The Man with No Time

Last night I took the chance of catching up on another film that I missed first time around at the cinema. The Student Cinema were showing the Lone Ranger, and I thought I’d go along and see whether it was as bad as its box office performance made it out to be. The Lone Ranger stars Armie Hammer as the eponymous hero, and Jonny Depp as his native America sidekick, Tonto. It reputedly had a massive budget from Disney, who were hoping for another Pirates of the Caribbean style success, but made equally large losses internationally. I have to say that I don’t understand why, as it’s a wonderfully entertaining piece of cinema that is simply great fun. I think the logo for the film is quite evocative too. (Credit: collider.com)

It's the TV event of the year! Or something. The Doctors, all twelve of them. That's 50 years of television history right there. (Credit: bbc.co.uk) I like to think that it's no secret that I like Dr Who. My close friends are (hopefully) all aware of this fact, and more to the point tolerant of it. Most of them watch, some of them enjoy it as much as I do, some less, some more. But that's by the by, because I really enjoy the show. Ok, so it might not be particularly highbrow; in fact it's fanciful (often to extremes) frivolous at times, and not particularly complex in terms of characterisation, character development, or storyline a lot of the time. Yes, there are convoluted stories, but that's not the same thing, and once you look beyond the misdirection and explosions, a lot of the modern stories aren't particularly challenging. Yet it has a lasting charm and appeal that belie these traits. The show's changed a lot in its 'modern...

For someone that reads an awful lot of books, and has actually increased the number this year, I've not talked about them very often on this blog. Partly that's because books are, to me, much more of a personal thing than films or television. I find it much easier to recommend those to people, as I find that they tend to appeal to a fairly broad audience. Whereas books, in my opinion, are often much more narrow in their appeal. Don't get me wrong, once I know you're interested in certain types of books I will happily share recommendations with you. But up to that point I try to fairly general in my suggestions. Every now and then though I find a set of books that I think a lot of people will enjoy. I want to talk about one such series today: the PC Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch.

Today I want to talk a little bit about some new musical acts that I've recently found through YouTube. One I've known about for a while, but have sort of rediscovered in the last few weeks, whilst the other two I stumbled across via the magic of the 'associated videos' list that's on the right hand side of every page on YouTube. There are definitely some common aspects to the three groups, but also some big differences. I think all three have really developed their fame through YouTube though; it's great to see that that can actually work (although in at least one case there was another, pretty big factor involved in their success to date).

Yesterday I made another visit to Warwick Student Cinema to see a film that I absolutely had to see on the big screen. When I first heard about this film, the combination of director and subject material made me incredibly excited. Ron Howard, director of films including 'Apollo 13' and 'A Beautiful Mind' (which I think are both brilliant pieces of cinema) was going to be making a film about the rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda, culminating in the dramatic 1976 F1 season.  Sadly, I wasn't able to see Rush at the 'real' cinema; it was released at an inconvenient time, just when I was in full-on finishing the PhD mode. But the Student Cinema came to the rescue once again. One of the character posters. (Credit: digitalspy.co.uk)

It's another Warwick Student Cinema film catch-up review. This time around I'll be taking a look at RED 2. I watched RED on one of the postgraduate film nights that we used to hold in the Astronomy group up in St Andrews. It was surprisingly entertaining, and really rather funny. I wasn't expecting a sequel to be made, but was pleasantly surprised when I saw that there was one. It wasn't top of my list of films to see, so much like After Earth  I didn't make too much of an effort to go to a "proper" cinema to see it, but when it was on at the student cinema I thought 'why not?' What a cast! For this kind of film you wouldn't expect it to work necessarily, but somehow it does. (Credit: joblo.com)

Part three of  my motorcycling season review will cover the top flight category: MotoGP. I've already written brief reviews of the intermediate categories,  Moto2  and  Moto3 , but these are the big bikes. (Credit: motogp.com) I used to enjoy watching MotoGP, but the 125cc category was always my favourite. When I lost interest in motorcycling as a sport for a while it was the top flight that really killed it for me. About mid way through the 2000s it sort of got a bit dull. Rossi was still great, and there was Stoner to challenge him. Then Lorenzo turned up, and between the three of them (plus Dani Pedrosa) the racing was decent every now and then. But on the whole it was turning into Formula 1 a little; the bikes quickly spread out along the track, and actual overtaking was often quite rare. Not to mention the fact that numbers were quickly dropping, with first Kawasaki and then Suzuki leaving the sport. So I stopped watching.

Part two of my motorcycling season review covers the Moto2 category. I've already covered Moto3 , and now it's time for the middle brother. (Credit: motogp.com) Moto2 replaced the 250cc category in 2010, and for the first few years provided the shot in the arm that the middle rung on the ladder desperately needed. The racing was close, unpredictable, and incredibly exciting. But over the last couple of seasons it's dropped off a little as the gap between the different chassis widens. This year was better than last, for a couple of notable reasons.

One of the forms of motorsport that has captured my interest in recent years has been MotoGP, not to mention its two support series Moto2 and Moto3. I used to watch MotoGP years ago, but in the early 2000s I lost interest. The top category became pretty dull, and the lower divisions were hard to find (although the racing in 125cc was epic). But over the last four or five years the BBC have started showing all three classes live, either on TV or on their website, so I've been able to start watching again . The quality of racing has also increased with new riders coming through, and some rules changes that have made a huge difference: the introduction of CRT bikes to MotoGP, and the replacement of 125cc and 250cc by Moto3 and Moto2 respectively. (Credit: motogp.com) This year I've managed to watch most of the races live, and I wanted to get some thoughts down on the page about the three seasons. I'll start with Moto3, and with Moto2 and MotoGP following in short o...

One of the things that I'm really enjoying about being back at Warwick is the student cinema. They have a showing everyday of the week except Wednesday, and two on a Saturday and Sunday. There's a different film every day (usually), and they're very good at getting recent releases and mixing them in with older films. Tickets are £3.50 for staff, which is an absolute bargain, and it's held in the biggest lecture theatre on campus; it's even got a proper cinema sized screen. The only real downside are the seats, which being lecture seats aren't particularly comfortable, particularly for taller individuals like myself! (Seriously, how did I sit through lectures in there?). (Credit: filmsoc.warwick.ac.uk) There were a lot of films this year that I didn't catch at the cinema when they were released. Fortunately the student cinema has come to the rescue! The first of many films that I've managed to catch up on this term was After Earth, the father-...

....or Loki 3 as I've seen some people refer to it, which is somewhat fitting given the popularity of that character and the  resulting screen time that he gets! (Loki 1 being Thor, and Loki 2 being Avengers Assemble of course). So I went to see Thor 2 at the cinema yesterday. The latest step in Marvel's dominion of blockbuster cinema, it continues to advance the Marvel Universe's cinematic storyline in several parallel paths. But is it any good? I thought Thor 1 was one of the surprises of the pre-Avengers phase of the Marvel superhero film craze, so I was interested to see how the second instalment would compare. The poster image for Thor: the Dark World. Oddly similar to the Iron Man 3 poster in many ways. (Credit: hdwallpapers.in)