After being almost dead against big monitors (I didn’t see the point given how close you sit to them anyway), low prices at play.com convinced me to get a new 19″ widescreen monitor. I am happy to say I was completely wrong and that the extra space is fantastic.

While finding a decent wallpaper for my desktop proved tricky, everything else is great. 1440*900 resolution lets you have a 1024*768 browser and enough space for any other active tasks that you might have, such as instant messenger windows. I recently bought Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for the PC and playing it widescreen makes quite a difference to the views, particularly in the wilderness between Los Santos and San Fierro.

The one thing better than the wider screen is keeping the old one in a dual-screen set-up. You get all the benefits of the larger area, plus you can have one monitor dedicated to passive tasks (like IM contact lists, media players, bittorent clients) such that it works as an information display at a glance. I highly recommend the extra space to anyone.

Another month, another bunch of films.

Normally, I abhor Owen Wilson. His acting abilities stretch to a single character: goofy and dazed. Thankfully, in You, Me and Dupree that’s exactly how he is cast. A lovable fuck-up that ends up living with newly married friends, we begin to see his character learn that he needs to make something of himself or forever be branded a loser. The real failure in this cast is Matt Dillion: a normally reasonably comic actor trying and failing to pull-off some trickier emotions. Not for one second will you believe his characters downward spiral or the subsequent, inevitable rise back to form. All in all, a watchable but forgettable film.

For fans of Broken Lizard, the comic writing, acting and directing team behind Super Troopers, Beerfest will hit all the sweet spots. A goofy comedy about something a little nonsensical, nods to it’s own stupidity, some fantastic quotes and over the top characters, and just a little grossness: a low-brow comedy for those of us beyond the cheap simplicity of teen gross-out comedies. Their debut was excellent, and Broken Lizard have once again shown they know how to write funny. Worth seeing.

The Black Dahlia is a beautifully shot piece full of ugly characters, motives, and premises; and that’s what makes it so good. A fictionalisation of a real murder, the film follows two detectives trying to solve the case of the most brutal unsolved murder in LA history. While the eventual conclusion is less than satisfying, the characterisation and interactions are so compelling that it does not matter. Another excellent film.

Jason Statham, by now, knows that his niche is in cheap action films. Crank is no exception. The plot is ridiculous (he’s been given a drug that will stop his heart unless he does progressively more extreme things as he tracks down the people who are killing him) but it doesn’t really matter. As dumb action goes, this hits all the sweet spots: excellent set pieces, hints of comedy without getting slapstick, all the while not taking itself seriously. If you can forgive the film the premise, acting and cringe-worthy moments (the falling scene, for example) and just enjoy it for what it is, a dumb action piece, then you’ll be fine.

The Children of Men future is one of the most convincing, well-conceived worlds ever seen. Set in the near future where, because women are no longer giving birth, hope is gone and the world is in turmoil, near civil war and refugees trying to escape fighting further afield. A disinterested, ex-activist is approached by a political group and asked to provide papers for a girl to leave the country; there’s something special about her. As various factions hunt down the pair, the film is relentlessly focussed on their escape, framing the political machinations and fighting all around as a background to their story, and not the other way around. Intense, emotional and unnerving; a beautifully imagined and desolate film. One of the best of the year.

Finally, Kevin Smith returns to his debut film in order to make a sequel. Clerks 2 is a smart enough piece of film making not to simply rehash the jokes and story of its predecessor, while being a disgusting enough look at current pop culture to set-up the main conflicts well. Again, we follow Dante and friends through a series of amusingly unpleasant conversations, and watch as their issues come to a head. While it’s hardly high-brow, it has the kind of honesty in dialogue many better films lack.

It has been a good month for cinema and, while Beerfest or Clerks 2 could have taken it for comedy in quieter months, the only real choice for winner is the excellent Children Of Men. Expect it to finish very high for the year.

One brave soul is dedicating himself to write a new application every day, for 30 days. You can find the fruits of his labour over at An App A Day. He’s already 20 days in and, as you would guess, that means he has written 20 apps already. While some are esoteric, one caught my eye as pretty useful.

Concentrate is a rip-off of a feature found in Expose on Mac OS X which dims all other active windows than the currently focussed window (if that’s a little off, I’m sure one of my mac loving friends can correct me). I’ve only been using it for a day or so and I have to say I’m surprised by just how effective it is; it really does make you focus more on the active window. I highly recommend a download for anyone who finds that they have app ADD. Couple it with Winplosion for double-expose rip-off action.

This morning I found out that I’ve been invited to join the Tape It Off The Internet Beta, after signing up months ago. The idea is that it’ll be the place to go for TV related stuff: whether commenting, leaving information or downloading.

It’s far too early in the beta to say anything much about it other than it’s a great idea (RSS feeds and the ability to attach your own torrents to episodes is sadly lacking). Instead, I have 5 invites to give away. If you want one, leave a comment, email my gmail account or find me on msn.

Late? Pah! Lateness is our new motto. August was a fairly busy month, so let’s get going, foregoing subtley for speed.

Miami Vice is atrocious. Michael Mann might have done some classic films (I even enjoyed Tom Cruise vehicle, “Collateral“), but this is far from it. In fact, this is about as far removed from his previous film as possible: acting is woeful on all fronts (including from Oscar winner Jamie Foxx), the grainy cam is just annoying, the action is… non-existent, and the dialogue is amongst the worst committed to celluloid. Honestly, you will pray for the deaths of either of the main characters just so they can’t talk to each other. Awful stuff.

On the comedy front, Nacho Libre mixes the writing of Napoleon Dynamite with the comedy front of Jack Black. Normally loud and Dynamic, Black struggles to make anything of this quiet, near dead pan style; laughs becoming rarer and never getting above a chuckle. That said, there is something appealing about the wrestling scenes; maybe it’s the outlandish silliness of it all, or the midgets, but they just seem to work. Not bad, but not great.

After some absolutely awful superhero films, Superman Returns is surprisingly reasonable. Taking off after Superman 2, and taking some great liberties with the canon, the plot brings the camp visual jokes back to Earth with more emotional content dealing, as it does, primarily with the return of a man to a world that both no longer needs him and is screaming out for him. The echoes between the life of Clark and his alter-ego may lack subtlety, but this is still good, solid storytelling.

The ultimate burlesque model turned minor star gets a biopic in the form of The Notorious Bettie Page. It deals with the subject matter in a very superficial manner, suggesting that she wandered into her starhood and didn’t realise what she was doing, even after it was explained. It never goes into any worthwhile depth, showing merely a series of events in her life rather than taking a standpoint, any standpoint, and rigorously exploring it. A disappointment purely for it’s lack of any real insight into the icon.

Just about everyone has seen it now, so I will keep it brief: Snakes On A Plane is unashamedly trashy, cheap, brainless nonsense. It doesn’t stand up to the slightest hint of scrutiny, but no-one cares. It’s amusing because it knows how bad it is. It won’t be winning any awards (despite the tongue in cheek claims of star, Samuel L. Jackson) but probably worth seeing once.

Finally, set in a world where we’re losing the so called war on drugs and paranoia is at a record high, A Scanner Darkly explores a world in which perception and reality are orthogonal. Our hero, under a secret guise in his role as an undercover drugs agent, is assigned to monitor himself and his own life. As his drug uses increases and his mind slips, he takes us through a bizarre world, rendered in the most beautiful rotoscoped animation. Performances are sterling throughout, with Robert Downie Jr doing exceptional work. Insightful, schizophrenic, and funny, a film worth seeing.

The obvious and clear winner is, of course, A Scanner Darkly.