Back in black crackers!

Merry Boxing Day! and I hope you all had a great christmas. I've decided to come back to this blog just cause I feel like it. I hope there will be at least 1 reader other than me and if you do read please comment to let me know that I'm not writing this for nobody, cheers. Anyway 2008 has been a strange and probably the worst I've had in my life but for me the last 2 weeks of the year have always been good because of Christmas and my birthday on the 30th (16 this year!).
The main reason why this year has really put me down was mainly facing school and I had important exams then afterwards had to go straight to a course that should be a 2 year one and I'll have to sit some exams in Janruary that only tell me whether I can sit the final one!!! it sucks. Also my best friend, my dog, died this year which has really made me lose hope making my marks in school go down. Plus the year when I really really need good teachers I've been given a lot of really bad teachers apart from a few who are great. The school has been letting me down since I first went there. Anyway even though next year is going to start off bad doesn't mean the whole year will be bad.

Well folks...

I've gotten fed up with writing reviews and decided to just stick with a normal blog. I don't like the name The Fedora blog too much anymore and most places on the net I am now just called by my name so I find it better just to be myself. This blog will lie here gathering dust in case anyone looks at it but for now I will be at www.theblogofewan.blogspot.com

So farewell old blog, now to make a fresh start.
Bye

Ideas, ideas, what to do, what to do

Well I have a good number of ideas, not just lego films but I want to try using other media as well. I'll just list them all.

Lego Films:
The lego cop film, I don't have enough time right now to film it but I can get pre production sorted out.

Dumbass Dave The Movie (fake film trailer) since I have short time I thought I could maybe make a fake movive trailer for a dumbass dave including dave shoved into the situations of action films but put in short clips.

The EPIC LIVE ACTION LEGO ADVENTURE, pretty self explanatory. I've seen a lot of lego live action films some were actualy alright and I thought I could make something easier than animating for a change.

Machinima:
Well I'd like to make some machinima but it'd be difficult but who knows what'll happen with this. I was planning to maybe form up a clan thing with some good friends and start building up a group for making machinima like the Janus Syndicate (google them they're awesome)

Cartoon:
I'm also thinking of making a cartoon with MS paint -that's right MS PAINT!- but I've seen a guy who's made some pretty good simple cartoons with ms paint.

Sweding films!?: Now this is a myth whether I'll do this or not. I'd need friends to help out and I'd have to be in town (which I'm not I live miles away from it) and I'm not sure if my friends would be up for it since the people in the place I'm at now are... let's say more mature than my old friends that I grew up with. If you want to know what sweding a film is go see Be Kind Rewind, great film.

So yeah if you think any of these ideas are ok please comment. If you actualy read this PLEASE COMMENT. I seriously need to know if anyone likes this at all.

later

- Ewan

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Now playing: Magnum, P.I
via FoxyTunes

ABOUT TIME YOU MADE ANOTHER POST!

Hey folks,

I have a few things to tell you today. First if you actualy read this you might notice I mention Fergus sometimes. Fergus is a friend of mine you can find at http://www.thebinaryblog.blogspot.com

Anyway just to let you know I'm having my freedom right now.
But it's almost over. :(
I finaly get an idea for a brickfilm and it's nearing the end of the summer. I'm really sorry about this guys I just wish I had more time to make a proper brickfilm but times running out and if what the teachers said for the whole of June is true this year I will have even less time than last year. None of you will ever have any idea how frustrated I am over this, I could probably make the film easy bit by bit after school though by the sounds it I may be getting a ton of homework but it's not guaranteed so I don't know we'll see.

Here's a new video I uploaded to youtube. Nothing much but enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WStGnj2c6sE I still don't know how to embed it here.

Investigation into Lego Mars Mission

About last year Lego released a new line of Lego sets called Mars Mission. I was happy to see them introduced because Lego didn't release any space sets that weren't based on Star Wars since they released a Life on Mars. This line of sets seems to combine 2 old product themes they made a while back.

One is Rock Raiders which was simply about a crew mining for energy crystals so they could go back home and two is Life on Mars all it was was a group of people flying to mars and meeting aliens there. Mars Mission however is about a crew flying to Mars and collecting energy crystals (the crystals are the same colour as the ones in Rock Raiders coincidence?) and taking them home but little do they know that there's aliens who live on the crystals so to get their crystals back they attack them.

I have to admit though the new lego aliens are pathetic. I was looking forward to seeing what they'd be like but they're only made of two parts. One is the legs - which don't move! - and the other is the top half which has the head arms - all of which don't move!! - and both parts stick together with a hinge piece. So the only action that the alien can do is some stupid looking chicken action.

However the sets make up for it. As lazy as I am and how big the Gears of War Review turned out I'm just going to show you some pictures.

only 3 more

Only 3 more exams and it'll all be over. But then I have 2 more years of school AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Ah well, after that I'll be free, only after 4-5 years of college AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It should be worth the wait in the end. Anyway I guess I am making progress just now so things might get better.

Moving on, Indiana Jones 4 is coming out in the cinemas next week which is something to look forward to. I was hoping for it to be out after the exams but still it'll shine some light on things :P
Plus I think there's 2 Indiana Jones games coming out, and I REALLY need a new game, one is a Lego one and the other is a proper one but it isn't based on the new film so it shouldn't be a rushed job.

The games that I'm looking forward to are:

-Indiana Jones (I have no idea what the main title of is but it's the proper one)

- Lego Indiana Jones (the Lego star wars games were a lot of fun so they might have improved it some more in this)

- Mercenaries 2

- Gears of War 2 (it has chainsaw duels!)

- Timesplitters 4

and one game that won't be coming out for a long time

- Monkey Island 5

If there's an awesome Xbx 360 game out there please mention in the comments. (If there is anyone but Fergus who looks at this)

CATS!

CATS! This post is all about them. You'd have seen at least one crazy cat picture on the internet so in this post I'll link a site to you, full of these crazy cat pictures(you guessed it Fegus). http://www.thelolcats.com/

Also here's a cat song :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNP5erCmYcQ

Yeah I was just bored today.

IMPORTANT MESSAGE! well sort of...

I am very sorry about the lack of posts if anyone does read this (apart from you Fergus) but I have these exams coming up (next week in fact) so I'll have to concentrate on them more than a blog.

If you do look at my blog and like what's been posted up here so far but would like to see more posts more often please email me at ewanfleck@hotmail.co.uk
Thanks

Anyway moving on from that I might be making a video to help people getting some achievements on the game Crackdown (Xbox 360). I also might make a mini review for the expansion pack for Crackdown which includes new vehicles, weapons and a funky little gadget. AND a new lego film WILL be made after these god forsaken exams are over. So there's good to come.

I will end this post with a lego thriller animation by a friend of mine on youtube. The animation isn't the best but that doesn't cut into the enjoyment of the film at all. Anyway here's Iniquity by Paul Harth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGukMolW_Tg&feature=PlayList&p=D17B84F720E2BBFF&index=22

P.S. I'm having a lot of trouble with embedding youtube videos to the blog for some reason, when I paste in the code it only pastes in a small part of the code but not all of it :? email if you have any idea what this means.

-Ewan

Gears of War review

OK my first review is of Gears of War for the xbox 360.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccWrbGEFgI8 This is a great trailer for Gears of War check it out.

The game is set in the future where there is a war of Humans versus the Locust. The Locust are an alien species who live underground and can emerge anywhere to attack you.

You play as Marcus Fenix who apparantley is a traitor and got put in prison but you start the game off, getting freed to help fight against the locust. When you join up with the rest of the team the commander (who is a complete douchebag, whatever happened to cool commanders?) has come up with a plan to get rid of the locust once and for all. Through the first Act you meet a couple of new characters but by the end of Act 1 you know who you're gonna be playing with the most part of the game.

The gameplay is pretty basic. Most of the time you're heading towards you're objective and the locust can emerge from the ground anywhere so trying to check rooms to see if there's any enemys in them is useless. There's also a lot of hiding in cover as you hide carefully behind a lump of rock you can jump over it, aim while you're in cover and even blind fire.

More detail has been put into reloading your weapon than your usual game. When you reload a bar appears where two colours on the bar represent getting a fast reload. Press the right bumper at the right time and you can get a super fast reload or if you get a bad reload you can be trying to load your gun looking like a complete fool to be put on a battlefield. Some of you might not think it's worth attempting but you do get achievements for doing it a certain amount and it does pay off rather than reloading slowly.

There's a good variety of weapons available like the lancer (an assault rifle with a chainsaw on it), a shotgun, sniper rifle, pistol, revolver and some more explosive weapons. With this variety of weapons some situations need them more than others like whenever I'm in a building I always whip out the shotgun and I always take the lancer out when I wanna chainsaw someone. I have to say though using the chainsaw is one of my favorite things about this game. When you use the chainsaw blood comes spraying out all over the screen. Lovely. Even though it's a bit silly the fact that you can shoot someone and they blow up to pieces it makes the game a whole lot more fun. Watching a Locust saunter his way towards you while you're in cover and jumping over the cover just to get a bullet in the face is always a good laugh.

The game provides online play so you can play through thw whole campaign on co-op with a friend (which is my favorite thing to do online) is a lot more fun than playying alone. There's also multiplayer matches with the usual teamdeathmatch type of thing with a king of the hill game. Even though there can only be 8 players in a game, 4 v 4, it really is great fun.

What new features does it bring?
- the ability to chainsaw someone (in a special move not just mowing them down like in DOOM)
- the fact that when you get a headshot the head flys right off
- the roadie run
- the Kryll, avoiding the dark so you can't be eaten alive by man eating birds, what an amazing idea to bring to a game

The Good:
- great graphics for one of the earlier games for the 360
- playing co-op on campaign
- a good variety of weapons
- a fun game to play with your mates
- the gore is funny

The Bad:
- the controls can sometimes be a bit bulky because of moving into cover all the time


Overall I'm giving this a 9/10 it's not perfect but hardly anything is nowadays. If you an xbox 360 I highly suggest you buy this, it is definetly worth it.

- Ewan

Webshots and my current stage in my New Film

Okay I'd like to mention http://www.webshots.com it's a great site for some amazing photographs of places all around the world, you should all seriously check it out.

Anyway I am currently in the very slow process of making a brickfilm but thanks to school work (the exams coming up in May) I am getting less and less spare time for film making. But after then I will have plenty of time till August so something is coming, believe it or not.

I have several ideas though so I'm going to make a few short films related to my ideas and then see what people like best. Anyway be sure to see my youtube at http://youtube.com/ewanjf

laters

Welcome to my Blog!

Hello and welcome to the fedora blog named after the coolest hat in the world.(it's a fedora in case you don't know)

Every now and then I'll post a review up of a film, tv show, game or anything I feel like reviewing. I will also post anything I've discovered across the net that I feel like sharing with you and I will also post occaisionaly personnal things happening in my life.

Hope you enjoy the blog. ;)