Given recent form, this will seem like a relatively light month in terms of cinema. That is because, since the return of the classic Tuesday night film, I’ve been going to that a fair bit more than seeing new fodder. Anyway…

First up is the dreadful Hostel, a film that gets virtually nothing right. The premise is a reasonable starting point for a horror film: tourists off the beaten path get captured and tortured. The problem is everything else. The writer gives us protagonists we can’t like and certainly don’t care about, the director gives us sloppy cuts and gets a woeful acting performance out of the cast, and the sound director does an unbelievably heavy handed job on even the simplest of moments. It’s not often that scene-setting music jars so horribly with the set-up that undermines the little dramatic tension present, but Hostel has this effect in nearly every scene. Even if you’re just in it for the gore, it is, for the most part, timid.

Pierrepoint is on the opposite end of the spectrum. It’s rare that you see a thorough and detailed character examination that is more than just superficial, that gets inside the head of the character and pulls out every dark synapse, but this film does it with style. Timothy Spall (previously best known for his role in “Auf Wiedersehen, Pet”) pulls off one of the finest performances I have even see as Albert Pierrepoint, Britain’s last chief executioner. 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.

Tipping away from the seriouss drama is Scary Movie 4. If you’ve seen any other chapter in the series, you will know exactly what to expect: crude references to well known films, slapstick and some awful jokes. It’s been so long since we had a good parody film (think Hot Shots, think Naked Gun) that an endless stream of toilet humour can pass. That’s not to say this is a worthless film, just don’t expect anything above simple and juvenile.

American Dreamz is surprising; it manages to fit some pretty sharp satire into a fairly clumsy mould. A take on both Middle Eastern politics and Pop Idol style tv shows, it’s not an obvious spoof. While much of the film is painful to watch, you know there are some good jokes been steam-rollered by bad pace, trashy caricatures and actors out of their depth (Hugh Grant being prime candidate). Probably not worth the time to go and see it, but if you get dragged along it’s not the end of the world.

Finally, Paradise Now is the story of two men, good friends, who are selected to be martyrs for the Palestinean cause. While this could be viewed as propaganda, it gives a reasonable view of what one side of the fight is thinking, without ever pretending that violence is justified. Indeed that is the real conflict in the film: whether or not the ends justify the means. As indie films go, it holds itself well, reasonable competence and confidence being shown. It just misses some real depth.

And the winner? Clearly, Pierrepoint. Early candidate for film of the year.

After about a year of hassle and countless arguments about the worth of social networks in general, I’ve finally done the (near) unthinkable and gotten a myspace page. You can find me, surprisingly enough, under the VKPS user name.

Why the change of heart? It wasn’t the getting slightly annoyed with people after every “What’s your myspace address?” question and ensuing debate (people can’t accept that it’s a pretty worthless site when you keep in touch with your friends and don’t really want a whole bunch of imaginary ones). It was the publishing of Mike Davidson’s guide to hacking a more tasteful myspace. I might not be much of a graphic designer or artist, but I know that the default design and masses of garish colour schemes and poor typography just wasn’t for me; I couldn’t put my name to it. Admittedly, I’ve done very little to the design I’ve put up, beyond the default hack; but it’s a simple, tasteful style that I can live with.

Speaking of design, I’ve started playing around with ideas for the next Solitude design. Current front-runner is based on picture I made (modified from stock photo) that I like to call Red Winter. I’ve got a few ideas of where that image might take the design, various variations in layout and structure but I definitely like the natural touch in the design. Incidentally, since a few people have commented on the current Solitude “Sunflower” logo, I want to put out that it’s not a flower. It’s actually a very heavily distorted picture of a star (blurring and colour bleeding used through-out).

Of course, don’t expect to see a finished design for, oh, another year at this rate.

The biggest problem I see when looking at material to be learned, whether technical documentation, tutorials, or other reading materials, is that they jump straight into the worked explanations of what is happening, and assume a reasonable knowledge of the surrounding material. This is bad.

For example, who remembers learning calculus? The first thing that 99% of schools will teach is how you do differentiation. Differentiation is a fine starting point for basic calculus since it is the lowest building block on which the subject is built, beyond simpler forms of maths. The problem is starting with “how” to do something rather than the “why”. Without at least a basic intuition for what differentiation (or any other subject) means and why it would be used, it becomes a much more abstract concept. Fair enough, it is an abstract concept but it’s one we apply to every day life. No-one, in the real world, cares about the quadratics it is applied to until those quadratics are modelling some very concrete problem.

Before a single example or “how” is shown in any documentation, you need to reinforce the “why”. Not only does it make the concept clear and applicable, giving a more physical and understandable notion of what is happening, it gives a goal to work towards: how to actually do the real world examples given.

This approach translates far better to being able to then problem solve using the same tools (like differentiation) in other areas, because the student has a feel for the subject.

So you’ve released a new application or library? Congratulations, and thanks for supporting the software community in some way. GenericoApi 1.0 sounds great and I’d like to use it for this great idea I have, so where is the documentation? Yeah, I can see the Javadoc methods on your site but… oh, that’s it? Right…

I’ve been in that situation far too many times. So let’s clarify something: if you create a library that is to be worth something you’re going to need the following.

• A high level overview. Far too many projects (SourceForge sites, I’m looking at you) think that just because a visitor ended up on their page that said visitor knows exactly what the project is about. This is rarely the case. I’ve said this before: a clear description of what you do at the top of your front page, always.
• A technical overview. A very detailed overview of everything your API/app can do, catering for the most knowledgable, hardcore contingent of your userbase. This is important for both early adoption and to show you actually know what you are doing; impress the cult leaders and the rest will follow.
• The API documentation. If you’re writing in Java, then I want to see a detailed and descriptive set of Javadoc documentation. This should make very few assumptions about knowledge of the system you use, and any assumptions should be clearly linked. It should be clear how to construct and use the main objects in your API immediately.
• A tutorial. Let me say this clearly: this is the most important thing you can do. Write a tutorial which goes through the different parts of your API in a logical order, making no assumptions about what the user knows. The tutorial should be as large as it has to be, taking up clearly defined chapters if necessary. Each section, or the complete piece, should show examples that build up into a working system, which covers a use case of your API. Any user who has taken the time to read and understand your tutorial, taking into account the burden of explanation remains entirely with the author, should be a near expert with your API and should be able to fully understand the previous three important documents (both overviews and the API).

Do this and you will be fine. Do not and you will frustrate and alienate part of your potential userbase.

Another relatively large month for cinema visits but, sadly, a fairly mixed bunch. Might as well begin:

Philip Seymour Hoffman deserved his oscar for his portrayal of writer Truman Capote. This film looks at the authors life around the time he was investigating and writing the greatest of his books, In Cold Blood. Capote is about a man obsessed with himself, his own greatness and ability, and the lengths he will go to in order to become immortalised. It’s a fascinating insight into the mind of one of the greatest writers ever, and thankfully it isn’t overly sugar coated.

Stay is an interesting film. It starts off as a fairly mainstream story about a psychiatrist (Ewan McGregor) who gets a suicidal patient, a young man who will kill himself on his 21st birthday which is only days away. From there we see a descent into madness, the lives of all concerned unravelling and being entwined with that of the patient. Arty, beautiful, but with a fairly poor ending, this film is worth watching just to have seen it. The tricks employed throughout are dazzling, the insanity permeating the film.

The thing about remakes is that you have to remake something that was pretty good, perhaps with a strong central premise, for it to be worthwhile. Anyone who can remember John Carpenter’s The Fog will know that this is not the case (B-movie horror fans, even you know it wasn’t great). A remake with poor CGI, dreadful acting, ghost lepers, and weak motivations that takes itself seriously just doesn’t cut it. From the awful soundtrack to the painful comic relief, this film is the epitome of formulaic modern horror. Avoid.

Sold as being from (some) of the writers of the Scary Movie films, Date Movie is exactly what you might expect: an adolescent spoof of recent romantic comedies, and teen flicks that focus on love. The thing it misses is humour. While there are moments (two) of hilarious, but utterly juvenile, laughs, for the most part this is a case of taking elements from other films and expecting them to be funny out of context. It doesn’t work like that, and the writers should know better.

Having now officially finished his stint as smug super-agent supreme, James Bond, Pierce Brosnan takes on an entirely different angle at the old killing game. In The Matador, Brosnan plays a washed out, dangerous, seedy, but ultimately lonely assassin, who happens to befriend a loser business man. The elements that bring them together are tenous, and the films finale awkward, but still the charm of the lead lets some of the better lines shine through. Enjoyable enough to watch, if nothing spectacular, Pierce has done a good job against type.

While Memoirs Of A Geisha has been out for a while, I only just saw it at the cinema so will include it here (I will, however, exclude Apocalypse Now Redux, which I also only just saw). This is a film of contrasts: beautifully shot, yet overblown; seemingly long, but only showing snippets of the character’s life; dramatic, yet turgidly dull. It’s not that it’s a bad film, it just doesn’t do or say anything particularly interesting: the central premise of loving a near stranger rings cold to the passion it attempts to portray.

The Ringer definitely grew out of a bad idea: something thinking that they’d like to make a film about rigging the Special Olympics. I have no real problem with the central premise, in so far as anyone is equally fair game for a pisstake, but the execution is somewhat offputting (and indecisive). Knoxville and cast spend half their time moralising that the other contestants are smarter and better than their stereotypes, and the other half saying that they are basically idiots. Couple this with the fact that the jokes never really get over repeating the initial idea, the film falls flat on its face.

Finally, from the makers of The Matrix (although not directed by them, or based on an original work by them or… what did they do again?), V For Vendetta is the overtly comic book look at a society where fascism has taken over Britain, and the rest of the world is in turmoil. Leaving aside the ridiculous British stereotypes (bad accents, Benny Hill, and pubs) and slightly cringeworthy finale, this story of an uncompromising freedom fighter is surprisingly good. I don’t want to say much about it, it’s not an action film as the trailers may make you believe, but it is worth seeing.

And the winner is… Stay, simply because it is a beautiful and complex film, arty without being arsey.