If you've watched (or read) the seminal Ghost In Shell - probably one of the best known, loved and critically acclaimed anime made - you might well have been experiencing physical pain of a non-specific nature... or perhaps a more general "I've got a bad feeling about this" for no specific reason.

The reason for this is probably that you're at some level aware that aforementioned seminal anime is going to become... a Dreamworks "live action CGI". That phrase is probably filling you with a sense of unease and foreboding... most likely because the last time you heard it was to describe the holocaustically bad Transformers.

Don't worry though, Steven Spielberg is REALLY keen on the project and his last great film was... uh... Jaws?

Prepare for disappointment.

The funny thing about Jumper - other than the fact Hayden Christensen has inexplicably been cast in a major film after his Manakin Skywalker car crash performance in the Star Wars prequels - is how the protagonist basically forgets his old life then stops by to his old high school sweetheart... and no one remarks upon the fact he disappeared for ages... or the fact that he managed to escape death and so on. Clearly, people just returning from the dead is a regular occurance and one doesn't hold the lack of contact in the interim

Of course, Manakin manages to survive because he's like a less cool, less interesting version of Nightcrawler... yup, he can teleport. Although, Manakin can apparently teleport to anywhere he's seen (with just a photograph) in the whole world. Naturally, having bailed out of school and such, Manakin decides it would be a super idea to rob banks using his abilities. Which makes sense. What DOESN'T make sense is Samuel L. Jackson being part of a centuries old religious order that wants to lay the smack down on the Jumpers.

The Paladins have all manner of doo-dahs to track jumpers and incapacitate them. The only problem being... it's unlikely any of them could have been portable 20 years ago and unlikely most of the could even have existed 30 years ago. Hence the notion of Samuel L. Jackson's ancestors kicking the ass of Manakin's grandfather seems... idiotic. If it's a long standing movement... there were surely some like Griffin who weren't content to stand around and be murdered and even WITH the doo-dahs, they're still at a considerable disadvantage. Sure, Paladins might have had numbers on their side but it just seems hard to imagine them doing a good job.

Regardless Samuel L. Jackson doesn't want no MOTHER FUCKING JUMPERS ON HIS PLANET. So, he tracks Manakin down because... well, Manakin is an idiot having left a trail of breadcrumbs big enough to feed the 5000. Anyway, as you might guess - Manakin isn't too bothered about that - he's sleazing on his old sweetheart (if he liked her so damned much, why did he just forget her for more than 10 years? And how the hell does everyone INSTANTLY recognise him when he wasn't even knee high last time they saw him?) and he's found a somewhat stereotypical Scottish Jumper.

It really doesn't take a genius to work out what happens. Manakin takes his girl to Rome, where he and Griffin bump into some Paladins (his girlie doesn't notice) and then he lets her go home on her own... and she gets pissed. So he explains to her - as all men have to eventually - honey, I can teleport all over the shop... and no, I'm not as cool or as interesting as Nightcrawler. He 'ports her from her house to Griffin's lair... What a schoolboy error - because guess what? Samuel Mother Fucking Jackson has a big box of plot device that allows him to go through the "jump scars" (Manakin did that earlier to follow Griffin, so you can't say that it was entirely unexpected but that merely makes a direct jump to the lair even more stupid).

As you might guess, there's a bit of a fight where Griffin goes mental and does some ass kicking while Manakin kind of douches around and looks helpless while his girlfriend from the OC gets taken by SLJ back through the wormhole. Griffin decides that with the baddest mother on the other side and most of his Paladin pals, it would be a rather super idea to lob a bomb through and let the God they're ever so fond of sort them out. Manakin likes his girlie too much and so steals the detonator for the bomb. Cue the two Jumping all over the world, fighting for the detonator.

Why? Is the only question to ask here... Sure, you can't exactly go to your local hardware store and say "yeah, I'd like a detonator please." but the guy can go anywhere in the world, stop by somewhere and pick up a whole new bomb. Naturally, Griffin being on the side of girl killing - Manakin eventually manages to trap him in an electricity pylon... Electricity is shown to inhibit the ability to jump... but only due to the fact it inhibits the ability to concentrate... or something, in any respects... the chances are the pylon would either kill Griffin or that there wouldn't be any electricity running through it. Him standing there going "Ouch!" is just idiotic.

Griffin out the way, it's time to save the girl! As you can imagine, Manakin has a GREAT plan. Jump right in there! Which isn't so much a plan as idiocy. He's a good guy though, so his plan to jump the entire apartment works just fine. He 'ports it right into a lake and naturally, saves the girl... the fate of the other Paladins is somewhat unclear but he takes Samuel L. Jackson to a cave in the Grand Canyon and tells him that "I told you I was different." Presumably Samuel L. Jackson will agree... because no one else would have been stupid enough to leave him alive.

Finally, we have the touching reunion between Manakin and his estranged mother. She didn't leave because his father was a douche - she left because she was a Paladin and didn't want to kill him. Presumably if she'd quit being in a super secret organisation, she'd lose her health care and a good pension... so, abandoning her son was the logical course of action... and of course, having announced to her that he's alive... she naturally has to kill him... ah, the bond between mother and child - truly unbreakable.

The premise of the film is interesting enough... although, in all honesty it's like a somewhat less interesting take on Heroes... that is to say, ordinary people, extraordinary abilities... except they're all the same and half of them are Hayden Christensen. It's a predictable yarn and essentially follows the ol' boy meets girl but tosses in "boy disappears for 10 years due to teleportation ability" and "loses girls to secret religious order of technological murderers". The only reason to watch is to see people bamph all over the planet. Which is ok but hardly a reason to waste your time.

The heart of any good zombie film - or pseudo zombie film - worth its salt, is the sense of a world turned upside down. A place where the rules have changed instantly, inexplicably and irreversibly. People go through disbelief and denial and eventually - if they manage to live long enough - they come to accept the grim truth, that there is only survival now.

Diary of the Dead may employ the now tired narrative method of "billy films everything"... but then, it does it for FAR more sensible reasons than Cloverfield did "I've got der camera, better film everything DUR!" No, Diary makes more sense in its documenting of the events that occur. In fact, in many senses - it's integral to the story.

Pretty much off the bat, things go South. The dead being so rude as to come back to life. A couple of sensible people decide to head out to the well fortified mansion. The rest decide to just mess around and go home. In a big ol' Winnebago... not the best zombiemobile but it seems to do OK. Naturally, people start out not knowing what's happening - not believing and so on.

The dynamic is different to most other zombie films... we start with a half dozen people, who actually all know one another. There are people along the way but the disparate group of survivors, thrown together by fate isn't present... and that is rather a staple of zombie films - fuelling tension between people. Once everyone gets the whole "dead rising from the grave to feed on the flesh of the living" thing though, they're about as cohesive a group as a group of college students can be.

They take a rather different view to the normal groups... there's no holing up in the nearest mall or barn. People want to get home... or at least they do for a while. Eventually they realise that survival and not family reunion is the way forward. About time. Naturally - it's a Romero film - the military are NO help... negative help... did the military kill his family? Although, in a situation such as envisioned by a zombie apocalypse - it makes sense that the military would end up running the show but really, the interactions with other groups are transitory. In fact, at the perfunctory 90 minutes the film itself feels rather transitory...

There's no real chance for the characters to develop... even those who don't have a camera glued to their face - in yet another example of people wantonly ignoring survival instinct... but that's necessary for the method of storytelling... in fact, it's pertinent to the social commentary of the film. In much the same way that Night of the Living Dead made points about racism and Dawn of the Dead pointedly mocked mindless consumer culture - not to mention the shameless anti-military message of Day of the Dead - Diary of the Dead makes very obvious observations about the nature of the media... the distortions of the government, the distance that one gains from events by filming them... and how voyeurism has become so common place.

As zombie films go... danger seldom feels pressing here. Occasionally there are moments - most notably in the barn when there is a horde of zombies encroaching and the Winnebago needs fixed - but on the whole, the group are merely in a situation where potential danger is present... although, they seem to be totally safe inside their vehicle. Zombies do seem to inexplicably appear en masse at rather convenient intervals - really, you wouldn't think there would be dozens of people hanging out in shambling distance of a barn or remote mansion. In Dawn of the Dead it made sense - zombies were heading to malls because of residual memory... there doesn't seem much reason for them to show up in the middle of nowhere... but then, they're necessary for tension and so on... just as their general absence is necessary for the voyeurism and documentary making to occur.

The commentary is pretty tame compared to the rather stark messages of Romero's original trilogy. It's not exactly as bare faced as zombies walking around a mall, it's just "ooo - the youtube generation!" The compulsion to document. It feels as if the story is really just a vehicle for that observation, it's focused on more than the zombies... naturally, there's a bit of "people are rubbish" too but then that's hardly original. It's all very rushed... even though we're dropped almost immediately into a situation where the characters are aware of events - even if some are sceptical - and yet still it feels as if the film is rushing to get everything tied up in a neat ninety minute package. Which is easily to the detriment of the film. Developing the characters, adding in more action... would have greatly improved things.

In terms of action... well, there's precious little. Which is at least realistic... the kids never come across a handy cache of automatic weapons and instantly know how to use them... but then, neither are they instantly beset with hordes of zombies from nowhere - ok, it happens in the middle of the film and at the end but not nearly as much as in your average zombie film. So, in other words - don't expect this to be on a par with the Resident Evil films or the Dawn of the Dead remake because there isn't a whole lot of zombie shooting here. In that respect, it follows the similarly shot Cloverfield... no excesses of information or action... just pervasive tension.

If you're in the mood for Blair Witch (minus the excessive amounts of incessant screaming and nausea inducing camera shaking) meets zombies... it's probably a good match but it's far from Romero's best work... and even the cringe worthy Land of the Dead was better - although just barely. For Romero and zombie fans only, really.

Spectacular, Spectacular Spiderman!

So, the Spiderman movies managed to make an already popular character even MORE so... as if Spidey really needed it. Naturally - it having been some time since the previous incarnation of an animated Spiderman - it was time for a NEW Spiderman cartoon - Spectacular Spiderman.

Another new cartoon, another beginning. Peter Parker has had a summer to hone his wall crawling skillz by the time things start and wouldn't you know supervillains have started popping up, just as high school begins.

Unlike other rehashes, this remains fairly similar to the general Spiderman mythos. Spidey is the smart, fast talking webslinger whenever the city needs him and of course, struggling to balance that with being in the far more hostile environment of high school and also, helping his Aunt May help ends meet.

Somewhat surprisingly, Gwen Stacy is centre stage - in terms of potential love interests - and Mary Jane has only been mentioned in passing... although, it seems inevitable that she will turn up as she's been mentioned several times... not that Spidey really seems to have much time for fraternising between his crime fighting, school, the Bugle and so on.

Currently - and as one might expect of a new series - the show has very much revolved around the creation of Spiderman's well known rogue's gallery. This translate to roughly a villain a week for Spiderman to defeat - just as well he doesn't have much of a social life, eh?

Stylistically, it favours the more... facile animation style that is ever more prevalent in cartoons. That said, while it may be somewhat less detailed than the 90s, the animation is very slick - so the trade off is fair.

We have some interesting development of characters and relationships, the foreshadowing of the Kingpin (who has been behind half of the villains that Spidey has faced) and so on. It's not exactly Earth shattering stuff but thus far, it's proven to be entertaining. Again, it's not a show that should be compared to it predecessors because, while Spectacular Spiderman is much closer to its roots than, say, Transformers Animated - it's simply not executed in the same way. One to watch.

Fresh from the rape of Michael "SFX aren't plot?" Bay, the Transformers franchise rolls ever onward, battered and bruised... but still massively profitable because it will take more than one hack director, inexplicably hired time and again to ruin good films - forget 9/11, THAT is a conspiracy.

Anyway, as proof that Michael Bay failed in his mission to sink one of the most awesome franchise ever created to the briny deep - we have a new Transformers cartoon, Transformers Animated.

As seems to be the trend these days, all previous history of the show has been summarily disregarded and the only thing that has remained is the basic premise and a few of the core characters... well, actually - just the basic premise. Giant sentient robots from Cybertron come to Earth and defend it from the evil forces of... THE DECEPTICONS!

It's best not to talk about Transformers Animated in terms of the original (Generation 1 aka G1) cartoon because they're very different animals... Transformers Animated has a sexy teen Optimus Prime (well, a somewhat inexperienced and scrawny Optimus at least) along with Bumblebee (essentially a hyperactive 6 year old but still the noob of the group), Rachet (who is essentially Kup from G1), Bulkhead (the heavy hitting sensitive one) and Prowl (NINJA ROBOT!) stranded on Earth, protecting the All Spark.

The differences in design and style are big and owe more to Teen Titans and The Batman than G1. ALL the robots - although, more the Autobots - are far more humanised. Pretty much everyone has a face, is capable of gesticulating and body language and even the massive Bulkhead is still extremely human. This is a far cry from the huge, blocky, monolithic very robotic designs of G1 where few concessions were made in terms of anthropomorphism.

The Autobots don't just LOOK more human, they ACT more human. There is a lot of talk about emotions, friendship... They seem entirely capable of feeling pain and are far more prone to damage than their G1 counterparts ever were. In fact, few episodes have passed where damage hasn't been incurred upon our brave robot defenders... which brings us to the next point.

While in G1, humans were... at best, an after thought, in Transformers Animated - they're very much a part of the show. Hell, the Autobots are based IN Detroit. Ok, they're in an abandoned factory... but that beats G1 where they were out in the middle of nowhere, fighting Decepticons in the middle of nowhere and so on. No, the cityscape of Detroit is full of people. The most important of whom is Sari.

Sari gets a key charged by the Allspark - allowing it repair/heal the Autobots and do all manners of mischief to anything with a keyhole. Given the propensity of the Autobots to get totally schooled - this is a fairly skill and probably why they keep Sari around. She also helps acquaint the Autobots with Earth customs and her father happens to run a major robotics company - Detroit is now heavily automated by his robots, to the point where there are robotic police drones - the success of which is predicated upon... MEGATRON! Or rather, the disembodied head of Megatron.

Yes, another BIG difference is that there isn't a weekly smack down between the Autobots and Decepticons. In fact, at the start we don't really have any and even by the end of the first instalment we've only got four, I suppose five if we count Black Arachnia... which we shouldn't. So, instead of Megatron's weekly plan to get enough energon to TAKE OVER THE UNIVERSE, we have various villains of the week - some of whom are orchestrated by Megatron remotely, Sari's father is totally unaware of this... mostly because he's a putz but he's also the second of three main human characters.

The third being the bumbling, technology hating police chief. As one might guess, in a city where technology is so prevalent - especially in the police force - he's something of a comic relief character, prone to a short fuse and slapstick comedy... although, occasionally effective at his job, or at least as effective as one can expect a meatbag to be against a race of hyper advanced alien space robots.

The effect of human characters and the lack of persistent Decepticon threat makes the show dynamic entirely different. G1 was essentially robots! Humans may have been there but they were along for the ride... Sari and a variety of rather less friendly homo sapiens prove to be far more in the driving seat in terms of plot. Sari driven by her inherent need for fun and mischief - the villains mostly by money and/or revenge. It allows for more variation than G1 and the introduction of characters has been far slower - it's only by the end of Megatron Rising Part 1 we have a full team of Decepticons... although, thus far the Decepticons have generally been shown to be far more powerful individually than the five Autobots.

Megatron and Starscream are very much unchanged from their original incarnations. Even though Megatron might be sans body, he's still the consummate schemer, planning and manipulating for his own ends - even if that is just a new body, mostly. Starscream remains the powerful, underhanded, backstabbing and opportunistic turncoat that everyone loves. Even if he's often sporting a cutesy sneer now, he's still quite menacing in his single mindedness to lead the Decipticons.

In terms of the Autobots... Prime is unrecognisable. He's a leader but not the confident, powerful one from G1... he's unsure of himself, dependent upon the advice of the rest of the team and hesitant... Not to mention angsty. Bumblebee is more hyperactive but in many ways, that's in keeping with the younger feel of the show... Ratchet is Kip, there's not much more to say.

As the constant references to G1 should illustrate... while the basic idea of robots that become vehicles is still there - the execution, structure and style are a world away and while the end is still to get children to buy the merchandise, they go about it in very different ways. While the G1 team would be happy to smash some Decepticons, let Spike think he'd helped and go home... Transformers Animated is more interested in plots and lessons. Not only that but the characters are substantially more human in all senses and humans play an infinitely bigger role - it makes it a far more relatable show...

People who cut their teeth on Megatron and Optimus Prime going toe to toe may well baulk at the changes but this is not attempting to be Transformers G1 any more than the live action film. If you watch it, not expecting G1 - you may be pleasantly surprised by some of it... if you're hoping for G1... you'll hate it unconditionally.