Monday

There is a deliberate non-use of guns in good films. I noticed this first in The Bourne Identity. Here, however, there is a reason: he doesn't want anything to do with violence, and is trying to repress his previous life as a killer. Although this is never stated, it is understood. Whereas, in Children of Men the main character avoids weaponry without reason - a gun would, in fact, help him out a lot, but he never even considers using one. James Bond does use them, but I would like to suggest sparingly. Obi Wan Kenobi famously disliked them. Indiana Jones has perhaps the best scene in cinema concerning guns, or not being able to use them. This last example indeed points to what I think is one of the main reasons for their non-use. For a script-writer a gun is a terrible thing. If a character has a gun he can end a confrontation quickly and easily. Thus in all situations script-writers attempt to get rid of guns - they accidentally slip out of a character's hands into a deep chasm etc - because they are not very good for the plot: confrontation is necessary to keep us involved. It's much more interesting, and affects the audience more profoundly, to have someone stabbed or strangled, or (best of all) to not kill them at all. A dead character is a dead end. Thus we must remember for movies the maxim: Guns don't kill people, script-writers do.

Sunday

The Aviator puzzled me. What was it about? There seemed to be several angles to Howard Hughes' life: his film-making, his flying, his women, and his mental condition. Of course they are all connected, and they are all him, but I couldn't help thinking that a focus on one of them would have been sufficient. Instead we are jumped around, never really getting an accurate picture of any of them. The film begins as he is trying to make his first film, before he has met many women, after he has learnt to fly, but before his condition begins to affect him. Why do we start then? I was confused. I don't know the details of his life, and I think this film relies on me knowing more than I do. I felt certain moments were being highlighted as important, but I didn't know why. We seemed to be shown random unrelated incidents - as if Scorsese was just filming all the interesting rumours and stories about Hughes, and not shaping them into a coherent narrative. I didn't like the 'radio' narrator who dominated the beginning of the film, and kept reappearing. In this instance, it definitely was a weakness. The story should be capable of being told without it. Also, why does the movie end where it does? Overall, I was confused by this film. It was of course remarkably well made, but didn't offer anything coherent. It seemed scrappy. When interesting things happened I thought 'what a remarkable man', not 'what a remarkable movie'. This is the problem I always have with biographies. They are very hard to get right. In a way, I think you have to destroy your subject in order to portray him accurately. Scorsese was too in awe of Howard Hughes to be able to do this.

Saturday

Inland Empire is an astonishing film. The theatre was reasonably busy - did all of them know this film would be three hours long, and contain very little narrative sense? I had been avoiding seeing it for this very reason, and only chose it because it was a Saturday and I knew the cinemas would be busy. Well, about five people left after half an hour, but the rest, amazingly, staid with it. The first ten minutes are confusing, but it does become incredibly gripping. Soon enough, however, in fact for more than the last hour, you get lost in scenes that seemingly bear no relation to the ones before or after them, and have characters playing multiple roles. As one of them at one point says 'I don't know what comes before or after'. Entertainment might be had in comparing this to For Your Consideration. However, David Lynch's work is demonstrably the better, and leaves a far more devastating impression on your memory. Art and life become horrifyingly confused in this film. 'These sound like lines from our script', she says in one scene, then turns to realise there is a camera filming her, and she was acting all along. You are never quite sure. Perhaps it is a cheap trick to play on the audience, but at one point a camera on a boom drops into view, then creepily slips away, as if it were alive itself. But, despite all this, it is the type of film I can never fully understand. I am too logical, or too focused on narrative. This movie is the concise development of an atmosphere, or a mood. I don't know how to criticise it, or talk about it sensibly. The performance of Laura Dern dominates. She is incredible. In fact, it was rather like an extended screen test: now do 'angry', now do 'happy', now do 'someone has just put a red shirt in with my whites'. Anyway, I was astonished by this movie. It is difficult, and it does stretch the meaning of the word 'film', but I believe that was Lynch's intention. Seeing it is the only way for you to decide for yourself.

Friday

What don't you know about Darren Aronofsky? By lazily summarising an article in the guardian yesterday, I'll tell you what I didn't know: it took him a very long time to make The Fountain. He had originally cast Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, until the former pulled out. The version that was released was a dramatically scaled down version of what he had planned. He is engaged to Rachel Weisz, who he put in The Fountain reluctantly, and who has a new Wong Kar-Wai film coming out called My Blueberry Nights. Warner Bros asked him to come up with some ideas for Batman Begins. I believe they rejected all of them. His next film is going to be about Noah. He hopes one day to make a teen drama.

Thursday

I hadn't heard of the film Equilibrium until I saw it on the TV schedule. Intrigued by the premise, the review on IMDb.com, and the casting of Christian Bale, I decided to watch it. I was badly disappointed. This, like the strangely similar Aeon Flux, was terrible. It regurgitated every good idea from science-fiction, but through simplification and without reference. Most obvious of all was Fahrenheit 451 which, as far as I was aware, received no acknowledgement. This was almost a remake of that film. Then there's Logan's Run and, well, everything else. The connection to The Matrix I feel was more stylistic than conceptual, and I have to admit the fight-scenes were ok. The son of Bale's character was interestingly creepy, and has a nice twist at the end. But with such science fiction films you have to invent an entire universe and engage your audience thoroughly with it. The universe created here was very poor (a future earth where feelings are banned, policed by highly trained ninja-like 'clerics'), too simplistic, and probably only appealing to frustrated teenage boys. Although I generally agree with movies that refuse to give the lead character the girl at the end, burning her alive ten minutes before then is clearly not the right way to go about it. Overall, they really needed to acknowledge, or even watch, their predecessors and learn how to do this sort of thing subtly. Instead, it lacks any appeal for repeated viewings.

Wednesday

In my post about films with bad titles last week I forgot to mention the upcoming Next. There is a large poster for this movie underneath the bridge at Waterloo. Nothing about this film sounds or looks good (except that Nicolas Cage is in it). What you will discover, however, is that it's adapted from the book by Philip K. Dick, called The Golden Man. Does this then make it worth watching? Perhaps. Philip K. Dick's work has been adapted to the big screen about 12 times - none of which he ever got to see, dying as he did just before the premiere of Blade Runner. He was never truly successful in his lifetime, but modern cinema has become quite fond of him. In many ways I think this is because of The Matrix, even though he himself is the source of a lot of its ideas. Most of his books are about reality, and that reality collapsing. The problem has been for a while over his titles. Blade Runner was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and Total Recall was We Can Remember it for you Wholesale. The change is debatable. But Next is definitely worse. Hollywood likes big, easily understood in a sentence, concepts, and that's what Philip K. Dick gives them. The greatest adaptations of his work, however, Minority Report and Blade Runner, have paid attention to the subtleties of his ideas.

In a related issue, tomorrow I'm going to talk about the terrible film Equilibrium.

Tuesday

I think there is indeed a difference between when a film ends and when a film finishes, as discussed last night. A film ends when the credits start rolling, but has it really finished? (We shall leave aside movies such as Austin Powers that include jokes during the credits, or X-Men: The Last Stand that has an important plot point after them.) What this has to do with is consistency, coherency, and completeness in the plot. The audience has to feel satisfied (not necessarily 'happy') when they leave the theatre. For studios, the walk of the moviegoer from the cinema to their car/bus/train is very important. If you're talking about the film then, they've got you hooked. And the best way to get you talking then is to have made the ending impressive. Now it doesn't have to tie up all its loose ends, be funny or clever. On the contrary, I think the best endings are those which leave things open. It's how they leave them open that's important. Manhattan is perhaps one of the best examples for this. In many films, however, you can't help but feel uneasy. What happens after the end of Return of the Jedi? Many directors/writers resort to killing their main character. But does this finish everything, or merely end it? Often when I'm enjoying a good film (because I do enjoy bad films too) I begin to worry about the ending. It could ruin everything that has gone before. It, in many ways, forces into the open the philosophy/outlook of the writer, which had been concealed up to that point. It's the mark of a good filmmaker.

Monday

Tobey Maguire says he will happily do another Spider-man movie. This is, of course, great. He is very good at the role, and the casting of him in the first film transformed the whole notion of 'action' hero, virtually ending the careers of men like Schwarzenegger and Stallone (although they were already on their way out). But is it good for Maguire? Before Spider-man I think he was on a really interesting career path. Since then, what has he done? Sea Biscuit and The Good German. Seriously, that's it. The more Spider-man films he does the less chance he has of escaping that role, despite him being a very versatile actor. Anyway, did you know Spider-man 3 (could've done better with that title) was part-written by Sam Raimi's older brother? Ah, I love nepotism.

Sunday

I wonder if you agree with the quote above by Billy Wilder? It runs thus: "An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark - that is critical genius". I put it up there because it was interesting, and you may be getting a lot more Wilder in the coming weeks, but I don't think I agree with it. I'm not so keen on the idea of 'timeless' art: that survives the ages and appeals to all people, at all times, in every country. I don't like the idea that we will know what good art is just by how long it has survived. You might think I'd hold the opposite view seeing as I study Classics, but that studying has rather shown me how random and unreasoning the process of survival has been. We have texts today simply by chance, not by selective transmission, as some would like to believe. I personally don't trust people in general, and over time, to make the right choices in regards to art: what to keep and what to throw away. We simply don't know what masterpieces we might have lost. Our opinions about what good art is have been shaped since birth - when we see a film are we really evaluating it objectively? Is there really any criteria for art? These questions are a bit mundane, I know, but they are worth asking every now and then. With film, I fear there are a lot of movies people consider great, but haven't ever watched. The classic example is Gone With the Wind. I thought this was a fairly bad movie. But how are we to consider the innovations and originality of the time that now to us seem dull? It's a tough question. Maybe the best option is to go with Wilder, or Scott Adams who says art should be judged by its intentions (although how are we supposed to know the author's intentions?). I'm not sure.

Saturday

There is a great art to the naming of sequels. Only few have mastered it. Seeing so frequently the posters for the terribly named The Hills Have Eyes 2 I thought I should offer a few principles to help. The first is: never use a number. This very rarely succeeds. Also, never call it 2000, or 2.1, or some other way of trying to make the number sound more exciting. Just don't use a number. Worst of all, don't use '2' in place of 'too', as in the awful 2 Fast 2 Furious. That is horrid. So, having eliminated the use of numbers, what should you do? You could go for the colon route, as in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, but I'm not so keen on this. You could use a cleverly placed 'too', as in Look Who's Talking Too, but that's a bit of a cop out. Or you can add a word like 'still', as in I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, which I think is very good. The best option, however, is to make a clever, funny, or silly, pun on the original title. What's your favourite? Die Hard With a Vengeance was good; Live Free or Die Hard (coming out soon) is not quite so good. Zulu and Zulu Dawn was original. The Bourne Supremacy and the upcoming The Bourne Ultimatum are interesting, although they do come from book titles I believe. You might want to include the Bond films, but are they sequels? It's uncertain. My favourite, without doubt, is the perfect simplicity of Alien and Aliens. Not only are both of these films excellent, but it's all right there in the title: in one film there is one alien, in the other more than one. Incidentally, Aliens is also the greatest example of how to make a sequel: give the viewer what they liked about the first film, but more. Genius. If you are a great fan of sequels, check out Sequelogue, which contains a list of possible sequels, including my favourite: 300 II.

Friday

I thought Reign Over Me was a very good film. Admittedly it was conservative in style and structure, and the cynical will say, or probably have said, that it's too sentimental, exaggerates emotions, and simplifies the grief process. But the script, the acting, the mood, setting and the music were all great, and I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. It isn't about 9/11, as some have suggested, but about loss. 9/11 isn't mentioned: the closest they get is something like 'on September 12th 2001 he stopped talking to me'. The event isn't important. It's the repercussions that count. Adam Sandler was fascinating in a serious role, Don Cheadle good beside him, and Liv Tyler better than I've ever seen her. I felt uncomfortable at times, the plot lost direction at points, and the new relationship for Sandler's character at the end was rather badly contrived (albeit emotionally satisfying). I had thought the cinema would be busy - this was the opening night - and so I bought my ticket several hours early. However, there were only five people in the theatre with me. One of them was an enigmatic woman who laughed at all the same points as me (this is quite rare, as you'll understand), but disappeared as soon as the credits began. Anyway, the film is good and I recommend you see it.

Thursday

There are a plethora of films with bad titles out at the moment. They involve a lot of abstract nouns, bad puns, and frequently have the definite article before them. Examples are: Fracture, Perfect Stranger, Premonition, The Messengers, Shooter, and Unknown. Going to the cinema as frequently as I do (or try to do), I believe I am beginning to see patterns in the types of movies released throughout the year. Of course, studios and theatres are aware of this already, but its subtleties are little known to the general public. Most realise that during the summer and winter there are blockbusters, and for Christmas and Easter there are children's films. What happens between them? There are lulls, but there are also mini-peaks in certain genres etc. At the moment I believe it is bad title season.

Wednesday

As Tim Vine once said, it's the little touches that make the difference. In the opening scenes of Independence Day I noticed something I'd never noticed before. I think the first, or some of the earliest, lines of dialogue from the Jeff Goldblum character are to his father, who is drinking from a polystyrene cup: 'Do you know how long those things take to decompose?'. He then criticises him for smoking cigars, gets on a bicycle and rides to work where he admonishes his work colleague for not recycling. His character is trying to save the world already. I was impressed (and, yes, perhaps congratulating myself a little bit too). It felt also that this sentiment, from a film made in 1996, was ahead of its time - perhaps ten years, because only now is there a real majority pressure to save the environment. And on the other hand, the film as a whole is remarkably conservative in form and sentiment, almost a remake of 50s disaster movies, or 40s war films, but the dialogue is sharp and funny. Interesting.

Saturday

Many of you have written to ask why I am boycotting Days of Glory. 'Why, Nick, why? Why are you doing this to us?' I hear you cry. My answers are entirely superficial. I don't like films that are so overtly political in their intent: that is, to make European governments aware of the sacrifice of Algerian soldiers during WWII, who receive very little, or no, compensation for doing so. This film's 'message' has been forced upon us before we've had a chance to experience it as a film. The letter from the director that was printed in newspapers was sickening, I thought. What an utterly terrible way to try to get your message across - to use film so uselessly. More than this, however, annoyed me. I first heard about the movie through the trailer in cinemas. It begins with text saying something like 'In 2006 one film changed the world'. If it changed the world, why didn't I hear about it? Why is it being released in 2007, and if it changed the world, do you really have to tell me it changed the world? Isn't that counter-productive, or something? The whole thing seems too righteous. I think good filmmakers are more sensitive than this.

Friday

The film that has been on the tip of my tongue for the last few weeks, that I had seen the poster for but couldn't remember its name or its director, that I was sure you would all be interested in, is by Richard Linklater and it's called Fast Food Nation. I finally saw the trailer for it last night before Blades of Glory. If you've read the book perhaps you'll have a head-start on all this. However, I thought the book was more of a fact/documentary thing than a fiction thing, but the film, or the trailer, looked specifically fictional: characters and plot and everything. Maybe one of you can correct me on this. Also on offer last night was a new film starring Adam Sandler called Reign Over Me, in which he does a 'straight' role again, so that could be interesting. Incidentally, I thought I'd mention that in-between the Tarantino and Rodriguez films in Grindhouse you will apparently get four 'fake' trailers for upcoming movies. They roped in some extra talent to do these: Edgar Wright, Eli Roth and Rob Zombie.

Thursday

I saw Blades of Glory today (not Days of Glory, which I am boycotting, or Inland Empire, which I said I'd see). It's as silly as you would expect it to be. Will Ferrell is Will Ferrell and Jon Heder is Jon Heder. Thankfully the amount of 'sport' in this sports movie was kept to a minimum, I thought. The focus was on the jokes, which weren't quite as good as I'd hoped - not Anchorman level - but still good. I suppose I could talk about problems of unity and consistency, which I feel are utterly vital to comedy. Nothing seemed to tie the movie together: there were hints of things - the brush, the tattoo, the orphan - but they ended up meaning nothing, and not coming back into the story again in any real way. In a comedy you want to be totally fulfilled in every way, you want everything to mean something, I think. Jon Heder gets a girl but Will Ferrell doesn't. In a way, this movie needed to be both more conservative with its structure, and more radical with its jokes. Nevertheless, the sex addict scene was great, as was probably the slowest chase in movie history: two men trying to walk in ice-skates over a polished marble floor. Overall, ok.

Wednesday

Whilst waiting for Sunshine to start yesterday I saw what was perhaps one of the strangest trailers ever. It was for Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's latest movie(s) Grindhouse. The trailer was in the style of a 60s B-movie/pulp fiction double-bill at a theatre called the Grindhouse. The two films are Death Proof, by Tarantino, and Planet Terror, by Rodriguez (I'm not sure if you will actually get to see them at the same time). They seemed to be actual, unremitting, pulp fiction (as opposed to post-modern commentaries on the form): one about zombies; the other about a death proof car. The trailers made them look great - absolute cheesy committal to the style, with seemingly no tongue-in-cheek - but whether they are actually enjoyable to watch or not is another matter. Perhaps it will be a bit like The Good German - an interesting exercise, but not much else. As always, you'll have my review here first.

Incidentally, I felt strangely compelled to see the movie Sunshine. I think this was because I was the target audience. It doesn't often happen that this is the case, but here I felt the full force of the advertising machine directed at me. And, sure enough, when I arrived at the theatre there was a queue of 20-something student-type guys in front of me. Creepy.

Tuesday

Sunshine is a terrifying film. I wasn't expecting that. At first the intensity seemed somewhat overplayed, and things started to go wrong very quickly. Maybe the pace should have been even slower? Although, I did hear people complain that it was slow and nothing happens to keep the audience interested, which is absurd. I was on the edge of my seat virtually the whole time*. The story is about a spaceship sent to restart the sun, but it really contemplates death, and life, and the meaning and importance (or not) of both. We get, amongst others, the classic dilemma that we find in Star Trek: save one man that you know, or millions that you don't? These situations are handled well, I think, and sometimes dealt with abruptly and without too much sentimentalism, as well as being interspersed with moments of horrifying action and suspense. I wasn't sure of the style at times: we are given glimpses of things before they happen, mainly shadows and faces. It all adds, I suppose, to what this really is: a great, intense psychological film. I did think, however, there could have been more contemplation on the idea of darkness as a void and sunshine as a fullness. The 'psychopath' at the end, I felt, was a little bit disappointing. Obviously psychopaths are scary, but they are also reassuring. The film can then become the good against the bad, where beforehand the lines had been blurred. Also, I'm not sure if the epilogue was necessary, but something like that was needed. Some have called this movie depressing, but I think conversely it is joyful. Overall, I enjoyed this immensely, although as always there were little things I would have liked to have changed.

*Interestingly, since I've started seeing more and more films, I haven't yet found one that I'm bored by. Every one is interesting to me and keeps my attention throughout.

Monday

In yesterday's guardian there was an article about Ray Liotta. In the interview he expressed his annoyance as always being cast as the bad guy, and he said how he always felt like an outsider and didn't fit in with the other Hollywood stars (for instance, in his most recent film Wild Hogs). He has only, really, done one role that people remember him for, in Goodfellas. And it's strange that he's not, ostensibly, a bad guy in that movie, although he is bad. It is a puzzle as to why he hasn't had more success. He didn't make his first film until he was 30. And after Goodfellas he was very selective with what projects to do, something he regrets now. Cop Land I remember he was good in, but otherwise what else? Recently he has been in the television show Smith, which I've been enjoying, but there were only 5 episodes made before it was cancelled. He is an amazing actor, or so it seems to me. What does it take for a guy to get a break? He insightfully says that it doesn't matter how well he performs, the movie as a whole has to do well, otherwise his performance is ignored. An actor, it appears, has to be a director, an editor, and a writer as well, or at least understand how good they are before he starts a project.

Sunday

In the last of my posts about Second World War films, for now, I'd like to list a few of those that were made during the war besides The Great Dictator. There is a website that lists all that have been made: http://users.aol.com/sailgower/WWIImovies.html There were 612 by the year 2000 (so should be 620 or more by now). Anyway, if you look at them you will realise the phenomenal amount that were made during the war. Some, yes, were outright propaganda, but they were still feature-length movies containing an ostensibly fictional plot and characters. Classics include: Went The Day Well, Waterloo Bridge, Casablanca, The War Ahead, Foreign Correspondent, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, and 49th Parallel. I would argue these aren't just some of the best films about World War II, or even about war in general, these are some of the best films ever made. The shift in tone from the 40s, to the 50s and then the 60s is fascinating. Some find the 40s movies too patriotic and stoic, but I can conversely find some of the 60s movies quite irritating and camp. In the 50s they are somewhere in-between. Anyway, I like that at the end of the wikipedia article on the Second World War it says 'See also: World War I'.

Saturday

Writing about The Great Dictator yesterday it occurred to me how the street fights with Nazis (or Tomanians) are no different from the fights in his earlier films with policemen in the London/New York slums. He has transferred the context to one with much more serious implications. I'm guessing, but I haven't watched enough of his films to check, that some of the actors and the stunts are probably the same, maybe even parts of the sets. So, what does this mean? That it is all a joke to Chaplin? That one policeman is the same as any other? Or that any form of power over other people is wrong, and can never be justified? I don't know. When Chaplin (Schultz) gets mistaken for Hitler (Hynkel), however, this does reveal the meaninglessness of everything (especially as Chaplin's Tramp with his moustache did look like Hitler). I think the whole system of power (and the powerless) is what Chaplin is aiming at deconstructing with simple comedy, if possible.

Friday

In my discussion of war films on Wednesday I omitted to mention the names of any of them that had been made during the Second World War. Alex, quite rightly, pulled me up on this and said I should at least have spoken of The Great Dictator, which he claimed was made in 1940. I didn't know this, and didn't believe it. When I saw that film it felt like a criticism from distance of Hitler, but it was made five years before the war ended. This is, as Alex says, pretty incredible. I had always thought, or perhaps been taught, that Europeans weren't really aware of what Hitler was doing until after the war. Here, however, we have proof of their awareness, and their ability to criticise it. I loved Chaplin's movie without knowing when exactly it was made. This new knowledge contextualises it further, and emphasises its originality, although I think we should always be careful when putting films in context - it could just as easily be our version of the context we want to see, rather than the genuine one. Anyway, just to throw a spanner in the works I thought I'd end with a few lines from the ol' classic:

- A satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really gets right to the point of it.
- Oh, but really biting satire is always better than physical force.
- No, physical force is always better with Nazis.

Thursday

I can only admit to being disappointed with 300. On what was perhaps the sunniest day of the year I queued up to pay money to sit in the dark for two hours. I don't regret it, but I am disappointed. As you would expect, the look and the sound of the film was at times mind-blowing - especially at the start - but as soon as the actors started speaking things went wrong. The script was terrible - I don't know how close it is to Miller's - and the actors, perhaps innocent of that fault, performed it horribly. Vincent Regan is good enough, but Gerard Butler and Lena Headey, I thought, were both terrible. I suppose they weren't helped by the plot, and the vague abstractions they were supposed to uphold but, given the pool of talent in Hollywood, surely something better could have been done? This film also seemed to suffer from post-Gladiator syndrome. That is: soundtrack of a woman's voice singing indistinguishable, mournful sounds over scenes of cornfields at sunset. Why do so many films about the ancient world have this? In Gladiator it was just about excusable, but hasn't been since then. At the moment of his death, just as in Ridley Scott's film, Leonidas thinks of his wife and gets an extra spurt of energy. One last complaint, despite the great amount of half-naked bodies I think this movie does not have enough physicality. Granted that the nature of the enterprise was to be artificial and glossy, but I still think it could have been more physical. Overall, quite viscerally entertaining in parts, but not much more to recommend it after that.

Wednesday

On the morning chat show The Wright Stuff a few days ago they were discussing the rights and wrongs of whether a film about the Iraq war should be shown on television - exposing as it did the cruelties of British soldiers to prisoners of war at a time when our own soldiers were being held. The general consensus amongst the panel was that it shouldn't be shown. Someone went even further than this to say that no films should be made about the war because it was still a recent event. We should wait a few years, he believed. This is what they did during the Second World War, he argued - no films were made about it until long after.

You can see why I was annoyed. The first point to be made, however, is why would what worked for one generation necessarily work for another? Or, maybe it didn't work for them. We don't know. Anyway, the main point is obviously that many, many films were made about World War Two as it was happening. This is the amazing thing, for me; and for a panellist on a chat show to dismiss them out of ignorance was startling. It was the first time I've wanted to phone in to one of those things. So, as I think I've argued here before, I want to see more films about the Iraq war. I won't try to call the (re)presentation in art of contemporary, traumatic events necessary, but I do think it is a good idea.

Tuesday

What is the best title of a movie coming out this year? Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End? TMNT? The Hills Have Eyes II (which surely should have been The Hills Have Two Eyes)? Evan Almighty? Ocean's Thirteen? Or, none of the above and instead: Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters. Apparently this is adapted from the television show Aqua Teen Hunger Force, making only a tiny bit more sense, and which I haven't heard of either. The tagline, which helps explain it all to you, is: From the 1st Assistant Director of the 2nd Unit of Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth and the Production Assistant of the training video "Know Your Fryer". You can view the trailers through the IMDb, although, for those of you with weak dispositions, I seriously recommend you don't.

Monday

Today, a few random thoughts on different films. Firstly, Pulp Fiction. I recently read that you can view this film as four trips to the bathroom by Travolta's character. This is interesting, but it is also flawed. The bathroom scene with him and Jackson surely doesn't count. It isn't him going in, realising something, and coming out to a changed situation as it is in the other three. Also, what about the time Thurman goes to the bathroom in the diner? Surely that's important. And the kid in the bathroom with the gun? There is definitely a theme in there somewhere.

Secondly, War of the Worlds, the 1953 version of which I just watched. The remarkable thing about Spielberg's version is that the main character is not important at all. It's an epic, disaster movie in which no one really does, or is capable, of stopping the opposition. All right, Tom Cruise does blow up one tripod, but that's it.

Thirdly, a note about Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. I heard someone say yesterday that the opening 20 minutes were the best of any film ever. I did enjoy them too, but thinking about them now I think there is something wrong: the slow motion sequence. This gives the audience a chance to breath, it lets them know everything will be ok - it takes us out of the reality of the situation. Although necessary in terms of pacing, I think this was a mistake by Spielberg.

Sunday

Having mentioned My Name is Earl recently I looked it up on the IMDb to find that plans are being made for a movie adaptation, directed by none other than Steven Spielberg, who is said to be a huge fan. Unfortunately, however, he has insisted on Tom Cruise playing Earl. At the moment he has also cast Philip Seymour Hoffman as Randy, which should be interesting, Jennifer Lopez as Catalina, and Heather Locklear as Joy. No one has yet been confirmed for Darnell, but possible names are Denzel Washington and Chris Rock. The biggest rumoured problem with this production is that Tom Cruise is insisting on replacing the notion of Karma with Scientology. Some pages of a preliminary script have been leaked to the internet: 'I don't know what you mean, Joy. I was your husband and a I slept with your husband? Oh my god, aliens are landing! But I don't care. It's Chinatown, baby.'