Is anyone else who uses Bloglines noticing an odd problem with items being kept new despite not having appeared before?
I’ve noticed that, on the Digg feed in particular, as I scroll through several items out of the hundreds have already been marked as “keep new” despite me having never seen them before. Is this a known bug?
I have signed up to Twitter, partly prompted by Matt’s invite, and partly because it seems like a good place to dump those really short thoughts that I think about blogging but then feel guilty about passing them off as real material here. I’ll integrate it into the sidebar at some point (sometime 2008 at this point), but for now if you want to see it you can find me at http://twitter.com/garyfleming, as cunning a name as you might imagine.
If you read this/know me, and already have Twitter, please do add me; I’m already subscribed to a friends feed.
A new year, a new film fight. As always, this is an aid so I can pick the best film of the year from the monthly winners. Despite the usual weak start to the year, there are 5 films this month.
White Noise 2: The Light is the sequel to a film I haven’t seen and to which it bears no apparent connection, by all accounts. It’s a fairly cliched story about predicting how people will die and the consequences of interfering. There are some interesting ideas here, but it’s carried off poorly. The story suffers from a hugely rushed establishing sequence, and veers between too many plot strands to be effective in any. Not awful, but not particularly worthwhile.
On the comedy front, Night at the Museum is surprisingly funny. While it’s aimed at a slightly younger audience, there’s plenty here for those who are older: the constant fighting between Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan, Dick Van Dyke as an elderly guard, and, of course, Ben Stiller pulls out some great lines. It’s a predictable (all conflicts are resolved by the final act) but light-hearted film.
Not in quite some time have we seen such a blatant attempt to rip-off the fast cut, edgy dialogue, and offbeat characters of Tarantino as we have here in Smokin’ Aces. Although the producers have obviously peeked at Quentin’s notes and ticked all the checkboxes, they’ve missed the point. Instead of finding a perfect balance between untouchable style, tongue in cheek over the top characters, and savage violence, we have a massive cast of paper thin characters, none of whom get enough screen time to be worthwhile, and a plot twists that are obvious from the go. Pretty awful, not even the great Jeremy Piven turns this one around.
One of the best horror films in a long time has arrived in the form of Them!. Rather than following the trend of an outlandish killer/demon/monster or some kind of curse, we have here a couple in their country house who, one night, wake up to hear intruders outside. As their unseen assailants move around the house, we see a queasy see-sawing between hunter and hunted. The key here is that we don’t see the attackers much until the final scenes, allowing the natural fear of the dark and creaks of the house overwhelm reason. A masterclass in modern horror, though that isn’t saying much.
Finally, Darren Aronofsky triumps again with The Fountain: a film told by 3 interconnecting, not necessarily literal storylines, each of which repeats the same key message about life, love and death. Beautifully shot, with an excellent score and cast, this film deserves to be seen by everyone. While the ending was overlong and hammered home its message repeatedly, the film still stands as a graceful and tormented challenge.
The January winner is, of course, The Fountain.