Sunday

Some Christmas thoughts: is there an opposition to liberal, democratic capitalism? Until earlier this year many of us, including me, thought that there wasn't. I'm still very hesitant to say that the current perceived economic downturn (I refuse to use the words 'credit crunch' or 'recession', yet) spells the end of capitalism, as some have rashly declared. Undoubtedly some things will change, but how much? The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been expensive, so those forces will be hurried out, won't they? Someone always benefits, and this time it's the anti-war protesters: maybe they planned the whole thing? Zizek's last book predicts a way to overcome capitalism, which could perhaps now be coming true. In a crisis, people turn to totalitarian governments, which is what we really have to be afraid of if things do get worse. Perhaps they already have? Isn't Obama's liberalism a kind of idealism that could easily flip over into totalitarianism? I've got lots of questions, lots of 'isms', but not many answers.

Thursday

The astute among you (or those not reading this through an RSS feed) would have noticed I set up a poll last week. The question was, which is your favourite Back to the Future film? You responded with a resounding 100% voting for part one. Undoubtedly this is the case, but the other two films do help to make it a great trilogy. Today, I've set up a slightly more festive poll: what is your favourite Christmas movie? Obviously I couldn't include every Christmas movie ever made, so I have just picked those that I like, with an 'other' option for those of who you are fussy. If I've missed a glaringly obvious one, the poll can easily be amended. The options are: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation; It's a Wonderful Life; Die Hard; Just Friends; Bad Santa; and Home Alone. There's a fairly substantial list of such films here. Happy Christmas.

Wednesday

Most superheroes, I once read, in some way represent America. This cannot be more true than for Hancock. He has great powers but is irresponsible with them, doesn't really care how he uses them, or who accidentally gets hurt along the way. Yes, he will catch the bad guys, but he'll do an enormous amount of destruction in order to do so. No one really likes him. During one such catastrophic rescue he (Will Smith) meets a PR man (Jason Bateman), who pledges to make people like him again. With a little bit of effort, Hancock improves and people start to love him -I know this was filmed before Obama got elected, but isn't it a bit of a coincidence? Anyway, I found this all pretty enjoyable up to this point. However, the film then goes off on another tangent which I don't want to ruin for you. This new tangent is never fully explained, and its origins a dismissed with bad script writing. We never really get to find out who Hancock is and where he comes from, which directly contradicts the nature of the movie. If you're going to make a film about a very realistic superhero, you have to realistically justify who he is, which they don't. It was also quite annoying that the special effects of him flying looked bad by today's normally high standards. So, this was interesting, but also frustrating.

Monday

As you may remember, three westerns came out last year. I reviewed one of them, Seraphim Falls, earlier this year. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford I still haven't seen, but I saw 3:10 to Yuma last week. It stars Christian Bale and Russell Crowe: the first as a man who is hired to escort the second, a dangerous prisoner, to a town where he is to catch the 3:10 train that will take him to prison in Yuma. This is classic western territory, and is indeed a remake of a 1957 film. It's directed by James Mangold, who after the interesting Cop Land is becoming more and more mainstream - Walk the Line and Girl, Interrupted. This film doesn't really contain the moral ambiguity of Seraphim Falls, and whilst Bale is good, Crowe is a bit too smug. It relies on a few cliches, but I can't deny that I enjoyed it, that the tension built well and the conclusion satisfying. This is a somewhat ordinary, but clear, classic western.

Friday

Despite my criticisms yesterday, I do love the Back to the Future films. They succeed in so many ways, but I think the two actors and their chemistry together is what makes them stand out. Watching them again recently I was particularly impressed by the second movie: it's the perfect sequel. In a sequel you want to be reminded of the best bits from the first film, and then have some extra ones on top of that. Back to the Future: Part II actually replays the first film from a new angle. Initially, Marty re-enacts the scene around the town square from the 1950s in the future. Then, he goes back to the 1950s and actually interacts with scenes from the first film. We see him literally behind-the-scenes at the school dance, orchestrating events in order to help his past self. We even get to see him watching action from part one - when his father punches Biff - and enjoying it, as we did. It's genius. Perhaps some of the in-jokes are too easy - it's a simple way to delude your audience into thinking they're clever - but there are so many of them, and they become quite complex by the third movie, that you have to admire the screenwriting here. This is just one of those movies, or trilogies, for which everything came together and worked, and I doubt even the director would be able to tell you exactly why.

Thursday

This is the first of two posts on Back to the Future, the trilogy of which I watched over the last week. Perhaps I had forgotten, but I didn't remember knowing that Eric Stoltz completed about half the film before they replaced him with Michael J. Fox. Undoubtedly they made the right choice. Anyway, I have a few small problems. The first involves the second film. In the first movie Marty had gone back accidentally, accidentally altered the future, and striven hard to rectify it. This all makes sense. However, in the second film they deliberately go into the future in order to make things better for themselves. Something then goes wrong and they have to travel back to the past to rectify it, and that's fine, but it's the first part, as you can see, that is ambiguous. It seems it's ok to alter the future if it makes it better for them. The third film appears to follow the formula of the first: accidentally gone back. However, the only reason Marty subsequently goes back is to prevent Doc being killed. Once again this is to their advantage. My final problem is with some of the last lines of the movie. Doc tells them that their future is unwritten, and they can make it for themselves. Surely, however, the movies have taught us that this isn't the case? It's only with a time machine that you are capable of changing the future. The films seem innocent, but perhaps promote ambiguous morals.

Wednesday

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies might be one of the funniest films I've seen. I went to see it in the cinema twice last week, which perhaps tells you all you need to know. It's a French film, and might be called a cross between Austin Powers and The Pink Panther. At the moment, I find it funnier than both of those. OSS 117, or Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, is a spy sent to Cairo to investigate the death of his colleague. He knows nothing of the middle-east, doesn't understand Arabic or the Muslim religion, and of course is deeply misogynist. It's hard to explain, but most of the comedy comes from him being totally inept, but thinking he's brilliant. A lot of this has to be down to the performance of Jean Dujardin, who does sometimes uncannily look like Sean Connery. If you miss this in the cinema, buy it for yourself for Christmas.

Monday

There is something strangely frightening about My Name is Earl. In an episode I watched last night, he meets a very annoying man who seems to have the perfect life: lots of money, a big house, a beautiful wife and a mistress. For Earl, Karma is not right in this situation. In a later fit of rage, Earl punches the man, and due to this punch the man loses his wife, his mistress, his house, and ends up going to jail. Karma has been restored. The conclusion is that Karma used Earl's fist to right the world. Don't you find this a scary notion for a half-hour comedy show? Isn't it a bit too reminiscent of a religious justification for war? 'God is merely using us to purify the world'. Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, and perhaps in a later episode that I haven't seen this incident is explained, but I'm now deeply troubled by the outlook that this show is promoting.

Tuesday

There are, indeed, many other people who have seen the similarities between the Pirates of the Caribbean films and Star Wars. The comparison on the moviefone site is the most user-friendly and entertaining. It picks up on a few things I didn't, such as 'ugly antagonists', 'wise weirdos' 'vile vessels', and 'not-so-smart natives', but some of its links are a bit tenuous. The article at slashfilm is a bit more intellectual, although it only focuses on Dead Man's Chest and Empire Strikes Back. The MTV comparison lies somewhere between these two. As the slashfilm article points out, however, there may just be a limited amount of storylines to go around, so that it's very likely there will be some similarities. Or, perhaps there is only one storyline of the 'hero', thus making it inevitable that the films will be the same. In terms of pacing, certainly, there are very few variations, but I think the parallels between these movies are so similar, and many of them avoidable, that something has gone wrong here. We're a generation still suffering from the success of Star Wars and the box office blockbuster.