Ridley Scott is a Pale Imitation of Paul W.S. Anderson

 Normally I would class myself as a moviegoer with at least a little bit of sophistication. I'm no 'buff', to be sure. But I at least like movies that make me think and I like to think about movies. Story, structure, plot and relationships, these things matter to me. I say these things so you won't think me a complete idiot when I tell you I enjoyed the first Aliens versus Predator movie but was disappointed by Prometheus.

The reasons I liked one and not the other movie are perhaps less important than the realisation I came to last night that the two movies are eerily similar - one might even say 'the same' -  despite one being put together by a world-renowned and revered, multi-award winning legend of the silver screen, the other by the guy who made Crash and since then probably only keeps getting work because he married a supermodel. Who also probably keeps getting work because she married a director.

Lets quickly go through the similarities, shall we?

Both movies start in a strange and desolate landscape, sometime in the past, where we see a frightening alien do something we cannot explain but know will somehow affect mankind's future and, of course, be important to the rest of the cast in the 'present'.

Then we skip straight to that present, where we see scientists doing, well, science, that although earthbound, will prepare them to deal well with the mystical aspects of the aliens they are about to meet.

Both films then pop those brave explorers onboard a transport vessel where the plot of the movie is explained to everyone's satisfaction with cool lightshows featuring the expeditions funder, Mr Weyland. There is a small discrepancy between the two films at this point - in AvP, Mr Weyland is alive and well and presents the mission in person. In Prometheus we are told Mr Weyland is dead, so his hologram substitutes.

Eventually we arrive at the site of unexplained phenomena - heat blooms in AvP, star maps in Prometheus (At this point AvP is in fact clearly the superior movie - heat bloom is a simple premise to follow, but how on LV-whatever did the Prometheus manage to break into the planet's atmosphere at precisely the right point to find the skull-pyramids?) and those crazy scientists rush out into the harsh weather to explore, despite warnings form cooler heads.

Once inside, more lightshows and exposition ensue - pictograms and holograms in both films explain the nature of the structures being explored. Eventually both parties get split up, small monsters appear and invade the bodies of explorers, these bodies then go on to attack the rest of the teams. In AvP they do this by spawning xenomorphs, in Prometheus they just seem to reanimate the dead.

Prometheus, sadly, didn't feature Predators. Instead it has Engineers. The two fill identical roles though. Both are responsible for the structures being explored, both use them as weapons storage, both are confronted by Weyland as he demands answers and compliance, both murder Weyland.

The two films then each show the luckless explorers being variously dismembered and destroyed, until only one female survives because she's tougher or more special or something. But she survives the film largely because of the sacrifice of a Predator/Engineer as he fights off a massive xenomorph. She is not unscarred from the fight though and is now aware there is more to the heavens than meets the eye.

In AvP the heroine is ritually scarred and will now travel with the Yautja, presumably to adventures so exciting we could never hope to capture them on film, while in Prometheus she's off on a Engineer ship to see the universe and answer the question 'where are the answers this movie failed to provide?'.

Avp then, and Prometheus. They are the same film, made a decade apart.

I know, I know, it had its faults. One of which was the casting of the voice of Cleveland's nagging wife from the Cleveland Show as the lead. But, apart from that utter failure to capture even a fragment of the magic the Aliens franchise has derived from its revolutionary casting of a strong female as lead, the film really isn't that bad.

Prometheus on the other hand really was a disappointment.

Even though it had Scott at the helm, calling the shots, driving the design, pushing the story to somewhere it would fit alongside and before the original Alien, the movie was a hodgepodge

Here is something that crept into my brain late last night as I started watching 'Prometheus'

Weight Loss Spreadsheet

I have put together a quick and simple spreadsheet to allow me to track my weight loss.

So far its going well - I lost nearly a kilo over the weekend. Some of this was due to diet control - smaller portions, zero chocolate and limited sugar intake - the rest to exercise. I have swum, walked, and done aerobics and yoga this weekend.

None of this has felt like particularly hard work though. Its just a matter of making it a priority to do some exercise each day. I did push myself with the aerobics and yoga, doing one straight after the other, but that was just from a desire to really work up a sweat and do more than I usually do.

Here's the link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApftOCGvZzandEl6R0RvdldkRDJpZUxnOEFSTlNjQkE

As always, happy to hear comments and suggestions :)

Golden Age of Gaming Part 2

Eurogamer just published an article about modern board and card games. Its a wee bit better written than my own post from a couple of weeks ago, probably because the author is a professional journalist who does research and has a budget and stuff. But essentially he says the same thing as me - board games are becoming cool and there is a massive variety to choose from. Even videogamers are becoming converts.

A nice read and some good suggestions for games to try too.

My Olympic Joy

 By about three days into London 2012, I was starting to feel a bit of a curmudgeon. I love sports, watching them at least (although I did love to play in my younger, lighter days too), and the Olympics are obviously the greatest collection of competitive games on the planet. I had boycotted the Beijing games for moral reasons (some of us care that the Chinese murder dissidents and use slave labour to make Homer Simpson slippers for the US) but I was glued to Athens and Sydney. But I also feel that while its a great spectacle, having the Games in your country is really not as great for you as organizing committees, politicians, and the Coca Cola company would have you believe.

If you wear Nike clothing at the Olympics, they make you dance in front of everyone

Add to that the fact that tickets for events were originally only obtainable by the general public through a lottery system, wherein you presumably had a limited chance to get hold of tickets to sports you would actually like to see played at the highest level (Basketball rather than Airgun Shooting, for example), and I was generally feeling glad to have gotten out of London before local taxes were raised to pay for the world's greatest corporate junket and athlete-orgy and to have the BBC covering every single event around the clock.

But then Beach Volleyball happened.

Just like that.

If you haven't seen a Beach Volleyball match, and you like fun, you owe it to yourself to watch a match right now. If you're lucky the BBC Sports site is still hosting video of every match from the main court. Otherwise, er, Youtube, maybe? Its not the most shown sport on TV, hence this being the first time I had really seen it.

For the really uninitiated, the game is pairs volleyball, played on sand. Best of three sets. First two sets are first to 21 points, the decider goes to 15 with the usual must-win-by two points rules. But, and here's the fun bit, it is played in a party-like atmosphere, complete with comperes and DJ's, who whip the crowd up between every point with pumping music, national callouts, sound effects, and so on. Shouting during points is very very much encouraged. God saw fit to grant London great weather over the last week as well and the Olympic Beach Volleyball arena at Horseguards Parade in London has, without a doubt, been the place to be during the Games.

The Olympics is also about art. Sand art.

The next big thing that happened was finding out tickets to various Olympic events were being made available on a daily basis through the official website. This was happening late at night - LOCOG officials were suggesting checking around midnight each night - as, I believe, it was established what 'Olympic Family' tickets were not to be used by their holding corporations and teams. So a sport I love watching, at the Greatest Show on Earth, in my own country at a city near me? I was bitten by the once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity bug and knew I had to go, if I could.

Who could say no to this?

 The first night I checked, there were tickets available for medal matches in the second week of competition. Unfortunately, in a manner of speaking, I would be away on holiday that week. But the second night of looking there were tickets for the very next afternoon. A quick check of the schedule of play showed GBR's women would be playing that day and fifteen minutes later I received confirmation I had a ticket!

Even John McEnroe put in an appearance

I had been concerned traveling across London would be a nightmare. There has been a lot of doom-mongering going on about the capacity of London's transport network and its ability to cope with the influx of visitors to the capital.

None of my worries proved well-founded though as it was easy to get a train into Fenchurch Street and a tube to Charing Cross. No crowds, no muss no fuss. Even walking through Trafalgar Square and along The Mall to the arena was zero-stress. There were people there, sure, and many tourists. But not a noticeable increase from normal numbers.

Collecting my ticket from the Box Office was easy, queuing to get in was easy (and shaded as some bright spark ahad though to place the queues under trees, the soldiers manning the security checkpoint (just like airport security) were pleasant and polite, and the 'waiting area' before one got in to the arena-proper did not even feel that crowded. I have felt more stress and pressure, for example, walking along Tottenham Court Road in the summer.

The arena itself is amazing. It took a bit of effort to look through the fences, stalls, and the giant stands themselves to remind myself what the place looks like, well, the rest of my life. I even got a great seat - maybe fifteen feet from the sand, behind the service line, at the Mall end.

Usually there are soldiers here. Today they were very well hidden.

The only possible misstep the organisers made was perhaps their scheduling. Team GB disappointed in the second match of the day - they narrowly lost the first set, but were never really in contention for the second. The atmosphere for the next tilt was then a little muted to begin with as most of the audience had cheered themselves out for Team GB. It certainly took me most of the first set to drum up some more enthusiasm for the rest of the afternoon's players.

Team GBR losing early kinda killed the mood...

All in all though it was a great afternoon of competition. Even if you couldn't care less whether Holland or Germany win the chance of a Lucky Loser match the atmosphere, the comperes, the music, the weather, and the crowd all combine to make shouting, cheering, dancing, and laughing impossible to resist. I loved my afternoon at the Olympics and wish I could do it every Thursday afternoon.

More art!

The Olympic Opening Ceremony - Most Offensive Ever?

No matter how you cut it, a potted history of the British Isles is pretty much guaranteed to be a catalogue of international offenses and insults. Last nights certainly was.

Also offenses against comedy

 Don't get me wrong - I really enjoyed the ceremony/festivities. It made me proud to be British. But perhaps part of that Britishness is the ability to pick out all the tiny little slights and pairs of fingers thrown around the arena as we went along.

For a start, why on Earth, in a ceremony about unity and inclusion and inspiring a nation, would you have Scottish children singing an anthem about how much the Scots hate the English? Yep, 'Flower of Scotland' is, at its core, about the Jocks fighting back and humiliating Edward Longshanks. I know, I know, these days the politically correct prefer to present it as a celebration of the resilience of the Scottish spirit, as an inspirational. But thats not how it goes down at Murrayfield when the Auld Enemy are in town...

One Ring to rule them all. Or at least keep them in a Commonwealth

Continuing with the theme of Rugby as a vehicle for f***-you-ishness, here's Jonny Wilkinson winning the World Cup - take that, Australia! (To be fair, its not like we have a lot of shots of Brits winning important stuff, and I'm really really glad the ghost of '66 wasn't dragged screaming into the auditorium)

Later on, during the dance-party section, we saw a crowd form the symbol of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament - suck on that, USA!

Generally, the UK is against WMD's

Somehow we managed to insult both sides of the greatest and most horrific armed conflict of the 20th Century by a) mentioning the war, and b) not mentioning the Munich deaths. 

Even our own government wasn't left out - how about a few hundred people celebrating the NHS - the Conservatives even took the bait.

Oh yeah, and there were lots of Christian songs (which I don't have a problem with) to celebrate our nations proud religious heritage, but it seems Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists aren't a part of our national identity we show to the world. The dead of 7/7 apparently now are though...

We'll put the slave ships over there, and the Mau Mau concentration camps to the right...

 On a side note, even the Danes, well one of them, took offense. My wife complained this morning athletes shouldn't be allowed to carry cameras and phones around the arena....

Yes, last night was a triumph for all involved. The 7500 volunteers were deservedly cheered and applauded and I would imagine an MBE is the spread to beat for Danny Boyle in next year's honours list.

Also, wtf?

 But Britain's greatest tradition, one we have proudly extolled and exported for centuries, is that of pissing people off, particularly foreigners, and last night was no exception. But given that we didn't even wait for the Games to begin to annoy the entire Arabic-speaking world and what could be the world's most dangerous rogue state, well, should we be surprised?

Here's looking forward to seeing how many more international gaffs we can squeeze into the next two weeks :)

A Little Less Than Daily

Sorry to say, my pledge of daily writing has been more than a little broken recently. It has been a couple of days since I last published on my toy soldiers blog and it was over a week since the post before that.

Part of that has to do with my wife working some crazy hours recently. Term time is over at the school at which she teaches, but that just means it is time for Summer School. Regular students have to audition to attend a course but, in the summer, the doors are more or less thrown open to all comers. Anyone who can pay, more or less, is able to attend a three week course in drama/singing/dancing. Its a fairly intense course for the students and it just about doubles my wife's teaching hours.

This, of course, leaves me at home with two small children. A challenge at any time, it gets worse when one is a baby who is going through teething and then gets a cold too. Oh, and refuses to eat all day and won't sleep all night ><

Stress-filled times at the White house then.

This then has left me little time for reading and writing. I have barely had any time to paint or exercise either. Usually I get about an hour in the morning to do something unrelated to babies and housework. Then it all kicks off...

The end is in sight though. Its the last week of Summer School and then we have a decent break, complete with overseas holiday. My wife has talked about doing some serious sleep training with the littlest monster in the house next week to try to get him back on track. And I should have more time to myself to think and plan and commit to the page.

Fingers crossed....

Limping over the Line

I'll admit I'm not actually sure when I last posted something. All kinds of excuses are possible, Burr essentially the problem is my wife went back to work this week, making me a full time daddy again, and that's hard work. So last night, after I had got both the kids to bed, wiped up all the spills and smears and dirty dishes and tidied away all the toys, all I wanted to was play Lego Batman 2 for a bit and go to bed. And eat sugar puffs, but that's a different issue.

I have several things I want to write about. The ethics of sporting competitions such as Formula 1 taking place in countries with dodgy human rights records, the incredible power of Kickstarter, comparing recent campaigns on that site I have followed and contributed to, and how ridiculous atheists sound when they write off creationists are all ideas I have been mulling over.

Right now though, both my kids are asleep there is a great tennis march on the tele and I'm going to gave some sugar puffs and some rest.