Oliver Dyson

1) The Story.

Whilst the marketing campaign has kept pretty much everything quiet, there’s been one thing that kept both film fans and critics interested- it promises to be a prequel to 1979’s original sci-fi horror, Alien. But not everyone is a fan of the thirty year old film, or has seen it. So what does Prometheus offer you?

Well, through a long online viral marketing campaign, there have been steadily bigger drips of information falling through the cracks. What we can garner from the trailers is that Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw, along with newcomer Logan Marshall-Green’s Charlie Holloway, discover a series of connections across Earth which point to something big. And when I say big, I mean big- as in the origin of humanity itself.

With funding from the Weyland Corporation, they set off towards an isolated planet, looking for their answers, all whilst the Weyland Corp seems to be silently anticipating something else. Judging from some of the more explicit trailers, it seems they find it. And whatever it is, it’s not exactly pleased to see them.

What should be pointed out is that this isn’t just some sci-fi yarn. Writer Damon Lindehof, one of the key brains behind Lost, and co-writer Jon Spaights, seem to be aiming for something more universal: the search for truth, and the fight to survive once you have found it (in this case, seemingly literally).

One of the things which separated Alien from the rest of the flock was that it wasn’t just a story about a monstrous alien. At its centre, Alien was about encountering fear, isolation, and darkness, and winning. Whether the crew of the Prometheus manage to is another thing entirely…

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Possibly the best superhero movie yet. There, I said it.

Joss Whedon’s pedigree in ensemble pieces (Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc) comes into play here to spectacular effect, crafting a film which will indulge not only the die-hard Marvel fans but also those who are in for a fun, entertaining reminder of what a trip to the cinema should be about.

Pulling together all of the characters from The Avengers cinematic predecessors- a list which is now five films long- Whedon displays remarkable prowess at both referencing the individual preceding storylines as well as crafting an epic new one.

Whilst some of the minor characters can disappear for long lengths at a time (I became concerned for Pepper Potts at one point, as Stark didn’t even seem to think of her as the film’s climax appeared on the horizon) it’s to be expected when you are juggling six different heavyweights all at once.

The cast is stellar, made up of Marvel’s individually selected leading roles for the heroes solo appearances. When a film can include the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow as a minor character, you know the billing is going to be good. 

Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark definitely headlines the witty side of the humour (as fits his sardonic character), but Mark Ruffalo as both the big green giant and Dr Banner comes surprisingly close to stealing it off him. 

After following up the likes of Eric Bana and Edward Norton to fill the tattered purple shorts of the Hulk, Ruffalo does an excellent and perhaps standard setting job as the internally conflicted scientist and the angry ‘other guy’.

Scarlett Johannson’s Black Widow also deserves a mention. After being poorly under-represented in Iron Man 2, she comes into her own here, kicking ass as much, if not more than, any of the boys and manipulating her way through the movie in such a way that the Natasha Romanov of the comics would be proud.

In summary, Whedon’s pulled it off in spectacular fashion. It’s everything you want from a comic book movie, with the big-budget effects and stellar line up you once could only dream of. There came a moment, during the final third of the film, when I underwent what could only be described as a ‘nerdgasm’, as the comic book heroes that I used to (and still do) read came to life on screen.

Imagine how you used to picture what would happen if your Marvel comics were real, or sprang into motion. Then imagine it better. That’s The Avengers.

Sources:

The Avengers Image:http://www.filmofilia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/The_Avengers.jpg

Original review I wrote and posted on Letterboxd.com: http://letterboxd.com/oliverdyson/film/the-avengers-2012/

Lisa Cholodenko does a decent job presenting a modern homosexual family unit, and the characters are believable and fleshed out. The main problem here is with the narrative; Julianne Moore’s character takes a dramatic decision which could be explained more thoroughly- you could interpret reasoning behind it, but within any real substantial evidence it becomes difficult.

Ruffalo as the hippie now seeking a family is great, but his character gets shoved out roughly two thirds of the way into the film and it seems like lazy writing rather than a believable act.
Annette Benning is brilliant as she desperately tries to cling onto her family, inadvertently pushing them further out of her reach at the same time.

The kids, too, are alright- Josh Hutcherson puts in a good performance as the conflicted youth seeking some kind of a father figure to wrestle with, but there isn’t that much of a dynamic between him and Ruffalo as I would have liked. Mia Waschowski is decent too, as she prepares to leave for College and manage her Mom’s and brother’s issues too.

What Cholodenko seems to have needed is an extra half hour,primarily to fit in more defined motives for character’s actions and explore the kids relationships with their biological father.

Some scenes, especially towards the start, are explicit (perhaps unnecessarily so), but what remains is the partially fleshed out framework for a really great character piece. it’s just a shame it didn’t quite fully form in the final appearance. That Cholodenko is currently writing a TV series based around the movie for HBO is welcome- the longer format might be just the space and time she needs to craft a script and story which can do the characters justice.

Sources:

The Kids Are All Right Image:

http://www.themoviejerk.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/the-kids-are-all-right-original.jpg

My original review posted on Letterboxd.com: 

http://letterboxd.com/oliverdyson/film/the-kids-are-all-right/

I haven’t read a book for the sheer pleasure of reading it in a while. Being on a joint English course, there’s a weighty reading list, and it’s difficult to fit in the time to power through it all with optional reading included.

That’s not to say I don’t like reading some of my set texts; I liked The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was a surreal and easy journey. My point is there’s a difference between being forced to read something and choosing to.

I made my first optional choice in a while two nights ago when I decided to start reading Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games. The recently released film interpretation has received a lot a hype and surprisingly, quite generous critical acclaim, and I won’t lie- I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

I’d seen people talking on Twitter about reading the trilogy and how much of an addictive trip it is, but I doubted whether or not I would get as hooked as everyone said I would. The last time I couldn’t put down a book properly was during the age of Potter, and that was years ago.

Believe the hype. I found myself burning through the pages at a rapid speed, and it was good. I don’t even know why.

It’s something to do with it bucking the trend slightly; here was a central female protagonist who wasn’t doting on a unattainable male, someone who was playing a traditionally patriarchal role in a family, and someone who- dare I say it- came across as more than a little damaged but indescribably human.

It’s a strange world the Hunger Games take place in. It’s a dystopian future where North America, or PanEm, has been divided into 12 districts and one central Capitol. Children are used as gladiators in a televised marathon fight to the death, serving as a reminder to the poverty-stricken, starving citizens of the districts that the Capitol is in charge.

It’s a weird combination of sci-fi tropes and savagery. The Capitol is a towering, neon city filled with strange outfits and stranger people, but in the outlying districts traditional hunting methods and trades are still common.

It’s a place where someone’s skull can be bashed in with a rock but then their cadaver disappears into an invisible hovercraft. And it works, weirdly, and mostly due to plausibility of it all. Of course, some of the names for things are ridiculous- ‘Tracker Jacker’ carries with it less connotations of a swarm of murderous mutated wasps and more of a dubiously sexual stalker.

But the amount of context and history subtly built around the creatures, places, and people means that you can overcome those more jarring labels. At times the writing isn’t perfect, with some dodgy sentence structures cropping up here and there, but the effort and sheer strength of narrative will more often than not pull you through unnoticed.

By letting you discover the world through the eyes of Katniss, Collins’ elaborates on things gradually, unveiling alien ideas to the reader in combination with things more familiar. She allows you to slip into the futuristic PanEm gradually and then traps you there.

 Similar to the Hunger Games described in the book, the only way out once you’re in is to see it to the close. And unlike Katniss, you won’t want to leave.

Sources:

The Hunger Games Image: http://cdn.sheknows.com/articles/2011/12/hunger_games_banner.jpg

So I went to see ‘The Woman in Black’ last night. Approaching it as someone who pretty regularly watches horror films, and who has already seen the play version, I was confident that it really couldn’t be that scary.

After all, a film with a 12A certificate really couldn’t be that bad, could it? ‘Best Marigold Hotel’ has a 12A certificate, and that has Judi Dench and Maggie Smith in it. Unless they’ve employed some pretty deceptive advertising, I don’t think a group of pensioners’ Indian retreat could be all that nerve jangling.  

How wrong I was.

It’s not that it has excessive gore, or that it has any sexually explicit scenes in it. It is the core of the subject matter which is the most shocking- child death. (Warning: spoilers ahead.) For those of you who don’t know the story, every time someone sees the eponymous woman in black, a child in the nearby village dies.

And I don’t mean dies quietly in their sleep. No, these children choose, or rather are made to choose, to throw themselves off the second floor of a house for example. Or perhaps drink lime, a substance used to clean drains and disintegrate corpses.

The point is, a lot of children are seen to die horribly. Even the ghost’s motivations are founded in a child dying. And they don’t shy away from showing it either; whether it’s the breaking of taboo, or the simple fact that a dead boy’s rotting cadaver is projected unavoidably in front of you, it makes for very uncomfortable viewing.

It’s this combined with a penchant for ‘jump’ scares which results in ‘The Woman in Black’ being such a disturbing viewing experience.Hammer Horror, the company behind the film’s production, are old hat at creating shocking and controversial material; it is out of their house that Christopher Lee’s iconic performance as Dracula emerged, as well as a variety of others.

This doesn’t seem to perturb parents from taking their children along to see it however. A lady on Twitter sent me a message informing me that both she and her nine year old daughter had gone to see it, and they weren’t scared at all.

Does this say something about children being desensitised to graphic or upsetting material then? It’s more likely that it says something about us. A group of students ranging from 18 to 27 years old were left shaken by a woman in a dark outfit, and yet a nine year old wholly enjoyed it.  

Nobody said being at University meant being mature. 

Sources:

The Woman in Black Vintage Poster Image: http://www.heyuguys.co.uk/images/2012/01/the-woman-in-black-vintage-poster.jpg

Last night, me and my flatmate Naomi decided that we were going to watch all three films in the Lord of the Rings trilogy back to back (as in straight after one another, not with us both sitting back to back).

It took some forethought and preparation;  we bought some popcorn, mini eggs and the like, both for snacks during the film but also as essential fuel- this was going to be an approximately nine hour endurance test.

With those supplies bought, we settled in. We decided that to watch them straight after one another would be a bit too much, so we stuck in two brief breaks of about 10-20 minutes between each one. And then we started.

I’m not going to lie, at times it was a struggle. As brilliant as Jackson’s films are, at a certain point you begin to feel like you’ve become the tenth and eleventh members of the fellowship. I suppose in a way, this shows the kind of involvement Tolkein would probably have encouraged in his characters.

Gollum becomes both frustrating and fascinating, watching his entire character arc from silent stalker in the first film, to his possible redemption in the second, and his final, murderous conclusion in the finale.

This is one of the positive things I’ve noticed from watching the trilogy as a single, cohesive whole- they are written in such a way as to encourage it. No apologies are made for making references to things in The Fellowship of the Ring when we are halfway through The Return of the King, and characters develop consistently as the journey goes on.

Another is the musical score. You don’t quite realise how essential Howard Shore and Fran Walsh’s composition is to your experience of Middle-Earth. Motifs for both locations and characters become your guide, whether that’s signifying Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli’s entrance into Rohan with swooping horns, or the arrival of the Uruk-hai with aggressive war drums.

As for us, we made it to the finish. At roughly 5:00pm yesterday evening, we left the Shire with Frodo, and by about 2:30am this morning he, alongside Gandalf and an array of the other main characters, had left the Grey Havens heading West.

It is a daunting task, but I recommend it. Never mind University work, or having that thing some people like to call a life- for nine hours, we left Lincoln and spent very close to half a day in Middle-Earth. 

Sources:

The Fellowship Image- lotr.wikia.com

I’m writing today to propose to you the most important item in the University Student’s toolkit: the microwaveable bowl.

First and foremost, its main purpose is obvious. It’s ideal for heating up most, if not all, tinned foods. Soup, spaghetti hoops, beans… the range is both expansive and (for the most part) edible. You can literally have a meal prepared in five minutes.

What most people don’t know, however, is that you can also cook pasta using it. Yes, there is an alternative to watching it boil for 20 minutes over a hot stove.

Simply put the dry pasta into the bowl, and then pour freshly boiled water over it until it’s covered. Microwave for five to ten minutes, et voila- fully boiled pasta.

All you have to do then is drain the water, and clean a bit of the starchy stuff which seems to appear as a by-product of the process, and you’re sorted. You can even bung the sauce into the exact same bowl, and microwave it again for about three minutes.

In fact, you can even eat the finished meal out of the bowl. Admittedly, this option should probably be reserved for the very lazy days or the badly hung over, but still; the option is there.

I’m not ashamed to admit that in one extreme case, I even used my microwaveable bowl to eat cereal from. It literally has been used for everything. Sheer ease and the speed with which food can be prepared should be motivation enough to get one.

Herein concludes my case for the microwaveable bowl.

Sources:

Photo of a Microwaveable Bowl, Image URL: http://lh4.ggpht.com/_GuQtKWKpbUA/TKIIpqWvcLI/AAAAAAAAWpU/9Xc-VI_HX2Y/DSC_0410%5B1%5D.jpg

I know a lot are just a well-written tales, but these sort of unsolved mysteries/ folk stories always fascinate me.

I was doing some research for a feature I have to write on Disneyland rumours, when I stumbled across mysteriousuniverse.org. The website is a collection of conspiracy theories and the aforementioned unsolved cases, but one story in particular caught my eye.

That was the story of the Dyatlov Pass incident, from the late 1950s. It involves a group of Russian skiers, led by one man, Igor Dyaltov, from whom the Pass would later gain its name.

The basic summary is that this group of ten set out on an training expedition over the Gora Ortorten Mountain, heading towards a settlement called Vizhai. The group never made it.

 On February 25^th, two weeks after they were supposed to have arrived in Vizhai, a search party discovered what was left of the expedition on the slope of a mountain known as ‘1079’.

The group’s tent lay tattered and broken in the snow, with bare-footed tracks leading in every direction away from the site. Further down the mountain, near the tree line, two of the skiers were found.

The two tree members were found in nothing but their underwear with their hands shredded and the nearest tree showing signs of a desperate attempt to scrabble upwards.

900-feet away from that discovery, team leader Dyaltov was found sprawled on his back, clutching onto a broken Birch branch and with one hand locked in rigor mortis, forever protecting his face from some unknown attacker.

Closer to the tent, another team member was found face down, the back of her head sporting a deep 7-inch fracture, even though her ultimate cause of death was determined to be hypothermia.

The following spring, during the thaw, the remaining four lost skiers were discovered 12-feet beneath the surface, in a ravine. Unlike the others, these were fully dressed, but had suffered horrific internal injuries.

Two of the corpses had suffered such severe damage to their chests that it would later be described as equal to that of ‘a car crash’, according to Dr Boris Vozrohzdenny, who inspected their bodies.

Perhaps most disturbing, however, was the state of skier Dubinina. Her head was tilted backwards at a severe angle, and upon closer inspection, it was discovered that her tongue was no longer there. It had been torn out from its root, deep within her throat.

Further adding mystery to these disturbing discoveries is the manner in which the tent was destroyed; it was not trashed from the outside. Rather, the occupants had torn their way out in what must have been a desperate panic to seek sanctuary.

The skiers found within the ravine were also wearing, alongside their own thermal gear, scraps of their deceased teammates clothing too- and their garments gave off unusual levels of radiation.

Of course, part of the reason why this story sent chills down my spine has to be the way it is presented on the site. Using a number of supposedly authentic photographs to accompany the text, the images provided a face to the carnage being told.

What must the skiers have gone through that caused such a reaction? MysteriousUniverse.org provide a number of theories, including that of a Russian military test site being violated unwittingly by the expedition.

The website is undoubtedly home to a number of the more extreme variety of conspiracy theorists, with such explanations as extra-terrestrial life and ghosts being offered.

In the comments, it gets even wilder, with one user, ‘Ziadamascus’, suggesting that ‘a pagan holiday called Imbol to the celts and Lupercus to the Strega’ could be involved, with ‘wherewolfs’ being the possible identity of the Russian’s assailants.   

Personally, I don’t buy into those more fantastical explanations- but what is undoubtedly true is that something, or someone, was on the slope of Mountain 1079 on February 2^nd, 1959. And that something really didn’t like a group of 10 Russian skiers.

Sources: 

UnsolvedUniverse.org- http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2012/01/mountain-of-the-dead-the-dyatlov-pass-incident/

Left: ‘It! The Terror From Beyond Space’ poster, Source: http://www.cinemacom.com/50s-sci-fi-REST.html

Right: Planet 51 poster, Source: http://www.scifiscoop.com/wp-content/gallery/movie-posters/planet-51-poster.jpg

The media always makes films where we, as the human race, are terrified of some extra-terrestrial beings and their strange ways. Well, there was that animated exception with The Rock in it, but we’ll not discuss that. 

Where I’m going with this is that if we look at ourselves objectively, I reckon we would be the ones who would turn out to be very weird. Just think about it. In fact, I can even sort it into a series of small points:

1) As a species, we have multiple languages. All we had to do was live in different areas of the globe and voila! 6,500 different languages now exist on this planet, and all for one type of creature (us).

2) We seem to, as a whole, require some form of otherworldly presence. Whether that’s through organised religion, or the belief in the supernatural, we seem destined to rely upon it. A number of texts, written by ourselves a long time ago, combined with word of mouth tales and legends, has become enough to convince a planet’s worth of people that there is something more. There are 20 major religions currently, with thousands more of a smaller size.

3) Not content to allow natural disaster and just general disease and famine to maim and/or kill us, we also go to war. Much in the same way as other members of the animal kingdom, we become remarkably aggressive when someone is seen to encroach upon any part of the world we perceive as ‘ours’. What’s more unusual is that we are not satisfied with just warding away invaders; no, we follow them back home, and insist upon starting campaigns of violence which ultimately result in a lot more death than if we simply let them leave.

The only other animals noted to have shown some form of this behaviour have been some Tanzanian chimps which wage murder spree’s against their northern neighbours on a seasonal basis. The fact that we are in some way related to them is all the more telling.

4) We also have a disturbing capacity to produce people who have a terrifying strong desire to ‘make everything alright again’, even if that means slaughtering thousands of our own race to achieve that goal. There are other animals which can turn murderous and savage, but unsurprisingly a large amount of the time that turns out to be the result of us poking around in their business and wrecking their homes. We don’t have any excuse for people like Hitler or Hussein, other than those which further involve other members of the glorious human race.

All those points might have made you lose a little bit of your faith in humanity- and I didn’t even mention Frankie Cocozza. But don’t fret too much, we have good points too. We do charitable things, there are organisations which help the planet, and twice a year Comic Relief and Children in Need come on everyone’s TVs to remind us all that there are people a lot worse off than ourselves. Whether or not we donate, the fact that we can feel guilty about it is something, at least.  

Tokyo as seen from Space. Photo by Donald R Pettit, NASA