(Photo copyright Rob Wilkins) It was a genuine shock when I turned on my phone to check the news and saw that Sir Terry Pratchett had passed away. Even though the diagnosis of a rare form of Alzheimer’s disease was widely known, his passing was completely unexpected and he was…
Last year was the 25th anniversary of Empire magazine, which is an impressive achievement for a print magazine these days. I picked up issue 301 (not the 300th; that would have been too obvious) to take a stroll down memory lane, because I haven’t subscribed to the magazine in many…
Created by Platinum Games The Wonderful 101 is a difficult game to review because it’s an original idea that makes excellent use of the Wii U but is frustrating to play initially, both in the way you move through the game with the characters and in the mechanics by which…
Although I’ve only written about the first Lego Harry Potter game, I have thoroughly enjoyed nearly all the Lego games. All three Lego Star Wars are great, both Lego Indiana Jones are very enjoyable, the second Lego Harry Potter game is expansive (if not as ‘fun’ as the first, what…
I saw The Hunger Games in the cinema – it was enjoyable, with an interesting setting and characters and some social commentary, and certainly a lot better than Twilight – but it got me thinking about the success of film adaptations of best-selling genre book series. The sequel to The…
When I started this sporadic blog back in January 2005, comic book bloggers preferred unusual names for their blogs instead of using their actual names (in contrast to today when the advice is to own your domain name so that you can control your brand). I’m not sure why this…
People want to feel attached to a ‘historic’ moment in their lifetime. I wanted nothing to do with it, and this is my reminder of that day. Friday morning was wonderfully quiet in the suburbs of London. Instead of being one of the idiots who had camped out the night…
Mark Kermode recently captured his thoughts on film piracy in his Uncut blog, which boiled down to his view that piracy will stopped by simultaneous distribution (releasing a film in cinemas, streaming online and on DVD on the same date). I think that Kermode is coming from a naïve and…
In which I pontificate about the major categories at the 83rd Academy Awards because I'm a blogger and that's what we do. (Yes, I can still call myself a blogger, even though I haven't blogged in nearly two months.) Even though I won't be able to watch the actual event,…
I was going to do another in my series of Comic Book Artists, where I post some great images sourced from the web from artists whose work I admire and talk about their career and try to discuss what I like about their work. However, Blogger is having some issues…