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.
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.
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.
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?
...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.
I was sitting in a restaurant yesterday with some friends, discussing the Apprentice.
I have mixed feelings about the Apprentice - on the one hand, it is clearly entertaining and compelling; finding the balance of I-could-do-that-task-better-than-them optimism and that-guy's-a-total-twat judgmentalism that makes Big Brother draw in so many viewers, while managing to avoid the feeling (a feeling I cannot escape with BB) that you're watching a bunch of mentally ill people being poked with a stick. On the other hand, it still feels awfully constructed - it may be "reality television", but it's not real people that we see every week, but the most entertaining facets of carefully selected people, smushed together into a nightmarish caricature of management speak and pressure-based utterances. I'd be lying if I claimed not to enjoy it, but the fact that what we see on screen has been so carefully constructed, edited and synced in order to entertain us, then taking anything other than entertainment away from it would be dangerous. Essentially, it's easy to say "Ben's such a twat", or "What kind of moron doesn't know how to wash a car", but since there's no way of knowing the origins, circumstances and hidden structures of what we're seeing on screen, I find it easier to watch as some sort of semi-improvised social fiction than any kind of actual contest or game.
Anyway, I was sitting in a restaurant yesterday with some friends, discussing the Apprentice, when they both revealed that they watched it while reading along with the Guardian's live blogging of the show.
"Oh", said I. "Is it any good?".
"Oooh yes", said they. "It's done by Anna Pickard. She's brilliant".
"Aha!", I pounced. "She's my cousin!".
So there you are. I officially claim my position as the relative of a famous person, as accredited by this unprompted name-dropping by someone who didn't know.
My cheque, I assume, is in the post.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Trailers for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.
Not to put to fine a point on it, but Oh. My. Fuck. Watch them full screen. It's fan-bloody-franken-tastic.
It's hard to explain how much these books mean to me. It's not so much the quality of the writing or the plots, both of which went seriously downhill after book four, but the completeness of the universe that JK Rowling created. During some of my lowest points during my growing up, this series gave me somewhere else to go. It was also what introduced me to the concept of online fandom and online interactivity as a whole. For three years or more, I co-wrote online stories on fan forums with sometimes as many as ten other people set in the Harry Potter universe. HP remains the only cultural marker I have ever written fanfic for. And no, it wasn't slash. My friends and I never played the characters in the books, but Hogwarts and its environs was our primary setting and through that writing I found long-lasting and wonderful friendship. I am still in touch with a good few of those people on a regular basis. The majority of our interaction is online, but the beauty of this kind of friendship is that you can always pick it up wherever you last left off.
The films were never as good as they could have been, I think the weight of expectation was always too great and as with the editors of the books, sometimes people just didn't know when to say no to those involved. However, aside from Chamber of Secrets, I don't think they have been truly awful. I certainly appreciated the pick up in pace for Prisoner of Azkaban. I enjoyed Goblet of Fire and have to say I can't remember Order of the Phoenix at all, though I did go and see it in the cinema. I may have to find and re-watch it before July 15. The adaptations always suffer from a lack of plot exposition and over-egging of the action in the final pudding, but I still enjoy them because they are a glorious realisation of a universe that has supported, sustained and encouraged me. Not only do they look fantastic as films, I also love the music which I think is just perfect. And whenever I go to see the films, I'm always carrying the memories of the books into the cinema with me which helps make up any deficiencies.
I think Philip Pullman is an infinitely superior writer to JK Rowling, Narnia will always be my first love, along with the Willard Price "Adventure" books and Enid Blyton boarding school stories, I think Hogwarts as an idea owed a helluva lot to Jill Murphy's The Worst Witch which I read when much younger, but I will always retain a special affection for HP. Now the books have ended, the films are something of a nostalgia fest for me, because my life has moved on in so many ways since that period when every new HP book was cause for serious excitement. On July 15, you know where you'll find me.
EDIT: Just been messing about on IMDB and discovered they are making Deathly Hallows in two parts. Talk about a money spinner. Part of me is delighted by this, but the rest of me feels we could well be in for epic fail.
An interesting video that's doing the rounds at the moment, demonstrating how Disney has "recycled" several of the same sequences in a number of their animated films over the years.
And stories covering the video in The Telegraph and The Times.
My thoughts...
The video, if nothing else, is compelling viewing. It's crafted to perfection, flowing seamlessly from one film clip to the next. The most surprising thing that's come out of this is the reaction from the "Disney fans" (read: people who commented on YouTube). From The Times:
“I feel so ripped off now. All the money I spend on this crap, they could at least come up with some original scenes,” wrote one viewer. “Our childhoods were based on a lie,” said another.
A little melodramatic, maybe? Oh wait, this is YouTube commenters. Maybe not then.
As a fan of Disney, do I feel "ripped off" or that my childhood is now "based on a lie"? Definitely not. The fact that a handful of scenes from a small number from Disney's dozens-strong canon of animated films have used the same animation sequences is fascinating to see, but certainly doesn't destroy the legacy that Disney has crafted. I find it surprising that the broadsheets would report the YouTube commenters as genuine commentators.
Returning back to the video itself, I found it remarkable that the video referencing system was used as late as 1991's Beauty And The Beast, and that the sequence reused was one from Sleeping Beauty, a film over years old at the time. I'll also be interested to see if any further compilations of this technique, from Disney films or otherwise, surface in the near future.
When it comes to films, I generally try to keep an open mind. I'll give most films a try and stick them through to the end (I've never walked out of a film in the cinema, and I've been to see some boring/excrutiating/embarrassing films in my time) mainly so that I can form my own opinion of them knowing that I've experienced them fully. Of course, there are films that I can be fairly certain I'll love, and others that I'll have a feeling I'm going to despise, based on past experience and personal taste. I try to go into a film with an open and objective mind, but obviously this can only be done to a certain extent.
I like to have an opinion on a film, no matter whether I'm already placing it within my all-time favourites or hoping my eyes and ears will never be besmirched by having to view or hear any portion of it again, and this opinion is invariably expressed through several outlets. Conversations with others is typically the starting point. These could be simply asking someone I know has seen the film too what they thought of it, or, if I'm speaking to someone I know is a fellow avid cinema fan, a more in-depth verbal analysis. Then there's reviewing films, which falls somewhere inbetween those two scenarios in terms of depth, but also has a separate function all together. I write a review of a film not just to let people know what I thought of a film, but also to record my own feelings about the film for my own reference, and thirdly, to produce a piece of writing that is coherent and engaging - basically, so that it's something other people will actually want to read.
My reviews currently appear in two places. I first write them on the Flixter application of Facebook. This application functions as a scratchpad for my immediate and initial thoughts and feelings on a film, where I usually write no more than a few sentences summing up what I think of it. Initially this decision was made as I became aware that the Flixter app is in no way linked to the Flixter website, and as such there's no storage of my reviews. If the app disappears for whatever reason, as far as I know so do my reviews, so I don't want to lose anything too detailed that I've actually put a fair amount of work into crafting. The primary reason now is because I much prefer my full reviews to appear in my second place: here.
And so, I finally head towards the crux of this entry (yes, there is one - and thank you for sticking with it so far). I've written quite a few reviews, some very basic, others more detailed. But ultimately, whether on Facebook or on here, they all boil down to the same conclusion: a score out of ten. And this is where I often find the greatest difficulty in my reviews. I can ramble on and on about the cast, the writing, the special effects, the direction, and any number of other things for as long as you like. But when it comes to giving a film a score, I often have to work very hard to not make it an arbitrary figure chosen as part of a trite exercise.
Here's the general rule by which I work. A totally average film - one that doesn't particularly do anything wrong, but also doesn't do anything particulary well - will receive five out of ten, roughly in the middle. Films I've given this score include such forgettable fodder as Along Came Polly, My Super Ex-Girlfriend and 17 Again. All films within roughly the same genre, the romantic comedy, which, whilst maybe seeming a little narrow-minded, actually helps me to demonstrate rather neatly what I mean. Speaking objectively, there's nothing specifically wrong with these films. If you have a strong personal dislike for anything involving Ben Stiller, you might score Along Came Polly more punitively than I have. If you're a big fan of superheroes, the treatment that that particular topic receives in My Super Ex-Girlfriend might have a bearing on whether you would give the film anything higher or lower than five. However, those are both highly subjective factors that, arguably, should be for the most part disregarded when reviewing a film objectively. In the end, none of these films are cinematic masterpieces (in itself a subjective label but one that hopefully is generally understandable and relatable), but neither are they embarrassingly bad films. So, they get a middle score.
But there's more to consider here. All three films are rom-coms, and as such adhere to rom-com conventions. You'll find stereotypical characters that include a man and a woman - one of whom will be very good-looking, but neither of which will be "ugly" (unless the person playing them is very famous or a guaranteed box office draw) and one of whom at least is unlucky in love; a "bad" current or former boyfriend or girlfriend; a caricature who is usually the best friend of one of the main characters and provides mainly comedy, etc. Present too will be a simple-to-follow and over-the-top plot that usually involves some kind of misunderstanding or crossed purposes, but resolves itself happily where the "good" people "win" and the "bad" people "lose". It's a format that, to varying extents, all rom-coms follow. This means that it's not particularly challenging to create a successful rom-com as long as these conventions are present.
So does that mean that a rom-com that does all these things should get ten out of ten? Well, no. When a rom-com is made, the people making it to my mind limit themselves in how good their film can potentially be. A standard rom-com, like the ones above, all receive an average score. A rom-com that does things particularly well, or that mixes things up in an interesting way, could gain a score of six. Anything higher than that and usually it will have to stray significantly from, or add significantly to, the rom-com formula. If a rom-com is particularly lazy or unoriginal, or just simply poor in its execution, it'll slip down to a four or a three. Three and below and we're talking about a film that not only wasn't interesting, but was actually physically frustrating or irritating for me to watch. But generally, even if a rom-com does most things right, in the end it'll never reach the heights of an eight or a nine, simply because those making the film have chosen to produce something that isn't challenging, unusual or particularly difficult to do.
It isn't just rom-coms of which this is true. Family comedies follow a different set of conventions, but again a set that doesn't exactly raise the bar in terms of cinema, and I find it very difficult to give them anything more than five or six, even if there was nothing particularly wrong with them. Horror films also follow a formula, and unless they are especially adventurous or out of the ordinary in their execution, again I find it hard to give more than a six.
So, what constitutes a high-scoring film, the eights, the nines and the tens? Films that get eight or nine are ones where the people making them have set themselves a challenging feat. They haven't decided to make something that's been seen countless times before, or something that simply follows a set of easy-to-follow rules. They've attempted to make a film that is more than that, that will stand out as a real achievement. But obviously attempting it is not enough. To get such a high score the film has to actually achieve its goals in some way. The more successful, the higher the score. Tens are pretty much reserved for films that not only do things right and to a high standard, but also have that certain intangible quality, that magical quality, that when I'm watching them, I know somewhere inside me that I'm watching something special or momentous - a film that will stay with me forever. Some films have it, and some don't. Ten out of ten to me doesn't mean I think the film is perfect. What it does mean is that the film sets the bar high in several ways and, in my opinion, it achieves everything it set out to do.
So, this entry's ended up being pretty rambling and sprawling. I've watched a wide variety of films recently, and I started thinking about how I form opinions of films and why I reach the conclusions I do, and it ended up as this entry. I'd be interested to see how others view and review films in different genres, and how different people arrive at the scores that they do. There's a few other people who write film reviews here, so I look forward to any comments or follow-up posts on the same topic.
It's been too long since I've put some reviews on here, but I've seen a variety of films recently, so it's time for that to change. I said something pretty similar to this at the beginning of my last film review entry though, so I'm not making any promises.
Knowing
Starts quite well with a psychological/supernatural thriller feel to the story, and the first half has a couple of well executed disaster sequences. The film really loses pace and focus in the second half, shifting the attention strongly towards a religious theme and providing a weak and anticlimactic conclusion. Nicolas Cage is firmly on auto-pilot, with his eyebrows set to confused-and-emotional from start to finish. The supporting cast is a mixed bag ranging from average to poor. The writing is sloppy with several poorly resolved points, and a couple just left hanging limp and incomplete. Overall disappointing and not worthwhile.
4/10
Marley & Me
This one should have just been called "Marley", as no one else in the film is well-rounded enough to fill the role of "Me". The eponymous Labrador is the most developed character, with Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston playing things safe and fairly shallow. The rest of the cast are either cardboard cutouts or simplistic stereotypes, adding nothing to the film. Alan Arkin sticks out very much as the exception to this, providing some genuine comedy and high quality acting head and shoulders above everyone else involved. Towards the end the film begins to drag, needing to be around twenty minutes shorter - once Wilson and Aniston's characters' children became more than background characters, I began shuffling in my seat and checking my watch every few minutes. Fairly enjoyable, and at times genuinely emotional (although this may be because I was reminded of times with my own pets from childhood) but ultimately incredibly sentimental.
5/10
Be Kind Rewind
The greatest failure of this film is that it makes far too little of its greatest asset: the amateur remakes of films (or "sweded" versions, as Jack Black's character Jerry names them in the film) that the characters create. As the audience, we're shown these films being made at times, but not nearly often enough, and very rarely do we get to see any of the final products. Instead, the film focuses on a sentimental story that lacks focus. The cast is generally solid, with Mos Def and Danny Glover putting in strong performances, and Jack Black entertaining if going through the motions at times. Entertaining, generally funny with some very silly moments, but in the end it doesn't give enough of what it could very easily deliver.
7/10
Wedding Crashers
With Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn starring, I went in expecting a "frat pack" style comedy. The end result is much more in the rom-com vein. Both leads have done better, and even cinematic heavyweight Christopher Walken gives a half-hearted performance in the supporting cast. Ultimately, this becomes far too predictable and safe, with an incredibly cliched climax. Will Ferrell provides the most satisfying part of the film with a cameo that I wish had been much more. Enjoyable, but not special.
6/10
Over The Hedge
A simple story executed well, but it's the voice talents that really make this film such a joy. Bruce Willis is fine as the voice of R.J. the raccoon; veterans William Shatner and Eugene Levy add credence and give excellent performances; Steve Carell as Hammy the squirrel also stands out in an over-the-top role. Not quite a computer-animated masterpiece, but thoroughly enjoyable and great fun from start to finish, with many genuinely funny moments.
7/10
Monsters Vs Aliens
Chock full of sci-fi and disaster film references, and usually with its tongue firmly in its cheek, this film is by and large a delight. Dreamworks go back to their overall winning foundation of a simple story executed well (e.g. Kung Fu Panda, as well as Over The Hedge, as reviewed above). The main characters, whilst poking fun at sci-fi stereotypes, have personality, and are voiced entertainingly well. The film is laced with genuinely funny moments, in particular those involving the president, as the film is at its best when heading towards the absurd. The animation is also impressive, and whilst Dreamworks is still second to Pixar in computer-animated cinema, the improvement from one film to the next is notable, and the gap in my opinion is closing.
7/10
17 Again
Zac Efron impressed me in Hairspray, and continues to show his leading man credentials in this film, taking the starring role and making it his own. Thomas Lennon also provides some funny, if incredibly unsubtle, comedy as an over-the-top sci-fi and fantasy nerd. Overall, however, this is neither special nor particularly original; the story lacks focus and direction, and none of the characters ever feels as though they have genuine depth. Fairly enjoyable, but ultimately forgettable.
5/10
Linked in this post in the NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/science/31angi.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1238515272-WtOhNY2U8b6S7OxLbbYEyA
is a pretty fun estimation game; slightly US orientated, but still fun.
Something of a bumper crop this time around, what with my recent lack of any kind of posts, let alone links ones. Enjoy:
A ridiculously lucky Turkish guy.
Addictive multiplayer acronym game.
The daft punk's console.
Intriguing they-must-have-faked-it fantasy football adverts from America.
Chinlone, the traditional sport of Myanmar.
Via David Mitchell (I've never found a columnist who seems to steal the thoughts out of my head quite so easily), we have the marvellous spEak You're bRanes, which mocks the ubiquitous Have Your Say commenters about whom I've complained a couple of times, but with less humour and less sucess.
Astounding lack of mathematical nous from an American phone company.
An example of a great graph from Graph Jam.
Two more columns from Dr. Ben Goldacre, examining data presented in the news or advertising - on prostate cancer and carbon monoxide.
So, March 2009 is set to be the leanest blogging month for FOTSLJW since its inception*. Is it the time of year? March 2008 suggests no, seeing as there was an entry for every day of the month then with one spare entry to boot. Is it that the writers here have lost interest in this place. I would claim a resounding "NO!" to that, as many of the writers have commented on entries even if they haven't created any new ones recently. Plus I just know that's not the case.
Maybe its just the fact that everyone here is a human being with a life that sometimes allows for indulgence in blogging, and at other times becomes continually busy, with some things being placed on the back burner out of necessity. This blog is a hobby more than anything for me. I don't have wild dreams of anyone picking up my film reviews, opinion pieces or esoteric ramblings and starting to pay me for writing them. This place is great for me to use, but sometimes, whether I like it or not, other things in my life need to take priority. My school breaks up for Easter on Thursday this week (with an INSET day on the Friday - when you're a teacher you have to go in on those days, surprisingly), so hopefully over the two weeks of holiday I'll have a chance to start writing here a little more regularly. This term has been three weeks shorter than the winter term, but it's felt a hell of a lot more tiring. I'm certainly not the only teacher I know who feels that way either.
Anyway, here's to April being a little more fleshy in terms of bloggery here. I'll leave you with a video of a dog having a very vivid dream.
*Following this entry, March 2009 now actually has one more post than July 2007, the month this blog was started. However, seeing as the first post here was written on the 20th day of the month, I reckon March 2009 wins as least bloggy month overall.
Sometimes you just need to inexplicably stop blogging for a month, ok.
I'm pretty busy at the moment, but will be trying to find time to post the odd nugget or two, hopefully working back up to a reasonable schedule.
In the meantime, watch Charlie Brooker's new show. Right now.
So, google launched street view in england. Less than five minutes later (actually not kidding), I managed to find myself!!! How cool is that??
Joe on street view
I've been a little quiet here in terms of my own posts recently, but I'm aiming to change that in the near future. But, for now, here's a shameless plug to my sister Charlotte's brand new blog. At the moment her focus is mainly on social and political commentary and her entries are genuinely a good read. So get over there and wear your opinions on your sleeves.
Interesting article about human colour perception.
The Irish police always get their man.
Great collection of single and multiplayer flash games.
I linked to one of his posts last time, but I think the Bad Science blog by Dr Ben Goldacre deserves another mention, it really is an excellent analysis of science issues in the media.
