Phill Sacre

Category: Reviews

Sometimes I’ll see a film or read a book or listen to a record. On very rare occasions I’ll choose to write about this. This is where this category comes in…

  • Review: The World’s End

    The World's EndI’m just going to come right out and say it up front: I was a bit disappointed by the World’s End.

    Let me explain. I’ve been a fan of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright since Spaced – it’s probably my all-time favourite sitcom. I loved both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz – in particular, Hot Fuzz (mainly because of the genre – I’m not really into zombie films). As a result, I had high hopes for the final installment of the ‘cornetto trilogy’ when we went in to see it last Friday. And, frankly, I came out feeling a bit let down.

    I’ve been thinking about this over the past couple of days, and after having one or two conversations with people I’ll try to narrow down what I think was disappointing about the movie for me. Please note that this review will contain some pretty major spoilers so I would avoid if you haven’t seen the film and want to. If you’re just looking for “should I go see the film or not?”, then – yes, if you liked the previous two, you should go see it. But you probably knew that anyway.

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  • “Lexicon” by Max Barry

    LexiconAs some of you may know, I’m a fan of the author Max Barry. The first book I read of his was “Company” (it’s his third book, so I was a bit out of sequence); then I read Syrup and Jennifer Government. More recently he wrote Machine Man – all are excellent books and I can recommend them (and I’ve written about them elsewhere on this blog). Recently his latest novel “Lexicon” was released, and I bought a copy and finished reading it a couple of days ago.

    At this point, for the impatient among you, I will give you the short version of the review: it’s utterly compelling, and you will be thinking about it for days afterwards… go and buy it now.

    The book itself has a fascinating premise: I don’t want to give too much away, but the book focuses on words used almost as weapons. What if, using the right words, someone could be persuaded to do … anything? The astute among you will notice that this is actually not far from the truth. In the world as it stands, people are persuaded with arguments constructed with words. Using words is a legal way of bringing someone round to your way of thinking (well, unless something like blackmail or some other form of coercion is involved, but let’s leave that aside for now). What Lexicon does is explore the possibility of a world where words can be taken a step further: words don’t have the power to just persuade someone of the truth of an argument; they actually can compel a person to do a particular thing – overriding the will of that person.

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  • Game Dev Tycoon

    Game Dev Tycoon

    The past few days, I’ve been busy playing Game Dev Tycoon, which was mainly because of this excellent stunt they pulled to do with piracy (read the post, it’s worth it).

    Anyway, I’ve been pleasantly surprised: I haven’t bought a game in ages, so I thought it was high time I got into something. And Game Dev Tycoon is compelling stuff. It’s harder than it looks to create a game that does well (although browsing the Wiki will help). But I think they’ve managed to create a game where – in my case at least –  I just want to do just one more game before I finish… which is a job well done!

    I think my favourite thing about it is that it takes you back to the 80s, when the Commodore 64 ruled the roost. Although I’m too young to remember the Commodore 64 the first time round (one or two of my friends had them, but they were getting old by then), I did get a NES in the early 90s [although, checking Wikipedia, they were pretty old by then too…]. My best friend had a Mega Drive, and then another friend got a PlayStation, then PlayStation 2… and then after that I discovered Half Life, Counter Strike, Unreal Tournament and pretty much played everything on the PC.

    So, I like playing Game Dev Tycoon for the nostalgia as much as anything. It’s kind of strange to be developing games for a format which you grew up with, even though they’re named something different to avoid copyright infringement!

    Anyway, I’d recommend Game Dev Tycoon if you’re looking for something to get stuck into for a while, especially if you grew up enjoying video games…

  • Intended for Good: The Providence of God

    Intended for Good: The Providence of God

    I’ve been thinking a lot about the providence of God lately. When I say, ‘the providence of God’, I mean the doctrine of God ordaining all things such that the apostle Paul could write “in all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28). That means everything that happens – things we see as good and bad – work for the good of those who love God. That’s an amazing thought, but at the same time a difficult one – especially when, as in my Mum’s case, people get ill.

    Jim Packer’s “Knowing God” does talk about God’s sovereignty – and I did, of course, blog through that before Easter – but it doesn’t go into very much detail. So, I was pleased to discover that Melvin Tinker had written a new book called “Intended for Good“, which I picked up recently and have just finished reading.

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  • The Trinity: What’s the Point?

    The theologian Robert Letham once wrote:

    For the vast majority of Christians, including most ministers and theological students, the Trinity is still a mathematical conundrum, full of imposing philosophical jargon, relegated to an obscure alcove remote from daily life. (Source)

    I wonder if that’s something you can identify with? Is the Trinity something which you’ve always known you ought to believe, as a Christian, but never really understood why?

    If that describes you, you’re not on your own. That was also my experience until relatively recently: I had some understanding of the different persons of the Trinity, I knew that it was important for there to be a God who was Father, Son and Spirit – but in a very vague kind of way.

    Last year, as part of our course on Church History and Doctrine, we studied the Trinity – and I wrote an essay on ‘The pastoral implications of neglecting a doctrine of the Trinity”. Needless to say, I now think it’s not just important: it’s fundamental for Christians to understand why we worship God as Trinity. Now, my original plan was to write something up about the Trinity on this very blog, but…

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  • 2012: The Year in Review

    It’s that time again: time for another one of my much-loved reviews of the year. Well, I’ve only really done one review of the year before, for 2011, but still – who’s counting, eh?

    Once again, this isn’t really a review of things which have come out this year, so much as a review of things I’ve seen / heard / done this year (i.e. there will be a fair few things in this list from 2011, 2010 and earlier…). The reason for this is… well, mainly because I never see anything which is current. (Hey, one day I might get around to actually playing Portal, rather than just quoting ‘the cake is a lie’ from time to time…)

    So, without further ado (further adon’t?), here’s a few things which Phill quite enjoyed this year (and there’s no more glowing commendation than that).

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  • Review: ‘Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert’

    A week or so before Christmas, I read Carl Trueman’s review of Rosaria Champagne Butterfield’s book, “The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert“. I was so impressed by the review that I decided to buy the book (Kindle edition – even though I don’t have a Kindle. I know, I’m mad! I read it using the Kindle Android app…) I read the book over Christmas, and I have a few thoughts about it which I’d like to share here. (You may want to read Carl Trueman’s review first, as I will be referring to it).

    First things first a quick synopsis of the book: Rosaria was a committed lesbian professor of English at a secular university, and she specialised in Queer Theory. This book is a record of her move from her position there into faith. The first half of the book focusses on her gradual journey towards faith, and the second moves on towards her experiences post-conversion.

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  • Keane and the end of term

    Keane PerformingIt’s been a busy couple of weeks for us: last week (24th November) we went to see Mark Watson at the St Albans Arena. This weekend (30th Nov), we went to see Keane at the O2. Mark Watson was very funny – it was our third time seeing him live (well, fourth if you count the book launch a few weeks ago). Unfortunately the tour is now over so you can’t go and see him, but if you’re looking for a decent comedy gig next time we can recommend him 🙂

    We went to see Keane once before at the O2, so we knew roughly what to expect. They didn’t disappoint: it was a brilliant evening. They currently have a list of the songs they played on their website (as an image) – but to summarise, they started out with “You are Young” (not what I was expecting) from the new album, but that worked really well.

    A few highlights of the night for me were The Hamburg Song (love the song, they didn’t play it last time); Can’t Stop Now – acoustic; A Bad Dream; Is It Any Wonder?; This is the Last Time; and my personal favourite from the new album: Sea Fog (which they only played in the encore).

    I was actually quite surprised by how few songs they played from the new album – I would have liked to hear them play ‘Day Will Come’, which is probably my favourite of the more upbeat songs on Strangeland. They played a lot from the first two albums (only one song from Perfect Symmetry I think). Anyway, it was great to hear it all live, it was a great show and we’ll definitely try to catch them live on their next tour!

  • Waking up with the Sunrise

    I’ve long talked about it, but a couple of weeks ago I decided to finally bite the bullet: I bought our first sunrise alarm clock. It’s a Lumie Bodyclock Starter 30, which is probably one of the more basic products you can buy – and also one of the cheapest.

    We’ve now been using it for a week, and I can say confidently: it works. I didn’t quite know what to expect with a sunrise alarm clock – I’d heard good things about them, and in theory I thought they could work, but I didn’t know how much difference it would make.

    This has been the ideal week to test it out – mornings are getting darker, the clocks haven’t yet gone back – in short, it’s the time of year when getting up is becoming more and more difficult: normally what happens at this time of year is that my alarm goes off around 6:30, and my body really doesn’t want to get up. Some mornings more than others, but I find getting up in the dark very hard!

    So, it’s been a refreshing change this week to actually not struggle quite so much with getting up. What I’ve found is, I tend to wake up a few minutes before the alarm goes off naturally – the light wakes me up. But not in a harsh way, it seems more natural – kind of like a natural sunrise.

    It doesn’t stop me feeling tired, but it does seem to stop the awful headache-y type feeling that I get sometimes when I feel like I’ve been woken up when I’m deep in sleep.

    Anyway, if – like me – you struggle with getting up on dark mornings, I can recommend trying a sunrise alarm clock. It does seem to make getting up a little bit easier!

  • Quick Review: Samsung Galaxy S Advance

    On Friday I arrived back home to find my new phone had been delivered (well, it had been delivered next door and I had to pick it up, but still.): a Samsung Galaxy S Advance. This is to replace my HTC Wildfire, which I’ve had for the past couple of years. I bought it on the strength of reading an excellent review of it a couple of weeks ago.

    Although I’ve only had the phone for a couple of days now, I decided to post up a quick review, given the pace with which mobiles seem to change and develop (it’s no use me posting a review after using the phone for a few months!). As such, this isn’t really a “how well does the phone cope over time” kind of review, but just my first impressions as well as a comparison with my experiences of an HTC Android for two years.

    I’ll look at the pros and cons, starting with the cons:

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