Stuck In A Phantasy World

So at the minute I'm busy playing "Phantasy Star Online" for the Gamecube. Only offline. So basically I'm running around trying to complete all of the quests of hard mode thinking that my Force character, not unlike the one to the left, will inevitably die if I manage to reach very hard mode. Not even my Level 70 Hunter was able to reach ultimate mode. How will my little mage cope?

Maybe I should explain. On this game you have to create a character and then you'll be transported either to Episode 1 or Episode 2, depending on what you really want. Episode 2 is a nightmare to complete even on normal mode, so you end up on on the first episode, on Level 1 ready to kick some monsters where it hurts. You find that you can only explore the forest at first with its easy monsters, but then you can explore the cave, mine and ruins after you defeat the boss of each area (as you do on any game really).

You'd think that just going along defeating monsters left right and centre would get boring after a while but actually it's highly addictive and you find yourself wanting to defeat more and more monsters until you're so strong that you just have to progress somehow. On to the next difficulty level, that is.

Then you have to raise your "MAG" who is like a little guardian angel. Sometimes they'll heal you and if you raise them to a certain level they'll evolve and learn a summon spell which you can cast after you've gained 100 points of Photon Energy. Phew... Some of the "MAG"s are so ugly though (like mine, a horrible little thing called Garuda. Yuck.) that you start to wonder if it was all worth it. Only in my case it was because Forces (one of the classes you can chose when creating your character) are so weak its unbelievable.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that even though some people might think that this is a repetitive, pointless game that it's actually not, it's rather fun and your character becomes lovable. Most of the time. I've had some real failures before I raised this one to Level 55. Oh well, back to my Force...

T: The Final Frontier

Turn over to Jamjarsuperstar now for coverage of T in the Park, to be updated regularly over the next couple of days! I'm working on it right now but for some reason my hands won't work as fast as my brain...

Anyway, feel free to leave a comment, disagree (constructively), agree (constructively) and talk about the bands/festival (constructively!). You get the feeling I'd like some constructive comments being posted, right?

Expensive/Cheap

Well to some shame I watched "Gok's Fashion Fix" on C4 on Thursday. I used to like "How To Look Good Naked" because of Gok Wan's caring and not insulting way of talking about a person and the way they looked - far better than the "god, you look like you've been dragged through a hedge backwards" approach of Trinny and Susannah.

Well what annoyed me about this is the fact that Gok kept going on about how good designers had the best fit and that they never showed where different sections had been stitched on. So imagine my surprise (okay, not) when a supposed stylist picks out an asymmetrical Felder Felder dress not unlike the one to the right. Granted, it didn't have the bow and the sleeve (which I'm finding quite appealing - how much!?). Instead it was rather like a canary-yellow elongated boob-tube with a tacky little strap hooked on at what seemed to be the last minute.

When the model wore it down the catwalk, the body was nicely fitted but the strap looked out of place and was ill-fitting - it didn't touch her arm once. Even my £10 asymmetrical graphic print dress from H&M fits me better than that atrocity. Are people really willing to spend hundreds and hundreds of pounds for something that was so... shoddy? Gok's creations looked expensive and yet he had spent less than £200 on each outfit; that includes skirts, dresses, shoes, socks, belts, bags, hats, bangles, rings... everything!

In another section of the programme, it-girl Alexa Chung went to meet Karl Lagerfeld i.e. top man at Chanel. Each dress there can be made to measure but at the store, at least the coat-dress she tried on fitted nicely and looked like it could be worth €31000! I thought maybe it had too many crystals on the front, but it was a lovely fit. But only in my dreams....

Still, are we actually thinking that a brand name = good quality? If this is the case then no wonder people are getting themselves into debt because they're shopping excessively and trying to look as chic as possible. My philosophy is that you can look just as good in some bargains at the sale as you can do wearing tens and thousands of pounds worth of designer clothes.

Thanks to timesonline.typepad.com/style/images for the pic!

Indy IV - The Last Reflection On Earth (Or Maybe Not)

I must have been one of the last people on the planet to see Indy IV, right? Okay, that was an exaggeration. There are probably plenty of people who haven't seen "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", right?

Anyway, when I did see it I enjoyed it. Just like I enjoyed the first three Indy films. Still, despite a friend once telling me that it was the worst Indy movie, I prefer "Temple of Doom" - it has this strange quality to it that makes me really enjoy it even though the story is so farfetched and so stupid.

So enter Indy IV and a new quest for ageing action man Harrison Ford. After a shaky opening sequence where Ford doesn't really look up to the job, he settles back into his role, possibly because renegade sidekick Mutt Williams (aka Shia LeBoeuf, of "Disturbia" fame) is busy doing the acrobatic vine navigating with the monkeys for him. Yes, there really is a scene where monkeys save the day. Young audiences everywhere would be pleased, I was less easily impressed. While we're on the subject of silly, only-in-an-Indy-based-romp sequences, how about the bit where he survives a nuclear explosion? In a fridge! A fridge people! Duck and cover, eat your heart out.

Ahem, daftness aside, it's not really a bad movie at all. The plot is a bit ludicrous but then there aren't any loose ends and everything is tied up in a nice little package by the denouement. The sequence where all the little ants come out and start eating the Russians is perhaps to be expected but at least it wasn't horrible like, say, Peter Jackson's giant head-eating maggot things in "King Kong" (I think I should get brownie points for being one of what seemed like few people in the cinema to watch that scene, albeit with a horrified face). Still, the best bits come out in the conversation. Probably strange little conversations between people, such as Indy and one of his students at Marshall College library about three seconds after he crashes Mutt's motorcycle. But it's great that after months of saying to people "What kind of a name is Mutt?" that Indy actually comes out and says it himself in the film! Hooray! Luckily this is just a nickname that he's given himself, not a silly name that his parents placed on him as a haunting joke that would plague him for the rest of his days. Poor kid.

Since this is probably going to be the last Indy film though, I expected more from his fear of snakes. Instead, only one semi-gag was made about Indy's lifelong hate of the cold-blooded reptiles and I found that disappointing. Surely the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull should have been swarming with them, just to make it even more perilous for the protagonists.

Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable film. Probably not one I would consider buying when it goes to DVD but then I'm quite picky. If I had to buy one Indy DVD, it would still be "Temple of Doom" no matter what people say. Despite good performances, Indy was better in his younger incarnation, not this older and supposedly wiser form. Ford's co-stars save the day, particularly LeBoeuf and Cate Blanchett as Russian agent Irina Spalko. If you haven't already seen it, you could go just for a couple of hours of enjoyment. Don't expect to be particularly enlightened though.

Thanks to www.reelmovienews.com/images/gallery for the pic!

Dex Is Back!

Yay! After a couple of months of waiting Season 2 of Dexter was here last night! Oh how I've wanted to know what happens to everyone's favourite serial killer after he murdered someone very close to him at the end of last season and then began being stalked by Dokes, who hasn't stopped calling him a psycho since the last time we saw the pair interact.

Well, it hasn't disappointed. Actually, it seems to be even wittier, filled with you-can't-say-that humour ("Behold! The Eighth Wonder of the World!"). Deb is still annoying though. I wish she retired from the force and left last season. Even wet-blanket Rita is more bearable than her - at least Rita has some guts about her, especially when faced with her ex-husband Paul.

But unfortunately poor old Dex is on the verge of being found out. A diving team has found his rubbish bags filled with dismembered bodies. Surely he isn't going down? We need a cunning plan to keep him on our screens.

http://16471.openphoto.net

Sunshine

Danny Boyle directed "Sunshine" last year, a sci-fi set 50 years in the future with an almost apocalyptic feel. In "Sunshine", there's always a threat, whether it's the sun dying out and consequently killing all life on earth or the little disasters that happen to the crew of the Icarus 2.

Seven years after the Icarus 1 fails to deliver their payload and save the world, a new crew is sent to deliver another payload in the hope that they will succeed. Robert Capa, a physicist played by Cillian Murphy, is the main character. He's in charge of the payload, making sure it works and deploys when the Icarus 2 reaches its destination.

As you'd expect though, things don't go to plan and the crew is jeopardized by a massive fire in the oxygen garden, so they come to the conclusion that killing off other members of the crew is the only way to ensure that they make it to their destination. One by one the crew succumb to increasingly inventive deaths, but the remaining members are finally faced with a new threat...

The whole film becomes increasingly claustrophobic, particularly, and somewhat ironically, when the characters are floating in space. The cameras are always positioned close to the characters so although you feel more of a connection with them, you also feel increasingly trapped inside the Icarus 2. This probably ties in with how trapped the crew are becoming in space and the fact that they will probably never return to Earth.

The lack of action at the beginning of the film is successful at establishing the characters and their personalities but the movie probably takes a little too long to heat up (pun not intended). However, when it does pick up the pace, "Sunshine" is gripping and at times disturbing. You find yourself rooting for Capa and the remaining crew members to finish their mission and slightly frightened that they could fail against the danger of the mysterious blurred figure.

At times poetic, at others almost disturbing, "Sunshine" doesn't fail to capture your attention. But then, you'll need it to work out exactly what's going on.

http://54.openphoto.net

Finales....

So last night, it was not only the finale of House, but also the finale of Heroes! Oh, what am I to do on Thursday nights now?

Ahem, getting away from that mini-meltdown both of the finales were particularly spectacular but surely House doesn't need so much soppy music in one episode? Surely Jose Gonzales' version of Massive Attack's "Teardrop" could have been the closing song instead of.... whatever else it was that played (can't remember and it was only last night!). Okay, so it was quite sad for Wilson - think they could have done something super, super dramatic with his plight though, like have him resign - but hey, House survived having electricity pumped into his brain and falling into a coma as a result! Best 1 out of 2 right?

Moving on to Heroes, I'm so glad Hiro survived that one. I was really worried at the end of the penultimate episode that Peter was just going to kill him off because he's been brainwashed by Adam but luckily he lives to fight for another volume! But why didn't he just kill Adam instead of somehow burying him underneath the graveyard? Surely killing him off entirely would have been the safer option since it seems as if he can live forever. What if Sylar wants to join forces with him? Hmmm.... actually I might be on to something there. Let's hope Sylar doesn't kill too many people off though. Unless it's Peter. Then I don't mind.