Wednesday 30 May 2012

Rob Reviews: The Dictator



This is Sacha Baron Cohen’s fourth film in which he is the driving force behind its creation; the movies he’s had the greatest success with have been the one where he’s had the most creative control.  Before The Dictator there was Ali G Indahouse, Borat and Brüno. It was Borat which made Baron Cohen a superstar and earned him critical praise for his innocently misogynist, racist and homophobic Kazakh journalist. Brüno was similar in terms of controversy and praise. Both films follow a similar form; both are about reporters who travel to America to seek their dreams whilst the fictional characters encountering real life situations and people. The Dictator is a more conventional movie in the style of the Ali G film. Ali G Indahouse failed, and for many of the same reasons The Dictator fails too.

Admiral-General Aladeen (SBC) is the ruler of the fictional North African country Wadiya. He indulges in classic dictator behaviour and vices; he has armies of female bodyguards (Gaddafi), aspirations to head a nuclear state (Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-il, Saddam), and sits on some major fraction of the world’s oil supply (Ahmadinejad, Saddam, everyone in the Middle East who was kicked out by the Arab Spring.) Oh, and hands out death sentences like… Aladeen is manipulated into journeying to the U.S. to give a speech to the U.N., where he is kidnapped and supplanted by an Aladeen lookalike (SBC again). After managing to escape from his captors Aladeen ends up working in a communal store run by a passionate feminist (Anna Faris) whilst he tries to wrest back his dictatorship from the soon to be democratised Wadiya. 

One of the main draws of Borat and Brüno was its air of unpredictability and danger. Who knows what’s going to happen when a Kazakh reporter sings his national anthem in the tune of The Star Spangled Banner to a crowd of rednecks in Bible belt America? Who knows what’s going to happen when a gay Austrian fashion reporter tells the leader of the West Bank’s Al-aqsa’s Matyr Brigade that Bin Laden looks like a “homeless Santa”? The crudity of the jokes works well here because of the collision of opposites. When it’s a feature length movie without such instances Baron-Cohen loses his brilliance and niche. The same thing was lost in Ali G’s transition from interviews and sketches to a feature length film. The jokes in The Dictator are laborious and underwritten. Painful is a scene in a helicopter where references to 9/11 are made. The character of Aladeen is too much like Borat as well. Close your eyes during his exchanges with Anna Faris’ character and the accents of Borat and Aladeen are indistinguishable. Faris herself is given barely anything to work on; her character is just a butt of many of the script’s jokes. Ben Kingsley has even less.
It’s depressing how much the great comedian is off form here. What matters is not the controversy over its themes and ideas, but the movie’s quality. The Dictator is a dud.

Reviewed and Written by
-Rob Horsfield 

Monday 28 May 2012

Dango Soup 3: Sweet Rivals




Based off the MCM expo this weekend. Will have a more detailed blog post about the MCM expo soon but yeah, here is an MCM based Comic. The Sweet War between us and Eamon Standing (Creator of the Tallisman Rogue and Jefferson Pugley series). 

Check out his site here http://www.tallismanrogue.com/

Thursday 24 May 2012

Dango Soup 2: Writerism

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Excited for the expo tomorrow, So thought I'd come out with another one of these. I think I might be doing these regularly.... Though don't expect a set time for them, will probably do them when I feel like it.

The only religion that is true in stories... Writerism.

And guys... Remember to check me out this weekend at the Expo... Look for the table with the Ajiey Media posters hanging off of it, or the table with the SHITLOAD of Fantasy World copies.

Tuesday 22 May 2012

Dango Soup: Pg1

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Ever wondered where I got the small characters with the straight eyes from? Well this webcomic explains where the original idea... originated. The Dango Daikazoku theme from Clannad (Still one of my favourite songs to this date), It's such a cute and simple theme with a relaxing-ish melody... I decided to try doing Dango-ish character of me... Back when this was just a blog for myself. As more people started joining me I ended up doing Dango characters for them to keep in with the theme.

P.s was also where I got the idea for the the Ajiey Theme

Sunday 20 May 2012

Ajiey Media at the MCM expo

Yes that's right... As the title says, we have a table at the MCM Expo on the 25th, 26th and 27th of May (Next Week). I will be there selling copies of Fantasy World primarily along with giving out these leaflets and promoting Ajiey Media as a whole.
And yes... Now that I've finished my exams for the year and the second year of university over all, I will be focusing more on writing and Ajiey Media as a whole and have quite a few things planned for this summer.

So MAKE SURE you check out the Ajiey Media table this weekend at the MCM Expo... We will be somewhere in the Comic Village section of the expo... so if you're coming down make sure to check us out. Check out the Expo page HERE



Friday 18 May 2012

Supers - We need you!

"In a world of Supers... You're just another number!"
Though we have postponed this for quite a while due to circumstances we finally want to get on with creating this webcomic.

Join Blaze, The Brute and Crow and others as they try to get on with their normal lives in London while a majority of the population has new found powers. Not much has changed...well... apart from a few groups of superhero and villain wannabes sprouting up, a new government tax on all those with Superpowers, a new... super powered police force that doesn't seem to know about the word restraint let alone use it, along with much more.

HOW can you help?
       If you wish to join in on the Supers webcomic you can donate to help us raise funds and receive unique perks along with your name in the contributors credits and even a Super character of your own to appear in the webcomic. If you wish to help raise funds go to this site and donate to and view the Unique perks. 

Supers © Copyright Ajiey Media

Thursday 3 May 2012

Avengers Review!

At first I was sceptical even though everybody I knew was telling me how amazing the movie was.

I seem to remember a similar situation last year where everyone was going on about the Xmen: First Class movie and when I saw that movie I was terribly disappointed! 

 

But I might get onto that in another post. So I had low hopes for the movie going in, however I kept an open mind as I usually do when going to see movies. The movie started off well and continued getting better as it went along. 
The Plot was very basic however "Evil Villain threatens the world, group of heroes join up to beat him" though everything else was great. The movie had enough jokes to be classified as a comedy and most of which had the cinema roaring in laughter... Especially a certain scene towards the end involving Hulk and Loki. The characters and character development was another thing I also liked. Previously hating Iron Man (Never watched the movies as the Iron Man cartoon I watched when I was a kid was awful, never really gave him a chance after that), after I saw the Avengers he become one of my favourite heroes... I even had to go back and watch both the Iron Man movies to get a better foundation on his back story.
Though the movie did have a very simple plot, how the plot was played out was really good I find, as along with their fight against their enemy there are also tensions growing between the heroes which adds quite a lot to the story and makes out for some very funny situations.

Overall I'd give it a solid 8.5 out of 10 it's been the best movie I've seen for a very long time and would say it's a must watch! Its 3D effects are also done quite well if you don't mind paying the extra money. OH and definitely wait until the end of the credits there's something extra you might want to see.

P.S
The Angel X sample on kindle has gone down to 77p (The lowest Kindle allows it to go so get a copy now)


Tuesday 1 May 2012

Ajiey Blog: Shaman King - New Manga Series!!

Shaman King is one of those shows I grew up watching, similar to DragonballZ and One Piece. I remember the first time I watched it... I was watching Fox Kids / Jetix and waiting for the show SonicX to premiere on the channel, which was coincidently premiering the same day as Shaman King. And it was one of them “Love at first sight” feelings, though I was a kid at the time.
The opening hooked me to the series, and the theme was… to this day something I still love. Partnering with ghosts and imbuing them into yourself/ weapons. Plus I really liked the story as well, with this mysterious kid and tournament that took place every 500 years. I have to commend Takei Hiroyuki on the idea and it ran quite well. It’s not until half way through the series/ 30 chapters in the manga that the main antagonist shows up and you find out what this is really about!

Eventually I finished the series and a few years later decided to revisit it as I heard the Manga is completely different to the Series (Which it is). It was a great 300 chapters… until the very end, which wasn’t really climactic. Yet was kind of realistic with the way they hyped up the antagonist (Yes it’s one of those where they make the antagonist seem god-like). But even though the ending was… meh… and I had quite a few complaints about the story and manga. But overall I enjoyed it.

This week a new series of Shaman King came out called Shaman King: Flowers which is set around 15ish years after the Shaman tournament and focuses on Yoh Asakura’s son Hana Asakura and from the first chapter it does look to be quite interesting.  I have high hopes for this series and have needed a good new manga to be excited about. Recently only Naruto and One Piece have really been doing it for me. There used to be a time when I had a whole battalion of manga that I used to read and now it’s fleshed down to Naruto, One Piece and Bleach (The BIG 3). I might need to catch up on Hitman Reborn and Fairy Tail when they get good again; as they lost my interest a while back.

 But yeah I’ve ranted on enough.  

Here is the link for the new Shaman King flowers manga.

 


P.s Ajiey Media has quite a lot of content planned for the near future. Well I always say that maybe not the immediate future but the near future definately. As you know I've been working on quite a few things including the Dystopia Universe with my friend Darasimi... I'm not gonna give you too much info on that. Along with some weekly content and a few more additions to the Ajiey Media team. P.s and maybe even a Fantasy World: Chapter two.... Who knows, wait and find out!