I'm watching it; I'm enjoying it. But you know what they say: it's not a Star Wars thing until there's a sticker album and a deck of Top Trumps*1. The 'Trumps are on the way (apparently), so all that remains in between weekly forays into the Lothal uprising is to squander concerning amounts of disposal income on a pastime designed to separate children from their pocket-money.
We all wonder when we start a collection (whether it be stickers, trading cards, action figures or the mummified corpses of our enemies), if we'll have the willpower (read: combination of cash and availability) to complete it. As the album pages are gradually completed and the pile of swaps builds disconcertingly and acceleratedly higher, we all wonder how much longer we'll be going into the newsagent's and slapping down our cash, in the forlorn hope of there being at least one sticker per pack that we don't already have.
If we had the patience (because let's face it, if we're collecting stickers we've got the time), we'd have been keeping some sort of progress-list of the collection. Of how much the hobby's been costing us, if nothing else.
I've got the patience to build that list, and I've got the Microsoft Excel obsession to give it some semblance of life.
But why would I do this in the privacy of my own headspace when I can inflict my twin loves of Star Wars and statistical analysis on you, dear reader?
So, I'm going to track my sticker album for you. And for me, obviously. Once a week or so (don't pressure me), I'll update an ongoing chart, breaking down key statistics of the ongoing collection...
I'm not going to scan every individual sticker in the collection (that would be the kind of thing a weirdo would do), but I'll include the pages of the album as a blank canvas, here at the start. As well as the ongoing statistic infographics, I'll scan completed pages*2 as the collection progresses.
A few stats to warm up with:
• The Star Wars Rebels 2014 Sticker Album comprises of 40 regular pages and 198 numbered sticker-spaces.
• In the centre-pages there's a removable four-page poster, to hold a further 10 stickers.
• For the uber-collectors present, there are at least two versions of the album. The first one comes in a soft-cellpohane 'starter pack' and has a regular barcode on the back-cover in the bottom-right corner and the product number SWRS-A1003. The other comes free with the UK Star Wars Comic #11 (cover-dated Nov 2014), has a 'Promotional album' message in the barcode's place and the product number SWRS-A1001. Other than this there are no other printing-differences that I can see. I'm sure you'll let me know if you find any, though. Something tells me there's an album ending with 1002; a loose standalone printing?
• The starter-pack comes with six packs of stickers, and a sheet of a further six stickers stapled into the album. These are numbers 11, 27, 53, 71, 91 and 109.
• The comic-gift version doesn't come with any packaged stickers, but does include a (loose, unstapled) sheet containing numbers 20, 51, 68, 76, 140, 149.
(For the purposes of this post, I'm going to assume the 'sheet' stickers are the same in each version. Topps issued an album in 2012 to tie in with the Phantom Menace 3D release, and this featured a similar six-sticker-sheet stapled into it. I bought two of those albums, and the stickers were the same in each, so it'd make sense for them to be the same for the Rebels collection, too. Again, if you know differently, hit me up in the comments section or over on the WoB Facebook page.)
Here's the empty album. Click for bigger*3...
Of course, what's any experiment without a control mechanism of some sort? In a false-bid to create one, I wrote a VBA code to populate a version of my tracking-spreadsheet with randomly generated numbers, working on the principle that there are five stickers in a pack and you don't get duplicates in the same pack (not in my experience, anyway).
There is of course the famous get-out clause with sticker albums. No manufacturer in their right bloody mind expects you to buy pack after pack of stickers chasing that one remaining, elusive holy-grail of gummed paper. There's a thing they do in the back cover where you can send off for the last few you need to complete the collection (they used to be at a slightly inflated price, but top-ups are 10p each in this album, which is the same as buying them in a pack. Yes, it's seriously 50p for a pack of 5 stickers. It wouldn't have happened in my day, etc...). The order-limit in the Star Wars Rebels album is 25 stickers, so instead of buying until you reach the 208-mark, you only have to hit the target of 183 before you can mail away for the rest. Or, y'know, get a parent/guardian to mail away for an extra 25 as well. With this in mind, my test-runs only calculate an approximate number of packs needed to reach 183 stickers (or 88% of the overall collection).
Anyway, here are the results of four separate, automated 'dummy-run' collections, processed through the simulator...
As you can see (and as guessed), the initial 45°line of the completion-percentage gradually becomes a slight incline as fewer slots in the album become available for filling. This is only to be expected, and it's this approximate curve I'll be comparing my actual progress against.
So, according to computer-calculated probability (assuming the stickers are packaged in a 'random' way which can be simulated by a machine), I'm looking at somewhere between 88 and 96 packs of stickers to get me to the 88% line, and in the process generate around 280 duplicates (far more than the entire album).
Knowing this, I'd have to be some sort of idiot to actually start the endeavour, wouldn't I? Fortunately for you, dear reader, I am some sort of idiot. Although I suspect you've worked that one out already.
So, your journey begins here. You don't have to collect the 2014 Topps Star Wars Rebels sticker collection... I'll do it for you.
You're welcome...
*1 Okay, it's what I say. For the purposes of this conversation, I am 'they'.
*2 Schedule permitting. Yeah, I know I've 'got the time', but my home-scanner isn't big enough to do the album page in one hit; I have to use the one at work for that. And as much as I'm proud of being a geek, frequently scanning completed sticker-album pages for my blog in an office full of actual grown-ups, many of whom are welders, is a bit far over the line, even for me. Me mordere.
*3 Although, only slightly bigger, admittedly. Hey, I'm not made of server-space.
Once every so often, a film comes a long which leaves my significant other and myself a little lost for words upon leaving the cinema. The initial 'Well, what did you think..? is answered cagily either way; it's not that the movie was actively disliked at all, but we struggle to sum things up in a positive light. And although we'll attempt to push the elements we liked of the evening's entertainment to the top of our list, the rest of the journey home is spent listing the ones we didn't.
Which brings us to Mr Turner.
A two and a half hour film with an hour's worth of story, the director Mike Leigh often seems to mistake plodding-unpleasantness for character-building, and we're treated to Timothy Spall's admittedly robust performance of a tortured creative, struggling to balance his personal artistic vision, public favour for his work and his personal responsibilities. Except we don't actually see any of the tortured stuff. At the start of the film, Turner is a successful artist taking trips around the world for inspiration alone before returning to his central London house/studio, with its bolt-on private gallery where he sells his paintings to art connoisseurs and nobility alike. Painting is his job, his life and his passion. It's also an activity he has the financial freedom to pursue. So other than an underlying (and largely overlooked) personality disorder rooted in his past, there's really very little to 'explain' the bad-tempered, misanthropic misogynist that we spend the film with. His issues with women are illustrated frequently, but rarely explored. Leigh by no means paints him in sympathetic colours, but other than a downward spiral of angst and mental instability, there's no development of his character (and I say 'character' because I don't know enough about the actual William Turner to judge whether the screenplay is a celebration, a portrait or a full-on character assassination of the man).
And yet the character of Mr Turner himself isn't one of the film's major flaws, somehow. Timothy Spall brings enough of his own madness to the role to keep him acutely interesting, if nothing else. Even such an accomplished actor, however, is hamstrung by a horrendously unwieldy script - although his in-character monosyllabic grunts convey far more emotion than his lines. The rest of the cast have lesser rates of success with the same challenges (to the point where Ruth Sheen as Turner's estranged wife sounds as if she's reading the lines for the first time as the cameras roll), and the film really becomes more about physical acting than exchanges of dialogue.
Areas of narrative interest (the 'revealing' of his real name to his Margate landlady and prospective partner / Turner's work falling out of public favour / his relationships with his contemporaries) are either glossed over, skipped over or outright abandoned. The film plays out like a dramatised documentary with no-one narrating the events you feel should be being examined. Bizarrely, it a single scene we get not only a direct reference to the Zong slaveship which formed the central thread of the costume drama Belle, but the matter being discussed with young art critic John Ruskin, whose older self appears in Pre-Raphaelite mope-fest, Effie Gray. It occurred to me then that Mr Turner really rounds off a trilogy of visually fascinating films which should really be so much more involving, given the nature of the stories they tell.
I didn't dislike Mr Turner's composition, but I disliked too many things about its execution.
And I know that the shots that are needed of Turner's beloved Margate are no longer feasible in Margate itself. The landscape and scenery has changed far too much for what's required, so I understand why those shots weren't filmed there. But if you can't actually film Margate in Margate, at least film somewhere which looks like Margate. Or even like Kent for that matter. There is not - and has never been - a tree-topped cliff on the Western side of the promenade which the sun sets behind. After all, it's not like Turner actually had any time, respect or love for the place. Y'know, like to the point where they built an art gallery and named it in his honour, or anything. So why try for accuracy, right? I rather suspect that someone has imagined the elevation of the setting in this picture to be higher than it actually was.
And I know - I know - it's an absolutely minute fraction of the audience who will pick up on this, but when you do that in your film, it looks like you don't care.
And if you don't care, why should your audience?
Yeah, whatever.
No, if I'm being honest.
I have no idea.
Sunday evening DVD, at best.
I won't want to, but I will.
I don't want to, and I won't.
There bloody well isn't.
That's it for 17th/18th century art-films for this year though, right?
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
You can't really go wrong with Benedict Cumberbatch. There. I said it. I wouldn't class myself as a fanboy by any means, but I've yet to see him in a role where he's disappointed me*1. Benedict is really the selling-point for The Imitation Game. And this is just as well really, as everything around him is certainly 'good', but rarely rises above that, somehow.
Telling the story of mathematician Alan Turing's work during the Second World War to break the infamous enigma code used by the Nazi forces, the film shifts between 1928 when Alan is a pupil at Sherborne School, 1941 when he's recruited to help crack the code at Bletchley, and 1951 when he lives as a troubled recluse (which is essentially the wraparound segment). The main narrative takes place during wartime, of course, with the other two stories being intercut to support the themes of the film. All in all the device works well, but I couldn't help notice that occasionally we'll be treated to a '1928' (or '1941' or '1951') caption; but not always. To the point where it seems intrusive when the person in charge of the captioning machine seems to have woken up again. As a viewer, you're never lost*2, but either caption all the cuts, or none of them, surely?
So, as I've intimated, Cumberbatch is fantastic as Alan Turing. Awkward yet enthusiastic, shy yet blunt, we get a sense of a man who was a genuine pain in the arse to work with but still wasn't inherently unlikeable, and I genuinely can't think of another performer who'd have brought him to life in this way. Elsewhere the cast is largely solid; Charles Dance plays his role as Commander Deniston straight down the middle*3, Matthew Goode is understatedly great as always as Turing's long-suffering colleague Hugh Alexander, and Keira Knightley seems to have been woefully miscast as Joan Clarke, the team's only female member (this was the 1940s, and that sort of thing simply wasn't done under the normal run of things). It's not that Knightley is awful in her role; the scenes in which Joan is prim-and-proper and quietly determined suit her down to the ground. But at the film's denouement she's called upon to do some actual, emotional acting, and she seems to struggle terribly with it. It's not a deal-breaker, but it is one of the film's weaker points.
With Cumberbatch's performance seemingly more far delicate than the rest of the story, he prevents things from becoming mawkish, even at his most vulnerable. An admirable film which seems to have trouble meshing 21st century values with their post-war counterparts, The Imitation Game never quite grasps what it's reaching for, but it's still an outstanding film and worth watching for what it's actually about rather than how that's done, necessarily.
Wow, that sentence was far too long, even by my standards.
All in all, The Imitation Game is very good; you should see it.
Hmm, well, ...ish?
For the most part, yes. As much as I wanted to? No.
I'd say it probably does.
You'll lose nothing by watching this on a Sunday afternoon at home.
Nope.
At some point, but probably only the once more.
I didn't hear one. Which means no.
Spoilers ~ highlight to read: Really, though? It took them that long before they figured out the words 'heil Hitler' may be a key phrase in Nazi communications and they could use that as a kickstart to breaking the code? I'd probably have been too embarrassed to mention that part if I'd been in the team. Which makes it all the more admirable that they did, I suppose…
*1 Not saying that can't or won't happen, it just hasn't yet. Them's the breaks.
*2 Unlike the other Cumberbatch film which switches unannounced between two timelines which look pretty much identical. Yes, I'm still annoyed by that. Still. *3 But it's at least an atonement for Dracula Untold...
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
What can I tell you, that I haven't already told? I love this movie. Even within the Marvel Cinematic Universe it really is the film that keeps on giving, and I'm still drooling over the detail crammed into every costume, ship and set. Cineworld's Take 2 Thursday*1 gave me the chance to enjoy Guardians of the Galaxy on the big screen one last time, and also drag along a couple of members of my family who didn't get round to catching it back in August. They were impressed, which is the important part, although even they admitted they were essentially beaten into submission by the amount of new information that this film throws straight at the viewer, and they decided in short order to just basically sit back and enjoy the explosions.
The gags are still funny, the action's still chaotic and Ronan The Accuser is still one of the best screen-villains Marvel has produced (thanks in no small amount to Lee Pace's performance). My only bugbear is that the film drops so many shreds of information about the galaxy at large that I want to know more, and I know all of those points can't be revisited in future installments (apart from anything else, there'll be new points to pick up by then). Normally I'd tear into the comics and Marvel encyclopaediae, but since I know the MCU is also ploughing its own furrow, I don't want to be taking on too much backstory that's going to be altered, ret-conned or outright dismissed by subsequent movies.
A ridiculous amount of fun without being completely throwaway, if you haven't seen Guardians Of The Galaxy yet, shame on you. It's one of the best movies this year within its genre, and is even performing well against other more grown-up flicks (the user ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB alone should convince you, even if I can't).
The DVD and BluRay release lands in the UK on November 24th.
Do yourself a favour and put this on your Christmas list.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
Well, you don't have much choice now as it's about to hit DVD/Blu-Ray.
Yep.
Yep.
There flipping well is, yes.
So how come when Peter jets into space to rescue Gamora, Rocket tells him that there's not enough room for them both in the mining pod, even though there clearly is? When Rocket lands his pod back on Knowhere we get to see how much room there is behind the pilot's chair. What gives?
Oh, and when The Dark Aster is plunging through Xandar's atmosphere we're told that the city's been evacuated, so how come there are at least a hundred or so people apparently within walking distance of the eventual crash-site?
*1 You're right, Take 2 Tuesday would work better, wouldn't it? I dunno, maybe they're all staying in for Holby City or something?
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
