I adore the first two Terminator movies. I was born in the year the first one came out and was only 7 when the second one came out, but I do feel as if I’ve grown up with these stories. These are the movies that made me think and dream about time travel and timelines, and I still enjoy theorizing about these type of plots. I was really looking forward to this latest installment of the Terminator series, and while it’s not everything I hoped it would be, it’s still a great action flick.

Terminator Salvation focuses on Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a man who wakes up in 2018 with no recollection of how he got there. Judgment Day has come and passed, and the human survivors are struggling in their war against the machines. John Connor (Christian Bale) is part of the resistance and knows he has to find his “father” Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), still a civilian trying to survive.

The main problem with Terminator Salvation is that this isn’t the movie every Terminator fan has been waiting for. Anybody who has seen the other movies wants to see one thing: the final battle between the machines and the resistance. What happens after they’ve sent back Kyle Reese and the terminators? Does John Connor and the resistance finally win the war? When does everything finally come full circle? This isn’t that movie. This movie is but a chapter in the whole saga, where Kyle Reese and John Connor meet. And that would have been fine, if they were the main two characters. If this movie was truly about the birth of their friendship. But it isn’t. Instead Terminator Salvation revolves around Marcus Wright, a new mysterious character, whose story line you see coming from a mile away. 

It kind of works. I mean I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and I came out of the theatre thinking it was awesome. But reflecting on it, I just think it could have been better. I mean, you’ve got these characters that the fans love and whose stories they want to hear, but instead we get a movie about this Marcus Wright. I don’t see why they needed this new character; why couldn’t they have focused more on Kyle Reese and John Connor? Or Connor and his wife? Or the rise of Connor in the resistance? It just didn’t feel necessary to have this movie revolving around this character whose story we’re not really interested in.

Sam Worthington is okay as Marcus Wright, and by the end of the movie you are rooting for him. There’s nothing wrong with his acting (although at times his Australian accent slips through), it’s just you’re not as invested in his character as some of the others. Christian Bale is a bit of a disappointment as John Connor. When I heard he was cast, it just seemed perfect; who else could play the fierce, yet tortured resistance leader? And yet, it didn’t really work. There’s just something in him that doesn’t make you truly believe that this is a continuation of the same John Connor, although that may be due more to the way his character was written than Bale’s performance. The highlight of this movie for me had to be Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese. After seeing him in Star Trek as Chekov, I didn’t think he could pull this character off (he just looks too baby faced there and not at all like Reese). But you get the feeling he must have watched and studied Michael Biehn’s Kyle Reese in The Terminator for hours, cause he’s spot on with his performance. 

The other characters don’t add much to the movie. Bryce Dallas Howard is fine as Kate Connor, but she doesn’t get that much to work with. She has this whole back story and history with John Connor and she’s pregnant with his child, but all she gets to do is stand on the sidelines and be a sounding board to his worries. Moon Bloodgood is introduced as a love interest for Marcus Wright, but it feels rushed and very unbelievable. 

I did really like the look of Terminator Salvation. After Judgment Day, the world is practically a bleak, deserted wasteland and visually they’ve managed to capture that. It’s gritty and barren, and exactly what you’d expect the world to look like after a nuclear winter. The action and special effects in this movie are also superb, with enough explosions and fights to do justice to the previous films. I loved the design of some of the new robots, even though some seemed a bit more advance than what you’d expect at this point in time.

Terminator Salvation is a great summer action flick. Story wise it’s not fantastic, but for most people I guess it doesn’t have to be. Unlike some, I didn’t hate this movie, and I think McG managed to deliver a fun enjoyable film. I’m just disappointed it’s not the Terminator movie I was hoping for, but if it does well at the box office, we might see one in the near future.

Back at my student house in Delft, we used to play this game a lot. I never got around to getting the game myself, cause the rules said it was only for 3-4 players. We recently found out though that it is playable with 2 if you adapt some of the rules. It’s a great game and one of must-haves for a true boardgame geek.

Title: Settlers of Catan (Kolonisten van Catan)
Type: Boardgame
#Players: 3-4 (or 2 with adapted rules, 5-6 with extensions)
Cost: £20-25

Settlers of Catan is a played on a board of hexagonal tiles, that represent the island of Catan. At the start of the game the tiles are placed randomly or in a specific predetermined manner (but always with sea tiles surrounding it all). The island tiles represent the different resources: grain, wood, brick, ore and sheep (there aren’t any set names for the resources, we keep using other words like wheat, stone and clay too). Numbered tokens are then placed on each of the tiles, except for the resourceless “desert” tile. 

The idea of Settlers is to build settlements and roads at the corners and on the edges of the hexes. Every player starts the game with two settlements and two adjoining road segments, and has to collect resources to be able to build more. You’re only allowed to build settlements at the end of one of your roads, and no two settlements may be built on adjacent corners. During each players turn, a roll of two dice determines which resources are allowed to be collected: every person with a settlement on the tiles with the number that was thrown is allowed to collect that resource. For instance, in the game in the picture above: if the number 5 is thrown, both the white player and the blue player may collect a brick, while the orange player is allowed to collect a grain.

During a players turn that player may spend their resource cards to build more. A brick and a wood builds a road. A brick, a wood, a sheep and a grain builds a settlement. And two grain and three ore builds a city. A city is an upgrade of a settlement, allowing a player to pick up double the resources for the adjacent tiles. Besides the building of the above, you can also use resources to buy a development card; these cards can do various useful things (I won’t explain all the different types of cards here).

The winner is the player who first reaches 10 victory points. You receive a victory point for each settlement you have on the board, and two victory points for every city you have (so no points for roads). Various other achievements, like building the longest road, can give you extra victory points.

The most interesting aspect of Settlers is the trading. Players are allowed to trade the resources they have in their hand, with other players or “off-island”. During your turn, you can initiate trades with any of the other players (if they are willing). This can be particularly handy if you’re not on a certain resource, while others are. With the “off-island” trade, you can exchange 4 of the same cards into any card you want (with the “bank”). Furthermore, there are special sea ports on the map that allow people with settlements on them better trading prices (like exchanging 2 sheep for anything you want).

As I said at the beginning of this post, Settlers of Catan is meant to be played with 3-4 people. From my own experiences 3 is the best number to play with. When you’re with 4 it’s still possible, but the map is slightly more full, leaving less space to maneuver. There are various adapted rules for 2 players floating around on the internet, and I’ve tried a couple of them. I’m still not completely happy with that game play though, and still trying to refine it.

Like Carcasonne, Settlers of Catan is a “friendly” game. All players are in play until the end of the game (unlike Risk) and there are no ways to destroy points from people. There are ways to annoy people though like by refusing to trade, cutting off road routes, taking the longest road (by creating a road longer) and using special development cards. The placement of your settlements at the start of game can be crucial to the rest of your game; you have to give yourself enough space to build more roads and settlements (without getting boxed in), while trying to receive the best possible resources.

Settlers of Catan is a fun board game, which requires logical thinking, smooth talking and scheming. There are a couple of different expansions available, but I haven’t tried them out yet. It’s a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon with a couple of friends, and (like I said before) a must-have for every boardgame geek.

Settlers of Catan is available for £29.99 at The Orc’s Nest (near Cambridge Circus), £33 on Amazon.co.uk, and $33 on Amazon.com.

I try to go with an open mind into any movie I see; how can you really judge a movie without watching it first? Despite that though I do catch myself disregarding movies, because of the first impressions of the plot or the actor. I had that here with 17 Again: a starring vehicle for the new Disney poster child Zac Efron, with a Freaky Friday twist? Nah, not for me. And yet surprisingly it was.

In 1989, Mike O’Donnell (Zac Efron) is the star of his high school basketball team, with a bright future and a college scholarship almost in his grasp. He throws it all away though when he finds out his girlfriend Scarlet is pregnant and asks her to marry him. 20 years later Mike’s (now Matthew Perry) life is falling apart: his marriage to Scarlet is on the brink of a divorce, he’s got no real relationship with his teenage kids and he’s living with his high school nerd-turned-billionaire best friend Ned. But Mike gets a second chance when he is magically transformed to 17 again.

The age transformation gimmick has been rehashed so many times in Hollywood: kids wanting to be older, adults wanting to be young again, we’ve seen it all before. Freaky Friday. Big. And now 17 Again. Add to that plot lines borrowed from other ‘teen’ movies, like the Back To The Future “must not attract the family member” and you’ve got a movie that reeks of unoriginality. Regardless of that though, 17 Again is a funny and entertaining teen movie.

As much as I hate to admit it, that mainly comes because of the likability of Zac Efron. In all previous movies I’ve seen with him, he comes off as a little too charming, a little too smug; I never got why so many teenage girls were so hysterical about him. But with 17 Again his charisma carries the entire movie. Zac Efron just charms the socks off of you and you can’t help but like him.

The rest of the supporting cast are great too. While Matthew Perry doesn’t get that much screen time, it’s his performance at the start of the movie that makes you begin to care for the character of Mike. Most scenes with Mike’s best friend Ned are hilarious: he has the best pop culture one-liners, his entire house is full of geeky memorabilia, his wardrobe is outrageous and his antics to woo the high school headmistress are awkwardly funny. There’s a brilliant scene at the start of the movie where Ned and Mike have fight with Ned’s Lord of the Rings and Star Wars props. Leslie Mann is great as Scarlet, although she doesn’t get as much comedy time as we’ve seen from her in previous movies.

The only drawback I had with 17 Again is it’s wrap-up. After the predictable reveal, the movie ends pretty quickly, giving almost no screentime to the stories of the other characters.

17 Again is a light funny movie, which deserves a wider audience than just hysterical Zac Efron devotees. Yes, teenage girls are going to love it, but there’s more in this movie that will attract others too. I was expecting a movie I’d hate, but instead I discovered I actually did enjoy it. 17 Again never reaches the heights of teen classics, like Mean Girls or Clueless, but it’s an entertaining 102 minutes and well worth paying a cinema ticket for.

When it comes to books, I’m much more into fantasy than into scifi (or should I say syfy now?). Still I was glad to win this book, Agent To The Stars, from the Fantasy and Scifi Lovin’ Blog. 

Agent To The Stars has a bit of a history. It was the first “book” written by John Scalzi in 1997 to prove to himself that he could write a novel. No publisher wanted to pick it up though, so in 1999 he released it online as a shareware novel; if people liked it, they could pay, but didn’t have to. Once his second novel got published, a limited run of 1000 copies of Agent To The Stars was released in 2005 and surprisingly to the publishers they got snapped up in no time. A year later Agent To The Stars finally got published the “proper” way.

The premise of Agent To The Stars is simple: Tom Stein is one of Hollywood’s upcoming young agents. He’s got a major movie star, Michelle Beck, as his main client and has just completed a multi-million deal for her. But then his boss introduces Tom to his new clients: the Yherajk, an alien race with an image problem. They’re big blobs of slime who communicate through horrible smells… and they want to be Earth’s new friend. Now Tom has to solve the problem of how to introduce these new “friends” to the rest of world, without causing panic and chaos.

This has to be one of the funniest books I’ve read in a long, long time. There are so many “laugh out loud” moments in here; it was just so fun reading it. It’s also one of those books that you don’t want to put down. I didn’t read it in one sitting, but every time I picked it up, I just flipped through the pages, and felt terrible when I had to stop and get on with some real work. 

I don’t often say this about books, but I could definitely see a movie based on this. Compared to other books it also wouldn’t require that much tweaking and cutting. The book is pretty short and a single movie could cover it all nicely.

Highly recommendable to everyone who wants a good laugh. And if you’re not convinced yet? You don’t have to buy the book; the entire story is also available on John Scalzi’s website.

Agent To The Stars by Joe Scalzi is available on Amazon.co.uk for £6.29, on Amazon.com for $7.99 and on John Scalzi’s website for free.

Week 2: Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.

I’m running way behind with these 52 Movies blog posts. I have been keeping up with watching a movie every week, I just haven’t found the time to blog about them too (plus the internet connection here is still sucky; fingers crossed it’ll be solved tomorrow). Hopefully I’ll manage to write the reviews for Week 2, 3 and 4 this week, and then next week I’ll do Week 5 and Week 6.

The movie for week 2 was The Shawshank Redemption, currently ranked as the number 1 film on IMDB. I’ve been meaning to watch it for at least the past 10 years, but every time it appeared on TV something managed to get in the way of watching it. Exams, delayed trains, or just plain forgetting what time it was on. It was a movie I knew I had to watch from start to finish, so I really didn’t want to jump in after missing half an hour. Frankly, I have been quite successful in avoiding seeing or hearing anything about this movie and not being spoiled at all (a rare feat considering the amount of movie blogs I read; I think I know at least the endings to half of the 52 Movies we’ve chosen).

The Shawshank Redemption tells the tale of Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), a man who is convicted and sentenced to life in jail for the murder of his wife and her lover. He’s sent to Shawshank Prison, where he learns how to deal with prison life.

So what did I think of The Shawshank Redemption? To be honest, I wasn’t that impressed by it. I mean, I can see and understand why it would be ranked so high; it’s a movie with not a lot of faults, and the type of movie almost no one can not like. That being said though, I don’t see it as “THE best movie ever” and that’s what this list of 250 Movies should represent, right? Especially the number one.  

It is a good movie though and for those of you who haven’t seen, it definitely is a movie you should see. It’s full of hope and the lengths that we can go to when we have hope in ourselves, in our futures, and in others. The acting is superb; both TIm Robbins and Morgan Freeman are great in their roles. Personally though I just didn’t find it deserving of that number one spot. 

Next week: Psycho