Month: October 2009

There’s never a frown with Harry Brown

Posted by Martyn Drake – October 27, 2009

Thanks to Pearl & Dean on Twitter I managed to grab a preview ticket to the new Michael Caine drama, Harry Brown, which I went to see last night at the Guildford Odeon.  MARV (Matthew Vaughn & Kris Thykier's production company) produces one of the best British thrillers I've seen in a very long while.  It's quite literally a heart pounding roller coaster of a ride, having managed to jump out my skin a good number of times during the course of the film.  It takes a lot to shock me, but this film provided it in spades.

At first glance the concept of a vigilante OAP going around murdering feral teenagers who killed his best pal Leonard seems a little ridiculous.  But Gary Young's screenplay delivers a fine story – starting with Harry padding around his council flat alone, waiting for his wife to recover from a stroke.  When she dies, he only has Leonard left for company.  But Leonard is growing ever more concerned about the feral teenagers hanging around their council estate, with drug dealers opening dealing their wares in the very pub that the two OAPs are drinking (and playing chess) in.

It eventually gets a bit too much for Leonard who vows to deal with the teenagers himself, after almost being killed by somebody setting fire to old rags pushed through his letterbox.  Having taken an old bayonet given to him by his father when he was small, Leonard finally ends up dead having confronted a group of boys in an underpass near the estate.  This sets off a series of events which eventually sees Harry, a former marine, extract revenge from the gang that killed his friend.  And all of them meet a very violent end.

It's a wonderfully shot film.   The cinematography is excellent.  The colour grading in particular gives a washed out, grey look, which perfectly matches the mood of the story.  Music is put to good use, but similarly taken away when it's (not) needed, which made me extremely nervous at times.  The shocks themselves come thick and fast in places, and even I was sweating (my hands clenched) at a couple of points as I just had no idea where things were going to go.  The performances are top notch, and the whole thing is superbly directed by Daniel Barber.

In short, Harry Brown is one tight thriller.  It provides an intense, heart pounding drama that will make even the most hardened viewer jump out their seat once or twice.  The riot sequence is one of the most violent that I've seen committed to film.  The special effects are really well executed.

Go see this film.  It's not the feint of heart, but if you like a good thriller with some unexpected twists and turns, then Harry Brown is for you.   Highly original, highly entertaining.

Windows 14

Posted by Martyn Drake – October 22, 2009

Have received our two copies of Windows 7 through Amazon today (via City Link rather than RM) having pre-ordered since the 15th July.  Will be installing my copy tonight, whereas we'll get around to Jennifer's laptop over the weekend.  Our house will eventually be rid of Vista, the operating system from heck.

I've been running Windows 7 since the Release Candidate, and just over a month with the RTM Windows 7 Enterprise trial, and I can honestly say that I've had no problems whatsoever.  Windows 7 has taken everything I've thrown at it and it's just worked.  It's much nippier and generally much more pleasant to use than both XP and Vista combined.

Let's hope Microsoft continue to uphold this quality of operating system.  I'd hate to see Windows 8 turn into Windows ME and Vista combined.

Daily Mail probes BBC’s CIN Around the World in 80 Days..

Posted by Martyn Drake – October 22, 2009

This Daily Mail article about the cost of producing Children In Need's Around the World in 80 Days only reinforces my opinion that it is an ineffective and very expensive excercise in raising money that's not likely to yield the BBC and Children in Need much return.

If you want a REALLY good travel show from the BBC, I highly recommend Charlie Boorman's From Sydney to Tokyo: By Any Means 2.  Now THAT's how it's done.  Almost missed the show as it wasn't being promoted very well in the iPlayer.

Stargate Universe: It’s very good, but take the camera folk off the caffeine!

Posted by Martyn Drake – October 19, 2009

I've been a huge fan of Stargate since the original Emmerich and Devlin movie first came out in the cinema back in the mid 90s.  When Stargate SG-1 first came to our TV screens a few years later, I even wrote an email to Centropolis Entertainment to ask if David Arnold was being brought back to do the music.  I was rather shocked to receive a reply from Dean Devlin (producer and co-writer of the film) telling me that they had nothing to do with the TV show and that should it should be boycotted.

A decade or so later, with many awards under it's belt and with one spin-off series completed, the Stargate franchise has spawned another new show: Stargate Universe (or SGU).  Having watched three episodes of this new show, I have to say that while I am very impressed with the storyline and am intrigued by the new characters, it's got a few things to answer for.

Firstly is the inevitable comparison to that other dark, nitty gritty sci-fi drama series, Battlestar Galactica.  Extensive use of hand-held cameras, darkly lit spaceships, in-your-face fight sequences, etc.  Then there is a similarity to Star Trek Voyager, in which a starship is hurtled thousands of light years away from home.  But this is Voyager done right – the crew are stranded on a deserted spaceship with very little provisions and very little air.  They most constantly find ways to replenish their resources otherwise they'll die.

What I dislike about this show in terms of technicality is the hand-held camera shots.  I kind of got used to these kind of shots in BSG, but coming from the Stargate stable which has traditionally relied on dollies, steadicams, cranes and tripods, this new shooting style is somewhat off-putting.  And some of the shots have been so far over the shop that one's eyes have tended to tire having the focal point judder about too much.  One's head doesn't jerk about like that, so why a camera should do so, I really don't know.  I know hand-held shots are supposed to provide a fresh and dynamic look to the drama (as if you were watching a news report from a war zone, for example), but all it does is wish somebody would spend some money on cameras with image stabilisers (or tripods, dollies, steadicams, etc.)  This technique is used by too many dramas at the moment, and I'm getting mighty tired of it.  I just think that this is not the right main shooting technique for this kind of show.

On the plus side, the visual effects are excellent.  They integrate exceptionally well into the live action and serve the purpose very well indeed.  I expect we can look forward to some pretty specatacular stuff later on in the season.  Also excellent is the cast, with Robert Carlyle heading up the team.

If they can only introduce a little more stability on the shots for future episodes, SGU has a great future and will continue to support the show.

BBC’s new Around the World in 80 Days = expensive advert for Children in Need

Posted by Martyn Drake – October 17, 2009

Bring back Michael Palin, all is forgiven!  Not there was anything to forgive in the first place!

I recently began watching the BBC's new "travel" series, Around the World in 80 Days.  But hang on, didn't that Michael Palin do all this back in the late 80s?  Yes he did, but this is a new endeavour designed to bring in money for BBC's Children in Need appeal.

Where this program fails is in the direction and editing.  The format concentrates almost entirely on the travellers and Children in Need, and glosses over the places they're visiting – which kind of misses the point when it comes to travelling in the first place.  While Messrs Mack and Skinner ARE very entertaining, we barely have time to take in the places they're visiting or the people they meet along the way.  Yes, they've got a strict time-scale to get the travelling done, but Michael Palin and his team managed to strike a good balance when they did it the first time around.  The most we get to see is the Crown Prince & Princess of Serbia.  Everything else is too much of a blur and utterly forgettable.

Unfortunately Around the World in 80 Days just comes across as an expensive exercise/advert in getting more money for Children in Need (a worthy charity, of course) whereas the budget for this show might have been better spent putting it directly into the CiN collection tin.  This series is just not as inspiring as the one Michael Palin brought to us back in 1988.

Spotify and the Case of the Disappearing Music

Posted by Martyn Drake – October 17, 2009

Since Spotify first came to my attention several months ago, I have been a big fan.  Despite it being a streaming service, it's enabled me to find and listen to tracks that I would otherwise would have to pay a small fortune to iTunes for to listen to in their entirety.  Due to their partnerships with various record labels, Spotify is able to keep adding tens of thousands of tracks to the catalogue on an almost weekly basis.  I've supported Spotify by buying a Premium subscription and have done so for the past few months.

But there is a problem.  It's Achilles Heel, as it were.  Something that is making me re-think whether I want to continue supporting Spotify and the record labels that are supplying them.

While tracks are being added to the catalogue, others are being removed.  This is mentioned on each update posted to the Spotify blog.  It's claimed that these tracks are removed due to regional licensing and other matters, but it's infuriating - especially to somebody paying the Premium fee.  Even having the recently added offline mode cannot compensate for having tracks suddenly vanishing from your playlists without prior warning.

I'm sure Spotify is doing everything in it's power to ensure tracks that are added remain so.  I have no doubt that Spotify is working it's hardest to provide the best service imaginable.  But what's really spoiling this service for me is the record labels and people behind them who impose silly, ridiculous, and seemingly random licensing restrictions which may well see people move away from Spotify because one cannot guarantee that your favourite playlist may be reduced to only a couple of tracks due to them being removed due to licensing restrictions.  This wasn't such a big problem at first, and I could almost live with it, but I have started to notice that more and more tracks are going bye bye.

There is no warning at all as to what tracks are going to be removed, or when.  I recently added Elbow's One Day Like This to a playlist one day, only to discover it was no longer available the next.  It makes me wonder what else I can look forward to having removed from my playlists.

So unless the record labels can be more upfront with Spotify as to what can and cannot be played through the service, I'm not willing to support the artists or record labels of the removed tracks by buying those songs through iTunes (or elsewhere).  Nor can I fully support Spotify until this issue is properly resolved.

Gnat’s Enough of Gnats – We’re back from Croatia

Posted by Martyn Drake – October 8, 2009

We've just returned from Zadar (well, Bibinje, just opposite the Marina Dalmacija) in Croatia after a week of beautiful weather.  However I've been bitten more times than I care to count by little gnats who seem to treat my body as some form of banquet.

Croatia is a beautiful country, but it is not without it's problems.  The first is that the taxi service is incredibly expensive.  Expect to pay around £20-£25 to go only a few kilometres.  A 10-15 minute ride from Bibinje into Zadar's bus station costs £20.  From the airport to Bibinje is around £24.  A bus from Bibinje to Zadar's bus station is £1 each way.  If travelling by bus, prepare to join the locals in being pushed and pushing your way onto the bus since the concept of queues and orderly conduct are not something is a feature of the Croatian culture.

Secondly, a lot of café's in the centre of Zadar's old town don't serve food.  Nor do they have any menus.  Expect to interrogate the waiters as to what they have and what it costs.  Even when you do come across a restaurant, you're not immediately given a menu or are shown a seat.  I realise that this is not a busy season, but the waiters certainly seem to make you work for your food.  If sitting outside, expect smokers.  Lots of them.

Also, most tourist offices close on days when you want them the most.  In the shops around the Bibinje's marina, prepare to check your receipt carefully to avoid being overcharged.  The marina's shop is expensive in itself, but we discovered that they were charging over the odds for cans of coke which are priced by Coca Cola themselves as 4.99kn, but was going for 7Kn and was rang up under "Milk".  The bigger, more reputable shopping markets do not do this.

Finally, do not trust most road signs.  Most of them around Bibinje and the marina aren't exactly accurate and you should consult local maps (ironically from the Bibinje tourist office which I only found by accident).  Bus stops are not marked very well or provide much information either – the timetable for the number 10 bus to and from Bibinje to Zadar is found at the tourist office and NOT the bus shelter.

Favourite restaurants: Restaurant/Hotel Bepo and Tomislav Grill which are both just across the main road opposite the entrance to the Marina Dalmacija), and Restaurant Fereta (at the marina itself).  I would strongly suggest that you try Dalmatian Ham, it is most delicious!

That said, I did enjoy Croatia a great deal, and the people we were renting our apartment from were absolutely brilliant: very accommodating (I particularly enjoyed their home made grappa) and friendly.