War Machine

 

Probably a bit late, but we watched this, and it had an alien mech chewing up a bunch of Ranger candidates on their last training day.

It has been around a while, but caveat, I'm mad about mecha, and there are not enough films with mecha, so I'm biased. 

Total gonzo fun. Hope there's a sequel showing the bigger picture of the invasion.

Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance

Finished watching Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance on Netflix last night. We enjoyed it.

The whole white demon is going to kill us all vibe is excellent. 

Others disagree, for reasons that I get about it not doing as well as it could've, but I don't care enough to allow them to get in the way of watching giant mecha action.

In other news, I took my truck down to Lasham to have it serviced and renew the MoT for another year. It was a day to remember, but not in a good way. The phone app said an hour twenty minutes trip, which was the first underestimation of the day, as I reckon it took way longer that that to than that to get to the M25 ( I wasn't paying attention to the time as traffic was nose-to-tail bumper car goodness).

Usually getting to the M25 takes about 45 minutes, so you can see where this is going.

After coming off at junction 5 on the M3 things went really Pete Tong. Lost the internet connection, and ended up in the middle of nowhere when I realized I was no longer being nagged to take a turning. That will learn me to pay attention.

Anyway, after circling around endless country lanes that all looked alike, I get the GPS back and proceed again to my destination, and then the phone battery died on me, despite having a full charge when I set off.

After a major panic, I managed to park up outside Alton, and find someone to help me out. Drew a map on the back of the old Mot certificate, and finally got to Lasham. Total trip time 4 hours.

And the icing on the cake, got a lift to Alton station to catch the 15.4, but didn't get home until 19.30; a normal journey back to Clapham Junction turned the trip into a nightmare, due to the West London route closing at short notice for maintenance with a bus replacement service.

All good, right?

After waiting half an hour for the bus, it's late Friday afternoon and traffic is solid, I was informed by another bus replacement service driver that the one I'd been waiting for wasn't coming. Ever. So, I was guided to another regular bus stop, and the handy-dandy clock said it would arrive in 20 minutes.

It did not arrive. Cancelled on route for reasons unknown.

So, back to Clapham Junction station to ask, given the state of everything, whether or not I could use my ticket, only valid for travel on the West London line to go into Waterloo and use the underground? I could, and so had to wait for the next inbound train, and then negotiate the commuters and travel on the tube to get home.

Arriving at Hammersmith, the connecting train to my stop departed with the next reported as not departing for 20 minutes. I walked from Hammersmith to Shepherds Bush at a rate of knots that left me frazzled.

I have spent today chilling.

Girls und Panzer

We've seen some of these Girls und Panzer episodes and they're all a hoot to watch.

For those who like to play wargames then TooFatLardies What a Tanker would be perfect for recreating a Girls und Panzer campaign.

KINO NO ANIME: Memories of Britain's Anime Boom | Documentary

It has been a honour to share a love of anime and mecha with Carlo.

Sharpe Watching

 

Still not been doing a lot of model making, because it makes my hands play up after a session, and I need to be able to write, which is not helped when I'm in pain.

However, I have done a little. In this case, modifying the barrel of the over-the-shoulder mount for one of my combat armour suits. I just need to do some painting to get it presentable.

So you can see we've rewatched the Sharpe TV series. The stories rollick along, and are good inspiration for ideas for my writing. Besides, Sean Bean is easy on the eye.

Napoleonics is so not my period. But, I will readily admit to really enjoying playing the game of Sharpe Practice from Too Fat Lardies.
   

The Battle of Tomorrow AKA Warriors of Future

    

Caught the YouTube trailer, unfortunately since removed. The Chinese look to be doing their version of All You Need is Kill aka Edge of Tomorrow or Live. Die. Repeat. It may well be derivative, but it still looks awesome.

Over here you can read what I said about the Tom Cruise film,  the book it was based on, and read the review of the film here.

The title according to Google translate is The Battle of Tomorrow, the clip says Warriors of Future. Who knows if it will come out, let alone what it will be called if it does.

Hercules

I haven't done a film or TV review for a while, though the real reason for this post today is because I'm a bit under the weather and this is a nice distraction.

I bought the 2014 version of Hercules staring Dwayne Johnson from Amazon after seeing a review of the WSS Ancient Warfare blog.  The direct link is here.  From reading the review one might think why bother?  However, I quite like Dwayne Johnson, so I took a chance and bought the Blu-ray.

What to say?  Yes the Ancient Warfare blog author is right at every point, but Hollywood films are not documentaries, and getting tied up in knots over egregious historical inaccuracies is pointless.  What one does get is a fun film with a great cast: John Hurt, Rufus Sewell and Ian McShane for a start, and we both really enjoyed it.
   

Dr. Who Fest

 

This weekend was of course the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Who, with The Day of the Doctor being seen in something like 94 countries and umpty-ump number of cinemas around the globe.  I wrote about what I thought of the episode here.  This is me now writing about the experience of watching Dr. Who for the rest of the weekend.

We were sucked into watching the after show party that interviewed the actors and had loads of the old companions in attendance.  It was mindless fun.  A mere bagatelle of fluffy cotton candy, but we were in the mood for it.  Following that we watched an introduction to the monsters, Doctors and their companions, which was also light and fluff, but triggered waves of nostalgia.  So that was Saturday night gone.

Sunday we tracked down the documentary on iPlayer, of An Adventure in Space and Time having missed the Thursday night transmission.  It was wonderful and the ending was an emotional kick that made me cry.  I can't recommend this too highly, well worth watching.  After that we watched The Five (ish) Doctors, which was a wonderful spoof documentary about the previous actors who have played the Doctor wanting to be in the fiftieth anniversary show.  Very tongue in cheek and funny.  Then we rewatched The Day of the Doctor and both agreed it stood up to being watched a second time.

I'm not a fanatic of Dr. Who, for definitions of fanatic that mean I probably look like one to most non SF fans, in that I talk like one, can be a bit obsessive about the Daleks, and I have a deep fondness for the show, with many happy memories of watching it on TV.  So my favourite Doctor is usually the current one until I get fed up with them, but there are several I never became fed up watching.  William Hartnell, Patrick Toughton, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Chistopher Eccleston and John Hurt.  My favourite companions start with Jo Grant, Sarah Jane, Leela and Ace, Rose, Donna and Amy.  These are my favourites for the things they brought to the screen that I admired.  Monsters, well the Daleks, Cybermen, Ice Warriors and the Silurians.

Favourite episode, far too many to mention, but pretty much multiple stories from every incarnation of the Doctor.  So I say I'm not a fanatic, but as I said that very much depends on one's definition.
  

Giant Robo Danger Close

I went with my partner to see Pacific Rim this week on our usual Orange Wednesday 241 deal, which makes the whole cost of going out to see a movie far more palatable.  Went to a 2D showing, because I'm not all that impressed with most 3D, Avatar excepted, and the show timing was better for us.

This is not going to be a review as such.  I thought Pacific Rim was the best B movie I have seen this year.  I was rooting for the heroes, cheering them on and loved every minute of it.  However, this paean to the Japanese giant robo monster genre by Guillermo del Toro while visually stunning and hitting all the right notes and tropes left me feeling a bit hollow.

This is mostly down to the fact that my first love is real robo shows like Gundam Universal Century, Fang of the Sun Dougram and VOTOMS, where this is more emphasis on the pilots.  Even so Pacific Rim rocked my boat and like most anime fans I had fun spotting the shout outs.

As for playing games I might look at the HeroClix models that have just been released, but of course one could always adapt Monsterpocalypse CMG, or The Creature That Ate Sheboygan for playing games monster munching robo mayhem.
  

About TIme

Super Dimensional Fortress Macross has moved one step closer to becoming a live-action movie.  I want to thank Robotech Battles blog for the heads up.  I've also added your blog to my front page blog list as a result.  Should have done that a while ago if truth be told, but them's just the way things happen at times.

Seeing Robotech for the first time was one of those big sense of wonder moments when I was over whelmed by the concepts of giant aliens from space having their asses handed to them by people flying transformable robots.  I guess you had to be there to appreciate what a big thing this was at the time?

I remember Helen McCarthy, who writes about Japanese culture and anime on her blog A Face Made for Radio running an anime fan run video stream at the 1987 Eastercon, where she pretty much kicked Japanese animation into the forefront of UK SF fandom scene by showing Urotsukidoji, otherwise known as The Legend of the Overfiend to an unsuspecting audience, which pretty much made everyone role for sanity loss.

So with Palladium moving towards a Robotech wargame and the now this movie, I see much happy giant stompy robot wargame goodness in the future.  It's heartening for an old time fan like me to see a new generation being exposed to something I love.
  

VOTOMS in 6mm

I've been re-watching all my VOTOMS anime over the last week or so, and above is the opening scene from the Pailsen FIles, and what can I say? What's not to like? Tell me you weren't humming along by the end of this? Even if you are not a fan of giant robots, surely the scene of hundreds of them marching was impressive?

I'm afraid this lead to one of those bright and shiny distracting moments that happen to us all. One minute working on painting miniatures for OGRE/GEV, then the next minute I'm browsing the internet for VOTOMS and ordering some Hound Dogs miniatures (loosely inspired by Scope Dogs from VOTOMS) from GZG.

Aren't they cute? More VOTOMs stuff to come later.

Oh just in case you want to listen to the full version of the opening song from VOTOMS The Pailsen FIles, here it is:

Needless to say really, but I'll say it anyway, I've now find myself inexorably drawn towards another giant stompy robot game, Dream Pod 9s Heavy Gear. Oh boy.
  

Doctor Who?

  
Dr. Who season seven Asylum of the Daleks aired last night, and what a great episode it was. It made the Daleks scary again for those who had become blasé to the real fear that the Daleks inspire, because they forget that Daleks cannot be argued with. Things that can't be argued with are frightening, especially when they believe that they are right and everyone else is wrong. For the Daleks  that means that anyone who is not a Dalek is wrong, and wrong things have to be exterminated.

If you are lucky.

If you are not lucky then the Daleks will subjugate and enslave you, and worse of all make you one of them. Dehumanise you, remove the things that make you human, like love, compassion, empathy, and turn you into a hate filled monster that will obey the will of the Daleks.

The will of the Daleks? They have hive like mind, the chorus of hate that binds all Daleks together. A bit like living in a world where we are all connected by the internet, and can spout off about anything we believe in without consequence, upsetting others with the righteousness of our convictions.

The Daleks are the worst in us, and that is what makes the frightening, we could become like them. Forget the eye stalks, plungers and death-ray. It's the fact that ultimately their conviction in believing that they are the ultimate life-form, and that all others are inferior beings that must be exterminated is what makes them frightening.

And that is why the Daleks are really, really scary.

Companions...

The Doctor has had a few. We all want to be a companion for the Doctor, except that the writers of the new series of Dr. Who have pretty much made it clear that the consequences of becoming a companion are quite high. You are not guaranteed a happy life. This brings me to another musing...

Oswind is played by the actress who will become this Doctor's new companion. If I were writing this I would be setting us all up for a good kick in the teeth by revealing that Oswind is the new companion and look at her fate; she gets to become a Dalek so as to save the Doctor's life. It sucks to be a companion of the Doctor.

Enough of that...

How about the fact that the new series has answered the question does the Doctor have a wife? Yes, at least two; River and the TARDIS. Does he have children? At least one; see the Doctors Daughter. And furthermore we know he has a grandchild; from the original Hartnell series.

So who is the Doctor?

The doctor is the healer of time and space, and will probably not be called Fred. The current writers can call upon the old series for inspiration à la Romana's full name; Romanadvoratrelundar from the House of Heartshaven, or not as the fancy takes them.

However, again if I were a writer on the series with the 50th anniversary coming up, I would be tempted to reveal the name of the doctor. I suspect that the writers will have a name, but it may not be what you think it is.

There again one can argue that the whole Time War between Gallifrey and Skaro is really not about who ultimately become the Lords of Time, but whether or not we become Time Lords or Daleks.
 

Aliens: A Lesson in Futility

Everybody, I know, loves the film Aliens, if they don't then they are either not Geeks, and pretty much don't count, or they are nerding out on some gonk thing that upsets them in the movie. However, everybody who loves the film can also sit down and point out the obvious problems ranging from a lack  of genre savvy characters, idiot balls in both the overall plot and character actions.

The first one that springs to mind as a wargamer is why oh why do you only send a section of troops to a planet when clearly the ship will carry a platoon or more? Some would argue that it is best explained by those ordering the mission wanting it to fail; in particular Weyland-Yutani.

Well yes maybe, but I'm not a great subscriber of conspiracy theories in general. Yes, I find them amusing, but real life plots are usually much more explainable through stupidity from a  lack of foresight, or planning.

Here is how I see the whole section deployed to accompany Burke & Ripley to LV-426.

Burke: sells a line to the company that their could be the chance to recover an alien that might be hostile and therefore useful to the bio-weapons division.

Weyland-Yutani board think this is a waste of time as all previous aliens have turned out to be mindless animals, but the records say their are aliens out there with technology, but we haven't found them yet. So they have a punt on Burke.

The United States Colonial Marines is undergoing a periodical review of its budget. Yes they have a ship, yes grabbing an alien would be good, but yadda-yadda it will just be another bug hunt. Command pushes an order down the chain of command.

Captain whoever has a new Lieutenant he needs to break in to replace the one lost on the last mission when he fell down a hole and got eaten by some indigenous lifeforms. A platoon is available, except that one third are out on R&R, training etc, and the other third exist only on paper. No problem, it's only a bug hunt, and by good fortune the two heavy weapons team gunners are available, and they have a pretty good senior Sargent to nurse the green Lieutenant.

Okay deploy one third of the platoon with heavy weapons to make up the weight of firepower and we are good to go. What could possibly go wrong?

And that is how I think the Sulacco ends up in orbit around LV-426 with the people it did.

PS: I would love to have this kit, but not at the price I saw it on eBay.
   

Citizenship Brings Service

Heinlein's Starship Troopers has the line that "service brings citizenship". Having just completed two weeks jury service for the Crown Court, I suggest to my learned readership that citizenship requires service. What was interesting to me about the whole experience was the emphasis that the defendant was innocent until proven guilty by the prosecution, but the important part of the process was deciding beyond reasonable doubt that you were sure, based upon your experience and interpretation of the evidence; not the prosecutors, or defense advocates, but your judgement as a juror.

Needless to say that the retiring debates were interesting, and reminded me of the times I've been witness to debates about game rules when something one player does appears to contradict the rules, or interprets the rules in a way that the other player of the game disagrees with.

Observing the advocates presenting their respective cases I noticed the similarity of approach, the pedantic observation of detail, and way of questioning that suggested that the witness had remembered events wrongly. The judge was interesting because his role was made very clear to us by both sides; he was the law (images of Judge Dredd now racing through everyone of a certain age I guess?).

It strikes me that having an umpire in any game is a bit like having a judge, with the players as advocates, and the game being the process of advancing to one's objectives by following the rules of "law" aka the rules of the game. No wonder players get so het-up about rule perceived rule infractions, it is about the playing a game within the "law" of the game, because generally people want to not break the law/rules, unless they think they can get away with it of course.

And there is the rub of it.

People in general will behave in a lawful fashion until either they become over aroused and angry, or see a chance to gain advantage with no cost to themselves. I think it is a measure of civilisation that people can sit down and largely play games by following the rules. With the caveat that I mentioned.

PS: Totally stoked about the new Starship Troopers animated film that is set for release this August.
   

Busy Doing Nothing, Totally Spaced

Working the whole day long, as the song goes, but in my case not so much finding lots of things not to do,  as not being able to finish projects and photograph them.  As Trebian notes blogs are about what you haven't been doing.

I have been away too. Last weekend off to sunny Devon to see my Father-in-Law, family issues to discuss, but we did manage to go out for a meal with Maria and Cary (boyfriend) of Buffers for a slap up meal at the West Bay Hotel in Bridport.  Buffers is a great shop for all your terrain needs, and I bought some more Woodland Scenics Realistic Water, which I'm using for my Vietnam river project.

So not a lot of painting done last weekend, and this weekend it is SELWG, so Sunday I will be out with Trevor and Oliver lowering property values and generally causing mischief while having fun there.

In the meantime I've been watching Spaced, a geek sitcom starring Simon Pegg, Jessica Stevenson and Nick Frost, all of whom are recognisable for their roles in various things like Dr Who, Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead.  I can't recommend this TV series highly enough.

It is a sitcom that speak to my inner geek. So much of the humour just really resonates with me.  Writers block, imagining film scenes and quoting dialogue are part and parcel of what I think makes life fun.  So if you have any interest if SF films, comics and geek culture you should check it out.

BTW: Spaced is being repeated on TV, but the DVDs are dirt cheap, so go on treat yourselves.
   

Being Human

 
Last night I was watching the series Being Human, the story of a vampire, werewolf and ghost sharing a house in Bristol. It is a charming and often hard hitting metaphor for life and the choices one makes when growing up. As often the case when such topics are written quotes from the Bible spring forth to hit the point home. In this case this one:

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." (1st Corinthians verse 12).

I mention it because to some extent one can consider hobbies like wargaming to be the anti-thesis of Corinthians. I rather like that it is.

I can't remember if I've ever discussed why this blog is called "Paint-it-Pink". No doubt if this were a graphic novel it would have been part of my origin issue, or in a more Po-Mo presentation an inserted back story to illuminate something like the Corinthians passage above. Me being me, I will use the telling to illuminate my thought processes around gaming, and in particular running campaigns; whether that is a traditional RPG, or more tabletop figure game.

I like to make my campaigns like onions. So that cutting them open provokes a strong reaction and reveals that there are many layers to the story. Once cooked onions become sweat and delicious, and my intent to always run games that delight the the desire to play games in much the same way as a good meal not only assuages one's hunger, but satisfies one's taste buds.

So why Paint-it-Pink? Why not. Pink is a girly colour. A Pink team is description of a Red and White scout and hog team in Vietnam. I could go on. What I will say is that the periods of conflict that interest me largely feeds into the games that I play, of which BattleTech remains a favourite, despite of, or because of its ludicrous elements.

So do I take elements of World War One and use them for games of BattleTech. Yes I do. Also I take elements from the Inter-War period, for example the Russian Civil War, Spanish Civil War, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and of course World War Two. Though in the latter case, even though I play a large number of games over the years, it no longer holds me in its thrall, especially late war actions. This is odd, because to some extent BattleTech could be seen to be a paragon for disguising WWII scenarios, which is what appeals to me so much about the BattleTech rule setting.

However, Vietnam, remember John Wayne in Green Beret, is still the war of my childhood. Hence Paint-it-Pink, and funnily enough BattleTech and Vietnam play together well. Units that have an overwhelming advantage, US armed forces, choppers etc. versus battlemechs that stomp around owning the battlefield, but just like Vietnam no guarantee of a meaningful victory.

OTOH I still like to dabble in those areas that I steal from wholesale, because at the end of the day it is always good to go back to the source material that inspires one. As I said the very anti-thesis of growing up and giving up childish things, rather the acceptance of one's inner child and the value from having an open mind that is still able to learn new things.

   

A Sort of Extended me too Blog

 

Over on the BBC website is a clip of Fede Alvarez's short film "Ataque de Panico" (Panic Attack), also on Vultures Blog in my side-bar list. I just felt I had to write something about this on my Blog too.

Apart from the Transformer movies that have come out, which feature giant sentient mecha, there's not much out featuring giant piloted battlemechs. We have been poorly served of films about my favourite gaming background. Now obviously Avatar is out, but the focus there is not really on the mecha as such either, though I'm sure it will be fun to watch. 

However, for years the BattleTech community has wanted a movie that did the background justice, and this may just be the movie, but I'm not holding my breath on this one you understand.

   

Two Films on a Theme

At the moment I'm really into my terrain building, but this week I thought I would do something different, and I don't mean more number crunching. I've been to see a couple of SF movies recently, and as both have been interesting to me as a gamer I'm going to review them en passant.

The first film was District 9, which quite frankly was the best SF film I've seen so far this year. Not that I haven't enjoyed the Watchmen, Wolverine was far better than I expected, the revamped Star Trek fun, and Transformers 2 action packed candy-floss.

However, District 9 made me care about what was happening to the people on screen.

The use of the SF trope of aliens landing on Earth as a way to discuss Apartheid in South Africa, can be seen a weary over-worn conceit. District 9s strength was that the story concentrated on the characters, and we see the characters grow and change from what has happened to them. Something that is rarely addressed in the usual Hollywood fare.

For me it didn't hurt to have a bit of mech action at the end either. Though I'm not sure in BattleTech terms whether the mecha was power armour, battle armour, a proto-mech, or even a very light battlemech? My gut feeling it was equivalent to a proto-mech.

I must admit I have an aversion to BattleTech proto-mechs, because of the animal forms the artwork uses to represent them. I think the mecha in District 9 looked like a mechanical version of the alien Prawns, but done in such a way that it still looked like a machine, and not some transformer beast wars cartoon.

The second film I've seen recently was Surrogates.

A Hollywood blockbuster with Bruce Willis, where the main character might as well have been called Bruce Willis. Surrogates is pretty much the usual fare of Bruce doing his whole Die Hard thing. Not that I mind Bruce being Bruce, as I quite enjoy watching him go through the motions.

However, Surrogates presents a future where everybody is living in a virtual world through the use of physical representations of themselves. Not robots, but waldoes. I understand the film is based on a comic/graphic novel, but so far I've not found a copy to look at, so I can't comment on how faithful the film is to the source material. I imagine it is not that close.

Anyway, Surrogates is not a bad film, I quite enjoyed it, but again it was not a great movie, and in some ways this is really sad, because it so could have been great.

Surrogates is like District 9, in that it is talking about how society is dealing with common fears around change brought about by outside factors. In the case of Surrogates it is the fear of death that is making Western societies risk aversive. However, what then happens is that we get a Hollywood visual feast of beautiful people. All entertaining, but so many missed opportunities.

A part of the plot revolves around an epiphany that Bruce has after losing his surrogate during a crime scene, which then leads to his character re-evaluating the effects of using surrogates. This is what makes the film better than okay. However, the film makers missed out on the fact that if you are living your life through a surrogate, then you have the opportunity to show how the virtual world can be enhanced.

In practical terms what we saw was beautiful people playing surrogates, and beautiful people made to look slightly less beautiful when they were themselves, except when the film makers wanted to score an emotional hit. 

If they had made the surrogates look less real, as Spielberg did in the film AI for the robots, then we could have seen the surrogates through the eyes of the virtual interface as beautiful people, and when Bruce is sans-surrogate he could have seen the plastic quality of the world he was living in.

This would have made the point that the virtual world enhanced reality, and given more credence to the anti-surrogate humans he meets in the film, because quite frankly with such perfection the film shows you, why wouldn't you want to live in the cleaner, brighter and safer virtual world?

From a gamer's perspective, I could see the technology being useful for Cyberpunk scenarios, and even advanced neuro-helmet technology for BattleTech, though obviously non-canon.