Knowing

In this latest sci-fi effort from the director of Dark City, Nicolas Cage plays a university lecturer who discovers a mysterious sheet of seemingly random numbers buried in a time-capsule at his son's primary school 50 years ago. It is not long before he discovers that the numbers do in fact contain the exact dates and death tolls of every major disaster to have taken place in the past 50 years... and there are still 3 dates left on the sheet that have not occurred yet...

I'm not going to say any more about the plot because let's just say that it is almost definitely not going to turn out how you would expect it to. The ending especially is very "out-there" and is understandably polarising the opinions of both critics and audiences. Personally, I fall on the side of liking it. Quite a lot, in fact. I'm always attracted to a good sci-fi film and considering that Dark City is amongst my all-time favourites, I have a lot of time for director Alex Proyas. Sure, there are some script issues and the acting is a bit variable (but hardly ever distractingly so), but the audacious plot (for a Hollywood film) and some truly stunning imagery is more than enough for me to like.

I must give special mention to the key set-pieces in the film, featuring some truly eye-popping visuals that at times are actually quite disturbing. One scene in particular evokes the memory of Children of Men, with a completely seamless tracking shot lasting for several minutes as absolute chaos ensues around the main character. It's easily amongst the most impressive things I've ever seen on the big screen, in spite of some minor CGI issues. Considering the film's modest budget the quality of the effects is in fact quite remarkable - an observation that could easily be applied to Dark City as well. Clearly Proyas has a talent for making the most of his budgets.

VERDICT: You may love it or hate it, but either way it's a must-watch on the big screen.

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Gran Torino

A couple of fairly short reviews today...

Clint Eastwood's latest directing effort is another small, understated story, much in the same vein as his Oscar-winning Million Dollar Baby. The plot revolves around an aging, bitter Korean war veteran who catches his young Hmong neighbour attempting to steal his prized Ford Gran Torino, and then gradually befriends both the boy and his family. Inevitably things become more complicated when the family start suffering at the hands of a local Asian gang...

A lot of critics were surprised that Gran Torino wasn't in contention for any Oscars, but ultimately I don't think it was that good. I did enjoy it for the most part, even if the film's pacing is very relaxed and the plot quite clichéd. Clint (in what he claims will be his last acting performance) does over-do the whole angry-growling thing and the actor who plays the young neighbour is frankly awful. Much of the film is surprisingly funny, although it does develop into a much more serious drama towards the end, and I will admit that I did feel for the characters to a certain extent. Ultimately though this is very much a case of "good, not great". And who in God's name thought it was a good idea for Clint to sing over the end credits? I've never been so embarrassed in a movie theatre.

VERDICT: Good but not worth rushing out to see.

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Says it all, really

Sorry, another one for the F1 fans:

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The wait is nearly over...

I'll warn you now, this is going to a long, fairly unstructured ramble about the upcoming Formula 1 season for the benefit of the few readers I have who may be interested. If you are not one of them, then feel free to move along; there's nothing to see here.

Anyway - Formula 1 is back this weekend! Woohoo!

I have genuinely never been this excited about the start of a new season of F1, for a variety of reasons, the most important of which is undoubtedly the new regulations which have resulted in radically different looking cars, as demonstrated to the left. With no silly aerodynamic winglets or turn-ups, the cars now look much cleaner and sleeker. I'll admit that the disproportionate front and rear wings aren't exactly the most elegant things in the world, but I have to say that I'm getting quite used to them now. In fact, some of the cars, including the Brawn (left), Red Bull and Williams actually look pretty damn good. On the other hand, the BMW and Renault are both butt-ugly... either way, if it actually results in the much-fabled increase in overtaking, then I'm all for it.

Because of the radical rules shake-up, all ten teams have effectively started from scratch with a blank sheet of paper, which with any luck will completely re-arrange the grid. Even better is the fact that everyone has had remarkably close testing times - there is a genuine chance for at least 7 teams to win races this season and just as many drivers could have a shot at the championship. Sounds good to me!

It is interesting to note that the last time there was a major set of regulation changes (2005), Ferrari plummeted from a hugely dominant run the year before to failing to win a race (I'm not counting the US race fiasco for obvious reasons), and Renault went from occasional race winners to world champions. Much the same could happen this year, although it would appear that McLaren are looking a lot more suspect than Ferrari based on their lacklustre testing times. And fascinatingly the eventual champions may not be Renault, but Brawn GP, a team that didn't even officially exist until about a month ago.

Honda must be kicking themselves now. After spending literally all of last season developing this year's car, they pull the plug at the last minute and nearly cause the team to collapse, only for them to rise from the ashes at the last possible moment and proceed to trouce everyone else in testing to the tune of 1 second per lap, despite very little mileage. It's an amazing story, but not that odd when you consider that it is still effectively the Honda team, just with a new name and new management. Still, the fact that Jenson Button is now favourite to win the Australian GP on Sunday seems utterly bizarre. I just wish that I'd placed a bet on him to do that a month ago, I could have made a fortune with such long odds...

Ordinarily I would be very concerned with McLaren's lack of pace, but crucially, Lewis Hamilton has already won the title, so that particular anxiety is over. And with my previous favourite David Coulthard retired, for the first time in memory I can actually watch the races and have genuinely no preference for who wins (as long as it's not Räikkönen!). In fact, I'd be quite happy to see Massa take the title this year, I actually feel that he deserves it after his performances last year.

Normally I would offer some kind of pre-season predictions, but in all honesty, I haven't got a clue. The Brawn cars could lap the field at every race and run away with the title, or there could be a different winner every time, and the uncertainty is truly exciting. I'm sure that after a while a general pattern for the season will emerge, but until the first couple of races are over at least, no-one will know anything for sure.

Other random thoughts:

• F1 is on the BBC again! No adverts! The Chain! DC as a pundit! No James Allen or Louise Goodman!
• The Australasian races are actually on at quite civilised times. It'll be odd watching the Australian GP with daylight outside.
• Toyota has better bloody win some races - they look quick and if they don't then the bosses in Japan could follow Honda's lead. Still, their best season ever was 2005... see my earlier comments.
• How lucky is Rubens Barrichello? It was all but certain that he had lost his seat to Bruno Senna and was facing an ignominious retirement before Honda waved bye-bye. Now he has a half-plausible shot at the title!
• I'm really glad that Sebastian Bourdais has been given another chance in the Torro Rosso, he was deperately unlucky last year. Although it would have been cool to see Takuma Sato on the grid again.
• The first corner this weekend will be carnage - those front wings are actually wider than the wheels!
• And of course, no season is complete without political nonsense. Although the ridiculous winner-takes-all system I ranted about has been hastily revoked, there are protests about the legality of the Brawn, Toyota and Williams cars which will not get sorted out until after the second race. Sigh... you can't have everything, I suppose.

So, in short... hooray! Who'd have thought that someone would be so happy to lose their freedom every second weekend for 7 months?

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The Darkness of the Soul... er, flat

Well, tonight was interesting. I come home, flick on the light switch and... nothing happens. Try it again. Nope. Check other lights. Nothing. None of my electronics are lit up. It was clear, I had no electricity.

After speaking to the neighbour I discover that there has been electrical work in the building today, and they helpfully decided to disconnect me. I then realise that the electricians had left a note through my door, with contact numbers for their company and Scottish Power (listed first). So I ring up Scottish Power, curse the individual who came up with voice recognition for customer service phone lines, and eventually get through to a real person, who tells me to check the circuit breakers and phone them back if that doesn't fix it. All very well, bit I can't see the circuit breakers as I have no bloody lights.

I then remember that my first aid kit has a built in torch... with no batteries. Sigh. So I scavenge the batteries from my remote controls, and check the circuit breakers... all looks normal. I phone up Scottish Power again, muddle through the voice recognition fiasco for a second time, and finally get put through to a different person who bluntly tells me that it's nothing to do with them and that I should have phoned the other company in the first place. I'm not sure if I hung up before or after swearing loudly...

Anyway, I ring the electrical company. "Please leave a message." Grrrr....  Luckily there is also a mobile number, which by some miracle is actually picked up. The guy on the other end tells me that I was supposedly notified of the work by a hand-delivered letter 10 days ago, and that all the other tenants in the building successfully contacted them to arrange for the work to be done. That's all very well, but I certainly never saw this letter. It must have been mislaid amongst the large piles of junk mail in the stairwell... and was probably wrongly addressed anyway. Anyway, this guy actually sounds angry at me for inconveniencing him. He curtly tells me that he'll call his electricians out and hangs up without giving me any indication of when they will turn up.

By this point it was almost completely dark - and there was literally nothing to do. I couldn't even cook anything because I have an electric hob/oven. So I sat in the dark and waited, pondering ways of torturing electricians... ok, so I did actually phone up my mum for a chat but that's not quite so dramatic.

After an hour they finally arrived and proceeded to make a huge amount of noise and mess, which I'm sure won't ingratiate me with the neighbours. Eventually the power was restored and I heard the joyous noise of all my electronic items powering on at the same time. How not to spend a Wednesday evening.

In short, I hate electricians. And in fact, most service industries...

On a lighter (ha!) note, last week I spent 4 nights in Braemar with a few friends, which was a very welcome break from that whole work thing. Highlights included:

• Visiting Tomintoul and buying whisky
• Visiting the Cairngorm Brewery and buying a crate of ale
• Celebrating my 25th birthday with chocolate ale cake
• Visiting the Royal Lochnagar distillery and buying more whisky
• Taking an 8-mile trek round Loch Muick as the sun set over the hills (See? It wasn't all about alcohol. Just mostly.)
• Exploring the Linn of Dee
• Winning games of Scrabble and a card game called "Bastard"
• Visiting my old home town of Auchenblae on the way back to Edinburgh, a place I have not been in 11 years. It seems a lot smaller and the door of my old house is a different colour... and the hotel has blown up (link)

Pictures can be found here and here.

It was a shame to return to the usual routine on Monday. Oh well, I've got to keep paying the bills to make sure I don't come home to find myself in the dark with no electricity. Oh, wait...

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The FIA does it again

Just how many moronic, sport-crippling rule changes can the FIA make before the entire of Formula One collapses?

The latest bright idea is to have the driver's championship decided by the most number of wins, rather than the points actually scored. This is in effect the same as Bernie's "medals" idea which was widely criticised and rejected. I honestly don't even know where this proposal came from - the last I read, the FIA were voting on a revised points system that would give a bit more advantage to winners. This alternative idea has literally come out of nowhere, and what's more bizarre is that the FIA supposedly conducted market research amongst F1 fans that suggested that such an idea was widely despised. This is all some kind of knee-jerk reaction to Hamilton winning last year's championship with less wins than Massa (ignoring the fact that this was only because the FIA stole one of Hamilton's wins and gave it to Massa) - strange considering that last season's finale was probably the most spectacular of all time.

So now, assuming the field is as close as it looks to be from testing, we have a situation where one driver could theoretically win the championship with 4 wins and 14 DNFs, instead of a driver who lands on the podium all season and has over 100 points. Madness. The championship will be decided well before the end of the season.

And don't even get me started on the non-sensical "budget cap" rules for 2010, where teams who spend less than £30 million in a season will have greater freedom to develop their cars. Nice idea, except for the fact that with only £30 million, a team won't be able to afford to develop their cars. Nice one.

I had been really looking forward to the new season, which held the promise of some truly unexpected results, but now my anticipation has been severely dampened. The sooner Max and Bernie get carted off to a retirement home the better...

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Repo! The Genetic Opera

And now, for something completely different...

I was at the Filmhouse cinema with some friends last night for a special screening of Repo! The Genetic Opera, a "21st century rock-opera" set in a dystopian future where everyone's organs are failing and they are getting transplants from an evil genetics corporation that will happily repossess the organs (messily) if you can't keep up the payments.

Essentially, it's a bit like The Rocky Horror Picture Show meets Blade Runner. The crucial difference being, though, that those films are, you know, good. Repo isn't. Not by a long way. In fact, I'd say it's quite easily one of the worst films I've ever seen. Almost from the first minute I was staring at the screen in a state of disbelief at just how bad it is.

The biggest problem is that the entire movie is sung. Unlike your typical musical which mixes ordinary dialogue with songs, the here the dialogue is the songs, and as a result most of the lyrics are terrible and not in the least bit memorable or catchy. The music is incessantly awful, the acting woeful and the plot non-sensical. And just to make things worse, Paris Hilton is in it. The rest of the cast includes a few recognisable names including Anthony Stewart Head (of Buffy fame) and, bizarrely, Sarah Brightman (a.k.a. the original Christine in The Phantom of the Opera). Quite how they got involved remains a mystery.

The evening wasn't a complete write-off though: the film's director, Darren Lynn Bousman, and the writer were there to introduce the film and answer questions afterwards (first question: "Why Paris Hilton?"), and they were both pretty cool, entertaining guys. They openly acknowledged that many people hate the film, but they clearly had a blast making it and were totally down-to-earth and self-deprecating. I was particularly surprised by Bousman, who as the director of Saw II, Saw III, and Saw IV is actually a fairly successful (if typecast) Hollywood filmmaker. He was refreshingly open about how the Saw franchise is very much a machine that he was only a small part of, and that he has greater career aspirations than churning out horror sequels his entire life.

Repo is clearly destined to become a cult favourite, judging from the enthusiastic response from the, shall we say, diverse audience last night. There is already an element of crowd participation developing à la Rocky Horror, despite the film only coming out last December, and I can foresee regular midnight screenings occurring around the world for a long time to come. It's just a shame that it's so bad...

VERDICT: Don't. Just. Don't.

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At Last...

Broken Records have finally announced the release of their first album, entitled Until The Earth Begins To Part. For those that don't know, Broken Records are a fantastic Edinburgh-based alternative rock group that have drawn comparisons to Arcade Fire thanks to the large number of people and instruments all on stage at once. I've seen them live 3 times now and they've been awesome on every occasion - in fact, I need to seem them again... The album is being released on the 1st of June, and the widget below allows you to listen to one of the tracks, If Eilert Løvborg Wrote A Song, It Would Sound Like This:

Full details of the album can be found here. I can't wait...

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Watchmen

So, last night I finally got the chance to see the film that I had been anticipating for many months now. The recent hype has been huge, so did the movie adaptation of Watchmen live up to expectations?

In short, the answer is: not quite. It's still a good film, perhaps even a very good film, but it ultimately suffers from pacing problems that prevent it from truly reaching its clear potential. The middle act of the film, in which most of the characters' back-stories are revealed, is the most problematic, consisting of lots of individual episodic moments that don't quite tie together smoothly. I'd imagine that this is a consequence of the original graphic novel originally being in 12 parts. Despite many fans of the book worrying that the film would be too short, I honestly think that at 162 minutes, it's already a little too long.

However, there is much to admire. The visuals, as expected, are fantastic, with excellent production design, cinematography and visual effects. The plot itself is compelling, especially in the excellent last 45 minutes or so of the film. Although at the time of writing I have only read four chapters of the novel, I can already see that the film is extremely faithful not just in terms of the look - many shots are exact copies of the comic panels - but also in terms of the dialogue, much of which has been used verbatim. It could be argued that director Zack Snyder has been a little too faithful, leading to the aforementioned pacing problems.

What I appreciated most about Watchmen is that it is fairly unique when compared to your typical big-budget blockbuster. It's dark, (very) violent, at times disturbing, deals with deep themes of politics and the nature of humanity, and yet has moments of genuine humour. Additionally, the ending is decidedly un-Hollywood (probably why I liked it so much). The use of music was also interesting; there wasn't a huge amount of original score, but rather a range of period rock and pop songs (Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix), classical music and pieces from other films, for example Philip Glass' score for Koyaanisqatsi, all used to great effect.

To be honest, I'm amazed this film exists at all. Warner Bros. apparently spent $130m on a long, 18-rated philosphical comic book adaptation with no major stars, no major villain, and where even some of the supposed heroes are sociopaths. That it works as well as it does is worthy of praise, regardless of the length issues.

VERDICT: Not quite the masterpiece I had been hoping for, but still well worth seeing, especially on a big screen.

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Terminator Salvation Trailer

I have to admit, this does look pretty good. Even if it is directed by McG...

Higher resolution versions are available here.

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The International

Clive Owen and Naomi Watts play investigators trying to bring down a huge and highly corrupt multinational bank that is helping to finance world terrorism in this new film from the director of Run Lola Run. What follows is the usual line-up of shady negotiations, chases, double-crosses and assassinations that are typical of any thriller involving corrupt organisations.

Sadly there is very little to differentiate this from any other such film, and it all ultimately leads to a distinctly unsatisfying ending. Whilst not a bad movie, there's not much to recommend either, beyond some beautiful cinematography and a very impressive and enjoyable action scene in the Guggenheim Museum in New York - and even the action scene doesn't make all that much sense in the context of the plot. Said plot is neither particularly interesting or original, although I will give it a little credit - it was refreshing to see a film where there was absolutely no romantic development between the male and female leads.

VERDICT: Stylish but unsatisfying.

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Vicky Christina Barcelona

So, on to my first "proper" review since starting this blog...

Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Christina (Scarlett Johansson) are two young American women who spend a summer in Barcelona in Woody Allen's latest European comedy drama. Whilst there they encounter a bohemian Spanish artist (Javier Bardem) and are soon drawn into a complicated web of relationships with both him and his slightly psychotic ex-wife (Penélope Cruz).

I enjoyed this - I will admit to only having seen a few of Woody Allen's films so I can't really comment on how well it compares to his other work but it is entertaining, albeit in a very lightweight manner. The narrative is simple, to the extent where most of the plot development is relayed by an anonymous narrator, giving the impression that you are actually just watching selected scenes from a movie with someone explaining the bits that are missing. On the plus side, having visited Barcelona myself, there was the added cool factor of "hey, I've been there" every so often throughout the film.

The acting is generally very good, with Cruz being the most impressive - that said, I feel she was probably lucky to win a Supporting Actress Oscar given that she has fairly limited screen time and isn't that good. I feel that this is a further indication of the weak year that last year was for cinema. I do feel sorry for British actress Rebecca Hall, who despite playing arguably the main character in the film was almost completely overlooked in the marketing in favour of more famous names - just look at the poster above.

My biggest problem with the film is undoubtedly the ending - or should I say, lack of one. The story just kind of stops and the credits roll without much in the way of resolution for any of the characters, leaving very little impression at all.

VERDICT: Enjoyable but ultimately forgettable.

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