holabendez blog

Aside from Iron Man 2, it would seem that movie studios have eased up quite significantly on their comic book movie titles in 2010, and aside from “Inception” the year has suffered for it in terms of the quality of its “blockbusters”. That looks to be remedied in the next couple of years with the impending releases of “Thor”, “Captain America”, “The Green Lantern” and “The Avengers”. Perhaps the break was a good things to help people catch their breath.

As an avid comic book super hero fan, I am looking forward to these movies with great anticipation, however, lets face it, these titles are B-grade heros at best. Sure, Iron Man has shown that if a film is well made it doesn’t matter what the status of the hero was in his comic book form, but I do wonder about the broad appeal of these upcoming titles.

So it was a pleasant surprise for me to see the extended Comic-Con trailer for “Thor” which is due out early next year. This particular property seemed challenging to make in any kind of grounded form – remembering that in conjunction with “The Avengers”, it is supposed to be set in the same world/universe as the “Iron Man” films which are somewhat grounded. This trailer made me feel better about the potential of this movie, but didn’t leave me all that convinced that it would have mass market appeal. What do you think?

See the bootleg trailer on YouTube

Holy crap, I freaking loved Inception. I’ve seen it twice, and I’ll no doubt be seeing it many more times. It is such a well made, superbly crafted film, it totally blew my mind. A definite must-see film. Go, see it now. I’ll wait.

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I think the days of a movie drawing people in purely on star power might be over. Aside from Will Smith, I’m not sure seeing a movie because someone is in it is enough of a motivation for people any more. There is no compelling reason to see Knight and Day; I’m not sure people see Tom Cruise as much more than a creepy weirdo these days anyway. This movie was lame.

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Recently finished this game, I wouldn’t say I’m a big Star Wars fan, but I had fun playing it. Unfortunately that fun was tempered by considerable frustration with the controls which were less than perfect. Having the ability to use The Force would as you expect lead to some pretty cool situations however the controls didn’t feel entirely right and there were plenty of times my character would ultimately not do what I was hoping it to do. I played it on the hardest difficulty which only added to my frustrations.

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It’s pretty rare for an Australian film to get much positive buzz, but after hearing a few people rave about this film, I thought I’d take a look. It is a pretty good film, and definitely a stand out in a sea of ordinary Aussie stuff. Not great though, probably just as good left for a DVD hire on a quiet evening really.

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After hearing nothing but good reviews, I was pretty keen to go see Toy Story 3 – and man, it was everything people have been saying. I’ve always been a sucker for the Pixar films, and the Toy Story ones are right up there with the best of the lot. Unless you’ve absolutely hated every Pixar film, you really ought to check this one out, it is fantastic.

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I finally got around to playing GTA IV and ended up sinking about 60 hours into the game. GTA 3 is my favourite video game of all time so I had high hopes for the next generation console follow up, despite finding San Andreas a bit of a disappointment. This one didn’t disappoint. The level of depth and detail found in the game is amazing. It is definitely a must play for anyone with a console. Five stars.

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