29 days, 7 films: it’s the February 2008 Film Fight.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is an interesting character piece. It follows two brothers who botch a fairly terrible crime, and the effect this has on their lives and everyone else involved, the perspective cutting and changing constantly. Through a fairly odd progression of action, back to motivation and then consequence, we’re made to dislike, sympathise with and then despise the characters; the changes in time toying with our perception. This has the unfortunate side-effect of making quite an interesting film, with some great acting from Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman, far too long. Some of the strands are extraneous, and with a little more editing a great film could’ve become a classic.

The months of mystery around Cloverfield came to an end in February, with the monster film finally crashing down. It totally reinvents and sets a new high bar for both monster movies and action mysteries. From the fairly slow set-up, through the initial panic and confusion, into the determined end game, Cloverfield proves itself to be confident and perfectly shot. The single handy-cam filming technique forces you to sit and watch, helplessly, through dozens of near misses, hopelessly glued to the action. Although at times uncomfortable, you cannot look away. A well-written, well-executed script. Solid all-round.

Surprise indie-hit Juno, by now, is no longer that much of a surprise. The story is that of a teenage girl who gets pregnant, and gives the child up for adoption. It’s a relatively sweet and somewhat twee story, focussed on the titular character: a smart-mouthed but likeable teen who guides us through her strange little world. It’s a romantic comedy, without being saccharine or schmaltzy, with enough intelligent laughs to keep away from teen comedy hell. Definitely worth seeing.

Although the concept shows a lot of promise, Jumper fails to deliver. From the initial dead-of-life narration into the clumsy back story, you know that Hayden Christensen will, once again, fail to act; why he still gets offered roles is beyond me. It’s not all his fault, of course, as the film heads into dumb special-effects territory pretty quickly, and backs itself up with terrible dialogue (“Like a Marvel comics team up?”) and a horrendously tacked-on love interest. A real shame because, with better writers and lead actor, the idea of the war could’ve been a lot of fun.

It would take more space than I tend to devote to any given film here to truly do justice to There Will be Blood, the story of an uncomprising, self-made, turn-of-the-century oil man. The opening sequences are perfect, with not a word uttered for minutes as we’re shown the quality of Daniel Plainview’s character, rather than being clumsily talked through it. The cinematography and story are great throughout, showing his empire building and growing madness in solid progressions. Of course, the finest aspect of the movie is Daniel Day Lewis’ Oscar winning performance as the lead. Every line and look is rife with a calibre of acting you simply will not find elsewhere, a brilliant portrayal of a complex man. Fantastic.

Finally, Michel Gondry’s latest, Be Kind Rewind, slightly disappoints. Through some fairly silly circumstances, a video store clerk and his friend find themselves making cheap remakes of classic films. While these “sweded” films are very funny and show Gondry’s imaginative cinematography, the rest of the film is simply a place-holder. The character progression all but falls flat. A shame that Gondry couldn’t find a better container for the excellent sweded remakes.

UPDATE: Seems I missed out Rambo. Someone obviously misses the classic eighties action films, when the screens were awash with Van Damme, Schwarzenegger and, pertinently, Stallone. The plot here is minimal, and the exposition is perfunctory: the bad guys are very bad, some good guys try to do some good things, and the tough guys need to go save the good guys from the bad guys. Carnage ensues. I do mean that. This is one of the bloodiest films I’ve ever seen, the body count hits high numbers, and the whole thing brings back the type of action film we just don’t see any more. It won’t win any awards, but it is some good silly fun.

The obvious winner this month is There Will be Blood. The incredible lead performance makes this an early tip for film of the year.

As alluded to in my previous post, I recently bought an iPod Touch. It’s a 16Gb model, that I bought 2 weeks before the 32Gb models were announced (damn!). I didn’t buy it as a replacement media player, as my Archos 504 is still in service (though its utility is shrinking every day). No, given that I travel a fair amount, I decided to get a portable device that would let me browse the web. It came down to either the touch or the Asus EEE PC.

While I have no doubt that the EEE is an excellent and hackable little toy, the size, interface and battery life of the touch are much better proposition for such a limited set of requirements.

The Touch version of Safari is excellent. Being able to double tap to zoom into a particular containing block and use the two-finger crunch and expand for more fine-grained is ridiculously intuitive, and feels absolutely right. Being able to flick photos up and down, with a sea of thumbnails when viewing en masse, is perfect. Being able to browse through albums in cover flow with your hands is just how it should be (the mouse version on PC/MAC is pretty flimsy feeling). That’s the genius of the Touch design: the tactile interface makes much more sense than any other computing device. We will be seeing this much more in the future, directly interacting with the virtual objects we see.

I would also recommend to anyone who buys a touch that they Jailbreak it (i.e. do a series of very easy steps so that you can install your own software on the device). I’ve added an eBook reader, a mobile scrobbler for my last fm account, a few games, and a bunch of other stuff. It’s easy and pretty safe, and really enhances the device.

Bad points on the touch? It’ll smudge itself up a treat if you so much as look at it, so you will require a case (I went for a thin rubber backing and the original plastic screen membrane). The USB charger is a bit slow, so a powerline charger is probably a good idea.

More annoying than that though is that it stores files in a bizarre structure, rather than just acting like a disk with a software layer on top (like every other player on the market I know about). This is presumably to control uploading onto other computers, and possibly to make indexing easier, but it’s a royal pain in the arse I could do without.

All in all, well worth a purchase, particularly for the web browsing on the move.

I’m a little curious about something, so this is a post for those who’ve visited Glasgow or have travelled to the airport in the last few months; if you don’t fit, bear with me.

As part of my job, I travel to London a reasonable amount. This means that I generally get the Glasgow Flyer bus service (recently taken over and upgraded by Arriva) from Glasgow city centre direct to the airport, and vice versa. As part of the increase in ticket prices and better service etc., they announced free wi-fi (which I believe is provided by Moovera Networks).

I’ve tried this both from my N95 and iPod Touch (which I’ll talk about at some point in the near future), and I get the same result on every trip: I can connect to the router just fine (i.e. the devices can talk to the buses equipment), but if I try to request ANYTHING from the internet it just does not work. It looks to me like the outgoing connection to the internet just doesn’t work. I’ve tried numerous different sites that don’t go down (Google, IMDB etc) and I’ve never made a successful request.

Has anyone else had this working? If so, what were you doing? Am I missing something really basic here? I’d be interested in finding out.

UPDATE: Moovera have replied in the comments, seems to be a known and now-fixed issue. Excellent.

I’m not a comic book fan. The genre staple of superheroes fighting each other in every possible combination over childish dialogue and ludicrous lack of continuity really does not appeal. Which is why, after telling some comic-loving friends this, I was so surprised to enjoy their recommendation: Y: The Last Man.

It tells the story of Yorick Brown and his pet monkey, starting from the day when every other male on the planet suddenly and violently dies. They’re left with a world where women have to rebuild. With significant losses to the population of nuclear engineers, politicians, pilots etc, Yorick witnesses a society that is struggling to find meaning while throwing off old gender stereotypes. Meanwhile, he is tasked with finding a cure, accompanied by a brilliant geneticist and a bodyguard.

While some of the sci-fi trappings can seem a little clichéd in synopsis, the excellent writing (provided by Brian K. Vaughn, who now writes for Lost) is thoughtful and tactful enough that everything that happens seems so inescapable, there’s no other way that you can conceive of events unfolding.

Unfortunately, the final issue of Y was released just last month, but it’s better that it was a planned finale (the story was always supposed to end at this point) than it running on longer than the story could have taken.

I’d advise anyone, particularly those who’ve taken a snobbish attitude to the comic book form, to read this one book. If you’re not hooked by the end of the first issue, I can’t help you; this is the work of genius.

As a post-script, I’d like to add that it’s drawn me into some of the less stereotyped comics (I still don’t like superhero books), including:

• Ex Machina — Vaughn’s other series, about a man who becomes a failed vigilante with the help of a mysterious accident,
• The Walking Dead — A fun, though sometimes drawn-out, story about zombie apocalypse survivors (I have a soft spot for all things zombie),
• Buffy Season 8 — Whedon continuing his brilliant storytelling with a massive increase in scope in terms of what can be achieved.
• V for Vendetta — The classic 10 part series about revenge, propaganda and change; which makes the film look like a vague embarrassment.

Go, read.

Kicking off another year of Film Fight in a particularly late fashion comes the January 2008 update.

Dan in Real Life hits an interesting balance between a character study of a man falling apart with feelings of jealousy and inadequacy, and lightweight family comedy. Steve Carrell plays the titular character who falls in love with a woman he can’t have. Under slightly cliched circumstances, they are forced to spend a substantial amount of time together and shenanigans ensue. While at times it falls short, with schmaltzy scenes and some resolutions that are a little too easy, it proves itself to be a surprisingly good film. It’s warming fun, without being unbearably cookie cutter. Worth seeing.

Almost in stark contrast, Charlie Wilson’s War is a lot more lightweight and throw-away than it should have been. The film follows a minor congressman through the period where he shadow funded Afghanistan against Russia, in order to bring about the end of the cold war. The subject matter could’ve been the stuff of heavyweight political drama and dark dealings, but we’re left with a fairly insubstantial fluff piece about a womanising politician trying to do something with his life. The one stand out performance is Philip Seymour Hoffman as an aggressive but ultimately brilliant CIA agent who masterminds the broad strokes of the plan; his performance making it a real shame that the thrust of the film wasn’t better conceived.

The Coen brothers return to form with a new modern masterpiece, No Country for Old Men. Excluding a slightly over-long and fruitless final scene, acting as a diminuendo, this film hits home perfectly. It has a quiet mood to it: dialogue is sparing (particularly in the early part of the film), scenes are framed in shadow, and plot revelations are left largely to what the central character knows. Josh Brolin plays that well-trodden Coen archetype: a man in the wrong place at the wrong time, presented with an opportunity, and he pulls it off superbly. His performance is only bettered by Javier Bourdem, a killer who is terrifying and ruthlessly homicidal, while being fair, principled and honest. Throughout he comes across like a force of nature: uncompromising, unchallengeable but not malicious. Brilliant from any angle, and well worth seeing.

Sweeney Todd is a complete change of pace. Based on the musical, it sees a typical Tim Burton cast sing their way through a dark comedy about revenge, treachery and mince pies. While the opening hour is painfully slow and the various accents laughable, it really starts picking itself up for a solid, if somewhat predictable, finale. Going a few steps off the beaten path have certainly made an odd concept work surprisingly well.

Finally, Walk Hard sees John C. Reilly step out of the shadow of his peers and into the limelight, somewhat mimicking the on-screen change of a Johnny Cash wannabe hitting the big time. For the most part the jokes are obvious and somewhat cheap, but that doesn’t stop Reilly hitting the mark. A particular highlight is the cameo-laden Beatles scene, full of bickering and in-fighting (as well as terrible Liverpudlian accents). It won’t win any awards, but is worth seeing once.

The first film fight winner of 2008 is: No Country for Old Men, another notch for the Coens.