Film Review – Epic (U)

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adventure, Amanda Seyfried, animation, Beyonce Knowles, Blue Sky Studios, Christoph Waltz, Colin Farrell, Epic, fantasy, Josh Hutcherson, The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs, William Joyce

Relative newbies to the animation game, Blue Sky Studios have long shown unfulfilled potential. Their Ice Age series managed to capture people’s hearts without ever producing a truly acclaimed film. Their best film to date, Horton Hears a Who! benefited from the talents of a literary creative. Epic, an adaptation of William Joyce’s The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs, is their most ambitious project to date. Is this the moment the Connecticut-based outfit arrives as an animation studio to be reckoned with?

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Game Review – Fire Emblem: Awakening (3DS)

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3DS, Chrom, fantasy, Fire Emblem, Fire Emblem Awakening, Intelligent Systems, Nintendo, Strategy RPG, War

What do the two best handheld games ever made have in common?

Book Review – Raven’s Gate (Anthony Horowitz)

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Anthony Horowitz, fantasy, Mystery, Raven's Gate, The Power of Five

Fourteen-year-old Matt, an orphan with strange abilities who is constantly getting into trouble, is sent to live with a foster parent in a remote Yorkshire village after being involved in a violent crime. His new guardian, Mrs Deverill, seems to be hiding something sinister and the village and all its inhabitants are creepy as hell. Matt tries to escape but somehow can’t get away and everyone who tries to help him seems to end up dead.

Film Review – Jack the Giant Slayer (12A)

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adventure, Bill Nighy, Bryan Singer, Eddie Marsan, Eleanor Tomlinson, Ewan Bremner, Ewan McGregor, fantasy, Ian McShane, Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack the Giant Slayer, Nicholas Hoult, Stanley Tucci, Warwick Davis

Jack (Nicholas Hoult) is a farm boy in the Kingdom of Albion who loses himself in adventure stories to escape his humdrum existence but when a chance encounter with a monk sees him trading his horse for some bean-like ancient relics and the kingdom’s princess shelters from a storm in his house adventure comes to him. Legend speaks of a land above populated by giants defeated in battle long ago by Eric the Great. When one of the ‘relics’ Jack receives sprouts a mighty beanstalk that lifts his house and the princess skywards, Jack volunteers to join a rescue party to save her.

Top Ten Skies of Arcadia Tunes

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adventure, Dreamcast, fantasy, Gamecube, Sega, Skies of Arcadia, Skies of Arcadia: Legends, Steampunk

Sometimes when a review for a game (or whatever) that really means something to me comes along it seems that just a review isn’t enough. I talked at some length in my recent love-letter to Skies of Arcadia: Legends about the soundtrack and how much it enriches the game with its innumerable mood-setting melodies. It seems only fitting now that I take a moment to really honour the game’s wonderful soundtrack with a good top ten. So here are my ten favourite individual tunes from the OST. Any one of these conjures feelings of pure escapism and adventure one way or another and they are all tunes I could happily listen to just for themselves. As usual with this type of Top Ten there’s no waffle from me. I’ll let the music explain itself.

Film Review – Oz: The Great and Powerful (PG)

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adventure, fantasy, James Franco, Joey King, L Frank Baum, Michelle Williams, Mila Kunis, Oz, Oz: The Great and Powerful, Rachel Weisz, Sam Raimi, The Wizard of Oz, Zach Braff

Creating what is, essentially, a prequel to one of the best-loved films of all time must be a thankless task but in the case of Sam Raimi’s Oz: The Great and Powerful, not only did the film-makers have to face the potential for fan backlash, they had to do it whilst constrained by copyright. Warner Bros. still own the rights to everything in the classic 1939 film so Disney’s new movie was not allowed to borrow any ideas it came up with that weren’t taken directly from L. Frank Baum’s source novels. This even extends to the exact shade of green of the wicked witch’s skin. How do you appeal to people’s fondest memories when invoking them is legally taboo?

Game Review – Skies of Arcadia: Legends (GC)

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adventure, Aika, Drachma, Dreamcast, Enrique, Eternal Arcadia, fantasy, Fina, Galcian, Gamecube, Gilder, Nintendo, Overworks, Ramirez, RPG, Sega, Skies of Arcadia, Skies of Arcadia: Legends, Steampunk, Vyse

As long as there are dreamers with the courage to pursue their dreams, the world will have heroes.

Book Review – How to Train Your Dragon (Cressida Cowell)

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comedy, Cressida Cowell, fantasy, How to Train Your Dragon

I’m getting the feeling that reading books that served as inspiration for animated feature films might become a habit of mine. Just a few weeks ago I reviewed Neil Gaiman’s Coraline which inspired my number one film of all time. Now it’s the turn of How to Train Your Dragon which was adapted by Dreamworks into possibly their best animated feature to date. Cressida Cowell’s original novel, the first in a pretty lengthy series, is only passably similar to the frankly superior movie it spawned.

Film Review – Wreck-It Ralph (PG)

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adventure, animation, Calhoun, comedy, Disney, fantasy, Fix-It Felix Jr, Hero's Duty, Jack McBrayer, Jane Lynch, John C Reilly, Mortal Kombat, Rich Moore, Sarah Silverman, Sonic the Hedgehog, Street Fighter, Sugar Rush, Vanellope von Schweets, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Wreck-it Ralph

My two favourite things together at last.

Book Review – The Snow Merchant (Sam Gayton)

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adventure, fantasy, Lettie Peppercorn, Sam Gayton, The Snow Merchant

Lettie Peppercorn is the twelve-year-old landlady of an inn on stilts. A note from her alchemy-practicing mother, who left a decade ago, warns her that if she leaves her home she could die. Confined to the inn with only a pigeon and a pair of demanding and belligerent old crones while the contents of the house slowly disappear to pay for her worthless father’s gambling debts, Lettie faces a pretty miserable existence. Then one day a rude man arrives to sell her something he claims to have invented, something called snow.

Book Review – Coraline (Neil Gaiman)

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Coraline, fantasy, horror, Neil Gaiman

Not Caroline, Coraline.

Film Review – The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (12A)

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adventure, Bilbo Baggins, Cate Blanchett, Christopher Lee, fantasy, Gandalf, Hugo Weaving, Ian McKellan, J.R.R. Tolkien, James Nesbitt, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Sylvester McCoy, The Hobbit, The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey, Thorin Oakenshield

In a hole in the ground there lived a wonderful film.

Book Review: The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien

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adventure, Bilbo Baggins, fantasy, Gandalf, Gollum, J.R.R. Tolkien, Smaug, The Hobbit, Thorin Oakenshield

In a hole in the ground there lived a children’s classic.

Game Review: Kid Icarus Uprising (3DS)

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3DS, action, fantasy, Kid Icarus, Kid Icarus Uprising, Masahiro Sakurai, Medusa, Nintendo, Palutena, Pit, Project Sora

“Sorry to keep you waiting!” Those are the words angelic hero Pit greeted us with at the moment of the first ever 3DS game announcement.  It was an appropriate thing to say on many levels. Think the wait for Duke Nukem Forever was drawn out? A full two decades, an eternity in the video game industry, separated Kid Icarus Uprising from the previous game in the series, the Game Boy game Of Myths and Monsters. In fact we would have to wait another two years after Pit’s apology to play his new title. So here comes the obvious question; was it worth the wait?

Game Review: Pandora’s Tower (Wii)

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action, fantasy, Ganbarion, Nintendo, Pandora's Tower, Wii

Rounding out an interesting trilogy of Japanese games that formed the focus of Operation Rainfall’s localisation campaign is Pandora’s Tower, a dark fantasy action title with mild RPG elements. After the excellent The Last Story and the genre-defining Xenoblade Chronicles this game from Ganbarion feels like the underdog and arrives very late in the day in the UK with North American gamers still waiting, probably indefinitely, for its confirmation. The Wii U is mere days away and its predecessor has been limping along on its last legs for some time now but any Wii owners looking for a fix from their little white box before the new arrival might consider giving this game a go.

Film Review: ParaNorman (PG)

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animation, Anna Kendrick, Bernard Hill, Casey Affleck, Chris Butler, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, comedy, fantasy, horror, Jeff Garlin, Jodelle Ferland, John Goodman, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Laika, Leslie Mann, Norman Babcock, ParaNorman, Sam Fell, Stop Motion, Tucker Albrizzi

Can the makers of the masterpiece Coraline repeat their genius three years on without Henry Selick?

Book Review: Marlfox – Brian Jacques

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adventure, Brian Jacques, Dannflor Reguba, fantasy, Lady Cregga Rose Eyes, Marlfox, Redwall, Songbreeze Swifteye

Twenty-one down, one to go. It’s been a long road but the end is finally in sight. I have now read every Tale of Redwall with the exception of The Rogue Crew, the last work Brian Jacques published before he died last year. Before I commence on the final leg of my two year Redwall marathon there is the matter of my verdict on Marlfox, the eleventh book published and the last I read as a kid. Of all the books in the series this one proved the most useful in the debate over old Jacques against new. Of all the books in the series I had read before this was the one about which I could remember the least, including how much I like it and I approached it this time without any rose-tinted spectacles. So does Marlfox stand up next to the old classics or is it more of a match for the lesser later titles?

Game Review: The Legend of Zelda – Spirit Tracks (DS)

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adventure, Chancellor Cole, DS, fantasy, Link, Malladus, Nintendo, The Legend of Zelda, The Legend of Zelda - Spirit Tracks, Zelda

I have a theory about escapist storytelling; trains make everything better. The evidence is present in everything from Paper Mario – The Thousand-Year Door to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. There’s just a romance about old locomotives chuffing their way through breath-taking landscape that elevates the sense of adventure and transports the reader/viewer/player just as effectively as the passengers. Nintendo evidently feels the same as evidenced by The Legend of Zelda – Spirit Tracks, a DS follow-up to Phantom Hourglass built around the romance of trains.

Film Review: Brave (PG)

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adventure, animation, Billy Connolly, Brave, Disney, Emma Thompson, fantasy, John Ratzenburger, Julie Walters, Kelly McDonald, Merida, pixar, Robbie Coltrane

The studio that has dominated CG animation for over fifteen years offers up their biggest challenge to Disney’s supremacy yet.

Book Review: The Sable Quean – Brian Jacques

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adventure, Brian Jacques, Buckler Kordyne, fantasy, Redwall, The Sable Quean, Zwilt the Shade

Does nostalgia cloud critical thought? Is a beloved creation from one’s childhood always at a massive advantage next to something more recent? The answer to these questions is almost certainly ‘yes’ but it might not always be that simple. I’ve now reviewed ten of the eleven Tales of Redwall I first read in my youth and this review covers the tenth of the eleven books in the series I am reading for the first time. There can be no question that the former ten have, on average, enjoyed more of my praise than the latter. Am I just revisiting Brian Jacques’ earlier work wearing rose tinted spectacles or did the quality of his books really drop off over time? I think the answer is probably both. Maintaining the extremely high benchmark of quality laid by books like Redwall and Mattimeo for over twenty publications is a big ask. And while there have been plenty of lesser titles like Triss and Loamhedge there is also High Rhulain and Eulalia!. And there is The Sable Quean.