Vision In Blue

It started out as a fun little idea... " I fancy having a Marvel marathon! " I had already done a bit of Spider-Man, and I realised I'd watched a lot of X-Men recently too. So that left me with the "proper" Marvel, and of course by that I mean the Marvel movies that scream Marvel when they're brought out in the cinema. Of course this just leaves you with one last decision... how do you watch them? By superhero series... by phase... or in chronological order? Now, I like order. My DVDs are sensibly ordered alphabetically by title. I like a list... nay... I LOVE a list. So why am I brought to my knees, a gibbering wreck, every time I start to think about the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Personally I'm an advocate for chronological and, because sometimes you just need to see a lot of Tom Hiddleston, watching a superhero set in order. I found a few different places online to see what the consensus is on watching order... and guess what? There isn...

Watching Doctor Who: Series 1 Serial 2: The Daleks I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little excited to see the first Daleks. This is basically like seeing Who royalty. Slightly concerned about 7 episodes thought, the last story was a little trying to watch with less... but let's see how it goes. The TARDIS has landed in a petrified jungle on a strange planet. Keen to explore, the Doctor fools everyone into leaving the safety for a quick jaunt to the shops for some mercury. In the futuristic city though there are very few shops, and the locals have made use of what supplies they have left. As it turns out, plungers make great weapons. The tin cans on wheels, clearly descended from bakers and plumbers, are desperate to leave their city. And after taking the gang hostage, encourage them to help forge an alliance with the more meaty inhabitants of the planet. The Dead Planet Ah yes, so we were left with Susan impatiently reading the radiation dial and telling th...

Watching Doctor Who: Series 1 Serial 1: An Unearthly Child The first disc is in the machine, and I'm already comforted by the familiar BBC tune. Let's see how it goes shall we? Susan, an annoying and obstinate child, has begun to make her teachers concerned. Instead of inviting her grandfather in to talk about it they decide to go to her home. When they get there they find Susan lives in a junkyard. Finding this unacceptable, they enter the premises without even knocking and proceed to badger an elderly gentleman about why she's shut inside a Police Box. But phew, it's okay, he's a time travelling alien and she's actually inside his ship... and luckily, he is her grandfather, despite his pimp-like attire. In a vain attempt to possibly make both teacher disappear and to keep his ship a secret, he randomly slaps the controls and they end up on earth in the stone age. Can they outwit primitive man and make it back to civilisation? As it turns out... only...

Hello. My name is Emma, and I'm a Whovian. Some of you will be booing and telling me I'm not, others will be saying god yes, she's such a nerd. The truth lies somewhere in between. I'm too nerdy for regular folk and I'm not nerdy enough for the nerdy folk. When Who came back to our screens in 2005 I was 23, and already a little obsessed with TV and films. I enjoyed a bit of sci-fi (and still do), so it was inevitable I was going to get to watching it. These days modern Who is a staple part of my TV watching diet (with a little bit less love during series 9 of course). Original Who has eluded me though. I was around for Five, Six and Seven, but when the series finished I was only 8... oh my god, I was Eight! Coincidence? Well, yeah. Yeah it was. *sigh* So what's coming next is going to be both safely within my comfort zone, and yet miles outside it... and by that I mean I'm about to watch the original Doctor Who for the first time. It'll be a...

"Master Class" might be a bit of an overstatement, but here we go anyway. Slow cookers have always looked like a good idea to me, although slow cooker recipes... not so much. A slow cooker to me is a way of cooking where you just throw it in and leave it, maybe with the odd addition of ingredients. Therefore a recipe shouldn't include you having to use a hob or an oven for any part of it. As such I'm making it my mission to find good, and "proper" slow cooker recipes... and this one is the first big success. So many slow cookers, so many settings. But ultimately as I wasn't really sure if one was worth it for just me I brought the Tesco own brand one for £14. It's simple, it doesn't have any bells and whistles, and it does what it says on the tin (box?). One dial that does warm, low, and high is all you really need. With technology as it is, it's not like you're short of the ability to remind yourself when something is done! ...

I like to know a little about a lot of things. At some point you'll find something that peaks your interest and then you've got a research black hole you can fall into. So when I see books like this I'm always interested to see how they approach a subject. Know It All Shakespeare: 50 Key Aspects of the Bard's Works, Life & Legacy, Each Explained in Under a Minute by Ros Barber. The book is set out quite neatly in seven sections that house the 50 key aspects. Each of those sections has a short essay on a specific Shakespeare play as well as a glossary. The pages themselves are set out for multiple factual sections: 3-second Prompts - a one/two line summary of the topic 3-minute Call - key point about the topic 3-second Biographies - profession and timeline of people relating to the topic Related Topics - other sections of the book that are relevant and the main article The trouble with a lot of factual books is the sheer volume of heavy text. This ...

I love picking up things like this on Netgalley, it really cheers me up. I've kind of given away what I think about the book haven't I? Never mind, carry on and listen to my waffle anyway. While I'm a fan of comic books, I'm by no means an expert. I tend to opt for single character titles with a set number of issues. If that says anything about me, it's that I'm impatient. But when I see things that say they're "volume 1" or are stand alone set of team ups, then I do quite like giving them a go. So, Justice League Vs Suicide Squad... I'm going to copy and paste this next bit straight from Netgalley as I don't want to miss any of the talented people... Written by rising star Josh Williamson ( The Flash ) with art from acclaimed illustrators Jason Fabok ( Justice League: Darkseid War ), Tony S. Daniel ( Batman ), Fernando Pasarin ( Justice League ), Howard Porter ( JLA ), and more. What the official blurb tells us... It's the fi...

Spider-man, Spider-man, does whatever a spider can... He has speed, strength, and agility. He can climb and cling to buildings and planes. His Spidey sense tingles at danger. He's a bit of a genius and creates new tech to help him fight crime... I'm not sure that spiders do that last bit. (Create tech, or fight crime.)  It is a real shame that he can't change colour to hide in his environment though, or call an army of spiders... although if he could do that last bit I probably wouldn't watch the movies, Chamber of Secrets was tricky enough. You know me and my Marvel fetish, so of course Homecoming was on my list. This one felt like it needed to be "go big or go home", so I fished out some previous Spidey recordings to get myself into the mood. I don't think I've seen Spider-man since it came out, Amazing Spider-man, maybe only a year or two ago. Needless to say I was feeling a little rusty on the subject. --- Spider-man , starring Tobey Mag...