Flavours of the Months: July/August 2023...

Tomes of Terror, a menagerie of monsters, and some rubber-burning donuts is just some of what's been setting the tone of my July and August 2023...

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Flavours of the Month: October & November 2022...

Flooring it in Mexico, the (sort of) end of an undead era, and the calamitous closure of a horror franchise is just some of what has been setting the tone of my October & November 2022...

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A quality spin-off...

I've been into Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles of late, and while I dropped a dose of "pfft" on it's ass when I first heard news about it, I've actually been pleasantly surprised.

For one thing it completely ignores Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, which was a complete load of gash quite honestly and just smacked of cash-in rather than being of any real purpose. Chronicles on the other hand, despite it's tongue-flappingly-long title, actually explores the universe further. We get to see before and after Judgement Day, we explore the characters from the first two movies further - making good use of that rubbish-bin-toppling, Pepsi-and-Lolly-Pop-chugging intern at Cyberdyne (who is nameless in T2). At least that's who I interpret the character of Andy to be, at least.

We get to catch up with side-characters from the movies, but several years later and see where they are now. Aside from the franchise-fan 'in-jokes' as-it-were (although they're references technically, not jokes at all), it's just a quality show on its own. It can get a bit Dawson's Creek from time-to-time whenever John is turned into too much of a teenager, but this isn't too much of a distraction.

It's taken a while for it to get into full swing and really understand what it is, but Chronicles is firing on all cylinders (well, the odd bit of Terminator one-liner-ing aside). By all means, do something interesting with a property such as Terminator (and now we finally have that), but avoid crap, gurning, mocking cash-ins ... i.e. Terminator 3.

Bring on a second season for sure.

...

Oh and my Xbox360 seems to be working fine. It actually runs quieter than it used to, and the power button feels better to push...if that makes any sense...I've got a small fan on the way to sit behind it, just to keep the temperature more stable back there, which will hopefully stop any silly-buggery-ness. Roll on GTA4 and Alan Wake!

Inspired by fellow blogger Danny (The Underground Slacker), I've finally thought of a name for my console - Mason. For some reason I've been obsessed with this name of late and have used it in 3 of my recent scripts.