1.21 jigawats...? GREAT SCOTT!!!

So you may know that the town I was born in back in the UK is Oldham in Lancashire; but what you may not know is that I grew up in Royton, a small suburb of Oldham.

The village of Royton stands halfway between Oldham and Rochdale, and comprises of a small shopping precint, a library and a public swimming pool.

Since a very young age, I've always thought some of the features of Royton were very familiar.

Allow me to explain:One of the main landmarks of Royton is the clock tower:










This is situated on the roof of the Royton Public Library, which lies next to a zebra crossing:















(I've highlighted the yellow of the crossing lights to give a clearer idea of exactly where the crossing is).

Now, the road which this crossing lies on is called Rochdale Road. It is a very straight, flat road.

Here is what I have always thought: I can use the zebra crossing (and its proximity to the clock tower) to travel through time.

1. I need to find a car that is fast enough and contains time circuits and a flux-capacitor, I'm thinking of something like this:
















2. I need to be able to predict when a bolt of lightning will strike the clock tower. I'm not sure how I will do this yet but I'm working on it. When I have this information, I will arrange for some electical cable to be ran from the clock tower down to a cable arranged between the posts of the zebra crossing.

3. I park the De Lorean at this junction:


















The start point is also marked on the 2 following photographs in yellow (with the clock tower highlighted in green):































4. I accelerate the De Lorean from the start point, and time it just right so that I hit the cable - and the bolt of lightning - when the car reaches 88mph. This will create a chain-reaction and will supply the 1.21 jigawatts necessary to achieve time travel. Easy really.























PS. Strangely enough, a few years back I played the Royton Assembly Hall - a stone's throw from the zebra crossing - with my old band Delta 7, and we did indeed play Johnny B. Goode. A bit like this:

Inception (2010, Dir: Christopher Nolan)

I saw Nolan’s new film before it was released here in New Zealand, but I held off writing a review of for two reasons: firstly, I was suffering from a brain-splitting migraine when I first saw it and secondly I felt it to be an injustice to critique the film after only one viewing.

It’s a strange affair to watch this film with a headache. The film itself is a headache, like a splinter in your brain pushing itself deeper and deeper into your grey matter, before being absorbed by your subconscious. After two hours I was confused whether the pain in my head was physical or a symptom of the spiralling narrative strands in Christopher Nolan’s heavy screenplay. To add to the perplexity, Hans Zimmer’s otherwise sublime score drowns out the occasional line of dialogue in the final act, leaving you straining to make sense of one character’s line whilst the next line is being spoken.

Thematically, Inception is closest to Nolan’s first film Memento than any of his more recent works. It’s a headfuck on celluloid, and you can’t really say that about his two Gotham City films. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight might be brainier than your average blockbuster, but they still follow traditional narrative structures. It seems that for these other films, Nolan is seeing how far he can take his audience down the rabbit hole without leaving them completely dumbfounded.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a fair bit of hand-holding in this film. We get one fairly hefty opening scene, where we don’t know what the hell is going on, followed by what seems like scene after scene of endless exposition, as Cobb (Leonardo Dicaprio) teaches Ariadne (Ellen Page) – and us, of course – about the technology that allows his team of specialists to operate within other people’s dreams. Under a different director, Terry Gilliam say, we wouldn’t have the benefit of an explanation until mid-way through the second act. Once we are along for the ride however, Nolan refuses to let the film, or the audience, breathe. It’s refreshing to see this in a major blockbuster. The last time we were tested by such a challenging narrative was The Matrix, although even this 1999 film looks tame now that the rest of Hollywood has caught up to it.

Casting-wise, Nolan’s films keep going from strength to strength. Alongside Dicaprio and Page, the team is rounded out by Joseph-Gordon Levitt, Tom Hardy, Dileep Rao and Ken Watanabe. Watanabe, the decoy Ra's Al Ghul from Batman Begins is only one of many returning Nolan alumni, with Michael Caine and Cillian Murphy also appearing. Rounding out the ensemble cast is a criminally underused Pete Postlethwaite, a criminally unrecognisable Tom Berenger (I had to watch the film twice to figure out who Berenger was playing) and a bewitching performance by Marion Cotillard. Thankfully, Nolan doesn’t dwell on the romantic aspect of the script, keeping the twisted love-story between Cobb and Mal (Cotillard) to a welcome minimum.

I was half-expecting Ellen Page to be well out of her depth in a film like this – her know-it-all egotism has made her a two-dimensional character in everything I’ve seen her in – but it’s really Gordon-Levitt who resembles Nolan’s greatest casting faux pas. Watching him trying to hold his breath above water amongst an otherwise powerful cast is pretty uncomfortable. Leonardo Dicaprio used to occupy this role – an almost prepubescent frame motored by a whining and nasal voice – until a glass ashtray smashed over the head of a barfly in The Departed announced his newfound masculinity. It almost seems like Nolan is trying to remind us of Dicaprio’s embarrassing past by casting Gordon-Levitt next to him.

More than anything, Inception is just The Sting for the 21st century, with less jaunty piano music. Fortunately the mood isn’t lightened by endless repetition of Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer, with Inception’s only recurring piece of popular music (Edith Piaf’s Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien) being the film’s best in-joke (Cotillard played Piaf in 2007’s La Vie En Rose).

I’ve already heard talk about a possible sequel – the characters are ripe to revisit - but I hope that it really is just speculation (look what happened to those Matrix sequels). Nolan doesn’t seem to be averse to sequels (he’s now preparing his third and final Batman film) but hopefully he’ll see the merit of leaving Inception to remain as a standalone piece of work. Part of the appeal of Blade Runner is that there’s no Blade Runner 2.

The film seems to have divided public opinion. A friend claimed that he fell asleep and dreamt that he saw a good film. I would say that if anything, it’s too clever for its own good. This is not a film that deserves to be seen, it’s a film that deserves to be seen twice.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (2010, Dir: Edgar Wright)

I shouldn’t like this film. It tries far too hard to be cool and it’s basically too clever for its own good. If it was directed by a stock Hollywood director, wheeled out to join the dots on an existing piece of work (the film is based on the Scott Pilgrim comic book series), it would be a dire, dire affair. However, under the hands of the very talented Edgar Wright (Spaced, Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz) it’s a very refreshing and genuinely funny comedy.

It could have been a bad move for Wright. Away from his regular collaborators Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, he could have suffered the same fate as other successful directors tempted by the Hollywood machine (see Jean Pierre Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection for a horrible reminder of how disappointing this situation can be). It’s also refreshing to see Wright take someone else’s work and run with it – each of his previous accomplishments have been original pieces of work co-written with Pegg.

The film introduces us to the nerdish Pilgrim, rehearsing with his equally outcast punk rock band (Sex Bob-omb), and introducing his band-mates to his newly acquired Asian schoolgirl girlfriend. However, when he meets the girl of his dreams – the eye-catching Ramona Flowers – he decides to switch partners, a decision which leads him having to battle seven of Ramona’s evil exes.

As you can probably imagine, the film has one foot planted firmly in reality and the other planted a whole stride away in a weird video-game-martial-arts-comic-book fantasy world. Although cineastes not fatigued by the spectacle of martial arts infecting every corner of cinema will probably be blown away by the action, it left me feeling slightly nauseous. I’m all for a film turning a genre onto its head, but I think I’ve just seen too much of this sort of thing – as though the whole world can be solved by kung-fu. If it could, Jackie Chan would be a world leader.

Where the film really shines is in the script (again, co-written by Edgar Wright, with Michael Bacall and the writer of the comic book Brian Lee O’Malley) and the lead performance of Michael Cera in the title role. The first act, prior to the appearance of Ramona’s first evil ex, is very funny, introducing us to Scott and the way in which he looks at the world. Much like Wright’s history with Spaced, much of the esoteric humour is aimed at video-game counter-culture, with a personal favourite being a dream sequence set to the princess’ descending theme from the Zelda games.

After this, the next instalment in Wright’s Blood & Ice Cream trilogy is a must see...

Four Lions (2010, Dir: Chris Morris)

Patiently waiting for this film to start in the Civic theatre in Auckland, I was amazed at the number of white-haired cinema patrons sat around me. I wasn’t sure if they were in the wrong venue or if they were simply pulled in by the allure of a British comedy on a cold Friday night (probably the latter). Either way, I bet Mrs. Popcorn Logic that they wouldn’t make the duration of the film. I’ve been exposed to a fair bit of Chris Morris’ comedy, and if there’s one understatement to make, it’s that he doesn’t really make the sort of comedy to please older people.

However, it seems that I overestimated how extreme this film was going to be. As long as you can get past the initial thrust of the film – that it’s a farce about four moronic British Muslims who decide to become suicide bombers – then its relatively easy going. Although you would expect Morris to up his game, freed from the constraints of television, he doesn’t really use the power of the silver screen to shock. Instead, his debut feature isn’t too far from the wholesome television comedy that Britain is famous for.

We open on the four in Sheffield (although I’m sure any Northern England mill town would have been a suitable stand-in) and a half-botched attempt at filming a home-made video to proclaim themselves as Jihadi terrorists. After a failed training trip to Pakistan, and the inclusion of a fifth member of the group, things get slightly more serious as they blunder into one situation after another.

It’s pretty hard to review a comedy and give enough sense of the film without giving the jokes away. Hence why it’s always a very bad idea to watch trailers for comedies. All I will say is that the film goes where other comedies dare not tread, without going too far.

(By the way, I lost the bet – the white-hair brigade stayed until the very end and seemingly enjoyed every minute).

I Love You Phillip Morris (2009, Dir: Glen Ficarra, John Requa)

Last Christmas I finally got around to watching Bad Santa, the festive film starring Billy Bob Thornton as a vulgar department-store Santa, assisted by an equally vulgar elf. I loved every minute of it. It represents everything that is wrong about Christmas, and for that I cherish it. So, when I heard that a new film by the writers of Bad Santa was playing at the film festival, I jumped at the chance to see it.

People have criticised I Love You Phillip Morris for its stunt casting, but I really feel that the high level of comedy that it employs warrants some big name stars. What we get is a top-notch Jim Carrey performance, in full goofy form, and a quieter Ewan McGregor, the Phillip Morris of the film’s title.

Initially, Steven Jay Russell (Carey) is a hard-working family man with a deep love for his wife (Leslie Mann). After an encounter with his long-lost birth mother and an almost-fatal car crash, Russell comes out – in a big way – and decides to stop living his life as a lie. His new extravagant life ends up costing more than he bargained for and his brief career as a con-man sends him into an endless cycle of prisons and subsequent escapes. In prison, Steven meets his soul-mate Phillip and their subsequent romance – and forced separation – provides Steven with the impetus to endlessly deceive the world around him.

Stylistically, the film plays like much of Hollywood’s fare – aside from a couple of extremely clever camera tricks – but it is the comedy that is the highlight of the film. Compared to Bad Santa, it’s a little tame – presumably to appeal to a larger audience – but the jokes really are top notch. The end result is a film that no only makes you laugh, but has the guts to tackle some of Hollywood’s extremely taboo subjects head-on, with impressive results.

Oceans (2010, Dir: Jacques Perrin)

Oceans is a real attack on the senses. What with Pierce Brosnan’s narration and the noisy family behind me in the Civic – moronic child kicking the back of my chair, talking loudly, rustling a packet of sweets, and last but not least the smell of an overflowing nappy – my senses really were bombarded.

I hate Pierce Brosnan. I hate his stupid hoarse voice. I think I might hate him because it was during his tenure that the quality of the Bond films declined like never before. I understand that the end result of the Bond films wouldn’t be his responsibility, and that my hatred is therefore unfounded and illogical, but isn’t that usually the case with hatred?

I spent the short running time (84 minutes) of Oceans trying to figure out who I hated more – Pierce Brosnan or the moronic family behind me. Fortunately we don’t have chavs in New Zealand, but they were perhaps the next best thing. Throughout the film, moronic daughter was asking moronic Daddy a whole raft of questions, to none of which moronic Daddy answered with a request to keep quiet.

At one point, a clownfish popped up onto the giant screen, and moronic daughter turns to moronic Daddy and says “Elmo!”. After giggling to myself for a few seconds, I thought that she would correct herself, or that maybe moronic Daddy would help her out. Instead she said again, “It’s Elmo!” Moronic Daddy probably thought the film was called Finding Elmo too. (You might question the motives of Disney, the studio behind this film – and coincidentally the owners of the Pixar films – of inserting a few shots of an innocuous clownfish into an otherwise remarkable visual film. Or am I just being cynical?).

I might be cynical but at least I can be considerate to other cinema patrons. As Bill Hicks would say, “A miracle is raising a kid that doesn't talk in a fucking movie theatre.” I understand that with parenting, you should encourage your child to ask questions about the world. How else are they going to learn? Well in this case, by listening to Pierce Fucking Brosnan.

Moronic Daddy must know best – who am I to question his parenting skills? – as he answered each and every one of her questions.

Maybe he hates Pierce Brosnan too.

A Prophet (2009, Dir: Jacques Audiard)

It’s easy to see why this French offering was nominated for Best Foreign Language film at the 2010 Academy Awards. It’s a nice little film which turns the Hollywood tradition of prison movies on its head and actually manages to say something new and exciting about the genre.

We awake in an almost dreamlike vision of a holding cell, and watch as Malik – guilty of assaulting a police officer and looking like Kelly Jones from The Stereophonics – is led to serve a six-year prison sentence. Inside, he swiftly falls under the protection of members of the Corsican mafia, a relationship which he struggles to maintain as external temptations threaten his way of life and his approaching release date.

The camera work is just right, a handheld style making full use of the claustrophobic and cramped environments, and although the narrative does extend to a few scenes outside the prison, the majority of the film plays out within its walls.

The only drawback about the film is its length. At a running time of 150 minutes, it really does seem to be at least 30 minutes too long. Anything longer than 2 hours is okay if there is enough variety in the film, but not in this instance where the prison environment begins to get stifling.

Around an hour into the film, Malik grows a small moustache, making him look less like Kelly Jones, and more like Harry Enfield’s scouse caricatures. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get this image out of my head though the remainder of the film as I was expecting him to turn around at any moment, raise his eyebrows, and with a dumb smile say “Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh”...

American: The Bill Hicks Story (2009, Dir: Matt Harlock, Paul Thomas)

I’ve been a fan of Hicks since around 1995 – a year after his death from pancreatic cancer – and over the years I’ve amassed all of his official records, plus more than a handful of bootlegs, and devoured both biographies written on him. So there’s not a lot left to say about the great comedian that hasn’t already been said.

Harlock and Thomas’ film paints a portrait of the comedian from his childhood through to his untimely death, with a raft of archive footage and unseen photographs. Of the two books, the film tends to follow the path of Cynthia True’s original biography American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story, telling his story according to everybody who knew him. The film doesn’t get under his skin in the same way as best friend Kevin Booth’s 2006 biography Agent Of Evolution, although Booth is one of the guiding voices throughout the documentary.

Eschewing the traditional talking-head format of retrospective documentaries, the film makes full use of that newfangled computer software that seems to be very popular at the moment: photographs are turned into moving images against interactive backgrounds, to conjure up a visual image of what the interviewee happens to be saying at that moment. Although it’s nice to see this occasionally (I mean, who wants to see repeated close-ups of unfamiliar faces on a huge cinema screen for 2 hours), this gets tiresome after a while. Aside from a few short segments where we actually see the face of the speaker, the entire documentary is presented in this way.

Is the film funny? Yes, without a doubt. There are enough anecdotes relayed by Hicks’ family and friends to keep the audience amused, without even mentioning the wealth of material of Hicks performing stand-up. Although the readily available footage is represented (Sane Man, One Night Stand, Revelations, Relentless: Live In Montreal), there are numerous camcorder clips of him performing from his very early parent-centric years to his very final days obsessed with politics and the death of the American dream.

Thankfully the documentary should serve one obvious purpose – to teach those uninitiated with Hicks of the marvel of his intellect and wit. Watching Hicks perform stand-up is like a breath of fresh air – many comics simply recite jokes and mix in some observational humour. At his best, Hicks is a history lesson, a current affairs lecture and a theory of how things should be. Best not to take it all too seriously; as the man would say, “It’s only a ride.”

The Hopes And Dreams Of Gazza Snell (2010, Dir: Brendan Donovan)

I’m sorry, but after watching the world premiere of this film, a film that has been seven years in the making, I was left with only one thing to say: is this the best you can do, New Zealand? That might seem an ignorant and crass comment about a low-budget New Zealand film, but I just feel that to really make it on the world stage this country needs to step up its game and make eye-catching pieces of cinema, not mediocre works that would sit more comfortably as TV fodder.

Sure, there’s nothing terribly wrong with the film, but there’s nothing outstanding about it either. Maybe my mood was soured by watching this back to back with Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West – which is a long time to sit in a cinema with its almost 3 hour running time. This film was set and shot in the East Auckland suburb of Howick (so Once Upon A Time In The East?), and is a melodramatic tale of a man obsessed with the racing achievements of his two sons.

And here’s where the story falls down. The script, by director Brendan Donovan and David Brechin-Smith, concerns itself far too much with the melodrama of the family unit and – probably due to the nature of the event that causes the drama of the piece – there’s very little left to laugh at. The writers have attempted to portray the father figure of the title as a lovable rogue, but his machinations leave little to empathise with, and it’s left to the minor characters to provide any level of enjoyment.

I’m sure Donovan can go on to do bigger and better things. He just needs to start off with a stronger script next time. Still, if his career as a film director does start to wane, he could always fall back on to stand-up comedy. After a very funny introduction to the film, Donovan was joined by the rest of the principle cast after the screening for a Q&A session. Around 3 or 4 questions in, an elderly lady in the audience stepped up and creaked something along the lines of “I thought the racing scenes were far too loud, and probably beyond the legally allowed limits...” Butting in, Donovan stepped up to the mike and said “Excuse me, could you please speak up, I think I’ve gone deaf.”

Once Upon A Time In The West (1968, Dir: Sergio Leone)

I really wanted to like this film. I really, really wanted to like this film. I love its predecessor, The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, really just for its sheer enjoyability. It’s a very simple joyride from start to finish, and easily the best – probably due to the size of the budget – of Clint Eastwood’s three spaghetti westerns.

So when I heard that a restored print of Once Upon A Time In The West was to be playing on the Civic’s big screen as part of the 2010 New Zealand International film festival, I couldn’t wait. Unfortunately it looks as though I was the victim of my own anticipation. As much as I wanted to like the film, I left the cinema disappointed. I don’t really know why. I was looking forward to the slow, steady-handed pacing that informs all of Leone’s work, but it just didn’t work for me. Mrs. Popcorn Logic, on the other hand, loved it from start to finish, which baffles me even more than my own discontentment.

The film opens on a deserted train station in the middle of nowhere, as three gunslingers await the train of the man they have been sent to kill. Charles Bronson, in fine form, turns up as the with his harmonica as the Man In White, and, with a few classic one-liners and three shots, swiftly dispatches his welcoming party.

After this great sequence, the film dips as it fills in the back story of the four main characters. Aside from a few interesting moments, the pace never really gets back on track, and Bronson’s final showdown with Henry Fonda’s Man In Black is just anti-climactic after such a long build up.

It’s great to see a western in the cinema, especially on a cold Sunday afternoon in Auckland, and although it’s been cleaned up, the film still retains that grainy quality and looks like it was shot over forty years ago. Although I won’t be rushing to see the film again, I’m glad I gave it a shot on the big screen – I get the impression that I would have liked the film even less if I was watching it at home. Despite my misgivings however, I’d queue up over and over in the rain to see the female lead Claudia Cardinale in action again.

The Man With the Golden Gun (1974, Dir: Guy Hamilton)

Roger Moore’s second outing as 007 is a strong film, but doesn’t dazzle as its successor The Spy Who Loved Me would eventually do. The film follows the now-standard Bond formula, firmly in place since 1964’s Goldfinger, and marks Moore’s first real outing in this fashion, with 1973’s Live And Let Die being little more than an entertaining chase movie.

The pre-credit sequence introduces us to the titular character of Fransciso Scramanaga (played by Ian Fleming’s real life cousin, Christopher Lee), sunbathing on his private island in Thailand. The villain is accompanied by his dwarf servant, Nick Nack, and his mistress Andrea Anders (Maud Adams, later to return to take the title role of 1983’s Octopussy). Visited by a fellow assassin eager for his pay, the sequence sets up the main running theme of the film: doubles and duality.

Although Lulu’s title theme is very of its time, I must admit I have a fondness for its energy, although I can see why John Barry views it as one of his lesser works. A running mate in the battle to provide the title song was an entry by Alice Cooper. Listening to that song, it’s easy to see that they picked the better of the two.

Unfortunately Roger Moore doesn’t quite hit his stride in the role, with too much reliance on Sean Connery’s portrayal of Bond. His manhandling of Andrea Anders smacks of late-era Connery, and it wasn’t until The Spy Who Loved Me that Moore would really make the role his own.

As far as set-pieces go, the film has more than a few, with Bond’s trial and subsequent escape from a Kung Fu school being an early highlight. However, the real star of the film is the car chase through Bangkok, culminating in the famed ‘astro-spiral-jump’ over a broken and twisted bridge. Unfortunately, the stunt is accompanied by a slide-whistle sound effect that cheapens its magnificence, and Clifton James’ reprisal of the Sheriff J. W. Pepper role in the scene further helps to hinder the sequence.

Britt Ekland looks great as the typical dumb-blonde-in-bikini Bond girl, and the film ends with the death of Scaramanga and destruction of the villain’s lair that had become almost commonplace since Dr. No.

Overall, The Man With The Golden Gun is an entertaining entry into the series, with its only real flaw being perhaps its overly serious, stifling atmosphere. Moore’s Bond is usually regarded as the ‘lightweight’ Bond, after Connery set the standard; and bookended by more lightweight films, this film really gives us an indication of the tone that might have permeated the series if Moore had been cast into the series to begin with back in 1962.

Dr. No (1962, Dir: Terence Young)

Watching the first of James Bond’s adventures is an odd experience. The film is so far removed from the Bond of today – or even the Bond of the 70s, 80s and 90s- that it doesn’t even seem to be part of the same series. Sure, the same elements are there – M, Moneypenny, Universal Exports, and a raft of catchphrases and mannerisms introduced to an unsuspecting pre-Beatlemania, early 60s cinema-going audience – but the film just seems tame in comparison.

I’m writing this after watching the film in high-definition, and thankfully it looks superb. MGM Home Entertainment have spent some real money, investing time and effort into cleaning up the picture and sound, turning it into something that looks – in its external sequences at least – as though it was filmed yesterday.

The plot is pretty simple. Bond is sent to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of a British Intelligence Station Chief, and the trail leads him to Crab Key and the reclusive Dr. No. Along the way, we meet Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress) emerging from the sea in a white bikini and we’re introduced to Ken Adam’s jaw-dropping sets.

Sean Connery plays the role with a determination we don’t really see again until the Dalton years, and there’s nothing of the humour that was injected into the series from Goldfinger onwards. Taking its cue from Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, the films sets up the formula of event–briefing–investigation that remained the blueprint for many years, and it’s nice to see Bond relying on his wits and actually operating as a spy, rather than resorting to gadgets and smart quips to solve his problems.

Bizarrely, in Japan the translators first interpreted the title as "Dr.? No!" and produced posters with a translation that meant "We don't want a doctor". However the most interesting fact about the release of Dr. No into the cinemas was that on the same day, Friday October 5th 1962, the debut 7” single of a certain quartet from Liverpool was introduced to record stores. What an exciting time – two pillars of popular culture sharing the same birthday.

I Am Love (2009, Dir: Luca Guadagnino)

So the 2010 New Zealand International Film Festival kicks off with a bang, or more accurately a whimper, with this Italian oddity. Of the 3 opening night films I have been to during my time in New Zealand, this ranks as the worst by a long way. I’m sure there’s an audience for this film at the festival, but not as the inaugural presentation.

Tilda Swinton (impressively in flawless Italian) plays the wife of a wealthy textile manufacturer, finding herself forgotten by her husband and pushed aside by priorities over the family business. When her son introduces her to his business partner, the chef Antonio, she finds the attention and spirit so lacking in her marriage. As with most films dealing with infidelity, I Am Love offers little in the way of surprises, and tells us what we have been told many times before: infidelity has its consequences.

My main issue with this film is its general Italianness. We get a solid 2 hours of art-for-arts sake filmmaking, with the focus puller presumably asleep. Add a score that on its own merit is sublime, but overlaid onto this film is purely out of place, and we’re left with a very uncomfortable experience. Several moments were greeted by exasperated titters from the audience, and the abrupt finale and closing credits were received with a mixture of relief, confusion and disappointment.

I initially thought that I’d like this film – I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve seen in Italian prior to this – but it seems that times have changed. In 2007, Tarantino said "New Italian cinema is just depressing. Recent films I've seen are all the same. They talk about boys growing up, or girls growing up, or couples having a crisis, or vacations of the mentally impaired." I’m inclined to agree with him. It seems like Guadagnino’s film is trying so very hard to be reminiscent of classic Italian cinema that it forgets to entertain, or even to *shock * offer us something new and exciting.

I’m sure this film will be seen by a wider audience in the English-speaking world due to the inclusion of Swinton at the head of the cast list, but I fear that instead of turning people on to foreign-language films, I Am Love has the power to do quite the opposite.

How's The Health, 007?

Ian Fleming’s gentleman spy has faced many adversaries over the years. Megalomaniacs, master criminals, underworld bosses - the list is endless. Although these antagonists are as deadly as the next, it seems that his greatest challenges always come from the real world. Villains like Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (the screenwriters of the invisible Aston Martin in Die Another Day), woeful CGI (again, Die Another Day) or the current enemy number one: the financial condition of MGM Studios.

It’s not the first time that Bond’s future has looked shaky. I remember the long gap between Licence To Kill and Goldeneye, which when I admit was only 6 years seemed much longer than it actually was. During that black hole – when Bond was the most unfashionable British import – it seemed like the franchise had been closed forever. Now, despite the momentum of a new Bond for the 21st century, production for the 23rd official film in the series has been put on hold. In April, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli announced that the new film had been suspended “indefinitely” with the media speculating that the studio is heading towards bankruptcy.

With the Bond franchise being the studio’s only real source of income, both for its present worth and its future earning potential, it looks unlikely that the studio will sell the character (this arrangement would leave Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer practically redundant). Instead, MGM are looking for a possible strategic partner to restructure the studio. Hopefully this will happen soon, otherwise we may be waiting a lot longer than 6 years for Bond 23 to come around.

Still, isn’t Wikipedia a wonderful thing? Ever wanted to see a column chart displaying the total income (both actual and adjusted for inflation) by Bond actor?

Or if that’s not enough, how about the budget vs. income correlation of the Bond films?

If you can see past the typo in this chart’s title (the charter’s, not mine), the data doesn’t exactly bode well for MGM. As budgets have risen though the years, the profitability of the films has slided. Although the chart doesn’t include Quantum Of Solace (the last data point represents 2006’s Casino Royale), it looks pretty good for Daniel Craig’s tenure – the profitability has risen slightly since Brosnan’s last woeful entry, the aforementioned Die Another Day. But look further and things don’t look too promising. There are only a few data points on the red line where a film’s profitability has increased from its predecessor. Casino Royale – Craig’s debut – is one of them; but two of the other five examples are Live and Let Die and Goldeneye – Roger Moore’s and Pierce Brosnan’s opening films respectively. This suggests that the allure of a new actor in the title role can increase the profitability of a Bond film, against the overall trend downwards in this metric.

I haven’t looked up the profitability of Quantum Of Solace. A complete lack of motivation prevents me from doing so. Instead, I’m just going to say that if Solace ends up being the last James Bond film ever to reach celluloid, then at least it’s a half-decent one. I’d rather the series went out with a bang with Casino Royale, but you can’t have everything. I’m just thankful the final film we’ll ever see Bond in wasn’t Die Another Day – to date the only Bond film I can’t bring myself to watch for a second time. An invisible car (sorry to harp on about it), windsurfing CGI and the worst Bond girl ever to grace a bikini in Halle Berry.

And while we’re on the subject of James Bond, here’s a picture of a man sat in an underwater lotus.

The Destruction Of The Daleks

Question: How many Dalek’s does it take to destroy a television show?
Answer: As many as Russel T. Davies can imagine.

I’ve been a fan of BBC’s time-travelling hero for longer than I can remember. Many of my childhood memories are punctuated my images of a white-suited Peter Davison standing against his TARDIS, and a cliffhanger at the end of every episode leading to a long wait until the next Saturday.

It was sad how Doctor Who fizzled out back in the late 80s and early 90s. Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy weren’t a patch on the previous inhabitants of the role, and the Paul McGann film that followed was so polished, so American, and most of all, so un-Who­ that it pains me to see his portrayal canonised as an official Doctor (although they were remakes of earlier William Hartnell stories, the two Peter Cushing films from the 1960s are more in key with the Who ethos; although a lack of BBC-involvement in those camp films practically excludes Cushing as an official Doctor).

So following 1996’s poor performing film, Doctor Who was all but extinct. Until the BBC – spearheaded by producer and head-writer Russel T. Davies – revived the character in 2005. The changes to the format of the show were many, intending to give the series the jump-start it needed to appeal to a 21st century audience.

Most importantly, the show is now comprised of standalone 1-hour episodes. Previously the format had always been 30-minute episodes, with between 3 and 5 episodes completing one story. Although you can understand the BBC’s motivation in this change – it makes the show more accessible to the casual viewer – it takes away one of the show’s most important trademarks: the cliffhanger ending. Many weeks of my youth were spent wondering how the Doctor (or one of his companions) would escape the peril that almost inevitably spelt death at the end of the last episode. These days, although there is a fair amount of peril to be found within an episode, it’s usually resolved fairly quickly, negating the need for schoolboys to spend the next 7 days imagining the outcome.

Where once the TARDIS was a source of perpetual randomness, the Doctor can now fully control his time-machine. Previously, the fact that he couldn’t accurately command where the TARDIS landed led to stories set on strange alien landscapes, new even to the Doctor. 21st Century Doctor Who removes this feature, and places the Doctor with a fully functioning time machine (except for the broken chameleon circuit which keeps the vessel in its iconic 1950s Police Box format).

So, now that the Doctor can now steer his TARDIS, the series gives us far too many earth-based episodes, either set amongst the chavs of Sarf Landon, or in – quite bizarrely – the Welsh city of Cardiff (the base of BBC Cymru Wales, who produce the show).

The third major change to the show is the re-introduction of the sonic screwdriver – the Doctor’s trusty tool that has a seemingly endless list of uses. Introduced by the second Doctor, the gizmo was written out of the series by the time of the fifth doctor, with the writing staff conceding that it was simply a plot device that was very limiting to the script. In Russel T. Davies’ Doctor Who, the sonic screwdriver is used relentlessly, assisting the Doctor in almost every situation. Again, this works against the show’s favour with the Doctor never really finding himself in peril. Lost your key? Sonic screwdriver. Close to death? Sonic screwdriver. Earth on the brink of extinction? Sonic screwdriver. It is the writer’s lazy way out of everything.

My final fault to be found in an otherwise excellent show is the overuse of its characters, most notably the antagonists, and especially the Daleks. In the good old days (nostalgia is never as good as it used to be), the Daleks would be used sparingly – probably as a result of limited BBC budgets. However, since the final episode of the ninth Doctor’s (Christopher Eccleston) run, the Daleks have been an all too common fixture of the series, with six episodes in the tenth Doctor’s (David Tennant) reign marking the most appearances the villains have ever had with one Doctor.

From the 1960s through the 1990s, a story featuring the Daleks would mean that the BBC props department would actually have to build the damn things. Nowadays, the availability of affordable CGI means that millions of Daleks can be written into a script – see the aforementioned episode Bad Wolf – without a thought for how this will destroy the character and effectively remove the terror that they once possessed. An appearance by the Daleks used to be a special thing – now they’re becoming like wallpaper.

Still, the future is rosy. Matt Smith has started his tenure as the eleventh Doctor, and his leggy assistant Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) marks a welcome change to the dumbed-down cockernee assistants of Eccleston and Tenant’s years. Things are looking good. I would say that Smith’s portrayal of the Doctor owes a fair deal to David Tenant, although this is probably down to him not fully finding his feet yet.

Now if the scriptwriters could just forget about the Daleks for a while - it should be moderation, not extermination.

Deja Vu, 007?

A complete fail by TVNZ. We're in the middle of TV One's Saturday night Bond season. This week's film is Sean Connery in 1965's Thunderball. If it seems very familiar, that's because last week's film - 1983's Bond film, Never Say Never Again - was an 'unofficial' remake of Thunderball, almost identical in everything but name, and again starring Sean Connery.

Hmm, or is this a joke played by a knowing TV One scheduler? Following Thunderball is the Jim Carrey film Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind - a film about the surgical removal of unwanted memories. It's either very clever programming or a complete fluke...

Craig Bevan – Movie Buff / Guitar Maestro

I’ve been following fellow movie-buff Craig Bevan with an eye of suspicion over the past few years. He stands out on a weekly basis as the everyman on the Movies You Should See podcasts from Simply Syndicated (Craig is one of the original podcasters on the most down-to-earth film podcast that’s now in its fourth golden year). Now, another talent has clearly come to pass. I don’t know where this guy gets the time, but his foray into music is definitely one to watch.

Now, I play the guitar, and I consider myself to pretty decent. Okay, my fingers would develop rickets if Eric Clapton walked in the room, but I reckon I can hold my own with most players. So there’s seldom a time where I’ll be wowed by someone. Usually it’s when I’m in the company of someone like Angus Young (as per 2 weeks ago) or if I happen to catch a decent jazz player in a bar.

So, despite hearing about him “working on his music” from his fellow colleagues on Simply Syndicated and having visions of Ross from Friends playing the Harold Faltermeyer tune from Beverley Hills Cop on a cheap Casio keyboard, I was pleasantly surprised when I caught a few of his videos on his YouTube channel.

It’s simple: Craig can play, and Craig can sing. He can even do both at the same time which is always a good combination. He has a keen ear for a good cover – usually involving songs you wouldn’t expect to hear played on an acoustic guitar - and his original material is just as strong. Check out the video for Drifting Along (Jazzy Chords) – the song that has pulled Craig kicking and screaming into the live finals of Live & Unsigned (the UK’s biggest original music competition).

I hope Craig does well, and wish him all the best. The end-result of this could be a recording contract, but if that doesn’t work out, there’s always the soundtrack to Beverley Hills Cop 4 to consider. Now wouldn’t Alex F. just sound great played by Craig...

http://www.craigbevanmusic.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/MrCraigBevan

Blu-Ray - An Overdue Review

I’ve been immersed in Blu-Ray now for a few months and felt that it’s the right time to weigh up all the pros and cons of this (relatively) new technology.

For the uninitiated, Blu-Ray is the natural progression from DVD – the general idea is the same, with the main difference being the amount of data that the disc can store. DVDs have the ability to store up to 4.7 gigabytes per layer, whereas a Blu-Ray disc (or BD, as the industry would prefer us to call it) can store up to 25 gigabytes per layer. The primary reason for all of this is to watch films in high-definition, complete with uncompressed audio. However, the technology is also used for Playstation 3 games, and, once computers catch up, will eventually become a widespread method of storage in the same way that we use CDs and DVDs at present.

Anyway, a couple of months ago I bought a PS3 – which is meant to be one of the better Blu-Ray players on the market even though it’s primarily a games machine – and a 40” Sony Bravia V-Series LCD television. Up to now, I’ve maybe amassed around 15 to 20 Blu-Rays, all of varying quality – and therein lies the rub.

My first purchase, Ghostbusters, is probably the poorest quality Blu-Ray I own. Before I had seen anything in high-definition, I had always wondered how older films would translate into the medium. I had seen hi-def branded cameras being employed on films and big-budget American TV shows, so how would films shot on standard film cameras stand up? In general, it is with the care and attention they take in transferring the film to high-definition which makes the difference. I’m told that there’s nothing higher-definition than film itself, so presumably anything shot on an HD camera simply makes it easier to transfer.

In its external scenes, Ghostbusters looks like it was shot yesterday. However, many of the indoors scenes suffer from a grainy background. This might not sound like much, but when you’re watching a film though the most state-of-the-art technology, this looks really bad. In a few scenes it almost looked like a sandstorm was going on behind the actors. Whether this is due to just a poor Blu-Ray transfer, or whether there was issues with the quality of the original negative, I’m not sure but I almost lost faith right there and then.

So it was a joy to see my second Blu-Ray purchase, Zodiac – to date, probably the best quality high-definition I have seen. I had recently bought the film on DVD and so this served as my showroom example of DVD versus Blu-Ray. After the opening scene, the credits rolls over a sweeping helicopter shot of San Francisco in the sunshine. In hi-def this looks amazing – it’s so clear it almost looks computer generated. On DVD, none of this magic comes through at all.

One of the big things I noticed with Zodiac was the richness of the colour. Presumably to match the look of the period, the interior columns of the San Francisco Chronicle offices are awash with a really golden yellow. This colour is also used for the leather of the chairs in the boardroom. Now usually I wouldn’t watch a film and harp on about the importance of colour (unless I’m watching The Godfather), but this yellow really jumps out – it’s crazy, and yet another example of something that just gets lost in the mix on DVD.

Even Mrs. Popcorn Logic, an initial detractor of Blu-Ray, was blown away by one of Zodiac’s later scenes. As Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo meet up in a diner, the camera frames the booth they’re sitting in. As she quite rightly pointed out, the composition of the picture almost looked as though our television was a window and we were looking inside the diner at them. This might sound a bit far-fetched, but it really can be that clear.

But can such clarity be a problem? Sometimes, yes. In a few of Zodiac’s scenes, when the killer’s face is supposed to be obscured by shadow, the high-definition betrays the films and shows us the face a little too clearly. Ditto with The Departed. In the opening shots of Jack Nicholson running the streets back in his younger days, his face is obscured by shadow – a simple camera trick to avoid them having to spend a fortune on make-up or digital effects to make him look much younger. Again, Blu-Ray takes no prisoners, and shows us his face pretty clearly. The Departed has now become a film where Jack Nicholson doesn’t age.











One of the good things about Blu-Ray is that it gives the studios the chance to repackage their films and bring out bigger and better box-sets. Some might see this as a bad thing (and, of course, it is) but if you love a film, you’re going to want the best possible package available. With my fingers still burning after Ghostbusters, I took the plunge and bought the 5-disc Complete Collector’s Edition of Blade Runner - four versions of the film, and 9 hours of special features. Which begs the question – how many different versions of Blade Runner is too many? Some would say that one is more than enough.

The transfer of Blade Runner into high-definition is sublime. The film looks brand new and if Blu-Ray achieves nothing else, then just to be able to present older films in this way, so that they visually stand up to contemporary films, is justification enough for the technology. Of course, Ridley Scott’s film - “the last great analogue sci-fi film” - is helped by the absence of computer effects. CGI has been so hit and miss over the last 20 years that some of it is going to look really bad in hi-def – I’m thinking Jar Jar Binks in Episode 1 here – and instead of looking real, the effects will just date those films to the last two decades. Blade Runner, on the other hand, now looks timeless.

Also sitting on my shelf is the Ultimate Matrix Collection – all three films, plus The Animatrix and 35 hours of extras, spanned over seven Blu-Ray discs. I was hoping that time would have been kind to The Matrix Reloaded, but it’s still deeply flawed. Although I expect I’ll find the same with the third film, it’s the bonus stuff I’m most interested in.

As for computer animation, I haven’t seen any on Blu-Ray yet. I’ve watched some parts of the Pixar films on DVD – upscaled by the player into quasi-high-definition – and they look fantastic. Up will probably be my first foray into hi-def computer animation – it was so good at the cinema, I’m really looking forward to it at home.

So, all in all, I have some great viewing to catch up on. I seem to be buying Blu-Ray faster than I have chance to watch it, so it’s definitely mounting up. Hmm, maybe I should start saving for one of those 3D televisions...