When someone mentions an Indian takeaway in the UK, I tend to imagine greasily mouth-watering side dishes, rich sauces and aromatically pleasing rice. As is the case however with proportion of other similarly popular takeaways in the UK such as Pizza, Fish 'n' Chips and Chinese takeaways, some Indian takeaways can sometimes fall under the category of many such takeaways simply serving overly-greasy, rich and aromatic food that has no passion or aesthetic quality to it. And that good sirs and madams is where the glorious Mogul Indian restaurant and Mogul takeaway (both of them in different parts of Greenwich, London) come in. Not only is there a definite sense of character and enthusiasm put into the food that comes out of the Mogul near the Cutty Sark museum and its takeaway outlet, but the food from the cooks at the Mogul balances culinary aesthetic with a good balance of aromatic smells, nicely balanced flavours and food that employs mouth-wateringly traditional Indian cooking but doesn't overflow with grease as many takeaways do.
Now before I get into the always-anticipated description of the food, I feel it necessary to describe the pleasingly warm atmosphere to be found within the walls of the Mogul restaurant. Located at 10 Greenwich Church St, a stone's throw away from Greenwich market and a 4-5 minute walk away from the Cutty Sark museum. The outside of the Mogul restaurant is modestly welcoming but not garish while also being simply painted and advertised but at the same time also having an air of inviting warmth. And that is just the atmosphere to be found once you walk in the door, warmth and a definite inviting air about the place. Like the outside, the inside has simple painting and decoration but is aesthetically pleasing in that regard while the furniture within the resturant is comfortable and (thank freaking goodness) doesn't wobble as the furniture of so many restaurants before it. On top of that, the staff in the Mogul are also helpful and informative about the differences and characteistics of and between each dish while at the same time not being overly-pushy but also managing to be freindly enough so that you feel welcomed both as a customer and visitor. As for the takeaway outlet at 192 Trafalgar Rd, the atmosphere feels a little rushed but the same helpful attitude from the staff is present there.
Now enough about the arty side of the restaurant and its takeaway and onwards to the truly important aspect of this review; the mouth-wateringly, nose-tingly, eye-achingly, stomach-grumblingly delicious food. The meals that are available at the Mogul are the usual kind of meals you'd expect from an Indian restaurant. There are some popular favourites such as chicken tikka masala, Bombay potatoes and onion bahjis. But the main thing (or at least in my slightly mad opinion) that characterises the food at the Mogul is that it is generally mild and instead of going all out on fire and brimstone dishes of crazy levels of spiciness, tends to serve meals that concentrate on massaging and tingling rather than sweating and tempering the taste buds.
Naturally there are some spicy dishes but it seems that the main aim of the food at the mogul is to give the usual diner there a delightful rather than challenging Indian cuisine experience. Now don't get me wrong, I love spicy food as I have tons of Tabasco mustard, wasabi, peri-peri sauce and the like on my food at home and also tend to sometimes get particular spicy dishes out at a restaurant when I'm feeling brave. Sometimes however, as we all might, I occasionally feel the urge to simply chew on something from the sun-swept lands of India that is flavoursome more so than it is spicy.
Naturally my usual meal from the Mogul reflects this wholeheartedly. For the basis of my meal it of course has to be a rice, and in my case I usually prefer the Mogul's saffron rice as despite the fact that the Mogul's possibly more popular pilau rice has more of an interesting palate and smell. I personally like the saffron rice more due to its interesting colours and mellow, perpetually nutty flavour.
As for vegetable dishes I usually like to go for the sag paneer; a course of cooked spinach with rectangular chunks of oh-so glorious, whey-based haloumi cheese (I honestly don't know how to spell that one). In particular, the sag paneer has a nice flavour to it as the mild flavour of the spinach is modest and vibrant while at the same time allowing for the chunks of cheese to stand out as beacons of truly expressive flavour within this mighty dish.
Subsequently, I usually also like to go for something extra such as Bombay potatoes which in particular at the Mogul, are not cooked in the usually dry and independently-flavoursome manner as in many other Indian restaurants but are instead cooked with a sauce meaning that there is more room to interpret the flavour and cooking of the potatoes themselves.
As for the main dish I usually go for something a little gamy and mild, specifically at the Mogul I usually go for the murgh dhansak which combines grilled chicken with lentils in a sweet and sour sauce that is pleasant for those with a penchant for more mild flavours while at other occasions, I may also go for the rogan josh which combines tenderly-cooked chunks of lamb with a rich tomato/garlic/onion hybrid of a sauce for those who have more of a palate for more extravagant culinary experiences. To top it all off I usually get a garlic naan which clearly has a flavour of garlic about it which is thankfully not too strong and wash that all down with a refreshing cobra beer and glass of water.
In comparison to the restaurant I personally prefer the food that is to be found there over the mogul takeaway, but as is the case with most people, I find it more relaxing sometimes just to sit back, relax and call up a delivery with free popadoms while lazing on my rear end on the sofa while watching ITV's Britain's got Talent on a Saturday night and swigging a couple of ice cold brews. And that isn't to say that the cooking at the Mogul takeaway outlet is inferior to a great degree, oh no, it just means that there are some slight differences in flavour, I think, between there and the restaurant which aren't even all that noticeable for the most part. What in turn makes the food from both the restaurant and the takeaway outlet truly appealing however isn't just the well-balanced flavours and aromatherapy-esque smells but also the reasonable prices with largely range from roughly £5 on some of the more simple dishes like panch ratten karai to £12 on a few extravagant ones like tandoori king prawns.
In conclusion, this restaurant has stood the test of time and developed its culinary might for nearly 40 years and it most certainly shows. Not only is the food good, but the customer service is informative and helpful yet not pushy and the character of the Mogul is shown through that. The one and only criticism that I have of this beacon of Anglo-Indian cooking is that some dishes like the sag paneer and onion bahjis may lack a little bit of character that could truly make them amazing via not having enough spice. Regardless however, the food is still good and the prices are reasonable for the most part. So if you're in south-east London, I recommend you venture to the Mogul.
Venture out and feast as royalty!
Food: 9/10
Customer service: 8/10
Atmosphere: 8.5/10
Price: 8.25/10
Overall: 33.75/10
Sunday, 21 April 2013
Monday, 15 April 2013
Game review #8: World of Tanks
In this modern day and age, video games have come along way from when they were simply pixelated adventure quests about unlucky-in-love Italian plumbers or matches about tennis as shown by moving white blocks that had to captivate their audiences with little else besides retrospectively primitive graphics and game-play with little pretence towards a story of sorts. In this modern day and age we now have games that are able to focus on all of these holy tenets of video games by combining increasingly realistic graphics with more extensive writing and immensely more advanced game-play on consoles that are a world apart in sophistication compared to the consoles of the 1970s and 1980s. However, with this advancement also comes the possibility that some games such as Final Fantasy XIII or Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots will focus more on the storyline and eschew game-play in order to advance the plot which let me tell you, is far from the best method of immersing the common gamer in your game.
That's where games such as World of Tanks, made by Wargamming Studios and designed for use on computers, comes in as this particular MMO (Massively-Multiplayer-On-line) has no story whatsoever and virtually, if not entirely, focuses solely on game-play and the development of game-play over story. Now I am most certainly impartial to both story and game-play-biased games, but when a game such as World of Tanks concentrates solely on game-play and manages to do it so well as the first Mario land games in a day and age when story holds such a strong reign over much of modern gaming my black, bitter heart soars to the heavens above. Now if you don't know what an MMO is, its a game where you advance slowly in a large-scale on-line community by participating in adventure quests in small parties and battle against mythical creatures as shown by the much-acclaimed World of Warcraft series in order to achieve higher ranks and better equipment and skills. In World of Tanks you advance in tiers rather than ranks and most of the game-play rather than some of it is based around harnessing your personal skills in combat. Initially you start off with a slot for a vehicle in your garage filled by the first tier vehicle of each of the playable nations which include; the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, America, France, China and Nazi Germany.
As expected with all MMO's, when you start off in World of Tanks you will be very weak and most likely die allot however, the more you battle, the more you will inevitably learn the weaknesses and strengths of each tank and earn greater amounts of experience points and in-game credits to advance to higher tiers of tanks. On top of this, the relative ease with which you will be able to advance up the first few tiers of vehicles will allow you to try out different tank types (specifically; Light tanks, Medium tanks, Heavy tanks, Tank destroyers and Self-propelled artillery) from each individual nation to properly sum-up what the play-style of your garage will inevitably represent. As is also the case with allot of MMO's, some content in World of Tanks can only be bought with real money with which you can by in-game 'gold' which allows you to create more garage slots and buy 'premium' tanks which are unavailable by other means except as a gift to be bought outside of the game itself. However, the good thing about this is that it is not always necessary to advance without buying gold and that when it is necessary most 'premium' tanks and other similar actions that are only available through paying real money don't cost too much money unless you buy higher tier 'premium' vehicles or a year-long 'premium' account.
That's enough for the technicalities, let's now move on to the glorious, tread crunching, armour-smashing, cannon-blasting tactics and types of game play that are to be found in this world of steel beasts! As mentioned before, there are six nations and four types of tanks, the differences between the different types of tanks are in themselves, very notable, but what is even more important to take into account is the play-style attributed to each tank tree of each country. One of the foremost countries in the game is Germany: these tanks are generally good for their wunderbar-tough armour, range of their main guns, ability to penetrate heavier armour and, in the case of heavier heavy tanks, tank destroyers and self-propelled artillery vehicles, fearsome damage output. On top of that, the Germans also have some of the highest amounts of health points on their top/tenth tier heavy tanks and tank destroyers. The one problem with the Germans however is their speed and manoeuvrability despite having tanks on their medium and light tank trees, many German tanks lack the speed and manoeuvrability of their main rivals, the Soviets.
The Soviets are largely at the other end of the spectrum of tank design in the sense that they seem to mostly focus more on the damage output of their main guns, speed, manoeuvrability and well-designed rather than simply thick-as-mushroom gravy armour. therefore, unlike the German tanks which excel at holding flanks and sniping, Soviet tanks equally excel at ambushes due to their low profiles (heights), flanking attacks and close-range assaults. In contrast to the Germans, the main weaknesses of the soviets are lighter armour on many tanks (excluding the frontal armour on the most popular soviet tanks amongst the heavies and tank destroyers such as the KV-5 heavy and Object 263 tank destroyer), lower penetration and accuracy on the guns of many heavies and some artillery and some tanks that take the Soviet penchant for speed so far that they take a great deal of taming in order to prevent crashes.
Similarly to the Soviets, the tanks of the Chinese also centrally focus on speed, well-designed rather than heavy armour, manoeuvrability and damage output on the main guns. The reason for this is that seeing as how all of the tanks are from the years between 1917 and the end of the 1960s, and this was the period that communist China and Russia were very close allies, it is only natural that the communist Chinese government which came about much later than the one in Russia holds some influences of Soviet tank design. The one thing that sets out the Chinese apart from other nations however is that whereas the other nations all have individual tank trees, all Chinese tank trees share the same first 5 tanks imported from other countries; the French FT-17 (tier 1), the British VAE type B (tier 2), the Japanese Type 2597 Chi-Ha (tier 3), the American M5A1 Stuart (tier 4) and the Soviet T-34/76 (tier 5).
Similarly, the French also start off their tank trees rather oddly in comparison to other nations. Whereas the tanks of other nations are generally slower the higher the tier they are, French tanks oddly enough start off snail-like slow while the higher-tier French vehicles go faster than an ice-cold bottle of French white wine on a warm summer's afternoon. On top of this, tanks of tier 5 and below for the French tend to have very tough armour for their tier while the higher tier tanks have comparatively weak armour for their tiers. However despite these oddities the French combine well-designed armour, guns with great penetration and rates of fire, heavier tanks with both crazy top speeds and auto-loaders (loading chambers that allow you to fire in quick succession) to create lower tier tanks that excel at defending and higher tier tanks that can overrun the enemy superbly through flanking attacks.
In comparison to all these nations, the American tanks may seem to be the most balanced and perhaps suit players with a generally flexible and freestyle approach to this type of game. Lower tier American tanks on all branches and higher ones on the medium branch follow the speedy, raider-like approach as most Chinese and Soviet tanks, many American artillery vehicles rival German and Soviet ones in damage output, the Americans have great frontal-armour like the Soviets and French and also like the French, have guns with great penetration, accuracy and rate of fire. What makes the American vehicles stand out from the crowd however is the terrifying range of their main guns, damn tough turret armour and finger-licking' good acceleration. With these advantages in play, many American vehicles are able to find de-elevated positions, dig-in, snipe away the enemy's health and move with immediate alacrity when danger rears its ugly-ass head. However, the one downside to these fine examples of American ingenuity is that for the most part, the hull armour on American tanks is pathetic meaning that they are best used in sniping positions and on un-defended flanks.
Lastly we come to one of the most talked about nations of them all, the tea-drinking, roast beef-scoffing, pint -guzzling, queen-glorifying bejewled sceptre that is Great Britain. Naturally, as it was the British who invented the battle tank you would expect British tanks to be the best designed and most powerful in the game, but as it is they are not the most damaging and have some rather odd designs indeed my old-chaps. For the most part, the British tend to have some of the lowest damage outputs for their main guns and have only just been introduced into the game recently meaning that they only have tank trees for mediums, heavies and tank destroyers. Furthermore, the British heavy tanks are compounded by nail shatteringly, irritatingly un-couth and downright 'I dare say!' slow speeds between tier 4 and 8 while medium tanks of the same tier have armour that is notably easy to penetrate. However, the British are surprisingly versatile for a number of play-styles in the sense that all British tanks have good accuracy, guns with great penetration, 10-year-old-Christmas-cake-tough frontal armour on higher tier vehicles and in the case of most light, all medium and some heavy tanks, the British are superbly mobile with truly splendid top speeds.
Subsequently, it might be a good idea to fight up the first few tiers by yourself or with just a couple of friends by creating a temporary 'platoon' to go into battle with each other. However, as your garage and kill-ratio progresses, you may find it more preferable to join the many number of clans that are constantly battling across the world, specifically ones centred in the country you live in. There is no reason to do or not do this depending on your viewpoint but if you take one bit of advice on how to play World of Tanks it is this; always co-operate with your team-mates and promote teamwork through your actions otherwise it might not only be the enemy team you find firing armour-piercing shells at you.
In conclusion; I strongly recommend this game. I know it may seem daunting with all this speak of multiple play-styles and nations to be found in the game but that's all part of the fun of playing World of Tanks as it allows you to be creative and have fun playing the same game in an uncounted number of different ways. What makes this game truly fabulous aside from the increasingly sophisticated physics engine, increasingly refined graphics and increasing variety of vehicles is the fact that it is totally free! OH FREAKING YEAH!!! This game is so free I could write an essay about how marvellous it is to simply go onto www.worldoftanks.com or .eu, click 'play for free', wait to download the game for 2 minutes and make yourself a well-earned cup of mint tea while the game takes its time to install which despite the wait is well worth it as you then venture forward into the World of Tanks.
Oh and BTW: congratulations to the World of Tanks European server on it's 2nd birthday!
That's where games such as World of Tanks, made by Wargamming Studios and designed for use on computers, comes in as this particular MMO (Massively-Multiplayer-On-line) has no story whatsoever and virtually, if not entirely, focuses solely on game-play and the development of game-play over story. Now I am most certainly impartial to both story and game-play-biased games, but when a game such as World of Tanks concentrates solely on game-play and manages to do it so well as the first Mario land games in a day and age when story holds such a strong reign over much of modern gaming my black, bitter heart soars to the heavens above. Now if you don't know what an MMO is, its a game where you advance slowly in a large-scale on-line community by participating in adventure quests in small parties and battle against mythical creatures as shown by the much-acclaimed World of Warcraft series in order to achieve higher ranks and better equipment and skills. In World of Tanks you advance in tiers rather than ranks and most of the game-play rather than some of it is based around harnessing your personal skills in combat. Initially you start off with a slot for a vehicle in your garage filled by the first tier vehicle of each of the playable nations which include; the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, America, France, China and Nazi Germany.
As expected with all MMO's, when you start off in World of Tanks you will be very weak and most likely die allot however, the more you battle, the more you will inevitably learn the weaknesses and strengths of each tank and earn greater amounts of experience points and in-game credits to advance to higher tiers of tanks. On top of this, the relative ease with which you will be able to advance up the first few tiers of vehicles will allow you to try out different tank types (specifically; Light tanks, Medium tanks, Heavy tanks, Tank destroyers and Self-propelled artillery) from each individual nation to properly sum-up what the play-style of your garage will inevitably represent. As is also the case with allot of MMO's, some content in World of Tanks can only be bought with real money with which you can by in-game 'gold' which allows you to create more garage slots and buy 'premium' tanks which are unavailable by other means except as a gift to be bought outside of the game itself. However, the good thing about this is that it is not always necessary to advance without buying gold and that when it is necessary most 'premium' tanks and other similar actions that are only available through paying real money don't cost too much money unless you buy higher tier 'premium' vehicles or a year-long 'premium' account.
That's enough for the technicalities, let's now move on to the glorious, tread crunching, armour-smashing, cannon-blasting tactics and types of game play that are to be found in this world of steel beasts! As mentioned before, there are six nations and four types of tanks, the differences between the different types of tanks are in themselves, very notable, but what is even more important to take into account is the play-style attributed to each tank tree of each country. One of the foremost countries in the game is Germany: these tanks are generally good for their wunderbar-tough armour, range of their main guns, ability to penetrate heavier armour and, in the case of heavier heavy tanks, tank destroyers and self-propelled artillery vehicles, fearsome damage output. On top of that, the Germans also have some of the highest amounts of health points on their top/tenth tier heavy tanks and tank destroyers. The one problem with the Germans however is their speed and manoeuvrability despite having tanks on their medium and light tank trees, many German tanks lack the speed and manoeuvrability of their main rivals, the Soviets.
The Soviets are largely at the other end of the spectrum of tank design in the sense that they seem to mostly focus more on the damage output of their main guns, speed, manoeuvrability and well-designed rather than simply thick-as-mushroom gravy armour. therefore, unlike the German tanks which excel at holding flanks and sniping, Soviet tanks equally excel at ambushes due to their low profiles (heights), flanking attacks and close-range assaults. In contrast to the Germans, the main weaknesses of the soviets are lighter armour on many tanks (excluding the frontal armour on the most popular soviet tanks amongst the heavies and tank destroyers such as the KV-5 heavy and Object 263 tank destroyer), lower penetration and accuracy on the guns of many heavies and some artillery and some tanks that take the Soviet penchant for speed so far that they take a great deal of taming in order to prevent crashes.
Similarly to the Soviets, the tanks of the Chinese also centrally focus on speed, well-designed rather than heavy armour, manoeuvrability and damage output on the main guns. The reason for this is that seeing as how all of the tanks are from the years between 1917 and the end of the 1960s, and this was the period that communist China and Russia were very close allies, it is only natural that the communist Chinese government which came about much later than the one in Russia holds some influences of Soviet tank design. The one thing that sets out the Chinese apart from other nations however is that whereas the other nations all have individual tank trees, all Chinese tank trees share the same first 5 tanks imported from other countries; the French FT-17 (tier 1), the British VAE type B (tier 2), the Japanese Type 2597 Chi-Ha (tier 3), the American M5A1 Stuart (tier 4) and the Soviet T-34/76 (tier 5).
Similarly, the French also start off their tank trees rather oddly in comparison to other nations. Whereas the tanks of other nations are generally slower the higher the tier they are, French tanks oddly enough start off snail-like slow while the higher-tier French vehicles go faster than an ice-cold bottle of French white wine on a warm summer's afternoon. On top of this, tanks of tier 5 and below for the French tend to have very tough armour for their tier while the higher tier tanks have comparatively weak armour for their tiers. However despite these oddities the French combine well-designed armour, guns with great penetration and rates of fire, heavier tanks with both crazy top speeds and auto-loaders (loading chambers that allow you to fire in quick succession) to create lower tier tanks that excel at defending and higher tier tanks that can overrun the enemy superbly through flanking attacks.
In comparison to all these nations, the American tanks may seem to be the most balanced and perhaps suit players with a generally flexible and freestyle approach to this type of game. Lower tier American tanks on all branches and higher ones on the medium branch follow the speedy, raider-like approach as most Chinese and Soviet tanks, many American artillery vehicles rival German and Soviet ones in damage output, the Americans have great frontal-armour like the Soviets and French and also like the French, have guns with great penetration, accuracy and rate of fire. What makes the American vehicles stand out from the crowd however is the terrifying range of their main guns, damn tough turret armour and finger-licking' good acceleration. With these advantages in play, many American vehicles are able to find de-elevated positions, dig-in, snipe away the enemy's health and move with immediate alacrity when danger rears its ugly-ass head. However, the one downside to these fine examples of American ingenuity is that for the most part, the hull armour on American tanks is pathetic meaning that they are best used in sniping positions and on un-defended flanks.
Lastly we come to one of the most talked about nations of them all, the tea-drinking, roast beef-scoffing, pint -guzzling, queen-glorifying bejewled sceptre that is Great Britain. Naturally, as it was the British who invented the battle tank you would expect British tanks to be the best designed and most powerful in the game, but as it is they are not the most damaging and have some rather odd designs indeed my old-chaps. For the most part, the British tend to have some of the lowest damage outputs for their main guns and have only just been introduced into the game recently meaning that they only have tank trees for mediums, heavies and tank destroyers. Furthermore, the British heavy tanks are compounded by nail shatteringly, irritatingly un-couth and downright 'I dare say!' slow speeds between tier 4 and 8 while medium tanks of the same tier have armour that is notably easy to penetrate. However, the British are surprisingly versatile for a number of play-styles in the sense that all British tanks have good accuracy, guns with great penetration, 10-year-old-Christmas-cake-tough frontal armour on higher tier vehicles and in the case of most light, all medium and some heavy tanks, the British are superbly mobile with truly splendid top speeds.
Subsequently, it might be a good idea to fight up the first few tiers by yourself or with just a couple of friends by creating a temporary 'platoon' to go into battle with each other. However, as your garage and kill-ratio progresses, you may find it more preferable to join the many number of clans that are constantly battling across the world, specifically ones centred in the country you live in. There is no reason to do or not do this depending on your viewpoint but if you take one bit of advice on how to play World of Tanks it is this; always co-operate with your team-mates and promote teamwork through your actions otherwise it might not only be the enemy team you find firing armour-piercing shells at you.
In conclusion; I strongly recommend this game. I know it may seem daunting with all this speak of multiple play-styles and nations to be found in the game but that's all part of the fun of playing World of Tanks as it allows you to be creative and have fun playing the same game in an uncounted number of different ways. What makes this game truly fabulous aside from the increasingly sophisticated physics engine, increasingly refined graphics and increasing variety of vehicles is the fact that it is totally free! OH FREAKING YEAH!!! This game is so free I could write an essay about how marvellous it is to simply go onto www.worldoftanks.com or .eu, click 'play for free', wait to download the game for 2 minutes and make yourself a well-earned cup of mint tea while the game takes its time to install which despite the wait is well worth it as you then venture forward into the World of Tanks.
Oh and BTW: congratulations to the World of Tanks European server on it's 2nd birthday!
Saturday, 13 April 2013
Old film review #4: Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (2010)
Let me start off this review by saying one thing, I have no underwear o...oh wait that's the wrong script. Hang on a moment...ah here we are, It's good to be back! I know I haven't done a review for nearly a year now but I thought that now is as good a time as any to return to the world of critics, thus here I am! And I thought it only appropriate that I return to this glorious position of magnificence by doing one of the earliest types of reviews that I ever did, a film review!
In particular, I've chosen a strange specimen of a film in the sense that I see it as both being old and yet relatively new, and at the same time under-appreciated but also somewhat pretty weak. Now there are many films that fit this bill, but the one I have chosen is the 2010 adventure/action/comedy/mythology romp titled Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief.
Like many such films mostly centred around action and adventure, we follow the rise to glory of an aspiring hero as they are flung out of the ordinary world and into a world where magic reigns, mythical creates represent challenges to the hero's weaknesses and where obnoxious and slightly irritating comedy relief characters hold reign over much of the side-plots In this case we follow the case of Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) who discovers through being attacked at a museum by a 'fury' from the legends of Greek myth that he is a demigod; a son of a mortal woman and the Greek sea god Poseidon. When he is attacked Percy discovers not only is he a demigod but also that his aforementioned, obnoxious comedy relief/best friend character Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) is a goat/man hybrid called a 'satyr' and that he himself is destined to be trained at a camp governed by the centaur Chiron (Pierce Brosnan) where demigods like himself spar in order to prepare for possible conflicts between the gods. Unfortunately for Percy, he is sent to this camp just as such a civil-war of the Greek gods is about to start over who has stolen mighty Zeus's (Sean Bean) master lighting bolt, the start of which sees the underworld god Hades (Steve Coogan) kidnap his mother and blackmail him into bringing the lightning bolt to the underworld in the suspicion that Percy is in possession of it. Naturally Percy is all for charging in to save his mother and the day but his superiors advise against it, however, he naturally disobeys them and thus sets out on an adventurous quest for clues to who the lightning thief is and how to get to the underworld with Grover and the demigod Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) in tow.
And thus begins a supposedly epic adventure quest to save the damsel (or in this case, redundant mother character) in distress and save the world before it is literally ripped to shreds. Now this might seem like a somewhat familiar and run-of-the-mill premise for a story as it has been done before in films such as Jason and the Argonauts (1963) or Clash of the Titans (the 1981 original, not the 2010 crappy-ass remake), but what really makes this particular telling of such a tried and tested formula is the characters and the way that they interact with tenets of Greek mythology along the daring road of their quest. Percy Jackson in particular is played amusingly well by Lerman as he is shown to be your archetypal white, working-class pseudo-moody American teenager (at least how that demographic is shown by Hollywood movies) and yet is not awed by the fact that he is a demigod like so many movie heroes before him but is instead scared witless by the prospect of fighting in a mythical civil-war. This in turn is compounded by the comical way in which Percy points out the logical reasons and counter-arguments as to why it is so weird that his best friend is half goat and that he is the son of the sea god. On top of this, while Grover is most certainly annoying, he does provide some good comedy relief here and there by generally being both heroically loyal to Percy and a lecherous rouge with an addiction to the daughters of Aphrodite (the Greek goddess of love). As for the references to Greek mythology, the main characters mainly go through these references by having to collect pearls in order to get out of the underworld which are in turn scattered throughout the lairs of Medusa (Uma Thurman), the mighty Hydra and the manipulative and mind-controlling lotus eaters. Most entertaining of all the Greek gods and mythological legends however is the role of Hades played by Coogan who shows the god of the underworld not as the brooding and brimstone-like creature of darkness in traditional Greek mythology but as a heavy rock-loving, leather-wearing biker with the laziest attitude to his whole scheme of evil that you'd see from any villain of his calibre.
However, as amusing as the references to Greek mythology, Coogan's Hades and the Percy/Grover duo are, this film does have its weak points, and by the electrifying beard of Zeus are they jarring. The foremost of these barricades to the film's success is the fact that the story is so token and so run-of-the-mill that it is sometimes very hard for the story to be propped up alone by the dashing and comedic exploits of our heroes. This perhaps would be a redundant problem were it not for the fact that Hades, Grover, Percy and the main and clunkily-revealed-at-the-last-minute main villain Luke (Jake Abel) are the only interesting and engaging characters who keep you drawn in to the story. As it is, all the other pivotal characters, most notably Annabeth, Percy's mother, Poseidon and even Pierce Brosnan's Chiron, are either underplayed to the extent that they are notably uninteresting or are simply shown so little throughout the film that they become redundant themselves both in character and relevance to the story. However, what is most personally grating to me is how badly the main villain,. Luke, is revealed to be the aforementioned lightning thief near to the end of the film in what has to be one of the most clunky, sudden and jarring character reveals in recent movie history. Just as Percy, Annabeth and Percy's mother escape from the underworld to deliver the master lightning bolt to Zeus, they are halted in their tracks atop the apex of the empire state building by Luke who has played the support character throughout the film by giving the main characters mythology-Intel and directions. Being the son of Hermes (the flying/fleet-footed messenger of the Greek gods) Luke swoops in, swipes the lighting bolt and literally out of the blue, almost immediately says to Percy's face "I'm the lightning thief". The fact that this is conveyed with so little build-up makes it one of the most underwhelming villain reveals I have seen in recent years and is further made worse by the fact that its done in the last (and uncomfortably-rushed) 15 minutes of the film.
Taking this all into account, it would be fair to say that Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief is a poor excuse for an adventure film. However, it still holds up to no small extent as an action film with comedy elements such as Grover's lewdness and the riveting battles against the Hydra and the fight between Percy and Luke at the film's climax. Yet the cons of this film such as Percy's under-played ability to manipulate water and the slew of un-engaging side characters meant that when this film came out, it was generally under-appreciated in the sense that it had a more colourful main character than most films of its type in modern cinema and that it had some star actors such as Thurman, Brosnan and Coogan which were mostly ignored.
Yet I personally think that Chris Columbus's directing of Rick Riordan's novel of the same name is an admirable attempt to meld modern film-based pop culture with ancient and eternal mythology from a culture that spawned democracy. In conclusion: see this film but don't expect to be awed by its approach to ancient mythology.
I hope you enjoyed this review and as mentioned before...
I
HAVE
RETURNED!!!
In particular, I've chosen a strange specimen of a film in the sense that I see it as both being old and yet relatively new, and at the same time under-appreciated but also somewhat pretty weak. Now there are many films that fit this bill, but the one I have chosen is the 2010 adventure/action/comedy/mythology romp titled Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief.
Like many such films mostly centred around action and adventure, we follow the rise to glory of an aspiring hero as they are flung out of the ordinary world and into a world where magic reigns, mythical creates represent challenges to the hero's weaknesses and where obnoxious and slightly irritating comedy relief characters hold reign over much of the side-plots In this case we follow the case of Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) who discovers through being attacked at a museum by a 'fury' from the legends of Greek myth that he is a demigod; a son of a mortal woman and the Greek sea god Poseidon. When he is attacked Percy discovers not only is he a demigod but also that his aforementioned, obnoxious comedy relief/best friend character Grover (Brandon T. Jackson) is a goat/man hybrid called a 'satyr' and that he himself is destined to be trained at a camp governed by the centaur Chiron (Pierce Brosnan) where demigods like himself spar in order to prepare for possible conflicts between the gods. Unfortunately for Percy, he is sent to this camp just as such a civil-war of the Greek gods is about to start over who has stolen mighty Zeus's (Sean Bean) master lighting bolt, the start of which sees the underworld god Hades (Steve Coogan) kidnap his mother and blackmail him into bringing the lightning bolt to the underworld in the suspicion that Percy is in possession of it. Naturally Percy is all for charging in to save his mother and the day but his superiors advise against it, however, he naturally disobeys them and thus sets out on an adventurous quest for clues to who the lightning thief is and how to get to the underworld with Grover and the demigod Annabeth (Alexandra Daddario) in tow.
And thus begins a supposedly epic adventure quest to save the damsel (or in this case, redundant mother character) in distress and save the world before it is literally ripped to shreds. Now this might seem like a somewhat familiar and run-of-the-mill premise for a story as it has been done before in films such as Jason and the Argonauts (1963) or Clash of the Titans (the 1981 original, not the 2010 crappy-ass remake), but what really makes this particular telling of such a tried and tested formula is the characters and the way that they interact with tenets of Greek mythology along the daring road of their quest. Percy Jackson in particular is played amusingly well by Lerman as he is shown to be your archetypal white, working-class pseudo-moody American teenager (at least how that demographic is shown by Hollywood movies) and yet is not awed by the fact that he is a demigod like so many movie heroes before him but is instead scared witless by the prospect of fighting in a mythical civil-war. This in turn is compounded by the comical way in which Percy points out the logical reasons and counter-arguments as to why it is so weird that his best friend is half goat and that he is the son of the sea god. On top of this, while Grover is most certainly annoying, he does provide some good comedy relief here and there by generally being both heroically loyal to Percy and a lecherous rouge with an addiction to the daughters of Aphrodite (the Greek goddess of love). As for the references to Greek mythology, the main characters mainly go through these references by having to collect pearls in order to get out of the underworld which are in turn scattered throughout the lairs of Medusa (Uma Thurman), the mighty Hydra and the manipulative and mind-controlling lotus eaters. Most entertaining of all the Greek gods and mythological legends however is the role of Hades played by Coogan who shows the god of the underworld not as the brooding and brimstone-like creature of darkness in traditional Greek mythology but as a heavy rock-loving, leather-wearing biker with the laziest attitude to his whole scheme of evil that you'd see from any villain of his calibre.
However, as amusing as the references to Greek mythology, Coogan's Hades and the Percy/Grover duo are, this film does have its weak points, and by the electrifying beard of Zeus are they jarring. The foremost of these barricades to the film's success is the fact that the story is so token and so run-of-the-mill that it is sometimes very hard for the story to be propped up alone by the dashing and comedic exploits of our heroes. This perhaps would be a redundant problem were it not for the fact that Hades, Grover, Percy and the main and clunkily-revealed-at-the-last-minute main villain Luke (Jake Abel) are the only interesting and engaging characters who keep you drawn in to the story. As it is, all the other pivotal characters, most notably Annabeth, Percy's mother, Poseidon and even Pierce Brosnan's Chiron, are either underplayed to the extent that they are notably uninteresting or are simply shown so little throughout the film that they become redundant themselves both in character and relevance to the story. However, what is most personally grating to me is how badly the main villain,. Luke, is revealed to be the aforementioned lightning thief near to the end of the film in what has to be one of the most clunky, sudden and jarring character reveals in recent movie history. Just as Percy, Annabeth and Percy's mother escape from the underworld to deliver the master lightning bolt to Zeus, they are halted in their tracks atop the apex of the empire state building by Luke who has played the support character throughout the film by giving the main characters mythology-Intel and directions. Being the son of Hermes (the flying/fleet-footed messenger of the Greek gods) Luke swoops in, swipes the lighting bolt and literally out of the blue, almost immediately says to Percy's face "I'm the lightning thief". The fact that this is conveyed with so little build-up makes it one of the most underwhelming villain reveals I have seen in recent years and is further made worse by the fact that its done in the last (and uncomfortably-rushed) 15 minutes of the film.
Taking this all into account, it would be fair to say that Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief is a poor excuse for an adventure film. However, it still holds up to no small extent as an action film with comedy elements such as Grover's lewdness and the riveting battles against the Hydra and the fight between Percy and Luke at the film's climax. Yet the cons of this film such as Percy's under-played ability to manipulate water and the slew of un-engaging side characters meant that when this film came out, it was generally under-appreciated in the sense that it had a more colourful main character than most films of its type in modern cinema and that it had some star actors such as Thurman, Brosnan and Coogan which were mostly ignored.
Yet I personally think that Chris Columbus's directing of Rick Riordan's novel of the same name is an admirable attempt to meld modern film-based pop culture with ancient and eternal mythology from a culture that spawned democracy. In conclusion: see this film but don't expect to be awed by its approach to ancient mythology.
I hope you enjoyed this review and as mentioned before...
I
HAVE
RETURNED!!!
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