Andrew Koenig

As many of you will have heard, after having been missing for 2 week, the body of Andrew Koenig, son of Walter Koenig (Pavel Chekov in Star Trek), was recently found in Stanley Park in Vancouver. Sadly, it appears that he took his own life having been suffering from depression.

When twitter first starting going into overdrive with tweets of his disappearance, the name Andrew Koenig sounded familiar, so I did a bit of googling, and realised where I’d first heard it. Sandy Collora‘s brilliant 2003 fan film ‘Batman: Dead End‘, where Andrew put in a superb performance as Joker. As much as i loved Ledger and Nicholson’s versions of Joker in the movie versions, Andrew’s portrayal in Dead End is, by far, the truest to the actual comic books.

Batman: Dead End was made for $30,000, and shot in 4 days on 35mm as a director’s demonstration reel for Collora. He followed it up in 2004 with ‘World’s Finest‘, using most of the same cast and crew.

Batman: Dead End pre-dates Nolan’s ‘Batman Begins’ by 2 years, and at the time, the last thing we’d seen of Batman on screen was Clooney and O’Donnell haming it up in ‘Batman & Robin’. Collora was the first person to give us a gimse of the tone the movie franchise should have been taking.

Click the clip below to see Batman: Dead End in full.

World Premiere of Alice in Wonderland

Last night Geektown reporter Sam dug out her glad rags and headed to Leicester Square to attend Sky 3D/Sky Movies HD and Walt Disney’s Royal Premiere of Tim Burton’s newest fantastical creation, Alice in Wonderland.

World Premiere of Alice in Wonderland

Walking the green carpet with the stars of the film surrounded by giant topiary animals and screaming fans with bunny ears and painted faces definitely set the scene for the weird and wonderful world ahead. Of course, being England, umbrellas were an essential part of the outfit, but despite the foul weather, the glamorous cast made huge efforts to meet and greet fans, Johnny Depp in particular spending almost an hour standing in the rain signing autographs. He is lovely isn’t he (I was slightly concerned we’d just get 100s of photos of Johnny Depp back from Sam, but she managed to restrain herself – Dave ).

Once inside and away from the glitz and soggy paparazzi, the audience watched Alex Zane interview the cast from the warmth of their seats before viewing a short documentary on the work of The Prince’s Foundation for Children & The Arts. Attended by Prince Charles and The Duchess of Cornwall, the event was in aid of the charity with two thirds of proceedings being donated. The Royal Party, arriving last, were welcomed by important film bods and chatted to Tim Burton and the cast before being presented gifts by Burton and Boham-Carter’s children. They entered the cinema to the sound of trumpets and God Save the Queen before Tim Burton himself introduced the film and its key cast members on stage. Finally, buzzing the with excitement, we donned our 3D specs and the film began…

Review of Alice in Wonderland

Of course, being Burton, you can not expect a straight retelling of the original Lewis Carroll story. In fact, it is more of a sequel seeing Alice, now 19, return to Wonderland with only a faint recollection of her previous adventures down the rabbit hole.

Alice Kingsley (Mia Wasikowska) escapes an unwanted marriage proposal by following a strange white rabbit and is once more plunged into a fantastically eccentric world of spectacular creatures. Growing up believing that her dreams of blue caterpillars and vanishing cats were just that, she does not remember anything she learnt on her last visit, leading the inhabitants of Underland, as it is correctly called, to excuse her of being the wrong Alice. She is quickly reunited with old friends like Dormouse and Tweedledum and Tweedledee and starts a journey that she is told will lead her to slaying the Jabberwock dragon, the only thing that stops The White Queen (Anne Hathaway) reclaiming her crown and ending the terrible reign of her sister, The Queen of Hearts.

Australian Wasikowska is brilliantly cast as the curious and dreamy Alice, she is more demure and less spoilt than the Alice we knew before. Burton’s favorites Depp and Bonham-Carter, prove why they are so with fantastic performances as the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts. The screeching demands of the over sized royal head are reminiscent of Blackadder’s Queenie and are just as amusing whilst Depp brings new depths of emotion to his character, highlighted by his mood reflective, colour changing clothes. You will hear plenty of familiar voices throughout the film, Timothy Spall, Paul Whitehouse, Alan Rickman, Stephen Fry and Christopher Lee, all chosen to perfection. Burton, admittedly a big Eastenders fan, shows his love of British TV by casting Barbara Windsor as the feisty Dormouse and Matt Lucas as the Tweedle twins, I mean… was that part made for him or what?!

The film does not make too much of its 3D element but it is definitely the right kind of genre for it. As you move through Burton’s imaginings of Wonderland you feel yourself taken in by the characters and scenery as Alice does. That coupled with a Danny Elfman soundtrack makes Alice in Wonderland a sensory delight that is definitely worth a trip to the cinema. It was everything we’ve come to expect from a Tim Burton film. Original, enchanting and captivating.

8/10

Photos from the World Premiere of Alice in Wonderland

Solomon Kane

Happy Monday to you all, and we’re kicking off the week with yet another competition! This time, we have 3 copies of the official Solomon Kane novelisation to give away.

Synopsis

Solomon Kane is a sixteenth century adventurer and mercenary; but when Kane meets the Devil’s Reaper, he postpones his fate by renouncing violence and takes up life as a Puritan. But his vow is soon tested by the forces of evil, and Kane once again straps on his weapons to embark on an epic journey of redemption.  Written by master horror and fantasy author Ramsey Campbell, this official novelisation gives readers the full story of the film and more, with extra scenes not featured on screen.

Two Ways To Enter

Via Twitter:

Just retweet the following:

Competition is now closed.

In the UK? Want to win a Solomon Kane Novel? Just follow @geektown and RT this tweet! Details at http://bit.ly/aOddcw

Via this site:

Answer the question:

Who created the character of Solomon Kane?

Competition is now closed. The answer was Robert E. Howard, who also created Conan the Barbarian (otherwise know as the Governor of California).

Enter via both, and double your chances!

The competition closes on 27th Feb 2010 and is open to UK residents aged 18 or over. There will be 3 winners picked from twitter and website entries. By entering this competition, you are agreeing to the rules of this competition. Full rules can be read here.

Review: Star Trek Online (PC)

As I mentioned in the Star Trek Online History post, i’ve been playing around in Star Trek Online since Closed Beta. I wanted to point out, this is very much a review of the live game experience. You may see a number of reviews out there that are based on the reviewers beta experiences, but that’s extremely unfair on the work Cryptic put into STO before launch. The difference between the live game and the awful ‘car crash’ of a beta test in terms of stability and playability are light years apart… Not that there aren’t still issues…

U.S.S. Geektown

These are the voyages of the Starship, Geektown…

At least they would be if you could log into the server…We’re a few weeks past live release and as far as I can work out, Cryptic seem to running STO on some old networked Spectrum ZX81s powered by hamsters in running wheels. I’m sure they’ll upgrade them soon… maybe get in some Commodore 64s powered by badgers on treadmills. However, this minor annoyance (which is slowly turning into mild irritation after the 3rd server crash today), does give me a break from playing to write this review.

Character Creation

You can pick to play as a Tactical (damage/tank), Engineer (support/survivability), or Science (healing/support) Officer. You’re limited to Federation (Fed) until level 6, where you unlock the Klingon Empire, in a similar way to how Lord of the Ring Online runs it’s ‘Monster Play’. Like ‘Monster Play’, the Klingon side is very much a PvP focused, cut down version of the main game. Choices for Fed races include Human (obviously), Andorian, Bajoran, Betazoid, Bolian, Saurian, Trill, Vulcan, and ‘Alien’. The character customisation is tempered depending on your race, however if you do want to go nuts, you can always pick the alien option, which basically unlocks all the sliders and lets you create your own wacky species. Your race determines your basic look and some of your starting abilities. Betazoids for example are empathic (reducing threat generation), where as Bajorans are creative (increasing skills with ‘kits’ – items that give you extra abilities). You then can pick your costume, which come in a variety of Starfleety type options.

Boldly Going…

Star Trek Online

Being a traditionalist, I picked a human tactical officer as my first character. After a intro voiced by Leonard Nimoy, I pop up in the mess hall on the U.S.S. GeekTown (a Miranda Class Light Cruiser) with red alerts blaring all around. It seems the Borg are trying to assimilate a nearby ship, so I’m instructed to beam over to their medical bay to see if I can give some help to the emergency medical hologram (who sounds suspiciously like Syler from Heroes…) Once a few crewmen are patched up, I’m sent to engineering to blow some Borg out of an airlock, and then fight my way to a transporter, where I get to pick a my first bridge crew.

Bridge Crew serve 2 main purposes. Firstly, they man stations on your ship. As you up level up and get bigger and better ships, you gain more crew, and more advanced station configurations. For example, the Enterprise like Cruiser Class has 2 engineering stations, 1 science, and 1 tactical, where as the Defiant style Escort class has 2 tactical, 1 science and 1 engineering station. Each bridge crew member has their own set of space skills, such as my new vulcan science officer, has a tachyon beam skill that lowers the shields on an enemy ship.

Your Bridge Crew’s second purpose is to serve as party members for the ground missions when your not grouped with friends - side note: when you are grouped with friends, it means the Captains from each ship all form the away team… which I’m sure must breach some Starfleet rule on officer safety… – Again each crew member has a variety of skills, such as the science officer’s medical tricorder, or the engineers turrets and mines.

Space… The Final Frontier…

Beautiful spacescapes

Moving on a bit through the starter mission, I find myself battling a Borg Cube. Thankfully, I’m not on my own. This fight takes the form of a fleet mission, where as you enter the zone, your automatically grouped with other players to take on larger objectives (if you’ve familiar with Champions Online or Warhammer, you’ll be aware of this form of open mission).

I’ve see a number of reviews where people describe STO space combat as fairly slow, but it’s really more depends on the class of ship. Cryptic do need to try and keep the ‘Trekness’ in the game, and to see the Enterprise suddenly pull a ‘handbrake turn’, spin 180, and launch a barrage of cannon fire straight at a Klingon really wouldn’t seem very ‘Trek’. However, if you do want  more maneuverability, once you reach level 11 you can choose to take an Escort class ship (e.g. DS9′s Defiant), which gives you a much nimbler ride, with a whole array of forward facing turrets, but does sacrifice survivability.

Overall I find the space combat mechanics good fun, even if the missions themselves can be rather repetitive – Go here, kill 5 Klingon ships… then kill 5 more Klingon ships… then 5 more etc… There are some variations, but that usually just involves flying to something and hitting the ‘F’ key to scan/repair/interact with it in some way.

Ahead, Warp Factor 5

Warp travel interface

Travelling through space is a different matter. One of the most disappointing things for me was mechanism to warp from planetary system to planetary system. Whilst inside a system, you get to see your ship in these stunningly beautiful spacescapes, scattered with asteroids, nebulas and planets. However, during warp travel, your ship model is thrown onto stylised tactical map interface, which totally pulls you out of any immersion. What would have been great during the warp travel would have been the ability to wander around my ship, or some interaction on the bridge (you can visit your bridge in STO, but it’s basically an instanced room, so you can’t travel in warp and be on the bridge at the same time). The system map interface just instantly made the STO universe seem small and ‘game like’, rather than the vast openness of space it really should be.

Ground Combat

Ground Combat

I beam down to a planet, my newly acquired science officer with me for backup, to show some Borg the business end of a phaser rifle. I have an issue with the ground combat in STO as I’ve had with other Cryptic’s games. I’m sure Cryptic’s proprietary MMO engine makes it easier and quicker for them to develop, but it has this horrible ‘elasticy’ feel to it. Their always seems to be a delay between action and consequence. Throw a grenade, it lands and explodes. Count 1… 2… 3… and then people fall down from the blast. I’m positive it’s not a lag issue, as there was a similar issue with Champions Online, and even City of Heroes. The engine just has this ‘floaty’ feel to it which makes the ground combat feel less solid than most of its counterpart MMOs.

Another issue is the away team AI, which seems to stands for Artificial Idiocy. It is vastly improved from beta, but you do still find yourself occasionally tracking back across a map because you’ve just noticed your tactical officer is stuck trying to walk through a wall somewhere. They also have a tendency to think running through the fire created by the plasma grenade they’ve just thrown is a genius idea. All in all, not Starfleet’s best and brightest.

The Interface

Whilst STOs main player interface is perfectly adequate overall, there are a few basic things that really bug me. Why is it Cryptic still can’t make an auction interface that actually has a decent number of search filters on it? Same goes for any of their NPC shopping interfaces. I can only imagine the conversation went something like “Shall we put some filters on this?”… “Nah, just whack everything into one MASSIVE list, and jumble it all together so it takes them forever to find anything, it’ll be fine!”

Also, given your dealing with Star Trek, surely the obvious thing to do would would be to base it round a LCARS interface? Michael Okuda went to a massive amount of trouble designing LCARS for the Trek universe, and it’s just disappointing there isn’t even a vague nod to it in STO, rather than some generic MMO graphics.

Boldly Going...

But is it Star Trek?

The ship designs and uniforms are very Trek. The history/lore of the universe is tied in nicely to the Trek timeline. They even have Nimoy (and Quinto) doing voice work. But I can’t help thinking, what would Gene Roddenberry say if he saw it? I rather suspect he’d be extremely disappointed in the over reliance on space battles to entertain, rather than exploring and plot. Star Trek was never about combat. It was about exploring new world. Boldly going where no one had gone before. If any game needed an EVE-like vast openness of space, it was Star Trek Online. Instead you get a bunch of instances held together by a map.

Conclusion

Although there are a number of negatives in this review, I am enjoying my time in Star Trek Online. I’ve made lieutenant commander, and am heading toward my next level of ship. It’s just overall, i see it as a missed opportunity to do something great with such a rich and textured license. I would have loved STO to have been more of a Star Trek universe, rather than just a Cyptic game with a Star Trek license slapped over the top. It’s more an MMOG than MMORPG. The role playing bit has got lost somewhere along the way. As someone mentioned in ‘system chat’ last week – “We all know we’re just treading water till Star Wars: The Old Republic comes out”… And unfortunately for Cryptic, i think that’s probably true.

7/10 – Fun in places but a missed opportunity.

Tired of all the Vulcans and outer space? Get back down to earth at moonbingo!

Not sure which Ad agency is responsible for this quality viral for Supernatural on Living TV, but it is genius!

It was recently confirmed that The CW have renewed Supernatural for a 6th Season.

Currently working my way through season 3 on DVD, seeing as Living (for some bizarre reason) stopped their reruns after season 2 to air Season 5… Much as I’m happy they’re finally airing Season 5 for fans, it would be nice if they’d kept the up the nightly reruns too, so us people that came to Supernatural late can catch up!..

New movie The Crazies have produced a great little app on their site at www.makeyourfriendscrazy.co.uk which let you upload pics of yourself, friends, work colleagues etc… and embed them into the actual movie trailer!

‘The Crazies’ stars Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood, Hitman) and is a remake of the 1973 movie about a town whose water supply has been poisoned by an unknown toxin that starts to turn people insane…

Click here to make your friends crazy!