I’m slowly catching up on my RSS feeds but have some lengthy articles on the backlog to read, my email inbox is as far from InboxZero as ever (currently 1446 unread of 10292). My magazine pile is quite high, including Private Eye as I’ve been listening to music rather than reading on the bus in the morning.

I created a site with a friend as project but we haven’t really kicked that off yet so as I get back into writing I’ll throw some stuff over on JoyStuckInThePast.

So I’ll do a quick round up instead of the films I can remember seeing at the cinema so far this year.

Star Wars: Phantom Menace (3D)

I went to see this with low expectations for the film but high expectations for the 3D effects. The trailer for Titanic 3D (spoiler: the boat sinks) made me turn and go I hope they didn’t use the same technique, that looks awful. Unfortunately, they did use the same technique. I saw the 2D version when it came out and then watched it twice on VHS but hadn’t seen it since (having only seen episodes 2 and 3 once each at cinema too). Jar Jar was as annoying as ever. The pod-race was more awesome than I remember. The 3D effects were terrible. Things rushing close to the screen and blurring the background whilst adding even more CGI creatures isn’t my idea of a good movie experience. Nor is the £9.40 asking price.

Unfortunately I will probably end up seeing the next two just so they go ahead and destroy the original trilogy even more when they 3D it up.

John Carter

Having been disappointed at Star Wars my next trip to the pictures was to see John Carter. It was surprisingly good. I hadn’t seen the terrible trailer and promotion which was the source of most peoples negativity of it. Of course it was only good when I eventually got to see it. The first time we went the screen failed during the trailers. Our options were money back and free ticket/see different film/wait 2 hours for the 3D version. We opted for free tickets and went the next night.

Unlike Phantom Menace the 3D blended into the background, in most places was necessary and you didn’t notice it. It was a bit too long but worth it. Unfortunately Hollywood accounting meant it was already a flop before it was released so you have to wonder if the terrible promotion/trailer were deliberate as some kind of tax write off for losses by the studio.

Muppets

Having seen the awesome reviews I took my nieces to see the Muppets movie. Jason Segel was amazing in it. Youngest niece was slightly bored as it took a while for the Muppets to actually be doing anything exciting. She was waiting on the fart shoes and Miss Piggy so once the fart shoes appeared that was the film over as far as she was concerned. The older niece and I really enjoyed it though. The best part for me was that it was a kids film where the adult jokes weren’t innuendos but ripping the piss out of movie cliches that would fly over kids heads.

Electric Man

Electric Man had a showing at DCA with a Q&A session with the director and writer. A really low budget film (I hate low budget films…) set in a comic shop in Edinburgh (not aimed at me at all). It was really good. Obviously it had the flaws you would expect from a low budget film but what it did well far surpassed those. The direction and casting was excellent (Fish! the only other actor for the role would be Tam Dean Burn) and the shots of Edinburgh were fantastic. It really showed off the Grassmarket area really well, normally films set in Edinburgh stick to the Princess St/Castle and the only film that has come close to showing off Edinburgh was Hallam Foe. They are currently looking for a distributor and really deserve it to be shown wider.

The Cabin in the Woods

Dundead Festival opening night had the Cabin in the Woods showing. I was one of the first to buy tickets for it like the rabid Joss Whedon fan-boy that I am. I had avoided the trailer and was glad that I did, watching it afterwards it didn’t really show off the film as trailers should, mainly because of the twists and spoilers. Due to that I won’t talk about it more just now, only to say it dissected the cabin in the woods horror genre from a different angle than Tucker and Dale vs Evil and was as enjoyable if not more so. Definitely more so as I then went to see it on opening night at the chain cinema. The inclusion of 3 Whedon alumni in the cast only added to the awesomeness for me.

The Raid

As part of the @Dundead Festival they showed The Raid as final film. It was the UK premiere of the new cut with Linkin Park member Mike Shinoda produced score. This was an incredibly good action film. I’ll definitely head to see it again when it goes on general release later this month. An amazing baddie who you really believe can beat the goodies and at some points find yourself rooting for.

Instrument

Scott Myles was allowed to pick some films to show alongside his exhibition at the DCA and chose Instrument, a documentary about Fugazi to be shown. I hadn’t seen it before and was totally blown away at how good it was as a music documentary. Heavy Metal in Baghdad had been my favourite one until I saw this. It is also available on YouTube in it’s entirety so you can go view it there.

As part of the introduction the guy said he had watched it several times on VHS, some points in the film looked like it was a copy from his much watched VHS. That fault aside it was really interesting, sometimes with long stretches of no talking, just music, one sequence is just viewing the fans at a show and it was interesting looking at the fashion and dress of the gig-goers. The highlight though had to be the on stage filming of intimate gigs in large venues – especially the opening scenes.

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Note: I fully expect to edit this for errors and clarifications when other former employees see this, especially as I can’t remember what each of the 20 function keys did so am making up the specific ones for illustration.

I started work in Virgin Megastore in Dundee in December 2001 and left in 2005. During this time I was at university so started off doing weekend work, more shifts during summer etc before being a supervisor (and the manager on duty Friday 4-6, Saturday 4-7, Sunday all day). I think one of the reasons I was initially kept on (apart from being brilliant, obviously) was I was able to pick up their bizarre computer system so quickly.

The core stock management system they used in stores was called ELVIS (EPoS Linked Virgin Information System) and used dumb terminals throughout the store. The other systems at the time I worked there were the intranet – a PC which had a mouse!, a Ticketmaster terminal and machine used to close and open the store for the day and return sales data at night.

Elvis had terminals at each till counter and in various parts of the back of the shop including the stockroom. It was used to check inventory or whether an item actually existed for customers and rough stock levels – sales were adjusted overnight although I believe it started using real time polling sometime after I left. In the back office it was used to adjust stock, add on deliveries and so on.

I did a variety of jobs in the store, from till duty, restocking, stock management, cash office, returns, customer orders and so on so can see how the system worked from a number of different angles.

The Basics

Your first interaction with the system was probably on the tills. You’ve just been taken on at Christmas thinking yay, some money and CV fodder little realising the sheer hell of the two weeks either side of Christmas in a busy retail store. You’ve had your till training and are confident that you can take a cheque, swipe a credit card with a broken magnetic strip and spot a dodgy tenner. With your encyclopaedic knowledge of real music (stuff you got into in the last year minus anything which later charted) as oppose to the drivel in the charts you’re pretty confident that you can help anyone with their queries.

Someone approaches the till and instead of having a pile of swag in their hand they ask you about the new single by FooBar and when it will be out. (In reality of course they will ask have you got that album by that band, that song by the guy and the girl – you know the one or the VHS of that film which comes out at the cinema next week, but we may return to crazy customers later.)

So someone else has logged in to the account limited to permissions that are safe on the shop floor and you move over to the terminal. So I don’t want to see what’s playing on the shitty in-house radio station I’ll go to the stock inventory search bitty using a function key (F4?). Good, now I can filter by categories, 200 is singles. If I’ve used the system for a while I might know that the band FooBar are in category 216 post industrial grunge funk unless some philistine at head office has added it under industrial grunge funk – 217 instead of course.

So you search for FooBar and you are sent to the index in the entire category starting at FooBar. You weave your way down the entire list of 12 singles on the page in alphabetical order. At this goes up to G and it’s a song starting at H you need.

So you page down by pressing either Page Down or a different function key – F6. You know this because at the bottom it says F1 is back up a level, F4 does something else and F6 is page down with F7 being Page Up. Notice the other ones missing. So you go to the second page and there it is in the second six. You press F9 to see more info and this refreshes the screen with 2 lines about each single instead of one. But you are on the first half of the page. You press F6 to page down and you see a new page with singles starting at S by that band. What was that did you press page down twice? best page up and find it. Ah there it is. You just found your first bug. Page Down always skipped page 3 when zoomed in.

I noticed this bug in 2001 about 5minutes after using the system. It was still there in about 2008 – the last time I asked someone in store to check for me.

You select the singles row using the up/down keys and press F12 to see more info about it. Name, label, release date, price, cat number (on side of case, maybe, alpha/numerals), quantity in stock, grade and SKU (virgins 6 digit numeric code). When I started the SKU for new items was about 800,000. I was really interested to see what happened when they hit 999,999. Well they did a clean up removing loads of old Laserdiscs, Super Nintendo games, cassette singles and so on which were still on the system. Any new items started from the earliest available free code.

Seriously in 2001 they still had SKUs for D&D figures and master system games on the system, in case anyone you know, wanted to order one.

From an items screen you could also, using function keys, see the order history of it, including current orders, future entry into sales or offers (and could advise people, don’t buy this DVD for £19.99, it’s going in the 3 for £18 tomorrow, sometimes they would take the advice…).

So it says 1 in stock in the new singles bit and you wander along to find it, sometimes with the customer following like a puppy dog, sometimes waiting at the till for your return. You then get it from the place in the rack, unless it’s been stolen, or someone has moved it in a different slot, or into the albums, or it’s sold.

Hold up.

Yep, you could have 1 in stock at 9am, open the store and sell it at 9:01. All day long the system still said 1 in stock.

This was actually useful if you were trusted to do the manual checks of daily sales, popular stock etc, but for dealing with customer enquiries it was a right pain. Every day you would get a print out of everything in the shop which had sold. You sold 1 copy of an old Beatles album so go check the correct amount are in the store and if there is 1 in the stockroom and none on the shelf go check it has the correct price (it may have lain there a year) and put it out for sale.

Old Stock Adjustment

After Christmas Virgin in their great wisdom decided to keep me on as a part-time employee. In January or so I had some free time from uni and there was some overtime available through the week. I turn up and I’m being introduced to our stock adjustment system.

VHS is dying, we still have a whole wall of it – 8 metres or so as well as several metre racks for different genres and only 4 metres of racking of DVD but it’s pretty obvious where the trend is heading. VHS take up twice the space of DVD per item and our stock room post-Christmas is creaking at the seams. There are about 80 boxes of VHS in there which is old and Deleted, 20 VHS to a box makes 1600 VHS. That’s money paid to suppliers for dead stock which is stopping us fill up the back room with lovely pretty new things. This is the task that really let me get to grips with the ELVIS system and Virgins product categorisation strategy.

Each item had a grade, 1 was Chart, 2 and 3 were popular sellers. 4-17 were various grades of obscurity and the smaller stores might only stock up to grade 10 stock sending their bizarre shit to the bigger stores who had more space and more chance of selling that concept album by that band only wanted by collectors and so on. 18 was new release and 19 and 20 were deleted. These were the stock which was impossible to order from the makers of the items, that 10 year old follow up album by a shitty 1 hit wonder who got dropped by their label shortly after and whos singer works in the Fast Food Emporium next door – that’s a grade 20. Grade 20 was also pretty awesome cos it was where you would find such wonderful stuff and amazing prices – Luniz 12″ album for £3.99 and A Man Called E by E from the Eels for 99p were two such gems. The E album was also the last copy of it in the entire Virgin chain and it had been gathering dust in the stock room for who knows how long.

Generally anything in stock which was grade 10 or better had at least 1 copy on the floor, unless it was like a Beatles album or the like and you would probably put that out too. When Biffy Clyro played an instore gig I trawled the stock room for early singles which were now grade 20 and put them out – selling out of loads of old stock which would never have ever sold under normal circumstances.

So anyway, getting back to the task – I had to go through all these old crap grade 20 VHS, check they were on the system so we could sort them to go in the next VHS sale at 99p each. Should they all go that nets the store an easy grand and a half for dead stock.

So I had to go through each item in each box with a big print out of all the stuff we expected to be there. When you had a video you could find it in the system by title, Cat Number, barcode or SKU. Sometimes the cat number didn’t match. Sometimes the cat number of the box said X137 and it was in the system as X00137 etc. Warner Brothers DVDs were amazing they said Z1642 and what that meant was it was really D0642. Little things like that you picked up in the stock room quite quickly.

Sometimes the item had 0 quantity in the system. That’s weird, you have it in your hand, probably someone couldn’t find it before and had adjusted it down by 1. Then you check the back and it has a sticker over the barcode 0123 4568 – 1.99 sale. So you check the system and it says there are 100 of them in stock for that barcode. Great, someone previously made a store specific barcode as a dumping ground for old shit and didn’t reallocate things off. Probably because it hadn’t sold at 1.99 so why waste money on such a useless task. So I then got a list of all these generic sale barcodes and noted how many VHS were already moved to them as I went.

Once I got through the whole box we then adjusted loads of the stock onto these generic codes and made the adjustments for all the discrepancies. This was a logon with a higher elevation than the store front one, say DUNDEE_BACKOFFICE or whatever. This system also shows the price the item was bought for so you could see that the VHS selling for 99p was originally bought for £10.99. This was revealing towards the end of 2004 you would see chart album bought for £10.29 selling for £13.99. You’d grab a paper at lunctime and see Tesco selling it for £9.99.

In this higher permissions account you would also see some of those missing functions from the shop front. As well as that access to other areas of the system which used different keys. F12 as more info on all the screens and F1 as back – that’s crazy talk. Lets allocate function keys to different functions on different screen and keep those damn till monkeys on their toes.

The night before the sale arrived and the stock was put out. I went in the next day and it was all in strict alphabetical order (genrefication of stock happened and was undone all the time, I actually think it was one of the causes of Zavvis failure, having a Film A-Z instead of Sci-Fi, Horror, Anime, Kids etc). This was especially amusing as there were 4 copies of some gay porn VHS flanked either side on the bottom shelf by kids movies. One copy was still there the last time I saw back-stock of VHS in the storeroom.

Stockroom

I was later trained to work in the stockroom. I got my own logon for the system with even higher permissions and the username DUNDEE_AG. Brilliant I get set up and go to enter my password “PASSWORD” – Error. Oh it’s because I used the same character twice. Your password then went through rotations every 28-30 days and you couldn’t choose any of the last 9. This inevitably led to you thinking up some seven letter word and appending a number to it cycling through them all.

Now I had my till log on (2 digits, 42 obviously) and my 4 digit password to remember. The password and account for front of store and my own log on and account. Later I would also have the ticketmaster info, safe combination and the alarm code to remember too. As well as all my online stuff and uni passwords etc which was great fun. Especially when you went to work hungover. (not that I ever did of course as that would have meant drinking on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night which just so happened to be when all the rock nights and gigs were on in Dundee.)

In the stockroom you had barcode scanners. You would get a parcel or packet in and find it’s order number. Bring it up on the system, check the invoice and each item. If it was all correct you would enter the correct quantities next to the order details on the system and save it. If there was an item missing you would fill our a form to send back to the supplier. If there was a wrong item – they send 2 copies of 1 item instead of 1 of a different one you would mark up that mistake so that the item was still outstanding. Depending on the item and it’s likelihood of selling you might keep it or send it back. If they sent an extra item then you adjusted that on and robbed some small supplier whilst making pure profit for Richard oppose unionisation whilst giving a million pound to the Labour Party Branson, mwaahahaha, mwaaahah mhhahahahaa! etc.

Customer orders also came in and you had to faff around and find the paperwork and then phone or write to the person letting them know that the order had arrived. Sometimes these would be days after an order, sometimes years after an order. Later pre-orders were handled the same way and you had to shrinkwrap the order form to the Spiderman DVD and keep separately so that the fanboys would make sure they could buy it on the day of release.

Supervisor

Around a year later I was promoted to supervisor and had my account upgraded to the Supervisor level of security. Actually that’s a lie. It was upgraded to Assistant Manager which put a couple of the other supervisors noses out of joint now I remember about it. Especially when they couldn’t find the manager to do something 1337 and had to ask me to do it for them. This game me so much more power mwaha. To be honest I can’t remember much except now only 1 main option screen was out of action for me and I had pretty much full function permission on the other screens. This let me see the full extent of the weird UI decisions. Sometimes F1 would be back, sometimes F12 would be back. Sometimes F12 would be more info and sometimes F20 would.

It was truly bizarre and worst of all there seemed to be no way to feed back bugs about the system and so on. The fact that more functionality was added later shows it was being maintained at some level.

Where did Elvis go?

I really have no idea what happened to Elvis or where else used it. Zavvi still used it and probably Head as well. There are still some Head stores so perhaps it is used there. Was it made by Virgin or did they get the makers of some system to customise a core package with HMV getting a similar customisation made. I really have no idea but if you know leave a comment below with more info.

I also have no idea what language it was written in and so on. I remember seeing some old modems in the back which sent back the info and the whole kit looked pretty ancient. I first saw it in 2001 and it was apparently made in 1991. I would have no trouble believing some of the hardware (especially keyboards) had been in operation longer than that.

I probably also got some of the function keys wrong as it is 6 years since I used it so corrections are welcome for accuracy. A quick Google search didn’t reveal any images of the terminals either so I couldn’t check on them or include any for illustration purposes.

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For god sake just let it fucking go so that sane people with more than 3 braincells can turn over to your stations without wincing due to your show plus 24 hour feed of show and daily half hourly analysis of the hour broadcast etc.

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This should be about 95% correct. Some of the names are familiar but I can’t remember definitely seeing them.

X what you’ve seen
O what you saw some but not all of
Bold what you particularly liked
Strike-through what you hated

CLASSIC DISNEY
——————————-
[ X ] 101 Dalmatians (1961)
[ X ] Alice in Wonderland (1951)
[ X ] Bambi (1942)
[ X ] Cinderella (1950)
[ X ] Dumbo (1941)
[ X ] Fantasia (1940)
[ X ] Lady and the Tramp (1955)
[ X ] Mary Poppins (1964)
[ X ] Peter Pan (1953)
[ X ] Pinocchio (1940)
[ X ] Sleeping Beauty (1959)
[ X ] Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
[ ] Song of the South (1946)

DISNEY’S DARK AGE
——————————-
[ X ] The Aristocats (1970)
[ ] The Black Cauldron (1985)
[ X ] The Fox and the Hound (1981)
[ ] The Great Mouse Detective (1986)
[ X ] The Jungle Book (1967)
[ ] The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)
[ ] Oliver and Company (1986)
[ ] Pete’s Dragon (1977)
[X ] The Rescuers (1977)
[X ] Robin Hood (1973)
[ ] The Sword In The Stone (1963)

THE DISNEY RENAISSANCE
——————————-
[ X ] Aladdin (1992)
[ X ] Beauty and the Beast (1991)
[ ] A Goofy Movie (1995)
[ ] Hercules (1997)
[ ] The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
[ X ] The Lion King (1994)
[ X ] The Little Mermaid (1989)
[ ] Mulan (1998)
[ ] Pocahontas (1995)
[ X ] The Rescuers Down Under (1990)
[ ] Tarzan (1999)

DISNEY’S MODERN AGE
——————————-
[ ] Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)
[ ] Bolt (2008)
[ ] Brother Bear (2003)
[ ] Chicken Little (2005)
[ ] Dinosaur (2000)
[ ] The Emperor’s New Groove (2000)
[ ] Fantasia 2000 (2000)
[ ] Home on the Range (2004)
[ ] Lilo & Stitch (2002)
[ ] Meet the Robinsons (2007)
[ ] Treasure Planet (2002)

PIXAR
——————————-
[ X ] A Bug’s Life (1998)
[ ] Cars (2006)
[ X ] Finding Nemo (2003)
[ X ] The Incredibles (2004)
[ X ] Monsters Inc. (2001)
[ ] Ratatouille (2007)
[ X ] Toy Story (1995)
[ ] Toy Story 2 (1999)
[ ] Wall-E (2008)
[ ] Up (2009)

DON BLUTH
——————————-
[ X ] All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989)
[ ] An American Tail (1986)
[ ] An American Tail: Fieval Goes West (1991)
[ ] Anastasia (1997)
[ X ] The Land Before Time (1988)
[ ] The Pebble and the Penguin (1995)
[ ] Rock-a-Doodle (1991)
[ ] The Secret of NIMH (1982)
[ ] Thumbelina (1994)
[ ] Titan AE (2000)
[ ] A Troll in Central Park (1994)

CLAYMATION
——————————-
[ ] The Adventures of Mark Twain (1986)
[ X ] Chicken Run (2000)
[ X ] Coraline (2009)
[ X ] Corpse Bride (2005)
[ ] James and the Giant Peach (1996)
[ X ] The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
[ ] The Puppetoon Movie (1987)
[ X ] Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)

CGI GLUT
——————————-
[ ] Antz (1998)
[ X ] Happy Feet (2006)
[ ] Kung Fu Panda (2008)
[ ] Madagascar (2005)
[ ] Monster House (2006)
[ ] Over the Hedge (2006)
[ X ] The Polar Express (2004)
[ X ] Shrek (2001)
[ X ] Shrek 2 (2004)
[ ] Shrek The Third (2007)
[ ] Monsters vs. Aliens (2009)
[ ] How to Train Your Dragon (2010)

IMPORTS
——————————-
[ ] Arabian Knight
[ ] Back to Gaya
[ ] The Last Unicorn (1982)
[ ] Light Years (1988)
[ ] The Triplets of Belleville (2003)
[ ] Persepolis (2007)
[ ] Planet 51 (2009)
[ ] Waltz With Bashir (2008)
[ X ] Watership Down (1978)
[ ] When the Wind Blows (1988)
[ ] Yellow Submarine (1968)

STUDIO GHIBLI/MIYAZAKI
——————————-
[ ] The Cat Returns (2002)
[ ] Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
[ X ] Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) Skip the movie; read the book instead.
[ ] Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
[ X ] Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986)
[ ] Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979)
[ ] My Neighbors The Yamadas (1999)
[ ] My Neighbor Totoro (1993)
[ ] Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
[ ] Only Yesterday (1991)
[ ] Pom Poko (Tanuki War) (1994)
[ ] Porco Rosso (1992)
[ ] Princess Mononoke (1999)
[ ] Spirited Away (2002)
[ ] Whisper of the Heart (1995)
[ X ] Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea (2009)
[ ] Panda! Go Panda!
[ ] Tales from Earthsea
[ ] Horus, Prince of the Sun

SATOSHI KON
——————————-
[ ] Millennium Actress (2001)
[ ] Paprika (2006)
[ X ] Perfect Blue (1999)
[ ] Tokyo Godfathers (2003)

SHINKAI MAKOTO
——————————-
[ ] She and Her Cat (1999)
[ ] Voices of a Distant Star (2001)
[ ] The Place Promised in Our Early Days (2004)
[ ] 5 Centimeters per Second (2007)

OTHER ANIME FILMS
——————————-
[ X ] Akira (1989)
[ X ] Appleseed (2004)
[ ] Appleseed: Ex Machina (2007) -
[ ] Arcadia of My Youth (U.S. Title – Vengeance of the Space Pirate) (1982)
[ ] Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2003)
[ ] The Dagger of Kamui (U.S. Title – Revenge of the Ninja Warrior) (1985)
[ ] Dirty Pair: Project Eden (1987)
[ ] End of Evangelion (1997)
[ ] Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz (1998)
[ X ] Fist of the North Star (1986)
[ ] Galaxy Express 999 (1979)
[ X ] Ghost in the Shell (1996)
[ ] The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)
[ ] Lensman (1984)
[ ] Macross: Do You Remember Love (U.S. Title – Clash of the Bionoids) (1984)
[ X ] Metropolis (2001)
[ ] Neo-Tokyo (1986)
[ X ] Ninja Scroll (1993)
[ ] Origin: Spirits Of The Past
[ ] Patlabor the Movie (1989)
[ ] The Professional: Golgo 13 (1983)
[ ] Project A-ko (1986)
[ ] Robot Carnival (1987)
[ ] Robotech: The Shadow Chronicle (2006)
[ ] Silent Möbius (1991)
[ ] Space Adventure Cobra (1982)
[ ] Steamboy (2004)
[ ] Sword of the Stranger (2007)
[ ] Unico and the Island of Magic (1983)
[ ] Urotsukidoji: The Movie (1987) Hell no.
[ X ] Vampire Hunter D (1985)
[ ] Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust (2000)
[ ] Wings of Honneamise: Royal Space Force (1987)

CARTOONS FOR GROWN-UPS
——————————-
[ ] American Pop (1981)
[ ] The Animatrix (2003)
[ X ] Beavis & Butthead Do America (1996)
[ ] Cool World (1992)
[ X ] Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)
[ ] Final Fantasy: Advent Children (2005)
[ ] Fire & Ice (1983)
[ ] Fritz the Cat (1972)
[ ] Heavy Metal (1981)
[ ] Heavy Metal 2000 (2000)
[ ] Hey Good Lookin’ (1982)
[ ] Lady Death (2004)
[ ] A Scanner Darkly (2006)
[ X ] South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)
[ ] Street Fight (Coonskin) (1975)
[ ] Waking Life (2001)

OTHER ANIMATED MOVIES
——————————-
[ X ] Animal Farm (1954)
[ ] Animalympics (1980)
[ ] Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon The Movie (2007)
[ ] Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker
[ ] The Brave Little Toaster (1988)
[ ] Bravestarr: The Movie (1988)
[ ] Cats Don’t Dance (1997)
[ ] Care Bears: The Movie (1985)
[ ] Charlotte’s Web (1973)
[ ] Fern Gully (1992)
[ ] G.I. Joe: The Movie (1987)
[ ] Gobots: Battle of the Rock Lords (1986)
[ X ] He-Man & She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword (1985)
[ ] The Hobbit (1977)
[ ] The Iron Giant (1999)
[ ] Justice League: The New Frontier (2008)
[ X ] Lord of the Rings (1978)
[ ] Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1992)
[ ] My Little Pony: The Movie (1986)
[ ] Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1982)
[ ] The Prince of Egypt (1998)
[ ] Powerpuff Girls: The Movie (2002)
[ ] Quest For Camelot (1999)
[ ] Ringing Bell (1978)
[ ] The Road to El Dorado (2000)
[ ] Rock & Rule (1983)
[ ] Space Jam (1996)
[ ] Starchaser: The Legend of Orin (1985)
[ ] Superman: Doomsday (2007)
[ ] The Swan Princess (1994)
[ X ] Transformers: The Movie (1986)
[ ] Wizards (1977)
[ X ] Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
[ ] Wonder Woman (2009)
[ ] Balto (1995)
[ ] Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002)

ADDENDUM
[ ] 9 (2009)
[ ] The Ant Bully (2006)
[ ] Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
[ ] Bee Movie (2007)
[ ] Beowulf (2007)
[ ] The Chipmunk Adventure (1987)
[ ] Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009)
[ ] Felix the Cat: The Movie (1988)
[ ] Flushed Away (2006)
[ ] Happily N’Ever After (2007)
[ ] Hoodwinked (2005)
[ ] Horton Hears a Who (2008)
[ ] Ice Age (2002)
[ ] Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006)
[ ] Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009)
[ ] Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2001)
[ ] Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)
[ ] Open Season (2006)
[ ] Pokemon: The First Movie (1999)
[ ] The Princess and the Frog (2009)
[ ] Robots
[ ] The Rugrats Movie (1998)
[ ] Shark Tale (2004)
[ ] Shrek Forever After (2010)
[ ] The Simpsons Movie (2007)
[ ] Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2003)
[ ] Space Chimps (2008)
[ ] The Spongebob Squarepants Movie (2004)
[ ] The Tale of Despereaux (2008)
[ ] Valiant (2005)
[ ] We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story (1993)

ADDENDUM II
[ ] Mind Game
[ ] The Secret of Kells
[ ] Shonen Sarutobi Sasuke (U.S. title “Magic Boy”) The first anime I ever saw.
[ ] Princess Arete
[ ] Urusai Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer
[ ] Cat Soup
[ ] Summer Wars

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It was quite good, there were a number of things in it I thought could have been fleshed out into great points, and a number of those which were fleshed out which in the scope of the documentary appear unfounded.

The premise of the documentary is that David Bond got a letter from the Government basically saying whoops, we lost loads of personal info on you and your family and your bank details too. Sorry, hope you aren’t distressed about it. As you were.

He becomes curious (and anxious and paranoid) about the amount of data being held on each person by a vast array of government departments and companies.

The bulk of the film is a recording of him aiming to go on the run for 30 days whilst private eyes try to track him. This part falls a bit flat for reasons I will go into later (with spoilers).

The rest is made up of interviews and a small amount of recording before his escapade (and a tiny epilogue).

He interviews a number of people on the issues of privacy, from No2ID campaigners, members of Liberty and former Home Secretaries to a headteacher who is using biometrics in school and people who have been the victims of false positives when it comes to data.

The David Blunkett interview was revealing. Just today he is bemoaning the cancellation of ID Cards. In the documentary he is complaining about people prying into others private lives. A far cry from his usual Nothing to hide, nothing to fear nonsense. Maybe this was prompted by a number of tabloids raking into his personal life with him deciding that he did have things he wanted to hide.

There were two members of the general public interviewed who had been victims of duff data. The first was a woman who applied to work with children but failed the criminal background check. Someone with a similar name and same date of birth had a conviction for shoplifting meaning this woman was unsuitable to work with children. The second was a man who fell victim to Operation Ore. His credit card details had been stolen and used to buy, amongst other things, a membership to an online site with child pornography on it. Although the police decided something like 99.2% of the transactions were fraudulent they refused to budge on this one, thus branding him an evil pedo scum for life. He mentioned 39 people had committed suicide after being caught in the same operation. Two lives ruined due to wrongful data being held on them by the state.

Before he embarks on his adventure you see a number of interesting situations, from interviews with a psychiatrist to discuss possible mental health effects of the experience to flare ups with his 7month pregnant wife over him deciding to disappear and refusal to sign a form allowing a nursery to keep loads of data on his children.

These all through up questions to do with keeping accurate and relevant data for necessary lengths of time. unfortunately over the course of the film he is advocating all data bad held by everyone when relevant data held for appropriate lengths of time by the right people would have got to the heart of the issue and made a far more powerful case.

The second major part of the prelude is him investigating the vast amounts of data held on him by companies. He puts in 80 requests under the Data Protection Act to various governmental and private organisations to find out what data they hold on him and his child.

He gets back various amounts from a few pages – to a doorstop from Amazon. This is where one of the main flaws in his arguments creeps in. Amazon didn’t seek out info on him and collate it. He signed up to Amazon. He agreed to their terms. He bought lots of stuff and liked it, reviewed it and catalogued it. If he found out that Amazon had this info and sold it to someone that would be a major argument against the retention. If they would refuse to delete it – major argument.

When I say this I am not meaning to critisise David, but some decisions he took and that we all take. Whether willfully, negligibly or through ignorance we all give away massive amounts of data to various people. The one important point he does make – whilst visiting East Germany and discussing the Stasi – is that tiny amounts of data appear innocuous, but when you have tiny amounts of data about someone or something from lots of sources you can discover more than the sum of their parts.

When on the run, he takes a number of measures, avoiding using credit cards, paying cash, doubling back on himself etc. What leads to his discovery is not using a mobile phone (which he does – to access a site set up by the PIs!) or credit cards but being careless with data and social engineering.

When it came down to it it wasn’t fingerprint protected databases or CCTV but social engineering and binning important documents without shredding or destroying sensitive data that was his downfall.

I won’t say any more to avoid spoiling it.

The small amounts of data was underlined when he saw the private eyes operation room. Surrounding a scarily large photo of himself was a vast array of info they had managed to dredge up from 20 year old photos of his mother to his birth certificates, credit card receipts (which he had binned) and even some of his plans for his run which he had written down. They had also predicted some of his movements.

The last failing was that he didn’t hit home the real point of his paranoia about vast databases of info on him. It took 2 people working full time for a couple of weeks to track him down, during which they spent ages on foot tracking down information on him. With access to databases of this info they could have got loads of this info in a few hours of the first day.

Although there were a number of failings in the film it interested me for two main reasons. The first was that there are very few documentaries of good quality investigating the issues covered. The second was David himself. He laid himself bare for criticism by showing himself doing lots of silly things in the context of the film – showing his address, possibly credit card numbers, phone number on screen whilst talking about the importance of keeping data safe. He also revealed a number of personal issues in the film – a past driving conviction as held by the DVLA and in his meetings with the psychiatrist and during his time on the run he shows himself to becoming increasingly paranoid. I had no doubt that if he had managed to stay on the run for a couple of months he would have developed some more serious mental health problems.

And that is really endearing.

To try and highlight issues of privacy he was willing to sacrifice so much of his own.

To read more about the film go to the Erasing David site.

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So random media etc I have been enjoying over the last wee while:

Films and TV

Kick-Ass

Does what it says on the tin! Really enjoyed it, was a bit longer than expected. Unsurprisingly the Daily Mail have went apoplectic with rage. Surprisingly by accusing the makers and fans of being paedos or some other weird projection from the reviewer.

I think the basis is that adults occasionally dress in school girl outfits to be sexy and as there is a girl in the film of 11 (played by a 13 year old) wearing one they are trying to make her look sexy and hence promote paedophilia or something. Missing the step that maybe she wears it cos she is a child…

Youth In Revolt

Quite funny, enjoyable and would definitely watch again. The closest Hollywood has come to the premise of Science of Sleep in a long time.

Music

The most recent albums of Fun Lovin Criminals and Frightened Rabbit are the last things I have bought. Both were really good. Missed going to see Fun Lovin Criminals tour though, first tour I have missed in about 10 years.

Books

Recently been reading some books by Kathy Reichs. She writes stories about Brennan. In the TV series Bones, she writes the stories of Brennan who’s character writes books about Kathy Reichs. Most amusing.

Just finished Craig Murrays Murder in Samarkand this morning and it was really interesting. The very fact that he makes himself sound like a total dick in various places makes you inclined to believe the rest of the stuff he is writing about (no matter what that scum sucking torture advocating cunt Jack Straw says to the contrary).

Food

I grabbed a bottle of Eristoff Vodka when I saw it cheap. It suddenly appeared on the shelves of supermarkets with large amounts of shelf space. Given the faux Russian style of the labelling I was put off (normally a sure sign of shitness) but it was quite nice. Certainly better than Smirnoff.

We popped into Duke’s Corner having heard really good things about the food. I got a burger and it was pretty meh. Genna got some chicken thing with nice big chips. After eating the chicken she tucked into the chips to find then still uncooked in the middle. Slightly concerning after eating chicken. If you can’t even cook chips how can you manage a food that is notorious for giving food poisoning if not cooked correctly.

Since then we have heard even more good reviews so hopefully it was a one-off. Will go again at some point for a second chance but it better be really good to get back to even favour.

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It was ok, a few laughs but nothing special. What is frustrating is it had so much potential. Anyway to start off, I had read the reviews that it was a world where everyone tells the truth. This is inaccurate. It is a world of David Brents where everyone blurts out what’s on their mind constantly with no tact nor regard for anyones feelings.

A world where everyone tells the truth is one where if asked if you like someone you say no. In this world you walk up to them and call them an asshole. A slight difference. In the course of the film Rickys character learns how to tell a lie. This is a revelation, not only does no one know what this is there is not even a name for it. He uses it for the greater good, sees how it backfires etc etc. I will try not to spoil anything you can’t guess anyway.

One part which has American critics going ape is that he invents the idea of an afterlife – the worlds first liar creates religion. Some amusing parts of this plot.

I didn’t really connect these as they aren’t in the story. It lumbers from one idea to the next, never really finishing any train of thought off. This is quite symbplic of the worlds characters as they blurt out every thought and carry on with their lives.

I found the concept of the film fascinating, in the same way Sci-Fi takes our world, twists it and explores some idea to allow an abstract view into it this film took our world and said Look what it would look like if no one lied. This philosophical idea is only ever used for cheap gags and there’s no real pay off apart from a better look at one character.

Unfortunately Gervais’s character comes off as a nice guy in a sea of assholes and by the end hasn’t grown at all, hes still the nice guy of the film.

If you liked David Brent in the Office, this is a film cast entirely of people playing him. If you didn’t you should avoid.

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He was really, really funny. Lot’s of nerdy material, references but also stuff non-geeks could get related to his attempt to appear on Britain’s Got Talent (but not the drivel on this show).

I did a search and eventually found his MySpace page. So he loses geek cred for having that as his only online presence, obviously. Was highly amused by a review I found.

Read what this cock has to say.

I could just imagine similar.

As a feminist, mother in law and lesbian I did not appreciate the comedy of Roy Chubby Brown.

Or the like.

Guess what, comedian is targeting his audience by saying it will be lots of geek humour, if you don’t know who Captain Kirk is you probably shouldn’t go along as you will probably be sitting there with a glazed look on your face you numpty.

Rob mentioned overhearing some people looking at his flyers and saying meh, it’s probably about capes n’ shit.

So hopefully he will still be kicking around next year and I can see him again.

Before Rob I also saw two other comedians.

The first, an Australian was ok, he had some good material but a lot was related to lols England sucks at cricket compared to Australia etc. Not only has it been done to death before but no one really gives a shit about cricket in Scotland. His other material was enjoyable though with his sperm test tale being very funny.

The second of the pair was pretty good. His stage persona was just verging on being more enjoyable than funny but his material was really good. Excellent on stage, ditching the mic and just going without.

These were free shows so at the end the comics had a whip round to pay for extravagances like food, rent and the like.

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It was quite fun, the weather was pretty poor at times (which you pay attention to when working outside!) but at its worst was not as bad as last years torrential downpours.

One of the reasons I like the fairs is that I enjoy blethering with people. To quote Kaylee from Firefly They’ve all got stories. Not just the public but the other exhibitors too. Every year there are new people and you are next to a different set of people so you get to know a bit about everyone. This year we also bought/swapped a bunch of stuff.

Gillian Kyle was opposite us and has pretty cool printed t-shirts etc with Scottish cultural logos.

Next to us was Will with his hand made Journals. These were really cool, Genna bought me a Serenity one. I will be contacting him at some point in the future to make another one too.

Gayle Robinson was just to the left. Her collagraphs were amazing. We got one and I was drooling over another really nice abtract landscape one in various shades of blue.

Sue from Look out scout! has totally awesome kiddies t-shirts with fun animal facts. Her website is really cool with lots of activities for kids. She had hers with her some days and they amused themselves giving everyone a quiz. My 5 out of 10 was not enough to win the packet of Oreos though . Her stand was really nice too with fake grass and animals etc all over the place. Sometimes you get a bit bored seeing a row of stands all day every day with the only variation being the colour of tablecloth and whether necklaces are on the right or left of the display. Really brightened up your day noticing new stuff all over.

Frans McAnaraks stall was even cooler this year. Steve from Highland Games made her buttons for clothing and they had so many requests from people they eventually caved in and started selling them too. Last year was a trial run with a small selection, this year there was a massive amount on day 1 and not so many on day 9 when we left. Her site has her selection of buttons on it but not her really funky one off coats etc. Genna now has 4 of her clothing items.

Stephen O’Neill had some really nice prints and we ended up getting 4. With the Rikki O’Neill print we got last month we can now make a wall of images of Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Genna did really well too. I’ll dig out the spreadsheets etc later (we forgot to take the details of last year) but it was definitely worth going .

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I just watched the trailer.

What the hell is Burton doing with all this ridiculous CGI? It looked appalling and out of place. Never mind that most of it was completely unnecessary, bah. CGI works if it blends in to the film, if it adds details but doesn’t stand out. All the grognnards complain about the remastering of Star Wars, what made it bad wasn’t that it was restored and remastered and cleaned up but that CGI was dumped in (and that Greedo shot first, obviously). It jarred against the style of the film and also made the rest of the film look dated. The previous remastering where they mainly cleaned up the print was a welcome improvement.

I had been looking forward to it, but don’t know if I should even bother now.

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Unusually for a vampire movie the vampire and main character are both pre-teens. The dialogue was sparse with most of the characters feelings being expressed through their actions, the way they touched each other, glances, tapping on walls to communicate, little notes left – it is surprisingly sweet. No doubt this is part of the reason Hollywood is already remaking it – what do you mean there’s no witty sidekick or party scene!.

That was mostly the romance side of it, the vampire lore was excellent. I have been getting sick of vampire movies which have to be different by introducing new rules or breaking conventional ones. Sunlight was a killer, blood was required, a minion watched over the vampire during the day (who slept in a bath covered in layers of thick material with the windows covered), cats were not happy, those bitten were infected.

The best of all was the title piece – what happens when you are not invited in – excellent and unexpected interpretation. I had been so used to invisible barriers from watching Buffy.

Really worth the wait, I especially enjoyed it as between Genna and I being ill over the past month it’s been a while since we touched any non-English films in the unwatched pile. Neither of us fancied reading loads whilst watching. Even though the film was close to two hours long the dialogue was so sparse that it wasn’t too much of a strain to ease back into the habit.

The other amusing part of the night was that on the other side of me from Genna was another couple. The woman kept jumping and gasping at all the semi-shocking bits, including a hit in the face for Oskar. It couldn’t have been more cliché if they had stood up clapping and cheering at the end. I had never experienced that before suppose I am so desensitised to horror and horror tropes* that I had forgotten some people do this.

* Whilst watching two horrors last week I kept going now or fake when the trope or twist on the trope was away to be used. Some of them were so appalling and cliché.

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The final episode had Neil with the best quote of the series though.

ghost stories like Harry Potter and the Bible

So random, I spluttered in giggles.

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Some of these were good, some were great, some won’t be watched again – a good mixture then. The unwatched pile however has not had a noticeable dent.

Flight of the Conchords Season 1, having been finally acquired from Mike was watched. Very amusing. Regret watching it all in a weekend though as the dialogue could be a bit dense at times and would have really benefited from full concentration. Murray is the greatest comedy character in years. His bemusement over how many New Zealanders are mugged when he advises them to avoid crowds and stick to the back alleys is priceless.

Messengers was quite amusing, if a bit predictable. Effects were to an acceptable standard, although I think the point which grabbed my attention most was seeing William B Davis in the opening credits to be fair. His character was a bit meh

When Zachary Beaver Came to Town was quite a fun £1.99er picked up for the humour of it starring Jane Krakowski (Elaine in Ally McBeal). Amusing coming of age film which was nowhere near as good as most in the genre.

Surviving Christmas (Christina Applegate) was a pretty shit Christmas movie which I watched in April for sheer humour value. Ben Affleck plays a character who is even more of annoying whiny dick than usual. He must have really reached far inside to create him and should be commended for that if nothing else. Every character was immensely dislikeable and unbelievable. I will happily watch films but having not one single likeable character puts a huge brick wall up in front of my enjoyment of a movie.

Creep was a very enjoyable horror although the main baddie was a bit shit. Hobbling one second, beating characters who were running the next. The main character deserved to die for being stupid enough to have the Creep in the ground injured and possibly knocked out with a giant spear next to her. Rather than kill the fucker she runs for the next 30minutes(?) of the film. I’m really tiring of horrors with stupid characters and giant plot holes, at least with psychological horrors you can empathise with the victims as you are focusing on what they are going through. The director in a special feature also speaks of how you can sympathise for the Creep who captures women, keeps them in cages and then rams giant blades into their genitals. Probably says more about him than the audience I think.

I have watched quite a few films this month but can’t remember all of them unfortunately.

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What I got was, well, mince. Dire acting, pitiful jokes, ridiculous symbolism. Lesbian vampires being defeated by spurting thick white gloop all over the place with the head one killed by being stabbed by the cock sword, a sword, with a penis carved into the handle. Psychologists will find this film a gold mine into the deranged brains of the writers.

Absolutely abysmal, I had expected a Shaun of the Dead style spoof, some intelligence, not jokes which would have peaked in amusement for me at age 12. Definitely don’t intend to watch again.

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It was the only thing I saw him in (although he apparently was in an episode of Buffy too) but he was constantly superb as the campy living life to the fullest character. Even in the episodes where I disliked the characterisation it was the writing, not the acting which had been disappointing.

Not a happy bunny.

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I rarely text and when I do I try to, on a shit keyboard, use correct spelling. I understand that two differs in meaning from to and too. I don’t understand compromising a 2 or 3 character word into 1. Paying by the character are we? R is a letter, are is a word.

From the ever reliable Wikipedia

Communication is commonly defined as “the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing, or signs…”, 1: an act or instance of transmitting and 3 a: “a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior … also: exchange of information”.

It is thus with disdain I read of the imminent re-branding of the SciFi channel.

SciFi is an abbreviation of Science Fiction. The new name will be SyFy, which is not. Additionally, it sounds like an abbreviation of a venereal disease. Apparantly this is what the hip kids would abbreviate Science Fiction to.

Nonsense.

SyFy barely comes up on a search and in fact doesn’t seem to appear before the last month or so.

Under what circumstances would you compress Science Fiction to SyFy? I don’t understand the International Phonetic Alphabet but would that not be a completely different pronunciation?

When we tested this new name, the thing that we got back from our 18-to-34 techno-savvy crowd, which is quite a lot of our audience, is actually this is how you’d text it … It made us feel much cooler, much more cutting-edge, much more hip, which was kind of bang-on what we wanted to achieve communication-wise.

Let’s look at this:

Who are the techno savvy kids? Are they trying to appeal to dance music fans or something.

It made us feel much cooler, much more cutting-edge, much more hip

Eurgh!

And finally: which was kind of bang-on what we wanted to achieve communication-wise.

This is marketing fuckwit for which was our aim. Maybe he wants to touch base with someone offline to collaborate on a making yourself look like a twat solution.

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Zombies

One was Zombies, a cheesy cheapo horror about zombie kids. Or ghosts or something. Pretty boring and plot holes you could drive a bus through. There are kids who were trapped underground, but are now zombies and/or ghosts. Also they are above ground now, and they are undead. They attack people and kill and eat them, but only at night, and only if you are a descendent of the people responsible for them dying, unless you are related to them or also a stranger.

That paragraph was intentionally written in as confusing manner as the plot. The acting was appalling, the dialogue was worse and the characters were as stupid as you expect from a horror, never mind a horror this bad. Also the first proper ghost/zombie attack isn’t until about a third of the way through.

An example of how bad this film is.

Towards the end, the crowd of zombie kids have assembled watching the heroes, as they have done before. Standing in silence. The cliché hick goes (paraphrasing):

There will be no stopping them, not if they are all riled up and I think they are tonight

As they stand there staring and slowly moving towards their target. Slowly moving for dramatic effect, not because they were slow zombies or anything.

I like bad horror. I like cheesy horror. I don’t like bad or cheesy horror that doesn’t acknowledge that it is bad or cheesy.

Utter garbage.

Mona Lisa Smile

After tea we watched Mona Lisa Smile, which was superb. A film set at an all girls college in the 50s has Julia Roberts as Katherine Watson, some kind of liberal subversive putting dangerous thoughts into the womens head such as You don’t have to just be a housewife.

One of my favourite quotes from Katherine Watson was:

I thought I was headed to a place that would turn out tomorrow’s leaders, not their wives!

This was the culmination of frustrating conversations such as the following

Katherine Watson: It says here that you’re pre-law. What law school are you going to go to?
Joan Brandwyn: I hadn’t really thought about that. After I graduate, I plan on getting married.
Katherine Watson: And then?
Joan Brandwyn: [confused] And then… I’ll be married.

Really good film, strong cast, well acted, great dialogue. Such a contrast to Zombies

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Orphanage, 2 years old and being remade because a section of the movie liking audience are too xenophobic to cope with subtitles and foreign dialogue. Fuck, em if they wish to miss this fine film out of their own pig-headedness and ignorance that’s their problem.

They Live, yes. The question is who can replace Roddy Piper and Keith David?

He-man. He-man is being remade, fantastic! I remember this as one of the first films I saw at the cinema. It was opening night at the ABC, where Yates etc is now.

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At times it could be a bit of a slog at over 2 hours long, but it was well worth it in the end. It had a really unusual style. The introduction had the screen split in halves with textual detail of who was who and hints and explanation to plots at the side, this happened at sporadic points throughout the film and is how it finished with a where are they now? section, which lately has only been used in really cheesy comedies. The other bizarre style change was during some of the sex scenes when the camera rotates so that both characters are vertical, quite strange.

The movie is comprised of three main plots, a brother and stepsister make up the real anchor of the story. One arc is about the stepsister, a second about the life of the stepbrother and a third which eventually interlinks with both of them. I was quite amazed by Lisa Kudrows acting. After seeing some of the other Friends actors films I wasn’t expecting much (yes Jennifer Anniston I am looking at you, Office Space and Derailed are your only decent attempts at acting and one of those you are a really minor character). She is superb in this. Steve Coogan plays basically a really weak Alan Partridge. Basically the same what I think is important, other people can get hurt but I’ll say what I feel, having a partner means he has to scramble afterwards to clean up the mess but it wasn’t a real departure from Partridge. That’s not to say he is bad or typecast, far from it just that you could see hints of his main character there.

I looked at it with Kudrow and Coogan and thought the main genre of the movie would be the comedy aspect but it really wasn’t. There were funny parts but no laugh out loud moments that I can remember.

Well worth watching.

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1. Our mums and dads fuck us up
2. they don’t mean to
1. but they do

It’s the opening lines from the first verse of Philip Larkin – This be the verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

Well, they needed to redeem themselves and they did so. You finally saw some characters settling into a group and some good interactions between people, although it’s still nowhere near as good as series 1 and 2. There is still a hell of a long way to go to even become as good as the worst episodes of season 1 and 2 so it’s earned a reprieve for a few more episodes. Hopefully the end of the season will be amazing and the early episodes will justify themselves on a rewatch with things you miss or don’t think are important on a first watch.

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Underworld 1 and 2 in preparation for the third.
Hallam Foe
TransAmerica
Transformers (original, obviously)
Smart People

February saw Milk, which was amazing and I will write a review at a later date.

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The question is, underneath the main plot of the film what does it show of the slums and poverty in which the majority of the film is set?

The first thing you notice about the slums is the grime, the cameras chosen really show off the filth everywhere. Danny Boyle chose to shoot parts of the movies in the real shantytown of Mumbai rather than sets. The kids play cricket on the only available flat area – the airport which backs on to their homes. After being spotted they are chased and beaten by the Police. After a short period seeing their basic lives the turning point is a sectarian attack by a gang of thugs angry at people having a different religion to themselves. The police are now turning a blind eye to the brutality of the sectarian mob. The children are rendered homeless and living in a garbage dump, an even worse situation than they had been in before.

From here you see a number of different routes out of the lives of the slum dwellers. There is begging in a Fagan style gang. Involvement in criminal gangs and as a teaboy in a call centre. No positive or progressive lifestyles are shown for those in poverty in the film. This narrow look at life only focuses on the main characters and not the wider society they live in and really limits the film to be a love story set against a backdrop of abject poverty rather than a film that takes a serious and detailed look at this life. This has been the basis of most of the criticism of the film, and I admit slightly disappointed me when I had watched it. To be fair though it was never marketed as exploring these issues, I had just hoped it would spend a small amount of time looking at them rather than featuring them as the fluff for the background of the love story.

Review after review have described it as a feel good movie. Certain parts of it were certainly cheerful, laugh out loud moments. The ending is as feel good as the reviews train you to expect. Other parts of the film are far from feel good. Part of the opening of the film is seeing Jamal, the main character being brutally tortured. Seeing the poverty in the shantytowns, the exploitation of a young woman was not a cheerful part of the movie. One early scene had me squirming as some reviews had mentioned child abuse being an issue in the film and I had mistakenly thought it may be sexual rather than physical, verbal and emotional. Those last three are certainly aspects of the movie although thankfully the former was not, although it was certainly implied that a girl was to be sold to a man.

The movie is certainly entertaining, deserving of its praise and all the Oscars which may fly it’s way. It is a film I would highly recommend anyone to see. It is not however one you will be laughing all the way through as the reviews imply. When I saw it on opening weekend in a packed screen the end was greeted with complete silence. Probably the most suitable way to digest the complete story you have been shown.

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I really liked Series 1 and 2, there was a willingness to explore topics few other series would as well as quite good character arcs. With the cast moving on and a new one starting I had high hopes for the new series.

What we seemed to get was Skins to the XTREME!!!!!

We had Cook being more Tony than Tony. We had JJ playing the most annoying traits of Sid and Anwar. We had Pandora as Cassie after being dropped on her head as a child and we had Effy as Effy Max with extra smoking at every possible moment.

Hopefully this was just showing all the extreme character traits so you could identify each person easily in future episodes and this won’t be their characterisations on every single episode. On the positive side we had Effy as a pretty similar character as before, her arc will probably be the main one in the show. Katie and Emily interaction is going to be quite good if the writers show even half the skill as the previous series of showing episodes from individual characters points of view. We saw Katie being a complete bitch to her sister, but not really any insight into what her view of Emily is. Neither Freddie nor Thomas made much of an impression. I sense Naomi being the token activist with ever changing obsessions every week, much as Hollyoaks** have done with that annoying character.

I almost forgot, all the teachers were pretty bizarre too. Previously all the characters had some sort of flaw, so far everyone appears to be completely dysfunctional. Not to mention cliché person in Communications who has trouble communicating. As soon as her title was announced I groaned as it was soooo obvious given what had happened already in the episode.

It can only improve.

* Who I recently found out have finally gotten round to releasing that second album. It was quite good too. And I have just discovered they will be in Glasgow soon.
**Usually on at tea time, occasionally interesting, mostly boring.

*** Note to self, 8am = grammar broked

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Having picked The Astronaughts Wife up for one and two thirds of a pound in Grouchos I wasn’t really expecting much. Checking imdb also shows an average rating on 4.9. It was actually surprisingly good and I would definitely watch again. The film was scary, intense and quite riveting. In places you grew annoyed as some of the characters but Charlize Theron totally pulled you in. Loads of wee subtle things (Depp feeling her temperature to see if she’s ovulating) and things I hadn’t quite worked out (the constant focus and emphasis on hands moving) mean I will watch again at some point to see what I can pick out.

If I haven’t mentioned before I always spot wee things in the background of movies and TV shows, some examples include:

• Random extras and what other films they’ve been in.
• David Boreanaz doing some amazingly silly things on Angel whilst someone else, Lorne or Wes mostly, is the focus of the camera.
• Shaun in This Is England having me in stitches slyly letting someone sniff his fingers as he passes them on his way into the living room after being out the backs with a girl.

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It lists loads of prizes:

• VIP tickets to an exclusive Hellboy party
• Hellboy scarf
• Hellboy beanie
• the movie on DVD
• Cygnett MP3 player accessories pack

I got an e-mail saying I had won a prize and thought woo, hope it’s the DVD, and have been holding off buying it ever since.

Well, I got a package through the mail today, in it was:

• Hellboy scarf
• Hellboy beanie with horn stumps
• the 2 disc special edition of the movie on DVD £12.98
• earphones £14.98 on Amazon
• charging battery for iPhone/iPod £12.96?
• iPod nano silicon case ~£14
• mini rechargable speaker £20.96
• mini fm transmitter for iPod/iPhone £37.99
• larger rechargable speaker for iPhone/iPod £41.99
• speaker dock/alarm clock/radio for iPod £67.79

Holy shit!, that’s over £200 worth of iPod accessories.

The hat/scarf and DVD are mine. Genna was drooling over the rest of the kit seeing as she has an iPod and I don’t

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Generally after making tea, doing dishes and catching up on random e-mails we settle down to a movie, anything from rom-com to horror to world cinema.

So far the ones which I haven’t blocked out this year have been:

Dead Creatures

Catacombs

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

Crime and Punishment in Suburbia

Dead Creatures was quite a fun romp. This is described as similar to Trainspotting in style. A group of young women have been bitten and turned into people who crave human flesh and move from place to place drugging men in pubs, prostituting themselves or just attacking in dark alleys to find victims. Quite cheesy in places but enjoyable. The best scene is one of the girls leaving a newsagent with a copy of the Guardian when her arm starts to not function. The first sign that the zombieitis is starting to control her.

Catacombs was a horror set in France, bought on the cheap on the basis that it was by the people who produced Saw and also starred Pink. Her acting was actually alright until her final scenes in the movie at which point I was bursting out laughing at it, and at the plot spoilers etc. Meh, might watch again at some point.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane was quite good and a bargain in Grouchos 3/£5 shite bin section (where a large amount of my movie collection comes from). Some decent acting from loads of people in their second or third films. Lots of the actions were incredulous due to shitty writing rather than poor acting. Ok subversion of slasher movie tropes.

Crime and Punishment in Suburbia was watched for the second time, and I had forgotten it starred Vincent Kartheiser (Connor in Angel). He is quite good as an obsessed stalker of the hot girl in school yadda yadda. Abusive parent played remarkably well by Michael Ironside who will forever be refereed to as Richter from Total Recall no matter what he does.

Looks like we will have to hit rom-com/comedy territory to balance out film intake.

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Fantastic video starring Jack Black, Sarah Chalke and Neil Patrick Harris.

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Attendance was probably around 200, with loads of under 18s for some reason I couldn’t understand, maybe Frightened Rabbit has a following with the teens?

We just caught the end of the first support band not used to advertised doors times being accurate…They were quite good, as were the Grace Emilys.

Frightened Rabbit came on before 10 and played for an hour with a small encore. They were as good on stage as on CD. I really like the second album that Mike forced on us going listen you’ll love this as we were met with:

Oh, you won’t find love in a
Won’t find love in a hole
It takes more than fucking someone
To keep yourself warm

Much amusement. Their songs were also filled with innuendo and cheesy silliness If we have a hormone race, I’m bound to finish first says another verse of the same song.

The voice of the singer is unique, powerful, raw and with a really detectable accent, a cross between Billy Bragg and Flying Matchstick Men or something, who knows.

Hearing Keep Warm I was worried they would be a bit preachy. Head Rolls Off makes it clear they are not

Jesus is just a Spanish boy’s name
How come one man got so much fame?
…
When it’s all gone, something carries on
And it’s not morbid at all
Just when nature’s had enough of you
When my blood stops, someone else’s will not

and ends with the most important point:

While I’m alive, I’ll make tiny changes to earth
Tiny changes to earth, tiny changes to earth
Tiny changes to earth

If the excellence of their music and intelligence of their lyrics are not enough to convince you to love them then the drummer being an Owen Boss Koala lookalike and Rhythm Guitarist being Jarvis Cocker in disguise should.

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