No No November
It’s nearly November and I was in danger of letting another month pass by without writing anything. This is therefore a rather pathetic attempt so at least I can say I did write something and who knows, perhaps if I just reduce the gap between each posting this will become a more regular occurrence.
So, last time I mentioned a few things I was going to write about. Firstly Flashforward, at the time I was just going to say how I thought the problem would be knowing how things were going to end it would be difficult to expand beyond one season. It turns out that it’s a bigger problem because knowing the future eliminates any risk and therefore any investment in any of the characters although considering you probably can’t name any of the characters there are perhaps even bigger problems. Five episodes in and I’m still curiously exactly how they are going to get to the FlashForward point but I’ve also realised that the whole show is a bit rubbish, enjoyable rubbish though.
On the gaming front I’d been playing Crackdown and Elite Beat Agents, the latter is just weird, almost to the point of being just wrong, but it’s an enjoyable rhythm game for the DS. My enjoyment of Crackdown went up and down quite a bit. In the early hours before powering up any abilities I really couldn’t see what any of the fuss was about but then as I gained more skills and started leaping around from building to building I began to enjoy it a lot more. I think a sign of a good game is when you start thinking about it in the real world and after playing Crackdown for a few hours any cityscape starts to look like a playground. My main problem with the game was the dull and repetitive missions which just got in the way of exploring and having fun.
Finally (500) Days Of Summer, in a year of disappointing films (for me, anyway) I’m fairly sure that this is going to be my favourite film of 2009. I just liked everything about it from first hearing the trailer, the first words on screen (which annoyingly I can’t remember now), the soundtrack and nothing, not even the ‘annoying’ sister, kookiness or ending, bothered me (but I did see the final ‘joke’ coming). Put simply, it’s the kind of film I wish I’d made and therefore obviously wonderful.
I was also going to write about the PHPNW09 conference I attended earlier in the month, but I had little to add to what has already been said in write ups by loonytoons, lornajane, mheap and the other comments on the PHPNW09 Joind.in page. It was a really great event, the talks were entertaining and informative and if you weren’t there you really should take a look at the talk slides and videos (when they go online). It also got me in the mood for more conferences and festivals. Tomorrow I’m off to hear Masaya Matsuura and Jonathan Smith speak at the GameCity event in Nottingham and in November I’ll probably be attending the Leeds Film Festival and Keswick Film Club’s Ken Russell Weekend (so long as I’m brave enough to go out in public with my ‘Mo‘).
One Month Later
One month later and, as expected, I’ve failed to write anything. To be honest I’m not really sure where September went or what I did with a whole month of my life. There probably were things that I could’ve written about but I never quite got round to it. I’ll have to try harder this month and try and formulate some of the ideas I have floating around my head regarding Flash Forward, Crackdown, Elite Beat Agents and why I was completely delighted and surprised to find myself thinking that (500) Days of Summer may be my favourite film of 2009.
The Blog With No Name (Yet) 