Sherlock Series Two Review

Sherlock is fantastic. By Sherlock, I mean the BBC television reimagining of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective Sherlock Holmes created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss (who also plays Sherlock's brother). The show is set in modern day with Sherlock Holmes, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, as a private investigator with incredible talents of observation and deduction. His friend and accomplice Dr. Watson, played by Martin Freeeman, is an Afghan War veteran and medical doctor who lives at 221B Baker Street with Holmes.

The show first aired in 2010 with a three episode first series that is currently available via Netflix streaming (go catch up). Each 90-minute of Sherlock focuses on a specific case and is more of a movie than a television show. The second series, which just aired in the United Kingdom and was released on DVD on January 23, 2012 also includes three episodes. The episodes in series two are: "A Scandal in Belgravia", a retelling of the original Holmes story A Scandal in Bohemia, The Hound of the Baskervilles (if you know anything about Sherlock Holmes, you have heard of this story), and "The Reichenbach Fall", which refers to the Holmes story The Final Problem.

There are several things that are great about this show. The acting is superb with Cumberbatch playing a very believable Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman is very good as his suffering sidekick (it’s hard to be Sherlock Holmes’ associate). The writing team translates the Holmes stories into modern times well and the twists and turns in each episode leave you guessing until the very end. They have even figured out a way to visually give you an idea of what Sherlock is seeing and how his brain works that don’t jar you out of the show, but enhance it.

Sherlock series two will be coming to America in May on PBS Masterpiece starting on May 6. Be sure to find it, this is great television – not to be missed. Sherlock earns 5 Mick Happies.

On a side note, I purchased series 2 of Sherlock on DVD and had it shipped from the UK to watch on a region-free DVD player. To rant a little, I am perfectly happy to pay for shows that I want to see, but I am often annoyed that good shows aren’t available because of distribution rights and nonsense that should have been resolved by now in our globally connected world. To content producers and providers: if you can stream or digitally distribute shows over the internet, do it. We will pay for it and don’t want to wait months for you to figure out how to distribute it in another region. Rant over.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Demo Review

It’s interesting to review a demo, but since I just spent the better part of 3 hours playing the demo for Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (KoAR), I thought I would share.  Note that this game is rated mature and you will need to be old enough to access the game website. KoAR is a single player RPG from 38 Studios and Big Huge Games. 38 Studios was founded by Curt Shilling and KoAR is their first game and features significant input from Todd McFarlane and author R.A. Salvatore.  The KoAR demo is available via download on Origin, Steam, Xbox Live and the Playstation Network. The full game will be released on February 7, 2012.

The demo starts with a cinematic scene of two Gnomes pushing a cart with a sheet covered body. As they push the cart, the two Gnomes discuss the body upon it and this discussion leads to the character creation steps. A little different take on the RPG usual setup fare and after the opening cinematic you awake on a pile of dead bodies. From there you are taken through a tutorial to try and exit the tower you find yourself in while getting equipped and learning a bit about how you got there. Once out of the tower, you find the start of an open world adventure and soon are in a nearby town and picking up multiple quests to gain experience and loot. After the initial escape from the tower and completion of that first quest, you have about 45 minutes of game time to explore the world before the demo ends. This is plenty of time since it does not include time spent in the menus or speaking with non-player characters.

The look and feel of KoAR is very nice. The graphics are not as picturesque as say Skyrim, but have a nice feel that is better than but somewhat reminiscent of World of Warcraft. It is easier to see items to pick on screen than in Skyrim due to the helpful lighting effects. The overall combat mechanics and magic system are interesting; especially the over-the-top sword bashing you can give the early monsters. There are a couple of interesting mechanics that involve specific combinations of buttons to yield special effects and they are worth the frenzied button mashing (I was playing on the Xbox). One thing I especially liked was the lock on target nature of the bow, where I didn’t have to constantly be moving to keep the enemy in my sights while shooting (unlike Skyrim where 15 hours in I am still having difficulty tracking dragons with a bow). The game also has the usual pick up ingredients and supplies to mix potions (alchemy) or make items, but unlike most games, finding a source of a particular ingredient doesn’t guarantee that you will be able to harvest it (sometimes you fail unless you Alchemy skill is trained up). As you battle and explore, you will gain experience that will eventually lead to you leveling up, which will allow you to raise your skills and choose perks, rather than a the increase your skills by using them that makes you increase in level mechanic in Skyrim.

As you play the demo for KoAR, you unlock items for use in the full game and a few items for Mass Effect 3. If you plan on playing either game, you should spend the couple hours trying out KoAR. I give the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoking demo 4 Mick Happies. I enjoyed my time in Amalur and will likely be picking this one up after it drops on February 7.  

Super 8 Review

There is one thing I can attest to…J.J. Abrams is on a film roll. My wife, daughter and I all liked 2009’s Star Trek and I really enjoyed Super 8 (they decided not to watch, their loss). Being the two films that Abrams directed in the last few years, I think that constitutes the start of some kind of streak.

Super 8 is a coming of age, sci-fi, quasi-action and thriller film set in 1979 in Ohio. It is the story of the events that happen in a small town when a group of middle school-aged kids witness a US Air Force train derailing in the outskirts of town. The train contains something the government doesn’t want loose, but of course it gets out.

I liked how well Abrams does at putting you in the feel of the late 1970s. I remember riding my bike all over the place the way the kids in the movie do. Granted I wasn’t into filming Super 8 movies or witness to a train wreck.  I also believed the struggle of Kyle Chandler as a recent widower and town deputy who has, through no fault of his own, been thrust into an authority role trying to make sense of what is happening in his town.

The only nits I can pick on this one might be the use of lens flares (it seems to be Abrams’ thing) and the slight suspension of disbelief needed to accept that the kids in the movie have things figured out well before the adults. Those really are nits though. If you haven’t seen this movie, get it on DVD and start watching. I give 4 Mick Happies to Super 8.

Blackout/All Clear Review

Blackout/All Clear is a Hugo award winning novel in two parts written by Connie Willis and published by Bantam Spetra. The story focuses on Willis’ time travelling Oxford historians who were featured in her previous works: Fire Watch (link to the short story), Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing ofthe Dog. In Blackout/All Clear, historians are travelling back to England in World War II to observe life during that chaotic, dangerous and heroic time and become unable to return to their original time. The novel tracks their efforts to blend into 1940s society, find a way home and keep themselves alive.

The novel is structured in a way that the reader is taken back and forth in time to the various parts of the narrative. This includes going from 1941 London blitz to 1943, 1945 and V-E day as well as to the “present” of 2060. As many of the characters have assumed identities to blend into the 1940s, the reader is left to figure out who some of the characters are and often, due to time travel, characters are in the same place but at different time points in their own narratives and thus don’t recognize or miss each other. I found this part of the novel to be great and provided a bit of mystery to unravel as you followed the struggle of the characters to get home before they are killed. Having read Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, I liked having some of the same characters back again. Two of my favorites are Professor Dunworthy, the chair of the History department in future Oxford and Colin Templer, who while too young for Oxford has a way of getting into the past to save the day. Both characters had important roles in Doomsday Book.

I did wait to buy All Clear, so it was about a year between reading Blackout and the second half of the novel. I think this lowered some of my enjoyment of the book as it took me a little while to get back into the time period and remember who the characters were. I would recommend reading both parts of the novel back-to-back as the author obviously intended.

The story in Blackout/All Clear is rich in details about World War II London and if that period is at all of interest to you, you should go read this story. If you like time travel and all the mind-bending possibilities that come with it, then you should read this book. I think this one is on the border between 4 and 5 Mick Happies and if I had read it back-to-back it would probably get a 5. In the end, Blackout/All Clear is a great time travel story and I give it 4 Mick Happies. Now where is my time travel machine?

Ready Player One Review

Ready Player One, released in August by Random House, is written by Ernest Cline. This is Cline’s first published novel, but he already has a lot of credibility with me by being the screenwriter for the fun movie,  Fanboys. The book is based in a dystopian future where fossil fuels are extremely scarce and most people spend their days in the ubiquitous online virtual reality system, OASIS. The book opens with the lead character introducing the reader to what happens when OASIS’s creator, James Halliday, dies.

Halliday, immensely wealthy, has been a recluse for several years and on his death everyone in OASIS gets invited to play in a scavenger hunt. The prize…his fortune including ownership of OASIS. To help, Halliday has left clues to help the players on a hunt that is influenced by his passion for the 1980s. The book is a romp through almost everything geeky and good about the 80s…John Hughes movies, video games, and Dungeons & Dragons and the like as players try to find 3 keys to open 3 gates to get the easter egg prize.

The book definitely made me think fondly of the movies I watched with friends as a teenager, the first video games I played, my favorite cartoons/anime and role playing back in the day. I felt the story was the recent successor to Neuromancer and Snow Crash (which if you haven’t read them, go do it now).  It blends the “real” world of the dystopian future with the virtual worlds of OASIS well and if you have played video games, you can easily picture something like OASIS coming in the future.

At the end, you will want more. That isn’t to say that the story isn’t complete, it is, you just want to have more time with the characters and the world. I really enjoyed this book both for the story and the reminder of all those great things we got to experience for the first time in the 1980s. Sure they were often cheesy, but they were completely new. I give Ready Player One 5 Mick Happies. You should read it or listen to the Wil Wheaton audio version of the book. Go to the Random House website to read the prologue. Check out Ernest Cline’s blog for more geeky goodness.  Once your done, you can wait with me and hope  for the Ready Player One movie, which Warner Brothers optioned earlier this year.

How Firm A Foundation Review

How Firm a Foundation was released in September 2011 and is the fifth novel in David Weber’s Safehold series. The Safehold series is set in a far distant future where mankind has fled Earth and the planets we had colonized after a devastating loss in a war for survival against an alien race, the Gbaba.  Safehold is a refuge planet far away from the areas of space the Gbaba have been seen and was planned by the colonizing leaders to be a world the Gbaba would never find (they destroy civilizations before they become threats by finding them via their electronic emissions).

To help ensure that Safehold would remain secret, the founding leaders brainwashed the colonizing humans during their suspended animation into thinking they awoke on Safehold to a world created by God and the archangels (the leaders of the colonizing mission) and were given a book to guide them, which denounces technological progress beyond a certain point. That is the premise of the first book, Off Armageddon Reef, where we find that not all of the colonizing mission leadership agreed with that approach and some took matters into their own hands to ensure mankind would again rise to take on the Gbaba. This fifth book continues the story of how a group of a few people fight to overthrow the oppressive church on Safehold and bring mankind back from this imposed backward level. For more detail on the background, click the links above.

Those familiar with David Weber know that he is known for military science fiction with his Honor Harrington series. I came to read his work through the Dahak series, which I highly recommend and can be found online. The Safehold series has a nice mix of science fiction and historical “feeling” naval and political intrigue. In How Firm a Foundation, Weber really channels a Master and Commander feel in the beginning of the book as we are given a detailed account of a ship battling a storm. At the time it felt a bit too much of a venue for demonstrating a great knowledge of nautical terms, but later I realized that it was to let the reader know how skilled those sailors were as they are pivotal characters in this fifth book

The series is going to be much longer than five books, the exact number hasn’t been set as far as I know. However, the story continues to move along with some new reveals and twists and turns you don’t see coming. If you like gunpowder, ships and religious and political intrigue, this series is likely for you. The books come out once a year like clockwork (thank you Mr. Weber). I would give this book 3 Mick Happies. It is an enjoyable story, not the best book in the series, but worth a read. Catch it in paperback when you can.

X-Men: First Class Review

I have enjoyed the X-Men for many years. I know there are those that didn’t like some of the trilogy movies or only know the movies, but I have liked X-men since I watched the cartoon on tv and then went and read the comics they were based on. I had even heard good things about X-Men: FirstClass before it came to my home from Netflix.

X-Men: First Class stars James McAvoy and was directed by Matthew Vaughn. I have enjoyed several of Matthew Vaughn’s other films like Stardust and especially Kick-Ass. Here are some of the things I liked about X-Men: First Class:

·         The kids learning to use their powers

·         The cameos

·         Getting to see Professor X before he was Professor X

·         Getting to see the X-Men again in a movie

Okay, that doesn’t feel like a very long list. It isn’t. I am either becoming jaded on the whole superhero movie or it was just I was disappointed in this one. I think it was this movie. I had high expectations and it missed. I am male, so I understand and eye candy is enjoyable, but how many shots do we need in one movie specifically designed to show January Jones in her underwear? How many blow it up over the top explosions? The whole thing just fell flat for me and seemed a bit forced. There is potential there, but it never was realized in my opinion. That opinion was strengthened watching Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger soon after X-Men: First Class.

At the end of the day, I will wait patiently for the next Wolverine movie and give X-Men: First Class 2 Mick Happies.