Robots gaining sentience? Bestowing the gift of conscious thought on bulletproof, metal puppets? We know where this is going right? Well, prepare to have your preconceptions shattered. CHAPPiE is a discarded police robot, given consciousness by his optimistic designer. Waking up in a world alive with possibility, his creator informs him that he can do anything that he so desires.

With this freedom, CHAPPiE makes it his life goal to win Ultimate Braii Master. Teaming up with his sous-chef, CHOPPiE – a streetwise but warm hearted talking knife – he preps and braiis his way through round after gruelling round of flame grilled tension, until a spectacular final showdown with Hugh Jackman’s mulleted, impossible to please barbecue judge.

In all seriousness, this one is well worth checking out if you’re a fan of Sci-fi in general, and particularly Neil Blomkamp’s films – District 9 and Elysium – both of which are excellent, and which, come to think of, I’ve also done comics for. I read an interesting article a while back talking about how his background in visual effects lets him plan out the CG stuff in his films much smarter and more efficiently than another director might be able to, so his films, while fairly CG reliant, come out with a much smaller budget than they otherwise might. Neat!

Furious 7 is upon us – the final part in the Fast and the Furious franchise, and the final outing for the late, great Paul Walker. You shouldn’t really be allowed to criticise the plot of these films, as to do so would be entirely missing the point, but it does seem a little funny that so many crises can only be averted with the assistance of a crack team of street racers. It actually reminds me a little bit of the Dan Brown novels – in that, really, how many cases can there be that require the services of a symbologist?

In this final film, Dom and his team have finally won their freedom and returned to US soil. However, the brother of a former nemesis wants revenge and is picking off the racers one by one. To add to the mess, they are caught between two groups vying to get their hands on deadly piece of software.

Personally, my first line of defence against cyber warfare has always been a hardened gang of petrolheads – for that reason I employ just such a team to keep my computer free from viruses – and Dom and the gang certainly don’t disappoint. Without giving too much away, they opt to destroy the internet itself, plunging the world into a new dark age and rendering the hackers entirely impotent. In the closing moments of the film Vin Diesel prepares to race representatives of every major oil company in a no holds barred battle for the environment itself.

Insurgent hits cinemas soon – we’ve got sneak peak plot details for you!

Nostalgia. Occasionally misleading. If you’ve got some incredibly fond recollections of tv shows from your childhood, sometimes you are best served by leaving them firmly ensconced in the past.

I’m just saying, it would be easy to go into this film with an expectation for the cutesy adventures of an athlete who steps out of his chosen field and goes to live with his loveable uncle, helping him farm foxes on the American countryside. People farm foxes right? Of course they do, otherwise where would all the foxes come from. Anyway, that’s not what Foxcatcher is about, which seems more than a little misleading. Had I been offered a seat on the committee for naming this particular film, I would have been pushing hard for ‘Wrestlemania’, because:

1) there’s a clear signal that wrestling plays some sort of role in this movie and

2) the ‘mania’ bit (just after ‘wrestle’ in the title) kinda sorta fits the John du Pont story.

Anyhow, take a look at the trailer, then (thusly informed) take a look at the trailer for Fantastic Mr Foxcatcher, then if you’ve still got time, go and watch Fantastic Mr Fox, which is beautifully animated even if not’s quite your cup of tea. Then maybe a nap.

I’m working on some other projects just at the moment, so will probably keep comics coming about once a week for the foreseeable future. Perhaps the relative scarcity will make the heart grow fonder.

We’ve still got plenty of shirts in the store, including some more recent additions available at Amazon below:

You would have to have a pretty good reason to invest hundreds of thousands of years cultivating life on a planet with the hopes of one day reaping a harvest. That harvest would surely have to be beyond priceless to be worth the effort.

The trailer for Jupiter Ascending doesn’t make it clearly exactly what Earth’s galactic forebears were hoping to one day cream from its inhabitants. I like to imagine these aliens seed countless planets, willing to wait eons for their individual cultures , and in particular their authorship of young adult literature, to develop to the point where they write their own version of the Twilight Saga.

Like the Shakespearean monkeys with their typewriters, each civilisation one day pens its own iteration of this literary benchmark – sometimes Edward comes out on top, sometimes Jacob – sometimes Bella is a werewolf from the start, and sometimes everyone is a lizard. Whatever the outcome, it allows for a narrative breadth and versatility that could never be penned by members of a single civilisation, however advanced.

American Sniper looks by all accounts to be a powerful film. Prior to the movie we hadn’t heard so much this side of the Atlantic about the famed soldier – although it’s a biopic I won’t go into the details here in case you would rather remain in suspense, but there’s plenty to read online if you’re interested. Unconfirmed rumours suggest that a PG director’s cut is on its way, wherein every enemy combatant in the picture is replaced with an adorable woodland critter, giving an overall flavour of a slightly grittier Bambi.

Good news for t shirt aficionados – I’ve had some more designs printed, available to buy from Amazon at the links below. It’s an updated, all around better version of my ‘How to Sail’ design – it comes in navy and royal blue for guys, and is also available in royal blue in a womens’ cut.

 

Also, if you missed it before, my Hobbit inspired ‘There and Back Again’ is also still available:

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

I’ve got a shirt up for sale at Teefury today which is pretty neat – it’s sliiiightly geeky, a map of Hyrule from the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. If any of those words mean anything to you, take a look here!

Doctor Baymax’ adventures continue, with important conclusions on inter-patiend hygiene. Sometimes all a person needs is a hug to make them feel better, but be aware that the value someone attaches to a hug is typically inversely proportional to the amount of blood and gore that you are presently caked in.

Paging Dr Baymax… Here’s a short clip, in case you’ve missed the trailers for Big Hero 6. Looks neat!