Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23

I had always avoided this short lived 2012-2013 comedy, assuming that it will be in the same vein of generic wastes of time like "2 Broke Girls", endlessly churned out trash for the US market appealing to the lowest common denominator.  However I was surprised to find this was one of the most enjoyable series I've watched in a long time. 

The cast of Dreama Walker, Krysten Ritter and James Van Der Beek fit together perfectly, bouncing off each other with energy, their amoral characters made lovable with their acting. The supporting cast compliment them excellently, managing to build the wacky world that allows Krysten Ritter's character Chloe to swan between eviction and celebrity parties on a regular basis.  

 James Van Der Beek steals the show nine-times-out-of-ten, his loving parody of his own ego and celebrity lifestyle being often more amusing than the main plot of the girls in the flat, his wealth and status allowing for more wacky plots to be follwed.

The innocent character played by Dreama Walker is the ray of sunshine compared to the scummy Chloe or the selfish James, but doesn't grow tiresome, the show exploring her having mini-breakdowns and losing the innocence that made her so highly strung in the early series. 

The show's pacing is strong, quickly moving from story beat to beat, not lingering on any joke or scene too long, preventing the characters from growing stale or tiresome. The characters feel familiar and warm due to their constant appearances every story, whether it be big or small, giving you the warm feeling of shows like "30 Rock", in both tone and comedic styling.

All in all a very strong show, such a shame it ended after so few episodes, if anything were to get a netflix revival I think this is a strong contender, due to the many areas of the characters they has still left to explore.

Comedy - 8/10
Characters - 10/10
Story - 7/10

OVERALL 25/30 - Watch it now! It's available on Netflix as we speak!

Mini Thought - Do reboots need the boot? * Re-Upload*

(Written and published Jun 20, 2015)
 
Fantastic 4’s soon return is causing many divided opinions, yet this is far from the only reboot scheduled to arrive soon, even 60’s childhood classic The Clangers will will return to British television this week. Reboots are running wrought through this generation’s media but why is this the case? Is it laziness, Or a genius use of nostalgia?
The announcement of the Ghostbusters reboot, despite the originals already expansive continuing story via video games and comics, made many question the need of such remakes. The fact that countless films such as these are being announced with each passing day could be seen as a massive indicator of the draining creativity of Hollywood today.
Is their inability to create revolutionary new intellectual property being made up for via the recycling of anything that made even the slightest impact upon the cinematic scene in previous times?

The major issue of these retellings is that they lose the emotion of the initial experience, often becoming mediocre attempts to recapture excitement on rather outdated concepts. A prime illustration of this would be Total Recall, the 2012 reimagining being a rather bland experience for all involved.
The modern day special effects, bland acting – not having the extremely entertaining magic of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s amazing overreacting – and the 90’s quality of special effects made it a perfect example of this era of action movie, thus far more entertaining than the modern day film’s less than impactful debut.

Old films aren’t like food, they don’t go off overtime. If anything they are more like a time capsule of their era, ready to be reopened, should one want to be taken back.
However, despite my distaste of remakes I can appreciate their good points. Some remakes being of films so long forgotten the only way they are drawn to light is via these retelling. Another key factor is that of nostalgia. Parents are able to share the adventures they remember from childhood with their children, something the recent return of the Thunderbirds to ITV allowed for in spades.
Jurassic World was a very good example of positive reintroduction, being connected to the originals yet distancing itself enough to be a fresh insight into the franchise. Connective successors are far more appealing than that of reboots as they allow for years of content to still feel relevant.

This is something that the new Ghostbusters film – in its yet announced connection to the originals – lacks, feeling somewhat lacklustre in its payoff. A return off the remainders of the old team would have been a much more exciting premise.
People find comfort in familiarity, myself included, but reboots needn’t be the answer. new ideas should be top priority over any kind of remake.
Some films just need to be left in peace, they aren’t going anywhere and are just as exciting as ever.

Mini Thought - Is sex all there is in the music industry today? *Re-Upload*

(Written and published Jun 17, 2015)

As Blurred Lines comes on the radio for the umpteenth time I begin to think to myself: “is this all there is?”
Music today seems to be a restricted industry of songs limited to mindless sex to eternal love, with few without focus on these seemingly all important issues taking much hold within this world of endless streams of shallow sex based media and coitus fixated culture.
A mere glance at the charts would seem to support my worries. As I write this the top 20 singles containing 17 relationship based songs, varying vastly, from Carly Rae Jepsen’s really liking someone to the lyrics of Hey Mama discussing the “dirty rhythm” as they want it in the “worst way”.
Some may claim that music is about the art, but the fact that such songs as Blurred lines are doing so amazingly well continues to fuel this unrelenting torrent of generic similar trash – as the McDonalds of music – it is easy to churn out and even easier to consume without thought for quality or taste, clearly shown with this track from Thicke being the third highest selling singles of this millennium.
However, one could never deny there is enjoyment to be found in songs of love and sex, there are some truly great songs of this now all encompassing genre; Pulp’s “Common People” was both a protest of the class system and an amusing little romantic tale; “Whole Wide World” by Wreckless Eric, managing to be heart-warming yet feel original in its styling.
The over sexualised packaging that today’s music comes in seems to be taking an ever increasing hold on today’s society, the ever decreasing amount of clothing employed in today’s music videos being often seen as necessary to sell, yet think back to the then ground breaking extravaganza employed by Queen in their eternal success of Bohemian Rhapsody, despite the lack of sexual content it was mind-blowingly successful, their amazing music combined with the artistic visual being paramount to their legendary status.
So next time you tune in and listen to the latest heart throbbing sensation, take a minute and think about whether you are bored of hearing the same ideas over and over again, or whether you think music should be exploring more areas, like the classic Bohemian Rhapsody, and remember that music should be about quality and not rhythmic beats to club and gyrate to.

Mini Thought- Has gritty grown mediocre and monotonous in the film industry? *Re-Upload*

(Written  Jul 30, 2015)

“Gritty” seems to be the word of the day in Hollywood. In the modern world of media, company after company is attempting to revamp their image to something “dark and “edgy” in order to appeal to the oh so important youth market, blatant examples being found on the silver screen.
Titles such as Man of Steel or Christopher Nolan’s imagining of the Batman franchise work because much of their appeal is the dark heavy realistic tone that is employed, allowing for the viewer to relate on an extra level to the world before their eyes, however is this really something that should be abused on the level that today’s cinema seems to be sitting at?
As the massive decline in appreciation for Tim Burton’s works shows; creating a dark and distorted world for the sake of being dark is not the way to go, as this results in cliche environments and static character development. For example his telling of the tale Alice in Wonderland just recycling old themes of excessive violence and a bland element of threat to make up for the inability to capture the escapism and wonderment that Lewis Carroll’s original tale conveyed.
This brings to question the need of these stereotypical “mature” films to appeal to anyone over the age of five, sometimes brighter is better! Sometimes some of the most fun films to this date are the colourful and engaging, such classics as The Mask‘s awesome and maddening action being able to juggle the dark themes of violence under possession with the funny dialogue and witty banter.
Marvel’s cinematic universe has also made use of a relatively lighter universe to that of DC’s, while this has made some call it wish-washy it has allowed viewers young and old to engage and interact with this phenomenon. Being light also allows for the escapism that cinema so gives to those whom need it most, averting their gaze from their own private issues and allowing focus upon a world more magical and manageable in their hearts, removing the gritty elements that make their own hardships worse in reality.
While I feel that grit is overdone I still feel it has a significant place in our media library. Such bleak hopeless films often giving directors a chance to truly show their inspirational views on our society, however the over saturation of the industry with these angst ridden titles should be carefully monitored as its growing excessively out of control, and limits the creativity being sold to us.

Mini Thought- Teen fiction and the art of the addiction *Re-Upload*

(Written and Published  Jun 16, 2015)


With the boom of Suzanne Collins’ the Hunger Games trilogy, books and films alike, teen fiction seems to be more popular than ever.
There are countless volumes of angst-ridden adventurers emerging from the wood work receiving both praise and condemnation both. Prominent examples being that of The Fault In Our Stars, The Maze Runner and Divergence respectively, taking queue from Collins’ success to leap from the page to the silver screen.
However, are these books any good? Or are they more generic clap-trap cycled out on the incredibly formulaic conveyor belt of young-adult story telling?

These have such cliché tendencies many must wonder why people are still wasting their hard earned money on them, and the answer is simple, these writers have mastered the art of the addictive read, employing a great number of techniques in order to make their shallow plots seem like the next Shakespearean masterpiece.
Impressions go a long way. Sometimes the idea of a book being a certain genre or having a certain concept allow the reader’s own imagination to fill over any gaps in plot the author neglects or the skilled writing they do not posses.
For example the incredibly ominous nature established in the premise of The Hunger Games, being that of a gladiatorial child death match over food, makes one’s brain ignore the fact that the games themselves do not begin for eleven chapters, and the fact that Collins’ poor descriptive skills can possibly do justice to such a spectacle is easily overlooked by the mind due to the ten chapters of build-up that specifically state that these games are an abomination of unimaginable horror. It is almost as if her creation of an unimaginably disgusting concept is used as an excuse for her to be unimaginative in her execution of said premise.
 Romance is a massively cheap reason to keep reading, the more contrived the better. The abuse of the “love triangle” in modern media is near astronomical. From Twilight to City Of Bones, all an author needs do to is add an element of reader-community interaction is slap a massive romantic choice in the first or middle book in their series, either as an initial establishing premise or to revitalise a dying plot.
People enjoy arguing and fighting, and thus allowing for any kind of division instantly allows for increased publicity to ones book, the peak of this probably being the enormous Team Jacob versus Team Edward campaigns being established.
Even simple romance is vital in the addictive nature of such books. The romantic pairing will be established within the first few chapters or lines, yet the writer will find any number of reasons as to reduce their time together, so as to only allow for tiny amounts of romantic development per chapter. This trickle effect makes the reader feel inclined to keep reading, even if not to the end of the book at least until the romance is either confirmed or abolished. Yet again the writer will never fully establish any kind of permanent arrangement until the final text in their series in almost all cases.
However, this alone would lead to readership feeling cheated, or like they are only getting half a story, this is solved with careful expansion of scale.
Scale is one of the most important tools to any page turner, and is a prominent feature of almost all teen fiction series. The expression “bigger is better” springs to mind, as a key means to draw people into any story is to up the stakes. Did the hero save the city? Well now he is saving the world! Did he save the world? Well now he is saving the universe! This shallow change allows for the plot to repeat once more, yet this time on a galactic stage, clearly shown in such texts as Anthony Horowitz’s the Power of Five series, growing from a tale in Yorkshire, to a global race to the ends of the earth to fight strange evil gods, or that of Twilight’s escalation from its cliché love triangle to that of an all out wars in the later books.
This increased size of the adventure, normally along with a slight increase in size with each volume – for example that of J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter – make the reader feel more gratification with each completed book, with the simple consistent writing making it an easy triumph, thus dragging a poor innocent reader into this addictive world of the so called page-turner.
This malevolent entity known as teen fiction knows its boundaries, as if the plot becomes too vast they will lose the final spell that drains the everyday reader’s pocket, relation to the characters. The easiest way for a writer to get away with terrible writing is for the employment of first person points of view in their teen fiction, major players in this field being James Patterson’s Maximum Ride series or that of the ever expanding mythological based books emanating from Rick Riordan.
This allows for clever dialogue to be replaced with pop culture references and youth slang, along with being able to clearly outline the main character’s thoughts and feelings. This easily allows for the reader to gain the impression of their having a deep understanding of the book, while this is impossible as all interpretation is clearly present on the surface with little to no depth to even explore.
Many prefer to use a third person point of view, but to the same effect in the majority of cases, despite the external viewer status this narration will almost always have narrow focus on the single main character in their struggles etc. The only real advantage to this presentation of events is that it escapes the mind numbing repetitive “I”, which drowns many pages of The Hunger Games even mid child blood bath, ruining much of the horror that the authorial intent would desire to convey.
Love them or hate them, teen fiction is far from thoughtless, as shown here it’s a calculated money making machine, playing with our perceptions, the dark concepts of dystopian realities used to create the impression that the reader is highly intelligent for getting through it, while the lax untaxing writing allows universal accessibility and reducing any real reward for their completion.
The repetitive nature of the universal teen fiction plots will continue until the addictive feeling’s effects wear thin, and at that point we will all jump from the recent craze of bleak alternate futures and love triangles for the next great craze to sweep the nation.

Mini Film Review – Cum to Live (2001)

This erotic French fever dream of a comedy thriller is unmissable. Going into this with no knowledge of the plot or genre other than that two people want to have sex in a cabin is truely a wonderful time, especially with equally confused friends.

The film's plot centers around a seeming murderous imposter having a sex-crazed actress visit and demand sex and food for about a week, strangely spending the first 20 minutes flirting with her and the rest of the film denying her advances. The tone begins to feel more like a sketch show than a film with one narrative, going from one very different scene to another with little transition. It even ends in a Rambo-esque  fight at the end with the main character butchering half the villains only to have the love interest shot to death, make sort of friends with the killer, find out he didn't actually kill the owner and all go their seperate ways.

The film even takes the time out for a rubics cube solving scene, with in-built timer making it feel like a childrens tv show, and an amazing music video where the singer begs for the main character's "Juice", claiming to be "tired of my fingers" and "tired of my cucumber".

While the girl is confusing and annoying the leading guy can carry the whole thing on his ridiculous  facial expressions alone, whether his cock his being forceably beaten off over a toy car by the chick or looking for condoms in a box of cereal he is a constant source of hilarity throughout. He also happens to be the director of this masterpiece, hence the massive quality of the project throughout. The first revolutionary step towards safe sex that we needed, but didn't deserve. 

An unmissable mess that comes together in all the right ways.

Rating - 
Direction - 5/5
Soundtrack -5/5
Plot - 4/5
Characters - 5/5
Overall - 19/20 (ONLY IF WATCHED WITH FRIENDS)

Mini Game Review - Life is Strange: Episode 4 “Dark Room” *Re-Upload*

(Written Jul 28, 2015, Day of Release)

Just out is the next long awaited installment of Square Enix‘s hot new sensation  Life is Strange, a massively successful graphic adventure game, playing with the concepts of time travel, both the positives of day to day rewind abuse and the terribly consequences when the course of history itself is changed. Episode 4, known as the “Dark Room” is a must play chapter in the story of Maxine Caulfield’s life, with many a dark twist and turn to be found!

This episode left myself with rather conflicting emotions, mainly due to wasted potential. The end of episode 3 left us in an alternate timeline, where while she had saved her best friend’s father from an untimely demise she has inadvertently led her pal Chloe into a universe where she has lost all movement in her body in an awful car accident. The shy and fairly timid protagonist Max is also show in this alternate timeline to be one of the adversarial party brats, a brief glance through this continuity’s phone showing her contrasting rude and bratty responses to her family and friend’s alike.

However, this world is totally wasted as Max reverts to the “real” world within the first 50 minutes of this near 3 hour installment, with no return and little mention. This could have been such an interesting plot if explored, yet as my own play through of this series had led my Max to this party scene regardless so i was not devastated. Their handling of the Rachel Amber case is both exciting and underwhelming, while learning the nature of her disappearance the end result feels rather ordinary in the weird time bending world that has been established here.

Chloe, Max’s rebellious confident, is driving me to breaking point in this episode, her actions in almost every episode have continuously made me hate and despise the character; it’s clear to see that we are meant to relate to her rebel attitude in this town that is ruled by the rich and corrupt, but she is so rude and selfish in almost every instance available, insulting you, her family and anyone that would disagree with her. While this is rewarding in some instances for the most part it is direct hostility against people who generally seem fairly nice.

At first it seemed to be that the disabled Chloe would be presented in a much more positive light, as if to make the player wonder which timeline is the more favorable, however within minutes even this “Chloe 2″ begins to attempt to guilt trip you and goes as far as to force Max to make impossibly cruel choices. Even the drug dealer Frank is shown to be a much more relatable human character in all his appearances, making me much favor his well being in any presented choice between the two, something that is yet again occurring in this episode.

Regardless of the wasted ideas in the game’s initial hour, the large variety of areas in this episode are a nice escape from the sometimes confining Blackwell Acadamy. the extreme speed that the plot picks up in the last few scenes of the episode would in my own eyes place this as the most dramatic episode to date, the twist and cliffhanger, while not being totally unpredictable or out of no where, are well executed, with just enough foreshadowing to heighten the tension yet not spoil the end result.

Rating

Looks - 3.8/5

Sound -3.2/5

Plot - 2.4/5

Characters - 2/5

Gameplay - 3/5

Replayability - 3.7/5

Total - 18.1/30