Monday, 31 January 2022

REVIEW: See For Me (2022) Stars Skyler Davenport and Jessica Parker Kennedy

See For Me is a great new film that looks at how a blind person could deal with a home invasion.
Sophie (played by Skyler Davenport, who is most famous for video game voice work) is a blind former skier, who lives with her mother. For work Sophie house sits, (cat sits) luxury houses in New York.
Early on, the film gives the Sophie character extra layers, outside the obvious layer of not being able to see. (Actress Skyler Davenport is partially blind in real life), by showing that Sophie is not your innocent young girl, when you see her stealing some expensive wine with the help of a friend who guides her.

Sophies mother encourages her to download an app called "See For Me", which connects you to someone who will help you if you are in trouble as a blind person.

After arriving at a house to house sit, Sophie accidentally locks herself out, she decides to use the app for help. Sophie ends up being connected to Kelly (Jessica Parker Kennedy who you might recognise from The Flash). Kelly is a former servicewoman, so gives straightforward easy to understand instructions to help Sophie get back in the house.

Full Review at

REVIEW: The Amityville Uprising (2022)

I seem to be reviewing a lot of B movies recently, the latest one to come across my desk is The Amityville Uprising, released by Lionsgate. Not sure why Lionsgate are making and releasing B movies, they clearly don't need the small change that this film would make.

The film starts off with some terrible CGI showing a chemical blast at a military base. The general idea of the story is that this strange blast, creates a cloud of toxic acid rain. Most of the story takes place at a police station.

Now as I have mentioned before, there are Good Terrible movies and Bad Terrible movies. So where does this one fit in. Well its tough to say. The film is roughly 80 minutes long, HOWEVER, here is an awesome life hack I am going to give you right now. You can watch the entire film in 40 minutes! All you need to do is fast forward the first 40 minutes, and then start to watch from there.

Full Review at

REVIEW: War of the Worlds Annihilation

Streaming on Tubi TV, this is a disaster movie from the Kings of the B Movie, The Asylum.

All Asylum films are terrible, we know this, however there is good terrible, and bad terrible.
Good terrible films by The Asylum include the Sharknado franchise and The Megashark Franchise.
Bad terrible films, are pretty much everything else. Sadly, War of the Worlds Annihilation falls into the bad terrible list of films.

With that said, the film does star the one good Baldwin, in William Baldwin who plays General Skuller.

Full Review at

Friday, 28 January 2022

REVIEW: Antlers (2021) - Horror film starring Keri Russell, Jesse Plemons, Jeremy T. Thomas, Graham Greene, Scott Haze, Rory Cochrane, and Amy Madigan

I hadn't seen or heard pretty much any publicity for Antlers, so I expected this to be your run of the mill supernatural horror film, but I was pleasantly surprised by this rather engaging film.

Directed by Scott Cooper, and starring the excellent Keri Russell, probably best known for FX spy thriller series The Americans, as a school teacher, one of her students is seemingly suffering from personal problems at home, but what she doesn't know is that he actually has a dangerous secret in his house.

The film starts off with Frank Weaver who runs a meth lab out of an abandoned mine, one day Frank is attacked by some kind of creature, along with his son Aiden, they survive,  we learn later on that their condition got worse when home, so he ordered his older son Lucas to lock them up.

Full Review at

Wednesday, 26 January 2022

Interview with Horror Writer R. W. K. Clark

When did you first become interested in writing?

I have been interested in writing since I was a teen. I remember being so excited on my first day of creative writing class. So many ideas just popped into my head, from a love story that I hoped would be a reality one day to the darkest thoughts within me. I sat down to write my first project, and the words just poured out of me. Looking back now, I realize I should have taken more time editing it before turning it in. When I got my story back from the teacher, it was covered in red marks. She even added little notes like, "this makes no sense," and "where are you going with this?" There were also a few not-so-nice things noted. Well, not nice to a teen with fresh hopes of becoming a writer. Some could consider it traumatizing in a way. I remember feeling so defeated that day that I honestly thought I'd never pick up another pen. Fortunately, due to my tenacity, I picked up another. I learned to take criticism, whether constructive or not, and try to understand the reasoning.


How did you get involved in so many genres?

I've always had an interest in the darkest thoughts people hide away. What makes a serial killer tick? Why would a sweet person suddenly turn dark? I know how that may seem, but it intrigues me. Most of my bestsellers are psychological thrillers. However, I do like to dabble in fantasy and sci-fi on occasion. The things we all want to believe in, but know deep down are all make-believe, like a Zombie apocalypse, are also appealing to me. No matter how many reiterations, it's still entertaining and thought provoking. Writing sci-fi gives my mind a much-needed break from some of my deranged characters, like Melvin from Mindless or Elliot Keller in Passing Through.

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REVIEW: Gold (2022) - Starring Zac Efron and Anthony Hayes

Gold is an "Australian Survival" film, directing by Anthony Hayes, who also stars alongside Zac Efron.

Zac Efron in what I can only assume is an attempt to be taken seriously as an actor, is all dirty in this film, dirty as in covered in dirt, dishevelled, grubby, however you want to describe it, it does seem that when an actor wants to move to that next level, if they are a woman, they "ugly themselves up" and if they are a man, they grubby themselves down.

Set in the Australian outback, Efron plays... erm.... "Man One", yes that is how he is billed, who is getting a lift from Hayes, (Man Two). The first 20 minutes is some of the dullest on-screen film I have ever seen.

Full Review at

REVIEW: Summertime Madness on XBOX

Summertime Madness is a single-player first-person puzzle game. The game starts off with a nice intro.

"The city of Prague was under siege, ravaged by war.
Buildings were falling, churches were burning, and everything was to be washed away forever.
A painter lived there, isolated from the outside world. The worse the terrors of war became, the more the artist obsessively painted beautiful landscapes as a contrast to the evil he had witnessed. One night, a mysterious figure appeared in the house seemingly out of nowhere. The stranger walked slowly around the room, inspecting the paintings. He then sat down in front of the artist; to offer him a deal.
The chance to enter one of his own creations, far away and free of war. But he would have to find his way back out before midnight, or else his soul would become trapped in the canvas forever. Feeling alone, on the edge of madness, terrorized by the scent of death creeping in from the streets, the artist shook the mysterious man's hand, accepting the deal.
A few moments later, the house was empty."

Full Review at

Harder, hotter and tougher - The Bridge is back

The Bridge, Channel 4's gruelling reality competition, returns for a second season in a fresh tropical locale. There's double the drama and double the prize money on the line as two teams compete to be the first to win a £200k jackpot.

The eight-part series is hosted by AJ Odudu, and it follows 16 strangers who join together for the possibility to win a large financial award, but are unaware of the epic struggle that would be required to take the money home.

To take on the ultimate test of physical ability, mental talent, and teamwork, the candidates must set their egos and differences aside. In a race to reach the riches kept on top of 'Fortune Rock,' the teams must build a bridge over 1,000 feet of water in just 12 days. Will the first person to reach the money opt to share it with their teammates?

Coming soon.

REVIEW: Shattered (2022) - Starring Cameron Monaghan & Lilly Krug

Chris (Cameron Monaghan) is a retired tech millionaire, he wrote an app, sold it to google, and now he lives in a beautiful house with futuristic technology throughout. His wife (Sasha Luss) is divorcing him.

One late night he decides to go shopping, and meets a gorgeous blonde woman, Sky (Lilly Krug), she asks for his help in choosing some wine, her Uber cancels on her, and he ends up taking her back to his. This happens to me all the time! Really! Ok, apart from the hot blonde and I don't have a futuristic house, but the rest is spot on.

Chris and Sky start seeing each other, then one night when coming back to his car, someone is trying to break in, a scuffle ensues, and the criminal attacks Chris with a crowbar. Sky then steps in as a nurse for Chris to help him in his recovery.

Full Review at

REVIEW: Sheltered 2 on PC (Steam)

Sheltered 2 is set 20 years after an apocalyptic event happened on Earth, wiping out most of the human race, what remains are splintered factions, all vying for their own land and resources.

At first look the game will remind you of Fallout Shelter, and although there are similarities, Sheltered 2 is quite different and much more of a hardcore survival game.

Your job is to run your shelter, grow your faction, all the while managing your resources, crafting items, exploring outside of your shelter, and generally trying to keep everyone alive.

Full Review at

REVIEW: The King's Man - Starring Ralph Fiennes

Although it has been out about a month now, I finally got round to seeing The King's Man, a prequel of sorts to the Kingsman film series.

The film has some big-name actors in it, Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, Rhys Ifans, Matthew Goode, Tom Hollander, Harris Dickinson, Daniel Brühl, Djimon Hounsou, and Charles Dance, and is set during World War I and covers the emergence of the Kingsman organization.

A collection of some of the worst "bad guys" from history have come together to plot a war to wipe out millions, and Orlando Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) is in a race against time to stop them.

Full Review at

The first look image for the second series of Sky Original comedy Bloods has been released.

Sky has released a sneak peek at the second season of the critically acclaimed comedy BLOODS. The quirky dream team Wendy and Maleek, played by BAFTA-nominated Samson Kayo and Golden Globe-nominated Jane Horrocks, return as we follow them and their paramedic colleagues in the life-saving realm of a south London emergency service. The series will be broadcast in two parts on Sky Comedy and the streaming service NOW, with the first five episodes premiering in March 2022.

The second season introduces a new source of friction for Wendy and Maleek in the form of Wendy's obnoxious son, Spencer (Nathan Foad). Katherine Kelly (Innocent, Liar) joins the cast as the acting therapist and listening ear at the ambulance station.

Coming in March

Saturday, 22 January 2022

REVIEW: Dyna Bomb on Nintendo Switch

Dyna Bomb is an arcade style linear platformer, run or fly (using your jetpack, that conveniently has unlimited fuel) around a level, collect diamonds, bombs and a key, then exit the level. Do this before the time runs out, and avoiding enemies. There are 8 worlds with 8 levels in each world. So, plenty of levels to complete. Throw in portals to move around a level too, and you have a decent little arcade platformer.

Your character will start a level with 3 bombs that he or she can throw at enemies, you can collect more as well, but use your bombs carefully as they are strictly limited. And if you touch an enemy, level over.

Full Review at

Thursday, 20 January 2022

The Responder is a unique new crime drama from Dancing Ledge Productions, the creators of The Salisbury Poisonings.

The Responder, written by ex-police officer Tony Schumacher for his first original television series, puts a mirror up to the emotional extremes of life on the front lines of British policing - at times darkly humorous, at times achingly heartbreaking, and always demanding.

Chris Carson (Martin Freeman) is a crisis-stricken, ethically compromised, unconventional emergency response officer who is sent to a series of night shifts on the beat in Liverpool. Chris is forced to take on a new rookie partner Rachel while fighting to keep his head above water both personally and professionally (Adelayo Adedayo). Both quickly learn that their life in this high-pressure, never-ending nighttime environment depends on them either aiding or killing each other.

Coming Soon

Wednesday, 19 January 2022

REVIEW: Fire and Steel on PC (Steam)

Set in World War 2, Fire and Steel is a proper old school arcade shooter, but instead of flying a plane, you control a young Dragon called Aiden, no idea who gave him that name, but it is not very Dragon like is it. A bit like calling a Doberman by the name Keith.

Anyway, Aiden has been asleep for a thousand years, he wakes up to find the world at war, not choosing sides between the Axis and Allied forces, Aiden decides instead to just breathe fire and kill anyone who gets in his way.

What results is a pretty cool game whereby you will find yourself breathing fire or shooting fire balls at everything, from people stood firing guns at you, to attack planes and helicopters, battleships, tanks, heavy artillery and everything else humanity has in a desperate attempt to stop you. Whether it is the Luftwaffe, RAF or the U.S Air Force, everything is open season for Aiden.

Full Review at


The last series of Happy Valley begins filming, with new and returning cast members announced.

Sarah Lancashire reprises her legendary role as Sergeant Catherine Cawood in six new episodes, which Sally Wainwright and Sarah Lancashire have long regarded as the final chapter in the Happy Valley saga.

As previously revealed, James Norton and Siobhan Finneran will reprise their roles as Catherine's antagonist, Tommy Lee Royce, a murderer and sex offender, and Catherine's sister, Clare Cartwright, a recovering addict.

Con O'Neill will also return as Clare's recovering alcoholic lover Neil Ackroyd, it was announced today. Nevison Gallagher will be played by George Costigan, with Catherine's police colleague Ann played by Charlie Murphy. Derek Riddell as Richard Cawood, Karl Davies as Daniel Cawood, Susan Lynch as Alison Garrs, Rick Warden as Mike Taylor, Vincent Franklin as Andy Shepherd, and Rhys Connah as Catherine's grandson Ryan Cawood will all return to Happy Valley.

For series three, Amit Shah (The Other One, The Long Call), Mark Stanley (The Girl Before, White House Farm), and Mollie Winnard (All Creatures Great And Small, Four Lives) join the ensemble and will play crucial roles in Happy Valley's last chapter.

Tuesday, 18 January 2022

REVIEW: Dagon: by H. P. Lovecraft

Are you a fan of H.P. Lovecraft? If yes, then you should check out Dagon, it is a 3D narrative experience based on the short story book of the same name. Best played in VR, it is a new way of experiencing the written work of Dagon by H.P. Lovecraft.

Gameplay elements are limited, so think of this more of an experience than a game, you play as a former ship officer, a drug addict, and you experience his delusions and experiences.

This is a short experience, maybe 30 minutes on first playthrough, although made for VR headsets, it can be played on a normal screen. Each scene is fully narrated, and you can look around, zoom in etc, you will see points that you can click on to further the story, which gives the origin of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Full Review at

REVIEW: In the Strange Pursuit of Laura Durand (Η Αναζήτηση της Λώρα Ντουράντ)

In the Strange Pursuit of Laura Durand is a Greek buddy road trip film that has finally made its way to the UK, and gets a Digital Download release from 31st January'

Antonis Titsanis (played by Makis Papadimitriou) and Christos Fertakis (played by Michalis Sarantis) are two young men, down on their luck, loser type characters, no jobs, poor living conditions and really just letting life pass them by, surviving on Christos' unemployment benefits.

But from within this sad existence, they do have a common love interest. The beautiful Laura Durand, (Anna Kalaitzidou) a 1990s porn star who mysterious disappeared, one day after watching an old VHS tape and reminiscing about her career, they decide that they should solve the mystery of her disappearance and go on a mission to track her down, after they have a vision of her almost summoning them to save her.

Full Review at

Wednesday, 12 January 2022

Restaurants to go head-to-head in a new Channel 4 daytime show "Come Dine With Me: The Professionals"

In an all-new twist on the iconic series commissioned for Channel 4 daytime, Come Dine With Me is going professional.

Teams of professional chefs and restaurateurs will compete in Come Dine With Me: The Professionals for the title of greatest independent restaurant in their town, county, or city.

Three local restaurants will compete for the renowned CDWM:TP award and a monetary reward shared among the winner restaurant's staff in each self-contained episode. Each restaurant will be represented by a duo — for example, the owner and the head chef – who will host their competitors for a meal designed to wow. The meal will take place during a regular service, giving people the opportunity to observe the ambience, food, and service. The visiting restaurant partners will score the evening out of 20 at the end of each dinner, with the highest total score taking home the prize. As the narrator of each programme, legendary CDWM voiceover Dave Lamb will bring the action together.

In 2022, Channel 4 and All 4 will premiere Come Dine With Me: The Professionals.

Tuesday, 11 January 2022

REVIEW: Eternals - Starring Richard Madden, Salma Hayek & Angelina Jolie

I wanted to watch Eternals when it first came out, but the bad reviews kind of put me off, so I thought I would wait until it was released for home viewing, so that I could watch it in peace.

I wish I hadn't bothered.

The film is terrible, the worst Marvel film ever released. Seriously, it is just as bad as everyone told me it would be.

Full Review at

REVIEW: Last Looks - Starring Mel Gibson and Charlie Hunnam

Charlie Hunnam stars as disgraced former LAPD detective Charlie Waldo, Waldo starts the film living the life of a minimalist tree hugger in the woods but his quiet life comes to a sudden halt when he is convinced to work as a private eye to investigate the murder of an eccentric British TV star's wife. Mel Gibson plays said eccentric British TV star Alastair Pinch. And yes, Gibson puts on a terrible English accent throughout the film. I honestly thought that he would give up the accent and admit it was part of his TV persona, but no, he really keeps it the entire film.

The film itself is a bit of a whodunnit, the problem is the film is nearly two hours, and by the end of hour one, realising that there is still another hour to go, you might start wishing you were the one killed.

Full Review at

Friday, 7 January 2022

REVIEW: Banana Hell on PC (Steam)

Banana Hell is a deliberately frustrating, and ridiculously difficult platforming game.

You control a banana, and you have to keep moving upwards to collect crystals. But of course, it is not that easy, as you climb you will face various creatures that are in your way, so you need to try to avoid them.
One mistake however and you will be knocked off course, and worst-case scenario you will fall all the way back to the bottom of the level.

Full Review at

REVIEW: The Commando (2022) - Starring Mickey Rourke and Michael Jai White

The latest in what seems like a never-ending schedule of low budget, winter action film releases, The Commando sees Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler) and Michael Jai White (Spawn) come to blows in a classic home invasion film.

James Baker (Michael Jai White) is a DEA agent who has PTSD after a mission that went wrong and as he returns home to his family, he has to deal with all that that entails. Little does he know that the home he and his family live in just happens to be a hiding place for the ill-gotten gains of a bank robbery that happened years earlier.

Full Review at

Tuesday, 4 January 2022

REVIEW: The Misfits - Starring Pierce Brosnan, Rami Jaber, Hermione Corfield, Jamie Chung, Mike d Angelo, Tim Roth, Nick Cannon and Qais Qandil

Pierce Brosnan stars as Richard Pace, a renowned international thief, he finds himself recruited by a bunch of unconventional thieves, he is convinced to take part in an elaborate gold heist after realising his daughter is the one that created the group.

But unlike most thieves, "The Misfits" are in it for the good, think of Robin Hood and you get the idea.

The plan is to steal millions in gold bars from a secure vault hidden under a maximum security prison, the prison is owned by rogue businessman Schultz (Played by Tim Roth), and is used for funding terrorism around the world.

When the film was released, it caused great controversy, as it is set in Qatar and the idea that they may fund terrorism might not be something they want advertised, even if it is in a film.

What follows is a pretty paint by numbers heist film, suped up cars, car chases, disguises, cons within cons, and a few explosions, and you get the idea.

Pierce Brosnan is Pierce Brosnan, he is cool, calm and collected, as he is in almost every film he makes.

Tim Roth plays his part as the evil businessman well, but again it is a part he has seemingly played endless times before.

The rest of the cast are very generic and bland. One black guy, one Asian girl, one blond girl, etc, it is yet another "one of each" type of casting, as to not piss off any ethnic group.

The Good

I am a fan of Heist movies, and The Misfits rips pretty much all of them off, without ever really improving on any of them, but does it really need to? It ticks all the boxes, has the twists, if like me, you enjoy a good heist movie, then this is perfectly fine.

The Bad

This is a film made for an international market, as I mentioned it is very paint by numbers, tick all the boxes kind of film, you will watch it once, and forget about it.

Overall

A film no one asked for, we don't really need, but it is not terrible, it is also not great, it is just another film.

I score The Misfits a fair 5/10

Watch Trailerr at

Interview with Sir David Attenborough and Michael Gunton (Executive Producer - The Green Planet)

Why did you decide to focus on plants for this series?

Michael: Well, one of the things that appeals to Sir David is doing something new, so with it being 25 years after Private Life Of Plants it did feel like it was about time! I also felt that people were starting to talk about plants, that there was a new zeitgeist coming back around [about plants]. But the key thing for us, to persuade David to do it, was going to be, how can we break new ground, visually and scientifically? What is the new technology we can bring to this series? What are the new stories?

Sir David: Yes, Private Life Of Plants exploited time-lapse, bringing plants to life by speeding up the action so that you could see them grow, blossoms open, and so on. But what could we do that was new?

In Private Life Of Plants we were stuck with all this very heavy, primitive equipment, but now we can take the cameras anywhere we like. So you now have the ability to go into a real forest, you can see a plant growing with its neighbours, fighting its neighbours or moving with its neighbours, or dying. And it's that that brings the thing to life, and which should make people say, "good lord, these extraordinary organisms are just like us" - in the sense that they live and die, that they fight, they have to learn to reproduce and all those sorts of things. But they do them so slowly, we've never seen it before. And that has a hypnotic appeal, in my view.

Michael: You can start to describe plant actions in the same sort of behavioural terms, with the fighting and deception, the sorts of things that we would normally attribute to animal behaviour. And so that also influenced how we approached the shooting of it. We wanted to reflect the approach we took in Planet Earth 2, where we got the cameras into the world of the animals and onto their shoulders while they were in the action. We would then allow the cameras to move around the environment, and as David was saying, capture the context and the relationships between the plants. And rather than just seeing it in one shot, you can see the world from various different plants' perspectives. It's a very dramatic, because this is a world we never see.

We're very plant blind because plants, to our own eyes, are very static, and they seem to do nothing. But when you use this technology, it's like parting a curtain to go into a parallel universe. And suddenly you see them [the plants] in the way they see their world. And that's when these sorts of perspectives really come to life.

Sir David: Plants fight one another, plants strangle one another. And you can actually see that happening [in real time]. That you can suddenly see a plant putting out a tentacle! Now you know it can't actually see, but you can see it trying to find its victim. And when it does finally touch the victim, it wraps around it quickly and strangles it. You know, it's pretty tough stuff.

How was it travelling the world for this series?

Sir David: In a sense, the series itself is slow growing, like plants. We started [filming] a long time ago, before Covid. And so I was dashing around interesting places, in California and so on, in a way that hasn't been possible for the last two years. So I appear in all these different parts of the world quite frequently, more than any other [series] for some time.

Michael: I think this series needed a guide. Somebody to take you on these journeys [in each episode] and allow you to go between our world and the plant world. And David acts as the kind of the translator between each world was a key reason for having him on location so much. But also there's nothing more fun than being on location and doing a little demonstration. So David would say, "watch this when this plant does this". It feels important and exciting, and makes it a lot more fun for the audience.

Did this feel like an important time to be making a new series about plants?

Sir David: Yes, the world has suddenly become plant conscious. There has been a revolution worldwide in attitudes towards the natural world in my lifetime. An awakening and an awareness of how important the natural world is to us all. An awareness that we would starve without plants, we wouldn't be able to breathe without plants. The world is green, it's an apt name [for the series]... and yet people's understanding about plants, except in a very kind of narrow way, has not kept up with that. I think this will bring it home.

The world depends on plants. It's a cliché now, every breath of air we take, and every mouthful of food we eat, depends upon plants. I also think that being shut up and confined to one's garden, if one is lucky enough to have a garden, and if not, to having plants sitting on a shelf, has changed people's perspective. And an awareness [has grown] of another world that exists to which we hardly ever pay attention to in its own right. Of course, we do gardening programmes and have done since the beginning of television. But this is not about gardening, this is about a parallel world, which exists alongside us, and which is the basis for our own lives, and for which we have paid scant attention over the years.

Michael: The plant world is an incredible life force. A walk in the woods, a walk in the park is actually salvation to the soul for so many people and the pandemic has accentuated that. People started to open their eyes to this world around us in a way that they haven't done before.

Anybody who takes a walk probably sees more plants than you see animals, so why do you think people have not been as engaged with plants as they been with animals?

Sir David: Because they apparently just sit there being a plant. You could either take them or leave them or you could dig them up, or throw them aside. They don't react, they don't resent it, they just die. We don't engage with plants enough.

Michael: Some of the discoveries we've revealed in the series do make you start to think about plants in a very different way. For example, that there's the 'microrhizal' network story that we've featured in one of our episodes that is truly out of science fiction. This idea [is] that all the trees in a forest are connected by fungal networks, so each of these trees are effectively communicating with each other. This is something that blows your mind, when you actually think about it. It's like going through the back of the wardrobe in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, into another world which you're suddenly seeing for the first time.

David, in your travels on the series you interacted with lots of plants. Are there any plants that really stuck in your mind?

Sir David: One of the really great, profoundly moving experiences, was to go to the giant sequoias in California, these enormous trees. It's not an accident that there's a cathedral-like feeling when you go amongst them. They are immense things, some of the tallest ones are enormous. But what this programme did was to use another of the inventions that you might think had very little to do with plants, technical inventions, that changed natural history photography in the past 10-20 years: drones. When you see the final sequence in the programmes and [the camera] suddenly rises above the tree tops. and you see these giants - it's a marvellous sequence.

Michael: It's the first time I've ever filmed there, and you cannot not be moved by them, they've been there for 3,000 years. You feel like they've been there since the beginning of time. You think nothing could ever go wrong in the world while these things are alive.

And you had a very scary encounter with a cactus didn't you?

Sir David: Yes, I mean, the cholla really is a physical danger. It has been very dense spines in rosettes, so they point in all directions. And if you just brush against it, the spines are like spicules of glass, I mean they are that sharp and they go into you and you really have trouble getting them out! So that is a really dangerous plant. The cholla is an active aggressor. I mean you feel you better stand back and you better watch out [for it].

Michael: One of the joys of going on location is thinking up horrible things to get David to do. So what we did, because it was so dangerous, was we got a Kevlar under-glove, and then on top of that a welding glove. So you can imagine that's about as good protection as you could possibly get. So David bravely put his hand inside this cholla cactus, as requested. And half way through it, these spikes still managed to get through those two bits of protection. And it's quite painful, isn't it?

Sir David: Yes it was!

Michael: What's more, the other thing that's so nasty and why all animals avoid it, is because not only does it puncture you, but it sort of acts like a trap. So if you put your hand into it you can't remove your fingers. And unfortunately you can find grisly signs of an animal that has got trapped by it!

In the water episode there's a big scene in the Pantanal (Brazil), how did you use time-lapse for this scene?

Sir David: Well, water lilies are extremely aggressive. And their battleground is the surface of the lake and the surface of the water, so it's a very narrow battle. The Giant Water Lily which produces leaves famously which can hold a small baby, has a bud that comes up loaded with prickles. And it comes up into the surface and starts expanding, with these spikes pushing everything else out of the way. And in the end the lake ends up as just solid Giant Water Lilies butting up against one another, with no room for anything else at all. It's one of the most empire building aggressive plants there is. Everybody says how wonderful it is, but nobody says how murderous it is.

And the final episode of the series is about the relationships between people and plants, can you tell us about that episode?

Michael: Yes, so that episode is about the relationship between humanity and plants. And that's both in terms of how we live alongside them, and also how our lives have followed a very tightly bound path with them since the start of the agricultural revolution.

The episode begins with some of the most successful plants in our world, what we rather disparagingly call weeds. Plants that are very good living alongside us. But occasionally the characteristics that make weed plants so successful can be used to mutual benefit. One of the stories we feature in the episode follows a particular group of people in India who live in very difficult environments, with very steep sided ravines of rocks, and torrents of rivers which are almost impossible to cross. So if you try to build a traditional bridge out of steel or concrete, they just get washed away. So this community use the incredible speed and strength and growth of a fig tree to train the roots to create these bridges. So over time, all these roots connect up and grow and grow and grow and produce these absolutely bombproof beautiful living bridges. And they'll live for hundreds of years, allowing the local people to cross these rivers. They become very symbolic for that particular community, so there's quite a spiritual connection.

What would you hope that the audience will take away from watching the series?

Sir David: That there is a parallel world on which we depend, and which up to now we have largely ignored, if I speak on behalf of urbanised man. Over half the population of the world according to the United Nations is urbanised, live in cities, only seeing cultivated plants and never seeing a wild community of plants. But that wild community is there, outside urban circumstances normally, and we depend upon it. And we better jolly well care for it.

Michael: One of the great joys of being a filmmaker is showing people things they've never seen before, and opening their eyes to things that could not see with their own eyes. And this does it in a way that perhaps no other series I've ever worked on has done, because you literally can't see these things other than on camera.

But I think also the importance and vulnerability of plants, they are unsung heroes. Particularly as we focus on the climate emergency, that plants are our greatest allies. They do such a lot of work for us, they are great carbon capturing machines. And what's great about them is they'll do it without us even having to try. Just leave them alone, and they'll do the job for us.

So there's various technologies being developed in this series, can you tell us about some of these?

Michael: One of the things that was absolutely critical for this series was to find some technology that allowed us to see from that particular plants perspective in a way that we hadn't been able to do before. And that involves time-lapse, because they live in this different time frame. And so that required a particular series of newly developed robotic cameras, which we were able to control in various ways.

So we used a combination of brilliant engineers, optical experts and computing whiz kids to come up with this technology. And it's all in one camera, called the Triffid. You can actually control this in various ways, including with a little game controller which I handed to David (laughs). And I thought to myself, he's never going to control it, but then a couple of minutes later he had it up, down, across and back up again. And then it did get a bit out of control and we had to get him to hand it back!

But that piece of technology allowed us to do something with a story that's never really been shown properly. And that's with leaf cutter ants and the partnership they have in the rainforest with plants. Leafcutter ants, which we see running around collecting leaves, effectively harvesting them, are being driven by a massive fungus which lives underground. And the ants are effectively the agents for that fungus, the fungus is the thing that feeds on the leaves. The fungus that digests the leaves gives the ants a reward of little tiny mini mushrooms.

So we wanted to show the scale of this by showing the whole route of the army of a leaf cutter ants trail From where it was collecting the leaves, all the way down into this chasm where this fungus was operating. So the triffid uses a tracking shot, that starts on the leaves and goes all the way along the trunks, down into the fungus. So that shot to your eyes is in real time, but in the shot all the ants are moving in time lapse. And that's one of the things that I think has been a breakthrough for this series, that the camera can move in our time. But within the shot, it's all moving in time lapse. And that is a quite an unusual perspective.

Monday, 3 January 2022

REVIEW: Ghostbusters Afterlife

As someone who grew up in the 1980s, Ghostbusters had a big influence on my life, it was an all-time great film, and I have been putting off watching Ghostbusters Afterlife, because I didn't want to be disappointed. The all-female lead reboot that was released in 2016 was awful, one of the worst things to ever happen in film. Of course, the media was desperate for it to be a success and when it flopped massively, they blamed everything expect that the fact the film was terrible. It must be racists who refused to go see it as there was a black woman in it, completely forgetting the character of Winston Zeddemore from Ghostbusters 2, a much-loved character in the franchise. Then they said it must be because it was all female lead parts, so it must be those horrible misogynists who refused to go see it, again totally forgetting the lovefest we all had with Sigourney Weaver as Dana Barrett in the original films. History has now largely forgotten that terrible reboot, in the same way it has forgotten some of the Terminator films after the third film.

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REVIEW: Aaero on Nintendo Switch

Aaero is a futuristic music based, on rails, rhythm shooter.

You control a spacecraft, and you need to follow ribbons of light, if you trace the line of the ribbon, you get a higher score, all the while you need to evade obstacles, shoot enemies, and fight against giant bosses.

My first thought when playing Aaero, was that it reminded me of AVICII Invector, there are similar elements to the gameplay, you need to follow a certain course to get more points, but where Invector relied solely on your abilty to press certain buttons at the right time, Aaero takes a slightly different approach, in that you have to shoot enemies, as well, which brings in a whole new gameplay element to what is in essence a rhythm game.

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REVIEW: Sherlock Holmes Chapter One on Xbox

Sherlock Holmes Chapter One is an open-world detective mystery with you playing a young Sherlock Holmes.

You find yourself returning to your childhood home of Cordona, a 19th century, British occupied Mediterranean island, that I assume is made up. You return there as you learn that they may be more to the death of your mother, than originally thought.

Since you are playing a young Sherlock, you have to accept that the game developers have to try something different, so Sherlock is a fresh faced, slightly brooding type character, and Sherlock even has an imaginary friend type deal, with a person called Jon, a pre-cursor to Watson I would assume. Seems strange that a man of logic would need an imaginary friend to throw ideas at, but like I said, this is a young Sherlock, so I suppose this could be akin to the older Sherlock having a mind palace.

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REVIEW: The Fix (2024 Sci-Fi Thriller Film) Starring Grace Van Dien, Daniel Sharman and Keenan Arrison

Kelsey Egan's "The Fix" is an ambitious science fiction thriller set in a dystopian future dominated by corporate greed and ...