaging and relatable while still being very funny; no one person stands out as being “comic relief”, as everyone gets their fair share of punchlines and witty dialogue. The plot is excellent and treads some serious ground without becoming too angsty — an important quality in any story. It all works very well to provide a satisfying experience — a movie with deep characters, big laughs, and a plot that should leave an impact on the audience, no matter how they interpret it.

There are minor gripes to be had with the execution, however. The script drags at times and loses a lot of its humour as the film goes on. There are a few too many dramatic monologues from the characters, especially in the third act. Although the acting is very good for the most part, some of these are a bit too on-the-nose to make sense.

One monologue that does work especially well is given by Alyssa about two thirds of the way into the movie. As she lies in bed with Holden, she talks to him about her sexual identity and experimentation – in such an insightful way that it makes me wonder how a straight man could have written the screenplay. This dialogue in particular is what makes Chasing Amy worth watching. You’ll have to watch the movie to understand — a quotation simply doesn’t have the same impact.

Still, there is one huge problem that looms over the movie and almost ruins it for me. This is a problem I have with the film’s message. Chasing Amy is a movie about a lesbian who falls in love with a man, but the movie excludes a certain word entirely from its dialogue-heavy script. Not once does a character use the word “bisexual” in the entire film — even though Alyssa clearly is.

Alyssa’s self-identification as lesbian is all because she doesn’t want to be ostracized by her gay friends. It’s an unfortunate identity crisis brought on by our society’s implicit acceptance of monosexuality over bisexuality. It’s a bad thing. The only thing worse than being gay in a straight world is being bi in a gay world, which is a message that the character of Alyssa conveys quite well — but only in implication. The film refuses to use the b-word.

Bisexual erasure exists — to many, many people, bisexuality is a “phase” that people will eventually snap out of. Sometimes being bisexual is seen as a cheat, like an unfair advantage that should be discouraged. Attitudes like this cause people to be pigeonholed into the discrete categories of heterosexuality and homosexuality, all depending on the situation. This is shown clearly in the scene where Alyssa tells her friends that she is dating Holden. To Alyssa’s friends, she is “selling out” by allowing herself to be attracted to men — as if she’s straight now and everything previous was just a lie.

Chasing Amy seems to be making a deal with the audience to accept Alyssa’s sexuality for what it is — and to combat bisexual erasure. But by leaving out the b-word entirely, the film paradoxically supports this attitude. Many people — gay and straight alike — misinterpret Chasing Amy as a movie that shows how the right man can turn a lesbian straight. By obfuscating the real meaning and refusing to make its point clear, Kevin Smith panders to audiences who only want to see this misinterpretation.

It’s still a great movie that has a lot to say about sexual identity, but it doesn’t really make an effort to teach the audience anything. It just preaches to the choir. It could have done more than that with minimal effort.

The question is, does the enormous price tag help make Avatar something worth seeing? Or is this just an expensive tech experiment?

The film follows Jake (Sam Worthington), a marine tasked with exploring the surface of an alien planet, Pandora, and communicating with the natives. Jake gets this position because he has similar genetics to his twin brother, who was a scientist initially picked for the job. To visit Pandora, the scientists and Jake use artificially-created alien bodies as avatars (thus the title).

The aliens – blue-skinned cat-people made out of advanced CGI and motion capture technology – are known as the Na’vi (with an apostrophe for decoration). The Na’vi are very spiritual beings who live in a giant tree, worship a god who actually exists, commune with the animals, etc. They are cliched nature-loving aliens through and through.

Humans are the bad guys who want to destroy the aliens’ big tree, which is located on a large deposit of valuable “unobtainium” (probably the funniest joke in the movie). The whole avatar program is in place so that scientists can communicate with the Na’vi and tell them to move out of the tree. Why the government would spend billions of dollars developing the avatars instead of just killing all the aliens is never explained.

From there, the film turns into Pochahontas. Jake falls in love with one of the aliens, they have a PG-rated mating ritual, and he turns against the evil humans. Some other sympathetic scientists help Jake to stand up for the Na’vi while a generic antagonist with literally no personality whatsoever rides around in a manga-inspired mecha and tries to destroy the big tree.

It’s an environmentalist film, if that was too subtle for you.

Still, even if the story is nothing special, that doesn’t mean Avatar is a bad movie. The delivery is a big part of it, too. And with this much money on the table, it’s clear that the delivery of this film was a big deal to Cameron. He waited twelve years because 1997 couldn’t deliver.

The acting is good. No performance really stands out, but that’s the story’s fault. Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana do most of the movie in motion-capture, which is pretty impressive – it’s hard enough to act in the film industry when you have to do the same scene dozens of times, even harder when you’re working against computer-generated creatures that you can’t see on the set.

The imagination and design put into the setting is also pretty impressive. None of it is particularly original, but there’s clearly been a lot of thought put into fleshing out what’s there. The human technology looks very mechanistic and grey, which is played for contrast against the blue-and-green alien motif. The Na’vi themselves are nicely designed. The filmmakers cheated somewhat by making them very humanoid, but it’s necessary to make the human-falls-in-love-with-alien plot work. If the Na’vi were any less human, the whole film would have crashed because the audience would no longer be able to believe that Jake could fall in love with one of them.

The CGI is gorgeous, of course. Nothing to complain about there.

I’m torn on exactly what to think about Avatar. It has an incredibly trite story that I find very annoying, but the delivery is actually pretty solid. It is a very well-made film that might be worth seeing for the effects alone. It still leaves me with a sour taste, though. Titantic, at least, had something worth delivering, and that made the delivery much more satisfying. Avatar is frustrating because it has good effects that it doesn’t even deserve. It’s a very boring and uninspired movie that isn’t worth 230 million dollars by any stretch of the imagination.

Had the film been made in a realistic setting – not as a fantasy with sci-fi flavour – it wouldn’t be half as annoying. The aliens aren’t necessary, and the special effects only serve to distract. Just watch the trailer and you’ll get the same effect. All the eye-candy without the condescending tree-hugging nonsense.

“Condescending” is the word, really. The aliens and humans are both totally one-note and boring: humans are all evil for no clear reason, and aliens are perfect paragons of good. I find myself rooting for the humans to kill everyone just because the aliens are so perfect and infuriating, and that’s where the story really falls apart. Even with the cliche story, it could have come to life with some engaging characters. Avatar doesn’t have characters; it has archetypes.

Watch Avatar if you want to see some really cool motion-capture. Don’t watch Avatar if you want to see a good movie.

This is actually a good film that isn’t dominated inappropriately by Tim Burton’s friends (and partner). This is especially apparent with Mia Wasikowska, who plays the titular Alice so well that I almost forgot that I was supposed to be impressed by Depp’s usual great performance. It also helps that she has that wavy hair thing going on for the entire movie. (Don’t ask; I just really love that hairstyle for some reason. It’s awesome.)

This new Alice is really nothing like the old Disney film, and even less like the original Lewis Carroll books, though it still has enough similarities that you could call it an “adaptation” with a straight face. Unlike previous Alices that played a lot with dramatic structure, this new Alice sticks to the standard fairly strongly — there are three obvious acts, for instance. It also has an obvious moral, which, though it’s a bit ham-handed, is still a step up in my opinion. At least for this movie, drugs are optional.

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is a good movie. It’s not incredible or anything, but it’s still a good movie overall. I like it better than the 1951 version, but that isn’t saying much — I really never liked that version in the first place. (And I can already feel my artsy cred evaporating as I type that sentence…)

Should you see it? If you’re a huge fan of the old one, you might not like this new one, which is an entirely different kind of Alice. Other than that, you’ll probably find at least one thing to like about it. It’s a nice fantasy film with good effects and good acting, so, while it’s not really anything special, it’s nothing to hate either. And I’ll probably get it on DVD when it comes out.

Most transgender comics turn into a) sexist nonsense, b) fetish fuel, or c) both. In fact, I’d say the majority are both. Misfile, with very few exceptions, manages to avoid these pitfalls. It actually gives a fairly realistic portrayal of the situation, and uses it effectively to tell an interesting story.

The story starts out seeming very weak: the main character, Ash, wakes up one day to find out that he’s switched sexes. An alcoholic angel tells him that it was a filing accident in Heaven, and that Ash needs to keep things quiet or else face the possibility that the filing accident will never be repaired. History itself has been altered so that everybody believes that Ash has been female his entire life; everyone except Ash, of course. To make things worse, this filing accident also caused a former student of Ash’s high school, Emily, to lose two years of her life. Ash and Emily have to stick together to stop themselves from going crazy while the alcoholic tries to sleeze his way back into Heaven so he can fix the mistake without alerting the Big Boss.

I was immediately put off by the ridiculous premise and the fact that the story involves a real-world religion in its plot. However, as I read more into it, I started to understand it better and it bugged me a lot less. I think the comic gets off to a bad start, but it recovers fairly quickly and, for the most part, sails smoothly from then on. Most of the mileage of the story goes into Ash and Emily coping with their new lives. Ash focuses on the different expectations put upon him, and how his past is different due to a slightly different upbringing. Emily focuses on how she was an overachiever — getting accepted into Harvard prior to the misfile — and struggles to decide where she wants to go with her life. (She tries to find her Point B.)

Emily’s story is much more realistic, obviously, and it provides a nice contrast to the fantastic problems that Ash faces. Still, Ash’s predicament is executed more masterfully than I’ve ever seen in a transgender comic. The new gender isn’t treated like it’s a totally different species, but it’s not meaningless either. Ash acts the same in terms of personality, but he finds out that some things in his history have changed because of how others treated him differently. The best example of this is in Ash’s parents. Ash lives with his father after his mother left him at a young age. He had a distant relationship with his dad when he was a boy, but his dad treats him with much more affection when he’s a girl. I think it’s a smooth commentary on how distant and awkward father-son relationships can get, and I have to applaud the writer for including it.

The writing in general is very good, which is what really makes this comic work. Some of the actual dialogue can come across as forced, with characters often spouting their innermost feelings for no reason, but it’s pretty good on a whole. It makes you care about the characters, and it feels relatable despite the implausible situations. That’s what makes the story so compelling.

Misfile is a great read overall. It’s a rare transgender comic that actually takes itself seriously, and it shows. There’s no real sexual content or swearing, so there isn’t much to complain about: it’s just a solid webcomic, and I highly recommend it.