And so then I think to myself, “I’ve got my camera. I could take a picture.” Almost half of the peopel there had the same thought; you can even see a reasonably elderly woman taking a snap with her camera phone, presumably so she can then twitter and facebook it to her peeps. But suddenly the idea felt creepy. Had people died? Would it be wrong to be casually snapping away at the scene of a fatal accident? News photographers do it all the time, but they’re servicing the public interest, or at least managing a close approximation of it. Does my massive contingent of 29 followers count as the public? I doubt it.

Anyhow, it turns out no one died and so I vaguely regret not trying to get a good photo. But I can’t quite decide though if I’m a bit disturbed by everyone milling about and recording the event, or whether I’m impressed by them actually doing something vaguely constructive by spreading the information around their various networks.

And briefly, an old man rant: One of Channel 7 News’ leading stories today consisted of announcing that Britney Spears had entered the country, that they hadn’t been able to get an interview or footage of her, and reading out what she tweeted when she got off the plane. This followed the startling revelation that the winners of the Melbourne Cup were “happy”. If I could remember Seven’s news tagline, I’d quote it here, ironically. That’d show ‘em.

In the future, we have bases on the moon. We harvest energy from the sun and send it back to the Earth, and power over half the world. We have ingenious robots who can control all the systems on a moon base whilst also empathically relating to its human crew. We’re awesome.

We’re so awesome, we only need one person to run our energy bases. It’s a bit draining — you work for three years straight, and there’s no one around to help you or keep you sane. This might not seem like such a good idea, but don’t forget, there is a helpful robot hanging around. He can even make a smiley face to match your mood. You’ll be fine. Just don’t screw up.

Moon is a peculiar sort of movie, but disappointingly not quite peculiar enough. It starts off with an intriguing sort of mystery, and slowly the pieces fall into place. But… not really that slowly. In fact, if you’ve watched any science fiction before, you’ll grab the ideas pretty quickly. This can lead to disappointment if you go into the film expecting a more head-twisting, ambiguous and elusive sort of story, so I’m telling you now so that you don’t. I’ll not say anything else about the story however, as by the same token, I don’t really want to spoil any of the film’s relatively shallow yet well directed mystery.

There’s not many people in it. I’ll spoil that much. However, the primary character amongst the aforesaid not many, Sam Rockwell, is tremendous. I’m not entirely sure why he isn’t a massive, massive movie star yet. He has a pretty huge responsibility carrying this movie, but there’s no question he’s up to it. If you make a film about one guy, he’d better be an interesting and engrossing guy; Sam Bell is at least that, even if he hasn’t watched as many genre movies as he really should have. He should also learn to communicate with himself a little better.

The Cylons amongst you¹ will be pleased to hear that the film represents a massive step forward in the positive portrayal of robots on television. For too long, well-mannered, softly-spoken robots have been portrayed as psychopaths; heartless, unfeeling idiots that are incapable of reconciling their dedication to the mission with their basic programming to protect and assist humans. Kevin Spacey’s GERTY bucks the trend, and I hope gives programmable toasters, automatic roller doors and plastic guitars hope that one day they can live in a life where people don’t treat them like untrustworthy villains-in-waiting.

Moon is beautiful, and well acted, and generally interesting. But it starts so very well, and appears so intriguing, that the fact that it’s only actually good, and not awesome, is tremendously disappointing. Let this be a lesson to film-makers everywhere; don’t make your films seem this good. Actually, that’s a rubbish lesson, and open to misinterpretation. Let’s not have a lesson. Let’s have more films from Duncan Jones instead.

1. I know you’re out there. You don’t fool me by looking and feeling human.

As those of you who will have read Jackson’s Star Trek review will one day know,¹ this year J.J. Abrams brought us a pretty impressive film. I was even able to rise above my childhood Doctor Who versus Star Trek rivalry to enjoy it. Perfectly paced, funny, exciting, moving.

It’s just out on DVD, Blu-Ray, and iTunes as well. May I caution you as an aside; do not just buy it on iTunes. It’ll cost you $25 there, but for an extra $5 you could get the blu-ray edition which comes with its own digital iTunes copy. Even if you don’t have a blu-ray player, one day you might. Think about it.

Anyhow, that’s not the point, as you may have guessed from the picture up in the top left hand corner.² What people often rightly applaud Star Trek for is its agenda of social progress and togetherness and the triumph of humanity against its base urges. The first inter-racial kiss on television. The first romance between a cyborg and an artificial intelligence.³ So it surprised me somewhat to be watching the scenes deleted from Star Trek and to find a pretty ropey scene between our hero Kirk and an Orion woman. Allow me to paraphrase:

KIRK: I’m really sorry. I realise it looks like I used you shamefully but I won’t actually come out and say that I did. I’m very awkward right now. I’m even a bit reluctant to make eye contact with you but I clearly have on several occasions in this sentence.
…pause…
You’re not Gaila, are you?

For those playing at home, that’s a joke about how all girls with green skin look the same and how Kirk can’t tell them apart. And we’re not talking about girls he’s barely met. We’re talking about girls he’s slept with. Take a moment to think about just how that’d play if, say, Kirk had the same issue but with Uhura and another girl of similar skin colour.

Luckily, it didn’t make it to the film. But not because it was in bad taste — in fact, J.J. and his crew still seem to think it’s really funny. It’s all a bit weird. How tragic that on the same day that I note that anti-robot stereotypes are on the decline, we see once again the ugly face of intergalactic racism. Truly, equal rights in genre movies is an ongoing battle.

1. Patience my children. Remember the parable of the Not Fade Away review.
2. I reserve the right to one day change the layout of this website and not update this sentence.
3. Well, almost-romance. Curse you, Voyager!

1. To Daryl. I strongly suspect that an apology would mean more if you apologised to the people you thought might have been offended by the sketch, and not to Mr Connick Jr.¹

2. To people whinging about ‘political correctness’. Call it what you like, but it seems to me that it’s only manners to avoid pointlessly offending people.

3. To people saying that if it was acceptable years ago it’s acceptable now. Lots of things used to be OK that aren’t any more. I don’t expect to see you attempt to prove your point by marrying your 13 year old cousin and taking a slave tomorrow. Console yourself in the knowledge that lots of things that used to be frowned upon are more accepted now. Enjoy them! Leave the house without your hat, vote to choose your leader, and let someone have sex with your bottom.

4. To people arguing that Harry Connick Jr may be a hypocrite. That’s not really the point here, is it?

5. To me. Admit it. You’re kind happy because now you have a morally justifiable reason to think Hey Hey sucks.

1. Do you say Jr when you only use someone’s last name? Enquiring minds want to know.

The answers to my questions turn out to be “Above”, “No”, “Serif”, “Neither” and “the coloured lights are inside it”. It hearkens back strongly to the older, simpler logos, which is nice. I see everyone at the BBC still gets excited by lens flares. I’m reasonably keen, though I’m curious to find out when they use the initials and when they use the full word. It’s certainly a nicer logo for putting on DVD spines which is obviously my main concern.

Hrmmm.

There’s not actually very much to say about a new logo. I should have covered the Apple event instead. They’re much more contentious. I went onto a Who forum to try to find crazy fans whinging that the new logo doesn’t do target disk mode, but no such luck.

The excitement never stops around here. I hope you’ll join me for the unveiling tomorrow.¹

1. No, seriously. I will actually post something tomorrow, or my name isn’t Jackson Kearney. Hang on, sorry. I mean, because my name isn’t Jackson Kearney.

So, it turns out, I’m Batman. I know, I’m as surprised as you are. I didn’t realise until playing Arkham Asylum, but there’s no other logical explanation. I don’t see how I could possibly feel this much like Batman without actually being him.

I’m not sure exactly when I realised about the Batman thing. It might have been when I first strung up one of Joker’s minions by his legs under a gargoyle, or perhaps when I swooped down from on high to knock down an enemy without him seeing me. It might even have been when I realised I had truly gathered a gadget for every occasion, without feeling completely ridiculous (i.e. No bat-shark-repellent).¹

Batman: Arkham Asylum is, against the odds, an awesome super-hero game. There’s several factors that make this happen, but key amongst them is that it isn’t actually tying into any particular Batman mythology, but just taking the bits that work for the game from whichever comic or movie it likes, and not fussing about the rest. The game happens entirely at Arkham Asylum, where the Joker’s up to some considerable mischief, and the story pulls Batman about through various locations. Balancing a plot which changes the world around you, yet retaining the sandbox nature of the game seems tricky, but Arkham Asylum makes it feel effortless.

Like any game you care to mention these days, there’s also collectibles hidden about the map which lead you down the hideously alluring path of achievement points. However, most of these ones elevate themselves from the usual pointless fare by unlocking histories of various Batman characters. Suddenly the pointless drudgery of wading through the map in search of blips becomes a lot like clicking randomly through Wikipedia. In essence, Eidos have managed to pick two of the biggest time wasters in the world today and marry them for a surprisingly satisfying effect.

The story is comic-book style ridiculous, but quite involving. Despite some pretty ropey dialogue, Mark Hamill’s deliciously over-the-top Joker keeps everything exciting, and even the more unexpected plot developments are still enjoyable — even if one in particular does find a way to recreate my least favourite video game cliche, the jungle level.² My favourite dramatic moments of all, however, fell somewhat outside the plot with the impressive and ingeniously reality-bending Scarecrow encounters. Letting the game down somewhat is the generally cheesy dialogue, though in some instances the cheese at least feels appropriate, if not entertaining.

The actual mechanics of the game are generally pretty well realised too. I love a game with hang-gliding — a love that’s swelled in my heart ever since MDK — and Batman’s cape doesn’t disappoint, though as Yahtzee pointed out, it is awfully difficult to actually see where you’re going when said cape takes up almost half the screen. Diving about, swinging, and simple combat all works flawlessly. When combat becomes more involved, to the tune of ten or more henchmen, I did find myself sucking rather uncontrollably, but I’m almost certain that this is a failing on my part.

I used to scorn super-hero games. Suddenly, I’m desperate for more. I can only imagine what these people could do with Superman.

1. Nasty buggers, bat-sharks.
2. Not because I find them unoriginal, but because giant scary plants give me the heebie-jeebies.