With the average life expectancy for men in the UK being approximately 70….at 35, it’s time to have my midlife crisis.
Some men, by a flash car, or start dating somebody half their age…..not me….I bought a Stormtrooper outfit.
Just a little bit of history. Myself and Antony (my co-host on the ScutterCast podcast) have talked for a while about how cool it would be to have a stormtrooper outfit….well today, that became reality.
The suites themselves are supplied by the company that supplies Jedi Robe, however due to collecting and buying 2 at once, we got a fantastic discount.
With the company not keeping boots in stock (due to the fact they would have to keep in multiple sizes), we bought them from an American company and had them shipped over. The company is called TK Boots, and again we got a huge discount for getting 2 pairs at once. The shoes are sold as “Disco shoes” and TK Boots are very careful not to mention anything Star Wars related…(I’m assuming this is to do with copyright reason) however if you read between the lines….you know what your buying
It’s been almost 30 years since the classic white ankle high boot has been seen on the dance floors of this planet. White boot mania has returned!
We did look at buying some official boots from CABoots, however they were out of stock, and didn’t look to get any until the end of the year. We then looked on eBay for some, but only found the “Elvis Style boot”, which were fine, but would be rejected if we decided to sign up for a garrison.
Below are the unboxing photo’s…..Why isn’t there one with me in the suite I hear you ask ?!?….Simple, it’s too bloody warm. I got as far as putting on the body sock and got far too warm, I’ll got back to it once it’s cooled down later tonight.
edit 18/07/2010
I wasn’t happy having it stuck together with just velcro, it just seemed a little too loose, so decided to go with the glue gun and rivet gun approach. It took me around 7 hours yesterday to remove all the velcro, trim the suit to size, but I’m now really happy with the fit.
Well, I’m honored to say, that I have finally seen the one of my most anticipated films of this year. This film is brought to you by the guys over at the Suckcast podcast. Just a little history before we start on the film, I was made aware of the Suckcast podcast when they tweeted the RedDwarfForum twitter account saying they were liking the ScutterCast podcast, back then we were getting quite a lot of flak due to poor editing, poor preparation, and just generally doing a poor podcast. I initially assumed that it was somebody else taking the piss out of us, especially with the name of Suckcast, and our podcast being called Scuttercast (there was method in my madness).
After doing a little bit of googling, I found that they also did a podcast, named “The Suckcast“, and decided to give it a listen, What a podcast !….I’ve downloaded every episode since and each episode makes me laugh out loud, a number of times.
The podcasts hosts are Man Guy (Dan Guy), The Herman (William Stendeback) and Cory (Cory Eskkridge Okouchi), each week they discuss their week, and discuss a movie they have watched that week and just generally have a laugh while doing it, you can tell by their synergy, they enjoy each others company, and enjoy doing the podcast.
At the beginning and end of each podcast they mention their sponsors, Ninjas Vs Zombies. Again after a little googling, I found that the movie is their own baby ! How awesome !, unfortunately they are still waiting for a publisher to take them on, so the chances of me ever getting to see their creation was starting to look bleak. Out of the blue a couple of episodes ago, Cory said that if anybody wanted a copy of the movie, to email in and he’s try to sort something out, so obviously I emailed in.
Anyway that’s the back story out of the way, now lets get to the film itself !
Is this film going to win any Oscars ? Nope.
Does this film have mindblowing visuals that make Avatar look like the first episode of the Simpsons ? Nope.
Does this film have martial arts that would show Bruce Lee a thing or two ? Nope.
Is this a fun, easy watching, laddish film ? Hell Yeah !!!
How do I know ? Because my other half sat playing on her Blackberry all the way through it, asking how long it had left, because she was bored
The basic movie plot is that Randall (Dan Guy), is interrupted while attempting to bring his brother Eric (PJ Megaw) back from the dead by Herman (William Stendeback), who is banging on the comic book stores (assume that Randall works their), as he’s want to play their weekly game of Dungeons and Dragons. This results in a botched resurrection that does brings back his brother, however he suck the souls of the living to survive. Each person he sucks a soul from, turns into a flesh eating zombie.
As the film goes on, Eric gets a taste for the soul sucking, hence resulting in an army of flesh eating zombie terrorizing the neighbourhood. With no way, and no hope of defeating Eric and the zombies, Cole (Cory Eskridge Okouchi), Kyle (Daniel Ross), Fitz (Daniel Mascarello), and Randell are granted super ninja powers to help defeat Eric, and rid the world of the zombies.
From this point on, (and without spoiling the film for anyone) it’s essentially a fight between Ninjas and Zombie !
So how was it ?…well it was a fun movie, when I initially saw the trailer, the first thing that came to my head was one of Peter Jacksons first films “Bad Taste“, an overly gory film with just so much heart and soul, it’s one of those films you just don’t get bored of. I’m glad to say that Ninjas Vs Zombies didn’t disappoint, the film had a decent story, decent acting, and to be honest really good special effects as this seems to have been made on a shoe string budget. The “soul sucking” scenes, and the fireballs that Randell can conjure really wouldn’t look out of place in a Hollywood blockbuster !
Was the film predictable ?…well it was a good guys vs bad guy film, and there are very few where the good guys lose
I have to say, the homages to the great films out there were amazing, it felt like a little game after a while, every few minutes I was turning to the missus and saying “ooooo, look, that’s the Turtles”, or one of the other films they paid homage too. I’m not 100%, but I seem to remember thinking a lot of the fighting moves were either from Mortal Kombat, or Street Fighter…I may be totally wrong, but that what they reminded me of.
Did it have any nudity ?…Yeah, but only for a split second, if anybody has listened to the Suckcast, you’ll know why I was a little shocked to only see a split second of nudity
Would I watch it again ? Already have, and it gets more enjoyable with each watch, it’s going to be one of “those films” I think ?
Would I have changed anything ? No, not really, there were a few points in the film where the comedy timing was a little out, apart from that much fighting, much gore, loved it.
All in all a great movie, if your looking for Hollywood blockbuster, with great depth and millions of pounds of special effects, then this movie isn’t for you, if you are looking for a low budget, gory, fun moving, then this is the film for you.
I think the current score on IMDB of 6.7/10 is totally justified, I just hope a publisher takes them on, so the rest of the world can see this great movie.
Over the post 6 months or so, I’ve become heavly involved with recording audio for a number of projects we work on, over at Fictionshed. If you listen back to the earlier podcasts (Fictioncasts), you’ll here me say, that you don’t need any specialised equiptment to record your voice, and a standard PC, with cheap mic will do…..the rest of this post will be me eating my words.
Due to getting a not the quality I wanted from the cheap headphone/mic combination, Tony kindly lent me a mixer and a couple of mics. This did improve the quality, however gave me some hard background noise.
In January, and with the ScutterCast in mind, I decided to splash out and get myself a MacBook Pro, as this was the only way I could find to do an enhanced podcast. The sound quality with the MacBook was a massive improvement, however the internal mic gave me a “roomy” type sound to my voice, which has been ok, however I needed something a little more direct.
After weeks of looking at the Samson C01U, the SL300 USB Studio Microphone and even the Samson G-Track, however Tony suggested I get the same as him, which was the M-Audio Fast Track Pro, as I already had the mic
Well Friday it finally turned up, and due to spending my Friday evening editing together the latest ScutterCast, I’ve only had chance to get to play with it today.
All I can say, is this thing is MINT ! It’s exactly the sound I’ve been wanting, it’s crisp, it’s clean, and NO background noise !
I now feel I’m set up to record the machinima project, this will also mean a lot less editing on the ScutterCasts, as I usually spend an age increasing the volume on my voice.
