Good scenes in not-so-good films

Okay, so not all these films are what I'd call "bad" per se, but certainly none of them are classics. Here's my offerings, although I'm sure there's plenty more that I could mention.


You Don't Mess With The Zohan - opening chase scene



Zohan by and large is a stinker. Misfire after misfire at political and ethnic satire, crude sex jokes that are about as subtle as a baseball bat to the scrotum, and Rob Schneider as a "foreign" cab driver. It sits firmly in the Adam Sandler pile labeled "ones to miss". But watching the first ten minutes, you would be mistaken (as I was) to think that maybe the film is a well-observed action/secret agent film parody. The chemistry between Turturro and Sandler is excellent, and the jokes by and large mainly hit the mark fairly well. Not perfect, but a very funny scene. Shame the rest of the film is such a steaming pile of Schneider.


Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story - The Beatles scene



Walk Hard is not a bad film. It's actually a fairly good film in many ways. But it's also a film that suffers from having long sections that are distinctly average, jokes that either don't go far enough or are done to death, and some parts that you really wish were funnier. The standout scene for me was definitely the fantastic Beatles parody provided through cameos from Paul Rudd, Jason Schwartzman, Justin Long and Jack Black. The Liverpudlian accents range from poor to almost unrecognisable, but that just makes it all the more funny. The reference to Yellow Submarine works well. But it's the interaction between the four "Beatles" that just cracks me up every time. "I've got a song about an octopus!".


Matrix Revolutions - The final battle between Neo and Smith



Towards the end of the third and final Matrix film, after all the needlessly drawn out stuff about giant mechanoid fighting machines and all the religious imagery, the Wachowskis remembered what a lot of people went to see The Matrix to watch: kick ass kung fu fighting scenes with ace choreography. And whilst it's not flawless, the final fight between Keanu Reeves and Hugo Weaving under a raging thunderstorm whilst an infinite number of Weavings watching this shit go down, is simply great.


Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End - Jack in Purgatory



Much like the third Matrix film, the third Pirates film suffers from simply being too long and overindulgent, giving us overlong sea battles, a huge amount of confused pirate mythology and folklore and generally not a great deal to care about. This scene is one of the film's few saving graces, being as it is gloriously surreal and very well executed, so much so that it doesn't really feel like part of the same film. Johnny Depp is on top form, giving us a truly classic Jack Sparrow moment that rivals any other from all three of the Pirates films so far. It's a shame that for the majority of the film Depp's character takes a backseat to the long list of other characters and scenes such as Geoffrey Rush marrying Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley during a pirate battle, with Rush in full Captain Birdseye/Sea-Captain-from-The-Simpsons mode.


I'll leave the list there for now, but there are a few more that are coming to mind even as I type this, so I may do a second installment of something along these lines. Essentially, the way I've presented these clips - by the power of YouTube - shows that having one standout scene in a film isn't necessarily a hindrance to the film these days. The internet, and even DVD scene selection, means you can enjoy the ten minutes worth watching out of a two hour film full of mediocrity with relative ease. Then move on to the next bitesize piece of entertainment, I guess. Good or bad, it's the age in which we live.

I can't do this

Dear all,

Well I mean to say, wow. Look at you all, blogging away like there's no tomorrow. How very proud of you I am. I'm aware that this challenge was open to all, and much as I would love to accept, I really can't. That's not to say I'm resigning from contributing, far from it. I would love to contribute far more than I already do and have several ideas.

What I lack, is time. I moved on to a daily paper five months ago. While I still lived an hour away from work in the car, this was problematic in itself. Last week I moved house and now seem to be working an insane amount of nights, though I do now have internet after 10 days without.

Currently, my inspiration is job-related and I can't say anything because I'm covering a murder trial and have to be careful not to write anything, anywhere, that would create a substantial risk of serious prejudice to that trial, as defined by the Contempt of Court Act. That's not to say that I would, either here or in print, but I think I'll feel more relaxed generally, if I know there's nothing written outside of work that's going to leave me with cause for concern by its mere existence.

But mostly, my problem is that because I write for a living, it's not something I'm hugely fond of doing as a leisure activity. After making words line up in a coherent, and hopefully interesting, order all day, it's not really what I like to do with my free time. And I find that while I plan blog posts in my head during the day, I get home and they've drifted out of my brain and I can never quite recapture the same elegant turns of phrase I had so carefully thought up earlier.

So I'm afraid I shall have to decline the challenge, Thanks, but no thanks. I shall certainly try and contribute more in future, but I'm wary of setting any yardstick because my job is rather unpredictable and I would almost inevitably fail to meet it. Which would make me sad and demoralised. And no one wants that.

And to anyone who may accuse me of wussing out, I will extend a middle digit in their general direction with this imperative attached: "Swivel."

I have a whole day of shorthand to transcribe. I thank you.

Guilty or Not Guilty

Two very different stories with very different outcomes:

The first involves two very religious parents who rather than take their diabetic child to hospital instead prayed for her as she died. Article here (BBC). Punishment - 6 months for each parent to be taken as one month per year for six years. The judge wants them to "think about Kara and what God wants you to learn from this".

The second involves a texan man who was convicted of killing his three daughters by arson and executed in 2004. It has since turned out that the key evidence used to convict him had no basis in modern fire science and that he was probably innocent. Long article here (New Yorker) but well worth reading.

I don't think that these cases are comparable but both highlight the danger in not using science over folklore. The differing sentences say something about the US justice system and how it deals with religion and also how the poor can (or can't) defend themselves.

There's obviously also a huge amount more to be said about either case but I have to get back to work.

It's close to mi-i-i-idnight...

So, I've been at school for over twelve hours because of open evening, hence the need for a relatively uncomplicated post here as I'm fairly knackered. The death of Michael Jackson is something that I haven't mentioned here since it happened a little over three months ago, although I've come close to doing an entry about Jackson on more than one occasion. I was a Jackson fan (not one of the huge devotees, but I have a genuine appreciation of his music and own several of his albums) and admit to feeling somewhat strange upon hearing the news one morning in late June this year. I was sad, but not entirely surprised. The man left the world in the fashion in which he'd lived in for a large part of his life - amidst spectacle, speculation and a mixture of devotion and hate from the public. To my mind, he clearly had serious problems for the last few years of his life (at least). But his music was consistently of a high quality. Even Invincible, his last studio album, which received a lukewarm reception, contained examples of R'n'B, hip hop and pop superior to those in the charts at the time. Jackson's influence is undeniable, and not just because that's what all the tribute shows and tabloid articles have told us is the case. It is evident throughout pop culture. Jackson seems to have been remembered for his music rather than the controversy and media circus that surrounded his life during the 21st Century, and for that I am glad.

So, with MJ in mind, here's some of the bollocks that has swept the internet since his passing. First of all, The Telegraph handily rounds up some of the most outlandish conspiracy theories to come about surrounding Jackson's death, with my favourite being that he was assassinated by Ahmadinejad to deflect attention away from the Iranian election.

Of course there are those who believe the King of Pop is still with us as a ghost at the Neverland Ranch. This claim is backed up even further by Jackson's appearance at Neverland again behind his brother during an interview. But hold on. How can Jackson be at Neverland when he's clearly moved to Stafford to enjoy his afterlife?

And just to finish off, my favourite of Weird Al's Michael Jackson parodies, complete with video that pays remarkable attention to detail. Hee hee.

TODO: Some sort of pun on "hair"

I went for a haircut last night - a stressful experience for someone who up until recently got his hair cut at the very reasonably priced barbershop-of-the-parents.

Having picked a place based on it being on my way home from work (a glowing recommendation, I'm sure anyone would agree) and on having no queue (in retrospect, possibly a bad sign), I scored the odd-hairdresser-out. Where his four fellow barbers were mid-twenties and black-clad, with modern spiked hair, he was white-shirted, red-faced and looked to be nearing retirement age. I thought I'd be getting the experienced option, but in fact, I might have ended up with a gentleman trying out a second career. If this were the case, picking a career that required steady hands might have been a mistake, and though I escaped without injury, more than once I felt the smooth glide of blade on ear.

"What do you want?" is a difficult question. What I really want is to have a thinner face, or at least a face which can sport a short haircut without looking like someone has carelessly left a doormat improbably balanced on top of a flesh hot-air balloon. This, though, is not something barbers can provide, in my experience so far. Hence, I normally mumble something about fringes and then let them get one with it.

Get on with it, however, this one did not. He kept re-evaluating the length and asking for my opinion: "This long?", "How about this long?". I just said yes every time, though I wanted to say "I have no earthly idea what would look good - please just make it a bit shorter and not look like total crap. That's all I want". I didn't, because that might have been construed as rude, and I was at something of a disadvantage, having my arms pinned at my sides, while he had several pairs of scissors and a straight razor.

In the end he stopped asking me, and just combed my hair back and forth, occasionally cutting at random strands, while remarking "..is very long..." and "...is very strange..." under his breath. At some arbitrary point he declared himself done, and I escaped with a new do which perfectly matched my internal request of not being total crap. Satisfied with the result if not totally with the experience, I'm unsure as to whether to venture within again, in case I'm not so lucky next time round.

Seriously, though - do people actually know what to ask for in barbers? I have no idea how to describe what I want it to look like, except for "like it is now, except a bit shorter all over". Does anyone ever actually take in pictures, or point at the ones on the wall?

nicely-trimmed blogathon score: 6

Whilst I wasn't posting

. . . at the weekend I was enjoying a wine tasting. Well, not all weekend, but it certainly hung around (or should that be over) into Sunday morning. Anyway, it was great fun and I recommend it to all (not Telf). Wine tasting / appreciation is one of those things I always think it would be quite cool to be good at, which probably handily sums up my view of what's cool. Being able to distinguish quality wine and really match it to food / atmosphere and being able to pick it out in a shop would be a pretty nice skill.

Anyway, the tasting itself involved 10 wines over about an hour and a half or so; 5 whites and 5 reds and was presided over by a friend's dad who certainly seemed very knowledeable. In between glasses he told us about matching wine to food, where to buy wine and other wine related trivia and we also chatted with those around us. Or at least other people socialised readily, I've never been that good at that (and was about 30 years younger than everyone else in the room). The wines varied greatly and some were extremely nice and made me feel maybe it would be worth spending a bit more per bottle than I normally would. That said I wouldn't know what to look for yet so it could just be a waste of money.

Overall I didn't have much to say today and not much time to say it in so that'll have to do. Wine good, good wine better.

Five cover versions I've enjoyed recently

1. Born Slippy by Barefoot (original by Underworld)
2. Freak On A Leash by Richard Cheese (original by Korn)
3. Jump Around by Moonbootica (original by House Of Pain)
4. Yellow Submarine by Roots Manuva (original by The Beatles)
5. Roses by Hayseed Dixie (original by Outkast)

I've mentioned cover versions on the blog before (only in one or two posts from what I can remember), but they are an area of music that I'm very interested in. I "collect" interesting covers, either mentally or by trying to get hold of them in some form. Some are good, some are average, some you really can't see the point of the cover being released as it's so similar to the original. But some just work so well they stick, occasionally even replacing the original. I don't know if any of the above five have replaced the originals for me yet (in the case of number 2 I heard the cover first anyway, and I'm not a huge fan of Korn and love Richard Cheese, so that one kind of had a head start), but they all bring something to the song that makes it the artist's own. And yet in each of them there is a faithfulness to, or at least appreciation of, the original. Whether the purpose is comedy or originality, or both, each of these cover versions has a spark of the original version in there, whilst creating an incredibly worthwhile alternative version.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy them at least some of the amount that I do.

Blogathon score: 5

11 things I have learned from living in a flat like a grown up

Housework has the ability to expand to fill all available free time. No matter how long is spent on it, the flat always looks "slightly in need of a clean".

Changing bedclothes on a double bed takes less time than you think it will. Washing up takes far, far more.

Other people do tiny bits of easy washing up in secret so that it's always your turn when there's a huge pile to clean.

Washing up is the punishment for enjoying a delicious meal, and can therefore be made more depressing if you're washing up old stuff from a night when you weren't even there. And the person who was cooking somehow made something using three roasting tins and an egg whisk.

Doing a set of washing is a chore, but doing all the washing in the flat and hanging it up to dry on every available hook, rail and prong in the flat is awesome and makes you feel like you're living in a 19th century industrial laundry.

Leaving the fridge open overnight is a terribly frustrating thing to do. Leaving it open twice in a week is something that can cause serious rifts in the household.

It is possible to intend to eat the same thing every day for a month and fail because you forgot to take it out of the freezer, leading to emergency trips to the local supermarket/takeaway for a suitable replacement every day.

You can buy food magazines, find delicious ideas, cut out recipes and stick them to the fridge all you like, but when push comes to shove, it always seems to be bolognese or baked potato for dinner.

The sooner all the house-cleaning robots arrive the better. After a days work, I'd take a chance of being-overthrown-by-our-creations in order to relax rather than do any cleaning.

While you're cleaning something, everything else in the flat gets a little bit dirtier just to spite you.

Fantasies about winning the lottery and owning a mansion become fantasies about hiring a maid.

super-polished blogathon score: 5

The Peter Principle

Nope, nothing to do with Family Guy (sorry guys) but instead the prinicple of promotion to incompetence. Wikipedia here. I guess it could fit Family Guy's Peter quite well although I don't know where he would be promoted from.

Anyway this was inspired by both an interesting (if light) FT comment piece on diversification to incompetence and its role in the current crisis (article here) and by an experience at an estate agents this weekend.

I had arranged on Thursday to view two properties with said estate agent on Saturday. The agent (lets call him Jason, it is his name) phoned me on Saturday morning about two hours before the viewing to say he couldn't show us one property as the keys were with another estate agent and he hadn't been able to get them. Possibly excusable although surely if you're acting as an agent for a landlord you would get your own f-ing keys. Surely that's a basic recquirement for acting as agent. Surely you don't rely on your competitors providing you with access. Anyway I accepted his apologies and agreed to see the other property anyway, we arrived to see Jason. He seemed happy to see us, got ready to head off and then . . . couldn't find the other f-ing keys! Apparently the plumber had them. Now why, when you've just not been able to get one set of keys would you not go and look for the other set and make sure you had them?

Anyway suffice to say we left with the understanding that when Jason came accross the keys we would still be happy to see the flats. Incompetence is not exactly uncommon amongst estate agents and so you can't just cut out those who are.

T is for "Torture"

So, at the beginning of the year, T-Mobile began a new advertising campaign with this:



The first time I saw this advert, I loved it. A simple idea executed well, incorporating a contemporary phenomenon (the flashmob) with neither audacity and claims of innovation, nor seeming to be desperately jumping on a bandwagon. I had no problem with T-Mobile at this point.

They then followed up with this advert:



I'm not quite sure how they've managed it, but T-Mobile have made me want to kill every single person who was in Trafalgar Square when these adverts were made. Whereas the dance flashmob was charming and came across without ego, the Trafalgar Square karaoke is to me almost the complete opposite. Everyone they show seems like a really annoying self-centred prick. And it doesn't help that none of the people are any good at singing. I know that's not necessarily an issue when it comes to karaoke (I have first hand experience of that), but if I'm at a karaoke night in a pub or a bar and the singing irritates me, I can leave. T-Mobile are shoving these obnoxious music-killers in my face via my very own television. Unfortunately, I can't find a clip of my least favourite of these adverts, which features a load of tossers yelling "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" as if Satan himself were poking a tender area of their bodies with a particularly sharp pitchfork to make sure they continue. Every time this version of the Trafalgar karaoke comes on, I hope with every fibre of my being that they show a special extended cut, where the Square is napalmed from above at the end, scorching each obnoxious twat into oblivion, before T-Mobile's jolly piano jingle rounds things off.

And then, most recently, T-Mobile gave us these adverts:





Again, I can't find a video clip of the TV version of this campaign, but hopefully if you haven't seen it you get the idea from these images. I can't decide if these grate on me more than the Trafalgar karaoke or not. The people in them are either incredibly dull, incredibly stupid or incredibly irritating. If the best thing you can think of to do with free texts for life is to have a really long argument with someone, then you either have serious problems or need to get out more. The girl who claims the idea is mind-boggling is equally irritating, as she's either incredibly easily impressed or incredibly thick. And the guy who says he'd start a revolution can just piss off.

So there you have it, a beginner's guide to how T-Mobile went from seriously impressing me to driving me to mass homicide in less than a year. Their next set of adverts could be pivotal in the direction my life follows.

Blogathon score: 4

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.