... about programming, growing up in the 1970's and 80's, games, science fiction, working in a charity book shop, films, spending too much time watching television, living in Basildon and Essex, and whatever else emerges from my fevered imagination. If you're reading this, it's your fault you clicked on the link: I am not responsible for your actions.
I'm on holiday at the moment and, to take a break from all the running around I usually do, I went to see the new Despicable Me prequel.
Minions Kevin, Bob and Stuart set out to find a new evil boss to serve.
Although not as good as the originals, probably because it lacked Gru and the girls, the plot's clever enough and there's the odd swipe at the Brits (or, rather, everyone else's perception of us). Light summer viewing for kids of any age.
I turned up again to do my annual stint of picking up litter at the Rhythms of the World music festival at the Priory in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. My mate John has finally settled in gay Paris and so was not present. There were the usual aging punk bands:
and the new punk bands (sorry I don't have the names of the groups as I forgot to get a programme):
There was also a rather sweet sounding girl band:
There was also the traditional mural in progress, which looks pretty impressive:
After a tiring four hour shift, during which I got soaked to the skin, despite the waterproof coat, I treated myself to the latest festival must-have, a fruit slushie in an odd platic glass:
On Monday, 1st June, I went to an evening presentation given by Pawel Szulc at Skillmatter regarding Monads in Scala (the videocast of it is here).
It's an obscure subject and not one I really understand, and this presentation didn't help much (too many cognative leaps, like reading a technical book with most of the pages stuck together).
Monads are a kind of contract or pattern, encapsulating a data type in a consistant interface. The interface consists of two functions: a "bind" or "flatMap" function that, given a translation function, allows another monad to be created from the first; and a unit function which creates the monad from the original type in the first place.
Pavel's got a thing about monads and tried to explain how they can be used as a design technique, but I think it's something that going to take a bit more than a presentation to explain. A monograph on the subject, perhaps. Clever bloke, though.
I've been a little busy of late doing an online course in Scala, so I'm doing a bit of catching up.
First up, The Unknown Known, a strange documentary from Errol Morris about the former U.S. Secretary of Defence and Neo-Conservative Donald Rumsfeld.
This can be contrasted, explicitly, with the documentary that Morris did previously about another Defence Secretary, Robert McNamara. Whereas McNamara seemed to be an active participant in the decisions made by himself and the presidents he served, and suffered accordingly, Rumsfeld seems to have merely been an observer, unengaged, just a place-holder until a real decision maker turned up. Intriguingly, Nixon thought of him as unreliable and so he escaped the Watergate scandal.
Next, Dracula Untold, the story of Prince Vlad Tepes (Luke Evans) and his struggles to save his people from the Ottoman Emperor Mehemed II (Dominic Cooper).
A ripping yarn, and an attempt at blending real history (Prince Vlad did defeat the forces of Mehemed in night battle and impaled 20,000 prisoners) with the Dracula story of Bram Stoker, this is a really good pizza movie and worth the watch.
Lastly, Officer Down, a cop movie starring Steven Dorff.
Based on a true story, it's not a bad little film, hampered only by the initial flash-backs, which just confuse rather than add style. The acting isn't bad, with good support by Walton Coggins and James Woods. Better than you would think.
Oooooo, on TV over in the 'States is a new series about us IT people. Called Mr. Robot, it's about a dysfuctional hacker (so no cliches there then) who finds himself embroiled in a shadowy world corporate intrigue.
Yeah, it sounds like clap-trap, but, in the absense of anything better, it might be worth a watch (assuming you can find it amongst all the dross on our networks).
A few films, courtesy of my Amazon subscription. First, a western directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones.
In pre-Civil War Nebraska Territory, a homesteader (Hillary Swank), tasked with escorting three women, driven mad by their experiences, back to a sanctuary in Iowa, recruits an experienced escort (Jones).
Although this is a decent enough drama, and certainly well acted by Swank, Jones and the other cast members, it's not really a western in the classic sense. For that it would require an ultimate antagonist, and the only real one in the film is the wild and randomly dangerous Frontier.
Next up, Brute Force, a prison drama starring Burt Lancaster. Driven to desperate measures by a sadistic and ambitious prison guard captain (Hume Cronyn), Joe Collins (Lancaster) and his fellow inmates attempt an escape from the notorious Westgate Prison.
A classic noire from the 1940's by Jules Dassin, Lancaster is at his toughest in this gritty drama where nobody wins. Fantastic stuff.
Netflix release it's own creations in job-lots and they've done that with one of Marvel's more ambiguous characters, Daredevil. In the aftermath of the attack on New York, depicted in The Avengers film, Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) investigates seemingly unconnected criminal activities in Hell's Kitchen and the shadowy figure behind them.
It looks pretty good, avoiding the usual cliches, and the martial arts looks top notch. Only available through Netflix, though, which is a shame.
Over the Easter break I've been watching a few films. First up, a sci-fi film from Luc Besson starring Scarlett Johansson.
Lucy
Lucy (Johansson), while being forced to smuggle a designer drug, accidentally takes a massive overdose.
Based on the joke that only 10% of the brain is used by the average human (in Chelmsford it's a lot less), imagine that someone had re-written Johnny Depp's film Transcendence, but had thought "throw out all the existential stuff, put Scarlett Johansson in it as a drug-enhanced psychic Ninja and a load of Chinese gangsters shooting things up with French police. And keep Morgan Freeman in it." It makes District 13 look like it had been written by Jean-Paul Sartre. Even a pizza movie has some standards, but if you only want to use 10% of your brain, one way would be to watch this.
The Grand Budapest Hotel
An author reflects on his stay at an odd hotel in a fictional eastern bloc country during it's communist days and his encounter with the owner.
Wes Andersen specialises in making odd films, (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Royal Tenenbaums), and this is no less weird. It's a story within a story within a story, the main one being of the Concierge of the Hotel (Ralph Fiennes) back in the 1930's, being framed for the murder of one of his aged "clients", an unrecognisable Tilda Swinton. It's not a bad yarn and the supporting cast is stuffed with A-Listers, most of whom have been in Andersens films before. It got a few Oscars and Bafta's, but you can see that the oddness would be a bit too much for a jury's taste. I liked it, but I can't actually figure out why.
Powers
To finish off, I thought I'd mention a comic book TV adaption, available only through your Sony PlayStation, if you have one.
Former super-hero Christian Walker a.k.a. Diamond (Sharlto Copley) is now a detective with the L.A.P.D. Powers Division.
It's a variation of the "if people really did have super-powers, who would police them?" idea (like The Boys). I've not read the comics, although I've heard good things, and anything where Eddy Izzard plays Hannibal Lecter with super-powers can't be all bad. Worth a watch, although not enough to get you to actually buy a PlayStation.
It's been a while since I wrote about the films I've been watching, so here goes. First up, a comment on modern news media.
Nightcrawler
Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), a petty thief and hustler in Los Angeles, encounters a freelance news crew at the scene of an accident.
An update of Network with a central character that makes Tony Curtis's Sidney Falco look compassionate and altruistic, Gyllenhaal gives a strange and chilling performance as the amoral anti-hero Bloom. The plot and direction are excellent, and he's ably supported by Rene Russo, as the news director who encourages him, and Riz Ahmed, as his gullible assistant. Both the movie and Gyllenhaal's performance are Oscar material, in my view, and the film is highly recommended.
The Equaliser
Next, a remake of the 80's TV series with Denzel Washington. Working in a hardware super-store, Robert McCall (Washington) lives a quiet, unassuming life until he tries to help a young prostitute.
Although it nods to the original TV series, this film is really a copy of an earlier Denzel movie, Man on Fire. Washington adds class to what would otherwise be another addition to the vigilante genre (Taken, Three Days, etc.), and there's been a bit more thought put into the plot and characters than normal, Marton Csokas as his Russian nemesis is particularly sinister. It is just a pizza movie at heart, however, just not a bad one.
Transcendence
This is Johnny Depp's attempt to make a serious science fiction movie. After being assassinated by an anti-technology terrorist group, Dr. Will Caster (Depp), an A.I. expert, has his consciousness uploaded into a computer.
Although the special effects are good, the film is let down by the plot, which lacks pace and energy at critical points. This is probably because it's trying to deal with philosophical issues (human identity and the singularity) in a medium that doesn't easily support their discussion. The acting is okay, if a bit pedestrian, which reflects the dull dialogue, and there's a few A-Listers to fill in, but overall I felt that it was just a little too slow.
A Walk Among The Tombstones
The latest vehicle for Liam Neeson, he plays a retired policeman hired by a drug dealer to investigate the disappearance his girlfriend.
From a novel by Lawrence Block, Neeson does well as the recovering alcoholic Matt Scudder (the start of a possible series). The plot is well conceived and translates well onto the screen, although Scudder's teenage sidekick T.J. (Brian Bradley) could have done with being older. After seeing Neeson in worse films, it was nice to see him in something decent. This was also the second film with David Harbour in a supporting role (he played a crooked cop in The Equalizer)
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
Yup, Tom Clancy's hero gets a reboot. After recovering from his injuries in Afghanistan, former marine Jack Ryan (Chris Pine) becomes a financial analyst working secretly for the C.I.A. when he comes across a plot by Russian intelligence to collapse the American economy.
Directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also plays Ryan's nemesis, the plot is reasonably good, if a bit cartoon, and the acting more than adequate, given that Pine is supported by Kevin Costner (much better cast than in the previous movie), as his boss, and Keira Knightley as his wife. Not a bad pizza movie, if a bit predictable.
The Naked City
A classic not-quite-noire from the 1940's, New York police detectives Lt. Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) and James Halloran (Don Taylor) investigate the murder of a good-time girl.
The acting is a bit wooden and there's not a bad cop in sight, but the real gem is seeing New York, New York in the 1940's (some of the sound is bad because they were filming in people's apartments and houses). The director, Jules Dassin, was one of the more adventurous in America, but was eventually blacklisted for his communist sympathies and moved to Europe. There are a thousand stories in the Naked City, and this was one of them.
Yesterday I went to a presentation, hosted by the London Futurists, by Jeremy Leggett, who gave a similar presentation about eighteen months ago. His new book is currently in production and he gave us a brief overview of it's themes and possible content.
His main thrust was that renewables are succeeding to the loss of fossil fuels. Renewables, mostly solar and wind, but also wave and tidal, have become much cheaper over the last few years, in particular solar technology. This contrasts to fossil fuels, which investors are seeing as increasingly risky: in particular he cited the reluctance of Shell's shareholders to back it's exploration of the Arctic and the cost overruns of Kashagan oil field, which has only just started production after more than ten years. As previously, he also highlighted the problem with shale oil and gas production. The third theme is the concerns over climate change and the reduction in greenhouse gasses.
Jeremy was quite bullish, even when some of the audience pointed out flaws in his arguments, and he's almost as myopic in his support for renewables as his opponents are for fossil fuels (one question concerned the degradation of solar cells and the difficulty in recycling them, for which he had no answer).
There seems to be two main problems with renewable energy, and energy in general. The first is that renewables don't seem to be very portable or storable. Most renewables concentrate on generating electricity, which is relatively easy to do, but they are unreliable and to make them truly an alternative to fossil fuels will require the storage of the electrical output. I'm not talking car batteries here, but of the size that can keep a small town supplied for, say, a week. My father was involved, briefly, in the Dinorwic pump storage scheme in Snowdonia. This was designed to allow nuclear power stations to run at a constant rate, storing the excess power at low demand times for use a peak times. On a smaller scale, this is what's needed for renewables to viable as an alternative to, say, gas, which can be used on demand.
The other problem, slightly related, is that electricity cannot be used in places where fossil fuels are used due to energy density. Aviation, i.e. jet, fuel has a density of about 40 MJ/L. Lithium-ion batteries, such as you have in mobile phones, have about 3 MJ/L. You can't power a jet aircraft on batteries. You can create hydrogen using the electrolysis of water, which could then be liquefied. It might also be possible to chemically create hydrocarbon fuels, such as ethanol, which has a energy density of around 20 MJ/L. Still, it's a fair way off and not currently achievable.
Another, more subtle, point is that the "war" hasn't been won at all. The energy companies are starting to look at renewables and investing in them, thus increasing and extending their hold on energy production in the future. On those terms, it doesn't feel like a victory. We've merely swapped one form of cartel for another. Maybe it was the wrong war?
Ultimately, despite Jeremy's hubris, my electric bill is not going to get smaller and there's no renewable answer that gets me to work and back.
Update: As usual, the group has videoed the event and posted it on Youtube.
On the way back home, the train passed by a large solar farm on the outskirts of West Horndon, but, as I looked up, I saw about a dozen contrails criss-crossing the sky.
I've been blasting through movies at a fair clip over the past few weeks, so here's the highlights.
Network
A 70's movie, a last great golden age in my view before everything went all blockbuster and sentimental, and also Peter Finch's last. Howard Beale, a veteran news anchor, has a breakdown on live television, but it doesn't have quite the effect anticipated.
Perhaps it's not as shocking now as it was then, what with Celebrity Big Bother and Judge Judy, it does show it's deficiencies in plot and styling, but the acting is still great and not surprisingly won umpteen Oscars the following year.
Out of the Past
A classic film noire from 1946, starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer. Jeff Bailey (Mitchum) is running a garage in a backwater town in the California hills when a he's contacted by a past acquaintance with a job offer he can't refuse.
Although the plot is good, it's let down by Mitchum, who hadn't quite got the hang of acting at that time, and Greer who's more neurotic than fatal (she was no Ava Gardner). The highlight is Kirk Douglas, as the menacing Whit Sterling, who could act, and proceeds to do so, stealing the scene from Mitchum every time.
Need for Speed
A vehicle, if you forgive the pun. for Aaron Paul after his success in Breaking Bad. Having been framed for the death of his friend, Tobey Marshall (Paul) drives across America to compete in an unlicensed road race and revenge himself on the man (Dominic Cooper) who set him up.
Not a bad little pizza movie, if undemanding. There's almost no plot and the script sounds like it was written in an afternoon, but this is more than made up for by the car chases, which are breathtaking.
Snitch
Dwayne Johnson plays John Matthews, a construction and transportation owner whose estranged son is arrested in a DEA sting operation and makes a deal.
Dwayne continues his acting lessons, this time with the help of Susan Sarandon as an ambitious D.A., Jon Bernthal as an ex-con who gets unwittingly involved, and Barry Pepper as Matthews D.E.A. handler. Dwayne doesn't do too bad, and it's a good role for him, with a bit of action as well as acting. Give the guy a break: he's really trying!
I, Frankenstein
Dr. Frankensteins creation (Aaron Eckhart) is saved by the Gargoyle army to help save humanity from the demon horde.
Yeah, whatever. I couldn't really summon up the enthusiasm for this. It just seems like a group of media types got in a room and randomly threw Gothic stories around until something stuck. Watch only if you're bored.
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
And finally, one of the best comedy films ever made, and certainly one of the most original. Rigby Reardon (Steve Martin) is asked by Juliette Forrest (Rachel Ward), daughter of a noted cheese scientist, to solve the mystery of her father's death.
Funnier than a pack of hyenas in a laughing gas factory, Martin and Ward spark off each other wonderfully, but it's the "bit" players and the fantastic editing of all the 40's and 50's film clips that make it such a treat. Watch again and again.
Better Call Saul
Ooooo, speaking of Breaking Bad, a new series has started in the 'States about one of the characters. Jimmy McGill a.k.a. Saul Goodman, one-time hustler and con-artist, now tries to keep his head above water as a public defender.
Although I was a little disappointed with the ending of the parent series, this looks a little more promising.
Last night, or rather this morning, I was up watching a series whose pilot I'd watched a few months ago on Amazon, based on the crime novels by Michael Connelly. L.A.P.D. Detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch (Titus Welliver) is called in to investigate some bones found by a dog in the Hollywood Hills.
Ably supported by an excellent cast (including Jamie Hector as his partner and Lance Reddick as his ambitious and more political boss, both actors from The Wire), Welliver looks very suited to the role and the story is excellent, as you would expect from the author of The Lincoln Lawyer. The only complaint is that when there's a deviation from the main character, it does feel somewhat artificial and contrived. Overall, though, it's an enjoyable, if conventional, series. I even like theme tune.
I'm also reading a Trade Paperback from Vertigo about an agency that fixes breakdowns in the fabric of reality. Trying to determine what happened to his father in a "quantum tornado", Adam Hardy joins the Federal Bureau of Physics and, with his partner Jay Kelly, gets caught in a bubble universe trying to rescue a financial fraudster.
I'm always looking for comics that break out of the conventions of the genre and this is no exception. Written by Simon Oliver (Story), Robbi Rodriguez and Rico Renzi (Artwork), it's just one roller-coaster of weirdness, but intriguing and entertaining in equal measure. And not a super-hero or zombie in sight.
Last Saturday, I attended a presentation hosted by the London Futurists in the basement at Birkeck College on the subject of stem cell-based regenerative medicine by Dr. Stephen Minger, Chief Scientist at GE Healthcare.
Stephen gave us an overview of what GE Healthcare did (they have a $1 billion budget for research) and a potted history of stem-cell research. He seemed somewhat hesitant to speculate on what the future might be for (stem) cell therapy, although he did highlight both the successes, in particular with leukaemia, and difficulties with the treatment.
The group has been posting the presentation on Youtube, and this one is no exception:
Overall I found the presentation both engaging and informative.
A few more films from my Amazon subscription, both based on legends old and new.
The first is based on one of the oldest Greek legends. After completing his twelve labours, a war-weary and haunted Hercules (Dwayne Johnson) and his companions Amphiaraus (Ian McShane), Autolycus (Rufus Sewell), Tydeus (Aksel Hennie), Atalanta (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal) and his nephew Iolaus (Reece Ritchie), are hired by King Cotys of Thrace (John Hurt) to defend his kingdom from ruthless bandits.
Despite a slightly shaky start, this turns out to be quite a good film. It's a good story and deceptive enough to keep you second guessing almost until the end; the special effects aren't too bad; and the acting is more than adequate, the effect of all the class British thesps in supporting roles encouraging Dwayne to raise his game above previous attempts. Recommended as an above average pizza movie.
In contrast we have as my second film, Godzilla: a remake of a remake of a modern Japanese legend. Fifteen years after his wife dies in a mysterious accident at a Japanese nuclear power plant, engineer Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) breaks into the quarantined area with his estranged son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) to get answers.
I suppose that if you like the original Japanese movies, this will be quite a good experience, even nostalgic. For me, however, it was a little tedious. Most of the "A" listers had gone by the time the movie got going and all that was left was three huge monsters slugging it out in San Fransisco. In the dark.
The movies I get from Amazon are in threes and I managed to get them all replaced this time around and watched one after the other.
First, Three Days to Kill, a (perhaps unintentional) comedy thriller staring Kevin Costner as an ageing CIA agent trying to reconnect with his estranged family and offered treatment for his terminal illness in return for one last job.
An inferior competitor to the Taken series, even the occasional stabs at comedy don't really work and the whole thing, although workman-like, is a damp squib. Only the action scene's redeem it a little, but even those are run-of-the-mill. Ignore.
Next up, Guardians of the Galaxy, based on the Marvel comics, one of whose authors is one of my favourites, Dan Abnett of the Eisenhorn\Ravenor series. Having been kidnapped by extra-terrestrials as a child, adventurer and thief Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) manages to acquire a metal orb that attracts the attention of villain Ronan (Lee Pace).
Not bad. The plot's pretty good, if relentless; the action well paced and the special effects gob-smacking and original. The characters are a little too cardboard for my taste: Vin Diesel plays Groot who only says the same thing over and over again, "I am Groot", so everyone got their money's worth there. Dave Bautista as Drax the Destroyer is better value, but Bradley Cooper adds little as Rocket. The 70's sound track and Quill's use of it to connect with his past, especially his mother, does add a human touch and stops it all being too alien. A good all-round pizza movie.
By the way, without looking at the credits, see if you can spot Karen Gillan from Doctor Who.
Last, but far from least, there's Edge of Tomorrow, the latest Tom Cruise vehicle. After an alien invasion of near-future Europe, U.S. Army spokesman William Cage (Cruise) gets accidentally caught up in the human counter-attack.
It's like an over-the-top mash-up of Independence Day, Groundhog Day and The Longest Day. The technology (me being geeky) is incredibly well realised with lots of vertical take-off aircraft (similar to the V-22 Osprey currently in service) and hovercraft, as well as the exo-skeletons. The plot's a bit convoluted but its origins as a Japanese short-story might be responsible for that. Cruise and Emily Blunt, as the soldier who's experienced the same time-looping before, do well enough, but there is a sort of forgettable quality about the story (in a similar way to a previous Cruise film, Oblivion). A good enough pizza movie if you ignore all the resurrection undertones.
Here's a thing. There's a school of thought that says that recent movies have a preoccupation with ageing, death, longevity or immortality. The reason for this is that the people who make the movies (star in them, produce or direct them) are the so-called post war baby-boomer generation and mortality is catching up with them. This is expressing itself in the films (Cruise is 52 and Costner 60) so the idea has some merit.
Just thought I'd do an update as it's been a few weeks and I've been a little preoccupied with work and whatnot.
R.I.P. Oliver.
A sad departure was my budgie Oliver who had been in declining health all last year, but worse in the run up to Christmas. Budgies are social creatures by nature and the loss of the female, Snowflake, the year before had hit him hard, plus he was around ten years old, which is about their lifespan.
He was a great budgie and he's missed already. Chez Lemon is very quiet.
Lazarus
On a different tack, I've been reading a copy of Greg Rucka's latest story, Lazarus, from Image comics:
It takes place in a dystopian future where society has descended into technically advanced fiefdoms run by families, each of which has a super soldier, or Lazarus of the title. The stories focus on the Lazarus of the Carlyle family, Forever, but in the second book, a story of a "waste" (a disenfranchised social class) family runs parallel to hers.
So far, there's little in the story which is positive or uplifting, but this is in keeping with Rucka's style (Queen and Country was a little bit like that, with no real winners, just survivors). The art work is also good, so it's all promising, if a bit grim.
12 Monkeys
Continuing on with the dystopian theme, the TV version of the Terry Gilliam film has been made over in the 'States and it looks good.
On the upside of a disruptive and chaotic Christmas/New Year (welcome to 2015, everybody), I watched a few films from my Amazon subscription. First up, two con artists (Christian Bale and Amy Adams) are blackmailed into an FBI sting operation:
On paper, this looks like it could be a really great movie, with a top notch cast and a true(ish) story, but the direction is poor and the casting laughable. Bale couldn't sell a lifebelt to a drowning man and generates no sympathy or empathy as the lead. Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams, as his wife and girlfriend respectively, do better, but, like Bale, are too young for the roles. Jeremy Renner is also good, but Bradley Cooper is just embarrassing. It's just simply not their kind of film. However, you do get a glimpse of what might have been when Robert De Niro turns up for 5 minutes and steals not just the scene but the movie.
Next is the Dallas Buyers Club. Ron Woodruff (Matthew McConaughey), after contracting HIV and developing AIDS, decides to treat himself and others using non-FDA approved drugs after the approved treatment fails.
The acting in the film is top notch, as you'd expect, with McConaughey ably supported by Jennifer Garner as his doctor and Jared Leto as his business partner, and the story is handled well. However, as with the previous film, I've always felt that true stories don't fit particularly well into film because a life cannot be told in 90-120 minutes. I always have a feeling that the truth is more complex and you're just getting half the story. Still, it's not a bad film and worth the watch.
Yes, it's December, which must mean that it's Dragonmeet again. It's been moved to a new venue from Kensington Town Hall to the Ibis Hotel in Earls Court ("more room" according to one of the volunteers).
To me it seemed smaller, or more compact. There weren't many vendors there, but perhaps more producers, including a new card game called Stak Bots:
I bought an RPG that I've had my eye on for a while, which seems to be a bit different from the usual character based games:
Unfortunately, I didn't get a game so, on my way back, I stopped off at Covent Garden to do a little more shopping and saw the lights:
Two films from my Amazon subscription. The first is the sequel to the popular Kiss-Ass. Bored with premature "retirement", David Lizewski a.k.a. Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Mindy Macready a.k.a. Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) join with other super-heroes while struggling with growing up and leading a normal life.
I must admit that I haven't read much of Mark Millar's work, in particular the Kick-Ass books, so I can't compare them to the original. The one book I have read, Wanted, was awful, and the film much better. The original Kick-Ass had a kind of naive violence, like Tom and Jerry, and the corresponding charm. This has the difficulty that the novelty has worn off, and the violence seems a little more serious and intense, as does the whole film. Jim Carrey (Colonel Stars and Stripes) plays the father figure that Nicolas Cage (Big Daddy) played in the first film, and the supporting cast is good enough, but it is an inferior sequel to a mediocre film.
The second film is 47 Ronin, based on a classic Japanese story. Kai (Keanu Reeves), a mixed-race woodsman in feudal Japan, is treated with suspicion and ill-disguised contempt by his master Lord Asano's (Tadanobu Asano) samurai retainers.
A visually stunning film, and worth watching for that alone, the cast, aside from Reeves (who isn't that bad, really), is excellent, headed by Hiroyuki Sanada as the lead samurai and the beautiful Ko Shibasaki as Kai's true love. Tadanobu Asano and Rinko Kikuchi are also suitably evil as Asano's nemesis and his sorceress.
It's problem, however, is that it adheres too closely to the original story for the Western audience (and is too conservative a film for the modern Japanese audience: Battle Royale is more typical) and yet is too Western for the Japanese audience, so it's no surprise (but a bit unfair) that it's the second most unsuccessful movie of all time, losing $20 million at the box office. You can imagine the effect on us if Hollywood decided to make a film about The Battle of Britain with Harrison Ford as Hugh Dowding, or The Dambusters with Nick Cage as Guy Gibson. Nah.. they wouldn't... would they?
Every so often, there's a new film on Film 4. Mostly I've seen them through other media, but Wild Bill was a new one and a little gem. Having served eight years for crimes he did commit, "Wild" Bill Hayward (Charlie Creed-Miles) returns to his East London home to try to reconcile with his estranged sons and lead a quiet life.
A kind of anti-revenge film, Creed-Miles is great as Bill, trying to avoid any trouble with his former associates, while dealing with the resentment of his eldest son Dean (Will Poulter) and keeping his youngest Jimmy (Sammy Williams) away from the villains. The supporting cast is top notch, with Olivia Williams as Bill's probation officer, Sean Pertwee as the cop who arrested him the first time and Andy Serkis as his even wilder former boss. However, it's Bill and his family who hold the attention until the final, inevitable, confrontation looms like a thundercloud. Very recommended.
...oh all right then. YES, there's a trailer out for the new Star Wars movie coming out next year. And, YES, it looks good. And, YES, it's got the Millenium Falcon in it. Go on then...
J.J. Abrams is at the helm and if Lucas is smart, he'll let him do what he wants: it didn't do Star Trek any harm.
Two from my Amazon film subscription. First the latest Liam Neeson film. Struggling alcoholic U.S. Air Marshal Bill Marks (Neeson) sets off on a trans-Atlantic flight, but is being sent mysterious messages threatening the safety of the passengers and crew:
With a ridiculous plot, bad pacing (there's are some very tedious moments) and small details that let the whole thing down (why would RAF Typhoons be anywhere near Iceland?), the only saving grace is the action scenes, special effects and the cast, although wasted. Better than nothing, but not much.
Marks might have been better off dead, which brings us to my next film, R.I.P.D. Having being shot and killed by his partner (Kevin Bacon), Boston Detective Nick Walker (Ryan Reynolds) is teamed with a former western lawman (Jeff Bridges) and tasked with returning "deadoes" back to the afterlife:
From a comic book of the same name, this is an enjoyable hybrid of Ghostbusters and Men in Black, let down only by Bridges trying to lampoon his own version of Rooster Cogburn. The effects are good and the supporting cast, especially Bacon, Mary-Louise Parker as their boss and Robert Knepper as their first suspect (much underused). Good fun and a decent pizza movie.
