Trailer Park: Toil and Trouble

You've probably noticed that there's been no new Hex Picks over the last few weeks. Sadly, it looks as though The Trailer Park may be going the same way. The Hex Dimension website is winding down for the time being, if hopefully not forever. It's been a great opportunity to be part of what went on there, and I wish everyone involved the best.

It's good, then, that our last collection of trailers can be quite a strong one. I like the look of almost everything we see here, and even the one that doesn't quite work for me looks pretty damn stunning.

So to read the final Trailer Park before it goes extinct, please click the unexpectedly appropriate dinosaurs below.

Trailer Park: Awakenings

It's been a very odd week for trailers. Not exactly quiet but... smaller? Usually you can count on there being one or two big blockbusters or big names, but this week there's only one on the list that I've ever even heard of - and then only because it's a remake!

Instead, the picks this week are maybe a bit more arty and more indie than usual. But there's nothing wrong with that, and it's nice to focus on the kind of trailers I'd probably have overlooked before I started this feature. Some of them look positively great, too - click below to check 'em out.

Trailer Park: Pixels and Piracy

I like weeks like this one, where there's a strange mix of all different types of film trailers. There's fantasy and sci-fi and horror and comedy and even a biopic, of all things. Some of it looks great - some of it looks bloody terrible. There's something for everyone!

Click on the giant glowing Pac-Man to take a look at our eclectic picks.

Trailer Park: The DC TV Puppetry Jamboree

After breaking one of my unspoken personal rules for The Trailer Park last week (no offensive content), I've gone and broken another one today. I had planned to restrict myself to only one TV trailer per week, and even then only if there weren't enough films. But there were so many good TV promos last week, and so few decent film ones, that I've gone back on that rule too.

Despite this, it's actually a really strong week overall. All five trailers are pretty great, and I absolutely love more than half of them. This feature may have morphed slightly away from how I originally envisiged it, but maybe that's a good thing! You can decide for yourself by hitting the link below.

Hex Picks: Apocalyptic Films

At the end of last week, we in the UK learned that we now have a Conservative majority government.

On a completely unrelated note, our theme this month is the end of the world. Click below to check out our movie choices!

Trailer Park: NSFW

One of my self-imposed unspoken rules when I started The Trailer Park was that it would only include trailers with no age-rating or restrictions. Stuff that anyone could watch, and no-one could find offensive. And it lasted... exactly three weeks.

It's not my fault, I swear! It's just that almost every damn trailer this week was redband or, at the very least, a little bit racy. Even the trailers I left out this week were for a bunch of gore-filled horror films! So, backed into a corner, here's a collection of the week's mostly filthy, mostly naked trailers. Enjoy!

Trailer Park: What a Lovely Kray!

Ah well, there were always going to be weeks like this. It's not a bad week - I like the trailers that came out - there just weren't enough of them. There's only four of them here, and one of those is for a TV series rather than a film! Still, there's some good stuff in the list, and a very generous helping of Tom Hardy. It may not be the best of weeks, but it's a lovely day.

Click below for our collection of the week's best trailers.

Trailer Park: Jur4ssicland

Nothing was going to live up to last week's one-two punch of Star Wars and Bat Soup, but I'm actually surprised at what a nice collection of different-feeling trailers we managed to fit into the second episode of The Trailer Park. There's a horror, a traditional mystery, a not-so-traditional mystery, a fun blockbuster, and a sombre, deadly serious blockbuster - there's actually more variety here than last week, which is cool. Hopefully people like it.

There's some slightly different stuff going on - I've messed a little with the layout, and the Trailer of the Week feature is actually visible now - but mostly I feel like the format is working, and five trailers feels like the right amount. I'd love some feedback, though, so please let me know how you feel about all this.
 
As always, you can check out the second Trailer Park by clicking below!

Trailer Park: Ant v Scream: Genisys of the Force

Today saw the launch of a new feature on Hex Dimension. It's a weekly spot that will collect all the week's best film trailers in one place, and give a quick analysis of each. It's a really great idea that I wish I could take credit for, but that honour falls to Emily King. It seems so obvious in retrospect - having one single place to look every week, instead of trawling through film sites - yet I'm not sure I've ever seen it done quite like this before. In the absence of Doctor Who, I've been looking for something I could write regularly (not to mention something I could overanalyse), so when Emily suggested this to the team it seemed like the perfect fit. I took it and ran with it and now it's here!

We call it... The Trailer Park.

There was no real reason why I decided to start it this week - things just worked out that way. Yet, somehow, I managed to choose the week that both the new Star Wars and Batman v Superman trailers broke. There won't be another week with two mega-trailers like that for a while! So, to find out what I thought of the two biggest trailers of the year (and a couple of the week's slightly-less-big trailers) click the pic below. And check back next week for more!

Hex Picks: Film Villains

This week the Hex Dimension team are picking our favourite villains from the movies. While the list is somewhat dominated by supervillains (because, well, supervillains are cool) there's still a couple of unexpected choices. One of the choices is almost entirely redacted, and another is probably the last supervillain you would ever think to include in a list like this (yet it's probably favourite choice on here).

It's a pretty interesting mix, in other words, and you should click the image to take a look!

Hex Dimension: Is Marvel teaming up with a Sony a wise move?

This week, a miracle happened. Marvel Studios finally struck a deal with Sony Pictures, allowing Spider-Man to at last appear onscreen with Marvel's other characters. But, perhaps more importantly, that deal establishes that this will be a new version of the character rather than the current puffy-haired, promise-breaking iteration. And, more important still, Marvel will be the ones with creative control, rather than the aimless executives at Sony. This is great news.

Following our reaction piece regarding the Star Wars trailer, Hex Dimension have written a similar piece about this Spidey news. Rather than just squee about how great the news is (like I did above), I tried to find a more interesting angle to look at this from. I think I found one - and you can find it too by following the link below.

Hex Picks: British Films

A lot of the stuff that we consume - whether it's written or visual or interactive - comes from America. They make more stuff than us, so that's just the way it is. But this February sees Hex Dimension trying to shed a little light on media from our own home shores. All our Hex Picks will be - to some extent - British, and it feels good to be giving them some recognition.

This week is movies (or "films", as we call them over here). There's everything from ultraviolent drama to gonzo comedy, and it's a pretty spectacular list of great films. I chose probably exactly what you'd expect me to choose - but it's one of my absolute favourites and I totally stand by it. So, for the good of the Commonwealth, click below.

Hex Dimension Review: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

I've been shocked and surprised at the general response to Peter Jackson's final Hobbit film. I liked the first two more than most (but less than some), but I can definitely understand the issues that a lot of people had with them, even if I don't entirely agree.

But this one? This one I loved. From start to finish, there and back again, I loved every single second of it. To see Five Armies facing the same kind of backlash as the first two feels like absolute madness.

To find out what's different this time, and why it worked so well for me, click below for my full review!

Hex Dimension: The Star Wars Trailer Awakens

So, a thing happened this week. You may have heard about it, and you may even have witnessed it first-hand. It was the new Star Wars trailer. And it set the internet alight.

Since my brother and I are Hex Dimension's biggest Star Wars nerds (which, at this point, means we're experts in stuff that doesn't matter any more) we naturally had thoughts and wanted to share them. Our reactions turned out to be very similar, but for quite different reasons. David once again demonstrates why he's the one with a writing degree - firstly by having a much better argument than mine, and secondly by saying more with two words ("exquisitely dumb") than I managed with two whole paragraphs. It was fun to write against each other like this, though, even if we did both somehow use the word "freaking" the exact same way.

To read our thoughts, click the image below. This blog post actually continues after the link, because I have a few additional points to make. So, once you've read the article, head back here if you fancy some extra fanboy rantings!

You back? Ok, so you've read the piece, and you've probably rolled your eyes at my rather excessive reaction to something that's only on screen for a couple of seconds. As David says in the article, my disdain for that lightsaber is probably somewhat misplaced. Certainly, I've receieved a few comments from readers to that effect - it is, after all, just a prop in a film.

But here's the thing. If you'd never seen the trailer, and I showed you a screenshot of that lightsaber, would you even know what it was? Would you be able to tell that it was from a Star Wars movie? Because, for every other lightsaber in the series - even the purple one, or the one with two blades, or the Inquisitor's crazy spinning frizbee from Rebels - you can always instantly tell.

This thing? I don't think you could. Personally, I wouldn't even know that it's from a sci-fi - it looks more like a fire-sword from a fantasy movie. For all that it shows us familiar things, like X-wings and Stormtroopers and droids, the lightsaber in this trailer doesn't even register as a lightsaber. And, for me at least, that is a huge problem.

And, on top of that, I have a growing fear that the stupid design for this 'saber - from it's turbulant blade to its rediculous crossguard - is just another symptom of the backward-facing rehashing that David wrote about. We know that the new X-wings are derived from Ralph McQuarrie's early concept-art for the original film, and that the new droid is based on early notes for R2-D2. What if this production is so stuck in the past - so beholden to nostalgia - that they're using designs from old posters too?

...I really hate that sword.

Hex Dimension Review: Interstellar

It's been a while since I reviewed something in earnest, beyond my brief weekly titbits for Hex Picks. Quite honestly, there just hasn't been much out that's tickled my fancy. But now there's finally something meaty in cinemas - Christopher Nolan's first ever full-on space movie, no less - and Hex Dimension kindly let me be the one to tackle it. I've even whipped up a new Review colour-scheme to celebrate!

Nolan is most famous for his Batman films of course but, much as I love Batman Begins, it's always been his other work that really appeals to me. The Prestige and Inception - both produced in the gap between Batmans - are such brilliant and intelligent movies, and Interstellar looked set to follow that trend. To find out whether or not it actually did, hit the rather pretty link below.

Hex Picks: Most Recent Comic

I started writing this blog for a couple of reasons. The main thing is a general love of films, of course, but perhaps even more important is the fact that I really needed to blurt out my thoughts about Prometheus.

That need has never really gone away, so when the chance came up to write some more about it for Hex Dimension, I jumped all over it. The only problem is that I was supposed to be writing about comics. This week's recommendations are the most interesting and most numerous in a while - so to take a look (and to find out just how badly I went off-topic) click the link below.

Hex Dimension: DC v Marvel: Dawn of Universes

You've probably noticed how psychadelic the blog's been looking recently. Well, now it's getting worse. This is the debut of my new Opinion Green theme, to sit alongside Recommendation Red and TARDIS Blue as ways to distinguish my nonsense. Hopefully all these colours are brightening the place up and not just hurting everyone's eyes! Anyway, to business...

With Doctor Who and The Companion Piece both winding down for the year, I finally have more time on my hands to write actual articles and opinion pieces and maybe even reviews! The first, which I hope will be one of several over the next few weeks, is a sceptical look at last month's press-releases from Marvel and DC, which announced their future movies.

I fall down pretty heavily on one side of the equation, and it's probably quite predictable which one - but I feel like my reasons are valid and the points are worth reiterating. Click the link below to take a look!

Hex Picks: Most Recent Film

It's November, and that means it's time for another round of Hex Dimension's weekly recommendations. Due to a bunch of stuff (although, on my part, that stuff was mostly just uselessness) we didn't manage to get a selection of books together for the first week. As a result, we're jumping straight in this week with our film picks!

Our theme for the month is, unusually, the last thing that we read/watched/played. It's unusual because there's no quality control for this - we're not picking our favourites of a genre, or even good films - so for the first time we might end up with picks we don't actually like! I'm not saying that's necessarily what happened (though I'm not saying it isn't either) but it was an interesting selection we ended up with and definitely worth a look.

So go on - say "Hex Dimension" three times and click to summon the page...

Hex Picks: Horror Movies

Hallowe'en horror picks continue at Hex Dimension this week with our film recommendations. I believe it's at this point that I'm legally obliged to ask, "What's your favourite scary movie?"

My choice is one of the first things I ever wrote about on this blog, weirdly enough, and while I'm not certain it's my favourite horror film, it is absolutely the best example of all my favourite things about horror films. I'm not sure if that sentence made any sense or not, but hopefully you can figure out what I'm on about if you click the link below.

By spooky coincidence, my pick this week is actually one of the prizes in this year's big horror givaway, too. So, if horror movies are your thing (and even if they're not) click here for the chance to win a small blood-stained pile of them!

Hex Picks: Crime Movies

Who would have thought that there would ever be a week of these recommendations where I would be the one person playing the theme straight?

This week - part of "Crime and Punishment" month - we've ended up with one comedy, one sci-fi, one comedy-sci-fi, an anachronistic-steampunk-comedy-action-thing, and a horror film. And only one straight crime thriller, weirdly chosen by me. I love how creatively we all interpret these monthly subjects - it might be my favourite thing about them.

It's a really great mix this week, with no two films even remotely alike, and you should absolutely get over there and check it out!