Adventures of Tin Tin - Secret of The Unicorn

An end of half term holiday treat for the family was seeing Tin Tin this morning in 3D at the IMAX.
It's Spielbergs, rather than Herges Adventures of Tin Tin, but he really makes a good job of it.
The boys already have quite a few of the Tin Tin books (they were into this well before we knew about the film), so enjoyed pointing out that the film also covers 'The Crab with the Golden Claws' as well as 'Secret of the Unicorn'.
It's an absolutely, stunningly fabulous film.  The CGI is so good that you sometimes forget it's an animation - go see it for yourself.

Raving Bonkers

The boys had fun this morning at a creative costume making workshop - Frodo made a bat costume, and Samwise built a 'King' Robot - i.e. a robot with a crown on it's head.
This was rather appropriate, as we took them to the cinema this afternoon to see Real Steel .
The concept of boxing robots operated by humans will be immediately familiar to anyone who played with the game Raving Bonkers in the 1970's/80's (it was known as "Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots in the USA). This film takes that concept and has you believing that this will be a real spectator sport in the not too distant future.
Samwise was getting far too excited, jumping on the edge of his seat and copying robot boxing moves throughout the fight scenes - hope he doesn't ask for a sparring robot for Christmas :)

Inception

Went to see Inception last night. "No Spoilers" other than to say this film goes into Phillip K. Dick territory, and messes with your head regarding what's real, and what isn't. The Matrix and Total Recall spring to mind, but this film's a lot darker.
Went to test our current state of reality with a couple of pints in Rigby's afterwards.
impworks has produced a review - but watch out - "spoilers!"

Toy Story 3

Met the family after work and went to the Odeon, Liverpool One, to see Toy Story 3.
Thoroughly enjoyed this one - there's some great stuff in it - comedy on all levels for the adults and the kids.
We'd heard that it was a real tear jerker at the end, but I didn't think it was that bad - just a little mushy.
We took the 3D option, and as usual I found that I hardly noticed the 3D effects after about 20 minutes in. They're allowing you to keep the glasses now, rather than immediately returning them for 'recycling', so you can take them back and use them another time. Wish I'd known that beforehand - we could have reused the ones that we stole last time :)

Clash of the Titans

Saw this at a packed cinema today.

We opted for the 3D version, but this wasn't really necessary. I don't think that the 3D works too well in a live action film - it was OK up to a point, but not that fantastic, plus the glasses seemed to wash a lot of the colour out of the picture.
In future I'll reserve 3D viewing for animations.

The film was worth seeing. They screwed around with the mythology a bit, but that was OK. There was a little homage to Ray Harryhausen near the beginning, and the Medusa was directly lifted from his visualisation of her.

Spider Man 3

Food at Tso's (all you can eat Chinese Buffet) followed by Spiderman 3 at the FACT Cinema last night.

Our decision not to take Frodo to see this was right (the rating is 12A) - too violent and scary for a 5 year old - (although nothing I think that the average 8 to 10 year old couldn't handle). So I guess that his first cinema experience is likely to be Shrek 3 when that comes out.

Enjoyed Spiderman 3 on the whole. We weren't too close to the screen, but I found my head darting about trying to follow the rapid action scenes.

There were a lot of shaking camera "steadicam" effects - perhaps to help hide the CGI.

Some critics had complained that there were too many villains. I didn't think so. The only downside was that it took a while for "Venom" to fully appear, which was fairly quickly followed by his demise.

I did think that they could have cut back on the slushy scenes - far too many of them and too long for most people's liking.

Also Mary Jane - is she fickle or what? The super_geeky PP should dump her and go for the skinny foreign girl who lives across the corridor - she's much more his type.

There were a few laughable plot events - the sort of corny coincidences that you'd expect from a comic.
I give it a 7 out of 10

Hot Fuzz

If you like The Omen, Straw Dogs, The Shining, Mad Max, 28 Days Later, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Dusk 'Till Dawn, Bad Boys (II), Point Break, Commando, The Matrix, Superman (2), The Terminator and a host of other action films, if you thought Shaun of the Dead was OK, but you absolutely loved Spaced then Hot Fuzz is a film that you should not miss.

Even if you don't particularly enjoy the above, but you like a good laugh, with a lot of action, and some Hammer style horror thrown in, then you should see this film.

We went to see it on Friday. We laughed, we jumped, we laughed, we shrieked, we laughed, we were grossed out, we laughed, we shouted out the heroes response to the bad guy before he said it, we laughed, we named the reference to another film, we laughed, we kept on laughing, did I mention that we laughed?

Haven't enjoyed a film so much since the latest James Bond. I don't think that I've ever laughed at a film from start to finish as much as this one.

Went to see it with, amongst others, Novelist Supermum and impworks who both blog about the film here and here

Definitely one that I'll be getting when it comes out on DVD.