So here is something the celebrity David Bodycombe threw my way a few nights ago, a low-budget web thriller called The Vault, based around a reality show with a similar aesthetic to second best film of all-time Cube (*) and is sort of an extra-large version of that game from The Mole where people are locked in separate rooms and they have to solve puzzles inside the rooms to help their team-mates escape. Here’s the official site, it started in 2011 and seemed to finish sometime last year. It’s not gory or anything, or at least not as far as I’ve got.
For me (I’m about halfway through) a bit ponderous, although each ten-minute episode finishes with a nice cliffhanger which has kept me watching thus far – I was going to stop a few episodes ago for the night but have kept watching, so it’s certainly doing something right.
IN OTHER NEWS, we always say that until the BBC decides to send a song the public will buy then we’re just wasting our time at Eurovision. But lo and behold, what has topped the physical sales charts this week?
Electro Velvet No.1 on the Official Physical Sales Chart pic.twitter.com/QbtVn445D8
— Danyal (@DanyalWho) April 26, 2015
Unfortunately it’s nowhere to be seen in the official Top 100 made up of downloads, physical and streaming. I wonder how many it has sold physically.
Finally, I was hoping to run another Mario Kart tournament this coming Saturday but I’ve been surprised with a family visit so I’m postponing it for a week to May 9th. This gives you ample time to download and play the DLC tracks (required), and this time instead of a tournament I’m likely to just host a room and everyone can join in so we should all be able to race at once (provided 12 or less turn up) – make sure you’ve added me as a friend on Wii U in the interim – BrigBother, and that’s my name on PlayStation Network as well if you want to add.
(*) The best film of all time is, of course, The Running Man.
This appears to be their next project – Circle, which sounds like a sci-fi reimagining of The Balloon Game:
http://youtu.be/z_zSG2ODWm8
Just a warning – the ending has gone down like a bucket of cold sick, me included, so enjoy the ride but don’t expect to end up in your planned destination.
That said, I give it 9/10 for effort. A little bit of wobbly acting in places and slightly under-edited, but marvellous ambition.
Gerry Scotti announced his retirement in 2016.
honest this time!
maybe.
Antonella Clerici from Ready Steady Cook and Paolo Bonolis will host the EXPO2015 opening show.
be sure to butt… to buT your ticket!
http://img.tgcom24.mediaset.it/binary/twitter/39.$plit/C_4_articolo_2101443_upiFoto1F.jpg
I have enjoyed The Vault rather a lot. I watched all of it but the finale last night (and failed to realize it was coming on 4am because of it). There are some minor things I could quibble about, but I think it nails the atmosphere and I did genuinely come to care for some of the characters.
I saw David’s post about the ending so I’m kind of wary of watching the last episode. So far I’ve enjoyed where it’s going later in the series, defying expectations in numerous ways, so I don’t know if he meant the direction it goes towards the end or just the very very end, so we’ll see I suppose. Although I probably won’t be able to watch for a while, I have a ton of errands today.
But thanks for the recommendation, Brig and David!
Marathoned the whole thing tonight.
Very much agreed on the finale being kinda…. eh…., but a great trip getting there.
Okay, finally got to watch the finale and you know what? I actually completely loved it.
I can totally see why a lot of people wouldn’t, but to me it underscored a lot of the themes of the series. I kind of want to start writing an essay about why (mostly to figure it out myself as I work through it via text – I do my best thinking outside of my head) but don’t want to do any spoilers. Also I’m obscenely tired. But it just worked for me.
Okay, I wrote a 1700ish word essay in the comments to the finale video if anyone is interested.
You probably shouldn’t be. But if you are…
I don’t know if that link even worked, youtube comments are weird, but if not look for the comment from user “feasible”.
Again, if you care.
I’m two episodes grom finishing this, it does really pick up for me about halfway through so looking forward to its contentious ending.
Well, hmm.
I’ll just leave this here…
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/lionsgate-remake-cult-sci-fi-792574
Completely unecessary of course, but being Lionsgate at least the traps are likely to be inventive. And gory.
Wow I thought it was alright and then came the ending. Now I won’t recommend it, which sounds harsh considering the time I spent watching it, but this last episode was really not satisfying.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Spoilery-ish post follows…
A classic example of writing themselves into a corner. I’m fairly sure they still could have used a similar ‘event’ like an earthquake to achieve much of the same aims regarding being trapped and teamwork without the need for such a hopeless (in both senses) ending.
The reddit thread on this is quite an interesting read. Over 90% of the comments are negative, which isn’t a great batting average.
https://m.reddit.com/r/vaultshow/comments/2g8uta/it_has_finally_arrived/
I’ve rarely seen that many people being that angry because of their disapointment. I can totally understand them.
Do you think a show like that could actually work? Well I envision a totally different look and just 8 people plus 1 operator in a 5 hour long game edited to a 90 minute slot as a summer special. Really just one show a year (okay maybe an additional one in winter) and the shows being entirely different every single time (e.g. one team trying to solve everything, two teams competing against each other,…). I mean room escape games are still quiet loved and it could certainly find an audience. Though I wonder whether this show could work for a public broadcaster (because it probably won’t be a huge audience) or on a public channel with product placements. (Would any company want to be involved? It would be a clever game the product would be connected to, but the product itself could just be a little thing in the entire show.)
It’s barely even writing into a corner, though. I mean, for me, it would’ve been a really interesting and better ending if this entire thing WAS all actually “part of the show”, and they were just taking extra lengths to screw with the players.
The time runs out, he presses the button, the lights go out… and they won. Audience cheering, Davina clone applauding, noose guy somehow explained (although, that’s one thing that confused me, why did he see him, when he should have been in the other Vault? It’s just so coincidental that THOSE three people had rooms with the others?)
Ah well.
When they showed the TV execs getting what came to them, the whole “is it real or staged” thing was decided once and for all. That’s what I mean by writing into a corner.
Yeah, but since that was IN the last episode (wasn’t it?) there isn’t much of an excuse to end up in that corner in the first place.
I watched some really weird sci-fi/horror movies a couple of weeks ago – The Human Race (Stephen King’s story “The Long Walk” (Stephen King also wrote “Running Man” too and I believe it is set in the same universe.) sort of reminds me of the feeling I get with films like this and cube.
It is good but if they give it a conclusion the conclusion will be disappointing. (see: Sequels to The Cube.)
The Human Race conclusion is bad and then it has the Battlestar Galactica problem that after the bad ending it has 10 minutes of worse things happening.
Coincidentally I watched this yesterday, and enjoyed it quite considerably. People (including the escape room people who pointed me towards it) still hate the ending; I didn’t hate it, though clearly it wasn’t satisfying. More disappointingly, the official channel has versions of the first five episodes plus annotations containing directors’ commentary, except that YouTube removed annotations from videos in January, so thanks for that. But what do I know? I still like Still In Love With You.