The Quite Nerdy Blog

As you may have been able to tell from the topics of my recent Top 7 posts, I'm a huge advocate of the use of music in everything. And the gaming edition of that is coming next week. But I think it's something that many people overlook and it adds an edge to that just can't be underestimated. And let me explain why it's so great. Anyone who saw Guardians of the Galaxy over the summer will tell you it has an incredible soundtrack. Fans of Forrest Gump are just waiting for an opportunity to jump up and praise the music. Tarrantino geeks, almost without exception, agree that all his films have brilliant soundtracks. And that sums it up. A soundtrack adds so much to a film, yet it's rarely noticed. In these moments though, when a soundtrack becomes so perfect that it gains actual appreciation. It's the kind of thing that transcends bad films. Even though Where the wild things are is a piece of crap, it has a fairly decent soundtrack. I don't know if this is be...

Newsflash! Quentin Tarantino has announced the main cast for his new film, The Hateful Eight. I'm pretty damn excited for it and the casting has made me even more excited. The full report is here (http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/6/7170107/hateful-eight-cast-announced-quentin-tarantino-western) but stick around and I'll give you a brief rundown. The cast is made up of a mixture of previous Tarantino collaborators and some newbies ready to be shot up in style. We obviously have Samuel "Bad-ass" Jackson (Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained e.t.c), the most frequent Tarantino collaborator starring alongside occasional collaborators Micheal Madsen (Kill Bill, Reservoir Dogs) and Tim Roth (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction). There's some relative unknowns but then we have Channing Tatum, a man whose most famous role is a stripper. Having said this, I trust Tarantino and Tatum isn't an awful actor so fingers crossed. All over, this looks promising. A brilliant director ...

Before I start, I'll just adress the elephant in the room. I'm not reviewing Gone Girl because it's an 18 and contains scenes in which a character uses a wine bottle to [CENSORED] and also has a scene in which someone is [CENSORED] during [CENSORED]. Family fun time all round. Anyway, Gone Girl has been replaced by The Judge. Let the review commence. The Maze Runner The Maze Runner is the latest in a long and ever increasing line of young adult book to film adaptations and as such is a difficult film for me to review. For a start, I am the target audience. While I may be fairly film-wise, I am in the age range of 12-18, go to the cinema and have money. The other problem is that I read and liked the book before the film and the whole series is at it's best when there is mystery. I read the books and knew everything that would happen before hand and because of this, I feel the film may have lost something for me. Regardless, I'll try to review the film, not t...

Being someone who is not at all a fan of horror films, I've decided that my special Halloween reviews will not be scary movies in the traditional sense. The scares from these movies will be that someone thought to not only make but also release these films. It feels only appropriate that we start with the #2 rated film on the IMDb bottom 250 list. This is: Birdemic. For those of you fortunate enough to have never heard of Birdemic, it's a film about birds who go crazy and attack people. Imagine that scene from The Core where the birds start smashing into windows, except now it's entirely CGI that was made by a two year old bashing away at a computer for a week. How could this possibly go wrong? Well, it turns out a lot. Like, a hell of a lot. I'll start at the start. The story (or what they've passed for one) is about a guy called Rob? He has a job. It is going pretty well. So well that figures like one million dollars, ten million dollars and even one billi...

Where the wild things are was a book that I completely adored as a child and one that my Dad would often read to me. It's a book filled with fond memories and magic. Then little child Henry saw the film version and all his hopes and dreams were crushed. To this day, it's the only film I've ever started and deliberately never finished. Until, you know, I had to re-watch it for this. Anyway, it was a hunk of shit, it destroyed the book's legacy and gave another bit of evidence to the side fighting for no more book to film adaptations. All in all, it's probably the worst film I've ever watched. But the saddest bit is that it could probably have been at least okay. This film shouldn't exist, but it didn't have to be as bad as it was. Now, for a film, you must have a likable or at least interesting set of characters. This film fails at that spectacularly. The mum shouts at her child, calling him a freak, and is then surprised when he runs off. The sist...

So, one of the two actually good reality TV shows is now back on air and I am loving it. I am talking about the Apprentice (if you missed the title and that picture of Al above the words). And while I generally despise reality shows, I adore the Apprentice. Why do I love it?  And why should you (audience member) watch this show as well? For a start, it's so funny and natural that it  rarely ever feels like real people talking real things. It's so funny it could be scripted but it's not and that's why it feels so god damn special. For those of you who don't know, the Apprentice is a show based around 16 (or 20 in the case of this year) egotistical businessmen/women trying to win an investment from business legend Lord Alan Sugar. It results in a bunch of people who think they're the best thing since sliced bread shouting at each other, blaming everyone else and ultimately being told they're shit by Lord Sugar. Oh, the looks on their sad little faces ...

This week's post was going to be another big double review of Gone Girl and The Maze Runner but due to me being on my Duke of Edinburgh all last weekend, that will be delayed to sometime soon. Instead, I decided to just natter on about books being adapted to films due to all sorts of things that have occurred over the the past weeks and in general to Hollywood over the last few decades. Also, it just kind of feels right, talking about book to film adaptations instead of reviewing two book to film adaptations. Before I start, I will say that this is a subject that I am of many minds about this subject because it's got so many sides. For a start, it's worth mentioning that there are tons of brilliant films adaptations. For example, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Godfather films and Forrest Gump are all excellent and incredibly critically acclaimed films. And if we put Comic Books into this category as well, we have some of the highest grossing films ever in here as well. It...