Oh yes, I wrote something

A few months ago I worked with a TV production student at my University and wrote his third year grad film. Some of the aspects had to change while they were shooting, which is a shame but still, it's worth a watch. So check it out, and I'll be attempting to update you, the eternal internet abyss, with more in the near future. See you then

Oh and don't forget to check me out on Twitter

Gaming, E3 and the Phenomenon that is Kingdom Hearts

The E3 annual gaming trade fair took place a couple of days ago and some big chunks of news hit the world. Now I don't consider myself a gamer. My preferred console is the Playstation 2 and I've not completed any games in the last 4 or so years unless you count Tetris, and as much as I'm a Tetris fanatic, it doesn't count.

The thing is, in my blissful youth, my gaming experience was scattered.  Gaming was mainly when I went to my cousins house and played Rayman on their Playstation with them. Back then playing with more than one person was either when you were fighting each other on Tekken or sitting by them during a boss battle on whichever game we were into and telling them when to hit, jump, heal and generally shout encouragement. And it was bloody brilliant.

My gaming career began with my Gameboy which I religiously played Pokemon on after saving Birthday and Christmas money as well as every penny I could find. When the Playstation 1 was reaching it's later days my parents had managed to russle one up from somewhere with some educational games for me to play. Which, lets face it, nobody wants to play, you play games to get away from education not to jump back into it. However that all changed during Christmas 2001 when I was bestowed the gift of gifts. For my Birthmas (Birthday+Christmas) I received a Playstation 2 and my own TV to play it on. From there, life was good.

I played on it for hours on end, keeping it on overnight to stay my progress until I could get a memory card. It was great and then, it got better. When bragging (because I was so dang humble) about my gifts to a couple of friends, one of them reminded me of this game I saw a trailer for a long time before. There was a boy and these worlds, they were based on something I knew, and he had a strange but cool weapon, a Key... Blade? It was called Kingdom Hearts. As soon as I could I took the remainder of my Christmas money rushed to the nearest store I could find and bought it. Thus began one of my biggest fandoms.

It was glorious and like nothing I had ever seen before. It took characters I've loved since I was born, from worlds I wanted to venture since I saw them and stories I'd giddily rewatched for years and told me that I could go on an adventure with them in a completely new and different way. My mind was blown. It was completely unprecedented and yet completely necessary at the same time. Disney meets Final Fantasy, I mean, what even? It was juvenile enough to linger onto childhood and yet mature enough to tackle strong themes; growing up, restlessness, home, love, loss, sacrifice, it was all there. I could freely talk about it with my group of friends and not feel totally alienated. Yes, to others it looked like fanatical childish waste fo time, but to me, it was a salvation from that bleak, miserable and angry time in life called teenager-hood.

It introduced me to series like Final Fantasy and later God of War but nothing quite matched Kingdom Hearts. Nothing was quite as lighthearted but serious, quite as epic but soulful, quite as cool but Goofy (see what I did there). It knew what it was and made no apologies for it. Yeah it was silly, and yeah, it was solemn but it was so self assured that you had confidence in it, you loved it because of that. its magnetism and charisma was enough to draw you back in and replay it a million times over. Its characters were charming and, sometimes, poignant and engaging to follow and it was this personality, this soul, this heart that gave it its loyal following.

Since 2006's first full follow up, Kingdom Hearts II, fans have been hankering for a third. In between the 1st and 2nd instalments Chain of Memories was released on the Gameboy, and since KH2, four other games have spawned from here on hand held consoles. Although these have contributed somewhat to the ever growing mythology and the ever complex plot, a third instalment has been begged for and now, these prayers have been answered.

Yes at this years E3 an announcement trailer was released for the new instalment on the Playstation 4 and Xbox One. No news has been released as to when it may be seen and little is known of the story, except it follows a mature Sora, but fans worldwide could be heard unanimously thanking their God's when they found out. Facebook and Twitter were aflutter with joyous reactions. As soon as I found out I literally cheered out loud. My gaming career had sat on a dusty shelf in my memory, resigned to the past, thinking this day would never come, I've had no money and no time to play the interquel's, midquel's and prequel's that have since been made, but now over ten years since I started playing it, I am giddy with excitement again.

To many, it doesn't make sense. Disney and Square? In a role playing game? But for us Kingdom Hearts fans it is a unique and definitive blend of concepts and emotions that has stayed in our hearts. It said to us that you can be hopeful, you can be optimistic and goofy and cartoonish and love what may seem childish but you can also be mature, responsible, heartfelt, protective and selfless. It told you that helping someone wasn't stupid, that loving your friends wasn't lame and that Disney is for everyone. It told you you weren't alone, that you're all right and, no matter what, you can endure. Your heart is strong and your will actions count. To paraphrase Sora, The heart may be weak, and sometimes it may even give in. But deep down, there's a light that never goes out.

Here is the link to the announcement trailer, introduced by Kingdom Hearts director, Tetsuyo Nomura.

To those who've only just been introduced to it, need a refresher or just plain diddly love the series, this Timeline feature of Gametrailers is worth a definite watch. It looks at the series as a whole, the stories, the themes and the guides you through any of its confusing matters.

GameTrailers

If you like what you're reading then check me out on Twitter. It'll be nice to hear from you.

Productive Procrastination: Vertigo Trailer (Fan made): Never Seek to Tell Thy Love

I got quite bored today and instead of doing any work that I may have needed to do, I decided to fix up some coursework that I didn't do as well as I hoped for last year. It's a trailer for Hitchock's Vertigo with an amalgamation of elements from the poem Never Seek to Tell thy Love by William Blake. The audio's a little spotty but otherwise, I'm kinda glad of what I did with it. Hope you enjoy:

Nineties Nostalgia and the post Friends sitcom

When I was walking back from Uni the other day, after staying too late and getting too little done, i began reminiscing of the nineties. As a child of the nineties there's a lot I damn well miss. As much as i really didn't like them, I miss the Spice Girls. Compared to Nicki Minaj and Justin Beiber, they're damn well likeable. People used phones as phones and there wasn't one attached to every ear, palm and God know where else. The lights seemed rosier, the streets seemed cheerier and the Coca Cola Christmas adverts were loveable  awesome and told you it when was Christmas. It was a bloody good time to be alive.

In amongst this haze of wallowing nostalgia I began to recollect  something that was definitive of nineties popculture - Friends. Now for those of you who have lived under a rock, under the sea, under six miles of ice for the last twenty years and just literally managed to get out, Congratulations. Welcome to the world. Here's a smidge of knowledge you may have missed during your incarceration by the cod people of Nanunaktu. Friends was a sitcom that took place in New York about a group of six twenty somethings and their navigation through life and relationships. It lasted for ten seasons and recently celebrated the nine year anniversary of its finale.

Now fans have been pleading for a Friends reunion/movie much like Sex and The City and the supposedly upcoming Entourage movie for a wee while, but it's been remarked upon time and time again that It's not going to happen. Moving past the fact that it's ended and people should let it rest in peace, I began wondering one of the cheesy and obvious things that people tend to wonder when things are over. What's the new one? What's the latest version? What's the replacement? What could be considered as the latest Friends?

You could even include
Friends spoof Chums
to the mix

Well, several shows can be considered. Since Friends began coming to a close, and even before that, there's been an onslaught of shows hoping to capture the same success that Friends achieved. Cases have been made for Big Bang Theory, New Girl and Happy Endings and all have valid points. Big Bang is filmed in front of a live audience and the main characters do live across the hall from each other. New Girl does have the 'will they won't they' kinda is kinda isn't romance. While Happy Endings has the close knit friends in a big city that all kicks off when a bride runs out of her wedding.

But that doesn't stop the similarity for other shows. How I Met Your Mother has the same close knit group and even city that Friends had making it all the more a candidate (as well as having one or two brides running from their weddings). Then again an argument could be made for Community, a show about a makeshift family with a setting they share that acts as their 'home'. Even shows like Modern Family could be thrown into the arena as well, emulating similare themes to later Friends seasons like gay parents and remarriage. Arguments could be made every which way from Sunday for the place of the new Friends, but maybe that's approaching it the wrong way.

Yep. Not so secret.

With a nine year legacy, a ten year tenure (try saying that ten times fast) and a legion of fans still hoping for a comeback, Friends clearly made a hell of an impact. I mean the finale got 52.5 million viewers! It's resonated with audiences young and old and left a mark. To this day you can't use "How you doing?" as a pick up line without seeming like a copycat. You can't bump your fists together as a sign of secret profanity, because it's not so secret and you can't say that no one told you life was going to be this way without clapping afterwards. Looking at the shows that it could be compared to, Friends seems to have acted more like a meme, and no not like Condescending Wonka. More like,

An element of a culture or behavior that may be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, esp. imitation.

It's become a sort of standard or template for other shows to match, and with so many similarities out there, it's almost inextricable from other shows to actually compare them. Shows have come to behave so much more like it, with will they-won't they romances (New Girl and How I met Your Mother), self referential humour (Community) or an urbanistic setting and focal hangout (Happy Endings). Friends has left a hell of a legacy. Having made such an impact and defining an era, you can't just compare other sitcoms with Friends willy nilly. You have to ask, what's done the same thing for this era as Friends did for the nineties? And that's a whole different answer entirely.

What do you think? You can Comment here or Tweet any views to @yjinkscrawler. Any previous readers may recognise I was talking about getting a Tweet portal and, et voila, I have. So be sure to hit me up there.

Have a little nugget of nineties nostalgia as well.

Into Darkness and the modern franchise film

Finally managing to round up some of my troops, I was able to venture to my nearby screen and watch the lens flare extravaganza Star Trek Into Darkness last night. The latest venture into mans final frontier sees Chris Pines Captain Kirk go after John Harrison, a space terrorist (?) played by sinister voiced and steely eyed Benedict Cumberbatch who is on the run after his attack on the Enterprise in London. Of all places. But, as it tends to be, nothing is as it seems. Cumberbitches, Pinenuts and Trekky fans alike won't be disappointed with the twists, turns and full blown spectacle that's provided. Although I'm not a Trekky myself, I could still pick out some of the homages and injokes from the series.

However, I'm not going to try and go into a review or anything. If you want to go see it, go see it. That's as far as my advice goes. The thing that I'm interested inm and that the title brings to mind, is the theme of Darkness and how ever growing a presence that's becoming in major movie franchises. Into Darkness does indeed go into darker territory exploring terrorism in the space venturing future, as well as the series itself exploring themes of genocide, racism and lens flare capacity (couldn't resist).

Many people have remarked and noticed the ever increasing dark and gritty elements in major hollywood movies lately. Last year alone we had franchise films like The Dark Knight Rises, Skyfall, The Hunger Games, The Amazing Spiderman and Snow White and the Huntsman (it's getting a sequel so technically franchise) and that's just a few. Now franchises like The Dark Knight Rises or The Hunger Games may naturally have these darker tones within their prior source material, to some degree. The Hunger Games follows teenagers killing each other for the sake of the upper classes entertainment (so basically high school), while the Dark Knight's tales have always had a somewhat gothic and sinister feel to them as he wanders around at night thrashing thugs for justice. Not to mention one of his pseudonyms does include the word "dark" in it. But story's like Snow White and Spiderman?

To some degree Spiderman does make sense. He fights crime in New York, so there is an element of darkness to it. But Spidey has always had a fun toting time time with his crime fighting. He is our friendly neighbourhood Spiderman after all. Does his depiction need to have a darker vibe to their exploration? With the previous Raime led version there was a tongue in cheek element with Defoes portrayal of the mentally troubled Green Goblin. They knew it was silly but you didn't stop liking it because of that. It's hard to take a giant lizard man seriously if you don't show him with a pinch of humour or humility. Although they tried to stick to the darker, grittier and more realistic tone with the reboot, advertising it as 'the untold story', it was still riddled with nonsensical tonal elements (which the Screenjunkie honest trailer video has a lot of fun with).

Similarly with Snow White and the Huntsman, the darker and grittier element was pursued through a more realistic approach. However a story with poison apples, evil queens and a 'lovable' Kristen Stewart, are hard to take seriously. The approach attempted to make the century old fairytale less 'childish' having it granted a 12A certificate in the UK with elements including a sword welding Snow White, a rebel war and a psychologically haunted Huntsman. It's interesting to note that the Huntsman iteration grossed $155 million next to its  cheerier Snow White rival, Mirror Mirror with $64.9 million. In fact all of these are part of Imdb's highest grossing list for last years releases - http://www.imdb.com/search/title?at=0&sort=boxoffice_gross_us&title_type=feature&year=2012,2012.

In most of these darkly approached films the filmmakers have attempted to give a form of 'honesty' to a source material that has previously had a different public perception. It almost shamefully hides its the materials past by trying to make it more realistic with a darker tone. However darker doesn't mean more honest. Star Trek Into Darkness doesn't make itself more realistic or honest by exploring terrorism or genocide. It doesn't stop people noticing the primary coloured uniform, the kitschy sci fi sound effects or how embarrassingly horrid Spocks haircut is. Just as darker doesn't make people stop noticing that Spiderman is a teenager in a red and blue skin tight suit, or that Snow White still aligns herself with seven dwarfs in the woods. All this brings to mind the Brian Cox speech from Adaptation.

Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every fucking day, someone, somewhere takes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ's sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life! And why the FUCK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it! I don't have any bloody use for it!

Now I'm not saying that these films don't replicate life (to some degree). Yes they include murder, war and destruction but that doesn't make them more realistic or life like. They can focus on these aspects so much that they can forget about the love or the faith. These films have taken the dark approach with their execution but for some of them it isn't really needed. They almost forget the reason why they were popular in the first place: wonder and exploration in Star Trek, escapism and the conquering power of love in Snow White, butt kicking and justice in Spiderman. By using the dark approach it can take away honesty from the source material and in turn what made it popular in the first place. I'm not saying don't use these dark and gritty elements, but know how to use them with your story. Into Darkness works because it helps to show the consequence of exploration but Snow White and the Huntsman didn't because it didn't bring the wonder or the love. It just brought Kristen Stewart. IF you're going to use darkness know how to use it to to highlight what makes your story special. What made it popular in the first place, because that's life as well. It's darkness as well as light.

With Mirror Mirror failing to pull the numbers that Huntsman did, does that mean dark is the way to go?

Here's some links for you to check out. The Amazing Spiderman Honest Trailer. An article on Collider about A lesson for contemporary Superhero films as well as Batman by the numbers.

Oh and a little bit of Brain Cox's Rober Mckee.

Back on the Horse

Okay so, yet again, it's been a while. To be honest I've never been the online type. I meanI only got Facebook for the first time a few months ago. I have over a hundred friends, woop woop, but I'm not quite sure what that really counts for. That's a discussion for another time though. I'm not going to make any promises but I am going to make an active choice to come here more often.

The reason I came back today is I saw a few really cool people on Youtube and some other sites over the past few days and it encouraged me to get back on the online horse. I'm never quite sure what to say because, as usual, so I'm just going to see what's of interest to me at the time. I'll leave it here for today but I'll put a few links up of what I've discovered recently.

Some really smart insights from these guys
Fun from here

Some Scottishness (it's always needed) and well cool points here

As well as some Awesomely awesome shinazz from these folks. They don't need my help getting readers or anything, but if I like something I'll say I'll like them.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/

http://herocomplex.latimes.com/

I might be getting up on the Twitter bandwagon soon (I'm still hesitant) but I think If I delve myself into the online sea I might actually be able to give more. Sooooo, who knows. Hopefully I'll get back to y'all soon