Five things on Friday #90

Things of note for the week ending September 19th, 2014.

Things of note for the week ending September 19th, 2014.

THIS IS A THING

1. Sennheiser Urbanites

LETS YOUR EARS BE LOVED

Featuring the German ‘Ultimate Love of Ears’, this has to be the oddest ad I’ve seen all week.

Obviously I’m sharing it with you.

Sorry not sorry.

2. A complete summary of 17 years of X-Men comics
Doesn’t matter if you’re a fan or not, this Reddit write up of [nearly] everything that’s happened in the X-Universe since its inception is pretty darn awesome.

3. In praise of Fincher’s women
Little White Lies is a fantastic film magazine. I cannot express this enough: Little White Lies is a fantastic film magazine. Bizarrely, I only recently discovered that it actually produces web content too. One of those pieces (titled above) is an excellent read:

A formalist with a forensic eye for detail (and no patience for wading through emotional sludge), David Fincher holds his characters at arm’s length – perhaps all the better to see them in their entirety. Most of these characters are men; Fincher is, after all, a man’s man with a particular predilection for stories about fraternity in crisis (The Game, Zodiac, The Social Network) and the crumbling framework of masculinity in a late-capitalist society (Fight Club, The Social Network and – we think – Gone Girl). However, that is not to say that Fincher’s women are shrinking violets.

Covering off everything from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo all the way back to nods to Alien 3, this article is a celebration of the interesting, complicated, and just plain subversive female characters Fincher commits to celluloid.

Read it.

4. An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words
Lost in Translation‘ is a collection of drawings illustrating words that don’t exist in English (I’ve covered something like this before) and I really, really I like them.
tretar_-_swedish_noun

komorebi_-_japanese_noun

 

akihi_-_hawaiian_noun

I’m just pouring out my tretÃ¥r now… 🙂

via.

Book available at Amazon.

5. Ask the Past
I found this gem in a collection of niche blogs that I came across last week. Ask the Past is basically a blog set up to collate all the best advice it can find from old books.

Example:

How to keep your cat (1470):
“If you have a good cat and you don’t want to lose it, you must rub its nose and four legs with butter for three days, and it will never leave the house.”

Brilliant.

Cat owners, does this work?

___________

Bonus items this week:

  • Race the Tube started out as item number one this week but so many people have seen it now I relegated it to a bonus item. Still, worth seeing if you’ve not seen it yet (it is rather good).
  • Beyond Contempt is ‘the inside story of the phone hacking trial’ – here’s a PDF of the first chapter.
  • Legendary Engram on Twitter. This is a Destiny thing (yes, another one). Play Destiny? You’ll love this. Don’t play Destiny? You’ll have no idea what it’s about.

NEW TRAILER: X-Men: Days of Future Past

Bring it.

Stop.

Before you carry on, watch it again, and then look at the poster below (which is also awesome).

XMen DOFP Poster

Days of Future Past (DofP) is the next instalment of the X-Men franchise and, as you can see from the trailer, combines the casts from both the original X-Men films (1, 2, and 3) and those from the rather excellent prequel (of sorts), First Class.

If you stayed past the end credits after watching The Wolverine, you would’ve already known that something else was in the works. Well, this is it. Based on the 1980s comic book of the same name and back in the extremely capable hands of original director Bryan Singer, DofP looks set to be amazing.

I am, somewhat unsurprisingly, extremely up for this. Yes the X-Men film hit rate has been patchy, but I’ve got a good feeling about this one.

Oh, and don’t think that’s it after this one either. X-Men: Apocalypse (yeah, you know) is being lined up after this with the third Wolverine film to drop straight after. So that’s three X-Men universe-based films (that we know about, X-Force has been rumoured for some time too) to look forward to.

What do you think? You in or out?

 

Related reading: Screenrant has a great trailer breakdown.

NEW TRAILER: X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST #DofP

It’s here…

So that looks suitably epic then.

Anyone familiar with the #DOFP storyline will know that in the original it’s Kitty Pride that gets sent back in time. But in this version, it’s looking like our friend Wolverine will be the one making the jump back. If any of you stuck around for the post-credits scene after The Wolverine, you might already have an inkling about this already.

Whatever happens, this crossing of the streams of the two cinematic X-Men timelines is set to be pretty damn awesome and with original (and equally awesome) director, Bryan Singer, at the helm DOFP can’t come quick enough!

This is only the first trailer. Next time around we might get to see a sentinel in action…

Sentinels: COMING SOON

 

Trask Industries: Your Future

I am loving the X-Men: Days of Future Past teaser campaign –

Seven things you should know:

  1. This ‘viral’ is supporting material to the next installment in the X-Men franchise: Days of Future Past.
  2. The film picks up both after The Wolverine and X-Men: First Class (yes, there is time travel).
  3. All casts from both sets of films will be featured.
  4. This is awesome.
  5. The Sentinels are going to be awesome.
  6. At the end it says ‘Since 1973’ – which is exactly when the past part of the next X-Men film is taking place.
  7. Did I mention that this was awesome?

So yeah, Trask Industries, bring it on!

Five things on Friday #14

Five things of note for the week ending Friday, April 6th 2012

1. Paper by Fifty Three
I’ve already blogged about discovering this app, but if you haven’t taken a look yet (it’s for the iPad) then I recommend you do. I love it and have been sketching away like there’s no tomorrow since installing… Unsurprisingly, there’s a theme.

Heroes!

2. Awesome New Music

New Childish Gambino
New Nicki Minaj
New Kanye West
And this full album stream from Alabama Shakes is worth a lisen too.
Enjoy 

3. Comic book stuff
I’ve been reading Project Rooftop for some time now, and it is an ace source of fantastic artwork on some my favourite characters. Their remit is to highlight and drive the craft of redesigning comic book characters that you know and love and generally showcase some gorgeous work.

This past week has been no different, but these two redesigns, Ninja Turtles and X-Men respectively, stood out particularly.

Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo all getting the redesign treatment. Given the myriad of interpretations the Turtles have been through over the years, giving them a fresh take is no easy task. But this effort is actually brilliant. I want to see more… And guess what, you can! Full set available here

This one stands out for two reasons. First, it’s the original X-Men (who are still one of the best teams to date) and two, the version of Ice-Man is sweet. I’ve not seen an ice-as-armour version before and well, no pun intended, it’s just too damn cool for words. You can check out the full set over on P:R. It’s worth a look, definitely.

What do you think?

4. The Lumia 900
The Nokia Lumia 900 launches this week and, while it is only really a bigger version of the Lumia 800 (which I’ve been rocking and enjoying since late last year), it’s intriguing to me as it’s the big N’s first serious play in the USA since, well – since forever really. To say it’s make or break time might be an understatement, but I think they might actually have winner on their hands. Only time will time.

This Read Write Web piece made me grin mind –

“There have been rumors that Nokia is paying AT&T to make sure that every rep uses the Lumia 900 as a personal device. The idea is that consumers trust sales reps to steer them in the right direction. Even as an advanced early adopter and mobile technology reporter, I often trust sales reps to tell me what the best device is and what is coming out (sometimes I quiz them to see how much they actually know about the ecosystem because I am that type of jerk).”

Heh, you’re not on your own there chap… 

I’d like to have a play with the Lumia 900 at some point (honestly, I haven’t played with one yet!) and I’m sure it’d be great, but what interests me more is what’s coming next. We all know the Lumia range is merely a proof-of-concept device (and a very nice range it is too) but I want to see what the tech-heads in Finland are going to do next. Now they’ve proven they can design gorgeous Windows phones, let’s see some of that innovation that they’re also famous for. Exciting times ahead, both for Nokia itself as well as the industry as a whole.

5. I made the Slovenian FT

Amazing

Bonuses: Dan Goodall got his blog back online, go read it; Fish: a tap essay is one of the best things I’ve come across for a long time and finally, I’ve been looking at the image below nearly every day – it’s just beautiful. 

Until next time –

Review: X-Men: First Class

No spoilers. 

Let’s get this straight – I am a geek.

Wolverine #90 got me into comic books and since that fateful day in 1995 I have dipped in and out of the comic book universe as I saw fit. In fact, tracing it back further still, growing up watching Christopher Reeve save the world as Superman influenced my life with and love of the superhero genre, definitely. But we’ll come back to him later.

Back at the turn of the millennium, Bryan Singer, whose directorial arrival was heralded by the sublime Usual Suspects, was tasked with bringing the world’s most unluckiest superheroes to the big screen.

To be fair to the guy, he didn’t do a bad job. Generally considered to be more of a taster of things to come, the first X-Men film definitely proved the concept, and when X-Men 2 (X2) arrived, we finally saw Singer’s vision fully coloured in before our eyes; Wolverine cut-loose, cameos-a-plenty and of course, that epic epic Nightcrawler opener.

Excellent stuff.

Since then though, with the X-Men at least, we have not been so lucky. X3: The Last Stand was frankly, terrible. A rushed schedule (largely in part to a last minute director change) not helping much and what with Mr Singer departing to work on [the extremely underrated] Superman Returns, the wheel was left unchecked and the series lost its course.

The less said about X:Men Origins: Wolverine the better.

Which brings us to First Class.

A few years ago the ‘Origins’ moniker was attached to a number of X-Projects (with Wolverine getting the first stab, so to speak) and First Class was one of them. When the news broke that the film was going ahead, it was promising to say the least.

First off, irrespective of takings (both X3 and XO:W both broke $200m at the box office) the studio knew they had to do something to prevent yet another bad X-film being made. This is a good sign. Second?  Singer was back. This time taking a writer/producer credit and – in a match that seems to be made in geek heaven – Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn (fresh from their own successes on the fantastic comic book adap, Kick-Ass), stepped into the roles of screenplay and director respectively.

The Gods were smiling.

But then, reports of a rushed production started appearing, followed by a poorly received above the line campaign and, to top it all off, every time a set pic was leaked, the ‘fans’ heaped scorn upon a franchise that was already fighting an uphill battle. Not cool.

When then trailer finally dropped, people did not know what to expect –

“Hang on, this actually looks quite good…”

Four months later, tickets were purchased and with much trepidation, we entered the cinema. Set in 1962, just before and during the Cuban missile crisis, First Class riffs on its 60s backdrop perfectly. With retro black lines drawn across the inevitable training montage scenes as well as a very suave, almost Austin Powers-like, Charles Xavier – brought to life by my second favourite actor in this film (I have a top three), James McAvoy. The time of the piece is set perfectly and trust me, it works.

Coming in third in the aforementioned trio of awesome, comes Kevin Bacon as the nefarious Sebastian Shaw. Hell-bent on world domination through a hitler-esque survival of the fittest, Bacon excels here. Fans of the books will understand that physically, in build at least, the two aren’t exactly similar however, with a combination of sheer stage screen presence and the film’s iteration of Shaw’s mutant power, this is swiftly forgotten – Kevin Bacon is Sebastian Shaw.

In at number one, our star of the show, Erik Lensherr – aka – Magneto.

Brought to life magnificently by Michael Fassbender. The vengeful intensity that he brings to Magneto’s early years is completely believeable and, once his solo mission of revenge comes to the end of its first chapter, you understand completely why people are already calling Fassbender out as the next James Bond. Seriously.

The rest? Mystique and Beast (who share a number of interesting moments together) are noteworthy as is The White Queen, Emma Frost. However, the others are fairly forgettable. Perhaps it’s only Banshee’s Irish charm that keeps him from fading from my memory… Additionally, whilst Riptide manages to get through the film without uttering a single word, the award for most criminally under-used character goes to Azazel.

In comic book lore, Azazel is the father of X2’s Nightcrawler and, colouration aside, shares a similar look and power of his future son. It’s just a shame then that his [slightly russian?] origin was not explored further. But hey, there’s always future films – right?

Let’s be clear; X-Men: First Class is by far and away the best X-Men film to date. Given that X2 set the standard pretty high, this is praise indeed – especially for a franchise that was close to coming to an end.

Finally, don’t try and worry yourself about the time line too much; if you work under the assumption that Singer ‘did a Superman’ and ignored the third and fourth films in the series, then they kind of plug in together nicely. You learn how and why Mystique is the way she is, why Magneto is the way he is and – crucially – what happens after a young Erik Lensherr is spotted bending gates in a Nazi concentration camp.

In closing; if you’re a geek (and can forgive a bit liberty thievery here and there), you’ll get a kick out of this. If you’re not, it’s still a bloody good, almost caper-esque, action flick.
I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t leave the cinema completely blown away but now, a few days on from seeing the film, it has definitely grown on me.

Go see it.