REVIEW: San Andreas (12A)

This year seems to be the year of literally MIND-BLOWING special effects. Already we have had blockbusters such as Jurassic World, Age of Ultron and the forthcoming Ant-Man - all of which are challenging our minds and eyes to believe in the unbelievable.  Putting the capital D in Disaster Movie, The Rock (aka Dwayne Johnson) takes on the might of mother nature in the latest hi octane, blockbuster disaster movie San Andreas. Clearly influenced by modern disaster movies (read: 2012, Day After Tomorrow) with a little bit of science jiggery-pokery to make it all sound rather plausible, this movie is actually quite an enjoyable romp.

Dwayne Johnson plays a fire rescue pilot Ray, capable of flying most airborne vehicles (and the ability to dangle out of them). The film starts with a situation right away - pretty blonde girl veering her car off the road while trying to check her latest Facebook update or equivalent. Cue the fire rescue to come and attempt to rescue her. The special effects in the first 15 minutes are breath-taking - giving an almost POV shot of what the girl is experiencing tumbling to her doom down a ravine. Luckily a tree overhanging stops her fall 'til the authorities get there - and Mr J & his helicopter team come in for the rescue. of course they save her - and maybe that's a spoiler but that's just the first 15 minutes of the movie or so.

We find out more about Mr Fireman - hot daughter, estranged wife dating millionaire property developer (played by the guy who played Reed Richards in the 2000's Fantastic Four) and a very rocky set of relationships. For the most part this set up seems to be a bit of a short cut way of setting up a family unit in modern movies and, although we learn a little bit more of it, it completely pales into insignificance once the action starts. Meanwhile all this is going on, over in a university lab, Paul Giamatti as Professor Lawrence (that's his first name not surname I assume) develops an early warning system to detect earthquakes. When one goes off and kills his colleague Dr Kim Park, he discovers that his theories are correct and there are bigger things on the horizon (also bigger special effects budget by all accounts too). As the Western part of America is slowly subject to numerous earthquakes it's up to Ray to rescue his family and Lawrence to save the people.

This movie is actually quite good. It's action from start to finish and as a visceral disaster movie you really do get your money's worth. The Rock is carving out a fantastic acting career for himself - managing to distance himself from the wrestler/actor stereotype defined by so many of his contemporaries before him.   Where this film really shines is in the special effects and it really places you into the action. The intenseness (is that even a word?) of the action sequences will have you on the edge of your seat. I watched this in 2D but if there's a 3D version* and they did it well I would think this would be mind blowing. Yes, it's stupidly unrealistic at times and nearly every second one of the major characters is in mortal danger - but it's enjoyable.

Overall this film is good - there's only so much headway you can make in a disaster movie and we have seen it all before - but Dwayne Johnson is likeable enough to keep the story moving and there's enough action and destruction to keep ardent fans of the blockbuster/big budget special effects happy. if you want a mindless action movie with amazing special effects and don't want to think too much - this is your movie. Get the popcorn and settle down for some fun and excitement.

San Andreas is at the cinema now and is rated 12A.

POPSCORE: 8/10

What am I talking about? The movie San Andreas

Where can I find out more? http://www.sanandreasmovie.com/
If you like this try: Deep Impact, Volcano, 2012, The Day After Tomorrow

Anything else:

Kylie Minogue (yes, really) features in a scene in the movie.
This movie has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Grand Theft Auto - though strangely, he steals a truck and gives it someone else in exchange of a plane. So maybe it has.

*When I was looking up the website address it says it is available in iMAX 3D. I may have to track this down - it would be one heck of a thrill ride!  

BYTE: Jovial June

Welcome to June - yes, yes I know I'm a bit late and it's nearly over! but better late than never eh?



Awesome sentiment from Marvel.

Lots of turmoil has been happening in this world this month - and it's been very sad to see the events that have unfolded earlier on today. Also Patrick Macnee, wrestler Dusty Rhodes and Sir Christopher Lee all passed away over the last few weeks. Sad times indeed.

What's been going on? Well let's look at the movies first - the much anticipated Jurassic World hit our silver screens this month - and hit it it did - even knocking Avengers Assemble for six in the box office stakes. Chris Pratt once again took on his Marvel companions and beat them into submission with his Velociraptor squad. Featuring more than a few nods and homages to the original, Jurassic World is definitely one of the best movies of this year - and a worthy follow up to the ones before it. Check out my review here to see what I thought of it - and you can leave your opinion on there too.

Where's Owen when I need him?

 I happened to be in London for a Piano Guys concert - and I reviewed that too. There was a big hoo-ha at Waterloo Station too - where Velociraptors were trying to break out of containment. So I did what anyone else would do - get a picture of them!

I visited the new Madame Toussaud's Star Wars exhibition in London and it was really rather good - however some over zealous customer broke Yoda's ear so we couldn't see the iconic little green man. I did however get to sit with Princess Leia and Jabba the Hut (I think they wanted to watch the Simpsons) and reached out to Darth Vader (see below) and saw an abundance of other Star Wars scenes and characters. This is featured at the end of the standard Madam Toussaud's experience and follows on from the Marvel 4D experience and the traditional wax works they are famous for.



"Luke! I am your fath..."
"I'll stop you there, mate, my name is not Luke..." 

Other stuff I've been up to this month also includes getting tickets for the Sheffield Film and Comic Con - I'm gonna try and meet some wrestlers, a horror icon and goodness knows what else - but keep it locked here in August for a full rundown and some pics of what I get up to with that.  The line up for the London one looks like a fanboy (or girl) dream - but I can't make it this year due to spending all my money on subscription boxes, other cons and...

 

...The Smithsonian Rise of the Superheroes distance learning online course. I've just completed the 5 week course and I found it really interesting and fascinating. Professor Michael Uslan and none other than Stan Lee, take you through the history of superheroes and tell you about your favourites. Complete with videos, assignments and reading lists - this course is fantastic for people who love history, comics and erm, Marvel. It was the first time they ran this course so I'm in the first class alumni - but it was so successful they are running it again. If you pay for the course - which I recall was about $50 then you get an exclusive art print digitally signed by Stan Lee and Prof Uslan - and a certificate from the Smithsonian. You can also do it for FREE but won't get credit or the exclusive artwork. Originally it sounded like you would get the print as a proper signed piece of work - but later they elaborated to say it was an exclusive signed print - but it was done digitally. I was a little disappointed at this - but the course was really good and to be fair that was the only disappointment. I will do a review soon of it in full - but until then, why not check it out and join me as an alumni?

 

Looking at the latest stuff as well:

>   Xbox Live:  Games with Gold this month includes the full game of Thief on XBOX 360 and for the posh 'uns who have XBOX ONE you are treated to Pool Nation FX (still) and Massive Chalice (?!) to download free if you are a subscriber. Major Nelson posted July's offerings and they look very good indeed!

>  PSN: PS Plus this month you have Metal Gear Solid 5 and Skulls of the Shogun on PS4, Futuridium EP Deluxe and Super Exploding Zoo as a bundle for PS4 and Vita and Call of Jurarez: Gunslinger and Cloudberry Kingdom on PS3. As always you need to be a subscriber, and stay one, for these games to continue working.

 

If you are interested in any of these games you will have to get a wriggle on as they are valid until the end of June. Also out this month is the Arkham Knight special edition PS4 and there is talk of 1TB models being released for both PS4 and Xbox One. But the most surprising news of this month is that Xbox will become backwards compatible! That's right! Xbox One will play Xbox 360 games - the exact intricacies are not yet available but support will be added gradually. I'll let you know more when I get it.
 

As always we have Loot Crate and Nerd Block unboxings to look forward to...

 

...AND Marvel Collector Corps: Ant Man edition!

I've had a crack at doing an unboxing video - I'll tweet the link when I manage to understand how to edit. If anyone is good at this sort of stuff feel free to send me some tips!
 

Anyway I've wrote enough now - have a Jovial June and I'll see you soon.

 

Keep being awesome!

 

Until next time

Paul

REVIEW: Jurassic World (12A)

Jurassic Park is back!

Kind of!  It's been 20 odd years since Hammond exclaimed - "Welcome... to Jurassic Park!". What ensued was a worldwide madness for dinosaurs and you couldn't move an inch before a rubber Velociraptor or a plastic Tyrannosaurus was in your face. I'll admit I'm a bit geeky when it comes to dinosaurs and really fell in love with the first movie. It was the first book that I read that I couldn't stop reading too. It was recently released in 3D at the cinema and I went once again to see it in it's glory with Chris - and it stood the test of time - even the special effects (and I'm not talking about the 3D stuff) were still holding up really well. It was the only film in the 1990's I went to the cinema to see more than once - which was unprecedented for me. So I'm lucky enough to have the original fresh in my mind but how did the new one do? My favourite character, Ian Malcolm was not in it, and neither was Dr Grant, Ellie Sattler or the two Hammond grandchildren Lex and Tim.

Jurassic World (not quite Jurassic Park IV) is a follow on from the previous 3 in the series but it's not really Jurassic Park IV and not quite a reboot - it's like just a bit further on in time, I guess like we are as the audience. Peppered throughout the movie are references to the first Jurassic park movie and some homages too.

Chris Pratt (Guardians of The Galaxy) stars as Owen, a zookeeper of sorts with an affinity (or respect) for Velociraptors. He has been working with them to be able to follow his order and have them as you would a bird of prey. Some people mistake this for him having tamed them, but he says that he hasn't - it's just a matter of mutual respect. A bit like birds of prey. Meanwhile, bonny redhead Claire (Twilight & Spiderman 3's Bryce Dallas Howard) has her nephews visiting for a few days at the theme park - which has gone from strength to strength since the madness that ensued with Hammond's original idea. However, it has been running pretty good so far until the admissions are starting to wane - so the owners decide to create their own genetically modified dinosaur -  the Indominus Rex - a cross breed of... a lot of nasty stuff including a velociraptor and a cuttlefish. Better keep it away from Ulysess Klaue from Age of Ultron then!

As the I-Rex (it sounds like an Apple product now) learns and develops and is intelligent enough to challenge even velociraptors, it is proven that it is a very dangerous dinosaur indeed. However, when it breaks loose from it's paddock - every one on the island is in danger and it's up to Owen and Claire to help the guys on the island and save the day.

The movie is a great homage to its predecessor and does it just as well. The special effects are fantastic and the 3D is good. The new dinosaurs are spectacular and the velociraptors aren't quite as scary as the first one but still deadly. 

The movie has a lot of homages to the first movie and even some sequences echo the first one - but I won't go into too much detail as it will spoil the movie if you haven't seen it. But if you look carefully you'll see Mr DNA make an appearance and there is a shop called Winston's that's named after special effects legend Stan Winston who worked on the original JP (and a multitude of other movies besides).

This movie has it all, action, excitement and ... dinosaurs. If you like a good action adventure with amazing special effects you could not do any wrong. In this day and age, and the success this film has, I feel that there will be a lot more dinosaur movies after this one - but let's hope they maintain this quality because if they do, Marvel will have competition on their hands in the blockbuster movie stakes.

Jurassic World is at the cinema now and is rated 12A.

POPSCORE: 9.5/10

What am I talking about? The movie Jurassic World

Where can I find out more? http://uk.jurassicworldintl.com/
If you like this try: Jurassic Park, Jaws, Shark Attack 3 (maybe)
 



If you're at Waterloo Station this week -
check out the display of the Velociraptors.

IN CONCERT: The Piano Guys, Eventim Apollo, June 13th 2015

"Have you heard of The Piano Guys?"

"Who?"

The concert started with some vox pops and potted history of the YouTube sensation that is The Piano Guys. The 'Guys themselves were conducting the interviews and, I suspect, those not of the YouTube generation will meet the question, "Have you heard of The Piano Guys?" with a resounding - "Who?". If that is the case, though, you are sadly missing out.

 



Gee, I wonder which artist is on tonight?

For those of you in the know, permit me to elaborate first and stay with me. For the others, TPG are a set of "middle aged dads who play music via YouTube videos", as Jon Schmidt (the talented pianist of the band) says. They do songs but they do mash ups, usually of famous songs you've heard of, and mix them with classical music you might not have. You might get Bach meets The Jackson 5 or Vivaldi versus the Theme from The Bourne Identity. As recently a few days ago they did a version of the Jurassic Park theme in one of their videos. The videos are great too - very arty, picturesque and into nature. The Piano Guys are most notably two artists - Jon (piano) and Steve (cello) but there are actually four of them. Their history of how they got together is both miraculous by Jon's own admission but also serendipitous. But I'll stop giving background now and go for the gig.

 

This was the last gig of the tour and featured a multitude of awe inspiring songs - sometimes to the videos we've seen on YouTube and sometimes not. Stretching from Story of My Life by One Direction to the Theme To Kung Fu Panda via Let It Go to some self penned tracks, TPG were inspiring. The fluency and skill on the part of both artists was nothing short of jaw dropping and the speaking in between as they interacted with the audience was like they were talking to you in their front room. At the start it was more about telling you what song they were playing next but by the time they got to their second act they were joking and chatting on like they'd known us for years. 



There's actually four Piano Guys -
here they are playing a piano at the same time!

I think it takes a large amount of skill to play both a piano and cello to the level they do; but to keep people enchanted for two hours is something else... And they did. Their mix of raw talent and humility was refreshing and their take on music is too. They've successfully mixed classical music with contemporary music and made it accessible to the masses. Some of their work borders on genius and in their own way they are as good as the composers they so obviously admire.

I would go and see these guys again. As a musician myself I was in awe, but as a spectator it was fun, enjoyable and refreshingly different. They created The Piano Guys YouTube channel to sell pianos from the shop they had set up. They created it to showcase the pianos... they never sold a single piano. They became world wide famous and released four albums and got signed by Sony instead.

 

Dreams can come true and these guys deserve every bit of it.

Top drawer music from a talented bunch.

POPSCORE: 10/10

For more on The Piano Guys and their amazing cross-genre music check out www.pianoguys.com and their YouTube channel - search "The Piano Guys"

I have used a photo taken from the gig in this review to supplement the text - if this is not appropriate then let me know and I will be happy to take it down.