GAMES
WORLD OR WARSHIPS, PC, free
One of our all-time favourite games was the original war sim Battlefield 1942, for two reasons: firstly, it was one of the first "massively multiplayer" free-roam games, giving you a real sense of being but one of hundreds of troops battling for control of an island, playing on a team and contributing to a common goal but doing what you felt like doing; and, two, you didn't get slaughtered within half a second every time you spawned. Even if you weren't particularly good at it, there were still loads of ways to have fun. As that series developed (with Hardline the latest instalment), online play became increasingly on rails, competitive and, frankly, super-boring for the more casual player. So it was with gusto we embraced World of Warships, the third title in a newish WW2 series (following tanks and planes), which takes us back to those, er, kinder, gentler times when war wasn't quite such hell. You join a fleet (choosing your craft on a spectrum from big, ponderous battleships, to nimble but vulnerable destroyers), chug about and try to hit the enemy, which is difficult but strangely addictive. AH
DVD
ALIEN, Fox (M)
Outer space has rarely seemed as scary as it does in Ridley Scott's 1979 shocker, which put a sophisticated gloss on a stock B-movie plot about a monster on the loose. Taking his cue from Stanley Kubrick's groundbreaking 2001: A Space Odyssey, Scott aimed for immersive realism within the science fiction context: the slow pace forces us to share the cabin fever of the blue-collar characters, cooped up in their starship light years from home. Yet the film also resembles a sexualised bad dream, starting from the opening sequence of the crew members emerging from womblike sleeping pods – prefiguring the bloodier "birth" of the ambiguously gendered alien itself, conceived by Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger as a shape-shifting freak of nature with a phallic muzzle and dripping, glistening teeth. Standing up for humanity is Sigourney Weaver as warrant officer Ellen Ripley, one of the greatest characters in modern cinema; while not yet the full-fledged tragic heroine she would become in the sequels, she already conveys a physical and mental toughness that suggests the creature has conceivably met its match. JW
FREE-TO-AIR
ABC3, OCTOBER 5, 6.20pm, READY FOR THIS
A double episode opens this anticipated teen series following a group of indigenous kids from around the country who move to Arcadia House in Sydney, a hostel for elite students in various fields. Ava (Majeada Beatty) is a gifted but cripplingly shy singer from the Torres Straits; Zoe (Madeleine Madden) is from Darwin and has her sights set on the Olympics; local kid Levi (Aaron McGrath) is a budding AFL player; Dylan (Liam Talty) is a gifted violinist secretly yearning to be a DJ; Lily (Leonie Whyman) has been sent to Arcadia House after her mum dies and Reece (Christian Byers) is the blow-in, the Sydney boy lacking stability at home who ends up a part of the Arcadia House 'family'. In this double opener the teens, all from disparate backgrounds, grapple with settling into their new lives, under the guidance of Vee (Christine Anu) and social worker Mick (Lasarus Ratuere). From the producers of Redfern Now, Ready For This has a string of veteran directors (Secret River's Daina Reid directs the first) and some great acting; the teen themes here might not be groundbreaking but what an overdue pleasure to see a cast where white faces are the minority. KN
DVD
THE BELLBOY, Paramount (G)
Shot on location at a luxury Florida hotel, Jerry Lewis's 1960 debut as writer-director is a plotless stream of gags and fancies that offers unusually direct access to his very strange mind. Lewis plays the hapless bellboy Stanley, perpetually tongue-tied rather than strictly mute, who causes endless trouble for his employers and others around him. A nobody in every sense, he's shadowed by multiple doppelgangers including Lewis playing "himself" as a jittery megastar ("I'm nervous, a nervous wreck"); some bits have unsettling Freudian undertones, as when Stanley is physically trapped in a quarrel between an old couple, or accidentally ruins a younger couple's wedding night. Linked to this material in an oblique fashion are sequences that warp time and space to serve fantasies of omnipotence: Stanley conducting an imaginary orchestra, the flash of a camera turning night into day, an auditorium filling with chairs in the blink of a cut. It's only intermittently funny in any usual sense – but if it had been made in, say, the Czech Republic, no one would dare challenge its status as a masterpiece. JW
SERIES
GRAND DESIGNS SERIES 12, Roadshow (PG)
The charming Kevin McCloud is as sharp as ever, showing us new possibilities and revisiting old projects to see what changes have been made. Patrick Bradley's cargo container pad on the family farm in County Derry, Northern Ireland, is one of the most challenging projects featured, with an outstanding result. While £135,000 is considered cheap, the architect (who also farms) gets a lot of bang for his buck with a building design that originally looks very clunky but comes good with an excellent choice of covering materials and landscaping. As always, there are several other clever and creative projects in this season, including a round house on a property, an amphibious house on the River Thames and a villa in Snowdonia. McCloud isn't afraid to point out the challenges and mistakes involved with each project and can be a bit heavy on the poetic praise in his summaries, but that's part of his shtick. The outstanding feature is always the individuality that shines through in these ambitious projects. JK
