Flavours of the Month: January 2011...

LOOKS:

Kick Ass (Blu-Ray) - still a great flick. I'd forgotten how thrilling the action set pieces were, too.

Scott Pilgrim VS. The World (Blu-Ray) - three of the four commentaries and another viewing on top, plus all the special features. I must have heard the menu music a hundred times by now.

Inception (Blu-Ray) - Nolan's mind-bender blockbuster is still as spiffing as it was in the cinema, if not more so.

The Expendables (Blu-Ray) - Ultimate Recon Mode is quite impressively done, and one of the best Picture-in-Picture tracks I've seen so far. While I generally prefer Rambo to this, it's still a bloody good time and I look forward to a sequel.

Black Books - years late to the party, but we barged through the rest of the complete box set.

Boardwalk Empire - it took a couple of episodes to get into it, but you find yourself becoming really quite invested in the characters and the complexities of their relationships. Plus the re-creation of the 1920s is superb.

Clarkson: The Italian Job - I think his DVD from 2009 was better, but it was still good for a bit of a Top Gear-like fix. The best sequence was the race at the end.

Lost: Season Three & Four DVD Extra Features - now I just need to get my mits on the last two seasons.

Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide - 3 discs of video nasty goodness, and surprisingly informative. Definitive, most definitely.


SOUNDS:

The Black Angels "Directions To See A Ghost" - I love their first album (Passover), and I've come to really dig this second outing too.

Daft Punk - Tron: Legacy Soundtrack - the flick was the visual and aural treat of 2010, so Daft Punk's superb soundtrack has been in my CD autochanger ever since.

Sex Bob-Omb, Metric "Black Sheep", and Nigel Godrich "Hillcrest Park" - there's been a distinctly Scott Pilgrim flavour to January, so that naturally extended to the aural world too.

Kick Ass OST - not only was it a great action superhero movie, but it had a cool score to boot.

Black Spiders "Just Like A Woman" - as recommended by a fellow fan of Airbourne.

Bo Diddley "Hey, Bo Diddley" - as heard during one of the Mafia 2 cutscenes.


VIBES & FLAVOURS:

Cold - I haven't had one since January 2009, so that was a rubbish few days. I do maintain however that some people who say they have "the flu" actually have a cold, and they're just trying to sound tough. Cold or Flu, they both suck. As if the time of year when you're packing away all the festive decorations wasn't depressing enough, eh?

Script Writing - working on the new version of the short version of zombie mini-epic "The End" (working title), as well as working on an idea to enter for a Public Information Film.

The Big Book of Top Gear 2011 - it's just a bunch of silly old nonsense mostly, but I do love Top Gear.

Cyanide & Happiness Vol. 2: Ice Cream & Sadness - my favourite online webcomic in book form for a second year running.

The Walking Dead Vol. 5: The Best Defense - I continue to make my way through the trade paperbacks for the first time, and while the dialogue is still needlessly filled with unrealistic exposition, the scenarios are intense and gripping. By the end of this volume I was gagging to read the next.

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life (Vol. 1) - the Scott Pilgrim feel to January extended to the first two (of six) volumes of the graphic novels.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (Vol. 2) - it's interesting to see that volumes 1 and 2 basically make up an hour of the movie (which runs for an hour and 50 minutes), but it's also cool to see further exploration of the characters and entire sequences that never made it to the film version (such as Ramona and Knives' library battle).

Call of Duty: Black Ops - the second time around, like with the previous CoD, it's not about the hype and all about playing the game on its own level. It also helps that you know what to do, so you don't have moments where the action gets too confusing, which has been the case with first-runs for the last couple of CoD games.

Mafia 2 - I fancied some 1950s gangster action, so I gave this another spin. It's no GTA IV or Red Dead Redemption (essentially being a linear game in a sandbox world), but I still found myself really enjoying it as the story continues to make you invest in the characters. I even got to nab some more achievements and collectibles I'd missed the first time around.

Jeremy Klaxon - Driving Us Insane (A Parody) - just a bit of fun, and one of those pleasant surprise gifts you get at Christmas.

Flavours of the Month: December 2010...

LOOKS:

Twin Peaks - jumping from The Horror Channel to the lovely 10-disc "Definitive Golden Box Edition" DVD (with a healthy dose of extra features), I finished my first tour through the fascinating and memorable oddball drama that was Twin Peaks. If only there had been a third season, because that cliffhanger just leaves you wanting to know what would have happened next. Additionally I dug into the prequel movie Fire Walk With Me, which I talked about in an earlier post.

The Blue Planet - I got this for my birthday months ago, but I hadn't seen it yet, so I figured it was about time I dug into it. Fascinating stuff, but it was the deep sea episode that was my favourite. It's astonishing what's way down there in the inky darkness of the deep sea, isn't it?

Lost: Season One & Two DVD Extras - the show came to an end earlier this year, so I've gone back to the beginning - well, the extra features anyway.

Italian Horror - it's been a lot of Argento-flavoured movies this month, what with Demons 1 & 2 (which he co-wrote & presented), as well as The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, Deep Red, and The Cat O'Nine Tails.

Avatar (Blu-Ray) - a third viewing of James Cameron's mega budget blockbuster. I still dig it.

The Expendables (Blu-Ray) - a ruddy good flick in its own right, but what impressed me most was the feature length making of documentary "Inferno" featured in the UK 3-disc package, which was just superb.


SOUNDS:

Twin Peaks - Angelo Badalamenti and Julee Cruse have been providing the background to my web surfing this month with their hypnotic sound.

Goblin "Profondo Rosso" and "Tenebrae" - from the Argento films of the same names.

Shutter Island soundtrack ("Symphony No.3 Passacaglia", and "On The Nature of Daylight") - both are equally as haunting from Scorsese's superior genre flick.


VIBES & FLAVOURS:

STALKER: Call of Pripyat - I was months late getting into this, but nevertheless I enjoyed the hell out of it. It took a bit of getting into initially, but once I was in, I was all about exploring every nook and cranny. The first game had the better story and climax, but this third entry in the series was the best all-round package.

Seasonal Snow - in January we got a shedload of snow, and this month, not even a whole year later, we got another big old dose of the white stuff accompanied by sub-zero temperatures all month. It's been as cold as -13c in my neck of the woods during the night, so it's been pretty damn cold out there. However it did mean we had a lovely covering of snow on Christmas Day itself, and I can't remember experiencing that before - so that was quite special indeed.

Call of Duty: Black Ops - one of my Xmas presents for this year; it's not perfect by any means (too many scripted moments where you have no player control, muddled battles that leave you a bit confused, endlessly respawning enemies at certain points, and generally not feeling all that different from previous entries in the franchise) ... but on the plus side I did still rather enjoy it (the plot was more interesting and better structured than that of Modern Warfare 2, which was sadly lacking on that front, being inserted into certain historical moments and alternate historical moments was cool, and some of the levels were really damn cool). Hopefully the next CoD game will shake things up considerably - and provide a longer single player experience - but despite some problems that Black Ops sports, I still quite enjoyed it.

The Big Book of Top Gear 2011 - one of the many books I got for Xmas. I've certainly got plenty to read over the coming weeks and months ... this, plus Scott Pilgrim Vol. 1&2, The Walking Dead Vol. 5, "It's Only A Movie" by Mark Kermode, "Driving Us Insane" by Jeremy Klaxon (a spoof), "The Man In The White Suit" by Ben Collins, "The World According To Clarkson: How Hard Can It Be?" by Jeremy Clarkson, and "Ice Cream & Sadness: Cyanide & Happiness Vol. 2" by the Cyanide & Happiness web comic guys.

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And being that this is New Year's Eve - to one and all, have a groovy night and a spiffing New Year 2011!