The Week In A Bad Education Towers #59

Hello you! After a crappy work week it was a lovely day yesterday seeing my first born since the first time he went off to Uni. He's still pretty much the same, no long hair or beard just yet but sure its only a matter of time. Anyways, lets get newslettering.

Short answer, don't know yet as hardly played it. Whilst out and about giddy with seeing someone I've helped keep alive for 19 years I picked the newly released Mario Wonder up from Game. I hadn't pre-ordered it, mainly because of helping to support the aforementioned uni based child. But, dammit, Im only human so when I saw it in a shop I snapped.

Only played a few levels with the youngest but its clearly a very good mario game. From looking at it initially its very much in the lineage of New Super Mario Bros, so very much that side on aesthetic but it feels a lot more playful than those games. Like elephant power is it once really daft but also really fun. And this is only a few levels in, so I haven't got to a bit yet where the games goes "oh, you wanted a REAL challenge did you, well have all of the challenge" which is something I always enjoy. Well, I say enjoy, enjoy through the tears you now?

Anyways, it feels like a belter but will come back later if anything changes.

Oh, I did also pick up a game from PlayAsia, a special edition of River City Rival Showdown which I bought a while ago but has now showed up at my house. I made a short out of it! I bought it because the stuff with it looked lovely, and also I remember the 3DS version getting good reviews, so why not? I'm only human.

Not when it comes to Spider-Man 2 though. £70? Jeezo.

The CreAItor

So as I said last week, I managed to get to the cinema and see The Creator.

Did anyone else hear about this film before it came out? I knew nothing about it till I saw the first teaser at the cinema which was brilliant! You forget how good that is, not knowing anything about a film until its like "Its here next month!" and you know nothing about it. With the way Marvel has made everything, you hear about a film years before it comes out, drips of trailers for ages so it lessens the surprise of seeing a film.

And it helped that the film was great; your man Gareth Edwards managed to do both one of the best Godzillas and a top drawer Star Wars, and considering those are two of my favourite things he's got a lot of positivity in the bank with me. Here's he's back to an original work, for the first time since his debut film Monsters, which is all about humanity and AI and big guns.

The AI thing is obviously a hot button topic, but the film doesn't necessarily reflect the current concerns; yeah, AI dropping a nuke on a city is one thing but currently the main focus is "should we left AI overrun the creative arts" so we haven't quite got to SkyNet just yet. The film is set in a post AI society, one where there is a US led effort to try and put the AI genie (genAI?) back into its bottle. Only AI has formed its own society now so isn't happy with that.

This conflict is a bit too black and white, especially when its a film filled with grey characters towing the moral line. The AI side is shown as spiritual and open, whereas the other side is basically the US Military Industrial Complex Only With a Big Giant Missile Dropping Spaceship.

Which is fine, I wasn't going in expecting a deep intellectual deconstruction of all this, but it feels like the film is aiming that way but undercuts itself in parts. What helps it is a great cast and that the film looks stunning. Honestly, it really does look amazing. And that you find out that the film was made on $80m which is just insane for a big sci-fi action film like this. Hell, Oppenheimer had a $100m budget, Barbie's was $128m at the low end estimate. Its nuts how good it looks.

Anyways, Its a cracking film which makes it a shame that it didn't do that well at the box office. Its creates a great world I'd love to spend some more time in but we'll see.

Its that time of year again! Old Mikey Flanagan is back with more spooky Netflix action, which this year is a show based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe.

Short version; man becomes rich off the back of selling painkillers, has a load of kids, bad things start happens and maybe he has a skeleton or two in the cupboard that might come learing out of the shadows.

The important question is, where does this rank on the Flanagan-O-Meter? Well, I still think Haunting of Hill House is my favourite just because of episode 6 but this is really fun. Being based on several stores being tied together, it feels a bit more of an anthology that the other series but it has a banger of a cast who really go for it.

Still need to watch that other show he did, Midnight Mass, so can't say if its better or worse than that.

This week's video is a about a baseball game that ended up being more of a chat about baseball than the game itself:

Which is fine, because who cares about baseball amirite? After that, got the latest Conquistabores to edit which is the second episode of the new way of doing it so might dig into that a bit next week.

Right, time for a bath and prepare for what I expect to be another rubbish week. But, should be off to see the new Scorsese film so that should be fun. Will a film about the murder of native Americans be fun? Probably not but we'll see.

Anyways, bye!