Mildly Interesting

I missed Doctor Who

2011-12-18T20:57:00.000Z

Looks exciting, doesn't it?

I missed the last episode of Doctor Who. The one at the end of the last season. Everyone was wearing eye patches and the Doctor had long hair. I'm not sure why. I wanted to see it, but I couldn't. I don't know when it'll be shown again. The problem is, I don't feel too bad about it. I mean, I'll see it eventually, right? Maybe I'll watch the next season first.

I know this isn't the attitude. My nerd credentials have been revoked. I've been thrown out. Even when I do finally see it, in about seven months, I won't be allowed back in. I will be looked at with contempt. It was earlier in this very year that I called Doctor Who the Best Thing Ever, and now look at me. I've let it slip. There's a hole where my obsessiveness should be. It's too late for me now. Go on without me. I haven't even played the new Zelda yet. I'm hopeless.

This is my way of looking in from the outside and asking what I missed. Was it any good? I'm looking forward to the Christmas special though. Honest.

The Martians are coming

2011-12-16T20:43:00.000Z

I've been reading The War of the Worlds. It's pretty dark.

"Where the road grows narrow and black between the high banks the crowd jammed and a desperate struggle occurred. All that crowd did not escape; three persons at least, two women and a little boy, were crushed and trampled there and left to die amidst the terror and the darkness."

The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells

I mean, calm down HG. It's only the end of the world. The whole thing is done so well it makes me worried about Martians. Not really concerned, but when I hear loud noises I assume it's the invasion.

Do I like poetry?

2011-11-18T00:26:00.000Z

Poetry seems like a thing I should be interested in. They come in books, and they're all wordy and literary. I've tried to read poetry. It usually goes like this: 'Okay, okay, yeah, okay, no, I don't understand'. A poem has always seemed like a puzzle I don't know how to solve. There's a whole form to it. A secret language. What about the pentameters? And the triplets? And the iambs and the foots? These words give me a blank face and an even blanker brain. I always take a poem at face value without hanging on every syllable. There are poems that I like. I can't name them right now, but I'm sure they exist. And I like them for what they're saying, not for their clever clever verse structure. And then there's the poets that fill every line with references to Greek mythology and ancient Celtic folklore. What am I meant to do with this? Okay, I'll rush straight to the library before I tackle the next verse.

I'm allowed to say these things, because I'm a postgraduate.

So I write poetry even less than I read it. In the past, when I really had to write a poem for academic reasons, I would start feeling deeply cynical and take out all the line breaks. I turned them into paragraphs. Now I have a chance to take a poetry module. And if I'm ever going to be interested in it, it's going to be now with these tutors and these people. If I did write a few poems, I don't know what they would look like. I don't know if I would like them. I'd much rather write a short story about evil machines. But I might have a go.

Nobody really knows

2011-11-03T22:17:00.000Z

A lot of the houses are dark. If it wasn’t for the street lamps the street would be lost in the black, and nobody would see anything at night. Maybe some people are in their houses with the lights off. James can see the next street through the gaps between houses. A back garden with high fences is lit up with big bulbs. The other streets are hidden behind each other. Are their lights on? They should be brighter. They should shine up into the sky. No, these lamps don’t light the streets. They only make it less dark. A murky pale glow that wraps around everything until morning. The back garden light in the next street flickers and turns off. James imagines a power cut getting closer, taking each house as it sweeps across the streets. Only his street is left. He stares at the light in Boy’s house. It stays on. Eventually it will go out like his own bedroom, but it’s on for now. As the night goes on all the lights will turn off. James thinks that nobody really knows what happens then, when the garden plants shiver in the breeze and the concrete glares with empty. In the playground and out into the fields and into the trees. Nobody really knows what is happening then.

Not making sense

2011-10-25T00:52:00.004+01:00

Does it bother you if a film or book doesn't make perfect sense? If it's not tied up in a bow. If it's open ended. Or if you just didn't get it at all. There's only two reactions to a typical David Lynch film - the first one is 'um' and the second one is 'ooo'. But even the people who like it don't entirely understand, so it becomes a sort of 'umooo' sound. Enjoying it isn't really connected to understanding it. Not everything needs to be about concrete reality or concrete answers. If you only read or watch things where it's all laid out for you, then you'll never have to use your imagination. Should a writer make something that a few people will love or that everyone will think is okay?

I don't know.

The first and second rules of the internet

2011-10-11T23:06:00.001+01:00

Rule one: do not argue with people on message boards

Rule two: do not argue with people on message boards

It's a well known fact that the internet is used by people that are wrong. And through this vast network of information, they can broadcast how wrong they are to the world. Occasionally you'll come across one of these people, and will be tempted to put them right. Except, as you probably know, trying to do this will only lead to a futile and endless struggle that will consume and waste hours of your precious life. I have learnt this. I don't do it anymore. I stay well clear. In fact, I don't usually go on message boards at all. I stay on here with bloggerers, like you, who are nicer. Recently though, I was looking at the IMDB page for The Adjustment Bureau, a film I quite like. I briefly glanced at the message boards. And it was full of bad things.

Now, everyone's entitled to their own opinion. But this rule does not extend to people who are just wrong. If it's someone who wasn't paying attention. Someone who refuses to accept creative ideas. Someone who would find plot holes in their own birth if they weren't assured it had happened. Here was a list of criticisms so blindingly incompetent that I almost, almost, pressed the reply button. These people are here to test me. This person was particularly testing. I won't quote any of it. No. My point is, if I ever have a point, is that I chose to have a therapeutic rant on here instead of trying to argue. It has helped.

A film made just for me. Possibly.

2011-09-25T20:41:00.003+01:00

The Adjustment Bureau is exactly my sort of thing. I know they didn't make it just for me, but they might as well have. A politician is told he can't see a woman again, because it doesn't follow his 'path'. It would mess everything up. So he has to fight the future to see her again. It's a love story being attacked by the agents of fate, who are all very smart and wear hats. He rides the same bus for years hoping to see her again. The men in hats watch and adjust the world in front of him to keep them apart. Every time he meets her she's pulled away by the hat men, in what looks like an unfortunate series of events. These really are mean hat men. But the path they make for us is for our own good. It can't be changed. Which makes all this running about part of a bigger fight. It seems impossible to outrun his own future and choose something else.

There are films that are objectively good - films that everybody likes because they speak to everyone at the same time. And there are subjective films - the ones that will only be perfect for certain people. I'm not saying The Adjustment Bureau isn't a good film, it'll just have extra goodness if you're me. It features ideas that I love and puts them all into a pacey, smart, and oddly moving thriller. It doesn't get bogged down in the heavy questions it raises. It gets on with it. All the surreal back-room gods and breaking reality you could ever want, with an engaging love story. It's like they looked into my mind and made the film I wanted to see. Maybe I just need to read more Phillip K Dick, or maybe this is as good as I think it is.

Bloggity blog blog

2011-09-22T20:34:00.001+01:00

If you're reading this (which, er, you definitely are) you probably have your own blog. So you might look at it and think 'why do I have this thing?'. To provide some sort of service? To promote yourself? Maybe you just want to do some good old-fashioned film reviews. Whatever you choose you'll have to do it a lot. Then after some time has passed you might want to try something else. Start again with a new idea. Or just keep going.

When I started this blog I wanted to write about some short films I was making. When I wasn't making short films I reviewed long films. After two years of doing that I came to realise that I'd reviewed all the films. And most television too. I don't make short films anymore. And I don't review many films. But I still have this blog. That's a good thing, because when there's something I want to write about, where else would I go? It's nice to have your own corner of the internet that you can fill with things you like and thoughts that need to be stored. I've been doing this for a while now, and I've come to realise that there's no point in posting for the sake of it, or trying to promote yourself across the internet. Blogs aren't making anybody famous. Every now and then I write something and some people read it. And I get to read their stuff too.

So yeah, if you've got a weblog, why do you do it? Do you still enjoy it as much as when you started? Will you still be doing it in a few years?

Music from before

2011-09-18T01:09:00.000+01:00

Some music sounds like a long time ago. There might be bands or film soundtracks that sound like your childhood. It's not like that for me. There's only one thing that was the soundtrack to my twentieth century. And films have got nothing on this.

For when you're swimming around calm waters with a giant eel
You can't go swimming without this. You'll feel a lot more relaxed, and you'll be able to hold your breath for longer. If you feel like you're about to drown, look for air bubbles or coins. Then when you're jumping around a massive castle, wondering what to do next, you'll realise there's a slide in the attic.

For when you're standing in a field feeling epic
Listen to this. It works better if you've got a sword and a shield. When you're feeling epic enough, walk into a forest to look for money in the bushes. If you accidentally open up an ancient underground labyrinth, don't go in without a few bottled fairies. If you make it back to your village, go into your friends' houses to break their pots and steal their money. Then go back out at night.

For when you're crawling through ventilation shafts
The only place they lead is the toilets. Make your way through the building, killing no more than two scientists. Shoot everyone on a train. Shoot everyone on a boat. Get thrown in jail. Then climb an electricity pylon for the final showdown with your nemesis.

Giving up on a film

2011-09-09T21:17:00.001+01:00

Have you ever given up on a film? I'll usually watch anything to the end, but with Confessions I couldn't be bothered. And it wasn't even a bad film. A Japanese teacher gets revenge on her insane students, very slowly and usually in slow motion. It winds along with all its different threads coming and going, and doing it all so stylishly that I lost interest. About half way through I thought about turning it off. That's a dangerous thought. What if I miss something brilliant? Maybe I should just skip through it. So I press fast forward. Nothing to watch in that scene. Or that one. I skip the whole chapter. And the next one. And the next one. Then I'm watching a bit of the end. And the film is gone. It was that easy to throw it away, and I didn't really regret it. Sitting down to watch a DVD or some Blu-rays, it's like you're making a commitment. It just wouldn't be right to stop watching it halfway through. It would be messy. It's probably the same impulse that makes me finish books I don't really like. Everything has to be completed and put back in its place. So how boring or bad does something have to be to turn it off?

I've watched some really bad films to the end, getting more annoyed and angry. I still don't think Confessions is a bad film. I just thought I'd rather be somewhere else. Like in bed, where there isn't so much difficult art. I feel a bit sorry for it. They put in all that effort. Never mind.

Things to do now that Harry Potter has finished

2011-09-02T19:12:00.002+01:00

Harry Potter's over then. Done. Finished. Not coming back. Not even a little bit. Some people seem quite upset about this, so I've compiled a list of other things to do.

1. Read some more books
J.K. Rowling wrote some very good books. There's other ones too. Books by other writers. They're not really as good as Harry Potter, and you probably won't enjoy them as much, but they're still available. Some of them are actually quite boring. So, yeah, keep reading.

2. Watch some more films
The Potter films are pretty much indistinguishable from each other until everything blows up at the end. The last one's got a good bit where Neville cuts off a snake's head with a sword. There's still other films to watch. I like The Social Network. Have you seen that yet? It's really good. It's out on Blu-rays, and you can even buy the Oscar-winning soundtrack.

3. Eat some delicious biscuits
I like custard creams. You could eat a dozen of those. Hob-Nobs are good, especially the chocolate sort, but you've got to make sure the crumbs don't go everywhere. Shortbread is okay, and sometimes comes in plate-sized chunks. Jammy Dodgers are a bit niche these days, and are probably expensive. Party Rings are disappointing if you're not actually at a party.

4. Join some sort of website
'Registration for Pottermore starts soon,' says the website called Pottermore. 'Explore the stories like never before' and 'discover new writing from the author'. This is just a guess, but I think this will be rubbish. There's no way there's going to be any new Potter writing without a large cheque from a publisher. It'll probably just turn your mouse cursor into a wand.

5. Try to make one eye look down and one eye look up
If you do this your eyes will break and roll backwards, and then you'll only be able to look at your brain. So this probably isn't the best thing to do. I don't really know why it's, um, on the list.

Or you could just read the books again.

Saves everyone, kisses the girl, goes somewhere else

2011-08-28T20:56:00.000+01:00

These days it's a rare film that makes me want to write one of these blog posts. It's got to have ideas that interest me - something that makes me want to fill a paragraph. Source Code is one of these good films. You might already know the premise. A man has to re-live the last eight minutes of someone else's life over and over, each time getting closer to a bomber on a train. And in a way, that's the boring bit. Question asked. Mystery solved. As he goes over it he gets to know the sequence of events and works out who the bad guy is. The interesting part is, that in this big budget thriller, there's all these big ideas. Is it possible to create a parallel world where everything's different? He knows these eight minutes are just a projection, but if he saves everyone, gets off the train, kisses the girl, goes somewhere else - he might be able to carry on. With this question the film can go anywhere. It can pull the plug or go with it. Even before it gets there it's engrossing. The structure of this repeated scene doesn't get old. Each time he tries to break it, push the boundaries and do something else. 'What would you do if you knew you only had a few seconds left to live?' This is a film that can get away with that question.

It's not as mind-squeezing as Inception or an episode of Moffat Doctor Who. Still good though. Sometimes less mind-squeeze is a good thing. Duncan Jones is turning out to be a director worth watching. This and Moon show that science-fiction is about the big ideas. The same big ideas that don't age, that are universal, and create a different place. More films like this should be made. It would keep me watching them.

Stuff and stuff

2011-08-25T20:12:00.000+01:00

There's Stuff and there's stuff. The things you've accumulated throughout your life deserve a capital letter. Boring and plain objects that you don't care about is just stuff. Because if you think about it, every object in your collection of Stuff has memories attached to it. Usually not very exciting memories, but you might remember unwrapping a film, or reading a book for the first time, or listening to music in a certain place. Some things might have come in on your birthday or Christmas, and the rest you bought or found. All of it together is arranged in order somewhere, in rows and piles and boxes.

So, I decided to count all my Stuff:

94 books
28 films/tv seasons
88 CDs
128 games

The most noticeable thing there is how many films I don't have. I usually rent them, and I only really feel compelled to own a few of them. And still, that list isn't right. A lot of Stuff has been given away, or sold, or lost. Stuff that isn't relevant anymore. I seem to keep books, even though they take up a lot of space. And games. You can't get rid of games.The other noticeable thing is that I have many objects. 338 things.

Does your collection of Stuff fill rooms? Or do you burn everything every few years?

Do scary films make us a bit mad?

2011-08-16T23:36:00.000+01:00

Last night I watched Paranormal Activity 2. It was pretty much the same as the first one, but with a dog and a baby. Doors slam. Frying pans move. Demons stomp up the stairs to drag you out of bed. But it made me think about the way in which horror films effect us. How they alter our minds. The least scary way to watch a horror film is by yourself. It's hard not to join in with other people's nerves, like how you'd laugh more at a comedy while sitting in an audience. So the tagline for Paranormal Activity is 'Don't watch this alone'. Because it might make you paranoid.

If the film has done its job your head will be in a slightly different place afterwards. Even when you've put the film back in its box. Everything is a bit more tense. You start noticing little noises. Creaks and bumps. Your safe house becomes a bit threatening, even though it hasn't changed. Only your perception has. And since Paranormal Activity is all about these little noises, some people might have trouble sleeping (not me, I'm brave). For a short time after watching a scary film, everything's different. What other genre could have this effect on us? Make us actually alter our behaviour. We know it's just a film (and in the case of Paranormal Activity 2, not even a very good one). We know it's not real. Maybe it flicks a switch in our brain, that makes us believe in the monsters we forgot about. Maybe that's the reason we watch these films. To go back for a bit.

Do horror films make you a bit mad? Little bit of crazy? The effect is reversed if you watch a Pixar film straight after. So that's good.

Books don't run out of batteries

2011-08-10T15:16:00.000+01:00

I recently let Apple try to explain to me why their e-books are A Good Thing and not An Awful Thing. I've seen these iPads. They look fancy. I mean, I would have no actual use for one, but they're really shiny. The adverts show all kinds of wonders. Listening to a magazine. Watching a newspaper. And, I don't know, eating a book? When you download one it goes onto a virtual bookshelf. Which is nice. It almost looks like a real bookshelf. But then you open one up, and this is where it all goes wrong for me. Apple boast about the advantages over paper. You can change the font and text size. Highlight hard words to look them up in a dictionary. Go straight to the page you were last on, because the machine remembered it for you. But I don't want to customise books. I don't want to change them. A book is a solid thing that has been designed and produced and exists in the world as an object. It can't be changed. Books don't have to loaded. They don't run out of batteries. In telling us that an e-book is just like a real-book, they've forgotten the most important thing. A piece of data in a machine is not really there. You can't hold it. You can't keep it. I bet it doesn't even smell of anything.

There is a possiblity I am being grumpy. This is, obviously, what happened to music. People who bought records can now scroll through iTunes. And in some ways, it's better. Having all your music two clicks away. That's good. I download music, but I've noticed a difference. If I really like an album, I'll buy it on CD. So I can have it. The downloads mean less to me. It doesn't feel right spending the same amount of money for information on a screen. If I downloaded a book, it would be because I didn't really want it.

The owls are not what they seem

2011-07-21T19:42:00.000+01:00

What is it about Twin Peaks that makes it seem like one long dream? First there's the bits that really are dreams, with giants and red rooms and backwards talking. But then the reality is just as strange. The town is 'a long way from everything else', surrounded by woods and mountains. It's as if, far away from the loud city, something else takes over. Where the Log Lady isn't entirely mad, and psychic visions can be held as evidence in a murder investigation. It's a surreal place, trapped in its own bubble of wrong. The music makes up half the effect. You can listen to this while you're doing anything to turn yourself Lynchian. The almost constant music can change an ordinary scene. It becomes hypnotic. And even without the beat it has a good variety of ominous humming. Everywhere is horrible and sinister with the right humming. This is what Lynch does so well - turn ordinary things deeply odd. The Sheriff says that there's a 'darkness' in Twin Peaks, 'something very, very strange in these old woods.' The back-end of the dream is the nightmare, and that's where Lynch comes in. You can spot the episodes that he directed. The ones that build to a crescendo of surreal horror. Broken records and lots of screaming.

By way of explaining what we're about to do, I am first going to tell you a little bit about the country called Tibet.

Twin Peaks becomes a necessity. The sort of story where it's always 'one more episode'. It was probably too strange to live. There's no easy way to describe it. It doesn't fit with anything else on television. I've never seen anything else that can mix casual drama with all this darkness and insanity. It tries everything at once. It's remarkable. And really, Agent Cooper could investigate anything and I'd watch it.

Books

2011-07-13T19:46:00.001+01:00

Recently I've been reading a lot of books that I think I should read but don't actually want to. Important, difficult books. Reading The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett becomes an act of will. Sammy B (as he was never called by anyone in his entire life) was tearing things to pieces. The book is a long monologue by someone who isn't sure he exists. Interesting philosophy? Yes. Entertaining book? No. Then there's The Castle by Franz Kafka. There's definitely a story here - a man is trying to get a job from the mysterious authorities in the Castle, but he's not even allowed to talk to them. In Kafka's case, because of the sheer genius of the man, he got away with dieing before he even finished his books. Which means that no-one had the heart to edit them and take out all the irrelevant bits. It's powerful, but a big investment for something that doesn't even end.

And now, after some time away I realise that it's better to read the books that just tell a good story. Something absorbing that you physically don't want to put down. Where you aren't glancing at the page numbers every five minutes. Thankfully, Murakami can supply this. Kafka on the Shore is a story with characters and everything else you'd expect. No intellectual exercise, no struggle, just a story. And in his own charmingly surreal way. So I'll be reading more of this and less of that. If anyone has any suggestions for some good wordy pages, let me know. I'll need some more to read.

The monsters in the woods

2011-07-05T18:41:00.002+01:00

I like stories about monsters. I especially like stories about monsters in the woods. The Village has these things. It's almost entirely about these things. The people in this village are afraid of 'those they do not speak of'' in the forest. It's one of those films about the fear of the unknown. I would gladly sit through hours of mystery before anything is revealed. Like I did with Lost. In The Village you only get glimpses of the monsters - big things in red cloaks with long claws. Your imagination fills in the rest. These people have enough childlike innocence to believe the monsters are real. They run away and hide in the basement and do a lot of cowering. It's a film that sets itself up for easy criticism, especially towards the end. 'Well that wouldn't happen,' says eighty percent of its audience. Give your story a big twist and that's all anyone will have an opinion on. I prefer the first two acts, with all their myths and tension. Even though I sort of already knew the twist, I was taken in by it. We become like the characters - afraid of what's in the woods and looking forwards to the scary bits. And we're eventually let down like them.

Nobody's winning any awards here, but it's tense and fun. If you aren't too cynical you might just be taken in by it. Having said that, I'd still like to see the other film. The one that ends differently. There's an interesting world to be seen in something like this. Like the the piles of pebbles in Blair Witch, or even the nasty things that live beyond 'The Wall' in Game of Thrones. It's the unknown that makes people debate and argue and analyse freeze frames, not neat twists. The Village could have been a lot more.

What you've written is rubbish

2011-06-30T20:27:00.004+01:00

That's what I tell myself twenty-four hours after thinking I've written something brilliant (I sometimes think in the third-person, this may or may not be a problem). It goes like this:

Immediately after writing:

This is the most brilliant and insightful thing that I've ever written.

Twenty-four hours later:

Meh

After coming back you can see these things for what they really are. The reader with fresh eyes can see the rubbish bits. Then it's time to rewrite it, or just to change most of the words. There's a difference. Rewriting involves dramatically deleting everything and starting again. The other is surgically removing every piece of wrong. Afterwards you're left with something new and shiny, and almost always better.

This is harder with things like blog posts, since it's out in the world straight away. Which is why I'll put up any old nonsense. What? I mean, um, finely crafted blog posts. Yes.

First chapter needs more bombs

2011-06-27T20:43:00.003+01:00

Writing a book is really easy. Writing a good one is hard. And one of the hardest parts of all this hardness is the first chapter. It has to be good or nobody's going to be interested in the second one. There's lots of ways to start.

1. With an interesting incident

The bomb will explode in one minute.

This interesting incident hits you in the face straight away. Is there enough time to defuse it? Is there enough time to run away? You would have to read on. Unfortunately, my book doesn't have any bombs in it. Yet. I could rewrite the first chapter to include more bombs. Alternatively:

2. Be abstract

Bombs are a bit mainstream. What if it was an existential bomb?

Why is the bomb? What is its purpose? It might not really be there. Probably is, though.

Yes. This can only be the opening chapter to a very serious book. It will make you ponder and pretend to be better than it actually is. Lots of interesting things will happen in this book. Or will they? Maybe it's just best to start with -

3. A really long sentence

This is a good way to trick the reader into reading more than they intended to. By the time they finish the first sentence they'll be so far into the book they'll think they might as well finish it.

The bomb will explode in one minute, which reminds me of a story my old bomb disposal teacher told me, it was a very long story and he told it all in one breath, he said...

If the sentence looks like it's about to wind down, that's the time to break out a semi-colon; an under-used punctuation mark for people who fear full stops.

The whole business of first chapters is so hard that I skipped to the second and the third and the fourth. They're easier.

The box of Thrones

2011-06-21T01:14:00.002+01:00

If ever I wanted a nice big boxset of something, it's of Game of Thrones. And it doesn't even exist yet. The final episode of the first season showed that they're playing the long game. They plan to film all four books and they want us to watch one after the other. HBO would be mad to cancel it. They love big boxsets as much as anyone. In five years time this thing will exist. Seasons one, two, three, and four. Maybe coming with a fold-out map. It needs to happen. The first season finale was like a prelude to everything else. The Watch rides out beyond the wall, the Starks gear up for a big fight, the dragon princess gets some real dragons, and Joffrey proves himself to be the evil bastard you always thought he was. He was just slapping children before. Now he's got heads on spikes. Put him in a room with Arya and a sword and he won't last long. Or Tyrion can sort him out. Tyrion, who's the cleverest person in the Seven Kingdoms - clever enough to want to stay away from all this war and nonsense. If the last episode seems uneventful, think back to the start of the season, and how much has happened since. Little things turn into wars and major characters die without warning. Game of Thrones is The Wire in Middle Earth, literature on screen.

Which makes me wonder if I should read the books. I could read the whole story right now. But the show is so good I'll wait for it to come back. The books seem like spoilers at this point. They can stay in their own boxset. Unless the show gets cancelled of course, then I'll read them in a week.

Playing chess with Professor X

2011-06-17T21:03:00.001+01:00

Move your rook. 'What?' 'I didn't say anything.' 'Okay. I just... thought you said something.' Move your rook. 'You're doing it again.' 'I'm not.' 'I try to have an honest game of chess with you - ' 'I'm not doing anything.' 'Okay, okay, let's just move on.' ...You should definitely move your rook. 'We can play Kerplunk again. Is that what you want?' 'No.' 'Then stop it.' 'Sorry.' ...How about that rook though? 'That's it, I'm taking your knight.' 'Check.' 'I hate you.' 'Would you like to play Battleships instead?' 'No.'

X-Men: First Class is pretty good. As other comic book films dig deep to bring up characters nobody has ever heard of, the X-Men franchise puts them in their place. The first three films were so long ago that they've had the time to get round to an origin story. And it all still makes sense. Fun, entertaining, and predictable. The best so far. But how much can we take? There's a whole list of possible and upcoming X-Men films. Maybe too many.

It's a long way to walk

2011-06-14T18:54:00.000+01:00

Walking. Walking. Walking. They're walking. Through Siberia. Through deserts. Up mountains. Down mountains. More cold. More hot. More dying of hunger, then thirst, then hunger again. Not having a good time. It's a long way to India. Poking holes in bark to make a mask for the snow storm. Running and hiding from the sand storm. Drinking mud. Eating snakes. Up mountains. Down mountains. It's a long way to walk when your feet hurt.

They're doing this to escape from a Soviet prison. The Way Back is the sort of film where people walk in the desert until they collapse. Is that a mirage or a refreshing pool of water? Do they go off course to have a look? Either way they're not getting out of this desert for a long time. At times it's a bit like Defiance, other times it's an endurance test. Not much fun, but not bad at all.

Red or green or orange

2011-06-11T21:00:00.000+01:00

It's blue. Very blue. I don't know why it's so blue, but it is. They must have had a meeting about it. They could have made it red, green, maybe a nice shade of orange. Instead they made it blue. It's blue in the caves. It's blue on boats. It's even blue in people's houses. It's all blue. Apart from flashbacks. They're sort of... yellow. Nice flashbacks to happier times when the sun was out and everyone wasn't trying to bite your face off.

The inexplicably successful Underworld franchise just keeps going. Film four is going to be released next year. I mean, proper franchises don't get that many films. There'll probably be a lot of bashing about in caves and unexpectedly complicated backstory. In its defence though, it's blue and has werewolves in it.

Charlie sitting by a typewriter

2011-06-08T15:44:00.000+01:00

After John Malkovich and Synecdoche, the only decent thing to do was to watch Adaptation. It's writing about writing, about Charlie Kaufman writing the film itself. He lies around the place with a blocked head, trying to find the inspiration to adapt the book he's been commissioned for. If Malkovich is where all the big ideas are, this shows how hard it is to invent them. Is it cheating to write about yourself writing, rather than thinking of a 'proper' new film? Maybe. It's self-indulgent, but he gets away with it. It becomes about different views on screenwriting, and how that effects the film. At first he wants to write a screenplay where nothing much happens, and we watch that. Then he's told to make the ending an 'event', so we get murder and crocodiles and swamps. Everyone's acting out his meta world that he can change and manipulate. His brother Donald is having an easier time, writing a script about multi-personality killers and car chases. Charlie looks down on this. Like in Synecdoche, he's trying to make a film about everything at once, about trying to find some existentially truth. Or, he's making a film about trying to make a film about everything at once. When he succeeds he can write something focused about portals into actors minds, when he's stuck he has a bit of a crisis and grabs for everything at once.

I know how to finish this script now

Being John Malkovich is still the best. Adaptation is about the writer's block that comes from trying to write something as good as it. It's a film for writers. Nicolas Cage does a good job of looking extremely anxious through the whole thing. You probably won't sympathise with this strange and awkward man if you're not a writer. It might be a warm up for the madness that comes later.

You'd need a corner cell for that

2011-06-05T17:56:00.000+01:00

Breaking out of prison is hard. Really difficult. You might just have to stay here. I've read a few books, and I've asked Liam Neeson, and it doesn't seem like a thing that can be done. It's really dangerous, and expensive, and... well, I just can't be bothered. If you want to do it yourself I can get you a chisel and a big poster. Apart from that I can't help you. I've brought you a few magazines instead. Should keep you going.

You'll have never felt as sorry for Russell Crowe as you will in The Next Three Days. He has to break his wife out of prison and it doesn't look like he's very good at it. There's some especially precarious running-away scenes. You can't run away from the evil state, after all. Unless you can. The whole thing is more entertaining than you'd think.

If it doesn't fly through time and space

2011-05-29T20:47:00.001+01:00

The first half of the new season of Doctor Who really shows the difference between the best and rest. Moffat and Gaiman wrote such good episodes that the others seem average, even dull in comparison. It all has to start with interesting ideas, and the 'The Doctor's Wife' has that. The Tardis becoming a person is something entirely for the fans. And it still works if the nerdy significance is lost on you. Because it's an episode crafted out of creative energy, and it makes special writing look easy. It's hard to describe, but it comes through dialogue that's better than the usual, or the ideas that nobody else could invent - the sense that something important is happening, that you shouldn't look away. There's this sort of episode, and then there's the type that don't seem to matter. 'The Rebel Flesh' is an unspectacular episode stretched out over two parts. The ethics of killing clones has been done before, and more entertaining than this. Running around a damp castle does not make a good hour and a half. At worst, the whole thing was unconvincing. The scientists die, as they always do, and I couldn't care less. Some characters can turn up for twenty minutes and have emotional deaths (the Girl in the Fireplace wasn't even on screen at the time). This lot were dull and irritating from the start, and then they got a second episode.

I'll always be here, but this is when we talked.

It all picked up in the last three minutes though, with an ending that almost justifies the amount of time spent on this 'flesh' business. And now there's a promising last episode before the mid-season break (mid-season break? What?). The problem is, that when I come to expect magic, only the best will do. A script that doesn't fly through time and space doesn't deserve to be here. If it's average, if it's just a bit ordinary, get rid of it.

What's the last thing you remember?

2011-05-27T16:52:00.000+01:00

Memory loss causes problems. Look at me, I don't even know why I'm sitting here. I think, I think, it has something to do with, um, the thing with the... no, I've forgotten again. I'm glad I don't have anything important to do. Yeah, I'd be rubbish at that. I should just go back to bed, or I might start some elaborate plan that'll only lead to trouble. That might have already happened. I hope I didn't hurt anyone. No, don't be silly. Go back to bed.

Memento seems like the sort of thing a thousand film students have written essays about, discussing all the nuanced bits and bobs of the backwards plot. Take it out of a university seminar and it becomes pretty entertaining. The audience is on the same level as the hero, waking up in each moment not knowing what came before. Look, I almost started writing an essay then. The simple thing to say is that it gets a lot of fun out of its big idea, and that Nolan knows how to keep you right on the edge of being confused.

Sih-neck-doh-kee

2011-05-24T21:04:00.000+01:00

"Hey Charlie Kaufman, here's a big pile of money. Go nuts." That's probably how Synecdoche, New York started. It seems to go off in every direction he can think of, ending up in a confusing but powerful two hours. A playwright constructing a play about his life sounds pretty normal, but here the play is inside a massive warehouse where an entire city can be recreated. A population of actors live inside it, including versions of the playwright and a version of the man who's playing the playwright. Layers and layers get stacked up until you don't know what's real, or what's all a bit of a dream. Years pass without notice, but that seems to be the point. 'There are a million strings attached to every choice you make,' says a fake vicar. 'You can destroy your life every time you choose.' This character seems to feel like that, as everything goes inexplicably and miserably wrong. But still, there's a happier message: 'I will be dying and so will you, and so will everyone here. We're all hurtling towards death, yet here we are for the moment, alive. Each of us knowing we're going to die, each of us secretly believing we won't '. Oh, did I say happy? I meant unrelentingly bleak.

I'm just really concerned about dying in the fire

But still, it is an enjoyable film. A surreal, complex, excellent mess of a film. The poor woman who buys a burning house to live in knows this. She likes metaphors. She's prepared to live in fear of a symbolic death. All this doom can't be good for her. Can't be good for anyone, as the play grows and grows without ever being seen. 'It's been years, when are we going to get an audience in here?'

Voldemort has a giant snake

2011-05-22T21:17:00.000+01:00

Camping is bleak. There's not much to do. Might as well just sit here. And frown. Has anybody got any ideas? Maybe a Game Boy, does anyone have a Game Boy? No? Okay, nevermind. I'll just sit here and, um, try to think of ways to save the world. Sigh. Yeah, just keep hitting that evil locket with a stick. That'll work. Idiot. You know Voldemort has a giant snake, right? What do we have? Exactly. I'll just put more leaves on the fire then.

I'm pretty sure Harry Potter Seven-and-a-half is the best one. It's about hopelessness and cold fingers. The others are indistinguishable from each other. This one is in the woods. Which appeals to me.

Floor 7½

2011-05-19T14:01:00.002+01:00

There are some ideas that make me happy and angry. Happy because they're brilliant, angry because I hadn't thought of them first. This happened about ten minutes into Being John Malkovich, when the puppeteer walks onto the seventh and a half floor. He's just got a new job working in this office, where the ceilings are low and everything is small. It's immediately and simply surreal, and it makes me angry. The whole film is like this. Spending fifteen minutes in John Malkovich's brain before being dumped out by the side of the motorway. Selling tickets. Becoming addicted. The central idea is so strong that it can be approached from any angle and still be interesting. What happens if Malkovich goes through his own portal? What happens if there's three people in there at the same time? It all makes me very, very jealous. Writers are looking for the big, original ideas all the time. This film has that big idea, and lots of smaller ones to go with it. The dialogue is effortlessly strange and funny, full of little moments that you forget to make room for the next one. It's films like this that can be rewatched, because it will always surprise you.

I know there aren't really any original ideas anymore, but sometimes I like to believe there are. Let's pretend Charlie Kaufman wasn't influenced by anything and all of this is his own invention. Because it's more fun like that. Then it can be inspirational. Floor 7½ is a good place to be.

Seven Kingdoms Scale of Evil

2011-05-12T13:22:00.000+01:00

Game of Thrones is the most ambitious television I've ever seen. It's constructing a world. Where fantasy films have to end somewhere around the three-hour mark, this can go on for (hopefully) years. It gives the context in bits so it's not overwhelming, building up like the chapters of a book (or maybe just the book it's based on). We know that there's scary wild things behind The Wall, but nobody really believes it; we know that there used to be dragons; and we know that there's a network of dead kings and girlfriends that everyone's upset about. It's traditional fantasy stuff, but it seems like a fresh commitment to putting literature on screen. Like somebody put Lord of the Rings into episodes. If it lives up to it's promise it could become monumental. This is what HBO have decided to do now that everyone else is starting to catch up, they're taking things up a notch. Enough of this real-world business, start a new land from scratch and you might get true escapism.

And here you know who the evil people are. They kill dogs. That's really evil. Cute dogs that never did any harm apart from mauling their master's enemies. The butcher's boy got killed as well but nobody cares so much about that. Nobody's supposed to kill the direwolves. They even make Sean Bean a bit soft. There's another bad sort who sold his sister to a horse-tribe. You can tell he wants to kill dogs too. The bad news for all of them is that 'winter is coming'. Seasons last for years in this place, and it's been summer for a while. Ominous.

Edit: I just found this staggeringly good post that includes diagrams of the houses, relationships and maps. It will make your nerdy mind do a little dance.

Bottom four TV titles

2011-05-07T20:35:00.001+01:00

Top fives are fun aren't they? Top fours are even more fun (what do you mean I just couldn't think of a fifth thing?). Anyway, this is a bottom four. So it's an entirely different thing. These are not the worse opening credits in television. They're bad titles attached to good shows. Which makes them worse.

4. Battlestar Galactica I feel bad about this. The music is excellent. Ethereal singing and bang-bang drums that really put you into that 'end of the human race' mood. But it's ethically dubious. When the banging starts they start showing you little highlights from the episode, before it's even begun. 'Oh, this a nice opening sequence. I'm really enjoying the singing. Spoiler. What? What was that? Spoiler. It happened again. Why are they doing this?' Little moments maybe, but I don't want to know someone's going to get punched in the face until it happens. Really nerdy people (not me) learn to look away during this bit. Not me. No.

3. Dexter It's a nice tune, and it's very well shot, but nobody's watching this anymore. It's two minutes of him making breakfast. Once you've got all the subtle hints about his psychosis it just becomes a long, boring bit before the show starts. By the third season it's just best to fast forward this. Maybe stop in time for the wink at the end. Ding. You know he's mad because nobody has the energy or will power to make breakfast like this. I can't even be bothered to put this much effort into lunch.

2. The X-Files Good wibbly-wobbly sci-fi music. Shame about the stretchy faces. And what's that? Some sort of novelty rotating lamp? No, it's 'Paranormal Activity'. Is it? I don't think it is. No wait, there's more stuff. 'Government denies knowledge', shadow man walking down a corridor, highlighted section of finger. This is a sketchy, jerky, blurry mess of everything they could think of. And if you're lucky you might get a secret message at the end. What could it possibly mean? I could let this off easy for being really old, but I won't.

1. Alias J.J. Abrams himself composed this, so presumably everyone was too afraid to tell him it was rubbish. Did this take half an hour on a computer? If the music wasn't bad enough, the Powerpoint presentation that plays on the screen makes it twice as bad. It's like somebody just discovered flashing letters and lens flare. I mean, they really like lens flare. Alias looks like an expensive show, why didn't somebody notice they hadn't finished the titles?

Shameless link to people saying nice things about me

2011-05-06T16:08:00.000+01:00

If you've been reading this stuff for two years you might remember a short film I made called Talk to Hoshuu. It was peculiar. Now a nice website called Best for Film has decided that it should be Short Film of the Week. I was confused, as the other films seem to be of the professional, Oscar-nominated sort, but there you go. They wanted to interview me as well, which was nice. Have a look. At the time the film was described as 'odd', but I prefer this quote: 'a Neil Gaiman produced Studio Ghibli anime if it was real-life and made by a handful of British university students'. There's something for the back of the box. That is, if there were boxes. I might stick it to the back of my personal copy. That'll do for now.

They also have a haiku competition. It's all very high-brow, and you might win shiny machinery. So really, you're better off over there than you are here. I don't have any competitions. You can't win anything here. And they didn't even pay me to say that.

Wes Anderson/Star Fox

2011-05-04T22:27:00.000+01:00

Seen Fantastic Mr Fox? Yes? Played Star Fox? Yes? Yes? Then you'll like this. Not only is the animation wonderful, but it's one of the best game parodies I've ever seen. The genius (yes, genius) of it is the way it merges the two things. The Anderson-esque ponderings of Fox McCloud mixed with actual lines from Star Fox 64. Never has Slippy Toad been more sympathetic - 'Maybe I'm not the one who needed help, after all.' The villainous Star Wolf becoming a faithful foxy friend - 'I can't let you do that Star Fox'. Sarcastic old Falco Lombardi becoming the most earnest bird you've ever seen - 'Hey, Einstein, I'm on your side'. Normally these things are shrieked in the middle of battle. Surely they could have found some way to include the boss' dying screams - 'cocky little freaks!', or possibly just 'bwaaaaa.' Yes, Fox McCloud has some good friends. Even if he can't 'barrel roll away from who he is', he will always have his furry, feathery, and slimy companions.

And remember, use bombs wisely.

Top five TV titles

2011-05-03T20:30:00.003+01:00

A good show needs something good to kick it off. A familiar tune, the cast and crew's names appearing in order, maybe shots of the characters turning round to face the camera. That sort of thing.

5. The Wire Five different versions of one song. Nobody's really sure which one is the best (it's season four though isn't it?). It gives each season a unique identity - the gravelly Tom Waits for the ports, the children for the schools, the, er, jazz for the politicians. Politicians like jazz. And the editors have combed though the episodes to find bits of nothing to put on the screen. It's paper, badges, and cameras, but it works. Nothing so mainstream as having the character's faces on there.

4. The West Wing Presumably this is the sort of thing David Simon was trying to avoid. But why? It's majestic. W. G. "Snuffy" Walden composed a thing of patriotic wonderment. A big waving American flag is imposed on everything, just so you're not confused, and the characters turn up one by one in various thoughtful poses. It got messed around with in the later seasons, but back when everything was in its place it was a nice sturdy way to start the show. I should also mention the closing credits, played to the jaunty theme, a.k.a. The Jaunty Theme. Nothing is more jaunty than The Jaunty Theme.

3. The Simpsons This should probably be number one, but I'm mean like that. Each one is full of individual jokes and references. The music is iconic. You already know this. I think they changed it recently though and nobody was very keen. The version I've got here seems to be the one YouTube wants you to see. It's a bit subversive. I didn't even realise it was all still going. What are the new episodes like? Everything I've seen is from at least ten years ago.

2. The Sopranos This earns points for just being really, really cool. Riding along with Tony Soprano with his big cigars in his big car. He's not committing any crimes but he's still cool. Maybe it would be rubbish without the song. If the Mafia didn't listen to this before, they do now. They have this on repeat in their cars. This and Journey for when they're ordering onion rings. Opening credits are designed to not get old by the hundredth time you've seen them. This gets better.

1. Firefly Joss Whedon's Ballad of Serenity performed by Sonny Rhodes. It's enough to make you want to become a space cowboy, if such a thing were possible. It's sad and uplifting at the same time. More than any other Whedon show these characters look like a family, flying around in their rusting tub. He's always had malicious fun with his credits, so who knows what characters would have briefly made it into this sequence in the future. 'There's no place, I can be, since I found Serenity'. It makes you want to watch the whole thing again doesn't it? Go on. Do it. It won't take long.

The Doctor

2011-04-30T20:38:00.001+01:00

Is it just me, or is Doctor Who the best thing the BBC has ever made? When other shows are stuck in pubs and living rooms the Doctor is flying around time and space. The new season opener has all the insanity of its best episodes. Possessed astronaut suits, a crazy orphanage, aliens in suits. Sometimes it's like they throw a pile of ideas into a box and pick a few out at random. It's full of foreshadowing, symbolism, and parallel timelines that don't entirely make sense, but that's the brilliance of it. You've just got to go with it. It's unrestrained. If anything it's trying to appeal more and more to the hardcore fans. So much so that even I don't really follow all of it. Here the Doctor is killed in the first ten minutes, before a past (or present) version of him turns up to help, with a woman from his future who knows his past, and a man who used to be a robot Roman but came back to life in a new timeline.

But it can also be simple. This new season has introduced the show's scariest monsters. They're not old robots, they're freaky aliens who look they've escaped from a melted Edvard Munch painting. Standing and staring like all the best aliens do. And because they're one of Moffat's creations, they're based on a clever idea instead of big lasers. Look away and you forget them, resulting in all sorts of new ways to go mad. This is a show that keeps getting better, and nerdier, and more imaginative. If it was brand new, if it wasn't already a fifty-year old institution, would something this good be allowed to exist?

Pie chart of writing

2011-04-23T19:18:00.000+01:00

Writing comes from a few places. But it's mostly theft. To prove it, I stole this from Sam Seaborn, who probably stole it from someone else - 'Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright'. I haven't worked out what the difference between 'borrowing' and 'stealing' is yet. Maybe if you're not planning on giving it back.

Things Monsters is better than

2011-04-18T21:08:00.001+01:00

I don't write about every film I see. I don't want to methodically criticise everything like a crazy reviewing mad person. But sometimes something is worth mentioning. Like Monsters. Made by tiny bunch of people wandering around Central America with a camera, making half of it up as they go along. You probably know that already though, as that's all the promotional stuff goes on about. It's pretty interesting in itself, but you'll want to watch the film first. It's a good one. A road movie through an alien-infested Mexico. Two characters and a bit of romance-action-horror. If Scoot McNairy's presence makes it seem like an apocalyptic In Search of a Midnight's Kiss, that can only be a good thing. The lack of action and 'creatures' appearing every ten seconds means that the characters can come to the front, and the danger seems more important. The tight focus makes it more of an adventure, more of a story than it's bigger budget friends.

It's something that'll stick with you after it's finished. Because traipsing through the jungle with these people is quite fun. One of them says 'I don't want to go home', and she's right. It might be dangerous but it can also be a nice place to be. Like sleeping on the top of a pyramid or sailing across a river at dawn. There's some amazing sights in this film. It stops to look at the view and take in the scenery. Like a massive wall constructed across the US's border to keep the aliens out - brilliantly done, like the rest of the effects, by a few people. The massive squid monsters aren't bad either. Somebody needs to take a few million dollars from Hollywood directors, and force them to make films like this.

The difficult third act

2011-04-15T21:28:00.001+01:00

There's some good ways to end films. So good, that they've been repeated lots of times.

1. What if two people are complete opposites but find themselves becoming romantically involved through a series of unlikely events? This sometimes happens, and everything goes well through the first act. Something funny will happen that they can talk about later, like almost getting killed by a crazy ostrich on a peaceful walk though a park. This happiness will continue well into the second act until it all goes horribly, horribly wrong. One says 'I don't want to talk to you anymore.' The other one says 'Fine! I don't want to talk to you either'.

Time passes. Maybe one of them is going to get married to somebody else. Maybe they're leaving the country and going to place without phones, post, or any means of contact. This is when the tried and tested third act comes in. One of them (usually the man) decides that they do like the other one after all, and rushes to wherever it is they need to rush too. They get there just in time. They grab the other's hand and give a long, emotional speech - 'remember when that ostrich almost killed you? That was the happiest time of my life.' Then the woman looks into his eyes and replies 'like I said, I really don't want to talk to you anymore'. And then leaves. Never mind.

2. In a controversial sequel to the previous film, the man returns home and keeps going about his daily life. Then there's a zombie apocalypse. Or, even better, a possessed zombie apocalypse. They're not just the undead, they're possessed by the devil too. It all resulted from a disastrous scientific experiment involving radiation and holy water. It's the end of the world now. Some people survive because they're just better at running away than others. Others perish and become possessed zombies. It's all very bad, but there's one place where the really bad thing lives. The survivors don't know that when they hide in the building.

It's dark because it's night, and the lights don't work because the possessed zombies attacked the power lines. Now they're trapped in this building until morning, with only a torch and their wits to keep them alive. 'Don't go upstairs,' somebody says, 'there's something really bad up there'. But when all his friends get killed and possessed there's nowhere else for Survivor A to go in the third act. So he ventures into the bad thing's lair. After a few tense moments he's possessed and becomes the ultimate embodiment of evil, ready for an appearance in the next film.

Five steps to becoming a writer

2011-04-12T19:50:00.001+01:00

The hardest part of writing is starting. Maybe you want to write a short story, a poem, a screenplay, a novel. Or maybe just an essay or a blog post. The hardest part is the first word. The rest are easy.

1. Inspiration First there's the inspiration to write about something. This can come from anywhere, but if you're having trouble you can walk around and look at things. Like animals. And trees. But mainly animals. Birds are particularly good for this. They're little flying balls of fluffy inspiration. Then you can declare that, yes, you shall write something. It helps to say this out loud, even if there are other people around.

2. The internet You're going to write something now. It's going to be the next thing you do. The very next thing. Maybe after five minutes on the internet. Just check Facebook for a minute. Comment on your friends' inane opinions on things. Now you can start writing. After you've checked for new videos on YouTube. There might be something interesting. It's all good research anyway. Speaking of research, you haven't checked the news website in a few hours. So you check that. There's nothing new, but there is an article about hats. This is now half an hour since you sat down to write something.

3. Bouncing This is an important step. You disconnect the internet and set about your task with new enthusiasm. You stare at the blinking cursor on the white page. It mocks you with its blinking. Nothing's happening. The words just aren't coming like you thought they would. You need something to get your mind working. Find a small ball and bounce it against things in a Toby Ziegler-like fashion. This is good. It's motion. Energy. It gets your creative juices flowing. And also, bouncing is fun.

4. Success The ball drops to the floor when the words jump into your head. You rush back to the computer and tap out the first few sentences in a rush of brilliance. You're a crazy writing mad person. These first few sentences are polished, perfected, and corrected. You change the font to make it look fancy. This is a good beginning. The start of a new writing adventure.

5. Happiness Now you've written something you can feel satisfied. You have achieved what you set out to do and you reward yourself with a biscuit. Tomorrow you'll have to go through the process again, but for now you can bask in your accomplishment. Bask for a while but don't let other people know you're basking. They won't understand. Keep it to yourself.

The Self-help Group for the Underappreciation of Brilliant Films

2011-04-06T20:54:00.001+01:00

Winter's Bone was an instant success. Critics liked it - really like it. It made a lot of money. It featured in many people's 'top ten' lists of last year. It went on to be nominated for lots of big awards. It was the indie hit of last year. Throughout all of this nobody mentioned that it was really boring. I've read lots of reviews and haven't found a single bad word about it. But honestly, I was bored. When the final scene came I thought 'Is this end? I suppose it's been two hours. It looks a bit like the end. But hardly anything has happened yet'. I know that this is meant to be a film of atmosphere over plot. I know it's meant to be realistic and authentic. Scary in a quiet way. I just thought it was a prelude to something that never happened. This girl wanders around a run-down corner of America trying to find her father. She asks all her threatening neighbours about it, then the film ends. As a narrative it's slight, bordering on non-existent. Atmosphere can only get me so far. After a while something needs to happen or my mind wanders. I usually think about crisps or biscuits. Maybe chocolate biscuits. I could get some chocolate biscuits. I walk away to browse biscuits. And when I get back the film is still on.

I feel bad about writing this, because the things I criticise here could appeal to me in something else. I mean, it really is very atmospheric (did I mention the atmosphere?). It's the middle of the winter. Everything is dead or dying and the colour left a long time ago. The landscape is bare. The acting is excellent. Everybody's as drab as they look. But in the end, I just wasn't interested. I suppose everyone must have a film they don't get. All the critics that rant on about it, all the articles you read, all the people that recommend it. And when you see it it doesn't happen. The weight of expectation or cruel old subjectivity? I don't know, but I won't be watching Winter's Bone again, and I won't be recommending it to anybody. There might be a club for this. Full of people who dislike films that are clearly brilliant. People who are definitely wrong. 'I don't like The Shawshank Redemption' says one. 'I didn't enjoy Lord of the Rings. Not any of them', another whimpers. Then somebody mumbles something about not liking Toy Story, and the rest shun him. Because everyone likes Toy Story. Freak.

The rest of the universe explained in pictures and words

2011-03-31T20:41:00.002+01:00

A few days ago I briefly explained the workings of the universe, since the television has been teaching me these things. I didn't go into much detail, but it had something to do with a rabbit. There's a bit more to the universe than that, though. A few paragraphs more. For instance, I didn't mention black holes. They're bad. Really bad. I know this because the scientific description is ominous - 'a region of space from which nothing, not even light, can escape'. That's right, not even light. The forces of evil are at work here. When a star collapses at the end of its life it turns inside out and becomes this whirlpool of doom. Some scientists think that there's one at the centre of most galaxies, including our own. If you went near it you'd be sucked into it and then something will happen. Nobody knows what's at the centre of a black hole, not even Brian Cox. Probably all the rubbish that gets hoovered up; a massive bin in the middle of the galaxy. Chuck that planet in there, we don't need it anymore.

I'd guess they were warp zones to other parts of the universe. But it's probably theories like this that got me laughed out of the scientific community. I don't think they've got very far in my absence anyway. They still haven't worked out what's beyond the universe. They try to baffle you with numbers and diagrams but they don't know really. They say 'what if the universe is everything that exists, then there can't be anything outside it.' I say 'there might be other universes'. They say 'the universe is often visualised as a three-dimensional sphere embedded in four-dimensional space'. I say 'what if you go out one end and come in the other like in Pac-Man.'

Because the universe is big. Really, really big. No, not quite that big. But big. The most distant stars we can see are only visible in the past, because the light takes so long to get to us. The light from the furthest stars started travelling when there weren't even any humans on Earth. It wasn't even called Earth then. Just a mound in space. When the light started travelling there were just little squidgy things flopping around straining to evolve.

Then one of the them strained hard enough to get legs and arms, and all the others decided they wanted some too. Others couldn't be bothered and flopped in the sea to learn how to swim. We didn't talk to them again, but after a while we produced some fingers, and thumbs, and started calling each other names. Then we started speaking in words that we made up and learned how to be sarcastic all the time. Somebody called the mound Earth (who was this?) and people drew lines and divided the place up into turf. Some of the countries don't like each other very much. Somebody invented money and convinced everyone else that they need it. We got iPods, then iPhones, and eventually iPads. We evolved. And then we saw the light from the distant star. It took a while.

The universe explained in pictures and words

2011-03-29T20:41:00.001+01:00

Astronomy would be really fun if it wasn't for all the hard science and stuff. What could be more interesting than trying to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos? Not much, but when I start looking into it I only come across equations the size of houses. All the good stuff is hidden behind impenetrable physics and words that come in five or six parts. But now Professor Brian Cox has been explaining these things to me, and I might be starting to understand. We're in the solar system, which is in a galaxy, and there's lots of galaxies in the universe. Right? Right? Good. Because it's best not to ask any more questions after that. What's outside the universe? And outside that? Maybe nothing, because it has to stop somewhere. Or maybe it repeats itself. Or maybe Men in Black was way ahead of its time. To summarise, let's look at the effect this sort of thinking has on the mind of a rabbit.

Wonders of the Universe is the only show on television that makes your mind actually break. That alone is worth the license fee. The Professor does a good job of explaining the fabric of existence to us. Everything's expanding, see. Expanding and getting messy. And when things reach their ultimate messy-ness, there won't be time any more, because nothing will change.

He doesn't have all the answers though. Which is probably a good thing. Ratings would go straight down. Like watching Lost, we don't really want to know why they're there or where the polar bear came from. The question is always more interesting than the answer. It's best to drag it out. When we find out, it's always the same reaction.

The Town: How to rob a bank and get away with it

2011-03-21T21:12:00.001Z

In The Town Ben Affleck and friends might seem like professionals at the bank-robbing business, but they make a few simple mistakes. Even though they were wearing scary masks at the time, they can still be recognised afterwards. Which is why you shouldn't get to know one of your hostages. Romantic conversations in flower gardens are especially foolish. The car chases and shoot-outs that follow may be very exciting, but they're a sign that something has gone badly wrong. Maybe some of your team are a bit unstable. Maybe you shouldn't give them semi-automatic weaponry. And if someone offers you 'one last job', you should not be talked into it. Although, it does make the film more entertaining. The last act is pretty excellent. Robbing a stadium looks easy in cunning disguises and cool shades. You can get away with anything if you're wearing the right clothes and say things confidently enough.

Like Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck shows that he can direct solid, compelling stories. The Town lives up to its promise, and will entertain you for two hours straight. After all, it's always more fun to root for the criminals. As long they're not the really bad sort. A few heists and a bit of violence towards other criminals is nice enough. That's not hurting anybody. And the FBI do what the FBI always do - try to spoil everyone's fun. In film's at least. The real FBI do fine work, and I wouldn't want to suggest anything different to the internet robots that are now browsing this page.

Ondine: Strange people that come out of the water

2011-03-17T19:42:00.001Z

I'll be honest, the only reason I watched Ondine was because one quarter of Sigur Rós composed the score. Which is probably a good enough reason to watch anything. If the other bits turn out to be good as well it'll be a bonus. So, an Irish fisherman catches a woman in his net and becomes convinced that she might be a bit mystical. His daughter thinks he's found a selkie, a sort of lady seal creature who can become temporarily human. When her singing starts bringing the fisherman luck, it seems that she might be right. But this is a film set in the real world. It asks how long the fantasy can be kept up, if it's real or just imagined. The woman doesn't want to confirm it either way, and does a lot of singing and floating around in the water. Ondine is a nice little film that spends most of it's time in the calm Irish countryside. It's gentle and funny and a little bit sleepy. There's a downbeat realism to it that stops it from getting too sugary, and Colin Farrell is likable enough to play the kind but slightly rubbish fisherman. It's the possibility of magic in a contemporary setting that keeps it interesting, and eventually a warming to the characters to see it through to the end.

And there's a few Sigur Rós songs as well. Apart from the new stuff, Kjartan Sveinsson added some familiar tunes. One song in particular plays an important part in the plot. Ondine sings it to the fishes, while being all mystical and mysterious. After all, what else would mermaids sing? The fisherman thinks it's a magical sound, proof of her being from another world. Then Sigur Rós appear on TV singing it, making him wonder if it really is a selkie song. 'That song, it's real', 'Of course it's real, it's Sigur Rós' - this is good dialogue. A film that hinges on a Sigur Rós song? This can only be a good thing.

Treme: Sometimes they cross paths and play a song together

2011-03-15T20:45:00.001Z

David Simon's Treme might look like it's going to be one long rant about the state of post-Katrina New Orleans. And there's a bit of that, but it's mostly a laidback look at the people within the community. It's full of music. Full of it. Almost every character is a musician; they play music in the street, in clubs, in hospital waiting rooms - anywhere they can find. Sometimes they don't stop and whole scenes go by with nothing but trombones, violins, and pianos. These people are as keenly observed as anything from The Wire, but everyone's a lot gentler. Some are actually lighthearted. These are not the streets of Baltimore. The first four episodes border on uneventful but, in that way that few shows manage, are just an interesting place to be. The characters have musical difficulties instead of debilitating drug addictions. Nobody has a gun. It's a tight community rather than a sprawling city, even though they don't seem to know each other. In the way of these things, they occasionally cross paths and sometimes play a song together. There isn't a bad note among them.

The highlight is Davis McAlary, a loud-mouthed radio DJ who is fired for letting a guest sacrifice a chicken on air, and then thrown off a hotel reception desk for sending Christians to the wrong end of town. He's got a childlike enthusiasm for music that gets him by, occasionally composing a song or two and adding a welcome chunk of comedy. Elsewhere, Sonny and Annie busk for spare change, John Goodman screams at YouTube, and Antoine 'The Bunk' Baptiste plays trombone all day. I'm sure these people will develop large, dramatic problems, but for now they're just quite nice to watch. Some might be annoyed by its quest for authenticity, or dislike the characters when they arrogantly proclaim New Orleans to be the centre of the world. Though any show with this amount of social commentary is bound to make people take sides. I like that the characters are faintly fanatical about their city. Without that, Treme wouldn't exist.

The Host: The other sort of mutant fish

2011-03-11T20:07:00.001Z

Ponyo made strange fish look cuddly. It was still pretty dangerous, but it wanted to be your friend. The fish from the Korean film The Host is a bit bigger, and probably just wants to eat you. This is what you get when you pour toxic chemicals down the sink. The mutated fish thing rampages across the city, gobbling people up or taking them to its lair to keep for later. And it really goes for it. They're not afraid to show the monster, so there's a fair amount of running away to be done. It appears in the first ten minutes. No build up. Just straight into it. That's commendable really, because this is one of the best starts to a monster film you'll ever see (is that a genre? I hope so). Then, when a man's daughter gets taken away by the creature, he sets off with his family to get her back. With plenty of resistance from the government, who are convinced that everyone's got a virus. It's a film that's a lot of fun. Underneath the bone-spitting there's a mixture of comedy and drama and mild jumpy bits. It can switch to tragedy without any fuss, too. All done with complete confidence. Of course, it's not all so much fun for the poor schoolgirl who has to wait in the sewer for dinner time. Her prospects look grim.

Almost as grim as the thought of an American remake. The more I think about it, the more I hate the idea of Hollywood recycling great world cinema. There's no good reason these films can't be released properly everywhere and find an audience. If there are people who don't want to read subtitles, they are completely and unremittingly stupid. 'Foreign' films are not stuffy or ponderous. Nobody would watch The Host and complain about the exciting action movie they just saw. And, let's face it, a monster rampage in Seoul is a lot cooler than the same thing happening in New York.

Ponyo: Fish with faces that come out of the sea

2011-03-09T19:51:00.004Z

The first ten minutes of Ponyo are probably enough to turn you back into a child. The little fish escapes from her father's undersea fortress and rides to the top of the ocean on a squid, with hypnotic orchestral music pushing her up. It's the style of the Ghibli films that really impresses. The best hand-drawn animation you'll ever see, and the score turning everything into a fuzzy dream. In this case the plot is nothing special, but it doesn't seem to matter when there's tsunami-riding five year olds and piles of moon-pulled ships stacked against the horizon. Ponyo meets Sōsuke but is then taken back into the sea by Liam Neeson. Her enterprising attempts to get back to the boy causes a tsunami to drown the coastal town. At this point Sōsuke's massively irresponsible mother decides to drive through the storm to her hilltop house, almost killing her son a few times. She then leaves him there on his own and goes back to work. It's a good thing he's got a magic fish girl for company. She turns his toy boat into a proper one and they go sailing together.

It's hard not to spend a whole day watching this stuff. My Neighbour Totoro, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle - these are films that need to be watched. All with an obvious Japanese identity but a universal wonderfulness. There's a Ghibli collection to be started. There's things I haven't seen - Princess Mononoke, Kiki's Delivery Service. The problem is that the DVD boxes are numbered one to seventeen. My instincts tell me I need all of them - they're numbered - but common sense tells me I only want a few. Six. Maybe seven. In order.

The Other Guys: They were so convincing in their argument

2011-03-06T17:07:00.001Z

The mildly interesting thing about The Other Guys isn't that it's a pretty boring comedy, it's that it's trying to make some sort of point. Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg playing a pair of useless cops are likeable enough, and they'd get away with it if they were in a better film. The problem's that they're not doing anything fun. Investigating a dodgy financial scheme doesn't sound like great comedy, and it isn't. The Other Guys wants to tell us something about the excess of capitalism and the crimes of the rich few, but doesn't present it in a solid enough way. It's dull, cold, verging on complicated. The end credits even start giving a lecture on corporate finance. There's pie charts and everything. And I'm still not getting it, because all I wanted was a comedy about buddy cops. The crime-fighting heroes that are killed off at the start - Samuel L. Jackson and The Rock - are more entertaining than the 'other guys'. It's a shame they jumped off a roof. If it's saying that the people who do the 'daily grind' are more important, try to make them more important. Overall, there's bits of funny in a pile of 'meh'. Ferrell's character doing his first 'desk pop', the tips for school children, and most things Steve Coogan says. A lot of it is like the 'Female Body Inspector' mug Wahlberg throws out the car window, and being asked 'You can see why it's funny right?'.

Don't just take my word for it though, because a lot of other people think differently. Now, I'd think opinion on this film could only reasonably range from 'bad' to 'kind of okay', but there's some people going going a bit mad. One critic calls it an 'insanely funny film', five out of five. There's a quote for the poster. Another takes the risky approach of saying 'send me the bill if you don't laugh'. One decides to be impossible wordy: 'an angrier or more lucid breakdown of the grubby malfeasance of the stripy-shirted masters of the self-designated masters of the universe has yet to be made'. No, I don't know what that means either. If I could, I would raise one eyebrow at the broadsheet critic who used the word 'masterpiece' in his review. The majority stay sane and say something along the lines of 'yeah, it's okay, but is this the best we can do these days?' If all of these opinions are honest, they're completely valid. Maybe I'm just getting grumpy. If there was a RottenTomatoes for blogs though, it would tell a different story.

Buried: There's no need to be rude, sir

2011-03-03T20:47:00.001Z

Buried in his box, Paul is having a bad time. He has a lighter and a phone and not much leg room. This is such a simple, powerful idea that I'm surprised it hasn't been done before. Setting a film inside an underground coffin, and watching somebody trying to get out. It's high concept stuff, and forces the director to be particularly creative with angles and lighting. There's the small flame of the lighter, the blue glare of the phone screen. Sometimes it's just dark. And Ryan Reynolds does a good job of convincing us that, yes, this really is very unpleasant. He negotiates with people on the phone, who put him on hold and hang up on him for being rude. All the time running out of oxygen and battery life. It's a film that asks how tension can be maintained in the space of a box, how many ideas there can be in a few yards of wood. At one point there's a snake in there, so that's good. The rest is cramped, frantic, suffocating blindness. It doesn't pull any punches. This character really is being buried alive. And it's not a short film. It keeps going and going and he's still not made it out - a sort of real-time nightmare. There's a surprising political edge to it too. Paul is a truck driver, ambushed in Iraq and being held for ransom. He wonders if anyone really cares about finding him, and argues with his captors about the war and the nature of terrorism. Which isn't really helping his situation, but he does it anyway.

Buried is an interesting film experiment, and it works. It works so well that it all comes down to this: only watch it if you want to feel quite upset afterwards. The script is expertly cruel. Films don't usually want to torment you this much. You'll hate the sight of the filmmakers. They are not to be trusted. It's all their fault, after all. They were very mean to this character, and if they weren't so good at it I'd stay angry.

Frost/Nixon: The Oscars and something about ice cream

2011-03-01T21:06:00.003Z

There are some things that happened before I was born, and I know very little about most of them. So it's nice when a film can teach you something. Frost/Nixon, for example, teaches me that Richard Nixon really did have a strange voice, and that David Frost wasn't always old. These interviews are the sort of the thing that pop up on mundane 'Best of All Television' compilations, but it seems they're actually more interesting than that. The fact that I know next to nothing about seventies American politics and still enjoyed the film is important. It can just be about the drama of two men sitting in chairs talking about important things. At least, it is eventually, because Frost has to be propped up to ask the good questions. He doesn't do any work for the first few recordings, so it doesn't go very well. He wakes up eventually and handily stumbles across a vital piece of evidence that everyone else had missed. Then he's won. He leans forward and says all the right things to make Nixon crumble. Frost/Nixon is the sort of the film that's good in a very boring way. The script is expertly structured. The performances are excellent. The direction is polished. It's a very good film when you think about it, but not worth getting exciting about. It was nominated for five Oscars but didn't win any of them, losing to films that were just a bit more exciting. An analogy could come in handy here, but I can't think of any. Imagine you're eating ice cream. It's very nice ice cream and technically excellent. But then there's other ice cream that comes with strawberry sauce and colourful sprinkles, and has an emotional third act. You enjoyed all the ice cream but would probably only ask for the second one again.

What was I writing about? The Oscars, yes. On that subject, it is very rude to play the music over Aaron Sorkin. He can talk for as long as he wants to. It is also very rude to call The King's Speech the 'best picture', when it clearly isn't. The King's Speech is the first sort of ice cream. There were other films with all the toppings. Ah well, I'm sure everyone had a nice time.

The King's Speech: Let's not forget what the great films look like

2011-02-24T22:55:00.002Z

Maybe it's the weight of expectation, but The King's Speech is, in all honesty, alright. Fine. Not great. Just good. It's what happens when a film is held up as a year's highlight. One of the best things you'll see. Something to applaud and celebrate. But I don't think anybody could say it was a masterpiece, or even something that's going to be remembered for a long time. It's calm and gentle, with a great performance from Colin Firth. And that's good enough for me, but let's not get carried away. You get a sense of a man trapped in a horrible situation, abused and neglected and called royalty. Despite being Colin Firth, he looks small and worried, shaking at the prospect of speaking in front of people. His relationship with the 'common' speech therapist is at the heart of the film. This guy really doesn't give a damn. He calls the king 'Bertie' and sits on thrones with his feet up - 'It's a chair. I don't care how many royal arseholes have sat in it'. If it wasn't for this Australian the film would have just been a bunch of royals swanning around in large rooms, and I'm not interested in that. We can thank history for supplying Lionel then, and livening up what could have been a boring two hours. The politics of the royal family does not make a great film, mainly because none of them seem like people. Apart from poor Bertie and his wife, who summon just enough sympathy to make us care. He stammers 'so beautifully' that they never expected to have to deal with these problems. He manages though, and we're still thanking Lionel for that.

But here's the thing. When I look at some of the other films up for winning Shiny Trinkets, then I wonder how this has ever got a look in. The Social Network, Toy Story 3, Inception - at least three films that deserve the prize for Best Picture more (and, er, the only other ones I've seen). The Social Network is literally inspirational, it makes me feel excited about filmmaking. Toy Story 3 is a masterpiece of animation. Inception is surreal, confusing, and a little bit wonderful. The King's Speech did not make me feel much of anything. It's fine, give Colin Firth all the acting awards you want, he deserves it, but let's not get confused about what the really great films look like.

Catfish: Strange things that happen on the internet

2011-02-21T20:25:00.000Z

In Catfish, a filmmaker starts documenting his brother Nev's online relationship with a family. After an eight-year-old girl sends him a painting of one his photos, he starts talking to her mother and older sister on Facebook. The paintings keep coming in the post, along with recorded songs from the sister. Soon he starts talking to them on the phone, even starting to believe that the relationship with Megan, the older sister, could be 'something serious'. Through Facebook and emails and texts they keep contacting each other, with the whole thing seeming strangely normal. Technology has apparently brought them together but always keeping them at a distance. Nev is in New York, while his new friends live in Michigan. You can probably see where this is going. For the sake of the 'documentary' they go on a road trip to meet the family. On the way they begin to suspect that something's not right. By the time they get to Michigan the tension is cranked right up, like they're about to discover something sinister. There's a real sense of excitement as they get nearer and nearer, even dabbling in a bit of mild horror. I won't say what happens, except that, like all mysteries, the question is more interesting than the answer. These few young men seem genuinely scared of what they're getting themselves into. How much they're acting up to the camera isn't clear, but their fear and nervous excitement seems real. There's a good period in Catfish that's incredibly compelling. The truth takes the edge off it eventually, but until then it's captivating. It's the sort of thing that can only be really enjoyed the first time you see it. When it ends you'll think back to that golden half an hour when everything was fresh and mysterious, and feel a bit sad that you'll never be able to see it like that again.

It's a film filtered through technology, where everything is analysed and deduced through the internet. Google Street View gives a glimpse of places before they go there. Emails hide clues that can be worked out through YouTube, Facebook, Twitter. The technology is useful but cold. Everyone is hiding behind it until they go to confront the real world. This is a story about right now, a bit scary and a bit exciting.

22 Bullets: An excuse to mention something else

2011-02-20T22:27:00.002Z

22 Bullets, knows an L'Immortel in France, begins with Jean Reno getting gunned down in a car park. After all, you can't escape your past, especially if you're a retired gangster. He survives and vows revenge on everyone involved. Or at least, he does eventually. For a while the film seems to be interested in anything but the plot, with the hero hardly saying a word for the first half hour. Despite the tag 'revenge thriller', 22 Bullets has more artistic intentions. It spends more time with an alcoholic detective and complicated gangster politics than it does with the main man. It's a shame, because there's an interesting story in here. When Jean Reno walks into a restaurant with a grenade and a gun, it makes more sense. But you'll be waiting a while for that. It's far too concerned in everything that's happening around the action, so it doesn't move along with any drive, instead sagging under the weight of all the other people. At times it comes together and Mr Reno is able to deliver the justice he's been waiting for. The baddies even get round to kidnapping his children, so he finally gets a bit worked up about it. Unfortunately, the whole thing is just too confusing to follow properly. Who's this? Who's side is he on? Why does he want to frame this guy who's doing that thing over there with those other people? Just get on with it. You'll have to fill in the gaps yourself if you want to give context to the violence.

It prides itself on being 'from the producers of Taken'. Another film that's from the producers of Taken is, er, Taken 2, which seems to be in production. This sounds like a brilliant and slightly rubbish idea. Somebody is going to have to be taken. But who? He's probably keeping a better eye on his daughter, so that won't happen again. Maybe somebody else's daughter? But nobody cares about that. And terrorist's wouldn't work, even though Liam Neeson could hunt them all down in five minutes. Somebody he likes will need to be abducted and shipped to a different country. I'm sure they can sort it out. Whatever happens, it'll be entertainment.

Boardwalk Empire: I ain't building no bookcase

2011-02-15T17:11:00.000Z

After watching the fourth episode of Boardwalk Empire, I think it's starting to take shape. It's set in America's Prohibition era, where criminals and political figures still control the flow of alcohol. 'Nucky' Thompson is at the head of it, a political 'boss' who controls Atlantic City through all sorts of criminal activities. It's part gangster show and part political drama - there's no line between the two. And Nucky's brother is Sheriff of the county, so they can pretty much get away with anything. Thankfully they seem to be fairly decent gangsters, more helpful than destructive. In the most recent episode they handed the leader of a Ku Klux Klan group over to Chalky White, the head of the black community in the city. Played by Michael K Williams, this character is the centre of any scene he's in, of which there aren't nearly enough. Here he tells the Klan member a story about his father, a gifted carpenter who was killed by 'six white men'. He gets out his father's tools, and when asked what he intends to do with them, says 'I ain't building no bookcase'. But in a threatening, Omar Little sort of way. In fact, sometimes he just seems like Omar in a red coat. Maybe an ancestor, or evidence of time travel, he's still the coolest thing in an entirely different show.

Elsewhere the show is really going for the 'old society' thing. Racism and sexism are a big part of it. We look in from the outside, with a bunch of sympathetic characters around to stop us going mad. There's the bad gangsters, who are okay really, then the really bad gangsters who say mean things about everyone. Though, in the case of some of these women, they may have a point. The majority of the female characters are completely pathetic, sitting around on their husband's laps being apocalyptically stupid. It's there for a point, to show a contrast to the pleasant Mrs Schroeder, but it's overdoing it a bit. The fact that Margaret actually has opinions on things impresses Nucky, when she puts forward some thoughts on women's right to vote. It might not sound like much, but his current girlfriend can hardly string two words together.

And there's a thing going on with Jimmy, who always looks like he's about to start singing Arcade Fire songs. Gangsters have meetings in big coats and hats. I'm not really sure who most of them are, but it'll become clear eventually. It's going for the slow build-up approach, and I'm more than happy to see where it goes. There are moments of brilliance here. Moments that are getting more frequent as the series goes on.

The Hurt Locker: This box is full of stuff that almost killed me

2011-02-13T18:06:00.003Z

Unlike most war films, The Hurt Locker is quiet and careful. It follows a US bomb squad in Iraq, and is mainly made up of tense standoffs that play out in whispers and clicking machinery. The streets are always deserted when the soldiers arrive. As one of them walks towards the bomb in a big blast suit the others scan the buildings around them. People appear at windows, some of them just watching, others waiting to detonate the bomb on the roadside. It's always the quiet before an explosion or a gunshot. In fact, one of the best scenes doesn't even feature a bomb. There's a sniper duel in the middle of the desert, with the soldiers boiling under the sun. As people get picked off around them they have to clean blood off the bullets to make them fire, and fiddle around with straws on juice drinks. There's a slow motion shot of a bullet casing bouncing off the sand. It's slow, tense action. Even when they start running and shouting it feels off balance, a bit surreal. It's like they're policing a ghost town. And made even stranger by the squad leader's attitude. He's laid back and cocky, strolling up to bombs without much worry. If he dies he dies, and he doesn't seem to care. He'll probably get the others killed. He goes off on personal missions, addicted to the 'rush of battle'. The film is about these soldiers rather than the politics of the war. It doesn't even have to be specifically about Iraq. It's closer than that. Without pulling away from the action, it becomes about how the soldiers deal with the everyday danger. There's a clarity to it that you don't get in other war films, a clear focus on a few people that isn't confusing. By showing a handful of characters rather than the whole country, it gives more insight than a chaotic thriller.

The quiet flow of it is hypnotic, full of ticking bombs that could go off at any moment. It's a sturdy thing that knows exactly what it wants to do and does it well. This is a serious film but also one that's a lot of fun. It only occasionally throws messages at you, but doesn't overdo the psychological trauma angle. As a suspense thriller it is excellent, as a drama it's pretty good. As a film it's solid and watchable.

REC: There must be something upstairs

2011-02-11T19:46:00.000Z

A cameraman and a presenter follow a fire crew into an apartment building. They were called in to rescue a 'trapped woman'. They soon realise that a fire would have been nicer, as the building is quarantined for 'public health reasons'. In other words, a bunch of people are trapped in a building with nasty things. Something is turning the residents into screaming flesh-eaters, and the disease spreads to the bitten. Better run away then. Unlike something like The Crazies, there's an almost real sense of terror coming off the screen in REC. The documentary style puts you right there with them, with the biting and the screaming and the running. It jitters and jumps and throws you across the room as the cameraman runs up six flights of stairs to escape the monsters. It's claustrophobic. As we only get to see through a narrow lens, we're as trapped as the characters - forced to watch whatever the camera points at. Occasionally someone says 'turn it off, turn it off', and for a second that sounds like a good idea. But you'll want to see what happens. It's a compelling thing. Lasting only seventy eight minutes, it spends a lot of time in quieter moments, playing out the fake documentary. The presenter interviews everyone in the assumption that she'll make it out to edit the footage. In this style it's like an extreme version of Paranormal Activity. The monsters are very real and very visible, and when it all kicks off it's very violent. The camera only catches glimpses off it, but it's definitely there. Then the lights go out and they switch to night vision for the really horrible stuff.

It's not very pleasant then, so why would you want to watch it? The thing about REC, as with most horror films, is that it's nonsense. Over the top, entertaining, ridiculous nonsense. To be physically scared or effected by it is to take it seriously. And nobody's doing that. It's putting yourself into a compelling nightmare while you eat biscuits. It's way beyond the line of fantasy and doing all the right things to keep you watching. It's a story you've seen before, but still fun.

Two boys walk into Big Moon Forest in the middle of winter

2011-02-09T19:06:00.002Z

This is a scene from early in Big Moon Forest. After walking for miles, Rhys is finally able to show Tom what he's found in the forest. It's also a lesson in how not to format a screenplay. Click on the fancy 'read more' link to see the rest.

EXT. FOREST EDGE - DAY

RHYS and TOM have arrived at the forest's edge. The tall trees are just brown sticks without their leaves. Dead spikes from the ground. RHYS - Can you hear it? TOM - No. RHYS - I can't either. They listen but can only hear the breeze and their own breath. TOM slaps RHYS on the back of the head. TOM - Can you hear that? RHYS - Be quiet. Another slap from TOM. Harder this time. RHYS - You need to be quiet. TOM doesn't respond, and they wait again. Listening to the breeze and staring into the forest. TOM- I come all the way out here for what? RHYS walks forward into the –

EXT. FOREST - CONTINUOUS

- and onto the crunching dead leaves. He can hear it straight away. A distant noise: like wood grinding and splintering, thundering and screaming. It's coming through the forest. After a moment TOM joins him. He can hear it too. They are both frozen, shivering, listening. It's thumping through the forest but still distant.

This time TOM takes the lead, walking forwards without saying a word. RHYS follows. As they walk into the forest, through the dense dead trees, the noise grows louder. It gets louder and louder, but still the boys walk forward. It comes in ten second bursts, starting and growing louder before switching back to silence and starting again. Eventually TOM stops and RHYS comes to his side, staring with him. Then RHYS sits down on a rock, and TOM walks on.

We stay with RHYS, alone in the forest, waiting for TOM to come back. The noise is still there: screaming and splintering, starting from nothing and growing up and up until it snaps back to silence. On repeat. RHYS looks up at the tops of the trees. Still light. Grey sky. Then he looks all around - there's nothing living, just the spikey winter forest. He puts his hands over his ears and the noise is muffled. He looks up at the sky again. He stares, for longer this time, with his hands over his ears. He looks back down and TOM and is standing in front him. The noise comes back.

RHYS - (drowned out by the noise) Okay? TOM nods, expressionless, and they walk out of the forest together, with the sound fading behind them.

The Crazies: Mad people with cunning plans to kill you

2011-02-05T21:07:00.001Z

People are going crazy from bad chemicals in the water. The Crazies are crazy in a murderous way. And then after a while their faces start melting. This isn't good news for a sunny American town, where everyone was having a nice time until this happened. The chemicals came from a crashed military plane, and the government decide to 'quarantine' the place. Soldiers in masks turn up to herd everyone around and explode things. For the sheriff and his wife, who probably aren't sick, this is a very unfortunate few days. As a horror film The Crazies has a fundamental problem. The crazy people aren't scary. They're extremely violent but not horrifying. As a version of a zombie infection, it doesn't get it right. Zombies are brainless monsters that lurk and shamble, these are mad people with cunning plans to kill you. More action than horror. There aren't even any hordes of them. A few sequences get away with it by highlighting scraping pitchforks, but our heroes don't run into many of the monsters. The real menace is the military, who turn up with flamethrowers and big trucks. They're so good at killing the crazies that the sting is taken out of the film. Of course, they want to kill the characters too, but they should have arrived a bit later. I want more scenes of 'I wonder where everyone is', and 'what's wrong with Mr Hobbs, he's looking a bit pale today'. So it tips the other way, into a gory action film. Except the action isn't that exciting. There's a peculiar scene in a car wash, where the characters are trapped in their car going along the conveyor belt. Big sponges attack them from either side. It's terrifying. And when it really does all start to kick off, the film ends, leaving some unresolved issues.

The most effective part of the film is the opening scenes. The town is idyllic. Quaint. The word 'foreboding' is written across the sky in big letters. They needed to get more out of this, because pretty quickly everything explodes and the tension is lost. The Crazies is a film that has its moments, but for anyone who's seen more than one horror film, it must try harder.

Blades of Glory: Prancing on ice with a bit of beheading

2011-01-31T21:53:00.000Z

You don't normally get many laughs from Hollywood comedies, even if they're Oscar nominated. But Blades of Glory is better than most. Two rival ice skaters are banned from the sport for fighting, and then come back a few years later as a same-sex pairs team. One's a graceful child prodigy, the other a rough sex addict. Will they be able to overcome their differences and skate to gold in the big championship? Yes, they will. Nobody's winning any awards here, but it's enjoyable enough. Will Ferrell and Jon Heder are funny together, and that's what holds up the entire film. They punch each other on the podium and prance around on the ice, and that's funny. Though it can't be right that saying a comedy is 'enjoyable enough' counts as high praise. Some critics count laughs to decide the quality of these things. Where's the fun in that? Are comedies so boring that five laughs is a high point? These are professionals after all. There's actors who made their way as stand-up comedians. If they only got five laughs a show they'd be in trouble. The blandest comedies are based on one joke, stretched out to two hours. It's much easier to add jokes to something else. A drama with funny bits. A comedy horror. Romantic comedy. Something that just sets out to be funny is pretty brave. Trying to be appeal to everyone will leave most people bored. If there's no constant stream of ideas coming, you'd better make your one joke pretty good. Here the joke is that Chazz Michael Michaels and Jimmy MacElroy are complete opposites, and they have to dance together. It gets by on the performance of the two leads and the likeable, innocent charm. It doesn't go for sweary or vulgar, it's pretty gentle, which makes it easier to get along with.

And anyway, Chazz Michael Michaels is a complex guy. He's written a poetry collection called 'Let Me Put My Poems Inside You'. Which is probably the best name for a book of poetry I've ever heard.

Some day we'll be drinking with the seldom seen kid

2011-01-29T15:18:00.001Z

Elbow seem to be back in business. Three years after the release of stupidly good Seldom Seen Kid, a new album will be coming in a few months. Build a rocket boys! will be it, and there's not much to go on except this new video of the song 'Lippy Kids'. I don't usually write about music news, mainly because I don't know any. But this is the rare thing that's worth a look two months before release. The video probably speaks for itself, so you'd be better off watching that first. Though I'll put on my music reviewer's hat and put some words to it (note: this is not a real hat, but I could consider getting one). Elbow are a band that seemed to have peaked fifteen years into their career. They released albums before Seldom Seen Kid, but only a relatively few people were paying attention. I only came in on that album, when a friend said 'you'll like this', and the songs were the backing track to every second television trailer. It may be the case that they'll never better that album - the one that elevated them to stadiums and mainstream ears - but they'll do a good job trying. It easily flowed between ballads and catchy riffs and soaring orchestral wonderousness. Held together by Guy Garvey's soothing tones. As an album opener, this new song is more relaxing than usual. Doesn't even have any unexpected trumpet explosions. Whatever comes next will probably be a treat.

And if you liked that you'll probably like this. To my ears The National sound like an American Elbow. Their fans would probably say it was the other way round, but I'll make the comparison for the sake of this post.

Body of Lies: Things are hard to find in the desert

2011-01-27T21:29:00.000Z

Body of Lies doesn't appear to be saying one thing about Iraq, or trying to expose a grand conspiracy. It gives little pieces of insight and drama in the middle of a conventional thriller. Too serious to be fun, but too silly to be important. In tracking down an elusive terrorist, Russell Crowe's chubby CIA man has a few words of wisdom: 'Our enemy has realised they are fighting guys from the future. And if they live like it's the past and behave like it's the past, then guys from the future find it very hard to see them'. This is at least true of him, as he sits in his control room watching satellite pictures of people buying vegetables. It's a bit harder for DiCaprio's character, who's an agent in the middle of it all. He's having a bad time. Things are hard to find in the desert and people keep shooting at him. His operations are frequently sabotaged by the man in the sky, who seems to be casual about the danger involved. It's a film that wants to make you afraid of walking down the street, or at least a street in the Middle East: 'We're an easy target. And our world is a lot easier to put to an end than you might think'. Serious stuff then, but it can't shake the problem of being a slightly average thriller. Its plot is tangled and the enemy is elusive, so much so that it doesn't have any drive. It's caught between wanting to explode things and make serious points about doom. If it wants to have action it should go for it. Give me a car chase or a big fight. Instead it gets a bit shy and veers off into a little romantic subplot with an Iranian nurse. To be fair, it's an interesting subplot, but in a different film. Green Zone worked because it was a straight action film, making its points but never slowing down. Body of Lies goes halfway towards action, halfway towards drama. Not really committing to either.

One day someone is going to make a great film about these things. Body of Lies isn't it. I don't think Green Zone is either. It might come a long way in the future, when it's looking back instead of trying to predict the future. Body of Lies will probably be forgotten. Apart from Mark Strong's suave Jordanian intelligence minister. He's so good at it you won't even recognise him. Shady, threatening, and thoroughly polite. And DiCaprio has a big fluffy beard at one point. So that's good.

The other people who made A Few Good Men

2011-01-22T23:04:00.002Z

With The Social Network about to win all the Oscars, it's time to watch Aaron Sorkin's first film, A Few Good Men. Two marines are accused of murder at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, and Tom Cruise is brought in to defend them. He doesn't take things very seriously amongst the hard-drilled marines, quickly getting into trouble with Jack Nicholson. He believes his clients may have been ordered to murder one of their fellow marines, but he can't prove it. A Few Good Men ramps up to something engrossing. Not just courtroom drama, but with the familiar Sorkin pace and craft. And on top of that, there's Jack Nicholson saying the words. Tom Cruise is all very well and good, but Nicholson is the force of the film. Playing a fanatical colonel with a dislike for just about everybody, he can spin a character out of a glance. Particularly in the final scenes, where he goes into battle against Cruise's courtroom questioning, he's mesmerising. A figure of authority that has to be taken down piece by piece - arrogant, single minded, and scary. The script itself was based on Sorkin's play, so all the action is in the meaty dialogue. Sorkin was asked how he was going to 'open it up' for the screenplay, and not knowing what this meant, he added a bit where the main character buys a newspaper as the 'action scene'. While it doesn't have the blistering pace of something like The Social Network or The West Wing, it's recognisable. People talking in rooms (usually lawyers) is what defines the scripts, but they do talk in rooms very well. And there's an appearance from Joshua Malina and Sorkin himself to keep the people who notice these things happy.

It probably comes somewhere behind The West Wing and The Social Network on the Sorkin-o-meter. Very good, but there's better to come. Of course, a real film reviewer would have pointed out the other people involved in making the film. But with Sorkin soon to start directing as well, I won't have to remember to mention anyone else.

Everyone else is having fun in Adventureland

2011-01-19T20:40:00.001Z

Adventureland was not the film I thought it was going to be. I fell into the trailer's cunning trap. I believed it was a comedy. It wasn't. So I'll need to forget about that before I start writing about it. What it is is a drama about a college graduate working in a theme park. He sits around on the 'games', making sure nobody wins and listening to repetitive music. The 'work of pathetic lazy morons', as one character says. Which is probably one of the reasons they're all a bit depressed. Everyone's having a melancholic time. It's 1987. Although that probably doesn't have anything to do with it. It's 1987 and they're bored, lost, and hopeless. The main character, played by Jesse Eisenberg of The Social Network, meets a girl who is also depressed. The whole thing is horribly believable. It ambles along in a dreary sort of way, showing these characters going nowhere and the summer passing. It's a film that will either captivate you or send you to sleep. And I have to admit that, unfortunately, I was bit bored. Which is a shame, because I desperately wanted to like it. For a film like this to work, you need to warm to it. Maybe from a nostalgia for the eighties. Maybe because you understand the characters. And this guy, with his degree in comparative literature and good intentions, can be easily understood. But I was left feeling apathetic towards this realistic character and his realistic problems. It's authentic but not particularly interesting. Not particularly entertaining. I feel bad criticising it, as its heart is in the right place, and if you watched it tomorrow there's a good chance you'd disagree with me. For me, the only spark of energy came from Bill Hader's theme park manager, who brings a little bit of moustache-comedy in his brief apperances. I've put off writing about it for a few days, in case I suddenly realised I loved it. This has not happened. I only remember it to be amiable, sweet, and a little dull.

Adventureland was not the film I thought it was going to be. A drama that's happy to be boring, if that's what reflects the story. As a slice of real life it succeeds (though I have no personal experience of 1987). As a film it's let down by its own intentions. Maybe if I hadn't been so cruelly deceived from the beginning I might have felt differently towards it. Mildly interesting? Yes, but for me little more than that.

The highly inaccurate Scott Pilgrim appreciation test

2011-01-16T15:36:00.003Z

Scott Pilgrim is quite good at 'POW', 'THWACK', and even 'KABIFF'. So good that he doesn't have much trouble fighting his new girlfriend's seven evil exes. He fights them with guitars, milk, and giant raging monkey apparitions. All to prove his love for a girl he sees skating through his dreams. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is relentless and bursting. Films are rarely full of so much stuff. Hardly a frame goes by without something exploding or smashing or lighting up in bright neon. Each scene crashes into the next without warning, crafted and wound up tight until it threatens to come apart. It's stylish, but in an inventive way. Somewhere the line exists between 'stylish' and 'annoying' - Scott Pilgrim manages to stay on the good side. Sometimes it barely makes sense, but just about manages to get away with it. For two confusing minutes it turns into a sitcom with a loud and disturbing laughter track. There's Vegan Police that crash through walls to deliver Vegan Justice. And the ending is a complete mess. Edgar Wright just throws everything in. Like I said, it's relentless. Sometimes it needs to calm down for five minutes so your eyes can recover. But the ambition to stuff it full of anything and everything is admirable. There's a joy of creativity here, and a love of all things nerdy. It might be true that only those with gaming claws for hands will understand most of the references. It hardly ever refers to a single game, but to gameyness in general. The flashing scores that rise from defeated enemies and the showers of coins that rain from their pixelly deaths. This is for children of the nineties, who can play every classic Nintendo game through muscle memory. Then again, I'm bound to like any film that features Zelda music.

A test for all of this is whether you understand the reference in 'Sex Bob-omb', the name of Scott Pilgrim's band. If you don't, there's a good chance you're not this film's target audience. It seems to have 'cult film' written all over it. Except that what it really has written all over it is 'KAPLOW' and 'THWUMP'. And sometimes 'BLAM'.

Especially in the snow. They have to put their noses in it.

2011-01-13T23:13:00.000Z

Writing continues on 'Big Moon Forest'. Here the same two boys are walking back home after seeing something scary in the forest. Tom hasn't spoken in a while so Rhys wants to change the subject. To cows. I've got to admit I didn't do any research on the habits of a cold cow. This sounds about right though.

One of the things that fascinates me about screenwriting is the idea that something I imagine in my head, when I'm just sitting in front of a computer, could be put onto screen. That's complete creativity that you don't get from directing, when you have to work from the words that already exist. In writing, anything can happen. Anything you want. That's worth getting a little bit excited about. Everything that's ever been written is somebody making it up off the top of their head. And sometimes getting paid for it.

In this case, cows. Not the most exciting part of the screenplay. There aren't even any real cows in it. It'll be good, though. I promise.

Shutter Island, last year's second most mysterious island

2011-01-10T19:53:00.002Z

In Shutter Island US Marshal Teddy Daniels arrives at the island's 'hospital for the criminally insane'. He's there to investigate the disappearance of a patient, who very mischievously escaped her locked cell and vanished into the night. Then so many twists pile up that, by the end of the film, this opening synopsis looks a bit silly. I'd already read Dennis Lehane's novel, so I was familiar with it all beforehand, like I was watching it for a second time. But I'm not going to start comparing it to the book. That would be annoying. The most important thing to consider here is the psychological, symbolic nature of the plot. There are dream sequences. Waking dreams in which Teddy gets surreal flashes of melting wives and paper rain. It's a claustrophobic film where, just as the characters are trapped on the island, we're trapped inside Teddy's mind. And he doesn't look very well. Scorsese has a lot of fun merging mind and reality and throwing everything around in the dream world. Like one of those other films that Leonardo DiCaprio's in, the dreams are a playground of creativity and metaphor, where anything and everything can happen. Little pieces of fantasy, but then the real world doesn't make much sense either. It's silly in a serious way, and can be quite distressing at times, especially if you don't like rats. There's tragedy, but it's wrapped up in mystery and uncertainty and big yellow pills. It becomes so twisty and ambiguous that I ended feeling slightly apathetic towards the whole thing. The film asks you to work it out while all the time giving you sly winks to contradict itself. It says 'here's the conclusion, but it could be like this, or what about this'. Maybe I've already over-analysed the book, making me reluctant to bother.

It's enjoyable though. Part detective story, part horror, part what-the-hell-is-going-on-now. Ominous and stylish and ominous some more, Scorsese knows how to keep you entertained. The mystery is there to be pondered, if you're interested, just don't think about it too hard.

Like sleeping on the furry chest of a Totoro

2011-01-07T21:25:00.004Z

My Neighbour Totoro is the sort of film that's difficult to write about. It's good in a way that's hard to put into words. The normal sort of film review seems irrelevant. It makes you feel all fluffy inside, like you're asleep on the furry chest of a Totoro. Curled up in the middle of a giant tree. It's a classic Studio Ghibli animation about two girls' adventures with Totoro woodland spirits. Even for a children's film, it's remarkably colourful. There's none of the grotesque figures of Spirited Away, or the mean old witches of Howl's Moving Castle. No conflict. No threat. Just one of the happiest, sky blue things you'll ever see. The biggest Totoro may be a huge, growling beast, but the children just see him as a massive cuddly friend. As the character that made a cameo in Toy Story 3, he represents the fading childhood world. Only the children can see him, along with his mini counterparts, and only then if they're very lucky. In moments of darkness, in the dark and the rain, he turns up at a bus stop with a leaf on his head - comforting and mysterious. He protects the woods and makes them grow. This countryside is disappearing too, but there's a perfectly idyllic slice of it here. It highlights the quality of the animation. Rolling vistas and pastel skies, all watercolour greens and blues and reds. It's like watching a moving painting. The cat bus runs across it and bounces over electricity wires, grinning all the way. The adult world is here, with a father chin deep in paperwork and a mother recovering in hospital, but the acorn-chasing, soot-gremlin world of the children is always out front.

It's the sort of film I wish I saw when I was six. It looks like something I remember seeing all those years ago, even though I know I never did. If you have children, watch Miyazaki films with them. They may not thank you right away, but they'll remember them for a long time. Because where some films want to scare you, and others want to make you laugh, My Neighbour Totoro just wants to make you go a bit soft.

Everyone plays the game with the weapons they've got

2011-01-05T21:15:00.001Z

My favourite scene from Battle Royale isn't the bit where a boy defends himself with a pot lid, or the moment when a dead man gets up and casually walks across the room to answer his phone. It comes early, when the students wake up in a disused classroom and are given a lesson on the rules of the game. At first they're skeptical. They think it's a joke, that they don't really have to kill each other. But then their teacher murders two of them for annoying him. They watch a cheery instructional video which explains that only one student is permitted to leave the island, that it's survival of the fittest and that most of them won't make it. They are called up one by one on the register and step forward. They are given a bag of supplies and a random weapon. Some weapons aren't as good as others. Some are given a machine gun. Others a sickle. Some a paper fan. The bag is thrown sharply at their head and they run off into the island to fend for themselves. In this moment they have to decide what they're going to do. Do they play the game, hide until it's over, try to escape, try to rebel? There are only a few things they can do trapped on this island, and there are some people aiming at their head. Some are given the best weapons from the start, others have to steal or acquire them. With perseverance even the worst weapons can be put to good use. Those that choose to hide will find a cave and wait for the game to be over, until they win or the bomb on their neck explodes. Others try to find a way out across the sea or over cliffs. There are a few that sit down and choose to play a different game, to try and take the whole thing down and win in their own way. Everyone plays the game with the weapons they've got.

Those who complained about the ultra-violent blood-spattered teenagers just weren't thinking allegorically enough. Who wins in the end? Not the ones with the biggest guns, but the people who trusted someone and stuck together. Nice, that. It is pretty violent though. Especially the bit with the sickle.

The Spirit, or Why Films Don't Have to Be Like This

2011-01-02T21:10:00.003Z

A dead man fighting crime against his arch-nemesis Samuel L. Jackson. That's about as much as you can tell you about the plot of The Spirit, because that's all that I understood. It's not a film that concerns itself with narrative clarity. It is, first and foremost, stylish. Super stylish. Hyper stylish. Stylish to the point of being annoying. It takes its comic book roots and smacks you in the face with them. All inked up in a Sin City sort of way, every shot resembling a panel from the source material. You can practically see the speech bubbles coming off the characters. You could see them if you closed your eyes too, because the acting is all bold type and capital letters. Any recognisable human sounds are thrown out the silhouetted window as the actors drone out one-dimensional chunks of words. The music parps. The faces shine. The green screen backgrounds scream at you even though you've fallen asleep. Nothing remotely engaging happens, because nothing seems to happen at all. If everything's in this misty highlighted landscape, and the people sound like parodies of themselves, why should I care? It drifts through cool-looking scenes in chunks and bits and never bothers to interest you.

Should comic book films really look like this? A drawing is stylish by necessity, a film can feature real things. Look at The Dark Knight, at Watchmen - style and substance and nobody's overdoing it. There's no need for so many fireworks. Ten minutes is fine, but then you get bored and annoyed and start looking at your watch. Even as a piece of character mythology, The Spirit falls way short. It's all half explained points and tangled backstory. The hero is a ladies man who loves his city. We know this because that's all he does. Kisses girls and talks about the city. The villain is doing something with clones and vases, but I honestly couldn't tell you what. And I was paying attention. I have no idea about the original work, but if it's any good at all, this film has badly let it down.

To Frank Miller and everyone else involved, stop it. Films do not have to be like this. Films should be about things. People and places and words being spoken properly. Style is what comes second. There was no need for this. If it serves any purpose, it's to remind us why films shouldn't be this way. Sin City was a novelty. This is taking the joke too far.

The Expendables are sent to explode a small country

2010-12-30T21:09:00.001Z

Or at least, that's what they end up doing. They're a bunch of mercenaries hired to overthrow the island's dictator. Stallone's character, who seems to be in charge of The Expendables, goes there once to kill the baddies, but then goes back to rescue a woman he met briefly. He also brings his friends along, who all have very big muscles and very big guns and very big knives. The baddies also include a rogue CIA agent, and Stone Cold Steve Austin. The film was marketed as a nostalgic throwback to eighties action films, although I'm not sure these films ever went away. Jason Statham is proof enough of that. He turns up here with his usual 'muscular head', as Mickey Rourke says. At times it's more of a guest list than a film, hiring old muscley men and new ones that might be out of work. Van Damme turned down a role because of the lack of substance or character development. This doesn't seem to worry anybody else. It's a film that knows what it is and isn't ashamed of it. Unfortunately, this honesty doesn't stop it being rubbish. For all the violence and carnage to be interesting, you have to vaguely care about what's going on. Or it at least has be stylish. Here the explosions last forever but don't have any impact. Your mind begins to wander, and you wonder if Stallone has dyed his moustache, or why his eyebrows are permanently raised. There's sudden decapitation every few seconds, which is entertaining enough, but it only happens to the poor foreign army. Mown down in their hundreds. I bet some of them weren't even baddies. Just nice men who didn't really want to be in the army, but all the fishing jobs had been taken and they needed to make a living somehow. They are the real expendables.

There'll probably be a sequel with an even larger cast list. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's still sort of fun to see these people making something so honestly stupid. That fun doesn't last for the whole film. About a minute of thinking 'look it's Arnold Schwarzenegger' and wondering who Dolph Lundgren is. A good minute though.

Well done everyone, we're halfway out of the dark

2010-12-29T16:50:00.000Z

With the Christmas special, Steven Moffat again proves that the best episodes of Doctor Who are the ones that are full of ideas. Here a man watches his past Christmas Eves being changed as the Doctor introduces his younger self to an annually-defrosted woman. It's a version of Dickens' Christmas Carol, and this man is Scrooge, refusing to save a plummeting space ship in the skies of his planet. And there's flying fish. The story's not made up of lots of running around, but clever ideas expertly stuck together. With each Christmas Eve that passes, the mean old man gains new memories and new experiences. The woman that comes out of the ice every year teaches him that the world isn't so bad after all, and that the massive flying sharks are nothing to be afraid of if you've got a good singing voice. Doctor Who can work these seemingly random ideas into one episode without feeling messy. It takes skilled writing to make something like this seem coherent. It takes extraordinary writing to make it good. Yes, it uses plenty of dubious Who logic to reach its conclusion, but where there's a sonic screwdriver there is always a way. The usual companions are mostly absent, screaming somewhere up in the sky for the Doctor to save them. Instead there's Michael Gambon giving speeches like this: 'On every world, wherever people are, in the deepest part of the winter, at the exact mid-point, everybody stops and turns and hugs. As if to say, well done. Well done everyone. We're halfway out of the dark.'

The reason I write so much about Doctor Who, more than any other TV show anyway, is that every episode is a new story, a new little film. They can't be grouped together and summarised in a few sentences. Doctor Who can do anything it wants and, in the new season, it probably will.

Grow and crack big trees in ten seconds

2010-12-23T21:36:00.000Z

This is the part of my writing where I get a bit loose with things like punctuation and grammar. It doesn't make perfect sense, but then it probably doesn't need to. It's from a short story called 'The Average Colour of the Universe', which is mostly a lot gentler than this.

The universe is beige, apparently. A beige called cosmic latte. Another name for it is 'skyvory'. This doesn't actually have a lot to do with the short story, which is all over the place, but it's nice to know. The idea of a forest moving up and down on fast forward has been turned into something else since I wrote this. Something that reads less like the scrawls of a mad person. The structure of screenplays can be good. I'm less tempted to make everything explode.

The boy who said there was a wolf but there wasn't a wolf

2010-12-21T14:31:00.002Z

This is from a screenplay called, at the moment, 'Big Moon Forest'. Here two boys are walking to the forest to see something. It turns out Rhys is telling the truth, but it's not really a monster. And I couldn't resist the 'trees' comment, even though it's a pretty bad joke.

I was told that I shouldn't write about children, because my style is too obvious a fit for them. For some reason I'm not listening, and am writing two stories about children. They start in the same place but go off in wildly different directions. This one involves a bit less of the surreal. A bit.

'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' has been attributed to Aesop. So this is something clever my university lecturers would have called 'intertextuality'. Maybe. I could just be making it up as I go along. What other way is there? Like everything else, the story is summed up in The Simpsons, when Bart tells lies about a test, and is then chased around school by a wolf.

Is the idea of 'a minute a page' true? Doesn't seem accurate to me. Some pages can go by in half that. Some could be about three. I'll play along with that idea if it makes things easier, but I don't believe it. A script of a hundred and twenty pages would be two hours long? Okay then.

Digging a hole through the world

2010-12-19T21:06:00.000Z

Here's a link to a website that actually lets you dig through the world. Or at least find the other side. You'll be lucky if you don't end up in the sea.

This is something from a novel, working title 'I don't know what it's called'. As there's a high chance it'll take five years to write and then be thrown away for something else, I'll put a bit of it here to make it exist more. Other things are happening, like a screenplay, and shorter bits, but this'll do for now. It's about holes in the pavement - not the entire story, just this bit here.

I always struggle naming characters. Are they meant to mean something, sound like something? I don't know. So here there's James, a random name, and Boy, because he's a boy. This might change. Although it hasn't yet and I'm thousands of words in. Never mind. He can be Boy.

If that girl's only hope is you, she's Gone Baby Gone

2010-12-16T16:15:00.001Z

A little girl goes missing at the start of Gone Baby Gone. The family hire private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro to deal with the 'neighbourhood aspect' in this run-down part of Boston. The police suspect the mother may have had something to do with it. Then twists pile upon twists upon twists. It lies somewhere between a serious drama and a detective story - too dark to be a thriller and too implausible to be true. That being said, it's impressive how real it all feels. Ben Affleck's direction is careful and powerful, never tipping into melodrama or feeling to glossy. And Casey Affleck's casting as the lead detective is interesting. Characters comment that he seems too young and inexperienced, but he shows himself to be tougher than he looks, being particularly protective of his partner. In one scene he gets into an argument with a man in a bar, when the doors are locked and the entire place stands up to glare at him. There's no chance of him fighting his way out, so it feels more dangerous and more threatening than this situation normally would. It's a film full of these tense moments, where action has consequences and violence matters. It's based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, who's had three of his books turned into films (including work on The Wire). I haven't read the book, which is actually from a series of Kenzie-Gennaro novels, but it's easy to see the influence. Some scenes drift by as prose monologues - 'Your city, your neighbourhood, your family. People here take pride in these things, like it was something they'd accomplished. The bodies around their souls, the cities wrapped around those'. It's an another compliment to the quality of the directing and acting that this doesn't feel pretentious. Elsewhere, Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman play the cops with lines on their faces. Old and wise and patronising towards the hero.

A very good film. Maybe slightly irrelevantly, it's interesting to see actors from The Wire playing the opposites of their characters. Michael K. Williams looks strange in a policeman's uniform, and Amy Ryan plays the sort of drug runner her Baltimore character would have helped lock up. One day I'll stop relating everything to The Wire, but not right now. Watch Gone Baby Gone, if you haven't already.

Home Alone - We need to talk about Kevin

2010-12-15T16:39:00.004Z

It doesn't look much like Christmas around here. I can fix that. Sit back, listen to this music, and watch festive films in your head. In Home Alone Kevin McCallister's very large family go on holiday and leave him in his very large house. On purpose. It's important to remember how talented this boy was. When bad men try to break into his house he warns them off with dozens of clever contraptions. At one point he manipulates a room full of mannequins and inflatable dummies with a system of levers and pulleys. Could you do that? No. This boy was a master craftsman. He shows a grasp of science way beyond his age, using ice, heat, fans, feathers, irons, nails, paint cans, toy cars - anything that can be used as a weapon. At the very least he has a career in the military ahead of him. First he draws brilliant plans of his house to work out the logistics of the operation, and then arms himself with an air gun. When these men threaten to murder him he is undeterred and continues to unleash his arsenal, taunting them with one-liners - 'You guys give up yet, or you are thirsty for more?' He is not scared of these criminals. He is, however, scared of a kindly old man with a shovel and the boiler in the basement. Neither of these things turn out to be dangerous, except for when the old man is delivering justice with his spade.

The following year, in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, these horribly neglectful parents continue to abuse their son, this time sending him on a plane to New York by himself. They just want to get rid of him. Thankfully, New York has some kindly old people to look after the orphan. Kevin, still unphased, is given two turtle doves by the owner of a toy shop. I didn't know what turtle doves were. I still don't know what turtle doves are. But it's comforting to have two. And a scary pigeon lady turns out to be quite nice, letting Kevin come into her spacious loft space in a church. The criminals that Kevin failed to put away last Christmas are back, at which point the boy realises he is powerless without a house. He breaks into somebody else's and builds another impenetrable fortress. An extremely clever, resourceful boy. The filmmakers decided not to produce Home Alone 3: Kevin Needs Therapy, and rebooted the series with a new child. Probably for the best.

The Walking Dead: This is our extinction event

2010-12-13T19:51:00.000Z

Now that The Walking Dead has finished its (surprisingly short) first season, I can try to work out whether it was actually any good. It's difficult. It's a show that frequently threatened to be rubbish and pointless, but then came up with a good scene, or a nice moment, or something genuinely different. In the fourth episode one of Rick's crew was held hostage by a bunch of gangsters in the city. Cue a pointless diversion with 'tense' standoffs between the two camps. That's how it looked, but by the end (when I was considering turning it off) these hardened gangsters turned out to be nurses protecting elderly ladies in hospital. There are good ideas here, hidden somewhere in the mess. Thankfully though, it went out on a high. Arriving at the 'Center for Disease Control and Prevention', the survivors meet the last scientist still working on a cure. He's understandably depressed, and his calm remarks about the end of the world give the whole thing weight. 'Don't you get it?' he says, 'this is our extinction event'. Everything is running out of power, including the building they're in - 'the world runs on fossil fuel, how crazy is that?' The Center is counting down to 'quarantine mode', the scientific term for a big explosion. He locks everyone into the control room and tries to convince them to stay.

Now, I've written before that the show had spread itself too thin. Too many characters, too little time to make them interesting. And that's mostly true, but here I actually wanted them to survive. This is a big difference from two episodes ago, when zombies attacked the camp and I wanted them all to get eaten. I don't know their names, but after six hours I began supporting the living. And then it ended. Why did it take so long? What happened to Morgan from the first episode, and that man that cut his hand off? Never mind. Overall, it's gone from being good to barely acceptable and back again, finally resting somewhere in the middle. I was expecting a one-off series, instead I watched what felt like half a season. With a longer second season in production, I hope it comes back with more bite (yes, that's a good pithy remark to end on, I could also have said something about 'brains' or 'guts', but 'bite' is good).

Tropic Thunder goes out into the jungle with a few good jokes

2010-12-12T17:24:00.000Z

The characters in Tropic Thunder are making a Vietnam war film, but it's not going very well. So the director sends them out into the jungle to do some 'guerilla style acting'. When the camera crew loses them and a real jungle gang turns up, some of them don't realise the filming is over. That's the premise anyway, and for the first half an hour it's very funny.The shooting of the film in a film is full of ideas, and the satirical take on Hollywood actors works well. Robert Downey Jr. is especially good, playing a method actor who's so immersed in the role he's changed the colour of his skin. It promises imagination, but when they set off into the jungle it quickly runs out of steam. You realise that all the quick, funny jokes from the first part are actually integral to the plot. In a better comedy something like a fake trailer for 'Simple Jack' would only be mentioned once to make room for the next joke. Here they repeat it until it's boring. Tropic Thunder rests on a few funny ideas rather than throwing hundreds at you. The whole thing gets stuck on a few jokes and a few locations. I wanted it to zip along. In the end it becomes what it was parodying in the first place. Too afraid to blow any of the characters up, it all gets a bit boring. It's one of those American comedies where all the actors are Hollywood buddies, just getting their friends to come in and have a cameo. They assume they're funnier than they are. Tom Cruise dancing in a fat suit is not funny just because it's Tom Cruise dancing in a fat suit.

I might sound like I'm being too harsh, but only because I'm disappointed. It didn't live up to my expectations, which might have been too high in the first place. It's okay, but I wanted the inventive, satirical comedy that I was promised. This promise may have been something I just made up in my head. If this ever appears on television, watch the start and then do something else.

Romance, the dead, and dental humour

2010-12-05T19:06:00.001Z

The ghosts that haunt Ricky Gervais' character in Ghost Town are the nice sort that only want you to do odd jobs for them. This is death as comedy, where someone getting hit by a bus is funny because of the cheerful music. And the good news is that it is funny - probably the first thing you'd expect from a comedy. It's not even particularly dark; it's all the gloss you'd expect from a Hollywood romantic comedy, but with ghosts. Gervais plays Dr Bertram Pincus, a misanthropic dentist with bowel problems. After dying 'for a bit' during a colonoscopy he begins to be pestered by New York's ghosts. One persistent spirit wants him to drive his ex-wife away from her new fiancé. What follows is a fairly standard romantic comedy, where Pincus inexplicably manages to get the girl. He's constantly rude and selfish, but is able to use his skills in dentistry to convince her that, maybe, he's not so bad after all. This is about as believable as the ghosts, so it's impressive that it all holds together. Ghost Town aims at darker issues but then flinches and goes the other way, which isn't a bad thing. The casual and friendly approach to the undead is refreshing - almost relaxing in its flippancy. It says 'yeah, there's hundreds of ghosts wandering around, but don't get worked up about it'. And it turns out Ricky Gervais can be funny with someone else's script. His casting as the unlikely lead makes the whole thing more interesting. Everyone lives in very fancy New York apartments, with jobs like 'Egyptoligist' and 'human-rights lawyer'. This could be offensive if the protagonist looks like a Thunderbird puppet too. Instead, the 'fat, British, middle-aged man' looks like he's broken in to this perfect world.

There's a question of why this had to be romantic at all. Is it just the default mode for lighthearted comedy? It has ghosts. It could go anywhere. As it is, it's watchable, funny, and verging on interesting. Something to watch.

Songs that should be in films: Hægt, kemur ljósið

2010-11-30T20:53:00.001Z

I recently learnt that a Sigur Rós song is prominently featured in the new Danny Boyle film, 127 Hours. This pleases me. It's nice when two things I like come together - melded together like, er, something that's melded. Now, I could mention what Sigur Rós songs would work well in a film, but I'm pretty sure they've all been used. Making the exercise a bit pointless. But I've chosen something equally Icelandic: Hægt, kemur ljósið by Ólafur Arnalds. He's a composer, who Wikipedia reliably informs me is aged 23-24. That's a nice age to be. Adding to the confusion, he writes 'neo-classical' music (thanks Wikipedia) and his song titles contain letters I'm not familiar with. But the music speaks for itself. I imagine this song could come near the end of a film, or the climax of a television series - a montage perhaps. Everyone's sad, a bit downbeat. A lot of bad things have happened. Maybe somebody's been happy for five minutes until Joss Whedon killed everyone they loved. They could perhaps be on a boat. Cut to other characters looking pensive. Wide shots of the scenery. Then, at around fifty seconds, the song picks up and they realise they have a lot to look forward to. And they're happy, but still in a poignant, reflective way. I imagine someone could start running at this point. There are alternative uses, like a bunch of presumed-dead fishermen returning to port, and then looking back out to sea to think about the journey.

For all my sarcastic meanderings, this is obviously a good song. That's the technical term used by music critics: a good song. For more impressive sight and sound, watch this other video. To sum it up in noises, it'll make you go 'ooo'.

The Pillars of the Earth: Slightly different hair but no happier

2010-11-29T21:26:00.002Z

At the end of it all The Pillars of the Earth seemed to ask: how many bad things can happen to people in their lifetime? The people of Kingsbridge have an extremely bad time. They're trying to build a cathedral, but it doesn't go very well. I wrote before about my expectations for the series, and its relation to the original novel. In watching it I was reminded just what these characters have to overcome. It's all down to a pair of thoroughly evil people: Waleran Bigod and William Hamleigh. They plotted and murdered their way through half a century. One an ambitious bishop and the other just plain bad. This is how to fill fifty years. Look at Jack Jackson, the hero of the story. He wants to marry Aliena, but before he can do that he has to be banished, strangled, banished again, and turned into a monk. Then she marries somebody else. He transforms from mute boy to master mason, despite not looking a year older. It's a sprawling story where people have to wait decades to get what they want. A new episode might jump fourteen years into the future, when everyone has slightly different hair but are no happier. It makes the payoff all the more satisfying. When William is clouted over the head with a rock it comes after weeks of waiting. It makes everything better.

The backdrop to all this strife is the argument over the throne. With so many political deals and earls to slaughter it becomes difficult to follow. And nobody really cares anyway. Sometimes the throne will swap hands between episodes, and the battles just seem to amount to a bunch of people on horses riding around in the same field. Never mind then, all the entertainment is happening elsewhere - with the monks and the wool merchants and the fancy new rib vaulting on the cathedral. It's not as powerful as the book. Sometimes an adaption just can't hope for that. But it does a good job of making you forget.

The Walking Dead: Chewing on zombie-Lost

2010-11-25T20:59:00.001Z

The third episode of The Walking Dead has a lot of making up to do. Can it regain its credibility (in my eyes) as a tense, dark drama, or become a cluttered show of annoying characters? Here we're introduced to even more people back at camp. Though not all necessarily annoying, I do miss the times of a lonely man and his horse. It's getting more and more like zombie-Lost. One camp full of disparate people, stuck in a mysterious, horrible situation. Stranded. All with stories to tell. Just dying to jump into flashback. There's so many of them that a few can be thrown to the undead every now and then to keep things ticking. Better to have a large group of zombie-food, or a tight family where every loss matters? We'll see, though not before they've got over their arguments. There's now a wife beater to join the racist on the dumb and evil pile. Characterisation comes in big strokes. Like the zombies just want to eat brains, there are people who only do one thing. Early days, obviously, but does anyone ever think about how good Lost was? In The Walking Dead Sawyer would be a racist drunk and nothing else. I hope to be proven wrong, as there's still good stuff going on the middle of it all. Rick finds his family, which holds up the entire episode. It's a nice moment, and you begin to forget how rubbish his wife is. Maybe it is just unremarkable drama with added zombies. The monsters make it interesting, to be honest. Every now and then one might turn up. There's always that threat. There was only one in this episode, chewing on a deer near camp.They are the other thing that's going on, hiding the shadows.

I look forward to seeing personalities shift and characters having another side. I don't look forward to a cycling succession of new survivors that come in to replace the chewed ones. Is it still annoying? Not really, it made it past that. But it's changed so much in a few episodes that I don't know which show it's going to turn out to be.

Especially if you're an action hero living in the mountains

2010-11-21T16:54:00.000Z

Wolverine is guilty of not realising the obvious: your past will always find you. In X-Men Origins: Wolverine, it happens to be the past of his past that finds him (it's probably right to be suspicious of any film with a colon in its title). This backstory can go on forever, right the way back to mysteries about his parents. And it all matters, apparently. Or it can just set up another thread of the franchise. I don't believe Hollywood is interested in making fan pleasing canon-fodder, so there must be some life left in these X-Men. Here we see that Wolverine and his brother used to be part of a military team of mutants, taking orders from the appropriately named Colonel Stryker. This all becomes a bit too shady for Wolverine but his brother seems to like it. Cut to six years later and the good one is living in the picturesque Canadian mountains, working as a humble lumberjack and living with his lovely girlfriend. Like the hundreds of retired heroes who came before him, he asks 'why won't they just leave me alone?' It was all going so well. The men in black cars always arrive to tempt you back into a plot that may or may not be a con. I'm not complaining. Thriller's are built on this idea. The violent past finds the pleasant present and then everyone can do some revenge. It's the standard for two thirds of all action films, even the good ones. In fact, Wolverine begins to make a habit of destroying idyllic things. He runs into two unrealistically kind old people, who let him sleep in their barn and give him the clothes he wears for the rest of the film. Then things start exploding.

Apart from this, a lot of time is spent in military labs and secret island bases. We see how he gets his metal and I'm reminded how invincible he is. There's no need to worry about him getting hurt, but the scale of the action makes up for it. He can slash through tanks with his claws. He's an action prop, but an effective one. This may all be about to change with the Darren Aronofsky sequel. Will he descend into a drug-fuelled haze and reflect on his loneliness? Possibly. And so, to sum up this film in a mildly interested sort of way: it's alright.

The wicked witch of the west was the bad one

2010-11-19T15:45:00.001Z

I wrote before that I'm easily impressed by found-footage horror, so it's about time I watched The Blair Witch Project. You've probably seen it already. In fact, you probably saw it when it came out ten years ago. But I saw it last night. I like to stay up to date. Three film students go out into the woods to make a documentary about the Blair Witch, a nasty-sounding ghost that haunts the place. They stock up on cereal and battery packs and set off for some camping. For a film of just eighty-six minutes, there's a good chunk of set-up before things start getting spooky. It's a nice walk in the forest until a bit of arguing, and a bit of map losing, makes the situation a lot worse. But how scary is it? Suggestion is a powerful tool but, perhaps unusually, it wasn't really working for me. There's shouting in the night and a lot of arts and crafts in the woods -mostly a bit too subtle, a bit too far away to count as horror. Maybe I didn't have my imagination switched on in the right places, but the piles of rocks weren't spooky. I could have done with a little bit more. A more concrete suggestion of something solid, ugly, and scary. Especially at the end, where something definitely needed to present itself. It is an effective film though, because without all these scares you're left with a drama about people going mad in the woods. The film crew really were harassing them and leaving suggestions for improvisation. Eventually they just start rocking back and forth. Importantly, the camera is a comfort to whoever is holding it. It's a disconnection from reality, 'a filtered reality', and makes them braver. They can only go out into the night if they're seeing it through a lens - it means it's not really happening.

I know that these characters aren't enjoying it, I'm just not feeling the same thing. One says that she's 'too scared to close her eyes and too scared to open them'. I believe her, I just need to be shown why. I'm usually a fan of this sort of horror, but finding scary things isn't the same as experiencing it. A bit more, that's all that's needed, just a little bit. So it may not have been the scary treat I was hoping for, but it's an interesting (and probably by now 'classic') part of the found-footage genre.

The Walking Dead part deux: Kill them all Rick

2010-11-15T13:47:00.002Z

Two posts in a row about the same thing? This can't be healthy. But the second episode of The Walking Dead raises a lot of questions. I wrote last week that the first episode was a 'very promising start'. And it was. Atmospheric, creepy, poignant. The second episode attempts to undo all that good work. It seems like a different show. We're introduced to a bunch of new characters who are, to put it softly, annoying. Officer Rick is a nice guy, wandering around the south looking for his family. But then he runs into these idiots. The first one he meets encourages him to get out of his 'cosy' tank and run around shooting things. Why is this a good idea? He's in a tank. But never mind, at least he gets to be in peril. After that he becomes stuck in a building with at least five new people. These, so far, seem like stereotypical flat characters, not helped by some clunky writing and acting. In some cases the faults are easy to spot: the racist, the slightly nerdy one. Others are harder to put your finger on, they're just a bit off. Like caricatures. It doesn't help that they seem to find the whole situation a bit amusing, like they're playing out some action film fantasy. Think back to the first episode and this all seems ridiculous. Remember that man's attempt to 'put down' his zombie wife, and his son who had to 'cry into the pillow'. Those seemed like real people. From a different show. Now we have characters wandering around in zombie guts to blend in with the undead, and when it starts raining someone puts their hand out and says 'Oh man'. Yes, it is unfortunate that it's raining and you're all going to die, now speak properly.

Maybe I'm being a bit mean. It's only one episode after all. But there was so much promise. Now I can't wait for this lot to meet the gruesome deaths they deserve. Poor Rick comes off mostly untarnished. I just wish he had something to look forward too. Now his wife and best friend are having sex in the forest there can't be much to smile about. Why did he marry this stroppy woman? It's a zombie apocalypse, don't have a pout. Kill them all Rick. Kill them and find another horse to ride. You used to be so much fun.

Ride into Atlanta on a horse called Blade

2010-11-09T19:33:00.002Z

Frank Darabont's name is all over The Walking Dead. Writer, director, developer (although I'm not sure what that last one means). The adverts scream Shawshank Redemption at you, but this seems to have more in common with his 2007 monstery film The Mist. In the first episode Officer Rick Grimes wakes up from a coma to find the world a lot more dead than it used to be. It's a 'post-zombie' apocalypse - all the action has already happened and now we're seeing the aftermath. The hero waking up in hospital may be a familiar scenario, but it's very effective. His first steps out into the blood-stained body-strewn corridors are gripping. Nothing's more creepy than a deserted hospital, after all. What will his first reaction be? What will he do first? He makes his way home past lots of bad things to find his wife and son are missing. So far it's more drama than horror. There may be a lot of intestinal bits flying about, but it chooses characters over quick scares. Rick goes back to find a half-eaten zombie women he'd met earlier to put her out of her misery. Another survivor has to choose whether to 'put down' his zombie wife. He can't quite manage it. The sunny American south makes for an eerie and oddly pleasant setting. The quiet countryside towns are only dotted with the undead. They quietly wander around without much trouble and congregate at night to look more menacing. There's plenty of wide shots of deserted roads and quiet desolation. The green fields seem wonderful until someone comes across an overturned car, or an eaten horse, or a sinister little zombie girl.

Rick makes the mistake of looking for the advertised shelter in the city. These shelters never live up to their promise. It all seems as deserted as the countryside until he turns a corner to find five hundred 'walkers' in one street. Then he's in trouble. Although, in a shocking twist, his wife and son aren't dead (yet). He should be reunited with them pretty soon. And then they will all die. That's not a spoiler, just a prediction. I imagine his son might get the zombie fever, and they'll have to frantically search for a cure. That sort of thing. It may be standard stuff, but it's confidently and powerfully done. A very promising start.

Wrestles on the weekend in front of small crowds

2010-11-07T21:35:00.001Z

The Wrestler follows Randy "The Ram" Robinson, an old and broken wrestler struggling to pay the rent for his tiny trailer. He used to be a celebrity, but now he works in a supermarket and wrestles on the weekend in front of small crowds. He's a man from the past being chewed up by the modern world. He's past his prime. Even his Nintendo is old. The first act shows the brutal effects of the job. Aside from the weights, tanning, and growth drugs we see a a tired man being repeatedly pummelled into the ground. A 'hardcore' match proves too much for him, causing a heart attack and forced retirement. Randy doesn't really know what to do outside the ring. He doesn't want to be called by his real name. He doesn't know how to speak to his daughter. He attempts to start a relationship with a stripper, who is also getting too old for her job. They both have stage lives that control them, seperate identities that earn them money and recognition. If it all doesn't work he'll have to go back to the ring. With Darren Aronofsky directing there's probably not going to be a lot of laughs, but it's a compelling and powerful drama. It's set in winter, when everything's dead or dying and getting darker. To exercise Randy runs through depressing little dead forests before stopping to cough and collapse. It doesn't go well. He could do with a Rocky-style montage. Maybe a run up some steps. But no montage comes. The film has a commitment to cold reality and won't compromise that for some traditional sports film energy.

In a big match finale, the nature of wrestling means that it's all rehearsed and decided beforehand. The uncertainty comes from the Ram's physical and emotional failures. The line between stage and reality is crossed. It doesn't sound like a lot of fun, but it's definitely worth a watch. There's enough metaphor in the script to make everybody's inner film student happy (he works at the meat counter, selling meat, because he's just a lump of meat), or you can just sit back and watch it unfold. You never know, there might be a happy ending.

They're coming for you, Barbra

2010-11-05T18:31:00.002Z

What's the best thing to do in a zombie apocalypse? The characters of Night of the Living Dead were some of the first to go through it, and they didn't have a clue. The best option would probably be to run, especially as this is only a localised zombie apocalypse. Run and keep running until there aren't any zombies. Barbra appears to get the idea. She does fall over quite a lot but she understands what to do. But then she decides to hide in a house, which is where it all goes wrong. It's like the rules of zombies are being explained. They're slow. They don't like fire. They'll go down if they're shot in the head. In recent outbreaks of the living dead everyone understands the situation pretty quickly. Here it's all fresh. A bit too fresh for Barbra, whose mind seems to break. The other survivors argue over the best strategy. Is it best to stay in the house or the cellar? Is it best to be boxed in or to keep escape routes? They foolishly decide against just running away. Leave the child in the basement, she'll be alright. Just run away from the slow, ambling zombies. Some of them are a bit more spritely and know how to use weapons, but don't wait for them to gather outside. Although maybe I shouldn't be patronising. It's not easy being the first. These people provide a service. They prepare us for our fight against the flesh-eating hordes (not horses, as I just typed by mistake - that's a different film entirely). You wonder whether the characters of recent zombie dramas have seen all these films, because they never seem to mention them. Maybe they just weren't taking notes.

For me, the most effective part of Night of the Living Dead is the threat of the very first zombie. If you didn't know the title of the film you might just assume he was a drunk gravedigger, but he's more energetic than the others. He almost starts running through the cemetery, something that zombies definitely aren't supposed to do. He's a menace. If only he'd stayed in the background and wandered past. Poor Barbra.

The same thing in a different colour

2010-11-04T19:49:00.002Z

I haven't seen Let Me In. And the more I hear about it, the less I want too. The problem is that it's, apparently, not rubbish. It's not a travesty. It's a 'shot-for-shot remake' of Let the Right One In. Now, I'm not about to review a film I haven't seen, but the thing that troubles me here is the term 'shot-for-shot remake'. What happens if the same film is made in a different language, just so a new audience of the subtitles-scared can watch it? It's a copy, so does that make it worse, better, or exactly the same as the original? Let's even forget about Swedish vampire films for a second. There are only a few things that can change in a 'shot-for-shot remake'. If the script is the same and the shots are the same, what's left? The acting, the score, the location. And other things I haven't thought about. What if these things are better the second time round? Is the original automatically better? When a book is translated into English by a different writer some of the words lose their meaning, some phrases get shifted around, but it's still the same book. If a sentence is a camera shot, it can be rearranged into different words but still mean the same thing. If that shot is of a girl in a dark room saying 'I've been twelve for a very long time', it still must work in a different language, in a different place, with more expensive cameras. It's in Sweden, it's blue. It's in New Mexico, it's red.

More importantly though, it makes me sad that such a thing is necessary. If a different bunch of people remake a film and turn it into something else, then at least it's different. It's doing its own thing. To copy something exactly is pointless. Who are these people who won't watch a film with subtitles? Where are they? I hope that Let Me In is different. I hope that it's better. I hope that it's worse. Just don't make me watch a new film I've seen before. It's weird. We'll see how it goes.

If it can be sorted out with a rocket launcher

2010-10-31T15:50:00.001Z

Action films are always better when they're set in Paris. The Bourne Identity. Taken. And, er, all those other films that I'm sure prove my point. There's nothing in this city that can't be solved with a fight or a car chase. Which bodes well for the characters of From Paris With Love, the new thriller from the French people who make this sort of thing. An embassy worker who has a side job with the CIA is partnered with agent Travolta. He's 'unorthodox'. He doesn't play by the rules. He has a bald head and a beard and isn't evil. Maybe just a bit too rough for his 'chess master' partner. What follows is the good sort of average thriller. You won't remember it in a week's time, but there's enough going on in the ninety-two minutes to keep you entertained. It's fluffy, lightweight nonsense, but not in an offensive way. It contains twists that would only be acceptable in a film with rocket launchers. If your mother turns out to be a terrorist, don't complain. In fact, you should probably shoot her. And then take down her whole terror cell who are planning to explode things. That's not what happens, but you get the idea. You know what sort of film you're dealing with when most of the action takes place in Chinese restaurants and nondescript warehouses. There are twenty baddies with Uzis coming for you, but it's okay. Piles of boxes are good for cover, and when you're unorthodox you'll always win.

I'm not recommending this film. I'm not saying it's any good. Not really. But if you find yourself to be watching it, for whatever reason, you probably won't have many complaints.

Hello, Dexter Morgan

2010-10-30T16:50:00.003+01:00

Season four of Dexter finished last night. In many ways it was the same as the others. Dexter has trouble hiding his secret life. People get suspicious. But now the line that seperates the world of his 'dark passenger' and his home life is getting thinner. It used to be a simple divide. Kill the bad guy then go home to your wife. Now he keeps creating more identities and more problems until something slips through the gap. Here the Big Bad is played by John Lithgow - the 'Trinity killer' who at first seems to be standard fodder for Dexter's plastic wrap. The problem is, he's bigger and badder than the others, and apparently can't be killed straight away. Dexter notices similarities to himself and decides to befriend the bad man, using the alias 'Kyle Butler'. As the season progresses Dexter puts off the kill in order to understand and learn from this secretly psychotic family man. This only leads to problems. 'Kill him, kill him now' is a phrase that'll probably pass through your head. Because the thing that drives Dexter, the fear at the heart of it, is what will happen when the two worlds collide. When the evil tracks his family down, or his activities are revealed.

This season goes for the build up. Even the slightly dull Quinn and his slightly dull girlfriend turn out to be pieces of the bigger picture. And when Dexter is always there to protect the right people at the right time, Kyle Butler isn't. Kyle Butler procrastinates, he makes everyone a bit uneasy. He kills the wrong people. Trinity eventually tracks him to his office, walks in, reads his name badge and says 'Hello, Dexter Morgan'. Then it's time to protect his brightly coloured home from the dark threats of a thoroughly evil man. Dexter always gets the man in the end and dumps him into the sea in pieces. It's reassuring. But just when you think there might be a nice tidy, happy ending, along comes horrific unthinkable tragedy. Which is good, if you like that sort of thing.

The West Wing: Season Seven

2010-10-29T22:28:00.001+01:00

The Santos and Vinick campaigns dominate the final season of The West Wing.The last presidential election (back in season four) was mainly comedy. Bartlet was always going to win that one. The Republican candidate was hardly seen, and when he was he looked ridiculous. The entire campaign didn't last long. There was no tension but it was obviously very good. Now there are entire episodes from the Republicans point of view and as the season builds, including a 'live' debate, it's really not clear who's going to win. The White House is having some problems too, including nuclear reactors and military leaks. Perhaps the best episode is the last but one - 'Institutional Memory'. It's a sign-off for a lot of the characters, away from all the ceremony of the final episode. Where 'Tomorrow' focuses on the future of the White House, 'Institutional Memory' is more of a look back, a goodbye to the characters and to the building. But through all this there are two questions that hang over this (very good) season. Questions that will probably never be answered. First of all: what did they do to Toby? After being integral to the show and the staff for the entire run, he's shoved off into a sidenote. It doesn't help that the arc makes barely any sense. Toby Zeigler would never, not in a million years, betray the president. Richard Schiff said as much in an interview. So when he says 'I was the leak', the obvious reaction is 'No you weren't, why are you saying that?' Are we meant to believe that he's lying in order to protect the Santos campaign? Seems unrealistic. He'd always been critical of Santos, and going to jail would be to abandon his two young children. So he must he must be telling the truth. Which is also ridiculous. Either way, Toby is not treated fairly.

And it isn't clear whether Leo's death was planned, or just made sadly necessary. John Spencer's death is announced before episode ten, 'Running Mates', with his last appearance being in episode thirteen, 'The Cold'. Leo dies from a heart attack in episode seventeen, 'Election Day Part II'. It would seem that this was a last minute change to accommodate for the loss of an actor, but where was Leo in episode one's flash forward? The season starts with a scene from three years in the future, where most of the characters are waiting for the new president to arrive. Leo isn't there, or even mentioned. It was aired several months before John Spencer's death, so there's no way they could have re-filmed it. So Leo must have had a reason for not being there. Maybe, as the Vice-President, he'd just be somewhere else, or they'd planned the character's death all along. Although, from a writing point of view, giving a character two heart attacks in two seasons doesn't make much sense. Either way, 'Requiem' has a sense of finality about it, a tragic end to one of the show's finest characters.

Statements from the producers contradict each other about a planned Vinick or Santos win. Whether John Spencer's death forced them to change their minds or not, the final script was written long before. Overall, The West Wing might not be entirely consistent in quality - a brilliant first four years followed by a scramble to find itself again. Sometimes things get lost in Mandyville, but there's no doubt it's one of the best television shows ever made.

Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3 | Season 4 | Season 5 | Season 6

Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Thud. Thud. Thud.

2010-10-27T15:51:00.001+01:00

I've never seen a film that's scared me. That's not me trying to sound manly. I've seen films that I recognise as being scary, but they don't actually make me feel scared. It's just a film, after all. So I watched Paranormal Activity, which is apparently so scary it stops people sleeping. It's based on the idea that bad things happen while you're asleep, and that some creaks might not be the wind. It might be a demon coming up the stairs to drag you out of bed by your ankles. That sort of a thing. Here, a woman lives with her boyfriend in a nice house and is convinced that something spooky is going on. The boyfriend is less convinced and sets up a camera to film the bedroom while they're sleeping. The film uses the 'found footage' style, where the camera is part of the story and we only see what the characters choose to record. I'm easily impressed by this sort of thing. The roughness makes it real and it gives you a sense of physically being there. And, appropriately, nothing happens for the first few nights apart from some ambient rumblings. Everyone becomes skeptical enough to relax. Then bad things start happening. The famous still frame of their bedroom is the most effective gimmick. It's just their bed and the dark landing outside the door, with stairs leading down to the living room. If you stare at it long enough (which you will, because there's nothing else to look at) you'll believe there's something there. It plays on the most effective horror device - suggestion. What you imagine to be coming up the stairs is much more powerful than anything it could show you.

Of course, it's not all creaking doors. As it ramps up, and each night becomes a bit worse, the ambient rumblings give way to more sinister things. It's true that the rhythm of the film is: Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Boo. Or occasionally: Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Thud. Thud. Thud. Sometimes there's thuds and then a boo. And it is, admittedly, all very tense. One significant boo made me lurch forward quite quickly. But was I scared? I was worried for these characters, who seemed like nice people in a very unfortunate situation. I was scared for them. I enjoyed it. I slept fine.

They sit down and watch Ghibli films

2010-10-25T21:08:00.001+01:00

I like Spirited Away. It's strange, colourful, uplifting, surreal, imaginative, and other similar adjectives. The first time you watch it you miss all the messages, and even some of the plot - you just go along with it. A young girl has to work in a bathhouse for spirits and monsters after her parents are turned into pigs. That's the premise anyway, but it just seems to become a rapid succession of ideas. There's magical soot loading coal into a furnace. Now there's a dragon being attacked by paper arrows. Now the entire world has been covered in water as a train skims across the surface. It's a film that demonstrates the limitless scope of animation. If it can be drawn it can be in the film. John Lasseter from Pixar has said that, when his staff are stuck for ideas, they sit down and watch Ghibli films. These are the people the masters turn to for inspiration. That's high praise. For all its anime style, Spirited Away comes from the same place as any Pixar masterpiece. There are same powerful themes - losing your parents in this case - but dressed up in dense anime plot. It's less immediate, but it gets the job done (in a slightly more convoluted way). Just when you're trying to work it out, the film might hit you with something simple and beautiful to make you forget. Hayao Miyazaki (writer and director) seems keen on the grotesque too. Big wrinkled heads and slimy globs of death shift it away from the friendly adventure you'd think it might be. The deserted spirit village is just plain sinister, and the talking frog is actually quite threatening. And I haven't even mentioned the music.

I saw Howl's Moving Castle a while ago. That impressed me, but now I might be realising why everyone loves Ghibli. Even if I'm not sure how to say it. Gib-lee? Jib-lee? I don't know enough.

The worst time to try and get a cathedral built

2010-10-22T19:12:00.002+01:00

The Pillars of the Earth is a very long book. It takes a while to build a cathedral in the 12th century, especially when there are lots of thoroughly evil people around to try and stop you. It's a sprawling story where people grow up and grow old and kings see off several generations of traitors. It's also brutal, violent, and uncompromising. So you'd have to be brave to try and put it on television - brave people like Ridley and Tony Scott. There's Ian McShane as a sly bishop, Rufus Sewell as a nice builder (there must be some mistake there), and Matthew Macfadyen being very Welsh. But the most important thing to mention here, particularly if you've read the book, is that the adaption is spot on. It could have been lifted straight from the (many, many) pages of the book. When an adaption is this good it replaces the images the book left in your mind. You begin to believe that you always imagined Earl Bartholomew to look just like Donald Sutherland. The town of Kingsbridge, with all its sulky monks, has been taken straight from your brain. The only slight difference is William Hamleigh, who doesn't quite look enough like the embodiment of evil. In a way though, all these comparisons are irrelevant. Without ever having heard of the book, The Pillars of the Earth should still live up to its promise as an intricate and muddy medieval drama. It could never have fitted into a film, it needs hours and hours (and hours) of room. I'm looking forward to seeing how it progresses across the century, and listening to more of Prior Philip saying 'It's God's will it is, I'm shooer of it'.

If you haven't read the book, and fancy giving a chunk of your life to an historical epic, read it first. If you're not that bothered, just watch this. It's only just started on British telly. After watching the next eight hours I'll tell you if it was worth it.

The start of The Social Network

2010-10-20T15:16:00.002+01:00

The Social Network begins with two people sitting at a table, talking. A student's girlfriend is breaking up with him. Nothing remarkable in that, but from this first second the film grabs you. It starts at a sprint, with unbelievably energetic dialogue. It's a standard camera set-up, brilliant writing, and two actors working all their socks off. It becomes almost hypnotic. One of these students is Mark Zuckerberg, who then goes back to his room to write an internet program comparing girls. It's the start of the 'creation myth' of Facebook, a story of 'friendship, betrayal, and lust for power'. Zuckerberg is the social outcast who creates a new way to socialise, where people don't have to be near each other and their attributes are reduced to lists. The website is like the construction of an empire. In the rise to power the emperor betrays his friends and accepts the help of villains. And what stands out in all of this, obviously, is the writing.

By this point I might just sound like some sort of crazed Sorkin fanatic, but when it's this good it can't be helped. There aren't enough superlatives to describe it - rapid, witty, exciting and - most importantly - never dull. It's just people talking in rooms but it never loses it's energy or sense of progression. One scene bounces into the next, flying between depositions, bars, coding, parties. It's funny, but by the time you've laughed it's already moved on. It's in the rhythm of the words and the inflections of the acting. Jesse Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg like a fizzling robot, firing off the lines with dry emotionless aggression. Andrew Garfield plays the good guy left behind. Justin Timberlake is the sly but suave antagonist who gains the confidence of the king. Most of these characters are completely horrible but, somehow, completely watchable. There's so much going on it's difficult to remember a lot of it. I could have watched it again straight after leaving the cinema. It makes you realise how good a script can be, how a director can hand the reigns over to the actors and the words. Inspirational stuff.

It's like watching the best West Wing for the first time. Classic Sorkin, and classic everything else.

Who does Michael Douglas think he is?

2010-10-19T18:43:00.002+01:00

Aaron Sorkin wrote The American President before The West Wing. That much is obvious. It's interesting to watch as messed-up preview of The West Wing, where everything is out of place and rearranged. It's a shame the film follows the slightly dull conventions of Hollywood romance, but there's enough other stuff going on to make it watchable. And it's still Sorkin. Here's some similarities between the two, both in cast and writing:

Martin Sheen plays the Chief of Staff. This is just wrong. This man is the President of the United States. Who does Michael Douglas think he is? Like Bartlet and Leo, these two are old friends. But they play pool instead of chess. And to be fair, Douglas does a good POTUS.
Joshua Malina turns up. That's all, really.
Anna Deveare Smith plays the Press Secretary. I had to look that name up, but she played National Security Advisor Nancy McNally. She was always around.
Ellie, who had a whole episode named after her, has a minor role here. Not the character, the actress. Nina Siemmaszko.
Michael J. Fox, who plays the 'Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy' (lets say Deputy Chief of Staff) is a lot like Josh Lyman. He gets worked up easily. He's completely obsessed with the job. And he has a similar moment to Josh's 'take your legislative agenda and shove it up your ass' rant. But with more swearing.
The relationship between the President and his daughter has some similarities to Bartlet and Zoey. 'You're going to make me read this book cover to cover and then ask me a thousand questions about it at dinner'. Or something like that.
'What is the virtue of a proportional response?' That came up pretty early in Season One.
The President says 'What's next?' The final words of the pilot and the line that was missing from the last episode.
Finally, and probably most importantly, the writing feels similar. The rhythm of the dialogue, the walking and talking, the sheer amount of stuff happening in each sentence. And the big speech at the end could have been straight from Bartlet. If it wasn't about the President's new girlfriend.

There's probably more, but I haven't seen The West Wing that many times to notice. Or maybe I have. The question is, was The American President the practise run or the inspiration?

Not many choose the happy fluffy things

2010-10-18T14:09:00.000+01:00

I haven't written anything mildly interesting in a while. I've been having some adventures with the BBC, and have been too far away from an internet connection and the mental ability to write anything. But now that's finished and I've watched a film. Yes. With The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Terry Gilliam said that he just wanted to 'relax and make something joyous and playful'. It's the sort of film that happens when a director is allowed to do anything they want. Doctor Parnassus' travelling troupe set up shop in the middle of a street and try to entice people into their magical mirror. Inside they're presented with a projection of their imagination, which is divided into happy fluffy things and the darker temptations of the devil. They have to make a choice, and not many of them choose the happy fluffy things. These dreamy worlds are Gilliam's license to go mad. Anything and everything can be shoved into these rainbow fantasies. It's where the 'joyous and playful' bit comes in. Inception's dreamscapes are almost realistic compared to this. Outside the visual spectacle, the cold reality is all puddles, shopping centres, and drunk people. The Imaginarium is a nice place to be. It justifies the (sadly necessary) changing faces of the central character. It has giant ladders that turn into stilts. It makes you lose track of the plot. This is a confident and strange film that knows exactly what it wants to do.

And it comes with a useful reminder. It is almost always a bad idea to make a deal with the devil. If the deal is immortality in return for giving the devil your first-born daughter, the last thing you should do is have a daughter. Doctor Paranassus becomes forgetful in his old age. The devil always wins, especially if he's played by Tom Waits. He's the one who rightly advised us to 'keep the devil way down in the hole'.