Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

Whilst it was a good enough way to spend an evening, this recent Underworld offering was a little disappointing. Taking a massive detour away from the other two films in the series it's set in an undisclosed medieval time period, amongst a coven of vampires who discover the first lycans (werewolves with the ability to transform back into a human form) and use them as slaves.

The first lycan, Lucius, falls in love with the daughter of a vampire elder - And the story revolves around Lucius escaping, freeing the other lycans and is topped off by a rather tragic end.

Stop me if this sounds a bit familiar.

The reason it might is because the flashbacks present in the first two films (second two?) show exactly the same era and, in the case of the first one, the exact same story. However; these flash backs last seconds. Rise of the Lycans lasts 90 minutes.

Rise of the Lycans, whilst entertaining, feels stretched out - With no new ground covered and little new character development. The centre of the story - the romance between Lucius and Sonya - isn't really touched upon apart from what has come to be known to Jo as "that scene", so you don't really feel much pain for Lucius at the ending.

Bill Nighy is his usual outstanding self, and to say the guy's getting on a little managed to perform several exceedingly good fight scenes.

Plus his character survives being stabbed in the mouth by a longsword.

Viktor is freakin' tough.

Webcomic Ideas

So, Matthew and I were discussing ideas for a web comic last night whilst he was playing Team Fortress and I was watching some godawful 1980's ninja movie.

• There will be ninjas
• It will be in space
• One character will be a beautiful, gamer, ninja robot.
• This robot will be insanely naive
  
• Did I mention space?
• It will be somehow set in Japan, also.
  
• The main character will be a geeky gamer who constantly beats on himself due to his social insecurities and/or will be retarded.
• He will have a sarcastic best friend.

So... Pretty much some strange cross between Ctrl Alt Del and Megatokyo. But in space.

Cha-ching!

Classroom Observation

After deciding to take a PGCE and aim at becoming The Best Teacher In The World I found that I was strongly advised to have at least two days of classroom observation before I applied.

Hm.

So, after e-mailing Shelley College and getting a phone call back I'm going to be heading along in late March to hang around the back of a biology classroom, looking at the students there and how the teacher handles them.

I'm looking forward to it a lot, which is surprising given my usual reluctance to speak publicly. I'm taking that as a good sign that I might make a pretty good purveyor of knowledge, if not The Best Teacher In The World.

New Blog For the New Year

Ta-da.

Ok, that's it. Clear off until the next update.