RS ‘Bd Clive Owen and Julia Roberts perfectly imperfect for each other Duplicity a great farce By Mark Fisher 0 one trusts anyone else these days. Everyone has become so N= to being lied to that now they are no longer surprised by it, or even resent it at all. Instead, it is expected, and in turn people will do the same thing back to everyone else. Your boss, your friends, your lover (or overs), politicians, the media (present company excluded, of course), and especially big business; each and every one of them is trying to play you. Many times, people don’t even try to cover up their lies anymore, they just say whatever they want and expect everyone to believe it, even though they’ ve been caught lying many times before. Duplicity is the story of two spies (played by Julia Roberts and Clive Owen) who don’t trust anyone because they’re so used be being lied to, and yet they somehow think it’s a good idea to team up with each other to try to pull off a multi-million dollar scam. Comedy ensues. To be fair, the movie is not just a comedy, it’s also a spy drama with a lot of plot twists and flashbacks, plus a scheme that’s very complex. Needlessly complex, in fact. Essentially the movie is a farce, with more funny moments and lampshade hanging than I expected. This movie could have worked just fine with Jim Carey and Drew Barrymore in place of Clive Owen and Julia Roberts. The feel may be different, but the plot, setting, and characters could essentially be exact duplicates. You wouldn’t have to change a single line of dialogue. But having a comedic actor doing the roles of Clive Owen or Julia Roberts would take away from the humour of this film. Funny thing about this movie is, both of them do everything so seriously, no matter how ridiculous of a situation they’re faced with or how badly their plans go awry. Clive Owen usually portrays someone who is very intelligent, classy, and loaded with attitude. But to get the best out of his character, he needs another strong personality to rival him, otherwise he just ends up dominating the film. The perfect example of this would be 2006’s Children of Men, a movie with a great vision, a talented cast, and a powerful message. But in the end, the most memorable aspect was the futuristic adventure Clive Owen endured while entertaining tag-along people that nobody seems to care about. Clive Owen is one of the few performers that can ruin a movie by being too good. Luckily, Julia Roberts can balance Clive Owen’s personality with her own, and succeeds at playing his intellectual superior—not an easy task. Anyone who saw 2004’s Closer will already know that these two are good together (a major reason I was eager to see Duplicity was because I wanted to relive some of the magic from Closer). Roberts and Owen have great chemistry and watching their interactions is a lot of fun, whether they’re sleeping together, planning a scheme, or blaming each other when said scheme falls apart. The strongest scenes in the film are when they’re having one of their bitter arguments, and luckily the movie gives them a lot to fight about. The plot twists in this movie are well done, though it will require the viewer to pay close attention if they don’t want to miss anything. The movie has a repetitive pattern of advancing the main plot, then having a flashback, and then returning to the main plot. Over the course of the flashbacks, we get to see Owen and Roberts meet, fall in love, and continually screw the other person over (screwing of the sexual type also takes place; unfortunately, most of it is off camera). We also get to see how their scheme came together, and just like most terrible ideas, it seemed like a really good one at the time. 14 Call of Duty: World at War Activision The latest instalment of the fabled Call of Duty franchise doesn’t disappoint. World at War takes place in the 1940s during the Second World War and to say the very least, it’s epic. The graphics are out of this world and the action scenes are incredible. There is a great roaming landscape and the various storylines are terrifically detailed. The look of each and every level is fantastic. The game has real footage from 40s newsreels and there are some great voice cameos, most notably from Kiefer Sutherland. The game is action packed from start to finish and also doubles as a history lesson as the majority of the battles you’ll go through were major turning points of the war. Throughout the game you can play a number of allied troops, most notably the Americans and Russians. There are several recurring characters, each with their own interesting back stories. —Garth McLennan Fantasies Metric It took them a long time, but now that this album is finally complete, it is evident that the three-year wait was well worth it. For some reason, it seems longer than that, but that’s mainly due to the band touring while performing the same songs over and over again. The new songs on Fantasies are going to breathe new life into Metric while they prove that they’re on an amazingly creative high. Emily Haines was already a prolific lyricist and singer, but on this most recent album she becomes one of the best voices in music today. Her singing capabilities have never been better and it’s impressive how well she can hit a high note. The first single, “Help I’m Alive” was mind-blowing, but every other song on the new album send that one packing. “Sick Muse” and “Front Row” are two of the most notable songs. The unbelievable closing track, “Stadium Love” is about on par with someone finding a long-lost Dr. Seuss book and turning it into a song. This album tops all the albums that I chose as the best albums of 2008 and 2007. —Mark Fisher yl Secret Invasion Marvel One of the most eagerly anticipated stories put out by Marvel Comics in years, Secret Invasion didn’t quite live up to the hype. It wasn’t a bad story, it was just that I was expecting it to be so much better then it turned out to be. Secret Invasion was 2008’s big summer event for Marvel, and it followed years of meticulous storytelling detailing alien shapeshifters’ covert invasion of Earth. One positive aspect of the story was that the inner workings of it can be traced back through years of comics that have influences in several major books over the last few years. So while Secret Invasion itself wasn’t the greatest read of all time, it was fun flipping back and finding the connections in other big stories. One thing that Secret Invasion does well is set things up for a while to come at Marvel. There is a pretty shocking twist at the end that will lead into this summer’s Dark Reign, which is the conclusion of the three-year arc beginning with 2006-07’s Civil War. —Garth McLennan Travians www.travians.com Travians is an online game made by the same company that created the immensely popular strategy game Travian. Besides adding an “s” to the name, this game expands the world of Travian by letting the player assume the role of a single citizen, instead of the ruler of an entire kingdom. There are many obvious parallels between this game and The Sims, which was a hit strategy game based around the idea of controlling a single person. The main difference is Travians has a medieval setting instead of a modern one. Just like Travian, this game is browser-based and can be accessed for free from any computer with internet connection. Players can pay extra to get access to features like bonus furniture for the houses, faster transportation around the game world, and better weapons and armour to fight within the game’s arena. The storyline goes that after inheriting a house and farm from your drunk uncle, you also inherit his curse, and it’s up to you and a talking pig to explore the world in search of a cure. —Mark Fisher