I’ve never been overly fond of the Mission Impossible series of films. I still haven’t seen the first, the second was complete crap, the third was passable entertainment, so you may want to take what I have to say about MI4 with a pinch of salt if you’re a fan of the series.

After a short introduction sequence in Budapest, with an agent being assassinated after a daring escape, we’re taken to an Eastern European prison where Simon Pegg and a new female agent are busting out Ethan Hunt, but rather then cooperate he decides to go and rescue someone else before being busted out. Then we’re treated to an intro credit sequence which is basically a stylised pre-cap of the rest of the film. From here I’m already getting a bit fuzzy on the plot, because it’s your basic mad man wants to blow up the world for his own reasons plot. To stop him they’re dispatched off to Russia to infiltrate the Kremlin and get information on this new terrorist plotting to blow up the world. This mission of course goes wrong when the terrorist blows up the Kremlin and frames Hunt and his team. Which of course leads to another escape and then being disavowed by the US Government, so a lone team, under equipped, though still having gadgets that would make James Bond envious, head off round the world to stop the world from ‘sploding all over the place.

Now I’ll say this, I didn’t hate it, it was sort of fun, in a brain switched off sense, but there was very little substance in the film. There was some Simon Pegg being “funny” and the usual Tom Cruise doing the “action”. But mostly it’s just fluff that will be blown from your mind in the breeze when you leave the cinema. The thought struck me in the cinema it was like watching a hybrid of 24 and Alias. Lots of doing what needed to be done to stop the plot, crossed with a level of silliness and gadgetry. But if you’ve seen the previous films and saw the trailer and thought it was for you, all I can say is that it’s pretty much what you’d expect. But at the minute I would say that Sherlock Holmes 2 is the better of the action fluff films on at the cinema.

When it came to the first Sherlock Holmes film that came out a couple of years ago I enjoyed it a surprising amount. I expected complete rubbish but it turned out to be a fun romp with some nice nods towards the Sherlock Holmes stories without being bound by them, which, for my money, is the best way to handle an adaptation, unless you’re going to stick rigidly to the source material but what would be the point of that when so many others already have?

And so we come to the sequel A Game of Shadows, which sticks to the same formula. Nods towards the source material while telling its own story. It’s flashy and brash in it’s form, unabashedly so, and fun for it. The fight scenes slowed down and plotted out remain from the first, giving it a seemingly more intellectual air to its fight scenes, with Sherlock using his trademark intuition and intelligence to plot out move and counter-move ahead of time so when you see the fight in real time the moves that would otherwise go by in a blur have emphasis to them. There’s a lot of whizz bang for those of us with short attention spans and plenty of humour and a few laughs, too.

As for the plot, well that’s twisty, as you’d expect. John Watson is still trying to get married, while Sherlock is still pursuing the trails and plots of Professor Moriarty. Along the way Irene Adler and Mycroft show up to help move the plot along. We also have Sim, a gypsy card reader who gets drawn in to the plot. So we have bombings, politics and business and in the middle of it all James Moriarty some how pulling all the strings and Sherlock obsessively pulling on the threads to see what leads where. And at the centre of it all the relationship of Watson and Holmes which the whole thing hangs on. Which may be where it succeeds or fails for you, if you enjoy the central relationship, then for all the humour, warmth and arsekicking between them you will enjoy this film. If you don’t like that then that will probably be the downfall of the film and it will be worth nothing.

For me it was fun and enjoyable, the action was well done, if overblown at times. The humour was mostly on the mark but some fell flat. The story, well as I said, when hung over the characters it was enough, but if you don’t like the characters then it will fail you. Judging from the reaction of the audience around me, for the most part, it hit the mark and it seemed like people were enjoying it. I can understand some of the criticisms it’s getting though I don’t share them at all. I really did enjoy the two hours sat there in the dark with this film. If you didn’t like the first you won’t like this one either as it’s more of the same, but if you enjoyed it then this is worth the price of admission.

What makes a great game, you will probably get every different answer possible from every different gamer and judging from my list of games I’d give half of them myself. I guess this will go in no particular order but I’ll start with my favourite because it’s the first that springs to mind.

Portal 2 (PS3)

Portal 2 had a lot to live up to, the first Portal was just a little bonus on Valve’s Orange Box which stole the show with its dark sense of humour and mind bending physics puzzles, and when you stand out against Half Life 2 and Team Fortress 2, two games which are often considered as best in genre, you know you have a winner on your hands. So after a short but sweet first game, which seemed just the right length, not over staying its welcome and using a wide range of puzzles you would have been forgiven for wondering what else they could possibly do with Portal.

Portal 2 picks up many, many years later, your character has been in stasis and you’re awoken by Wheatley, an AI core who is responsible for looking after the test subjects. There has been a problem and he’s helping you to escape Aperture Science, and a wonderful introduction sequence which shows off the vastness of Aperture and the state which it has fallen in to since you destroyed GLaDOS in the first game, and shows despite its age the Source Engine can still manage to give us fantastic gaming environments.

From here you are thrust in to the puzzle solving and mad humour of the world of Portal all over again, but this time with a much deeper and fleshed out story, and plenty of new elements to keep you entertained and challenged for the duration. And once you’re done with the single player story there is a co-op multiplayer mode for you to enjoy with a friend, which isn’t just the usual single player with an extra person co-op, it is an entirely new game, and with the recent addition of a Downloadable add-on, free of charge, there’s hours more fun to be had. Wonderful game, well worth a purchase if you’ve not yet played and worth seeking out the original Portal too.

Bulletstorm (Xbox 360)

Now Bulletstorm is one of those stereotypical video games, full of shooting, gore, bad language and juvenile humour, but you know what? It’s bloody good fun. The story isn’t original, it isn’t clever, but it does what it does. A group of mercenaries on a mission of revenge, attack the ship of the person they’ve been pursuing and in the battle they both crash land on an alien planet and you have to fight your way across the ruins of this baddie infested world to find and kill him, so far so whatever right? Well the fun lies in the creativity of the kills, the stupidity of the dialogue, the crassness of the insults, you can just have a laugh playing this game. Yes, there are beautiful graphics and well designed areas, and all of that, but this isn’t a game where the story or the design matters that much, you’re just there to kick some arse and have a laugh doing it.

The multiplayer has more of the creativity and fun in the kills, get online with some friends and laugh as you gang bang a corpse in to a Venus fly-trap for extra points.

Super Mario 3D Land (3DS)

So how do you follow up Super Mario Galaxy, with Super Mario Galaxy 2 it seems, which improved on the original, so Super Mario 3D Land had a lot to live up after those 2 games. Did it manage it? No, of course it did, did you expect it to on a hand held with a tiny screen, even if it is in 3D? So despite having a difficult standard to live up to Super Mario 3D Land acquitted itself rather well. They were clever in designing this game, it doesn’t have the expansive worlds of the home console siblings but it does have levels which you can complete in a couple of minutes while on the bus, or in a waiting room, it does have cleverly designed platforming and good use of 3D. It manages to feel retro and modern at the same time, taking design elements of everything from the very first Super Mario games, with a lot owing to Super Mario Bros. 3 from the NES, and melds it with the elements that have been dominant in the series since Super Mario 64. I wouldn’t call it an entirely new experience but it does do what it does extremely well.

As a game play experience, after recent Nintendo 2D platformers, you may be left wondering where the hardcore element has gone. New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Donkey Kong Country Returns both became so difficult it had many hardened gamers pulling their hair out, but fret not, Super Mario 3D Land may start off very easy, leaving you feeling bereft of challenge, but it soon gets back to the hair pulling difficulty. I used perhaps 50 lives between the start of the game and finishing world 8, after world 8 this has spiralled to almost 500, so give it a go and the challenge will appear.

Batman: Arkham City (Xbox 360)

Another game that had a lot to live up to. Batman: Arkham Asylum was widely seen as the best Superhero game ever made, so how Arkham City fare? Well it made everything bigger, we went from an enclosed Asylum to an open world city, it added more villains, more side quests, a bigger story and a second playable character in the form of Catwoman. After a brilliant start where you get to play as Bruce Wayne you dive straight in to being Batman fighting crime in the newly formed Arkham City which takes in mates from the former Arkham Asylum and the Blackwater Prison. You can stealth or fight your way through crowds of bad guys, come up against supervillains aplenty with some very well thought out fights, on in particular has you having to think your way through using all the weaknesses of the character to defeat him.

There’s also a lot of great voice talent on show here, creative character designs and a wonderfully realised city. Overall it’s very near the top of my list of games that must be played this year.

Dead Space 2 (PS3)

Dead Space 2 has probably my favourite start to a video game this year. You’re in a straitjacket, helpless and then you’re attacked by necromorphs, all you can do is run and run as these alien creatures try to kill you. Tense and scary, a wonderful start to a survival horror game. Dead Space vastly opens up the world of the game, from the tight claustrophobic spaces of the original the sequel has a whole world, though in reality you’re back in the tight spaces a lot, but there are more varied environments, great action set pieces and some great scares in this improved sequel. I have to admit I had my worries when they said they were going to focus more on the action than the first game but it really didn’t disappoint. With the bonus of Dead Space: Extraction on the PS3 version, and the add on which shows you what comes of the characters from that game it was a great experience and one I hope continues in style with a third game.

Right now that’s all that comes to mind as my top games, 5’s enough to be getting on with anyway. There are other games which were good but didn’t live up to their predecessors, Uncharted 3 for example, good game, but didn’t reach the heights of the second one. Gears of War 3, technically I would have to say it was a better game than either of the previous two, but despite that, despite actually having some character in its characters, despite looking better and being of a better technical standard it was repetitive and dull. Dead Island promised a lot with it’s cinematic introduction to the world, but when you get to the game itself, it’s badly put together, rather shoddily done, and for a game with a zombie horde that you can, supposedly, kill in very creative ways, it was boring as hell.

Any more I should have put on the list? Some that don’t belong?

I know I haven’t posted in a while, but I thought it’s the time of year to reflect on the best of the year. So I’m going with some Best of posts if I can be bothered to keep writing them. And after the best TV episode of the year last night I thought it was a good time to do TV. And this is going to be British shows, so despite loving shows like Fringe, Big Bang Theory, Glee, Supernatural, etc. I’m not going to put any of them in there.

Drama

Luther

Luther had a decent start last year but really picked up the quality this year, the second series was great stuff. The show itself seemed like it might not come back with a fairly lackluster audience for the first series but when they picked it up for 2 specials it seemed like a gamble, then they expanded it to a 4 episode series and they were really on to a winner.

Following on from the first series with Luther in a strange friendly relationship with the killer he’d spent much of the first series trying to catch. Then the story expanded with him taking in a young woman and trying to rescue her from life of drugs and sex for money. With Luther’s trademark insight in to the darkness he pursues and sometimes crossing the line in order to get the job done, it’s not as clichéd as it sounds, OK it is, but it works.

Downton Abbey

Unexpected for me, I watched the first episode last series and didn’t really get in to it, but on the recommendation of a friend I picked up the Blu-ray set of both series and really enjoyed it. It’s a show full of bitches, male and female, toffs and servants alike, barely a likeable character amongst them, but at the same time the interactions are a lot of fun, the storylines span months, even years, from the sinking of the Titanic through to the end of World War 1 and the Spanish Flu outbreak, playing out against the loss of tradition and the very real possibility of the loss of the title and land for the toffs, and the associated jobs for the servants.

There are characters I actually hate in this show. Which shows how good it is because it takes something to get me invested enough to not be indifferent to the characters.

The Fades

Now this was a new series that started on BBC Three. The premise, a teenage boy has disturbing nightmares about the end of the world, then he begins seeing dead people, the Fades of the title. He discovers that he is part of a group of people called The Angelics who have the power to see dead people and various other powers, including the ability heal injuries, and it is their job to fight the menace of these “fades”.

While there was a few problems with the show, things that weren’t fully thought out or fleshed out, for the most part it was really well done. Lots of geeky references and full of interesting ideas, even if they were really the most well played in the show. It’ll be really interesting to see, if this is picked up, where it goes in the future.

This Is England ‘88

Now to the show that made me think to do this. This is England, a brilliant film, This is England ‘86 a fantastic continuation, This is England ‘88 kept up the tradition and really was some of the best TV in years. It’s a hard premise to sell, I mean it’s basically just a bunch of young northerners living their lives in the 80s, the ups and (mostly) the downs.

There’s utterly fantastic acting, the writing is so real. Tears, laughs, depression, love, life, all run through This is England in spades. Woody, Lol, Shaun, Trev, Gadge, Milky, Kelly and Smell, a wonderful cast of characters who you believe have a life that goes on when you’re not looking at the screen.

Be prepared for hard to watch scenes, heartache, inappropriate laughs and floods of tears while watching, so not for the easily depressed, but really wonderful TV that deserves much recognition and to continue for as long as they can make such brilliant stories.

Misfits

Now in to it’s third series Misfits has continued to be funny, irreverent and filthy despite losing, arguably, it’s biggest asset. The series managed to introduce a new character, a whole new set of powers and get them back in to community service with flair and keep it entertaining at the same time. With the introduction of new powers and Rudy they’ve managed to keep it fresh and the fucked up situations the ASBO 5 keep managing to get in makes it not only funny but one of my favourite shows on the air. Here’s looking forward to the end of this series and the upcoming series 4.

Honourable mention

Outcasts

Now I know this wasn’t to the taste of a lot of people, it was slow, nothing happened, it was a mess, are just some of the criticisms levelled against it, but you know what? I’d argue it wasn’t as slow as people think, it is true it was a bit of a mess, things didn’t quite work as well as they should have and it could have been made to work better. But it should have been given a bigger chance.

The story was of a colony of humans on a habitable planet many light-years from Earth where they were trying to make a fresh start of it after ecological and social disaster on Earth. The people of this new planet are trying to make a fairer more eco-friendly place but the usual corruption is sinking in and with the last transport from Earth coming in outside influence is trying to twist the people against the people in charge.

The show really did improve in it’s 8 episode run and really did have a lot of potential there, if only it had been allowed a chance to grow in to itself.

Black Mirror

Charlie Brooker has a twisted sense of the world and an interest in the geeky, so when he decided to do a sort of Sci-Fi anthology of techological what-if stories I have to say I was very interested. So far the first 2 have been on and I’ve really enjoyed them. The first a story of a Princess being abducted before her wedding and the demands being posted on Youtube so everyone knows about it and the government can’t hide it or spin it the way they want it. All they can do is react. Wonderfully twisted, could have done with a bit more flesh on its bones.

The second a “sarcastic future” in Brooker’s own words. Every surface is an interactive video screen, people power the world by cycling for merits and spend those merits on everything from buying clothes for their virtual avatar and their processed food, to a pentalty for not watching the adverts which flash up on their screens at random. And for a chance to get away from this you have to buy your way in to being on a “X-Factor/Britain’s Got Talent” type show.

I hope there’s a future in this show because it reminds me of shows like Twilight Zone and Outer Limits but with a British, slightly absurd twist on the format.

Comedy

Spy

Sky upped their original content quota this year and one of the things to come out of it was Spy. With the guy from Dirk Gently, her from No Heroics, Citizen Smith himself and him from Horrible Histories it was surprisingly good. It was kind of a British version of Chuck without any super computer in the head and an annoying little shit of a kid. Well worth checking out.

Psychoville

Well the second series of Psychoville picked up where the first left off. As wacky and dark as ever it managed to kill off most of the cast and replace them with equally strange characters. Funny, twisted, dark and original Psychoville deserved to continue but unfortunately this was the last series, at least it went out while still good and I hope the guys continue on to new projects that I like as much as this.

Rev.

On the second series now, Rev. is the story of Reverend Adam Smallbone, moved from a small village parish to an inner city London parish. With a small but loyal congregation with a CofE school in his parish he has to liaise with the headmistress, who he seemingly fancies, interact with the inner city kids who are likely to tell him to fuck off and an ambitious lay reader who wants to become a vicar himself. It follows his crises of faith, his conflicting love for his wife and doing his job and the ridiculous situations he gets in with the local junkie asking for money and the drunk regularly leaving his porn around the church. It may not sound laugh a minute but it’s good stuff.

Mongrels

This BBC Three comedy is in its second year, a puppet show with a cast of various animals, Dogs, Cats, Pigeons, Foxes, all talking, singing and dancing of course. With shades of Family Guy in its knowing nods towards popular culture and slightly surreal humour at times. With songs like “I’m going to murder Justin Bieber”, “F**king Chickens” and “I’m a C**t” it’s not for everyone but I get plenty of laughs out of it.

Best of the rest

So there’s other stuff like Him & Her, Educating Essex, Living with the Amish, Frozen Planet, Everything & Nothing, Wonders of the Universe, Russell Howard’s Good News, Beaver Falls but this post is getting a bit long now and I want to wrap it up. So overall I think this has been a good year for TV and I’m sure there are other shows I loved that I’m missing but that’s the shows that came to mind.

Any recommendations of shows I missed?

The Guard is a film I’d heard good things about for a while and I wanted to see it though didn’t seem to be getting a release locally. Since I didn’t think I’d get to see it at home I took the opportunity while on a trip away to see it, and then again while visiting a friend, so I’ve actually had the chance to see it twice now at different cinemas. Once in a big Cineworld and once at a small independent cinema and both times I found it to be excellent and the audience response was very good, too.

The film begins with a fly over, following a car driving erratically on a country road, cutting inside to see lots of drinking going on, just as the pass a police car at the side of the road and this is where we meet Sargent Boyle, looking bored. The car crashes and Boyle sighs and goes over to find the driver and passengers dead, looking through the pockets of one of them he finds a bag of drugs. “Now I don’t think your Mammy would be too pleased about this” is his thoughts on finding the drugs. So he throws away all but one and takes it himself and exclaims “What a beautiful fucking day.” while looking out at the bleak west coast of Ireland landscape in the cloudy light. And this is the perfect introduction to Boyle. An unconventional cop to say the least.

After meeting the new lad, in from Dublin, at a murder scene, which is really the start of the plot. Tip offs and interviews follow. But Boyle is also summoned to a meeting with an FBI agent who’s in Ireland trying to stop the smuggling of cocaine with a “street value” of half a billion dollars. To which Boyle remarks “I often wonder what street you’re buying your cocaine on, because it’s a different street to what I’m buying mine on.” It turns out the guy who was murdered is part of the crew bringing in the cocaine and so Boyle now Boyle is trying to help out the FBI with this drugs bust, but tomorrow is his day off, for whoring around and getting fucked up.

Now this description of the plot makes it sound rather boring, but it’s really a brilliantly done film. It’s a brilliant little film, and a lot to evoke the feel of a western, from desolate landscapes, to shoot outs. There’s also plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. Until I saw this I would have said Inbetweeners was the funniest film I’d seen this year, now I’d find it hard to pick. They have very different styles, including the comedic style, but I found this no less funny, and think it’s actually the better film of the two.

So this review may be a little late for it to be of any use, but if you get a chance to see it you really should.

Cowboys and Aliens started life as a graphic novel, and seems it was going to be a Robert Downey Jnr film right out of the gate after Iron Man, but some how along the way Downey got replaced with Daniel Craig and so now you’ve got a film with James Bond and Indiana Jones in the wild west fighting aliens with Quorra from Tron along for the ride. Seems that should be all kinds of awesome to a geek.

The story is James Bond is the man with no name, no memory and a kick ass alien gun on his arm. Han Solo is the rich man in the area who brings all the business to the local town, and his son is the town drunk causing all sorts of problems but they can’t really do anything about because they’ll lose his father’s business. So when Daniel Craig shows up in town and stands up to the kid he causes all sorts of problems, not least finding out he’s actually a wanted man and gets locked up in the jail with the kid. Later that night Harrison Ford shows up to get his kid the aliens also show up and start kidnapping townsfolk, including his son, the Sheriff and the bartenders wife. They decide to get together and go off in search of the aliens and their family and friends.

And this is where the review falls down, because I find I have nothing to really say about the film. It just didn’t really make an impression on me, it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t good it was just there. The effects work are done well, the story works well enough but it doesn’t really make a lasting impression and generally I will see films multiple times when the chance presents itself, but with this I really didn’t want to see it again when a friend asked me to see it, so I can’t really say I recommend it, but if you’re interested in seeing it I have nothing to say you shouldn’t see it either.

So after an awful 4^th film which it seemed tried to rely solely on the 3D gimmick as it’s main selling point I really didn’t think Final Destination 5 would be up to much. So it was only after hearing good things about it that I decided I should see it.

Well what is there to say about Final Destination 5 that you won’t already know? It follows the tried and tested formula of someone falls asleep, dreams of a catastrophe just in time to wake up right before said catastrophe and warn people and get them out of the way. Only to have those people die in order through the rest of the film and of course there’s the usual bad actor or two thrown in there.

And this time the main big death sequence is a bridge collapse and the characters are a bunch of employees who are being taken on a team building retreat, with the usual mix of couples and arseholes who you’re quite happy to see die. And die they do, in interesting, gory and mostly unpredictable ways. Though since this is Final Destination you know to expect the unexpected and are looking for the ways they will die through each sequence.

Now it’s not the scariest or most original of films, and to be honest I laughed more than I jumped or felt scared but they do have some creative deaths, and the ending is a nice way to tie up the series, which it hopefully will since 4 was supposed to be the end then 5 came along anyway. For the most part the 3D works well in this film, it’s gimmick but it knows it is and uses it to the full effect with things sticking right out of the screen at you and really that’s what you want and expect of this sort of horror film.

While there is some bad acting Miles Fisher as Peter really stood out as the worst for me, but this wasn’t bad enough to ruin the film. And actually it was way better than I expected probably 3^rd best film of the series, so if you’re a fan who was put off by one of the last 2 films I’d say give it a go, you may be pleasantly surprised by it.

The latest Disney/Pixar film isn’t one I’ve really looked forward to, if I’m honest, Cars is probably my least favourite Pixar film ever made. So what’s Cars 2 got that’ll get you interested? Well if the first Cars was Doc Hollywood, this is The Man With One Red Shoe or The Man Who Knew Too Little. A Spy Thriller with someone who’s not a spy in the middle of it.

After winning the latest race season Lightening McQueen is back in Radiator Springs and his Best Friend Tow Mater is excited to see him. So excited he crashes a date between McQueen and Sally and mid-date he sees an F1 car called Francesco bragging on the TV about being the fastest car in the world and phones in to put him in his place and inadvertently gets McQueen pulled in to the World Grand Prix, a new race to prove Allinol, a new environmentally friendly petrol substitute, is viable and safe.

So off they go on the World Grand Prix, with Mater along as part of the pit team. McQueen warns Mater that this isn’t Radiator Springs and he should try to smarten himself up a bit and after embarrassing himself and McQueen, by leaking oil in front of everyone, he rushes off to the toilets to clean himself up, only to be caught in a confrontation between an American Spy and 2 thugs, and before he can be beaten the American spy plants the information on Mater as he leave the bathroom, only to run in to a British spy, who believes he’s the American spy holding his cover, and she arranges to meet him the next day. Mater goes off believing he’s got a date.

The next day at the race track the spies spot Mater in the pits and a load of thugs approaching him, breaking in on his radio headset they tell him to run, believing this is part of the date Mater shouts over the headset and distracts McQueen at a critical point in the race and loses. For this he shouts at Mater and tells him to leave and go back home. Meanwhile the British spies, still believing Mater to be undercover recruit him and take him along on their mission around the world.

So what we have here is a family film, mostly aimed at the kids, playing on the plots of spy films, and other comedy films that also played with spy film conventions. So there are many things here that I don’t believe kids will get. But there’s also plenty of cars racing, and chasing, explosions and bright colours that will probably keep most entertained anyway. There’s funny bits that work, and the obligatory touching moments. Generally I’d say it’s a fair film, it has fun moments, but overall it seems less like the Pixar we all know and love. It feels more a cash in on the popularity of Cars or a film done because the makers enjoyed it rather than for the audiences. But I had that feeling with the original Cars, too.

The animation is good, some really top notch work has been done on the cities that the races take place in, and while the 3D didn’t detract in the way I’ve thought it has in a lot of other films recently, it really added nothing either, it really didn’t pop out at you like most animated films do. So take or leave the 3D option here.

I will say I enjoyed Cars 2 more than I remember liking the first, may just be because I enjoyed the action/spy plot more than the Racing/Not Racing plot of the first. I have no doubt it will be enjoyed by many children and adults alike but it’s far from Pixar’s best, but on it’s own merits, rather than compared to other Pixar films, I’d say it’s a fairly good and enjoyable film.

Major spoilers for Changes, minor spoilers for Ghost Story

Where to begin with this? Well I guess at this point it’s worth saying if you haven’t read Changes yet then don’t go any further because there’s major spoilers ahead I will try to keep spoilers for Ghost Story to a minimum but I’m sure there will be some slipping in so read on with caution if you don’t even want minimal spoilers.

It’s been a long wait for the follow up to that ending in Changes. Then we got Aftermath in Side Jobs and then some more waiting, and now we finally get to follow up on Harry’s apparent execution, and where we go from there. Well (un)surprisingly Harry is pretty spray for a dead guy. The story begins with Harry going towards the light, only this is Harry Dresden we’re talking about so of course the light at the end of the tunnel is a train coming towards him at full speed. After his fight at Chichen Itza the night before and his death he understandably feels beat and a bit pissed off about that, so decides to just stay there in front of the oncoming train. Only to be dragged off the track by a man, a man who seems to know him and who seems familiar. The man is Carmichael, Murphy’s lately deceased partner, only he looks younger, fitter and healthier.

It appears Harry was stood in front of the “Southbound train” and that’s not somewhere he wanted to go. And so Carmichael takes him to headquarters to talk to the Captain. Harry is in the “Between” he’s not ready to move on so here he is in an empty “Could have been” Chicago, it’s not quite the Chicago that is, but all the possible buildings that could have existed, and it’s empty but has a strange feeling of danger to it.

When he talks to the Captain he discovers the other side cheated and his death wasn’t what it appeared, he has a choice, he can stay there in the between and work with them and what appears to be guardian angels, or he can try to move on and in order to move on he has to solve his murder, and if he can’t solve it 3 of his friends are in danger and could die. So of course Harry has to go back and help his friends, though will be a ghost, they won’t be able to see or hear him. He’s given a lift back to real Chicago, and given no one can see him, he chooses to go to the one place he knows he will be able to get help, Mortimer Lindquist, Ectomancer.

On his arrival Harry notices Mort’s house has changed since he last saw it. A much nicer place, less like a dressed up spooky place and a more calming and quiet place. Walking up to the house he’s stopped by a big ghost at the door, Sir Stuart of the Colonial Marines, he won’t let Harry pass without good reason, after a quick chat Harry convinces him to take him to Mort so he can talk, and once in the house Mort decides Harry is trouble and runs off and hides in a room, where Harry tries to run in and follow, and being Harry, runs smack in to a solid wall and falls on his arse. Mort it seems is smarter than Harry gives him credit for, he painted the wall of this room with Ghost Dust and made it impenetrable to ghosts. And just then an attack starts on the house. Wraiths are attacking Mort’s house, and Sir Stuart and his gang of soldier ghosts are protecting the house, from a distance Harry notices are the back there’s a grey cloaked ghost and a floating skull, looking a lot like Bob, but Harry being a newbie in the ghost stakes knows nothing of how to fight against these things, his magic won’t come to his command and he’s practically helpless.

So this is how things start with this Ghost Story. The main mystery of the story is Who Killed Harry Dresden? But the main thrust is Harry trying to do what he’s always done, only being stymied by not actually being able to do anything to effect the physical world. His usual tactic of kick in a door and throw fire around won’t do him any good, so he has to think round things and do put in to practice what he’s been telling Molly for the past few books. Of course, this is a Dresden book and there’s more than a little magic thrown around and more than a few stupid moves by Harry, as per usual.

As you’d expect a large part of the book focuses on ghosts and what they are, ghosts are build on the memories of the person, so we get a lot of backstory from Harry’s life, we finally hear the full story on what happened with Justin, Elaine and He Who Walks Behind. And it’s not quite what I imagined, but it fits what we already knew, and also gives us some interesting ideas to dwell on for the future. There’s some real insights for Harry here, in his own life, who he is and what he could be.

I guess at the start I was thrown a bit by the shift in style here, there’s some really dark stuff here. Not that The Dresden Files is a light series, and Changes was Dark but here is seems really hard, I loved it in the end, but it started out a difficult to take. Jim has taken a bat to Harry in the past, it seems now it’s time the other characters got in on the action, too. I doubt it’s going to get much lighter in the books ahead either, but it seemed harsh here for some reason.

That said I loved the book, as I do all books in the series, there’s plenty of the humour you expect in there to balance out the dark, there’s a lot of nice moments where you feel glad to be with these familiar characters again, but there’s also times that bring a lump to the throat or a heart breaking sadness at the tough decisions and hurt that is being dropped on them.

As always I recommend the series to any one. This book feels like it could be a jumping on point for new reads, as there’s a lot of explanation of the situation, the rules, the relationships and everything else governing the Dresdenverse, but I would really recommend anyone starts at the beginning and reads them all, even being a long haul it’s well worth it.

After 8 movies and a decade the adventure that is the Harry Potter movie franchise has come to a close. Fan or not the Harry Potter series has been huge, to the point of having topples Star Wars as the most profitable franchise ever. It’s fair to say that when Deathly Hallows was split in to 2 parts it felt like a cynical way to squeeze that much more profit out of a franchise that was ending. They had managed to fit the 6 other books in to a film a piece, even when they were long than Deathly Hallows. So was it justified?

Well at this point I’m going to assume everyone knows the story, at this point anyone who didn’t wouldn’t be seeing the film or interested in a review. So it seems have the makers of the film, for the past few films there’s been no attempt to gently introduce new viewer to the concept or the story, they simply get on with telling the story. No stops for exposition on what’s happened previously unless it’s actually relevant to the story. Picking up where Part 1 finished we start with a recap of the final scene, Voldemort is now in possession of the Elder Wand and is coming for Harry. If you were disappointed with the subdued pace of Part 1 then part 2 should rectify that for you, as with most of the Harry Potter stories most of the action is in the last third of the book, and this film is basically that last third. There’s big battle sequences, big effects set pieces, cameos from practically every actor who’s been in the series, emotional scenes that have left adults in tears. Basically this film really is the culmination of the entire decade. The scenes with Snape towards the end show why Alan Rickman was the perfect choice for Snape, brilliantly played through the entire series, it’s just a shame we don’t get to see more of him and though the regular background characters of the series don’t get a great deal of screentime in either part of Deathly Hallows it’s great to see some of the characters come in to their own.

The effects are very well done, and while the 3D conversion is one of the better ones I’ve seen and there occasional scene looks brilliant in 3D, the 3D is by no means a necessity and to be honest there are scenes where the effect doesn’t work well at all, and others where there’s an out of focus feel to the entire scene or a ghosted image of things too far in to the foreground or background. It also makes it have this dark, almost grey tinge to everything, which doesn’t do the already dark scenes in the film any favours.

Despite basically being a the second part of a 5 hour film there are still bits of the book missing or truncated. There’s no way they’d ever fit everything in, and some of it doesn’t really matter and of course if you only watch the films you wouldn’t notice their absence. But I heard people comment they were disappointed this or that wasn’t in the film, but personally I think the split paid off and we’ve ended up with a great end to the series with these 2 movies, it allowed them to fit in as much as possible, even if it was just a quick nod at the expanded version in the books. And if you’re even a casual fan I definitely recommend it. 3D definitely isn’t a necessity so don’t rush to spend the extra money if you don’t have to but it’s well worth the visit to the cinema.