Review: Gameswipe (TV)

Charlie Brooker seems to be carving out TV shows like they're going out of fashion at the moment. Hot on the heels of You Have Been Watching (a show about which I have Opinions, and about which I wish I had written here when it was more topical) comes Gameswipe (available briefly on iPlayer here).

Gameswipe tries to do for (video) games what Screenwipe and Newswipe did for TV shows and news programs respectively, which is to say, analyse, mock and explain them from an insider's point of view. His previous two "-wipe" products were also influenced by topical issues, and generally analysed recent examples of the areas that they were focusing on, so it seems likely that newly released games will get some coverage too.

I have been waiting expectantly for a mainstream game-review programme to emerge, and one fronted by Charlie Brooker is more than I could have hoped for (since I've now followed him full circle since his days writing for gaming magazine PC Zone). Having watched the first episode, I'm pretty happy with the way things have started out, albeit with a few reservations.

The programme probably suffers from the fact that whereas television and the news are two things that have a mass appeal, and probably pretty equal interest from most age and gender groups, video gaming is only just becoming an area of widespread interest to many people, and even then in some areas far more than others. Hence a programme focused on mass-appeal casual games like Rock Band or Guitar Hero, will risk being too basic for more hardcore gamers, while one with too much emphasis placed on more introverted genres such as MMORPGs and FPSes, would be likely to instantly alienate casual viewers.

The first episode treads this line fairly well, with introductions to basic gaming genres, and examples of how these genres have developed over the years, interposed with celebrity rants about aspects of the industry, but it will be interesting to see how this balance is maintained in future episodes, and whether both ends of the spectrum can be kept interested at once.

One real niggle with the program was that the coverage of violent or objectionable video games - certainly one of the biggest issues faced by the industry at the moment - seemed unfocused and haphazard. There was some mocking of the media coverage, but not enough, in my opinion, of a well-constructed counter-argument. The issue is one which deserves fuller coverage and analysis, and I would have hoped that it would have an episode devoted to it.

Another problem was with the discussion of storytelling in games (again something [from the point of view of a fairly experienced gamer] only touched on very briefly), in which Graham Linehan bemoans the fact that the story-telling in games is never given enough attention by the industry, where minutes before, Brooker had been describing his boredom at the plot-development aspects of a game. Both are different sides of an argument, but I felt the presentation was contradictory rather than balanced.

As a whole, though, it's good to see Charlie Brooker on TV, and it's good to see modern gaming-centric programmes, so despite any negatives, I will certainly be looking forward to the remaining episodes.

Blogathon hi-score: 4

Derren Frown

Attention: potential spoilers lie herein if you haven't watched last night's episode of The Events.




















So, my prediction/hope for last night's episode of The Events didn't happen. Instead of some huge Derren Brown twist or revelation, we saw Brown "fail" at his attempt to predict the outcome of a roulette wheel spin, thereby not winning a member of the public £175,000. But did he fail? Was it all planned? Did he get it one out on purpose? Did he succumb to the pressure from people who said he shouldn't have made it look like he got all six lottery numbers correct, as five would have been amazing enough and "more believeable"? Or did he genuinely miscalculate things in his brain so that he was one number out on the wheel? I don't know. But no doubt these and many other questions will circulate the internet in the coming days, along with the diatribes of disillusioned Brown fans and those who like to let people know they are superior to anyone who tries something a little boundary-pushing and doesn't quite manage it.

I don't know why Brown ended his series the way he did, or even if it genuinely didn't go quite to plan or Brown intended that to be the ending all along. But I have to admit that even I, who has staunchly stuck with the "events of misdirection" angle on the series, am now feeling pretty deflated by the series. It wasn't awful. In many ways it was very very good. But it felt very disparate, with the prerecorded segments, the on-location experiments and the live parts of each show not really feeling convincingly linked together. Essentially, compared to pretty much all of Brown's previous work it felt distinctly average.

I'm still living in hope that Brown is going to pull one more trick out of the bag and show what the series was "really all about". I'm not nearly as confident of this happening as I was before watching last night's Event, but Brown's message after the end of last night's show came up on his website remarkably quickly and felt a bit too clean-cut to be written by Brown after having just finished his most hyped up series on what can only be described as an anticlimax. I might be wrong, but I hope I'm not. I'm still a big fan of his. And, after all, with Derren Brown you really can't predict where the next piece of misdirection is going to come from.

Blogathon score: 3

Don't get him wet!

Hallowe'en approaches, the nights grow cold and darkness begins to cloak the land. I get tempted to watch Gremlins again (I know it's set at Christmas, but it always felt like more of a Hallowe'en film to me). And what better Hallowe'en/Gremlins crossover can there be than lovable Gizmo carved into the side of a pumpkin? I am seriously tempted to try this - despite not having carved a pumpkin since I was about twelve and being very doubtful that my abilities will have improved in the intervening years!

And, as if that weren't enough, there's a whole website filled with hundreds of pumpkin carving designs! The obscure niches of the internet never fail to amaze me.

Blogathon score: N/A - I fell at the first hurdle. Still, I've doubled my personal post count, which must count for something. Right?

Stag dos vs. Christmas.

Nothing does well when compared to Christmas. Christmas is the ideal time of fun and relaxation, family bliss and contentment, good food and good cheer. And yet, of course, Christmas is not perfect for anyone, and not even fun for lots of people. The imagined role of Christmas as a sacred, untouchable time of year (heaven forbid anyone is accused of "ruining Christmas") becomes its downfall, as it is inevitably unreachable. Weddings present a similar problem, as does the humble "stag do".

The whole point of the stag do seems to be lost sometimes in the percieved desirability of excess. A stag do without strippers is a second rate night. The very idea of a stag do without alcohol is unthinkable. And yet, the point of the occasion is not simply to live up to tradition, surely. The idea is to give the groom one last night of freedom before the chains of marriage lock around him, but the point, it seems to me, is to counterbalance the future life with his chosen partner by reminding him of all the things he should not forget about his other friends. As with Christmas, weddings, and, indeed, all other experiences in life, getting caught up in what tradition tells us things "should" be like is likely to end in disappointment, whereas looking for the experience we want to have, and choosing the best route to it, seems to me far more rewarding and fulfulling.

That was pretty rambly, and I apologise - I'm writing it late at night because I'll not be around on Saturday. I'll have no internet, because I'll be on a stag do, with no strippers, no clubbing and no debauchery: just a group of friends having a day together and celebrating as one of their number takes the next step forward in their life, and hoping to remind him that getting married does not mean the end of all other relationships.

Vegas strippers posted: 4

Daring Brown?

For my second blogathon entry, I'd like to put down my feelings towards the latest series of programmes by Mr. Derren Brown, which have already generated a considerable amount of discussion in the media and with Brown's fans. First off, I'm a fan of Derren Brown and have been for a while, having enjoyed pretty much everything I've watched that he's done in the past.

So far, on the surface, I've been slightly underwhelmed by the series as a whole. I've enjoyed watching the programmes as they've gone out, but they feel slightly less tight overall than what I've seen Brown do in the past. Apparently many others have had this feeling to various degrees, with the media questioning the quality of Brown's series and the internet bubbling with everything from mild disappointment to furious outcry declaring that Brown has broken the bond of trust with his fans. I'm closer to the mild disappointment end, although having said that I've still enjoyed watching the series despite hoping for something slightly more throughout.

Brown's final Event, where he plans to correctly predict the outcome of a roulette wheel's spin and apparently win some money for a member of the public through doing this, is to be broadcast later this evening. At the end of tonight's Event, one of two things will happen. Either it will simply be the end of the series and I'll feel somewhat crestfallen and unsatisfied by the series. Or, another thing will happen, that I'm really hoping (and, at this moment, fairly confident) is going to be the case.

Let me explain. The main bone of contention people seem to have with this series is that Brown in some way hasn't delivered what he's promised or has used methods which cheapen the whole experience. He said he would show us how we can predict the National Lottery, and because he didn't give people a foolproof way of doing it during the show, the audience feels cheated. As I said before, the programme didn't sit quite right with me, but I didn't feel cheated in any way. His explanations during the series have felt somewhat flimsy compared to his previous track record. But every time I think that I come back to the same thought, and that thought involves the adverts that ran on Channel 4 before the series began.

Brown described these shows as "events of misdirection". So, by definition, that means that anything you think you're seeing him do, you actually aren't. He's controlling the whole thing to make the audience think one thing's happening when it's actually something quite different. The "explanations" he's given for these events are purposefully put together building towards Brown's intended outcome. So, back to the "other thing" I'm hoping is going to happen. Brown has pulled off an immense, month-long misdirection of everyone who's watched the series. All of the frustration and slating and denouncing him as a cheat, he's wanted all of that to happen. He's misdirected the whole time. And at the end of tonight's final Event, he's going for the big reveal. Or not. Either way, he's going to tie things up, restore the faith of all those nay-sayers, and prove to me that I was right to stick with him all along.

The final Event starts in about five minutes, so don't be surprised if my entry tomorrow reflects on what I've said in this post.

Blogathon score: 2

Crossing over

I have a road-based dilemma that I face almost every day. Near where I work, there's a junction with a slightly unusual light-change sequence that stops the traffic on one side of the road, while letting the traffic on the other move freely. The upshot of this is that the cars will be standing at a red light, next to a pedestrian crossing with a red man showing - very frustrating for the busy commuter or office worker who needs to be somewhere. Therefore, those of us who know the system can pick our time, based on the traffic on the side of the road that is still moving, and cross safely even without the help of a green man.

The problem, with this otherwise excellent strategy for road-crossing is that people with less knowledge of the road will often blindly follow our lead without looking for cars. In the last few days this has nearly led to accidents twice, as I crossed safely and without incident, but people who assumed that there was no need to check were nearly hit.

So, the dilemma: Do I have a responsibility to wait at the side of the road for the green man, if there is the possibility that other people blindly and blithely following me might be hurt, or should I trust that these people are adults, and should be able to use the roads themselves without needing my attention and supervision? If I walk into the road and someone else gets hit by a car because they followed me without looking, am I partly responsible?

What do y'all think?

For the moment I'm avoiding the issue by crossing at a much more dangerous place further up the road, where there's less chance people will follow me...

Blogathon score: 2

Day 2

Day 2 and we're already two players down; in your face Hannah and Andy!

In the spirit of competition and with the Olympics being decided I thought I'd dredge up an old arguament I remember having about why some sports were better than others. The basic theory was as follows:

In last place - sports played on your own against yourself
running, swimming, jumping (in fact most of the Olympics), darts, golf and the blogpocalypse. The problem with these sports is that there's no real need for anyone else to be there. You could hold the open over the course of a year with players turning up as and when, hitting a few holes and then heading off for a fine wine at the club house with whoever else turned up that day. If someone beats you at darts it's not because of team tactics or because his play disrupted your game, he just threw more accurately at the board than you did.

In even more last place - sports with arbitrarily decided winners
dancing, diving, to some extent boxing and come dine with me. These are also often done by yourself, though obviously boxing rises slightly above the rest by dint of the rule above. The problem with these sports is that watching them you think "ooh, that was quite impressive" about all of the competitors but have no sense of tension because at the level it's done it all feels pretty arbitrary. In fact this sport is only generally enjoyable when it goes so wrong you can laugh at the competitors a la australian serving raw potatoes on come dine with me.

Somewhat higher up - sports played on your own against your opponents
tennis, snooker, hitting a baseball and gladiatorial combat. Ahh, sports where you have to react to your opponents moves and where your actions can hinder your opponent. A far truer test of skill; you can't be a gladiator and expect to just repeatedly make the same high-points sword stroke.

Normally on a slightly lower level - sports played in teams against yourselves
rowing, relay races, tour de france (apparently) and scrapheap challenge. The team aspect certainly improves these over the basic "I will do as well as I can" sports, however the whole group is really let down by the tour de france which is really dull and the fact that the guy who crosses the finish gets all the glory (who here knows any of Lance Armstrong's team-mates?). Anyway these two lead neatly (and totaly obviously since the first level) to . . .

The best sports - played in teams against other teams, wooo
football, cricket, charades and medieval warfare. Playing with other people against a team of others trying to disrupt your play, the ultimate test of ability and skill. Here are contained the creme de la creme of the sporting world, except for chess which unfortunately got held up in the whole team issue. Never mind, exchange chess can still carry the torch.

Obviously there are some sports that try and sneak their way up the scale despite being rubbish; American Football - you're bigger than me and when you ran into me I fell over whoopdefrickingdo, F1 - technically a team sport but so so dull you're watching hoping for a life threatening collission and then when one does happen it turns out to have been faked anyway.

Conclusion (and the real purpose for this post) the X Factor is rubbish

Trailer Mash

And so comes my time to enter into the Blogathon Of Destiny. I considered a few things to write my inaugural post on, and whilst what I settled on may be a slightly softer option than a few of the things I've decided to put off for another day, I still think it's worthy enough to be entry number one.

I read Empire's website fairly regularly, and find the lists they put up there, if not entirely original, enjoyable to read the vast majority of the time. Their most recent list is The 50 Best YouTube Move Trailer Mashups, a genre of internet videos that has featured on this blog in the past. Not entirely impressed with every trailer mashup I've watched so far on the list, but most of them have been entertaining. Some of them are truly inspired however, with personal favourites including numbers 43, 27, 13, 10, 9, 7, 4, 3 and 1, with 2 being my overall favourite (although all of the top four are masterful).

Even though the more obviously entertaining ones are those that take the images from one film and the sound from another, and when these match up well it's wonderful to watch, the most well-crafted and authentic mashup trailers are by far those that simply take clips from just one film and use them in a new way. The power of suggestion is truly a mighty weapon, and (apart from one or two tiny additions here and there) the top four of Empire's fifty use just that to take one film and turn it against itself to fit it into an entirely different genre. That's why number 2 is my overall fave: I don't think I've ever seen it done better than in that short video.

Anyway, maybe something a little weightier for tomorrow's entry, but I just couldn't resist the English teacher geekery available in writing about this list.

Entries towards Destiny: 1

Droplets of eve.

A good opening gambit, there, James. I respond with a couple of supermarket stories, number one:

I approach the cashier in Sainsburys at lunchtime. I'm buying my usual bottles of diet coke and tubs of mass-produced super-sweet rice pudding. She rings them up, I pay with a note, so far, so good. She opens the cash drawer to get me my change, and sits staring at it for a few seconds. Then she picks up a little plastic bag full of coins from the back of the drawer and tries to open it. She scrabbles at it with her nails and tries to pick open the corner. Finally, noticing, perhaps that I am getting restless, she takes the top into her mouth, closes her teeth on it, locks eyes with me and pulls the bag downwards. The bag stretches for ever, as she leans her head back, sticks out her lower jaw and gurns it open. At last the plastic tears, and she pours the fifty pence pieces into the till, before handing me my thirty-six pence of change.

"Sorry that took so long", she says, cheerfully. Indeed.

And number two:

I'm in the home-maintenence aisle, looking for black refuse sacks, when two girls approach from the opposite direction:

"Here we are - bin liners", says one.
"No, no, those are bin liners, we want rubbish bags", responds the other.
They argue about the various merits of each, and decide to get both.
"Ok, bin liners and rubbish bags - will these be big enough?", says the first
"Actually - do we even know which night our bins go out?"
"I don't know..."
They contemplate for a second, then the girl who has just spoken continues:
"Actually, do we even have a bin?"
"I don't know - I haven't seen one"

After giving a few moments more personal contemplation to this technical hiccup in their plan, they give up on bins and wander on to look at the bleach shelf.

Hope that was good enough, and expect future mundanities in the future if I feel uninspired.

Super-happy-blogathon score: 1

An inauspicious start

So the start of The Challenge has been heralded by earthquakes and tsunamis, are we sure we're not meddling with forces beyond our control? I guess there's only one way to find out and that's for us all to keep (start) posting. Onwards to the blogpocalypse (god I hope that doesn't become a word).

Not sure if that's really enough for a first post (especially as it doesn't really say anything). Maybe there should be some opinion (beyond hoping what I've written doesn't make it into the dictionary)

I think earthquakes suck, big time. There we go, that should be fairly non-inflammatory.

A little challenge

So - it's been a while. Almost two months since my last post, and several months since I posted anything like regularly. I apologise. After a couple of years of blogging semi-regularly without trouble, I was struck down with momentous ennui. A state from which I wish to emerge.

The cure, I hope, will be a gimmick. A forced march back into the fetid marshlands of bloggery, with all the unnecessarily florid prose which that entails. The rules of this effort are as follows:

> At least one post per day. No limit on the maximum number of posts.
> No link posts. The post can centre around a link, but must contain original analysis, opinion or commentary.
> Posts should be at least a short paragraph or so in length. No one's going to be counting words, but try to keep it from looking like Twitter.
> Posts should be readable. If we're only requiring a few sentences a day, then getting most of the grammar and spelling right shouldn't be too hard.
> In the event that a day will be missed (due to holiday, absence from internet, etc) the post can be written ahead of time and assigned as "for" a date in the future, or a suitable substitute poster may be nominated.
> Rules are subject to change
> First person to miss a day is a big smelly loser.

Any and all are welcome to participate alongside Bambi and myself - simply start posting on the 1st of October, and don't stop...

N.B. Feel free to request rule changes as we go - it's all pretty fluid. Scoring systems may be implemented too...

The arrogance of Piers Morgan

wow

choice quotes:

"As Muhammad Ali said, it’s hard to be humble when you are as great as I am,”

"I think it’s time the talent fall back and go, ‘hang on a second, without us, you don’t have networks'."

"I am looking to at least double it (his salary of £2m). I’ve got no problem if they take it away from somebody else who feels guilty about this type of thing, because I have absolutely no guilt issues about my salary whatsoever. I think I’m worth every penny."

Anyway, that's what's been annoying / amazing me this morning.

Badverts 2

A second installment of the TV ads that have got on the wrong side of me recently for one reason or another.


Kellogg's Rice Krispies Squares

Not a bad advert in many ways. A simple idea - puffed rice community lives on chocolate volcano - executed well enough with CGI krispies and volcano, obviously aimed at the kiddies to make them pester mum and dad whilst doing the weekly slog round Tesco. What I take issue with here is the accent of the narrator. He's supposed to be from the Caribbean or somewhere in that region. That's what I just about get from the way he mangles the opening sentence anyway. But after that ignorant piece of rice plucks a seemingly innocent flower from the cocoa crater he calls home, the narrator seriously loses the plot. Where the hell is that accent meant to be from? Somerset, perhaps? Maybe Wales? Or somewhere that doesn't actually exist? I'm going to go with box number three please, Noel. I mean if they wanted a Caribbean accent, instead of hiring someone who really really can't do one, why didn't they just go for the much easier and obvious option of, oh, I don't know, hiring a voiceover guy who comes from the Caribbean? But they didn't, and so we get this embarrassing, chewed up, offensive-to-your-ears-whether-you're-from-the-Caribbean-or-Crewe monstrosity of an impersonation. I'm guessing I'm not the only one of this opinion, as the advert has since been changed and now runs with a different voiceover who's supposed to sound like David Attenborough on a nature programme. He doesn't. It's still shit. Not quite as bad, nor as offensive, but still shit.

Mikado

An advert that lies (for me, at least) on that fine line between a campaign that's quite brilliant and one that's just plain wrong. But in so many ways it lands firmly in Wrongville. The advert has almost nothing to do with the product, reducing the snack being advertised to little more than a prop in the story it's telling. This is not a problem in itself, as any self-respecting drum-playing gorilla will tell you. But that means the company, having shunned the more traditional "buy our product because it's great" route, now has no choice but to promote the values associated with their product to make people want to buy it as it fits in with "who they are" and "what they're all about". And what values does Mikado have, according to the advert? Well, that it's "a bit cheeky". A young woman working in an office accidentally sets off the photocopier whilst kneeling on it trying to reach a Mikado stick. Oooh, cheeky.

But it's not. It's really, really not. This isn't Barbara Windsor giggling whilst clasping her boobies in a Carry On film. It's not even a rebellious teenager pulling his already-halfway-to-his-ankles trousers down and xeroxing his clammy posterior. The woman in the advert is wearing a short skirt and straddling the copier, meaning that she's either making copies of her knickers or her, ahem, "front bottom". See why it's not so cheeky any more? But it doesn't stop there. The male co-worker who had previously exited the copying room now re-enters, and is clearly somewehat surprised by what he sees Little Miss Knickers doing. At this point, the makers of the advert make sure that their advert cannot be rescued in any way, shape or form by slapping on the most inappropriate slogan for the scene which we are now gazing upon: "More than a little bit tempting". Fair enough with regards to the woman wanting a Mikado stick, but genuinely alarming when considering its alternative focus. Apparently the values that Mikado stands for are centred around office rape. If that's who you are and what you're all about, what the fuck is wrong with you?


Diet Coke



This one doesn't really need a huge amount of analysis. Annoying vacuous chart pop music. Annoying slogan that's trying to be oh so hip. So, a good start then. We then get a montage of women being, to put it bluntly, twats. Ruining wedding photos, trying to starting fights in bars, pissing around during a coworker's office presentation. And thinking they're hilarious whilst doing it. I could go on and on about how vomit-inducingly irritating all the women in this advert are, but that would be to waste far too much energy on them. Essentially, Coca Cola are saying if you're a woman and you drink Diet Coke, you'll become a complete dickhead. Great ad, guys.


ITV1



So, I'm at the cinema, awaiting the start of whichever film I've chosen to see. The advert starts, and this one comes on. I've not seen it before. So I begin taking it in. As it unfolds before me, I start to consider what it could be for. A new drama series, maybe? Perhaps a charity? I keep watching, still unable to put my finger on it. The advert continues. The kids are walking on a beach, there are homeless people living on the beach - could be about conservation at a fair stretch? Then the kids start doing the whole "throwing stones at the sky to break up the clouds" bollocks. At this point I've given up trying to work out what the hell this advert is for, because I've run out of things that could possibly fit with the colossal amount of pretentious wank that is being played out before me. This advert pretty much ticks all the boxes for being everything I hate. Child actors being annoying - yep, there they are; token foreign-looking kid in a half-arsed, last-minute attempt at diversity and political-correctness - most certainly; lashings of oversentimentality - oh yes sir, plenty of that. And still, I'm none the wiser as to what is being advertised to me.

As the children dance in the sunlight, which they have apparently never experienced before, playing whimsically with a damaged umbrella without a care for the used nappies and hypodermic needles that have likely come into contact with it, Patrick Stewart puts me out of my desperation and reveals that this heartstring-tugging tale is in fact an advert for ITV1. My jaw drops. ITV1? The "brighter side"? Really?! So, the channel that brings us The X-Factor, Tonight (which might as well be named The Daily Mail: TV Edition) and The Jeremy Kyle Show, turning on this channel is like, and I quote, "being able to make the sun shine whenever you want"? This advertising campaign is so ill-judged and egotistical, it's laughable. I can't think of many things that deserve such overwhelming and histrionic praise, let alone self-praise. But ITV1 is somewhere near the bottom of the list. I could go on and on about the things that this advert does wrong, but I'd be here for a long, long time.


That wraps it up for this second entry. Chances for a third installment? Well, that all depends on whether companies and advertising agencies continue to make terrible adverts. So, quite likely then. As always, if there are any ads that have caught your attention and/or got your goat recently, please let me know.

In the dollhouse

Last week, I watched Dollhouse. (Don't read too far down, spoilers there be) WHICH HAS TOTALLY EATEN MY BRAIN. Normally I daydream about sex, or my unfulfilled career as a stunt double/stand-up comic.

But at the moment, I'm daydreaming about Dollhouse and wanting the next series now. One night, I actually fell asleep thinking about it and woke up still thinking about it. The received wisdom seems to be that the first episodes weren't that good, but I actually enjoyed them and found everything compelling. Admittedly, things do pick up dramatically at episode 6, but to me it felt like a natural build up.

I don't really feel the need to empathise with the central character, who has her personality re-formatted at the end of each episode, because there are a lot of interesting side-acts to keep me hooked. It may be because it's such a welcome distraction from the rest of my life that I've found this show so compulsive, but I got through all 13 episodes in less than a week and I'm currently doing the re-watch with commentaries thing and working my way through most of the special features. I'm not sure what I'll do when I get to the end. Meep.

When I was younger, I quite liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I recently managed to get round to watching seasons 6 and 7. They were diverting, at times entertaining. Watching them needed doing, I needed to finish the saga. But they were as morphine to the heroin that is Dollhouse. Or Firefly. Maybe I've matured (fingers crossed), maybe Joss Whedon has matured. Maybe Firefly and Dollhouse are just more to my taste. Maybe they haven't been going long enough to get crap (Firefly certainly hasn't). But I think they are both streets ahead of Buffy. And Dollhouse is getting a second series. Woo!

To anyone interested in Whedon's work, I would definitely recommend you check this out. I didn't really have any preconceptions about it and just loved it.

Review Round-Up 7

I've come to the conclusion that, once again, I need to rethink how I put together my film reviews here. Some of these films I saw around a month ago, meaning that more than I would like of some of these reviews is made up of what I wrote on Facebook's Flixter application combined with whatever I can now remember of my reaction to the films at the time I saw them. So, these Review Round-Ups will most likely come to an end in the near future if I can work out how better to get my reviews up here without making the entries too brief or too lengthy.

This entry is made up of reviews of films I've seen at the cinema. I'll do another entry soon on the films I've seen recently on DVD.


Ice Age 3: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs
This film felt very aware of the fact that it had two films behind it to develop all of the returning characters, which turns out to be both a good and a bad thing. Good because it means that the foundations are there to start off another adventure with familiar characters without trawling through backstory. Bad because some of the main characters' storylines feel very underdeveloped and almost like afterthoughts as to what to give them to do for this installment. Diego, for example, a pivotal character in the first film, is now placed firmly in a second fiddle position and unfortunately given a storyline that could be written down on the back of a postage stamp. Crash and Eddie suffer a similar fate, although I wasn't so fussed by that. The main storyline itself is the simplest of all the Ice Age films so far, but this is still great fun and enjoyable all the way through. The characters are not tired yet (although I'm not sure if they could all withstand a fourth installment) and the introduction of Buck (voiced by Simon Pegg) is a welcome one who provides real humour throughout. The Scrat skits also get a fresh twist, and are as hilarious as ever.
7/10

Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince
Tom Felton stands out in a returning cast that appears to simply be going through the motions, especially during the first half of the film. He brings new depth and believeable turmoil to the character of Draco Malfoy, something that Daniel Radcliffe as the eponymous teenage wizard fails to pull off in this installment. Jim Broadbent is well cast as Horace Slughorn and puts in a strong and charming, if exaggerated and hammy, performance (but what else do you expect from British stalwarts in Potter films?). However, the film overall never grasped my attention enough, with the magical elements underwhelming and the story oversimplified to the point of incomprehensibility at some points (good luck to anyone planning to understand this film without having read the book to fill in the gaps). Ultimately, in no way is this a particularly bad film. There are enjoyable elements scattered throughout, and, from the point of view of someone who has read the books, it is less frustrating to watch than Prisoner Of Azkaban. It's just that, in most ways, it's distinctly average.
5/10

The Proposal
Below average, with all the familiar elements of the rom com formula presented in a half-hearted fashion. Having two capable actors in Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds as the leads drags it up a little, as they do have genuine charm, at times even chemistry together, and you feel they are doing the best with the poor material they have. They're never believeable in the roles they've been cast in, especially Bullock as the bunny-boiling bitch (made even more disappointing if you've seen her in 2005's Crash, in which she plays a similar character with real flair). One truly funny scene and another moment involving '80s hip-hop stand out as small and unexpected islands in a sea of writing and direction mediocrity.
5/10

Land Of The Lost
Feels decidedly amateurish and relies too much on "teenage boy" humour to carry it (I lost count of the amount of jokes about boobs). Will Ferrell is amusing enough, and has some relatively funny dialogue, but for the most part feels as though he's on auto-pilot, making his character of Rick Marshall feel like a watered-down mish-mash of several previous Ferrell incarnations, making for a mediocre and unsatisfying performance. The other cast members are on the whole unconvincing and feel too one-dimensional to be anything more than just adequate human scenery for Ferrell. The plot is paper thin, at times almost non-existent, and large sections of the film leave the characters simply bumbling around aimlessly without any real focus. If you have nothing better to do then you could do worse, but be prepared to switch your brain, and your crap filter, firmly to "off".
5/10

The Time Traveler's Wife
A real mixed bag in many ways. At times the time travel element feels cleverly handled and executed with genuine flair and humour; at others it feels confused, and almost as if the film-makers themselves were unsure of what they were depicting and the rules it is governed by. Eric Bana is excellent throughout, bringing depth and humanity to a role that would be easy to turn into a parody or cliche of the time-traveller archetype. Rachel McAdams is satisfactory as the eponymous spouse of Bana, but rarely shows the range and depth required to make the character feel genuine. Very enjoyable with some truly inspired parts, but at the same time frustrating - many characters feel severely underdeveloped, some to the point of having no purpose in the film whatsoever. Some elements and scenes also feel oversimplified, giving those parts an unsatisfying feel and taking away from the film overall. Considering the film as a whole, Bana is very entertaining and, whilst the plot occasionally lapses into the simplistic and sentimental, the story requires enough brains to make this worthwhile and enjoyable.
7/10

More Trailer Trash

Maybe fifteen months later is too long to do a follow-up entry to a previous post, but to hell with sticking to convention, I'm going to do it anyway. Said previous post was actually inspired by an entry Telf wrote on the varying success of film trailers, and how certain trailers get it wrong. A pet peeve Telf and I share is trailers that don't know when to stop - essentially telling a large part (in the worst cases, all) of the film's story, instead of giving just a taster of what is to come when seeing the film itself. Seeing as I've experienced a couple such trailers recently, I thought I'd share my take on them.

Incidentally, everything below contains potential spoilers (although most of it is based on the content of the trailers alone, so I can't be certain what's a spoiler and what's not. That said, it would be difficult to spoil some of these films more than the people who made the trailer already have)

The Taking Of Pelham 123 (click here for the trailer)
The combination of Denzel Washington and John Travolta initially made this a film I was interested in seeing. However, the more I heard about Pelham 123, mainly about it being just another flat and formulaic action flick, the more my interest wained. I was still curious though, and thought it could be one to see just to make my own judgement on. That is, until I saw the trailers for it. I knew the basic plot of the film, which is where the trailer starts, and where it should end. But it doesn't. So we get the set-up: Washington's introduced as the average guy just trying to do his day job, Travolta as the sociopathic bad guy, whose actions throw Washington unwillingly into the hero role. Standard action fare. Fine, no problem. But hold on, the trailer has more to say. We get a bit more interaction between hero and villain; we find out some of the details behind the villain's motives. At this point I was really hoping the trailer would finish, or at least stop giving away the plot of the film. But it doesn't. It keeps going. We get Washington doing all the hero stuff, including a high speed taxi chase (of which we see a fair amount) where he's apparently taking a large amount of money down to Travolta in the subway train, and even see Washington and Travolta's characters' first meeting. And it goes on. By the time I'd finished watching the trailer, I felt I pretty much knew what happens in the film apart from the finale. If I have to sit through everything before the end knowing basically what's going to happen, then I just won't bother. And that's what Pelham 123's trailer did. It made me just not bothered about the film it was advertising. Good work, guys who made this trailer.

Funny People (clicky for trailery-type thingamajig)
Not quite as serious an offender as the trailer for Pelham 123, but this is a film that I am much more interested in seeing, so my disappointment at its ham-fisted trailer was amplified when I first saw it. This trailer essentially runs around a minute too long. We see Adam Sandler as a successful comedian - no problem. We see Seth Rogen as a comedian just starting out - fine. We see Jonah Hill. My interest is sustained despite this. A film about comedians is enough to draw me in. Then we find out Sandler's character is dying. A twist to add further interest. This looks like a film I'd really be interested in. The trailer continues, drawing me in further, and then when it should finish, it goes too far - Sandler's character recovers from his fatal affliction. A very frustrating fact to include in the trailer, as now when I go to see the film (which I still want to despite my annoyance at the trailer's spoilerific qualities), whenever they make out that Sandler's character is close to death and that it's very sad, in the back of my mind I'll simply be thinking "he's not going to die, so I don't need to worry about that". Essentially, up until the point that Sandler's character is told he's going to beat his illness, the film won't be as satisfying as it potentially could have been as I've had that major plot point revealed to me. Still looks to be a good film, but a shame that the trailer has slightly spoiled it for me already.

There have been a couple of others recently, but these are the ones that stuck out in my mind.

In contrast, the trailer for the new Coen brothers film A Serious Man is what I would define as a very good trailer.



So why is this trailer so much better than those for Pelham 123 and Funny People? Well, it's original for starters. I can't remember seeing a trailer like it before in terms of the way sound and image loops are used. Secondly, it's intriguing - it draws you in without showing you very much at all. I could make some guesses at what some of the film's themes and ideas might be, but I couldn't tell you what the story is. But I do want to know what it is, so the trailer has done it's job. The simple and unostentatious presentation of some of the Coens' previous hits at the end is the icing on the cake. True, not all films are able to do this; but this trailer can, and does it pretty well too.

Just to finish off, I've seen the trailer for G.I. Joe a few times recently. Not a particularly bad trailer in terms of giving away plot, but the film looks like total dross (and most probably without much plot to have given away). The reason I mention it is that, after seeing it for the first time, I immediately drew one or two comparisons with a film in particular from a few years ago. Those one or two grew to several comparisons on a second and third viewing. And I'm so glad to see that it's not just me who spotted them...



I was actually considering going to see G.I. Joe just in the hope that it is so bad that it's laughably bad, but I don't know if I can manage it now. I think to stomach the whole film I'd be hoping all the way through that Matt Damon was going to crop up and say his name repeatedly in a moronic voice.

Linkables 3/8/9 : Video Extravaganza

For some reason I ended up saving a ton of videos recently, so it seemed only natural to link them all at once:

What could possibly make two already-great genres of music even greater? Combining them! Hence, I give you 80's music + ragtime piano:


Secondly, lest we forget the campy sins of our forbears:


Thirdly, the eternal delight that is Literal Music Videos. There're loads of these out there, so I'll just link a couple, to wet your whistle:



And, finally, just Dara Ó Briain being funny:

Linkables 29/7/9

Somewhat similar to Bambi's post a while back (which I can't find) about telling stories in just six words, but this time it's genre-specific microfiction within the confines of a twitter message.

Dave Gorman on the horrors of being a celebrity in a super-connected age.

Genuinely freaky video apparently showing a dog living without a body- I can't find anything obvious claiming it to be fake, either.

Just never give your laptop to anyone, ok? But you can stick your hand in liquid nitrogen as much as you like.

Two flash games: A simple but addictive space-based mining/combat/tower-defence thing, and an equally addictive (and frustrating) roll-the-dice-and-make-patterns game.

Cool webcomic-in-the-form-of-a-photo type thing. With good astronomical advice.

And, of course, the ever-enticing Babes of the BNP.

Deeper Underground

For those of you who find it difficult to get your head around Shakespearean characters, but easy to navigate the London Underground system, this map from the Royal Shakespeare Company may be of help:



Reminiscent of The Great Bear by Simon Patterson, another inspired (and indeed educational in a pop culture and stuff-it's-good-to-know sort of way) take on the iconic Tube mape.



(Not a brilliant quality image, so if anyone manages to find a better one online please inform me of it).

Patterson's idea sparked off many imitators, especially on the 'net, although most of the ones I've seen so far haven't been too inspired. One of the few exceptions is arguably The Guardian's map of musicians and musical genres (the accompanying article upon which can be found here). Largely though, they don't succeed to the same degree as Patterson's version. I'd be interested to see any other versions of the Tube map people know of, though.

Awareness Test

I was first shown this during a professional development course. I think it's fantastic. Just watch.

3.something

A few days ago was pi-approximation day, and so, in its honour, I present a little script which can be used to calculate the best pi-approximations using not just the day and the month, but also the year...

http://www.thetelf.co.uk/projects/piday.php

Enjoy...

P.S. I'm sure it'll be very easy to break, since I knocked it up in a couple of lunchtimes, so please be nice...

Harry Potter and the Halfway Point

I've just seen Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince I worked a 12-hour day at work yesterday and am knackered so I shall review it thusly:

Characters:
• Jim Broadbent was brilliant. Wonderfully captured Professor Slughorn. Shines out in an excellent cameo as Kenneth Branagh did in the Chamber of Secrets.
• Alan Rickman was very good, but at times Snape still remains a bit too opaque for the audience to connect with what, if anything, he might be thinking. At least he doesn't mince so much anymore. In the first film, I kept expecting him to break into song. He was too camp for words.
• Daniel Radcliffe was a lot better in this film and he has great comic timing, but he still can't pull off the heavy stuff. Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy acted him off the screen in ever scene they had together and held his own a lot more comfortably with Michael Gambon et al at crucial points. You genuinely felt Draco's pain and confusion, though you never really, truly, felt Harry's.
• Maggie Smith, good but just seems like she's going through the motions.
• Helena Bonham Carter, beautifully demented, shame she's not in it more.
• Evanna Lynch, effortlessly weird, sadly underused.
• Rupert Grint, the best of the main three, but it's a shame he's not given more to do besides comic relief.
• Emma Watson, not nearly so annoying and over done as in previous films, though her friendship with Radcliffe's Harry feels like a more convincing one than her supposed romantic entanglement with Ron.
• Bonnie Wright can actually act now. Surprising.
• Voldemort aged six/eight. Not very scary. Doesn't act interested enough in being a wizard. Sounds like a wannabe cockney rude boy. Voldemort aged 16ish, has metamorphosed into someone who sounds like he came from Eton. Charming and intimidating.
• The annoying thing were Fred and George talk in unison the whole time is back. Shudder.


Plot: SOME SPOILERS HERE.
• They go to school. Teenagers do that teenage thing. Large parts of the book missing. Not much takes a long time to happen. Suddenly, Dumbledore discovers a possible Horcrux. They go to look for it. They come back. Bad things happen. The end.
• Random additions such as an attack on the Burrow do nothing to move the film forward. Cutting the final battle at the end makes Draco's flight seem too easy and the film just sort of tails off. It was shame not to include Dumbledore's funeral but it was pretty long as it is.
• The dialogue was at times incredibly well done but at others also incredibly clunky just to fit as much exposition in as possible. There have to be better ways.

Cinematography:
• This film looks brilliant and the whole thing is leached of colour which gives a sombre and foreboding feel to it. It's not quite black and white but it's getting there. A lot of people wear a lot of black.
• Scenes are nicely linked together, with characters, usually Draco Malfoy, appearing in interesting bits of the screen framed in an usual way, propelling us into the next bit of the film.
• The visual effects are all very smoothly done, though the Inferi in the cave scene are not very convincing and the fire seems a little overdone.

General:
• Could have done with a bit less teenage romance. It's funny and well-acted, but the film could have been shorter without it. I've been reading the book again and have come to the conclusion that it's just there to hide the fact that not much happens in this book. Harry does his sixth year at Hogwarts. The end. The book is filler and while this film tries hard not to be, there's not that much it can do to avoid it.
• It can't have escaped the film makers' notice that the particular angle at which they shoot Ron and Cormac McClaggen astride their broomsticks with handles protruding from between their legs is indecently phallic. Seriously, it's not just me.

Conclusion:
I have never been able to understand why anyone would go to see these films if they hadn't read the books. You only know that things are significant because they're so obviously signposted the whole way through and without the background knowledge some of the films big reveals, like the identity of the half-blood prince, make no sense. The plot of the films is strangely paper thin yet also trying to cram in an enormous amount of information, but it's not always the right information. The strange thin and thickness of the plot may be because the pacing is very choppy between ACTION and exposition. I enjoyed it very much and liked the ending and can't wait for the next two. But I know I only like them because I fill in all the details of the books myself. I know I only put up with the methadone of the films because the supply of heroin of new Harry Potter books has long been exhausted.

Badverts

Advertising in its various forms can be inspired. At the moment, on TV at least, it certainly isn't. A selection of the worst TV ads on at the moment:

Confused.com - I think my main bone of contention with these is that Confused.com actually want you to believe that people record themselves on YouTube talking about car insurance comparison websites. Add to that the fact that the people on the ads are at best not very believeable as genuine members of the public, and at worst are annoying enough to make me want to stick a fork through their skull. Especially the guy who gives "hilarious" examples of questions that "other price comparison sites" ask you. Except that they aren't hilarious, just annoying. Fits in with the rest of the advert then.

Envirofone - In a similar vein to Confused.com, except that it has even worse production values (which considering Confused.com has made theirs look like YouTube is pretty impressive by Envirofone). The backgrounds look like the makers of the advert have simply picked some generic neon tie dye backgrounds found in a five second Google image search. The people chosen are again painfully unconvincing as average people, and the fact that they've been chosen to appear diverse (the first three being: Asian man, Welsh woman, punk with over-the-top spiked mohican) makes that even more apparent. The worst has to be the bloke who shouts "WONGA!" into the camera in a feeble attempt at a cockney accent, so feeble it doesn't even deserve to be called mockney. Whenever Mr. WONGA! comes on screen I want to dispatch him and every other loser on the advert as quickly and violently as possible. Other reasons for annoyance include the sheer lack of information on the advert, almost to the point of false advertising (so, I'll get £50 for my old Nokia 321o that I used about ten years ago, will I? I highly doubt it), and the fact that the man I assume is meant to be a biker (although I only assume this from his beard, seeing as his accent sounds more like a cross between Seann William Scott and Alan Carr) is wearing a shirt that I own. Bollocks.

John Frieda: Sheer Blonde - The only version I could find on YouTube has a German (?) voiceover in the middle, but it doesn't take away from my point. The whole premise behind this advert is just shockingly bad. Woman with blonde hair interrogated by second-rate good-cop-bad-cop team. The advert has a mainly American feel, and yet the accents and the newspaper clearly point to England as the setting. London, to be precise. The whole thing just feels, well, shit.

Savlon Advanced Healing Gel - I can just imagine the advertising ideas guys at Savlon Towers sitting in the board room agonising over the idea for the new Savlon advert. Then, after hours, maybe days of crap idea after crap idea, they finally had to settle on this as the best of a bad bunch. "Well, some kids might buy fake wounds to pretend they've got injured... I mean, I know my kid wouldn't, but maybe yours... No? Fuck it, let's go with it anyway". It's just rubbish any way you look at it. Not funny. Doesn't make me want Savlon. Twatty little kid in my face on the telly. Interestingly, looking this one up on the 'net led me to find out that it had received ten complaints. Eight of these ten apparently thought the advert "glamorised wounds" - okay, I can stretch to that - "and could be seen to condone knife crime amongst the young". Wait, what? If you haven't done so yet, watch the ad. Spot any knives, among the young or otherwise? Maybe the ad at a stretch encourages bad bike riding, but we don't even see the bike crash, just hear it after watching Twatty ride past and make the leap ourselves. At the end, a bunch of eight-year-olds look at Twatty's obviously fake cuts and grazes in a park. Yep, obviously off to stab someone for their iPod Touch once the sun sets.

As we seem to be receiving such a wealth of toss from the people in TV ad land, maybe I'll make a follow up to this entry. I'm also going to unearth some of my favourite adverts from years gone by and put them up here soon. Feel free to let me know of any other truly bad, or indeed truly great, ads that you see.

Overheard II

On a bus coming into Wimbledon on a Thursday morning. A group of teenage girls discussing where to get cheap designer clothes*:

Girl 1: "Yah, you should go to Ashford."
Girl 2: "I went down Portsmouth. Was well cheap."
Girl 3: "Is Sweden a country?"
Girl 2: "um..."
Girl 1: "Yes, Sweden's a country"
Girl 3: "Then I went Swindon"
Girl 1: "Yeah, Swindon's the town, Sweden's the country"

Girl 2: "I thought Swindon was the country"

* I think this is what they were talking about. I'm not an expert on fashion, clothes or teenage girls, so, really, it could have been anything.

Linkables 10/7/9

First dance? Now that's a first dance...

And you thought you knew how to peel a banana...

Cool visual illusion.

The slightly bizarre new Tango adverts don't get a great reaction everywhere, but personally I really like them. Although the initials of the phrase on the can is either a massive oversight, or some very ballsy advertising.

Possibly not for the faint-hearted: Wikipedia's list of unusual deaths.

Interesting metafilter thread asking for cross-cultural strangeness.

Harry Potter: Not just Christians are against it...

Have a fun weekend now :)

Hell is Virgin Media

So, I finally have home broadband in my new house after several weeks of trying to get it transferred from my old address. I could provide an incredibly detailed account of exactly what happened with lots of description and emotional reflection, but I just can't bring myself to do that. I started writing out a simple blow-by-blow account of my dealings with Virgin Media including dates, but I just couldn't bring myself to finish that either. So here's what you need to know: Virgin Media are the worst company I have ever had to deal with (and believe me, Hayley and I have had trouble with quite a few companies recently). Here's a selection of reasons as to why that statement is true.

• They have given me three activation dates over the past five weeks. On the first two, my account was not activated. The third I didn't want, but they put it in anyway without asking me.
• Told me various things that weren't true about problems with my order, and assured me they were true.
• Cancelled my account at my request. Except that they didn't cancel it properly. So when I tried to get a new account set up with O2 Broadband, O2 were unable to proceed as the line was occupied by my "cancelled" Virgin account.
• Told me (quite rudely) that my account definitely was cancelled even after I told them the technical details O2 had given me. After I refused to accept this, I was put on hold, and then told (rather sheepishly) that the account had now been removed from the line and would take a further 48 hours to clear.
• Sent me two bills detailing connection fees of over £80 each. Told me not to worry, as I would not be charged any connection fees. One then came out of my account anyway, meaning I had to contact Virgin again to request a refund, which was sent by cheque.
• Assured me I would be contacted by phone on several occasions, and never got back to me, meaning I then had to call them. Again. And again. And again.

If Hell exists, for me it will be perpetually trying to sort out broadband for my burning, sulphurous corner of Satan's neck of the woods with Virgin Media. I will never-endingly sit on "hold" listening to their eclectic mix of "hold" music (jumpstyle drum and bass one minute, classical string quartet the next - "Oh, look at us, we can mindlessly juxtapose genres, aren't we cool and down with absolutely everyone!"... No, you fucking aren't). And I will sporadically be put through to a customer service advisor who gives me another date in an endless string of activation dates for all eternity.

If I never have anything to do with them ever again it will be too soon. My advice at the moment is to go with O2 Broadband. Aside from when they could do nothing as Virgin was still ruining my life, they've so far done everything in a straightforward and pleasing manner. That said, after all the trouble I've had, my feeling towards home broadband is currently akin to the feeling one has towards food after having a particularly painful and violent case of food poisoning. If we're still connected in a fortnight with no problems, maybe I'll be back to my former gorging self.

Something for Bambi

And other English pedants

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article6586237.ece

Linkables 26/6/9

Broken Picture Telephone is the web-based version of the Chinese-whispers-style game where you alternate drawing pictures from a description and describing what you see in a picture until you end up with a transition of images and pictures that ends up miles away from its origin. It's great fun to do online, and some of the results are brilliant. Here are some of the ones I've taken part in so far.

Great message-board addition, with added dinosaury awesomeness...

Speaking of dinosaurs, an awesome and thoroughly confusing Dinosaur comics guest comic.

And by the same guest, MSPaintAdventures. I really like the idea of writing a story based on user-suggested actions, and though he seems to have moved somewhat away from that according to the description on the site, I still found the latest story to be enthralling and hilarious. Your experience may vary, of course, especially if you're not a programmer who enjoys interactive fiction.

Auto-tune the news. Indescribable madness in the key of C. #2 and #5 are particularly fab.

On a more serious note, you can examine what your MP has been splurging on. I take particular delight in noting that my MP spent £3.67 of my money on paper plates. For what dark purpose, though? Those MPs, always up to something...

The main problem with this digital age in which we live? It's no longer possible to impress people with incredible sheep-related stunts, because everyone will insist that it's faked.

BBC readers react to MJ news

9/10 of the most watched news clips...
...and 8/10 of the most read news stories...
...but at least people are still sharing the wallaby story...

A change of profession, perhaps...?

I just took the BBC News Magazine's online GCSE English Literature quiz. I got four our of seven. Oh bollocks.

In my defence, whilst the questions are all regarding potential GCSE English Literature texts, the quiz is just that - a quiz with multiple choice answers - and not an examination. You would never find a multiple choice question in a GCSE English Lit paper, nor would you find a question which gives you one mark for a "right answer". Of the three I missed out on, only one will I hold my hands up that I should have got it right (the one about Much Ado About Nothing). One I missed because I've never read Jane Eyre, and another because in my view there was more than one "right answer", and it just so happened that BBC Bitesize defined the other one as "right". Essentially, it felt more like a recollection of facts about GCSE Literature texts than an examination of actual understanding, which is what literary study is all about. The question on Of Mice And Men I also felt as an English teacher and graduate was open to debate on which answer would get me a mark. I might write more about the purpose (if any) of the quiz at a later date, but as I'm at work at the moment I'll leave it at that for now.

Anyway, have a go yourself and see if you know more about English Literature than I do.

Also, I should have teh interwebz back at home from this afternoon (finally... *pained groan* [not necessarily from missing the 'net but from the hassle of actually trying to get my account transferred to my new address]), so my entries here should hopefully increase in frequency.

Ryanair

God I hate them.

Part of me wants to leave this post there but I feel I should give some sort of motive. So here's an example of why a part of me hopes that their offices burn to the ground and all the wings fall off their planes, possibly plucked by some righteous, loner, school boy, god plucking wings off flies.

Last night we were booking tickets for a family holiday to Spain. The flights aren't really that cheap anyway and then you come to all the additional costs:

Quite annoying - £20 to take up to 15kg of luggage (and woe-betide you if you take more). Luggage, what exatly is in their hold otherwise? I mean, they have bought standard model planes, which presumably have exactly the same hold capacity as every other airlines planes. I can only assume that their holds are somewhat empty because everyone flying with them is wearing as much clothing as possible with as big a piece of handluggage as possible, trying to squeeze into hot, tiny seats.

Also annoying is the card handling fee - £20. £5 per passanger, per flight (two people on returns). I am still only going to be paying once, and presumably they're not going to re-run the transaction at every check-in to take my money gradually. The only card on their list which wouldn't attract a fee is the Ryanair Creditcard, although I wouldn't be surprised if it charged you both to pay for things with it and to then repay it, after all having computers that can run electronic transactions does cost money and is a luxury that more frugal card holders can manage without.

Most annoying however is the £20 charge for online check in. Again, £5 per passanger per flight. This is charging me to save Ryanair money because now they won't need to have a lady waiting to view my passport, and take my bag. Although wait, you will because I'm taking a bag. Maybe that was what the bag charge was for. Anyway, in notes to the side of this is the following warning: If you don't check in online (and print out your bording cards) they will charge you £40 per passanger per flight to provide you with bording cards. Surely part of the cost of a flight should include the right to actually get on the flight? The thing here is that if the flights had just cost more and there had been the option either to pay more for non-online check-in or the option to save by taking online check-in then I wouldn't be annoyed.

Rant rant rant rant rant.

Anyway, basically I find their whole philosophy of getting you to pay extra for every tiny item you want in addition to just having a plane with fuel and a pilot just so that they can claim low prices is wrong. Especially with costs that aren't actually optional and don't appear to bear any resemblance to the actual cost involved. This is a style of business that I don't want to succeed, There's no reason Ryanair can't be cheap and profitable and still act in the reasonable way all other airlines do.

So I pledge that other than this flight (which was forced by family things) I will not fly by Ryanair*.

*Unless of:
- peer / family pressure
- no other option on a particular route
- Ryanair change of policy

Linkables 11/6/9

How to teach a child to argue.

The story of a longboard rescue.

Charlie Brooker on the BNP

How to start something big from nothing at all, just by standing out.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Who knew?

Report on getting computer-generated nonsense accepted to "peer-review" journals.

And finally, would you go into space if it meant standing on a 15km tall inflatable ladder?

Linkables 28/5/9

How to be persuasive.

How to open a suitcase with a pen.

In a move that will interest basically nobody, I link to a video of a ridiculous goal.

As seen in various TED talks, Gapminder.

LyricsWiki, for song lyrics without having to trawl through random unreadable and potentially dangerous "lyrics" search results.

Who to vote for in the upcoming European elections.

And finally, a game in which you play a cowboy riding a giant sperm.

"Have you ever been raped?"

NB: This post is more a series of connected thoughts than a coherent argument. I was just struck by some links between random areas of my life.

For a long time, I never referred to myself as a feminist. I preferred to say I was an egalitarian, as I believe men and women possess some different and some similar characteristics but you should never assume someone's gender automatically determines their actions. In addition, just because a man may act one way and a woman another, it doesn't mean that either course of action, or the characteristics that lead to them taking it is more valuable. Societies are unequal when acting in a certain way or displaying a particular characteristic is seen as preferable and normal. Being egalitarian seemed to confuse people, so I eventually gave up and started calling myself a feminist.

I never subscribed to the argument that, physically, women could ever be as strong as men. It can happen, but from all the time I've spent fighting men in Judo, I know it's not that common. But, as a woman, I can move faster, I'm more flexible. And depending on the build of the man I'm fighting, I can be stronger. In short, everything is relative. If my technique is better, I can win. If I fight more intelligently, I can win. In Judo, it's possible, because strength is not paramount. In boxing, however, I would never feel comfortable fighting a man in a proper fight. They'll always be able to hit harder than me, because more of their body consists of muscle. A certain amount of power in the punch comes from your legs. My legs are bigger than most guys I've boxed with, but I store fat there, they just have muscle. Where they have pecs, I have breasts. They don't tone up so well, even if I wanted them to. Unless I all-out body build, I reckon a bloke the same weight and height as me will always hit harder.

It seems I'm not the only one who has noticed this unwillingness to admit the differences. In his latest, really excellent A Point of View", Clive James points out the importance of democracy to feminism by celebrating the election of the first four women MPs to the Kuwaiti Parliament. You have to install RealPlayer to listen to it, but it really is worth it. He gently criticises those feminists in the West who think liberal democracies are not liberal enough.

He makes the point that where violence holds sway, rather than argument, women are always worse off. Even when violence is not the ruling force, you can't argue away the differences. Listening to this broadcast in the car on the way home, a lot of thoughts that had been swimming idly around in my head like lazy tadpoles suddenly coagulated into a shoal of thought with some purpose.

Mainlining The Wire on DVD lately has frightened me because, for the majority of characters in it, death is a constant threat. I know they exist in a world that is a) not necessarily real and b) not mine, but it reached the point where I started feeling the only reason I was alive was because no one had decided to shoot me yet. I haven't done anything to deserve being shot, that I'm aware of, but the frequency of death in the show brought home how fragile life is. There are not many female characters in it, but it does show at times that, give a woman a gun and she can murder indiscriminately with the best of them.

I also recently finished watching Firefly and the last two episodes gave me pause for thought. In the penultimate one, a band of whores fights attempts by a local man with money to try to steal a baby from one of them. They are presented as legitimate business women refusing to kneel under the yoke of a male oppressor. Again, give a woman a gun and she can murder, though this time discriminately, with the best of them. It's all relative. Guns take away the advantage of strength. Clive James makes the same point.

In the final episode, a bounty hunter lands on Serenity and breaks into the ship. He knocks out the captain and sets about disabling the crew in one way or another. In a truly horrible scene, he says to Kaylee, the ship's female mechanic "Have you ever been raped?" in the same way you might say "Have you ever eaten Thai food?" It got me thinking, if someone spoke to me like that, discussing it casually, making it sound inevitable, what would my reaction be? Would I fight them? Would I acquiesce? Patrick and I had a discussion a long time ago about whether we'd be murdered or raped. As I recall, he could come to a definite answer. I really couldn't.

The bounty hunter even says at one point "Men are always stronger than women. Yet it takes a woman to make a child, what's that all about?" No one answers him in the show, but thinking about it, perhaps I'd say you don't need the same kind of strength to make a child as you do to kill someone. It's all relative.

Clive James mentions in his broadcast how some of the first female MPs in Iraq were murdered by men to make an example of them. In a situation like that, when someone tries to kill you, they're frightened of what you represent. Change.

I'm not really sure what my conclusion is, except that I don't want to need a gun to defend myself. Being a feminist or an egalitarian or whatever I am can some times be difficult in a liberal democracy, because it can be hard to distinguish between the important things to get upset about and those that can really just wait. I know for certain that I'm very lucky. I think the TV episodes made me uncomfortable because they made me realise just how cocooned and special my liberty is, compared with a lot of other women out there. I wish there was more I could actively do to help them.

Cutest Video Ever!

I challenge you not to awwwww at it.

Business Challenge

Watching the Apprentice last night (I know, it's all I talk about nowadays*) I decided it was like a business-oriented Scrapheap challenge. When someone actually wants to build a go kart (or a trebuchet, or a speedboat, or any other Scrapheap-type contraption) in the real world, there are lots of steps to go through - materials and suppliers need to be sourced and researched, schematics drawn up and experts consulted. But for the purposes of entertainment, these considerations are put aside, and the competitors are encouraged to build something without the necessary materials and time that will almost certainly not work particularly well. But then that doesn't matter, as there's nothing riding on it, and it's just a bit of fun.

So then, contrast with the Apprentice where there is ostensibly something riding on it (how much, or how little is open to interpretation), and where it is supposedly "business" skills that are being tested. Like scrapheap challenge, then, the tests are done without appropriate materials or time, but there is none of the sense of friendly competition about it (because the Apprentice is real and serious, dontchaknow), and the results of the tests are given huge importance. Imagine if the winning team in scrapheap challenge was offered an engineering position at Ferrari? That wouldn't be fair, of course, because why does building a war machine that happens not to fall apart quite as quickly as your opponents' qualify you for anything (other than perhaps a humorous trophy)?

In the same way, I find the idea of putting together a pitch to rebrand a Kent town in two days flat with no experience, expertise, resources or time to be a pretty strange way of testing business nous. Someone who could well have done the job brilliantly in reality might fail on the task for any number of reasons beyond their control - factors provided by the context of the task and the structure of the program.

Clearly, this is true of any interview (or indeed any situation in which someone's ability is judged), but for a show that is constantly reaffirming that it is testing "business" skills, it relies an awful lot on standard reality-tv task tropes. In scrapheap challenge, the teams spend 5 minutes choosing what to build, and then hours building it. Throughout, the smallest problem can scupper a team's (possibly badly laid) plans. Rather than being a test of engineering skill (in as much as an entertainment program can be any kind of real test, naturally), it is a test of ingenuity and luck - no bad thing in itself, of course. Eventually someone comes out on top, because their machine, made out of different parts, to a different design happens to do better. It's entertaining, but it's not particularly rigourous. In a real engineering situation, there would be research, feedback, and, if a plan was obviously going wrong, the chance to put back the deadline in favour of quality. Obviously none of this matters, because scrapheap challenge isn't pretending to be a rigorous test, it's a competition, and competitions can rely on luck.

The Apprentice, on the other hand, is supposed to be an interview - a specific test of ability in which the most able person comes out on top, but is structured like a casual competition, where luck plays enough of a role to keep things entertaining, with rules that benefit some over others. Anita might be a brilliant businesswoman, but we'll never know, because she got a fraction of the time available to the other interviewees to show what she could do. You might be able to learn something about someone by putting them in a high pressure situation in which they might easily do everything right and still come out on the losing team, but doing it twelve times doesn't necessarily give you the person with the best business mind.

In last night's episode, when Sir Alan asked what the cause of the failure was, a response of "we were given no time at all to do a job we're not experts at, without the possibility of research or feedback, we had to go with the first idea we came up with, and with a small pre-set team, we lacked the specific skills required for portions of this task" would not necessarily have been out of place. Essentially, with so much restricted by the framework of the competition, there's no way of telling success-by-skill from success-by-circumstance.

My real problem with the Apprentice, of course, is not that it has this structure, since it is welcome to have any structure it likes, but that I feel it is making claims to rigour and accuracy that it cannot possibly deliver on given the constraints present in the program. And so no matter how entertaining I find the buying and selling and marketing-speak, I can't ever quite get past the idea that they may as well be building giant crossbows out of car parts.

* it's pretty much 100% of the broadcast TV I watch these days, and hence, I like to believe, this kind of indulgent blog-focus is allowable.

Linkables 13/5/9

Snatch Wars

Fast paced word-creation game.

Article busting some of the myths behind which side of the road particular countries drive on.

Victorian riddles, and surreal re-imaginings of them.

From New Scientist: 13 things that don't make sense.

Type a word or phrase and get back a picture and caption at milk information. Sometimes garbage, sometimes strangely perfect.

Where are you in the movie?

In the beginning...

...Wolverine was a little boy called James with a tendency to shoot bone claws out of his hands when particularly enraged or upset. He had an older brother called Victor who grew his finger nails long when the violent urge was upon him. It is said both brothers fought with animal-like ferocity and a strength inhuman. They discovered early on their limitless capacity to cheat death and regenerate their physical substances and fought in many wars. The endless killing became the consuming passion for older brother Victor and hence, the two brothers found themselves facing execution at dawn by a firing squad for the murder of a senior army officer.

Having come through this unscathed, the indestructible siblings caught the attention of a military scientist by the name of Colonel William Stryker...

So begins X-Men Origins: Wolverine, one of the better movies I have seen in the cinema in recent months, though this verdict may be slightly influenced by the fact that the last three films I saw were The Boat That Rocked (amusing, if sexist and with a plot so thin it would fit with room to spare between the testicles of a gnat), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (too long, somewhat boring, apparently shot mostly in a sepia-like colour palette for no good raisin and ultimately unsatisfying) and Marley & Me (let's not even *go* there).

I really enjoyed this film. It was perhaps a little long and at times felt unfocused, with the reveals of several plot twists coming a little thick and fast on each other towards the end. But these late additions nicely resolved various earlier sections of the film which seemed inadequately explained.

After the car crash that was X-Men 3, the motivations of this film's characters was much more realistic and considered. Although one wonders if, having made a man indestructible, the top military dudes really thought sending another mutant after him with a couple of guns was going to do the trick? It did provide a stunning action set piece for the film, but predicated on a completely ridiculous starting point. Still, don't let that stop you enjoying it.

Hugh Jackman obviously wanted this project to succeed because he's listed as one of the producers and he does work as the lynchpin of the story although Liev Schreiber's character, that of his brother, at times steals the show and could have done with a bit more elaboration. As this is the explanation of why Wolverine is as he is, it's wrong to expect the swaggering Logan we know and love, but at times he is just a little weak. And when he says he's going to kill everyone, there's not always enough weight behind the threat. There are, however, a lot of cool fights scenes and either impressively ripped/manicured/made-up men pounding seven kinds of hell out of each other at regular intervals. The final two-way fight between three people on top of a nuclear power plant stack is gripping and well-realised.

There are some nagging threads to this film. At one point Wolverine is with an elite gang of mutants working for the military. Their powers are never really explained. One guy is really, really, really good with guns and jumps about a lot. Same for another dude, but swords are more his thing. Yet another guy just punches things. HARD. When Wolverine is re-visiting them later in the film to find out what's been going on, their knowledge about the TOP SEKRIT military stuff seems is patchy and inconsistent one minute and briliantly on the money the next. Having said all that, there are some pleasing nods to the films that preceded it in the making, which helps when tying all the threads of the story together. I've never read the comics or watched the cartoon, so don't know how annoyed to be by all the non/canon and continuity stuff. All I can contribute on this level is that's amusing that a character as fey as Gambit is played by someone called Taylor Kitsch. If that really is his real name, I salute him.

Also, stay in the cinema until the end of the credits for a tease of what's to come. There are two apparently. But I missed the last one because my fellow cinemagoers were getting impatient.

I'm not one to rate things out of ten, but that's what people seem to do on this blog when reviewing films, so I give it three bananas, a bottle of fairy liquid and four chupa chup lollipops. Go see it. It's dark, fun, well-acted by a skilled ensemble cast and lots of buildings get seriously damaged. Rock on.