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.

After another mishap with my last Archos (to do with the power supply), I got a new Archos 504. It’s a nice piece of kit but I do have a few gripes.

First, the move to a proprietary USB cable from previously standard mini USB is almost a deal-breaker. I like being able to carry data around on my Archos and pass anything on to people who ask for it. I do not like having to always carry around the supplied cable to do this. I can understand that someone probably thought this would help make money through supplying more of their own cables but they’re obviously ridiculously short-sighted: who is actually going to buy one of these since they come packaged? A few people will undoubtedly lose their cable, but I seriously doubt that number would justify designing, manufacturing, storing and distributing a proprietary component. Very annoying.

Also, while the physical interface is more obvious for first time users (old users have to make some small but ultimately good adjustments), it has flaws. Each of the buttons on the side is actually a double-button i.e. each side of the button has a different function and so has to be tilted in the appropriate direction. This is a little odd but becomes second natured pretty quickly. The real problem here, though, is that it interacts with the supplied leather case quite badly. Unless you spent some time stretching the elastic at the side, it is too tight and presses the buttons for you, commonly resulting in pausing, track skipping and volume changes, all functions on the right side of the interface.

Most annoyingly for the new user is that the TV dock, which was bundled as standard with previous models, is now an extra cost. However, this is somewhat mitigated by the new design which has reverted to being a proper dock (the AV500 series was little more than an infrared port) with a slew of AV ports to link up all of your devices.

Other pluses include a much nicer UI (aliased text, video thumbnails, better library for audio), an expanded hard disk (my model is now 80Gb), and expanded format handling (some are only available through paid-for plugins — nasty). Given that this was an upgrade due to a fault (because of Christmas pricing, I actually made money), I can’t complain too much. It is better than previous models, but the shift towards proprietary interfaces is a worrying and silly move.

Having recently purchased an Xbox 360, I want to talk about a few aspects of the system that are doing interesting things for gaming as a whole.

First up, the idea of achievements is inspired: push the abilities of gamers by offering up challenges and awarding badges that basically say “I managed to do this”. The reality is, however, a little different. Many games miss the point of the achievements and hand them out for simply playing through the game, the awards becoming little more than milestones. The interesting games get you to go outside the realms of the normal game: Dead Rising gets you to put novelty masks on a number of zombies, Geometry Wars gives you an award for not firing for the first minute (making for a hectic start). This is an excellent way of extending play. I remember doing similar things when I was younger i.e. playing through Street Fighter 2 without using any special moves etc. To have this style of gameplay recognised is pretty good. The flip-side of achievements is the gamerscore: points you get for having gained achievements. This measure is completely worthless. Given that points aren’t (and can’t be) standardised, higher scores are achievable simply by playing the easiest games with the weakest achievements. No fair comparisons can be drawn.

Secondly, Xbox Live Arcade. I was a doubter. How could a series of essentially cut down games be worthwhile? While there is a lot of crap on the service, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is a killer app. It’s a perfect blend of twitch gaming and synaesthesia, an addictively flowing game where the interface melts away and there is only neon light. You get into the zone incredibly quickly with this game, and immediately want to get back to it if you die. Incredible stuff.

Lastly, Dead Rising. I love zombie films, and I like playing games. Take the best setting from the former (a mall), put it in the latter, and add a mix of comic book humour, a massive home-made armoury, and an innovative game structure to produce something that I will waste far too much time on. While the difficulty curve can be rather steep at times, any frustration can be seen off by simply grabbing a nearby item and taking it out on one of the thousands of zombies nearby.

All that said, if you know me and have a 360 yourself, my gamertag is VKPS. See you on Live.

Happy New Year to you all. I wasn’t planning on doing a 2006 best of, but when trying to wrap up the year quickly and move on, what could be better? Onwards:

• Best Album of 2006 – This is tricky as I bought far more albums from prior years than albums actually from 2006. I will probably go for “Mcluskyisms”, the retrospective by now defunct Welsh band, Mclusky. Featuring 3 CDs (don’t go for the one disc version) of mad, great rock, you can’t pass it up. I suspect had I gotten the Yourcodenameis:milo collaboration album, “Print Is Dead, Vol. 1”, earlier then it might have stood a chance. If you ignore the awful collaboration with Lethal Bizzle, the rest seems to be gold.
• Best New Band – This is the best band I heard last year and easily goes to Kinesis. Sadly, they have split but left a masterpiece in “You Are Being Lied To”; sounding like the rock album the Smashing Pumpkins never quite managed. Got their earlier album for Christmas (thanks, Jen!) and that is also sounding pretty good, need a few more listens though. Also quite liking what little I have heard of Piano Bar Fight. Reminds me of the more thoughtful Idlewild moments, with Morrisey like vocals (as distinct from lyrics).
• Worst Split – I can’t immediately think of any bands that I wished had made at least one more album. I would say Drive Like You Stole It, but they actually split in August 2005. I’m pretty sure I didn’t notice until Spring.
• Best Use of Michael Caine – Since William Fichtner went to TV this year (only really featuring in the woeful Ultraviolet), the best usage award is for Michael Caine: everyone’s favourite Michael Caine impersonator. This year he actually did some acting! While his character in The Prestige was decent enough, he was delightful in Children of Men as a playful hippie. Really good stuff there from Alfonso Cuaron.
• Best book I read this year – The sublime Catch 22, by Joseph Heller. While it’s now one of my favourite books, it was a bit of a non-event since it was the only book I read in 2006. Yes, that is an abysmal effort, and one I’ve already taken steps to rectify this year. It’s not that I wasn’t reading at all, just that it was mostly online: thousands of articles, covering technology (of course), neuroscience, cognition, perception, religion, economics (a growing interest), and lots of other bits and pieces.

Compare and contrast with the 2005 awards to realise the world is a very samey place. I will hopefully increase my post count in 2007, after a fairly dry 2006. That’s what we always say though.

As I said in last year’s film fight, a knock-out tournament like this can only show my favourite film of the year, not even producing a guaranteed second place, but who cares? Let’s start with notable films that never took a final place:

• Shopgirl
• Jarhead
• Walk the Line
• Derailed
• Capote
• The Matador
• V for Vendetta (… maybe)
• El Lobo
• Fearless
• Beerfest
• Black Dahlia
• Clerks 2
• The Departed
• Casino Royale

Now the finalists:

• Cock and Bull Story
• Good Night, and Good Luck
• Stay
• Pierrepoint
• The Magician
• Thank You For Smoking
• District B13
• A Scanner Darkly
• Children of Men
• Little Miss Sunshine
• The Prestige
• Pan’s Labyrinth

Unlike last year, I think I can say that none of those finalists got through by default in a weak month. With just as many notable films as finalists (with more sitting just outside that list), it’s been a good year for cinema and a hard decision to make. A Scanner Darkly impressed visually and with the deft handling of the source material, The Prestige and Pan’s Labyrinth were masterfully crafted in their vindictiveness, District B13 was the action film of the year, Cock and Bull Story and Stay were a head-scratching pleasure, and Thank You For Smoking and The Magician were darkly comical.

I think my April tip for film of the year has proven true: Pierrepoint. I don’t think I can say it better than I did in April: “Starting from humble beginnings, we see the complexities of the man as he rises to fame and descends into a broken shell. A stunning, faultless work.” A deeply affecting work, that thoroughly deserves more acclaim than it has acquired.