Quickie Reviews (some spoilers)
Dec. 30th, 2009 03:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalShirotsugh: Y'know, on paper it didn't look so big.
Marty: Ideas grow: sometimes bigger than life.
Wings of Honnemaise (Royal Space Force): In an intricately thought out alternate universe, a slacker in a joke of a military force finds himself inspired by a young evangelist to become his world's first astronaut.
This is a re-viewing for me. I hadn't watched this several years and had forgotten just how good it is. Basically what Miyazaki does for airplanes this film does for rockets. The sheer amount of world building done by the animation team is nothing short of amazing. Almost everything from the aircraft to the rocket (admittedly just an R-7 with a nice paint job) to the spoons is obviously not of Earth and yet practical looking. The only false note in the entire thing is Shirotsugh's aborted rape attempt in the second act, which is confounding given his established personality (and the female lead's reaction equally so).
Young Fred: Don't pull that lever!
Ringo: Can't help it. I'm a born "Lever-puller".
Yellow Submarine: Watched this again in honor of finally getting Beatles Rock Band. It's still trippy, theBeatles voice actors' Liverpudlian dialog is damned near incomprehensible even without considering the wordplay, but it's stuffed wall-to-wall with Beatles songs, which is all you really need. Great fun.
Ed Sullivan: Ladies and gentlemen, The Beatles!
The Beatles, Rock Band: This is probably the most highly anticipated game this holiday season short of CoD: Modern Warfare 2, and it lives up the hype mostly. Basically you follow the arc of their career from the early days in the Cavern Club to their final rooftop concert, in lovely custom animated scenes, as opposed to the generic strumming of the standard Rock Band and Guitar Hero performances. Especially interesting is the middle to late section, which pays out in their Abbey Road studio period. Knowing how dull that would look if done straight, the game designers set each song in an individualized "dreamscape", from etheral fields to a vastly trippy version of "I am the Walrus" (which comes across as one of those music video ideas that musicians regret much later in their careers).
If there's a knock on this game, it is short. While there are forty-five songs on the disc, it's important to remember that on average they're each just three minutes long. I blew through them all and earned the "Hard Day's Night" achievement in less than a day. This compensated by being able to buy the remaining songs on the "Revolver", "Rubber Soul" and "Abbey Road" albums as DLC, but if you don't feel like spending more money you're out of luck until the inevitable "Beatles RB 2".
Of special note is the unlockbable content, with such gems as the Beatles first Christmas album to their fan club, a video of their rehearsal prior to their first Ed Sullivan appearance, and raw footage of them noodling about doing interviews on a train leaving Washington DC after their first US concert among other things.
Marty: Ideas grow: sometimes bigger than life.
Wings of Honnemaise (Royal Space Force): In an intricately thought out alternate universe, a slacker in a joke of a military force finds himself inspired by a young evangelist to become his world's first astronaut.
This is a re-viewing for me. I hadn't watched this several years and had forgotten just how good it is. Basically what Miyazaki does for airplanes this film does for rockets. The sheer amount of world building done by the animation team is nothing short of amazing. Almost everything from the aircraft to the rocket (admittedly just an R-7 with a nice paint job) to the spoons is obviously not of Earth and yet practical looking. The only false note in the entire thing is Shirotsugh's aborted rape attempt in the second act, which is confounding given his established personality (and the female lead's reaction equally so).
Young Fred: Don't pull that lever!
Ringo: Can't help it. I'm a born "Lever-puller".
Yellow Submarine: Watched this again in honor of finally getting Beatles Rock Band. It's still trippy, the
Ed Sullivan: Ladies and gentlemen, The Beatles!
The Beatles, Rock Band: This is probably the most highly anticipated game this holiday season short of CoD: Modern Warfare 2, and it lives up the hype mostly. Basically you follow the arc of their career from the early days in the Cavern Club to their final rooftop concert, in lovely custom animated scenes, as opposed to the generic strumming of the standard Rock Band and Guitar Hero performances. Especially interesting is the middle to late section, which pays out in their Abbey Road studio period. Knowing how dull that would look if done straight, the game designers set each song in an individualized "dreamscape", from etheral fields to a vastly trippy version of "I am the Walrus" (which comes across as one of those music video ideas that musicians regret much later in their careers).
If there's a knock on this game, it is short. While there are forty-five songs on the disc, it's important to remember that on average they're each just three minutes long. I blew through them all and earned the "Hard Day's Night" achievement in less than a day. This compensated by being able to buy the remaining songs on the "Revolver", "Rubber Soul" and "Abbey Road" albums as DLC, but if you don't feel like spending more money you're out of luck until the inevitable "Beatles RB 2".
Of special note is the unlockbable content, with such gems as the Beatles first Christmas album to their fan club, a video of their rehearsal prior to their first Ed Sullivan appearance, and raw footage of them noodling about doing interviews on a train leaving Washington DC after their first US concert among other things.
