One of the reasons the film fight series has been a little delayed this year is that I was a little less obsessive about my record keeping than normal. One consequence of this is that I only seem to have seen one film in May. This could be true (I was travelling a lot) or possibly not. Either way…

Magicians is what happens when two of Britain’s best comedians, David Mitchell and Robert Webb, get watered down to fit a mainstream audience. While this could’ve been another great and fairly dark piece of comedy, like Peep Show at its sickest, it’s barely more than a children’s film with some blue references. Forgettable, and uninteresting. Avoid.

Sadly, despite the review, Magicians wins for May… unless I can remember what else I saw.

Update: I found the other two ticket stubs for May!

28 Weeks Later is that rarest of things: a sequel that pays adequate respect to the original material, while standing on its own feet. The opening sequence is both stunning and shocking, the excellent score making it one of the most intense openers I’ve seen in a long time. As zombie films go, 28 Weeks Later is ok. It isn’t trying to make a point, but has a reasonable vision of how the world would go wrong. There are some fairly trite missteps, such as the main character zombie (a device used effectively by George Romero in his series of zombie films, but abused here). Overall, this is still fairly enjoyable.

Finally, Zodiac is David Fincher’s latest master work: an account of the Zodiac murders, largely from the perspective of the cartoonist who became so obsessed with the story that he wrote one of the definitive books on the matter. As the case was unsolved, Fincher focusses on the paranoia and fear found in this time and place, while expanding on the details. Every scene is beautifully shot, with CGI used seamlessly (as it should be), and excellent performances from the whole cast. Although it doesn’t quite match some of his previous work (Fight Club, Seven), it’s still a fantastic piece of cinema.

With that, Magicians is no longer the winner for May, Zodiac wins.

April was a big month for cinema, but something of a mixed selection.

First, 300 is the film version of the classic Frank Miller comic book. Though I expect most people saw this film, I thought it was fairly bad. The acting ranged from fairly strong in some places to camp, ludicrous and over-the-top throughout most of the film. While much has been made of the epic scale of the battles, it’s hard to be impressed by men clearly fighting in front of blue screens. I don’t know why Hollywood thinks they’re at a level where they can do pure CG convincingly, but the evidence is clearly against them. Everything looks cheap and empty, but on a larger scale than we might have otherwise seen. The story itself is strong (which is why it has survived this long) but the director has not done it justice here. A real shame.

I Want Candy is your typical Brit-comedy: cheap, a little tacky, but fun enough to watch. It’s the story of two struggling film students who, through some convoluted twists, end up making a porno with heart. It has all the usual boy-meets-girl storytelling you’d expect from the genre, but that’s not really a great criticism. Again, as light comedy goes, you can do much worse.

Far more serious is Danny Boyle’s Sunshine. The set-up is fairly obvious sci-fi boilerplate, but the plot is a little wider in scope: the exploration into the unknown, realising you’re a very small piece of a mind-bendingly large universe, and the effects of extremes on the human psyche. While much of this is brilliantly shot and scored, it stumbles in the final act. Writer Alex Garland uses his usual trick of establishing a more manageable crisis and resolving it as a finale, which generally works well. Instead, in this instance, the final third of the film falls in the science fiction trappings that have been so carefully avoided to this point and goes wayward. A real shame.

More comedy can be found in Blades of Glory, about two rival figure skaters who join forces to beat their evil rivals. The plot follows the standard buddy comedy pattern: they hate each other, they agree to work together, it doesn’t work out well at first, they each learn something from the other, a last minute fumble looks set to destroy it all, but finally they win through. Though it isn’t Will Ferrell at his comic-best, it still stands up as a decent film.

The Lives of Others deservedly won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film this year, the reasons shining through in every scene. Focussed on the activities of the Stasi and their invasive and bureaucratic processes, the film shows both sides of the ex-government activities. The main characters are a writer, who gradually rails further and further against the corrupt state, and the Stasi agent sent to monitor his every move. It builds a great tale of frustration and emotional impotence, in the face of a state destroying itself through its own policies and paranoia.

Half Nelson is about the coming together of an addict teacher and a young girl in his class who discovers him nearly passed out. The core of the film is about them coming together despite, or perhaps because of, their differences and trying to better themselves. It’s a fairly formulaic premise, updated a little, but fails in it’s execution: our teacher shows very little in the way of redeeming or interesting traits, his spiral downward being of his own making. It’s hard to sympathise with a character who is given numerous chances to change but doesn’t. Perhaps that’s the point but, honestly, I didn’t care by the end. There was not enough tension or struggle to warrant the time spent here.

Finally, mind-numbing action in the form of Shooter: a completely by-the-numbers political action-thriller. Mark Wahlberg gets caught up in a plot to assassinate the president for no good reason, but consistently evades capture while uncovering the conspiracy. Some terrible performances (excluding the competent lead) and obvious plot holes mark this remarkably bad film as one to avoid.

The winner? Easily, The Lives of Others: an easy contender for film of the year, even at this early stage.

Yes, I let film fight go for a number of months without update. I’m starting it again now, with the March update and should be back up-to-date by the time this month ends.

First up is A Guide to Recognising Your Saints, an autobiographical tale of a boy trying to escape the insular world in which he inhabits and become more than his parents. The story largely focuses on the hardships and maniac friends the protagonist keeps during childhood, and flips between showing his past and him occasionally revisiting it as a grown-up. Although there are some powerful, emotionally charged scenes between the lead and his father, the film itself is fairly hollow. It’s a standard coming-of-age story, which is a little too self indulgent.

Comedy: School for Scoundrels is a remake of the classic film, about a guy who goes to classes to learn how to be a bit better with the ladies. Billy Bob Thornton is perfectly cast as the devious, double-crossing teacher; doling out advice and stealing girls from the star performers. A fairly silly and lightweight film that won’t win any awards, but does entertain.

With The Prestige setting a fairly high bar in the magic and revenge themes only a few months ago, The Illusionist had a lot to live up to: it failed miserably. Using fairly weak CGI rather than stage magic is one mistake that can be forgiven if the plot is adequate but, sadly, it isn’t. It’s predictable, lazy, and lacks any real impact; certainly a weaker moment in Ed Norton’s career.

Finally, Matt Damon stars as a CIA spy back in the founding era of the agency in The Good Shepherd. Rather than focus on action, as is the vogue, it explores the cost of his dedication on his family life and the lengths to which he will go to protect them, despite an increasing distance between them. Ultimately, we know he put himself in this position, but we can’t help but feel sorry for Damon’s character as his life slips away. Beautifully shot, and with an air of authority, any shortcomings in pace are made up for in craftsmanship.

Though it may have struggled in a stronger month, The Good Shepherd is the only real candidate for March’s winner.

I’m not usually one to recycle content created by other people, but this is too good to pass up. Imagine, if you will, 1500 prisoners. Now imagine the video for “Thriller”, by Michael Jackson. Now imagine 1500 prisoners recreating the video for “Thriller”.

If you didn’t follow that link, stop what you’re doing, have a look and then come back.

Done? Excellent. How astounding it is aside, it really does raise some questions:

1. Did things like this happen before YouTube?
2. How the hell did they convince 1500 prisoners that this was worth doing?
3. Of all the things you could do with 1500 willing people, was this maybe a bit of a waste of time?

Think hard about number 1 for a second: I’m really genuinely curious as to how much outlandish stuff happens and gets filmed now that wouldn’t have before YouTube existed. I’m sure it happened sometimes (You’ve Been Framed does not count), but I can only imagine the volume has increased a stupendous amount.

So, the real question: if YouTube is powerful enough to cause the world to warp in this bizarre way, what else is it capable of?

I’ve been surprised that no-one in recent years has decided to give the idea of subscription music a serious attempt. By that, I don’t mean the sort of thing that eMusic are doing, where you pay an an intermediary a monthly subscription for a fixed number of downloads from a plethora of artists. In fact, I mean the opposite end of the subscription spectrum.

The way music works most of the time is that a band works on an album, then puts it out along with some singles, and tours it for a year. Then they do another tour with no new released material, have a break, and repeat. The album-tour-break cycle for many bands is 2-3 years, in which the bands have a flurry of buying activity near the start (album release), that rapidly trails off for all but the biggest artists. Although they’ll get royalty cheques through the in-print lifetime of their records, the size of said cheques declines soon after release (unless you’re Nirvana, in which case it gets bigger year on year).

Bands are always going to have a number of hardcore fans who will buy or download anything the band puts out. Albums, singles, b-sides, bootlegged live shows, acoustic tracks, even demos; the biggest fans will lap it all up. I just wonder to what extent bands could utilise that to guarantee a relatively steady income.

How much money do artists generate just now? The album itself is probably £10, and the singles are about £3 for all 3 formats in a modern release (thanks to deals that people like HMV do). After 3-4 singles, the total amount generated per dedicated fan is around £22. (Note: we’ll ignore touring costs, t-shirts, and other merchandise, because that doesn’t change).

Imagine a service where the fans agree to pay an annual subscription of £20. For that price, they get access to all the music the band release in that period. If it’s an album year, they get a copy of the album (either digital only, or a real physical copy), and all the singles. If it’s not an album year, they get a deluge of other material: live shows, acoustic versions of favourite songs, demos, maybe the occasional new song too. This is not necessarily a huge amount of extra work for the artists; they’re creating the vast majority of this stuff anyway. They just keep it to themselves, or sometimes it gets bootlegged. Why not make some money from it?

The less astute readers may be thinking, “hold on – £20 is less than the £22 the band were making beforehand”. You’re absolutely right, it is. But that’s what they’re getting in an album year. Currently, that £22 is all they generate from releases for the whole of the 2-3 year cycle. Years 2-3 get them very little. Move to a subscription model, and that’s £20 every year, or £40-60 for the cycle. A significant increase.

Not only that, but it’s a regular fixed amount of income. If you’re a small and independent band, you no longer have to worry month-to-month about sales: you’ve got at least some portion of it forecast quite nicely.

As I say, the extra material already exists for most bands. Live shows are recorded, acoustic versions exist, and albums get heavily demoed before production. They just have to ensure that they keep a decent and consistent stream of music going to subscribers. That’s an album and singles one year, and a few live shows etc the next. It’s not a big burden.

Another benefit from a label point of view is that suddenly you have a very engaged audience: you have people who are actively waiting for what you will give them. This means you can easily cross-sell similar artists (subscribe to X and Y? We’ll give you 25% off Z), or promote new bands (you like X? Here’s some free stuff by this new band Y who’ll be supporting X on their next tour; if you like it, subscribe with a small discount).

Complications? Of course there are. For example, what happens if a band splits early? You keep the money in a holding account and only pay it out to the band every month or quarter, pro-rata, so you can give it back to the fans if the band falls apart. I think with a little thought, this is a workable system.