Overrated/Underrated

Every now and again, some newspaper or some website or some magazine or some TV channel (most likely Channel 4) will do a “Best of X”, and tell you all the movies you should see, books you should read, games you should play, whatever. The fact is, however, that a lot of these things aren't the best of the best. They’re what a bunch of critics think the best are – and most of the time, they’re wrong. Citizen Kane is an okay film, but it’s not the best one ever made – that’s Revenge of the Sith. Sgt Pepper isn’t the best album ever made, that’s blatantly The Varangian Way.

So, here are five things that are frequently over-rated, and their plucky little underdog that you should be rooting for

Westerns

Overrated:
The Magnificent Seven

I hate this movie. It’s dull, laborious, and a waste of fucking money, sure...but that’s not the reason I hate it. I hate it because this is the point where the Western world decided that they didn’t want to read subtitles, or see nasty foreign types on their screens. They’d just take the story, and do it better...in English...with nice white, American actors...and cowboys!

Because their market research at the time had led them to believe that Cowboys are better than Samurai, presumably.

What follows is one of the most uninspired rip-offs in the history of movie making (with the notable exception of Eragon). Watch the hell out of the original, Akira Kurosawa’s Shichinin No Samurai (Seven Samurai), and the Pixar movie A Bug’s Life, but please don’t worry yourself with this overrated piece of claptrap.

Underrated:
High Plains Drifter

Sure, you’ve heard of High Noon, A Fistful of Dollars, Unforgiven, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Young Guns, Outland – all great movies, right? But chances are that you haven’t seen the first western that Clint Eastwood ever directed, High Plains Drifter. Oppresive, mind-bogglingly violent and a little bit rapey, this should be required viewing for the Emotionally Fourteen.

Unfortunately, it’s one of those movies that I can’t say too much about without it giving the whole bloody thing away. So...just watch it, I guess.

Schwarzenegger Movies

Overrated:
Batman & Robin

Ha! I kid!

Underrated:
Conan the Destroyer

All too easily dismissed out of hand because it wasn’t as sweeping and powerful an epic as its predecessor, Conan the Barbarian, that doesn’t actually stop Conan the Destroyer from being a fun fantasy movie. In fact, in many ways, it captures the essence of the original stories and comics even better than the first movie. There’s magic, wizards, and combat, all told in a rather more episodic format. Considering that Conan was originally episodic and not epic...hey, this is more what Conan is supposed to be!

It’s not as good as the first movie, but it’s just as fun.

Star Trek Movies

Overrated:
Star Trek

Three years ago, someone could say “I like Star Trek”, and I’d say “Okay” or, at most, “What series is your favourite?”. These days I say “When you say that, do you mean you like Star Trek, or that bizarre mish-mash of Star Trek and Star Wars that was released last year?”

Star Trek isn’t a bad movie by a long stretch, but it’s a bad Star Trek movie. It relies way too much on big special effects, explosions, punch-ups and geeky, giggly in-jokes. That’s not what Star Trek is about – that’s what Star Wars is about. There was no character depth, unless you knew the originals anyway, and I could have sworn the Romulans appear to have been Vongformed in this instalment.

Underrated:
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

Yeah, okay, it’s an odd-numbered one, but it’s the best of the odd-numbered ones. There’s deep characterisation, and a sense of wonder and adventure that’s not there in the truly botched movies, like Number One and Number Five. If you’ve been put off re-watching it because of some stupid thing Simon Pegg said, then don’t do that. What does he know about whether a Star Trek movie’s shit or not?

Star Wars Characters

Overrated:
Boba Fett

There is a fan sub-culture based around Boba Fett and his clan, who call themselves “Fandalorians”. Hah, hilarious! Jesus...

Seriously, why is this guy so popular? His complete list of achievement in the Star Wars movies, in chronological order are:

Does what his dad says. Chuckles “menacingly”. Watches his Dad die. Cries like a girl. Appears in The Star Wars Holiday Special. Stands around. Appears at Cloud City via plot-device. Stands around. Stands around. Stands around. Falls in a hole.

Consider that next time you see someone wearing a Boba Fett shirt.

Underrated:
Princess Leia

Unplug your stupid “Girls...ewww” mentality that seems to surround way too many of the E14, and consider this: Princess Leia is, after Obi-Wan and Vader, the third-hardest character in the Star Wars movies.

Princess Leia is the single greatest shot in the Star Wars movies, hitting with a blaster bolt nine times out of ten. She has the potential to be a Jedi. She can lend a hand fixing the Millenium Falcon.

If that doesn’t work for you consider this. There are only two characters in the movies who choke people to death. The other one is Darth Vader.

John Carpenter Movies

Overrated:
Halloween

Alledgedly, this movie singlehandedly created the slasher movie genre. Here’s the thing, though. Virtually every other slasher movie franchise (well, the ones of note, anyway), are better. Friday the 13th does it better. A Nightmare on Elm Street does it better.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes outdo it, and they were made before it.

What we have here is nothing more than a turgid slasher movie – and not really a very original one either.

Underrated:
Dark Star/Memoirs of an Invisible Man

There are two John Carpenter movies you should see. One of them is the Dan O’Bannon scripted sci-fi comedy Dark Star, and the other is the Chevy Chase/Sam Neill comedy Memoirs of an Invisible Man. It turns out that the master of gore and horror is actually a fucking amazing comedy director! Who knew?

Not the people who've seen They Live, that's for damn sure...

Ninja Assassin

Ninja Assassin
James MacTeigue
Warner Bros
In Cinemas Now
Review by Blake Harmer

There are a lot of strange things about Ninja Assassin. Such as...why is it so dark in places? Or why is Patrick from Coupling kicking large amounts of ass towards the end of the film? However, these questions pale into insignificance with the strangest thing about Ninja Assassin. Why did I come out of Ninja Assassin loving it, and now consider it to be just another average Kung-Fu action movie?

Ninja Assassin has lots of violence, and most of it ends with the victims having limbs cut off and large buckets of blood being thrown at the screen, which is always awesome in The E14 Handbook. The opening scene deserves special mention for having several triad members being killed in all manner of cool ways, without the assailant being seen. The choreography of the fight scenes are good for the most part as well, despite being a bit too dark at times, but I will get to that later.

Chuck these two factors in together, and you have some great fight scenes that result in lots of ninjas being killed in incredibly cool ways. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen ninjas being killed in so many cool ways since I first saw Shogun Assassin. The plot is pretty standard for most action films with the lead wanting revenge against his clan of ninjas for killing the love of his life, but it does seem to have been put there as an excuse to string together a load of fight scenes so they can come up with more cool blood shed.

So now you know why I came out loving it. However, it is only after the initial “Wow look there’s legs and heads flying everywhere!” moment had worn off that I started to realise the film had some serious flaws. Firstly, the special effects are terrible, a lot of the blood is computer generated and it can be quite clear at times that it is. Also, the use of special effects to show the use of “ninja skills” shows shadows flitting around rooms or sliding into windows, and to be honest, I think the effects of the Shadow Monsters in Ghost were better than this.

So how do they get around the fact that these effects are quite terrible? They make the scenes dark so that it’s hard to see how bad they are. Whilst this does work occasionally, with one particular scene where a fight leads to the ninjas flitting throughout a darkened room and appearing in different places whilst they were fighting looked pretty cool, the overall use of the dark made things difficult to see at times and thus made a few bits of the film a bit confusing as you couldn’t see what happened.

Secondly, the plot (whilst paper thin) disrupts a large part of the action at the beginning of the film by showing past events leading up to the reason for the revenge story, so it feels like a long time before the action really starts to hit it’s stride. That and some of the Ninja Skills such as being able to heal yourself through meditation is complete rubbish, even if the thought of it sounds cool. But as long as you accept that this is “magic” then it doesn’t interfere too much with the film.

The Emotionally Fourteen Rating
Violence: Hundreds of ninjas and soldiers being cut, shot, diced, having limbs removed, or being filled with hundreds of shurikens. In a word, awesome!
Sex/Nudity: None to my recollection, if there was it was very brief…and probably severed in two.
Swearing: Quite a bit of swearing, but the focus was put more on killing ninjas than insulting them.
Summary: An enjoyable gore fest that it’s let down by poor special effects and a paper-thin plot. At the end of the day, the reason I ended up liking this film less and less was that I actually thought about it. If you take your brain out before going to see this film and focus on the endless killing then you will love this film. If you think about how stupid the plot is or how crap the special effects are then you will end up hating it. Just focus on the Hot Ninja Death Rampage and then you’ll probably think that this is the most Emotionally Fourteen film you have seen since Commando. It is because of this E14 factor, that this average film gets a couple of bonus points. 7/10

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“Your son Michael is a very disturbed young man...”

Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake of Halloween was a massive success and horror fans embraced the film at box offices around the world to the tune of 80 million dollars. Now, Zombie’s much anticipated and equally terrifying sequel is to be released on rental and retail DVD and Blu-ray by Entertainment In Video on February 1st.

Halloween II sees the return of lead cast members Tyler Mane as the evil Michael Myers, Scout Tyler-Compton who reprises her part as Myers’s sister Laurie Strode and Malcolm McDowell (Tank Girl, Fist of the North Star) who plays the part of Dr. Samuel Loomis.

Picking up where Halloween left off, Laurie Strode is taken to the local hospital after supposedly killing Michael Myers, the man responsible for the deaths of several people in the town of Haddonfield, Illinois. However Michael is very much alive and as the anniversary of the massacres approaches, he returns to Haddonfield once more, with a family reunion planned that Laurie will never forget.

Unleashing a devastating new trail of terror Myers will stop at nothing to bring closure to the secrets of his twisted past but the town has an unlikely new hero …if they can only stay alive long enough to stop the seemingly unstoppable.

Thanks to our friends at Entertainment In Video, we've got two DVD copies of Halloween 2 to give away! For your chance of winning one, send us an e-mail to halloween2giveaway@rocketmail.com with your name and postal address before midday on Tuesday 2nd February (UK time). The first two names drawn out of the electronic hat will win free copy!

The Worst Games I Ever Played

Firstly, I must assert that this post would have been a lot easier to write if either of the following had been true:

1) My desktop PC had not been subject to what I like to call "Spontaneous power supply combustion". It's been a couple of weeks in coming, but finally I've been able to get hold of my spare and set it all up so that I am back on the Rig of Glory. However, this wouldn't have been so much of a hardship if:
2) My laptop was not five years old, and suffering from what appears to be mechanical memory decay.

"Hey laptop, do you think you could bring up a Google search? I need to do some research for an article."
"Sure..........thing..........Rob.........."
*Time passes*
"Hey Rob, I found that........information out for you........."
"...It's been three weeks. Believe it or not it was actually quicker to go to the library and look it up in a book."
"Oh. Well, that was pretty........obscure information."
"Yeah, I know, I had to wait a week for the book to be available."
"Hunh............Want to play Solitaire?"
"You mean Patience? I don't think that'd be an appropriate game for me right now."

You know that your laptop is a clapped out piece of crap when you can accurately simulate its working order using the wheelchair-bound kid from Malcolm In The Middle as a template.

So now all is well, Van Halen are playing in my earphones and my keyboard is full-sized. Let's rock.

The subject of today's "Worst Games I Ever Played" is a relatively unknown gem from 1998 that was released for PC and Macintosh, named Knights and Merchants: The Shattered Kingdom.

Incidentally, three things spring instantly to mind. Firstly, is that woman stealing from that stand, despite actually being one of the more presentable specimens in the street? Secondly, is it me or does the guy with the lance blatantly fancy the guy with the box under his arm? Thirdly, is that Fagin from Oliver Twist giving an apple to those kids?

Anyway, I digress. I first saw this CD cover in Staples, the stationery store that, true to its word, has been in the same place since it opened. After perusing the back cover, and having a read of the description, it actually sounded like a game of reasonable quality. Add to this that it was priced at £3, and I thought it would be worth taking a punt.

One thing that anyone who knows me can be sure of is that I'm into my real-time strategy games. While other people were using their "year abroad" for the purposes of "travel" and "enrichment" and all that bollocks, I was about two things: Filling myself with as much caffeine as possible, and playing on my PC. Some people may call that tragic, but I would argue that those people haven't put Aston Villa into the Champion's League and overthrown an evil corporation's genetic experiments on a tropical island within the space of a couple of weeks. Pah, amateurs...

So I took this game home with me and considered that a bargain. That is to say, until I loaded the game up.

Let's get one thing out of the way. By today's standards, these graphics are piss-poor. In 1998...they weren't amazing.

However, I was prepared to look past the graphics, as the game tutorial did have elements that I really enjoyed. For instance, in order to make bread, you had to first get wheat, then make that wheat into flour, then make that flour into bread. It sounds convoluted, but it turns out that this is actually the way bread is made (some steps have obviously been removed as it is, after all, a war game and not a bread-making simulator - it's not called Knights and Morphy Richards for a reason).

Said bread would then feed your army at the local inn, and I was even drawn in by the little sprites actually eating in the inn so you could see them. Not a huge game-breaking step, but a nice little addition that I thought was cool.

Why, then, did this game belong on the list of "Worst Games I Ever Played"? Very simple.

After the tutorial ended, I decided to launch into the game and was presented with a plot the width of an After Eight mint. The long and the short of it was that my village was being attacked, and I would have to go and drive out the invaders. The problem was that the invaders, on their way out, killed all my soldiers and then set up camp just outside of town on a bridge.

Now, this isn't necessarily as big an obstacle as you might think in any other strategy games, as you can generally create more units. In Knights and Merchants, however, you could only create a limited number due to the limited resources you were able to gather. This essentially meant that you sat in a state of absolute stalemate for as long as your patience would take it, for as many times as you were willing to attempt to upset the balance of this otherwise broken game.

In my case, ten minutes each for a total of three times.

As if that wasn't enough, I couldn't even pass the game on to another person via the wonderful site eBay, as the disc wouldn't work with all PCs, and was particularly stubborn with newer machines. As a result, I ended up binning it and hoped that I would never have to tell the tale.

There, happy now?! You made me sad.

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Robot Chicken is back! Season 3 of the toy murderin’, attention‐span shatterin’ TV series comes to DVD today!

No cow is too sacred, no star too celestial to escape the Robot Chicken treatment. Created by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich, Robot Chicken Season 3 delivers 20 fifteen‐minute episodes of fastly‐paced sketches featuring an impressive list of vocal talent from creator Seth Green and an impressive cast of Hollywood names.

In its native USA, Robot Chicken has gone on to become Adult Swim’s highest rated original show, winning an Emmy© for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation in 2006 and 2007. It was recently nominated for two more Emmy© awards for the Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II special.

All of this mayhem started over a love of toys. Having worked throughout the comic book industry, Matthew Senreich rose through the ranks at comic bible Wizard to become editor of their Toy Fare publication. While attending the annual Comic Con in San Diego he ran into actor Seth Green (Rat Race, It) and a friendship blossomed over their mutual love of action figures. An idea was struck to take a knowing swipe at everything from Star Wars to George Bush by animating their beloved toys – every man’s dream right? But where did the obscure title come from? Seth Green explains, “Um, “Robot Chicken” was a dish from the Chinese restaurant where we ordered take‐out.”

Highlights from Robot Chicken Season 3 include Sarah Michelle Geller pedaling a Japanese yeast infection cream; Albert Einstein and his wife have couple’s therapy and Governor Schwarzenegger investigates the illegal immigration issue with Speedy Gonzales and Dora the Explorer.

And then there's Aqua Teen Hunger Force...

In case you don’t know, this is how it goes down. Aqua Teen Hunger Force stars Master Shake, a sadistic, lazy milkshake; Frylock, an erudite, floating packet of fries and Meatwad, a simple‐minded, easily‐lead meatball and their corpulent next door neighbour Carl. They live in New Jersey in a less‐than‐salubrious situation. Seriously, you should see their kitchen. There are plenty of badly thought out attempts to score booze, cash, women, and booze. And cash. Guest characters abound, including Frat Aliens, killer robot scorpions, a clown virus, Ozzy Osbourne’s guitarist, Zack Wylde and, yes, yes y’all, the notorious Mooninites make another appearance. Seriously, it’s great. Tell everyone.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force is written and directed by veteran Adult Swim talents Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro. Voice talent includes Dave & Matt, Dan Snyder, Carey Means and Atlanta‐based rapper Schoolly D, (who wrote and performs the theme song, and also provides occasional links and commentary). And Zack Wylde voices his own character. If you’re into rock music, you might think that’s quite cool.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Volume 3 is out on DVD today!

Thanks to our friends at Revolver Entertainment, we've got two Adult Swim bundles containing posters and a t-shirt to give away! For your chance of winning one, send us an e-mail to adultswimgiveaway@rocketmail.com with your name and postal address before midday on Monday 1st February (UK time). The first two names drawn out of the electronic hat will win a prize bundle!