Dark Review - The Chaos Engine

My review of the remade Chaos Engine game is now up on Geek Syndicate here. The classic Amiga game given a new HD treatment but still looking and playing faithfully to the original. Not bad at all.

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Dark Pondering - My Second Competition Result

I entered the August Flash Fiction Competition on Darker Times and received two honourable mentions, which I am quite happy with. I'm a bit disappointed to have not improved on my last attempt but I`ll settle for that. Winners, runners up and honourable mentions can be seen here.

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Dark Review - Kick-Ass 2

Kick-Ass 2 Review

By Casey Douglass

Image ©Universal Pictures

 

If you have no memory of watching a film featuring a weedy guy in a green and yellow wetsuit, or a young girl dressed in purple with a severe case of potty mouth, go and watch Kick-Ass right now! I’ll wait. If these characters conjure up mental images of jet-pack mounted mini-guns and mugs of hot chocolate stuffed with marshmallows, welcome to the sequel. While it’s not absolutely necessary to have seen the first film before viewing the second, you will get the most from it if you have.

The film begins at the tattered ends of the first one, with Mindy Macready / Hit-girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) adjusting to a life without her dead father (Nicolas Cage’s Big Daddy). A friend of his has taken her in, and is trying to push her into a more normal, less violent life. Mindy takes to it like a boxer to needlework. It feels strange and scary and she would much rather be out ridding the streets of criminal scum.

Her partner in heroism Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) has also given up the mask, partly due to feeling like some kind of false superhero that, while inspiring to others, was nothing compared to Big Daddy and Hit-Girl. Dave decides to engage Mindy as his tutor and trainer, wanting to finally become the real deal.

It is not long into the film where a botched training session draws a lot of unwanted attention to “masked-vigilantes” and the two part company to pursue their own attempts at the lives they want to lead. For Mindy, this is being forced ever deeper into High-school culture, concerns of having to fit in and to be popular, all the while having the feeling that she is selling her soul for the price of a promise to her dead daddy. She pushes her Hit-Girl persona so far back into the closet that Aslan might soon be seen sporting a purple wig and swearing at Mr. Tumnus. Dave faces similar issues as he follows the opposite path and embraces his superhero alter-ego even more, having to fit into a new group of like-minded individuals and seeing if he can survive without Hit-Girl’s aid.

But what would a sequel be without the return of the evil mastermind in waiting Chris D'Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). Having seen Kick-Ass propel and explode his father with an RPG from the top floor of a skyscraper, the boy certainly has vengeance issues. After the fortuitous death of his kill-joy mother, he reinvents himself as The Motherf**ker and sets about building his own evil empire to choke the city and to sever the veins of his father’s killers.

This ladies and gents, is the film. The story arcs of each character collide and then veer away at intervals, forming a deadly dance of dressing up in funny clothes and crude name calling, with the occasional brutal fight or one-upmanship in between. I think that it trundles along at a nice pace, the action never outstaying its welcome, nor the quieter scenes dragging on indefinitely. The humour that ran through the first film is still as pure in the second. If anything, the swearing is even more inventive and some of the one liners even more memorable.

The real strength of the second film is the ensemble of other characters that flesh out both sides of the conflict. Kick-Ass teams up with Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey) and his crew of heroes, which also include Dr. Gravity (Donald Faison) and Night Bitch (Lindy Booth). The villainous ranks are also swelled, most notably by Mother Russia (Olga Kurkulina), a giantess of a woman who’s epic stand-off with four or five police cars using nothing more than what is at hand is well worth the price of admission on its own.

The technical side of the film is very well done, with the variety of costumes and colours on screen a nice reminder of the comic book origins of the series. Every scene is clear and precise, and the accompanying score carries it all along nicely to its grandstanding conclusion.

While I did enjoy the film very much, it does suffer from the usual malady of simply being a sequel. While it does change the formula here and there, it did feel like a case of having “seen it all before”, even if it has been expanded and polished to within an inch of its life. I think that may be the reason the fighting was more brutal and the swearing more deviously placed; to cover the notion that it is all a bit samey. It is definitely still well worth watching, and if you loved the first, I am almost certain you will love this sequel.

Rating : 4.5/5

IMDb

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Dark Pondering - My First Writing Competition Result

I entered my first paid entry writing competition last month. The reason it has taken me so long isn't due to any aversion to paying, just that I didn't really feel ready until now. I had entered a couple of free to enter competitions over the last few years but didn't place in those.

When I found Darker Times, I felt that I could write the kind of story that I really enjoyed and so felt it was definitely worth a go. A few days ago the results for July 2013 were published and I was very happy to see that both of my flash fiction stories were placed. One as a runner up, one as an honourable mention. I was disappointed not to win of course, but to have two get a mention was almost just as good for me. Even better, they will hopefully be published later in the year as part of the Darker Times Anthology, which I can actually buy from Amazon as a paperback! I know it's not quite the same as having your own book published but mentally, I feel that I am another step along the path that I want to travel with my writing.

I will certainly be entering again, and other competitions too. If I can repeat or better that result, I will feel more able to push ahead and to at least have some confidence in the idea that I might not be deluding myself as to my abilities or my feasibility as a writer.

The winning entries, along with the runner up and honourable mentions can all be seen here, and are well worth a read if you like dark things.

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Dark Review - Brothers : A Tale of Two Sons

My review of the latest Starbreeze game Brothers : A Tale of Two Sons is now up on Geek Syndicate. A novel game that sees you control two brothers (get out!) simultaneously. I really love it and it's dark story. Check out the review here on Geek Syndicate.

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Dark Review - Pacific Rim

Pacific Rim Review

By Casey Douglass

Image ©Warner Bros. Pictures

Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim has been my most looked forward to film of the year so far. This is unusual for me as I don’t often get to that stage of anticipation with many films. The last one that did was probably The Dark Knight Rises. So I will tell you now, I give Pacific Rim 5/5. It’s not a perfect film but I personally loved it.

Pacific Rim is the story of humanities struggle against invading monsters that emerge from the depths of the Pacific. These creatures are Kaiju, denizens of another dimension, that travel to our own through a “dimensional rift” on the ocean floor. Initially they come through at the rate of one every few months, but the frequency increases as time progresses, the gap between each emergence narrowing with every new creature rearing its ugly head. In response to this threat, the countries of the world band together and create the Jaegers, colossal human driven robots that can fight the Kaiju on their own terms.

The humans prevail for awhile, but the escalating numbers of Kaiju soon overwhelm their capacity to keep patching the Jaegers up and sending them out to do battle. Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam), is a Jaeger pilot who comes off the unfortunate loser against a large Kaiju. He bows out of the program feeling that he is washed out and done. The Jaeger program is deemed ineffective and funding is stopped in favour of other defences. Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba), was in charge of the whole scheme, and refuses to give in. He corrals the last of the Jaeger into one base, determined to carry on the fight, and re-enlists his favourite pilot Becket once more.

It is here that the film really launches off into the guts of the storyline, giving glimpses of pilot relationships, research into the Kaiju and other projects and dealings that both empower and jeopardize the war effort. It felt to me that more time was spent running around deciding what to do than driving the robots and punching monsters in the face. I do feel that the film was better for it though. It made every action scene that much more exciting by not over-saturating the viewer with too much robot flesh (I’m looking at you Transformers!).

The Jaeger themselves are things of metallic beauty, each one built by its own respective world power in its own distinct way. The Russian one is strong and stark compared to the Chinese one which is lithe and agile with whirling blades. The Kaiju themselves offer great variety too, some resembling lizards, others sea creatures. They also vary in size and abilities in as many ways as the Jaeger.

When the two enormous fighters clash, it is certainly a thrilling sight. Guillermo del Toro penned a piece in the July issue of Empire magazine, going into his influences and enthusiasm for Kaiju movies growing up in Mexico. (A very interesting read). He says that he always felt the Kaiju were forces of nature, like a tornado or a tsunami. I would say that he achieves this effect in Pacific Rim with great skill. They are certainly majestic in their own way, which is another effect of his own love affair with them. He says that he always finds himself rooting for the monster. This brings me back to the last film that made me excited to see it. The last two Batman films in fact. Both The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises had me rooting as much for the villain as for Batman. I did feel the same in Pacific Rim. There is just a part of me that enjoys revelling in mass destruction and is envious of things that don’t seem to have to follow any outside rules.

I really enjoyed Pacific Rim, the story, the fights, the effects and the acting. It was great to see Idris Elba in something like that, along with Charlie Hunnam and Robert Kazinsky, all great British actors who should appear in as much as possible in my humble opinion. I still find myself reflecting on the film almost a week after seeing it, and am looking forward to its hopefully soon blu-ray release. I may also pick up the movie score on CD. It is odd as I think I saw some of the same monster movies del Toro did when I was growing up, and I can only remember being unimpressed by them. They didn’t capture my heart like they did his, but del Toro has well and truly ruined me for other Kaiju films now.

Rating : 5/5

IMDb

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Dark Fiction - Watcher

Watcher

By Casey Douglass

As part of  #fridayflash

My head has always been a little empty. Even from a young age, I was content to sit and watch, rather than take part and control.

I watched my granddad fall to the ground when his heart gave out. People fussed around him. I sat serenely in the background, shiny eyes funnelling the scene into my six year old brain.

I watched a girl get raped at high-school. Nobody knew I was sitting quietly under the large conifer hedge, half forgotten Wuthering Heights slipping from my fingers. My brain absorbed and filed, my body just a tripod for my head.

I watched the car get closer through the lens of my sixteenth birthday present, rapidly taking shots so the moment was preserved. Weightlessness and rushing air ruined the last few, but my finger click clicked as my body disintegrated.

I watched so much in life, and now death has opened up new vistas. Walls and doors matter little when you are composed of ether and willpower. My brain is hungry for strange sights and any exotic view. I’ve watched and I’ve watched and I’ve watched...and now I am watching you.

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