I.O.U

I've been falling behind on my written reviews as of late and I haven't really got an excuse for it beyond: "I've been ill!" So basically I owe you guys three or four extra reviews this week. I'm working on it don't worry.

Watchmen: Movie

I hate to break it to all of you, but the Watchmen movie is going to suck. Don't get me wrong the comic book is the singularly most brilliant comic that I have ever read and the main reason for that is that Alan Moore wrote Watchmen to be a comic book and nothing else. The comic shows off just how amazing the comic book genre is and whilst it features some truely cinematic moments, it's one million miles away from film material.

Watchmen is probably going to be a box office bomb as well. Who does it appeal to beyond fans of the comic? It has an "R" rating, meaning that it can't appeal to children and anyone over the age of 30 who hasn't read the comic probably isn't going to be interested either. I realise The Dark Knight made superhero movies appeal to a wider and more importantly, older, audience but it was still rated "12A" and it had both Heath Ledger's death and general Batman media frenzy thrown all over it.

It's also impossible to convey the complexity of Watchmen's plot effectively in a film, it would take at least 4 hours to get everything in and by that point half of the audience would be dead. Maybe if Watchmen had been released as two films I might be less skeptical but sadly I doubt anyone thought that making two box office bombs would be a good idea. 

I suppose most of this skepticism comes from my lack of faith in the film's director, Zack Snyder, who's previous work has left me with the impression that the man can only direct fairly shallow action films. Although Snyder is undoutabley very good at creating a specific look for films, I doubt he can convey the plethora of subtext seen in the comic. Watchmen is subtle, it needs a subtle director.

Maybe I'm being too harsh about Watchmen. Maybe it will rock. I'm still going to go and see it.

'Nother video

Wow. I've been ignoring you guys.

Well, I've been offline for a long time so I thought it was probably fair that I gave all you guys a look at what I've been doing all this time.

First off, reviews have been going up, about the same amount as usual but rather sporadically. This has been partially due to the fact that I have alot of work to do at the moment (final year of A-levels) and partially due to a massive decline in my mental stability. I think it's probably fair to say that the last two weeks of my life have been two of the worst. It's getting better now but I'm doubtful that it'll stay that way.

Secondly, I've been writing a lot. Mostly quite dark stuff. I've recently gotten involved with a school creative writing project and I'm currently operating as the publication's editor, which is eating up quite a lot of my time.

Finally, my first video is up: