Review: Star Wars: The Clone Wars

January 1st, 2009

The Clone Wars has been greeted by a massive outporing of dislike from critics and Star Wars fans alike. Not since Star Wars: The One With Jar Jar Binks In It (aka Episode I) has there been such a negative reaction to a Star Wars movie.

The one thing you’re probably already aware of is the fact that it is not a live action movie but an animated one. The style is something between a conventional cartoon and the more realistic CGI of Pixar et al. From the stills that I saw online prior to getting this DVD, I thought that it would really annoy me. The characters looked weird indeed. However when you actually see it in motion the CGI isn’t nearly as disconcerting as that. In fact, it’s actually growing on me.

The plot, it has to be said, is fairly weak. It is essentially just a by-the-numbers attempt at fitting all the desired elements (opening space battle, ground battle, air assault, lightsaber duel, end of film) into the hour and forty minute running time. This only strengthens the hand of those who claim that TCW is really just an extended opening episode for the new TV series. In a TV episode, a plot which only serves as a means of connecting different action sequences is largely acceptable, because the more involved plot is handed out in small helpings throughout the series to come to a climax in the final few. TCW, being a one off film, doesn’t have that advantage and is left looking a bit weak in the story department.

The only significant new character, Ahsoka Tano, is done quite well. Aside from the times when she calls Skywalker “sky guy” (which is wooden and forced to a greater degree than any of the scenes fans love to hate in the Prequel Trilogy). You may at this point be thinking that my mention of Jar Jar Binks was just the typical Star Wars fan’s swipe in The Phantom Menace’s direction, but there was a point to it. As unlikely as it may seem, TCW has actually managed to come up with a character even more irritating than Jar Jar. Ziro the Hutt is Jabba’s ‘uncle’ - at least that’s what the characters say. Evidently nobody told the production team, as the Ziro actually put into the film is female. Why nobody at Lucasfilm noticed this slight (!) discrepancy before the release is quite beyond me. Let me make it quite clear, however, that as an irritant Jar Jar is pollen to Ziro’s sulphuric acid. I cannot begin to explain just how utterly infuriating it is to have Ziro on the screen. Jar Jar at least managed to be funny from time to time - Ziro is more grating and less funny.

Now on to the central issue: the action. This is, on the whole, excellent. My one concern is that some of the lightsaber action (mostly the first duel) is animated in a very jerky, stunted way. This is obviously supposed to give the impression of a frantic, desperate duel but doesn’t really work. When the animators stick to emulating the lightsaber fights of the Prequel Trilogy, all is well. The conventional battle sequences are very well done indeed. Furthermore, because all of the participants (clones, droids, and starships) were done as CGI in the live action prequel trilogy, they look more or less identical in TCW.

Overall then, TCW doesn’t have the plot strength to compete with the live action films. It isn’t as good as it could have been. Nor, however, is it the cinematic carbuncle that the critics and hardcore fans will have you believe.

Rating: ★★★½☆

Happy New Year

January 1st, 2009

Well, that’s that. Whether 2008 for you was a good year, or a completely fucking shit year that needs to be burned with fire, it’s all over with now. I’m stuck watching talentless has-beens (or, more accurate, never-have-beens) on the BBC’s sheepmolesting-and-shortbread New Year show, or the alternative of shopping channels still attempting to sell something called a PocketSurfer 2 despite the fact that (even with such channels’ practice of not giving any spec for IT stuff) it is clearly utter crap. Ah well, Vicar of Dibley will have to do - at least it doesn’t have Leon Jackson in it.

Merry Christmas

December 25th, 2008

I would love to write something astonishingly witty on here, but having a heavy cold and very little sleep (the latter closely related to the former) I can’t. Hope everyone has had (or is having, depending on timezone!) a fantastic Christmas.

Using IE could be seriously bad for your wealth [UPDATE: Fixed]

December 16th, 2008

UPDATE: It’s only fair to point out that Microsoft have fixed this particular problem. Of course, it’s still a good idea to use something other than IE, but it’s no longer critical for security reasons. At least until next time ;P

Smug geek types have known for years that using Microsoft Internet Explorer is a thoroughly daft thing to do. Now it seems that the ‘experts’ agree. A critical security flaw (yes, another one) has been found in IE, and predictably malicious hackers have worked out how to exploit it before Microsoft have bothered to fix it. Essentially, using IE at the moment puts you at risk of identity theft, credit card fraud, and death by exploding hamster. Well, the last one is pretty unlikely unless you’re still on IE6 :p

The ‘expert’ advice (again, not anything geeks haven’t been saying for five years plus) is to immediately stop using Internet Explorer, in favour of one of its not-completely-buggered rivals. Since this only affects Windows users, I’ve put in links to Windows, English-language downloads of the various browsers. These are download page links rather than direct links to the files, so they should still give you the latest version regardless of how many months later you’re reading this.

  • Google Chrome. As the name suggests, Google’s attempt at a web browser. At the moment it seems to be the fastest around. It is also probably the best option for temporary switchers from IE - its interface is quite similar to the default one in IE7, and it doesn’t have any of the extraneous features (e.g. Opera’s email client, Firefox’s extensions) you won’t want. Any privacy concerns (not really any greater than the “Customer Experience Improvement” on IE or “Talkback” on Firefox) can be resolved by unticking everything in the “web services” options once you’ve installed it.
  • Firefox. Probably the only one on this list you’ve heard of. However, recent versions have introduced memory bloat and instability with the result that choosing Firefox as your browser is no longer the no-brainer it once was. Plus, if you’re only switching for a brief amount of time (well, since this is a Microsoft patch we’re talking about maybe not too brief!) you’re unlikely to get any benefit from Extensions anyway.
  • Opera - reasonably fast, but the interface is a bit annoying and it includes lots of stuff you probably don’t want like an email client (it’s horrible, stick with Thunderbird, Outlook, or your webmail) and a widgets engine (if you’re on Windows XP, just install the Yahoo or Google widgets).
  • Safari. Apple’s browser. Good performance, but it shares iTunes’ horrible grey-metal theme that looks like Hammerite paint.
  • Webkit. Lightweight open-source browser engine that is used as the basis for Chrome and Safari. For techies only.

Make Wikipedia free again with Adblock Plus

November 19th, 2008

‘Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit’

As you’ve undoubtedly noticed, Wikipedia’s annual two month donation drive started a couple of weeks ago. This is accompanied, as usual, by an abusive ad banner which, as usual, is bigger than last year’s.

Why abusive? First of all, the thing is huge. This is especially significant on lower resolution devices - it takes up about a third of the screen on my EeePC, I shudder to think what iPhone users are going through.

Secondly, there is no option to remove the banner [EDIT: Unless you're a registered user who is logged in, see below]. Clicking ‘collapse’ simply displays a smaller one. If this were desktop software, it would be classed as adware - the inability for the user to remove obtrusive graphical ads is considered unacceptable in desktop software. Even on the web it died out in about 2001. Or perhaps I’ve been given mind-altering drugs and I’ve actually been contributing to GeoCities for the past four years rather than a communal encyclopedia.

Luckily for those of us using Firefox and the Adblock Plus extension, help is at hand. Simply stick the following into ‘Add Filter’ in ABP:

wikipedia.org#div(id=siteNotice)

[EDIT: As a couple of commenters have pointed out, this is case sensitive (I transcribed it from my Adblock Settings wrongly the first time)]

Credit for this goes to the Adblock Forums.

The wider question, though, is how much damage this will do to Wikipedia as a project. Most ordinary users don’t mind unobtrusive ads on webpages. Wikipedia’s ad banners, however, are far more intrusive than Google AdWords. If an ordinary, IE-using web surfer comes across Wikipedia in the next couple of months, they might well assume that Wikipedia has been bought over and is now profit-making. For the record, NEITHER HAS HAPPENED although one commenter suggests that there’s a professional fundraising organisations involved in these shenanigans. Abusive advertising is one of the reasons people came to Wikipedia from ‘freeware’ websites in the first place - these unacceptable ad campaigns (the banners for which get bigger every year) are the biggest threat to the project’s continued growth.

UPDATE: It appears that on enwikipedia there is an option to disable the advert in your user preferences (go to Gadgets, and it is ‘Suppress display of fundraising banner’ under ‘Browsing gadgets’). Cheers to Bduke for pointing that out