Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in scotm's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Sunday, May 13th, 2012
6:16 pm	Enjoying Twitter 101 There's little surprise that QI host Stephen Fry was one of the first major cheerleaders for tweeting. Twitter isn't in itself very interesting - but becomes interesting through being a source and user-driven broadcaster of interesting things from its users. I hesitate to use the word recipe. Recipes involve doing things precisely and in order - Twitter is more like "just whack a bit of it in". It doesn't matter much as to the proportion, as long as you do them regularly and often. Follow interesting people and engage with them. Tweet things you find interesting, and you think others would find interesting. Don't be shy about it either. Propagate current interesting news, witter or events. (Either tweet your own spin on it, or retweet it for others who follow you.) Twitter's smartest move is the ease of following and unfollowing people. It's easy to take a punt on an unknown person; should they be dull outside of a few choice tweets you can unfollow them quickly and easily with a minimum of social baggage. Following people who are experts in your interests gives a rich tapestry of interesting stuff of the here and now. Engaging with them benefits everyone - since those who are interested can join in the conversation. Journalists tend to do well - the providers of regular digested news, gossip, astute commentary, pithy back and forth chatter and links to some of the most interesting stuff on the Internet. 140 characters need not be a limitation. It is sufficient for a single, carefully-considered thought, point or counterpoint - any one of which can be the beginning of an interesting, multi-dimensional tapestry of chatter within or around the here and now. Trending topics are little pieces of text about which a lot of people have taken a sudden interest. These are mostly inane, but occasionally provide interesting social data on current issues and interests. One of the interesting hacks that emerged from Twitter early on was the concept of hashtagging, and using Twitter's search to find common chatter. They were adopted, and now are part of the common Twitter lexicon. Hashtags unify disparate commentary on commonly discussed current affairs - using a common shibboleth which begins with a hash sign (#). Reading live updates, adding your own chatter, retweeting points for your followers - it all contributes to a rich source of interesting media. They range from silly word-punning games [0], through current happenings across the globe, to live television commentary from some of the wittiest, most enthusiastic and passionate people. The #bbcqt hashtag is for BBC Question Time, a UK political discussion show which covers the issues of the week with politicians, commentators and its audience. Add the drinking game, and it's like having a busy pub discussion with thousands of people. It's all Quite Interesting. You can reach me at @scott_eff. [0] - Recent example: #popleveson. Write a tweet in the style of Robert Jay QC - lead counsel to the Leveson Inquiry - to a pop-star using their songs as submitted evidence. (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 16th, 2012
4:15 pm	Fitness wahoozery I was asked recently about how exercise is coming along. It went south over October and November, although I kept the PureGym membership and occasionally went to make heavy things move. Over the past three months, I've improved. One of my co-workers is a personal trainer and martial artist, and with his help I've started kickboxing after a fifteen year hiatus - and I seem to have kept most of my earlier flexibility. It's utterly punishing stuff, with incredible emphasis on conditioning and cardiovascular work. By the end, I'm uncoordinated, tired and weak - and in pushing on, in spite of the dizziness and drenching in sweat I'm learning to enjoy it once more. It's weirdly rewarding. I keep walking out feeling like a million bucks; like I'm accomplishing something. In early February, I hired my co-worker as personal trainer (at a considerably less expensive rate than I got from the gym) for an hour a week. In these sessions, I've been pushed for more conditioning, and learning how to handle kettlebells correctly. They're excellent for combining resistance training with gasping-for-breath cardio work. I seem to be blessed with buttocks of old mutton and iron. My lower back isn't thanking me, but it's the good kind of tired muscle pain, which is easily resolved with a good stretch. Not to be confused with the "AAAAARGHCANTGETOUTOFBED!" pain that requires Vicodin. I've gotten myself two steel kettlebells from left-over birthday money, do a short circuit every morning and I'm already looking for heavier ones. In a moment of madness and their £29/month promotion, I've joined Edinburgh Leisure - mostly because I like Leith Victoria's swimming pool - and it's easy to sneak in a swim most days after work. Again, I've kept most of my skill from fifteen years ago, even if I don't have the puff to do much more than the occasional front crawl sprint. Speaking of puff, in spite of several attempts (most of which annoy the shit out of my Twitter followers), the delicious fags remain. There is no excuse. I've been supplanting them with electronic cigarettes, the kind that make my mouth smell like a packet of blackcurrant Tunes. All hail helping me breathe less easily. I pulled out the old pull-up bar from the closet (probably bought years ago on a dare), and combined it with a Pilates resistance band tied to the frame and using the band on my foot as assistance. This way, I'm training myself to handle the load, and I'll decrease the assistance from the band. Using a stool to assist in pull-ups requires me to split focus from the pull-up movement itself, whereas the bands are passive assistance. So. Nothing much has changed. I'm still unfit; every session remains a challenge, but the real difficulties in keeping the routine remain. How do you all keep yourself motivated? (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 6th, 2011
2:33 pm	Where the Scottie hires someone to make him fit I often cycle to work. The bicycle is one of our greatest transport inventions, transferring up to 98% of the energy from the rider to the wheels, this means I don't really need to put a very large amount of effort into it, and coasting - stop pedalling and letting momentum take you forward - is common. It's not really making me that much fitter, but quick for getting me from one side of Edinburgh to the other in an hour (which is about the time I'd take on the bus). It also makes me strangely happy. I turn up raring to go. Anyway, I've been a lardy guy for the better part of 20 years, and I'm getting sick of it. The only people I know AFK who have successfully changed from being fat to slim have either exercised hard or had surgery to make it so they can only eat a few mouthfuls of food. Good food is a great pleasure, and should not be sacrificed. My mum has lost a lot of weight in the past two years, through eating a lot less, but she looks weak - losing both good muscle as well as fat. As it happens, I work with a guy who moonlights as a martial arts and personal trainer, and after picking his brains over a few "water-cooler" moments, he suggested hiring a personal trainer to go over my lifestyle and training regimen. Around the same time I got a raise, and decided I could afford it. It's also the first time I've ever face-to-face hired someone to do me a personal service. So, after asking at my local gym I got a trainer. He's a rugby player, and looks it, built like a friendly brick shithouse. As it turns out, it was entirely (if initially) painless - a couple of questionnaires and a conversation about goals. Taking "I want to be healthy, fit and strong" - and breaking it down into "running 2 miles without an oxygen tank", "being able to do unassisted pull-ups" and "losing fat, without losing muscle". I despise the word "tone" as a verb - it's a marketing droid's word that disguises the very real effort required to get in shape. Instead of saying "tone" from now on, say "making heavy things move and yourself for good measure". It's hard work, and using soft words to disguise it is foolish. </rant> On to the first session - a basic program of calisthenics and simple equipment exercises. The trainer devised a program that avoids resistance machines, largely because the body does not work in the simple way that these machines force you to work. Hooray for science! I regretted it, but almost certainly won't over time as I get better. Going through the programme, it was an interesting if downright weird experience - relearning how to do this stuff properly, and feeling the body work as a functional unit. I have so many annoying habits, and physical tics to undo. Lesson #1 - Getting it right is more important than throwing weight around. So, it turns out I had to relearn how to do a squat: bend at the hips, keeping knees in line with toes, driving through the ground with your heels, and keeping the back straight. Keeping that stuff in your head, and feeling it work - it was strangely satisfying. It's worth saying out loud that a knowledgeable, encouraging and correcting-where-necessary human being is an enormous help. Towards the end, the programme required gritted teeth, involuntarily shaking. and a small monsoon of hard-won sweat. But... I *can* do this. In the changing room afterwards, pulling off a sopping-wet t-shirt with some difficulty, and feeling the soft, sweet endorphin rush amid deep, rich oxygen refilling my body; it felt like an accomplishment - a badge of pride. Now to do it again... (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 10th, 2011
11:33 am	An appeal to the well-read. I am not very well-read. I know more about cinema than I do any other art form, and I suspect it's hampering my abilities to communicate - at least in appreciation of shared contextual comedy and avoiding general ignorance. Therefore my New Year Resolutions (yes, they're made to be broken - I'll try not to) include the following two. I'll write a blog post at least once a fortnight - including this one. Some may be friends locked, some may be private to me alone. All that psychological nonsense that clogs up my right hemisphere late at night when frantically trying to sleep will be dumped there. Apologies in advance if any of you should be exposed to it. I may also review films and Doctor Who. I should become better-read. Fifty books over the course of the year should be manageable. So, my appeal to the groupthink. Please suggest books that will not turn up in those terribly dry "*arbitrary number* of X to Y before you die" listspeak books. I'll be reading stuff from the "long established classics" nodegel too, and would appreciate some suggestions to randomise it a little. (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, January 6th, 2011
1:54 pm	For Gallifrey! For VICTORY! ( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. ) (Comment on this)
Friday, August 13th, 2010
4:41 am	I have ascended to the ranks of the gainfully employed. I'm terribly happy. Right now, even as I type, I've got a glowing ember of joy in my chest; the kind of simple bliss that we all had when we were eight and knew Christmas was a couple of days away, or that first visit to a pretty girl's bedroom. Even the simple act of breathing kindles it and spreads the warmth and the endorphins. It's filling me up with pleasure and hope. Let me explain. I've just gotten a job offer, for a role I think I'd be brilliant at - a Web System Administrator. It's a vague title, encompassing a reasonably broad, if not terribly deep skill-set. It starts on 1st September. The money is perfectly acceptable, it's full-time, permanent and it should be an excellent bike-ride to and from the facility. And I've accepted it. I've been out of full-time work for just over three years after leaving a property company (in hindsight, at the right time). I was having anxiety attacks at work, and didn't know how to deal with them. Since then I've been doing bit parts in retail, seasonal postal work, volunteer work to keep the CV fresh - and to feel useful! - business eBay selling and up until ten hours ago, a telephone interviewer for a market research company - a job I'd been doing for six days. My biggest issues in doing this kind of call-centre work are as follows. I am very easily replaceable - the stats are like a swinging scythe over everyone's head. I have no sense of ownership of my work. I'm the square peg in a room of cylinders. The entire job is structured so that I get zero decompression time after a call - no time to catch my breath, or lubricate my throat. I'm usually hoarse after an hour and a half. There is no chance to get to know anyone while at work. You're perpetually on call, or waiting for the next one to pick up. Most of my respondents are terribly, yet understandably, rude. Guys, don't be rude, or make excuses to pollsters - just ask them not to call you again, and do the TPS thing for sales calls. Simples! The money is not good enough - not for the unpleasantness of the job. Even so, I like money - it buys nice things and services - and so I was planning on sticking with the job until the new one begins. Unfortunately, after handing my notice in, they asked me to leave the premises there and then. Even so, I've gotten things from the job, other than money. I've never been good on the telephone - I find I witter nervously, rather than sticking to the point. Over the last couple of jobs, I feel I have gotten a lot better and more confident in my professional telephone manner. It's still tough to speak slowly, concisely and clearly; but the experience gained from interviewing and negotiating on the phone should put me in good stead. While delighted, I'm trying a little to temper my overall joy. I'm not sure if this is my unconscious mind trying to sabotage my happiness, with a nagging and unshakable feeling that "This is usually the point where the ground falls from under my feet." But then again, maybe it won't this time. Maybe this is the one piece that everything else can hang on to. I'm going to hang on to it, and make it flower through skill and will. Things are good, and I'm happy. And I'm still breathing, it still feels good. Current Mood: hopeful (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 4th, 2010
6:12 pm	The Karate Kid (2010) Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) is a thin, wiry and likeable 12 year old from Detroit. Leaving America with his mother, who is relocating to Beijing for work (his absent father is mentioned only once, in a memory-laden height chart) - he's got his work cut out. He can't speak Mandarin well at all, he's got next-to-no-friends, he's bullied by particularly violent kids schooled by Master Li (Rongguang Yu), a "No Weakness, No Pain, No Mercy" mantra-spouting kung fu instructor, and Dre has from his time in America is a skateboard from his best mate, and memories of Spongebob Squarepants dubbed in English. Like the original, there's even a rather atypical love story with Meiying (Wenwen Han), a sweet English-speaking girl Dre's age. They have a fairly nice meeting, and evolving friendship. She is driven by her strict parents to practice the violin constantly - a not terribly subtle comment on the high expectations placed upon modern Chinese youth. It works well, forming a charming prepubescent romance. After Dre suffers a particularly brutal attack from his tormentors, the apartment maintenance man, Mr Han (Jackie Chan) steps in, and promises to teach him “real kung fu” and train him for a tournament where he will face the bullies. All in all, so 1984 - and it's at this point, too that you stop caring that it's a remake. The film, directed by Harald Zwart, is a great step up from his previous efforts The Pink Panther 2 and Agent Cody Banks, and is illustriously photographed by Roger Pratt (the first two Harry Potter pictures). It is about as good as one can expect - a faithful update of the source story by Robert Mark Kamen, by newbie screenwriter Christopher Murphey. Jaden Smith (The Pursuit of Happyness) is a terrific find, with no "cartoon black kid" nonsense clogging up the work. He's particularly good at the alienated, sensitive and easily hurt kid who's longing for the past; he instinctively knows how to act for the camera - and is evolving into one of the most natural child-performers I've seen in a very long time. He's Will and Jada-Pinkett Smith's son - so screen charisma may be in the family. The fanservice Miyagisims from 1984 are present and correct - Mr Han finds a new, and considerably more practical way of catching a fly with chopsticks, and lovingly restores a very special car with doses of wax-on wax-off. The fight scenes are mostly over-edited and undershot, with lashings of shots to the sternum and wince-inducing thumps on the soundtrack. Mr Han's defense of Dre is the best fight scene by far. Watching Chan take on six 12 to 13 year olds to humiliate, but not injure them is very clever, but it's a real fight, not at all a weak-sauce effort. The 56-year old Chan has still got it. The training montages are obvious, present and correct - but the update of "Pat" Moriga's training is strains credibility at first - but like the original, it kind of works. "Kung Fu is in everything we do!" exclaims Mr Han - as Dre grasps the significance of picking up, putting on and pulling his jacket off with perfect form. The movie features Jackie Chan's best English language performance. There's pathos, depth and honest-to-goodness acting - and he truly sells the idea that student and teacher fit together like the yin-yang. It's corny, but they're good enough to give the movie its humanity and depth. He doesn't remind us of Noriyuki "Pat" Morita's Mr Miyagi, the little clipped man from the original whom noone pays attention to until it's too late. Chan and the script make a halfway decent effort to combine the post-Imperialist China backdrops with the innate sense of being more than just Postcard Exotic Locations. There's a really good story thread where Dre and Han visit the Great Wall, on an equally potent voyage of self-discovery - and refresh themselves with waters real, and metaphorical. The Karate Kid is a good movie, with a pleasant and engaging story - but it's about half an hour too long; at 140 minutes it tests patience. It's not particularly great cinema, it does nothing at all that's fresh or invigorrating and doesn't replace or outdo the original. It's just different - and equally worthy. Also, it's infinitely better than this year's other 1984 remake, A Nightmare on Elm Street. Oh, and there's no Karate. Perhaps that's for part II? (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 20th, 2010
2:04 pm	Toy Story 3 "When I became a man, I put away childish things." Toy Story 3 is a dazzlingly confident and magical picture that recalls Paul of Tarsus's quote, but its makers have never forgotten what it feels like to be children. Pixar Animation Studios continue their near unbroken run of animation masterpieces with a colourful and emotional return to the best toy box in moviedom. In the first emotional sting of the tale, the first scene delves into a loosely-tethered and spectacular imaginary recreation of the time where we all devised our own worlds and stories with toys. But Andy has finally grown up, and is preparing to go off to college. His toys (the gang's mostly here, though some have left, through age, breakage and yard sales) are devastated with his paucity of playing - going so far as to  contrive elaborate schemes to remind Andy of playtime. It doesn't work. They're heartbroken, but pragmatic - "Every toy goes through this". The week before college, Andy's mother asks Andy to separate the toys he wants to keep for the attic, those for the trash. In a mixup, Buzz Lightyear, Mr & Mrs Potato Head and the rest barely escape from heading to landfill (under the untouched recycling bin) and head to the local day-care centre. The fluffy teddy-bear Lotso, driven bitter and angry by his owner replacing him, spearheads a chilling and wholly corrupt totalitarian regime within the centre. Our heroes are stuffed into the Caterpillar Room for toddlers and barely escape with their lives, if not their dignity. Lotso enforces discipline with an iron will, eventually reprogramming Buzz to serve him - the effort to get him back to normal leads to the most inspired animation gags of the movie. The rest of the film is basically a wonderful mashup of Toy Story and Prison Break in the most exciting U-rated action adventure I've seen since, well, Pixar's last. (Some moments may disturb very young children - the all-seeing monkey should be a monster on Doctor Who!) The character animation has come on leaps and bounds since Toy Story 2. Humans are far less plasticy and better animated. And the performances of all the main characters are richer and more nuanced. This is essential for the drama that is to come. Barbie and Ken ("I'm not a girl's toy!", "You're a purse with legs!") have their own delightfully amusing strand, and the voicework remains as invisibly wonderful as always. A particular standout is the Fisher Price Classic Chatter Telephone, an old timer in the centre. Teddy Newton's work combines with magnificent animation (acting by eyebrow has never been so sublime!) to create an incredible world-weary performance. Pixar have always delivered magnificent scripts, and this is no different - what a delight it would be to be a fly on the wall of their story meetings. The storytelling mixes huge laughs and rich pathos, seemingly without effort, and leads to a finale that will leave few with dry eyes. Pretty much perfect. And stick around for the credits, the gang all get their closures - including Rex's 'dominant predator' status and videogame addiction. (Comment on this)
Friday, June 18th, 2010
2:32 pm	Evil In The Time Of Heroes Ancient Greeks and modern life meets zombies in a timeywimey action horror. Sounds like a laugh, right? Wrong. An ancient evil is released (don't ask how - the movie doesn't say), and a handful of survivors must hole up against a gargantuan zombie horde. The streets are deserted, other than the pockets of very fast-on-their-feet zombies. It's like 28 Days Later, but with better gore effects and an even weaker story.   This is almost certainly the goriest film you will see this year. Each of our main characters is introduced by a swift dousing in stage blood - think Noel Edmonds and the gunge tank in slow-motion. Start as you mean to go on, I guess. The messiness doesn't stop at the ceaselessly inventive Savini-shaming effects - the script is shockingly incoherent. Evil In The Time Of Heroes feels like a manic storyteller who won't shut the hell up when he's whizzing off on a tangent, and knows nothing about storytelling ebbs and flows. Characterisation is minimal, the storytelling rushed and undercooked, dishing out (actual) Deus Ex Machinas - spouting "WTFs" when it should be inspiring "Woah!" There's a couple of good giggles - the before/after shots of a football stadium zombie attack have the rhythm of a well-told joke. In definitely the coolest cameo of the year, Billy Zane does his best Time Lord meets warrior monk impression - "Like a Jedi? You know, Luke Skywalker". And admittedly, the filmmakers do their best to make him look awesomely cool. His scenes don't make a lick of sense, and often take on the appearance of a really bad LSD trip. There's a dozen reasonable ideas, none of which are developed into fruition - especially the time-travel stuff. A bit of a waste, really. The script is a collection of a movie-loving fool's mad ravings. The movie is highly competent in the technical aspects, and is well-shot. It falls down towards the end, where shakycam upturned what was left of my stomach. There's a strange lack of emotion in the affair. No fear, no big laughs, no social satire - if it had held on a couple of months, perhaps the story could have leached some timeliness from the economic situation in Greece's near-bankrupt government. You know, zombies being used for what they usually are - a satirical infection to be purged, preferably with fire. A wasted chance, but hopefully it'll lead to more interesting and coherent things for all involved. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
10:55 pm	Superhero Me Superhero Me immediately makes me think of all those deliciously sad people who wrote Jedi as their religion at the last census. They are such lovely, deluded creatures. First-time documentary filmmaker Steve Sale decides to become a superhero. His journey begins by recruiting comic-book experts for basic intelligence, for various traits that superheroes must have. In desperation, he even interviews his parents; when asked about superpowers, his dad comes out with "If you call Luck a superpower, I've got that!" So, to become a superhero, without obvious exceptional gifts, he recruits the help of a personal trainer - starting off with a 'Get Ripped in 8 Weeks' advert, and concluding with a funny Run Fatboy Run meets Team America montage. Also needed are a martial arts guru for dispatching evil swiftly (using Drunken kung-fu, of course), and most importantly of all, the costume. Sale picks the pseudonym, SOS, based on his skills as a sound editor, ropes a mate for some seriously cool illustrations. We see Sale mooch around and trawling the internet for inspiration. After a lengthy gestation period, he starts making and remaking the costume out of brightly-coloured spandex and other such fun fabrics. One of the movie's best terrible puns happens when he's shopping for y-fronts - "this movie's pants". We also learn that he's considered the bathroom practicalities. What he has failed to consider is his weapons and skills - testing a loud oscillating alarm on his pet dogs, who just sit blithely and wag their tails. Also, transport is somewhat lacking, the first trip on the SOS-mobile is marinated in Fail. To his surprise, Sale discovers there are many other real life superheroes. The reclusive Captain Ozone, "a time-traveller" who uses a petrol-powered chainsaw to make environmental fossil-fuel conservation points of note. Entomo, who fights  crime on the streets of Naples, opens the doors to many other superheroes. Funniest of all is Angle Grinder-Man, a deliciously anarchic scourge of parking clamps everywhere - he has a hilarious answer phone message. There's even a musical band of superheroes - Justice Force Five, who inspire SOS to compose a rather catchy theme tune. In between placing adverts in local newsagents and searching for a sidekick, SOS makes a name for himself doing all manner of nice deeds, mowing lawns, charity fund-raisers, impromptu taxi services and chasing shoplifters. Even the sexually starved get a look in, a woman begs for attention with broken English: "All the boys become gay. Save me!" "I'm not going to make 'em straight. Look at me!" Okay, it's funnier in the movie. Things take a darker turn with the story of a Los Angeles vigilante: Master Legend. He seems to breathe the ethos of Superman's origins back in the Great Depression - helping the poor and wretched. Clanking around in a roughly hewn suit of armour, balls to the wind, he fights the causes and effects of local crime. And those who "heal with the faith of the almighty crack-rock." While occasionally amateurish and sloppy in its staging and interviewing skills, Sale's film also belies a certain engaging roughness - the footage was shot on inexpensive consumer video cameras and videophones, collected and edited on an old computer. Strangely, Superhero Me doesn't feel like "a story that needs to be told by any means necessary", as promised by the opening title cards, and could probably benefit from being about five to ten minutes shorter. Technical issues and filmmaking limitations aside, this movie is good fun, Steve Sale is an engaging and funny host, and doesn't let his movie's technical weakness get in the way of an entertaining time. (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 22nd, 2009
7:20 pm	Oscar predictions By popular request, both of you, and you know who you are - here's the list of what I hope wins (in italics) and what I think will win, if I were a betting man (in bold). Best Actor Milk - Sean Penn The Wrestler - Mickey Rourke Best Supporting Actor The Dark Knight - Heath Ledger - bet the house. This is the closest to a lock I have ever seen. Best Actress Changeling - Angelina Jolie The Reader - Kate Winslet Best Supporting Actress Doubt - Viola Davis Best Animated Feature WALL·E - Andrew Stanton - nearly as safe a bet as Ledger. Best Art Direction The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Donald Graham Burt, Victor J. Zolfo Best Cinematography The Dark Knight - Wally Pfister - because it's the best photographed movie I have seen in 2008, nothing less. It is my favourite kind of blockbuster, luxurious and expensive stuff - expert cinematography. Slumdog Millionaire - Anthony Dod Mantle Best Costume Design Australia - Catherine Martin - throwing it a frickin' bone, because it's the one thing it got right. Best Director Milk - Gus Van Sant - insanely good authorship of a movie. Slumdog Millionaire - Danny Boyle - bet against the Director's Guild at your peril. Best Documentary Feature Man On Wire - James Marsh, Simon Chinn - Never before in a documentary has my heart thudded against my windpipe in delirious excitement, shock, suspense and full blown horror. Best Film Editing The Dark Knight - Lee Smith Slumdog Millionaire - Chris Dickens Best Foreign Language Film Waltz with Bashir - Israel - Gommorrah from Italy was robbed! This makes the entire FL nomination list invalid. Best Makeup The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Greg Cannom - because it was professional and brilliantly done. Hellboy II: The Golden Army - Mike Elizalde, Thom Floutz - because it was imaginative and brilliantly done. Best Original Score Slumdog Millionaire - A.R. Rahman WALL·E - Thomas Newman Best Song WALL·E - "Down to Earth" Best Picture Milk - best of a reasonable lot. Not since 1994 has there been such an insipid collection of Best Picture Nominees. Slumdog Millionaire - The juggernaut continues. Best Sound Editing WALL·E - Ben Burtt, Matthew Wood - Like the animation, the sound editing lent unparalleled characterisation to all the characters. It is a milestone work. Best Sound Mixing The Dark Knight - Lora Hirschberg, Gary Rizzo, Ed Novick - uniformly brilliant sound mixing choices. Professional, and backing up an incredible film. Best Visual Effects The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Eric Barba, Steve Preeg, Burt Dalton, Craig Barron Best Adapted Screenplay Doubt - John Patrick Shanley Best Original Screenplay Milk - Dustin Lance Black (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008
3:55 pm	The mid-year ten best Okay, I've not written anything in here for months. And for a mid-year ten best, I'm two months late. That's just tough. 1) The Diving Bell And The Butterfly 2) The Dark Knight (IMAX takes this to 1st place) 3) No Country For Old Men 4) The Fall 5) Man On Wire 6) 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days 7) Somers Town 8) Taxi To The Dark Side 9) In The Valley Of Elah 10) Before The Devil Knows You're Dead Eleventh Place Diary Of The Dead El Baño Del Papa Hellboy II: The Golden Army Juno Shotgun Stories Standard Operating Procedure Son Of Rambow WALL·E (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 2nd, 2008
2:49 am	Diary of the Dead Diary of the Dead - ***1/2 Diary of the Dead exists as a film within a film, admittedly a hackneyed story device these days - but diaries as horror devices are greatly effective. Who hasn't read fiction on which the monster reaches the writer just as the final words are written? Within Romero's treatment, he stamps it with multiple authors and several key viewpoints, which means the author's possible human death is not the end of the telling. The overarching story returns to the first night of the zombie outbreak and begins with movie-brat Jason Creed (Joshua Close) shooting a student mummy movie. He is with his college friends and perpetually plummy and drunken English professor, who just so happens to be an archery crack-shot. The scene being shot is a woman being chased into the woods, and like Scream, knows the conventions of the obligatory tit-shot, the slow-moving nasties ("Wouldn't their ankles just snap off if they ran!"). Pockets of radio news report an outbreak of the dead returning to life, and the freaked out students decide to leg it to their loved ones in a large caravan. Diary of the Dead feels most potently allegorical about recent events like Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. The media's feeble handling of telling the stories and the government's ineffective dealing with the human catastrophes hits hard. Romero himself even takes a starring role as the Pittsburgh chief of police, telling the story that authorities want people to know. One immediately recalls the brief spate of Internet bloggers as the Iraq invasion started after Shock And Awe, and the small rivers of stories bleeding out of New Orleans as the central news networks neatly edited it for mass consumption for telethons. Anyway, Romero keeps doing these zombie flicks blending the carnage with social satire, and oodles of intertextual storytelling. In Diary, he shows a delightfully precocious (yes, I know this is a misomner in terms, given he's 68) fascination with the technology behind instant delivery of human stories. The filmmakers in his story are inexperienced amateurs who can use prosumer camcorders, laptop editing suites and the Internet to show (even only partially completed, yet self-feeding and evolving) work the mainstream media will never show. Also, he satirises their inexperience by dressing with cheerfully cheesy dissolves and overtly ostentatious voice-overs. The film does not linger on the social responsibilities of these youngsters, by leaking their stories, but provokes questions that have no easy answers. Although the camera's seduction emerges as the opening mummy chase is recreated with chilling and hilarious life-or-death effect. Does the film deliver elsewhere? You bet! The opening scene of unedited footage, uploaded to the Internet by a news cameraman - is Romero's single most terrifying scene since the graveyard scene in Night of the Living Dead. Horror buffs are well catered for, with oodles of offscreen cameos from established celebrity horror fans, immensely creative and foul zombies and death scenes which shock and delight equally. A great sequence in a hospital, full of ravenous nasties waiting to be zapped with the defibrillator, is a standout. Further additions to the look-like-zombies or sound like zombies roster is a delightful mute Amish chap who will doubtlessly bring the house down in his scene, and an elderly couple in a sickening downloaded movie spliced into the tale seamlessly. There's even a moment reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan's magnificent Signs (itself a great emulator of Night of the Living Dead in it's unrelenting final act) with a video of a birthday party gone horrifyingly wrong. Romero knits these videos into his narrative expertly, making it a part of the movie we're watching, and cutting to his characters watching it on their laptop - this movie within movie integration is clever, tight and well orchestrated. Although again, and perhaps the greatest acheievement of his movie, Romero makes The Death of Death betray its core idea - documenting the unvarnished truth - with cheap music, complete with musical "stings" and manipulative editing. Sure, this might antagonise viewers that don't get it, but it's easily defended as satire. The only real story flaw - and it's a biggie - is that his characters do not accept the dead are returning to life until it's far too late. For such a collection of ragtag horror moviemakers, I find it hard to believe that they do not know the rules of a zombie flick, and don't grasp it for a sizable portion of the runtime. Then again, they're rather well cast as the YouTube era misfits. That, and the coda - where Romero reuses the chestnut rednecks from Dawn of the Dead - "are we worth saving?" - as they truss up and blast zombies apart sticks as sheer gory unpleasantness for its own sake. Youthful, energetic and lively as ever - George A. Romero's cinematic resurrection is a thinking man's horror delight. Stuffed full of ideas, low-budget, with a tight shooting schedule - unlike his slickly overblown and underwritten Land of the Dead - Romero returns with a reboot of his magnificent political zombie dynasty. The candy floss horror Cloverfield may use the same tricks, but Diary of the Dead in another league. It is startlingly delivered and shows the old hand can still teach the newbies a couple of tricks all the while delivering a fine entertainment and gives its genre audience plenty of fresh meat to chew on. (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 13th, 2008
1:23 am	2007's best films 2007, while upon first memory didn't seem to have a lot in it that lingered, upon reading a big list of all the UK releases from 1st January till 31st December, there's been literally TONS of high-quality film splashing out on our screens! Zodiac - leading the pack by far is David Fincher's best film. Retreading Se7en ground without the shlock horror, but gains a shower of masterful performances, impossibly slick storytelling adapted superbly by screenwriter James Vanderbilt. Fincher has matured immensely from his enjoyable black comedy Fight Club, bringing every bit of technical excellence and filmmaking prowess. Bravo! Death Proof - Quentin Tarantino, only bound by Grindhouse shackles superficially has fashioned the coolest movie in years. He reinvents the slasher genre, the chick-flick (making it mean something again!) and gives us a treastise on the cinematic gaze that would make Laura Mulvey drop dead. The Fountain - The most awesome film of the year, dazzling ingenuity from Requiem for a Dream director Darren Aronofsky, very nearly equalling it. His great achievement comes from making a cohesive and yet elliptic story construct and making this hang together with faultless acting and grand operatic storytelling. Water The Lives of Others Ratatouille This is England Hot Fuzz The Bourne Ultimatum Michael Clayton Twelve films that share Eleventh Place: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford Atonement Black Book Breach Control Letters From Iwo Jima Paranoid Park A Prairie Home Companion Rocket Science The Serpent Tell No One Waitress Best Director: Brad Bird for Ratatouille - Impeccable handling of the audience through caricature performance, visual impact and storytelling prowess. (I have seen No Country for Old Men - it doesn't get released over here till next week. If the Coens don't get their Oscar, I shall be pissed off. Runner up: Clint Eastwood for Letters from Iwo Jima and David Fincher for Zodiac) Best Actor: Ryan Gosling for Half Nelson (Special Jury Prize for Peter O'Toole in Venus, and as Anton Ego - the Grim Eater - in Ratatouille) Best Actress: Amy Adams for Enchanted - she simply made my eyes shine in delight every time she was on the screen. (Julie Christie in Away From Her was also masterful.) Worst Film: Norbit - I was going to stick on Good Luck Chuck - a rank and noxious comedy, as juvenile and unfunny as any film I've seen this year. But, locked away in a dungeon of subconscious... there was Norbit. Just... ugh. It's been 20 years since Eddie Murphy got more than a chuckle. He didn't even manage an upturning of my lips this time round. Does Exactly What It Says On The Tin Award: Teeth - "They're sharp. They bite. And they're not in her mouth..." From the Edinburgh International Film Festival catalogue. Biggest Disappointments: Spider-Man 3 Tales from Earthsea Biggest Surprises: Hairspray Stardust Die Hard 4.0 Special Jury Prizes (for being just shy of great, but really good anyway!): Apocalypto Beowulf Black Sheep Black Snake Moan Bridge to Terabithia Die Hard 4.0 Eastern Promises Ex Drummer Fast Food Nation Hairspray In the Shadow of the Moon Knocked Up The Last King of Scotland Little Red Flowers Meet the Robinsons Rocky Balboa Sheitan Shoot 'Em Up Sicko Stardust Superbad Them Venus Special Mention: Blade Runner: The Final Cut - Simply awesome seeing it on a big screen in a print that simply takes the breath away. Four stars on the big screen, three off it. (Comment on this)
Friday, September 21st, 2007
2:09 am	Great Expectations Great Expectations - ***1/2 Charles Dickens and David Lean do know how to spin yarns! Fresh from his springboard success in Brief Encounter, Lean assembled an outstanding crew, a break-neck script, and solid performances to craft one of the finest book to film adaptations of all time - but his Oliver Twist is even better! And what of the plot...? A common boy, blacksmith's apprentice Pip does an uncommon kindness to convict Magwitch (a terrifying Finlay Currie), and is spirited away to a queer stately home every couple of weeks to visit an aging lady, Mrs. Havisham and her very beautiful and cold daughter, Estella. Pip grows up into a young man played by Sir John Mills, with and a mysterious benefactor has him brought to London to live as a gentleman... But, he "realised that in becoming a gentleman, I had only succeeded in becoming a snob" Copy picture Even from the opening shot of the camera leering over the pages of Dickens, and Mills reading it aloud - David Lean's great achievement with his adaptation is the visual trappings within the walls of the text. Who could ever forget Mrs. Havisham's dank dungeon of a stately home? Or indeed, how well it merges seamlessly and yet distinctly with that we have in our minds eye. The house itself is caked in dust and cobwebs and Havisham herself unable and unwilling to live within the field of time after her wedding-day heartbreak. Her clothes, a magnificent wedding dress worn to rags, and a cake having decayed for decades. The hideous lair calls to mind Billy Wilder's outstanding Hollywood satire, Sunset Boulevard, with the deranged Norma Desmond. Lean is aided immeasurably by cinematographer Oscar-winner Guy Green. He is not in love with his imagery, cutting a well-heeled movie out of his fabulous images. His early scenes set in the graveyard with Magwitch flirt with the visual stylings all so common in horror films, and the quiet, scratching sound design. Pip suffers, much to the pleasure of Havisham, having crafted a deadly weapon in her daughter to all men in the guise of stunning beauty. Systematic abuse on her daughter pays off against the male sex. This delicate character's thread comes to a head in astonishingly vivid fashion - and improving on the source. The great aspect of reading Dickens' prose is the fashion in which his characters linger in the memory of their readers, the way in which they linger forever as a flavour of a person's humanity. Lean's success in casting, therefore, is a great deal of the battle, so as to entirely co-exist with the images that the book inspires. Chris Columbus, with his turgid and uneventful Harry Potter films certainly realised this, although he lacked Lean's incisive skill in compressing story and time. John Mills - while looking about ten years too old for our hero, Pip - has certainly the youthful exuberance and the adult knowledge of human habit and sufferings. Other characters who have precious little screentime yet still linger in the memory include Mr. Jaggers, the lawyer whose tumultuous revelations are equally offshadowed by his great, bulky and booming body. Alec Guinness, as Herbert Pocket is wonderful as a straightforward conscience and accomplice - functioning as a way for Pip to externalise his thoughts and ideas directly. I may have Great Expectations, but it's everything I hoped it would be. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 19th, 2007
10:27 pm	Leaving Las Vegas Leaving Las Vegas - **** Leaving Las Vegas is one of the sweetest, loveliest love stories I have ever seen in movies, written with all the surprisingly wry and horrific wit of a well-composed suicide note. It is a story of two lonely souls crossing paths and sharing what little precious time they have. It's an enormously successful film, so achingly sad and strangely fantastical in that we doubt such a story would occur, but the story-teller weaves such a spellbinding tale, that criticism becomes futile. Nicolas Cage - a richly-deserved Best Actor for this picture - plays Ben, a thoroughly wretched alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter. He's sacked from his job, and has nothing else to live for - we learn of a long-gone family (a wife and son in a photo album). So in cold logic he decides to purge himself of non-essential possessions, drive out to Las Vegas and kill himself through drinking. It's all planned out in sufficient clarity, with "enough for 250 to 300 dollars per day". One can only begin to imagine what demons could possibly drive him to such a slow, inordinate crucifixion. "I don't remember; I just know I want to." "Are you saying that your drinking is a way to kill yourself" "Or killing myself is a way to drink!" He encounters professional prostitute Sera on his first evening in the city, nearly knocking her over in an alcoholic haze in his soon-to-be-sold car. Almost immediately afterwards, he offers her $500 for an hour. But rather than some nonchalant sex, what Ben really wants and needs is a friend, a welcoming ear. For reasons entirely clear while watching the film, yet summarised and written on paper seem somewhat unbelievable, Sera takes the woeful puppy-dog Ben under her wing and into her home. A early scene with Ben and his boss where he learns he is to be let go, is a curious, affecting moment - we can see the affection that his boss had for him once. Similarly so with Ben and Sera's first dinner together, where she questions him about why he wants to kill himself. What an interesting way Cage has about himself... Totally lucid, behind the glazed-over drunk's eyes an incredible intelligence beneath the dullness of the alcohol. The real skill of the movie is the performances and the chemistry of these actors, as though no-one told them that they were in a tragedy and should act accordingly. They don't care you're watching them. He drinks to bare oblivion, she fucks random strangers for cash. Their only ground rule for their relationship: No trying to change one another. They deal with these aspects, even if they're not ambivalent to each other's self-chosen purpose in life. "Maybe I should ask one of your clients what it would be like to sleep with you", Ben asks. "They wouldn't know" Elizabeth Shue is a revelation as Sera, having basked in bit-parts for years and sadly continuing back to obscurity after Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man. It's an enormous pity, her performance in Leaving Las Vegas is so gutsy, so human that I'm enormously saddened that her obvious talent didn't lead to more interesting roles afterwards. Her backstory is only fleetingly doled out - through the narrative, short throwaway moments and in a striking dramatic device - therapy sessions cut into the story at optimal points. We only see her face in these situations, and yet the eyes, those deep pure eyes, could move mountains. A simplified sexuality and clear, pure love soaks through both their work - but they reveal far more than the cheapest stock characterisations of the miscanthropic drunk and the hooker with a heart of gold. Cage and Shue transform them into people, actual believable people that you feel you could talk with - trascending the usual bounderies of the screen and your heart. They also change roles several times throughout the story, they relate with one another as lovers, friends, and a nurse soothing her dying patient. It's such a deep, pure and human movie whose outcome is haunting and unforgettable. The movie is a masterful character study of compulsions leading to tragedy, and in spite of their destinies, they are full of grace. If there's anything to be taken from the story, it is to have empathy and charity for one another. Mike Figgis, the gifted and risk-taking director of Internal Affairs and Time Code shoots this picture with a raw and heartbreaking simplicity - using inexpensive Super16 cameras and a quick-shoot approach to getting the story elements he needs. The performances throughout feel fresh and spontaneous, without stiffly redrafting the work through practice. He never takes the easy way out with his story - fully demonstrating the horrors of final alcoholic death and Sera's vicious treatment violation by her Latvian pimp, Yuri and later on brutal treatment at the hands of frat boys. She puts herself in this dangerous situation as a self-imposed punishment - for turning her back on Ben. The movie feels like an exuberantly human blues number; it is so sad for both the outcome, but the warmth with which Ben and Sera share with one another. In this vein, Figgis composes the light jazz score to compliment his great story. The third character in the movie is the city itself, Las Vegas: a caustic and artificial adult theme park in the middle of the desert. Always much too hot and busy, yet completely indifferent to what these people need. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 12th, 2007
2:05 am	Superbad Superbad - ***1/2 Superbad is a movie for those among us who in high-school felt sad, angry and lonely because they felt no-one liked them. It remembers both the pain, and the complete absence of delight in those adolescent years. It is uniquely authentic in its depiction of the high-school social structure, both in terms of characterisation and the fierce intelligence and underdeveloped emotional strength the heroes have. It's also often deliriously funny and touching. In spite of all its latent foul-mouthedness, hearts of poets beat strongly - similarly with Kevin Smith's debut, Clerks. Superbad is wise, and has little affection for anything other than close friends, for which it makes up entirely. Reminiscent of George Lucas' American Graffiti (and a sprinkling of American Pie), the movie chronicles three close friends final night of high-school. Like the upcoming Death Proof, Superbad chooses to evoke the style and sensitivities (a psychedelic opening sequence, some clever shots reminiscent of the time's cinema) of its inspirational period and embracing modern language and keeping its trappings at arms length. In short, friendship is timeless. The main pair, Seth and Evan compliment each other superbly - dealing with separation as fate deals them into separate colleges - with a delightfully dissociated set of performances. Jonah Hill as Seth, is a roly-poly motormouth capable of pouring out peerlessly offensive speeches, while Michael Cera as Evan is a tall, skinny, intelligent and repressed wet blanket. It recalls, oh-so-briefly, Laurel and Hardy double-act, and their chemistry and co-dependent performances easily convince that they've been friends for years, far more so than a simple sentance would. The movie is terribly insightful, in that teenage boys recall their deepest and truest loves for their best and closest friends; girls are a secondary pleasure, of which discussion is open, rabid and frank - these inexperienced boys do not know any better. That is how it was for me. Well, that minus a dreamlike stream of uproarious slapstick and knob jokes. The third, even more ostracised - even by Seth and Evan's standards - friend is Fogel (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). He has the smarts and the means to make a fake Hawaiian driver's license (the only name printed on it - "McLovin") for obtaining booze. Fogel's characterisation is also masterful, reinventing the ultimate nerd for this generation. It follows the American Pie strand, in that these barely legal teens are chasing a shot at the girl of their dreams - but let's be clear, they're self-aware enough to know that their supposed love is fuelled by adolescent infatuation and momentous crushes. Their only hopes to be the "wrong guy" is an invite to a party from their mutual aquaintances, and the only way they'll get in is if they come with a small truckload of booze. Seth and Evan need Fogel's fake ID, or some other means at their disposal. The movie chronicles this quest to come up with the goods - knitting the knowing friendship with the outrageous comedy adventure. The script is clearly somewhat autobiographical, writers Rogen and Goldberg recall so many astute memories and details that make it refreshingly authentic. Everything from little painful, embarrassing secrets (a hand-drawn ode to phalluses) all the way to the never-forgotten first real sexual encounters. There's one face shot in there, which reminded me of the shock, delight and unspeakably alien sensation of my previously virgin penis in its intended home. Some stuff really is universal. Similarly so with a bedroom scene with a nearly passed-out Seth and Evan, where they declare their simple, pure and true love for one another, bequeathed of sexuality. It's both cringeworthy, delightfully funny and so utterly touching at the same time. I honestly wish I'd written this movie, and I suspect a handful of people my age feel the same way. Director Greg Mottola keeps things moving very swiftly, keeping the story rattling on at a swift, well-cut pace. The only reason it ever slows down is for sentiment - which sometimes feels like a mistake, a coda for their adventure feels tacked-on - and the overlong cop scenes. There's a scorching 90 minute movie here, which overruns to just under two hours. (Comment on this)
Saturday, September 8th, 2007
2:59 pm	Run, Fatboy, Run Run Fatboy Run - ** "I'm not fat, I'm just unfit" moans sweat-mopped and red-faced security guard Dennis (Simon Pegg) - as he chases after a transvestite thief. Well, he's not just unfit, he's scarily so - a pudgy, chainsmoking no-hoper, who left pregnant girlfriend Libby (Thandie Newton) at the altar five years ago. Dennis is a loser, living in a basement flat, occasionally being a doting dad to his son Jake while being totally disorganised about it - his failure to get Lord of the Rings Symphony tickets, forgetting his keys all the time. Libby has a suitor, upper-crust American investment banker Whit (Hank Azaria), who is everything that Dennis is not. Motivated, can-do, and well-connected. Whit plans to run in the London Marathon and Dennis, lacking better judgment decides to follow suit - to prove to Libby that he's a changed man. Dennis' best friend, previous best man and compulsive gambler, Gordon provides much-needed motivation and sports injury help - notably, the blister from hell. Several staples of the sports movie are present - the training montage (surprisingly funny even if it does recycle Rocky for London), the "Am I worth a damn" moments and the self-doubt that clouds over it. As the vessel for this, Simon Pegg demonstrates himself an enormously capable comedy leading man, brightening up the dreary script with an eagerness to hammer out deadpan slapstick - if that makes sense. An inimitably funny Dylan Moran continues to wring laughs from the situation comedy effortlessly, while inexplicably betting the farm on Dennis' predicament. Hank Azaria makes for a splendidly hissable villain, his standout is a cringeworthily funny gym-locker scene. The chemistry between the leading men is good - and gets several laughs. Unfortunately, the luminous Thandie Newton is handed the unfortunate duty of being the bland "too good to be true" girlfriend, she is given little to do other than stand and react. The movie is considerably funnier than writer Michael Ian Black's previous disgraceful effort, Wedding Daze, which also had a stunningly inept handling of how to write women. It also lacks the mean-spirited and nauseating flavour that plagued Pegg and director David Schwimmer's last pairing together, Big Nothing. Pegg is also credited on the script, which likely elevates the material somewhat - giving some of the stock characterisations, like Dennis's landlord - Mr Ghoshdashtidar, who comes complete with homespun motivational training and the punishing spatula of doom! - some life and wit. The whole affair rings rather hollow when compared to other bloke human comedies about finding yourself, like most of Nick Hornby's adapted works. Schwimmer's occasionally inefficient and indistinguished direction doesn't really hurt the movie, although a stronger hold on the material, including some judicious cutting would pare down the movie's soggy midsection. There are several completely extraneous scenes - including a cameo by David Walliams, with a tiresome moment straight out of his Little Britain. There are cheesy overwrought visuals that don't work, the "runner's wall" is represented by nothing other than a big brick wall in the middle of St. James' Park - yawn! Furthermore, the morals and themes of the piece are jammed down your throat. Run Fatboy Run is a modestly entertaining comedy, transposed from its New York origins with nothing lost in translation. Then again, there wasn't too much to begin with... (Comment on this)
Friday, August 24th, 2007
2:13 pm	Knocked Up Knocked Up - ***1/2 The birthplace of modern comedy exists in that wormhole of constant reinvention through plastering ideas together and seeing what fits. More to the point, with the 40 Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up (with the promise of more with the upcoming Superbad), Judd Apatow has pulled himself as the leader of delivering raunchy comedy that seems effortless and believable at the same time. The story is simple, an unplanned pregnancy between two strangers and how it affects their relationship, their friends, family and their work. Ben (Seth Rogen) is a lad's man who's physique is the consistency of cookie-dough. He's fond of clubbing, smoking pot, rollercoasters and faux gladiatorial games with his mates. He also runs a business website for analysing the amount of nudity in a given movie, aka fleshofthestars.com - which really could have used some competition analysis. While I'd want to party with him, he's not exactly father-figure material. Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl) is a modern working woman: professional, nice and finally getting a break with her bosses as she is promoted to on-camera talent on the E! network. To celebrate her promotion, Alison and her older and married sister Debbie (Leslie Mann - Virgin veteran and Apatow's wife) head off clubbing. A charming chance encounter later, and Ben is back to Alison's for a late-night drunken bareback one-night-stand. The premise is hence straightforward - what surprised me was the way that writer/director Apatow ran with it and milked the drama and comedy for its intrinsic value. The film works so sincerely to provide as much human drama as possible, all the while being so very funny that the screenplay's effects multiply when the two written worlds collide. The only real flaws are that we never truly find out what Alison is like as a person - the script doesn't deal with her enough as a person, rather as a vessel for the raging hormones, morning sickness and physical changes. She appears to have no real friends other than her family, which makes it all the more interesting that Ben, for all his immaturity seems to be the best thing that's ever happened to her. The script is so consistently clever and well written that to oversee Alison seems like a major step-back. However, the actors startlingly adept comic timing and emotional resonance make it work. And, where the sex is awkward, the medical scenes quite scary, they have the ability to make their reactions so human and believable. The double-take from the gynacologist's line - "You look a lot like your sister" had me laughing so loudly people started looking at me funny. Following the secondary characters for a moment: Debbie and her husband Pete (Paul Rudd - getting the lion's share of lines not by Rogen) are reaching a small crisis in their marriage - they unintentionally antagonise one another, the mid-life strain is getting to both of them. Pete feels the need for some uninhibited male bonding - expressed in sneaking off to a fantasy baseball tournament, or more explosively, for a trip (in more than one sense) in Las Vegas. Debbie is reaching that point in her life when men are no longer hitting on her, causing her to need constant reassurance about her attractiveness. These secondary characters are as carefully written as the main players. Ben's buddies are less well-written, although they steal a mammoth number of funny lines (they dare one of their buddies not to shave for a year - and consequently and constantly tease him to shave) , and seem to have difficulties coming to terms with their friend growing up. The other really nice part of the movie is the small throwaway moments. These are good, often great scenes - Harold Ramis as Ben's dad offering some self-consciously bullshit advice for his son and apologising later on with the ineptitude of his son's best-laid plans - "Life doesn't care what you plan." Homespun wisdom, to be sure, but it works. Also in a delicious pair of cameos, Kristen Wiig and Alan Tudyk (Serenity) as the Alison's bosses playing passive-aggressive good-cop/bad-cop. Other characters pop in and out, like a painfully candid bouncer, Ryan Seacrest (American Idol) and Steve Carell as themselves. Again, these characters are carefully written and dutifully cast. To cut these scenes wouldn't do much to the narrative, but to take counter-example, the movie is richer, funnier and more human with them in it, but they do stack up to bolster the running time. The upcoming DVD is expected to have an even longer cut of the movie - so we'll see how that turns out. The characters throughout stay true to themselves, while growing up and becoming better versions of themselves. Apatow's metaphor of "reading the baby books" becomes a sticking point for Ben's acceptance of his parental responsibilities, getting a new job and astutely preparing to fit in with the flow of modern family life. At heart, the movie believes in marriage, family and duty - which surprised me, as did Virgin's painful and lovable characters. Surprising, as we don't expect this kind of warmth and humanity in our sex comedies. This is a movie for every smart lover of human comedy, fitting comfortably in the 15-rating demographic and is comfortably vulgar, but never dumbs down to thick teenagers as Chris Columbus' Nine Months did, which covered similar subject matter with movie stars. Knocked Up is a fantastic date movie, it is one which reaffirms our human frailties, strengths and conditions. It might be a little longer than it needs to be, but I defy you not to enjoy every moment. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 21st, 2007
10:30 pm	Death Proof Death Proof - **** Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof is a magnificent tribute to the superb excesses of trash cinema. It's also his greatest film since Pulp Fiction, a sneaky and insidious little delight. The plot, such as it is, is about a psycho - Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell revelling in sheer all-American iconography) - who murders women using his two ton "death proof" muscle stuntcar. He strikes up a friendship with an attractive girl in a bar (Rose McGowan, Tarantino bathes her in virginal light which blooms off), and charms her in a small but stunningly-written soliloquy to take a ride. Biggest mistake she'll ever make. The film is a glorious collection of the trashy, go-for-broke exploitation flicks of the 70s, known as the Grindhouse genre. By dressing the entirely modern movie with technical ineptitudes like enormous, screen-width scratches, nicks and print defects, dodgy jump-cuts, and simply slotting in a whole reel in black and white simply because it looks so damn cool - it reinforces that like someone found this print under a pile of old crap in someone's basement, and cobbled it together by themselves. And of course, there's a fantastic cut back to fully saturated film. Sure, it's cheeky (not least the texting, iPodding and juxtaposing Fantasmagoria and Film Comment in the same shelf in a grotty 7/11), but by God, it's fun. In short, like all of his films, it doesn't quite send up the genre, rather take the most interesting elements of this genre, elevate them and turn them into something that is never boring and has plenty to say. It also boasts a very personal brand of feminism. Equal amounts of misogyny and misandrist story constructs are smeared about for those who will dig for it, but Tarantino is having a good old laugh at their expense while punishing the men of the picture equally - Eli Roth takes a cameo in attempting to charm the ladies. It's all very clever and entertaining highbrow and lowbrow stuff. The women that Tarantino loves are as at home kicking a whole lot of ass as looking delicious - an ironic and loving form of "girl power". The set of spoiled, catty little whiners who play games with men, before a whorish lapdance, get splattered across the road in multiple action-replays, like they have it coming. Quite simply, Tarantino is hammering home how cheesy and petty our little sex-rituals are, and devotes a great deal of funny scripting on this subject. The zesty and lively girls in the second half of the movie, quickly snap from passive blind terror and enjoy their revenge with all the caved in skull duggery it deserves. These powerful and strong women, (Two stuntwomen and Rosario Dawson is indentified as a mother, the bearer and deliverer of life while Stuntman Mike takes life for masturbatory gratification) are wonderfully characterised people. The script is careful and smart enough to distinguish these two forms of sexual politics and conquest and still make clever and light humour of their distinction - all the excess dialogue is character-building. Death Proof celebrates the genre, period and meshes it entirely with modern filmmaking technique and storytelling prowess. Not for nothing does the roar of Mike's rampant carnality - oh sorry, his "ride", complete with phallic duck affixed to the bonnet - sound so clear in digital sound. And like so much of his prior work, Death Proof is dotted in knowing, kidding and loving references, yet all the while Tarantino makes every stolen shot, every re-envisioned cool piece of exposition entirely his own. He steals wholeheartedly, but we are never in doubt that it's Tarantino behind the creative wheel. Far from cut and paste, he's an auteur who instinctively knows why something's cool, and how best to deliver his story within the genre constraints. It is also a celebration of filmmaking techniques, characterisation and storytelling prowess. The man simply knows how to write great dialogue which exudes character and is snappy. Stuntman Mike's little speech about "good in my book" is both hilarious, menacing, witty and strangely in-character with the rest of his established movie-loving dialogue, and delivered with relish. Every performer in the movie (Tarantino himself included as Warren the Bartender) looks like they're having a great time. So was everyone else, the audience was roaring with laughter and squirming in delighted horror, often in the same moment. Indeed, Tarantino fully implicates and invites us to share these gruesome murders for what they are; Mike looks straight into the camera at one point just prior to the first - knowing full well that we're all going to stick around for the money shots of the movie. I confess, I'm very fond of Tarantino's foot fetish. It's a humanising trait common to his features - which is also like his own choice to become director of photography in Death Proof. There really is an instinctive join between camera and actor instinctively causing them to give their best. The chumminess of performer and director is enthusiastic and fun. It is astonishingly well-acted, with a dialogue-laden script that simply reminds your reviewer just why Tarantino collected his Best Screenplay Oscar. For all Kill Bill's deliciously effective action, the final 20 minutes of Death Proof tear all this up for a sterling piece of stunt-porn in which Tarantino amazes us with the abilities of his drivers, Kiwi stuntwoman (the rustic and charming Zoe Bell) and editor Sally Menke's cutting. It is the most astonishing driving set-piece I have seen since the mighty Ronin, perhaps even topping it for sheer "go for broke" verve. And refreshingly, Tarantino keeps his word - this sequence is free of any CGI "stick my dick in my Nintendo bullshit", his words, not mine. Death Proof is as much an experience as it is a movie for those who love movies. See it in a cinema and not on DVD. Don't let it tank like it did over the pond as part of "Grindhouse". (Comment on this)