Geek of Oz

Kill la Kill is nuts. Not quite FLCL nuts but nuts all the same. This series is equal parts Battle Royale, Sailor Moon and FLCL in that Ryuko Matoi finds herself being transformed into a bad arse, fellow student thrashing monster thanks to her anthropomorphic school uniform. Pretty in so many ways, Kill la Kill is one of the more irreverent series to hit screens in years. Honnouji Academy - where the school is ruled by students clad in special outfits called Goku Uniforms. Deriding the student body as "pigs in human clothing," Student Council President Satsuki Kiryuin, along with her loyal underlings, the Elite Four, has the academy under their absolute control. One day, a vagrant schoolgirl named Ryuko Matoi appears and tries to get Satsuki, who recognizes her Scissor Blade, to talk. Was their encounter a mere coincidence or fate? The clash between the two will soon consume the whole academy! Animated by the reasonably new studio TRIGGER, Kill la Kill bears...

Thanks to its voluminous cast, This is Where I Leave You has an 'overcrowded elevator' feel about it. I couldn't help picturing a maximum capacity sign, wondering which of the surplus characters I'd happily jettison to give everyone else some room to move. With so many moving parts, the film is forced to the juggle multiple plot lines where nothing particularly interesting was explored, which left me wondering what the point was. The Altman family is reuniting in the wake of their father’s untimely passing. Despite being an atheist, Papa Altman's dying wish is that his family sits Shiva in order to bring everyone together for some much needed family time. The family's woes are a veritable smorgasbord of dysfunction, with each member’s problems topped by the next. Given this is a family reunion flick, one by one they start to find the happiness that's been eluding them through the love and support of their ... Sorry I just threw up a little. The film ...

Are you ready for a MASSIVE weekend of wall to wall gaming awesomeness? How could you say no?!? Thanks to our pals at PAX Australia, we've got a double 3 Day Pass (valued at $300) to PAX which is being held in Melbourne from October 31 - November 2. Considering that weekend passes have been sold out since November 2013, I guess you could say that this is a money-can't-buy kind of scenario! In 2004, the folks at Penny Arcade decided they wanted a show exclusively for gaming. Sure, comics, anime, and other nerd hobbies were cool, and those activities all had their own shows... so what about games? From that idea spawned a small 4,500 person event in Bellevue, Washington, focused on the culture and community that is gaming. Since then, the show hasn't looked back. Doubling in size each year until venue capacities were reached, in 2010 the show expanded into Boston for PAX East, drawing tens of thousands of attendees in the inaugural year. The shows in Seattle and Boston...

At times, I question how far I've actually aged. Biologically I'm 24 years old, but it's anyone's guess what number the parts inside the brain case add up to. Sometimes I feel the relative youngness of those 24 years, but sometimes I regress into something closer to single digits. Disney Infinity 2.0  makes me regress, in a great way. There are few other ways one can enjoy Thor fighting Elsa from Frozen  in a treehouse, or Star-Lord and Dash from The Incredibles  having a foot-race through New York, or even Iron Man picking up and punting Jack Skellington over a gaping abyss like a flying red-and-gold man cannon, unless you regress somewhat. Last year's vanilla Infinity  (which I guess is 1.0?) was a gaming-cum-merchandising attempt by Disney to make the  Skylanders  lightning strike for them. It was a fairly simplistic but artistically engrossing game that featured a plethora of Disney characters - existing in the real world as wallet-puncturing plas...

Over the years there have been numerous vidja games set in the Tolkien realm and just about every one of them has been worse than a Ring Wraith’s hand writing. Seriously, how are they supposed to have any sort of dexterity with those spindly, armour clad fingers? Anyway, just when you thought all hope was lost, along comes Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor from WB Interactive Entertainment and Monolith Productions. Set between the events of The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring, you take control of Talion, a ranger of the Gondor garrison who, along with his family, are cut down by some of Sauron’s baddies before being rejected by death. You then find yourself bound to an amnesiac Elven Wraith and adventures abound. By adventures I mean lots of heads get chopped off. Those fiercely bound to Tolkien’s lore will have a bit of an issue with the story as it not only diverts from the general feel of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth texts by focussing on what is essentially a revenge ...

Don'tcha just love the circus? Karneval seems to be the lovechild of a mangaka who wanted to fold Final Fantasy , Soul Eater  and Spirited Away  together and see what came out of such an unholy union. That's not to say the idea couldn't produce something original, but at the same time there's a distinct sense of familiarity. It goes beyond mere homage or utilisation of the tropes of the anime medium and into "I could've sworn I've seen this before" territory. Whether you're one for going over well-trod ground or prefer the undiscovered country will largely determine how much you end up taking to Karneval 's thirteen episodes of colourful adventure making. The story follows Nai, a young platinum-haired protagonist (with strange purple hair-horns) who's snatched away from a fate worse than death at the hands of a shape shifting Eldritch nightmare who'd fit right at home in Yubaba's bathhouse. Nai's saviour, Gareki, brings...

You’ve got to admire the way Kevin Smith does business. Last year, Smith and his partner-in-crime Scott Mosier cooked up the idea for Tusk during a particularly hilarious episode of their weekly podcast, the Smodcast , during which Smith read out an advertisement from Gumtree purporting to be from a person seeking a flatmate who would be willing to dress as a walrus in order to live rent-free. This led to Smith penning a script for the film and turning to his loyal army of twitter followers to decide whether or not it should be made. With overwhelming support, Smith’s fans got behind the project and now, just over a year later, Tusk has arrived. If this is where Smith’s career is headed, it’ll never be super-profitable but I’m on board for whatever comes next. Tusk is a challenging mixed bag of a film which is lodged squarely in the ‘seen to be believed’ category. Wallace Bryton (Justin Long) and Teddy Craft (Haley Joel Osment) host a podcast titled The Not-See Party (say it...

The Judge , is an uneven, rather dissatisfying film that inhabits the very American genre of the “Coming-home-drama” where the city-based protagonist or protagonists return to their generally “Middle-America”, “small-town” roots for a family occasion or high-school reunion. Often the “small-town” is pretty and even idyllic, contrasting with any family unrest and unhappiness. Protagonist/s often learn lessons from coming home, ultimately soothing family squabbles and find some sort of peace, closure and self-acceptance from the experience. Some good examples include August: Osage County (2013), Junebug (2005), Sweet Home Alabama (2002) and the darkly hilarious Grosse Pointe Blank (1997). Largely The Judge plays no differently to this core plot, but with some quirks added to the mix. Our protagonist is down-in-the-dumps Chicago criminal lawyer Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr) who returns home to Carlinville, Indiana, after hearing his mother has passed away. From the moment...