End of year Film Review 2011

OK, so I’ve been a bit busy this year. Well actually I haven’t I just couldn’t be bother to blog. So my new years resolution is to make sure I blog about something at least once a week. Lets see how long I last.

Anyway to round off the year I thought I’d give you my take on some of this year’s films in a one sentence summary:

Drive – Overrated. Michael Mann ( Thief ) and Walter Hill ( The Driver ) pretty much said all that was needed to be said about this kind of thing.

Hugo – Scorsese + 3D = good ( The 3D stops it from being great ).

Bridesmaids – Actually better then the hangover. There I’ve said it.

True Grit – Still trying to understand the point of this remake. It baffles me and so does the critics praise of it.

Thor – mediocre

Green Lantern – see entry for ‘Thor’

Captain America – see entry for ‘Green Lantern’

Tintin – Spielberg + 3D = Bored my arse off.

13 Assassins – Miike will never be able to wipe the memory of Audition from my mind, but I actually enjoyed this flick.

I’ve seen loads more then this but this is what sticks in my mind. Overall not that great a year. Mostly I’ve been catching up on old movies on DVD. They don’t make them like they used to…shit I must be getting old.

Aguirre, Wrath of God

I’ve wanted to blog about this movie for some time now. Its a brilliant work and probably in my list of favourite movies of all time. From the opening shot as the soldiers work their way down the Andes into the rainforest to the Kurtz like journey down the Amazon river. Its a fantastic mediation on madness, colonialism and the pursuit of power. I’m not going to burden you with details of how mad the shoot was. Just google it and you will find all the craziness that went on. This is cinema at its most brilliant and lurid. It also shows just how much of a visionary director Herzog is. He’s interested in constructing images and sounds into a narrative that would leave most directors for dust.

Vin Diesel Vs The Rock Vs Thor Vs Hanna

I saw Fast Five recently as well as Thor and Hanna, they’ve all been release here in London around the same time and I thought I’d do my review of each by comparing them against one another. This makes no sense whatsoever but I thought why not? My favourite of the bunch was Fast Five, ok you are probably thinking I’ve lost the plot but here me out. Fast Five “does exactly what is says on the tin”, you go in expecting car chases, hot women and a suspension of all the laws of physics and the film delivers. Then on top of that you get Dwayne Johnson who actually pretty much walks away from it as a bad ass mofo. Its over the top, though very well directed by Justin Lin – the action pieces are great and look like some thought was put into it unlike Michael ‘lets just film another explosion in slow motion’ Bay. Thor and Hanna both left me feeling a bit cold. I didn’t really enjoy watching either of them as much as I did Fast. Don’t get me wrong they are both fine movies, with great directors behind the helm but they didn’t really deliver. I know people are raving about Thor but to me it was just a very average movie. Hanna likewise is very well shot and had moments that were great but again it just didn’t live up to the trailer and the middle bit just sagged for me. There was too much running around to Chemical Brothers soundtrack. If I was at home and channel hoping and came across Hanna I’d think I was watching a new Chemical Brothers music video. Also the director can’t do action…

Directing a good action sequence requires genuine talent and very few directors fall into this category. Even Justin Lin the director of Fast isn’t quite there yet but he is much closer to it then the directors of the other movies I’ve mentioned today.

Oh and one more thing. All the movies mentioned were FAR TOO LONG! A lot of reviews of films in general all have the same comments about length. It seems to me to be a real problem and it’s actually destroying the narrative flow of the movie. I would probably have liked Hanna a lot more if it had been much more tighter and I would have thought Fast was pure genius if it had shaved about 20 minutes off….well OK maybe not but definitely even more fun!

Murder By Contract

Wow! I mean Wow! This film is amazing. I would post the trailer from youtube but it gives too much away about the movie so avoid it, go straight to the source! The acting and the plot are terrific, and the camera work is outstanding – by the legendary Lucien Ballard ( see Sam Peckinpah ) All the more so considering that the movie was shot in seven days…seven days! No modern Hollywood director could produce anything so perfect in 7 days. It has a very different feel from your typical noir, a lot is probably down to the budget but I think that encouraged the producers to think outside the box, both in terms of plot and in the way scenes are composed and shot. As one critic comments “it doesn’t look restricted, it looks restrained.” Scorsese has stated that it had an influence on him – if I’d have known that I would have watched this movie much sooner.

RIP Sidney Lumet

12 Angry Men, The Anderson Tales, The Offence, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, Prince of the City, The Veridict, Q & A and Before the Devil knows you’re Dead.

A fuckin’ legend! ‘Nuff said!

Hurrah for Japanese Ingenuity

So this is what I have been geeking up to over the last couple of days. Building my Space Battleship Yamoto. Lovingly bought back all the way from Japan. ( I went late last year before the catastrophe that befell that great nation ). Those Japanese really do know how to mass produce models for building!

As you can see a very productive day. Now all I have to do is paint the damn thing….

BBC iPlayer Partner Schedules

So I’ve been working on the BBC iPlayer Interlinking Project on and off over a 6 month period and it’s live now so check it out! I will say that its been a very tough project and I’m glad to see it released. Although I was a very small cog in the wheel I had interactions with other developers on the project and there were some major loops and hurdles to run through.

You may look at the site and think that looks easy, but it wasn’t. If you think about it, its a very complicated process. We have to gather data feeds on programming schedules and on demand programmes (these are TV shows that you can watch via the Internet for a given period of time i.e. ‘on demand’ ) from all our partners and add them to our system. OK that sounds straight forward. However these are all 3rd party companies that probably store their own data in a different way to the BBC. They have to consolidate and output their data into a standard feed that the BBC can ingest and import. Then once this data is in our system we have to index it to make it searchable and make the schedules available. Plus all of this has to be automated so that changes from our partners appear as quickly and as accurately as possible on the iPlayer website. And we need to make sure we are not wasting time and (license fee) money babysitting feed ingesting 24/7.

Not an easy project!

What the warlord!

I saw this and I howled into the night. I love the John Carter of Mars stories, even though they may not have aged so well and probably will not appeal to a modern audience. However just the covers alone make me yell out in pain. It seems to be going for the lowest common denominator. I.e. teenage fanboys. Now I don’t have a problem with drawing women all out of proportion, because its not just limited to women, men are also similarly depicted with outlandish biceps, chests etc ( see Rob Liefeld et al. ) . However this for some reason has annoyed me so much, its just too much…though I do quite like the cover by Sean Chen, its pretty realistic though she’s a bit too skinny…she needs to eat some food!

Machete Vs Black Dynamite

I saw both of these films recently and I’d thought I would give you my thoughts on them. The two movies are similar in that they attempt to parody/pastiche exploitation movies (and specifically blaxsploitation with Dynamite ). Both movies had there flaws but I have to say I preferred Black Dynamite. It seemed a lot more affectionate in its tribute to those movies, and people looked like they were having fun making it. It was also shorter then Machete and I think that was a big plus. The joke never wears out its welcome as it does with that movie. Another plus was the cameos, there was one scene involving Mykelti Williamson ( look him up on imdb ) I didn’t realise it was him until a fair bit into the scene and then he’s gone. A perfect cameo, whereas on Machete all I could think was ‘Robert De’Niro when did it go wrong for you?’ Granted I shouldn’t be comparing those actors but I’m making a point about cameos and not actors themselves…

Winner: Black Dynamite because his Kung Fu skills are top-notch

The American

What can I say about this movie to make you go and watch it? Not a lot, because to be frank its a dull as dishwater. Its well shot and the cinematography is well done, but thats all that I can say is good about it. (Oh and George Clooney does look the part ) The film starts off spectacularly, I thought I was in for a real treat on viewing the opening sequence, but no…it just deteriorates. The big problem is that it neither works as an action film, nor as a thriller nor as a love story. In fact one of the worst aspects is the love story, suddenly out of nowhere the American decides he has fallen in love with a prostitute, I thought I’d fallen asleep half way through the movie and missed a whole plot point…

To be fair this is not the worst Clooney movie I’ve seen and I’m still a fan of his ( he is ‘maturing’ into quite a good actor ).