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So here's the thing.

I'm in Sydney at the moment, on a trip with a group of people. My brother lives over here, so I stayed with him and his family for the weekend, then last night joined the rest of the party at our hotel.

Today was the first day of the trip proper, and it was really good. We had a very busy day, going from place to place. But the very last event of the day was cancelled, so we had a few hours to kill. At this point it was late afternoon, about 4.30pm, and since there was still about an hour to go before the shops closed, some in the party wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to go shopping. As we stopped to let those people off at some large shopping mall, I made a sudden and impulsive decision to jump out and also look around the shops, just to see if I could find anything interesting.

I wish I never had.

Here's the problem: I hadn't expected to go shopping, so I wasn't prepared for shopping. Sure, I had my wallet, but I didn't have the other thing just as important to the shopping experience as my wallet - my iPod. You see, I find shopping deathly dull, so I can only do it while listening to something that gives my mind something else to focus on. Without my iPod, I realised I'm not going to cope. Plus, I'm really only interested in a limited number of shops - ones that sell DVDs or books. And with the exchange rate being as it is, I doubted I could find anything that was actually a significantly cheaper than I could get in New Zealand. But I was lucky, and did find a DVD boxset for about $NZ25 less than back home. That said, I would gladly pay that $25 to avoid what happened next.

About 5pm, I decided I'd had enough of the tedium of shopping, and started walking toward the hotel. I walked some three blocks before I saw the Town Hall train station. Knowing that my hotel was close to the Circular Quay station, which is a couple of stops after the Town Hall station, and that it was supposed to only be a short walk from the shopping mall to the hotel, I started to wonder if I was going in the right direction. After all, it hadn't occurred to me to check what direction the hotel actually was. Figuring Circular Quay was a better-known landmark than my hotel, I asked at a newsagent, who said Circular Quay was indeed in the direction I'd just come from. I had been going the wrong way.

So I walked back for a while, when I started to think. Circular Quay was by the water, for obvious reasons, so where's the water? I look up the side-streets, but every street around me slopes rather sharply up, not down to water level. It was like I'm in a valley, not a place with a harbour two blocks away. So I try walking up one of the side streets to work out which side Circular Quay is on. I reach the top of the hill, and look down to a big sign saying "Darling Harbour." Then I start to worry. I don't really have a mental image of what the city of Sydney looks like, but I do know that Darling Harbour and Circular Quay are two entirely different places. So just how far away from where I want to be am I? Which means now I have NO idea where my hotel is.

So I did what any rational mature adult would do. I panicked. I had difficulty breathing, I felt faint, a wave of stress hit me, I started to imagine myself wandering aimlessly around Sydney for the rest of my life. Then I had a thought. I have family that live in this city. They'll know where I need to go. So I call my sister-in-law, but she didn't know where to go, and even if she did, I couldn't have heard her over the traffic noise. I was going to call my brother, who had apparently finished work, when I saw a couple of bus drivers standing around a bus. They'll know where it is, I thought, so I went up and asked "Which way to Circular Quay?" One of the drivers points me to the direction I'd originally started going. So I set off, now knowing that I'd been right all along.

It's at this point that my brother texts me asking "You lost or something?" I give him a call, but again cannot hear him because of the traffic noise. Still I manage to communicate to him where I am. Meanwhile, for some reason I'm starting to have my doubts again about exactly which direction I should be going in. So I decide to ask some people standing waiting to cross at the lights. This very nice girl said to me, "Circular Quay is too far to walk, but you can catch a bus. If you follow me, I'll show you where the bus stop is." We cross the road, walk for a couple of minutes, and then she points me to a long line of buses, telling me which bus to catch. I thank her, walk along to the front of the bus stop... and my heart sinks. Across the road is the shopping mall where I began this whole saga. Half an hour of walking, and I'm back where I started.

Then I have a thought. It's 5.30pm, the shops are closing, if I'm lucky perhaps some of the other members of my party might have only just finished their own shopping. In which case, I can follow them back to the hotel. I start to call one of them when a text from my brother arrives on my phone. It's directions, based on where I had been when we talked. "Walk up two blocks until you find George St. Turn left, walk 1½km until you find your hotel." I look at nearby signs. Hey, I'm on George St. And I did turn left to get to the bus stop. Now that I know where to go, I set off, walking, and walking, and walking, until I find... a hotel I'm not staying at. But it's a hotel I know is near mine, because last night I accidentally briefly logged onto their wireless internet rather than my hotel's wireless. So that must be my hotel behind that other one. And indeed it was. So, some fifty minutes after setting off, I finally was able to collapse in my room. (And for the record, yes, I had initially been going in the wrong direction. If I hadn't noticed the Town Hall train station, I might very well still be walking right now.)

Moral of the story: never leave your room without your iPod. The whole experience would have been a lot more bearable if I only had something to listen to.

Alternative moral of this story, as suggested on Facebook by my friend Kim: "Don't go travelling with Matthew - he starts panicking when lost in an English-speaking urban area, complete with shopping malls, hotels, easily-accessible public transport, mobile coverage and local contacts..."

Well, sure, I guess that's one lesson you could take out of the story if you really wanted to.

Goodbye Aunty

So here's the thing.

When I was a kid, I wasn't exactly sociable. So, when I was about 14, my parents applied their parental pressure to force me to go to the church youth group. I didn't want to go - it was on Saturday nights, and I had things to do on Saturday nights (mostly TV watching). But they forced me to choose between a couple of choices, and the youth group seemed the best of my options. So, rather unwillingly, I started going. In hindsight, it was one of the best things that happened to me. I met a lot of great people; my best friends, people I will be close to for the rest of my life, come from that group. And over the next 3½ years, we grew to be such a strong group. And I met Daphne.

Daphne was the woman who ran the group, along with her husband. She would have been in her late-40s at the time, and she was wonderful. The family didn't have a lot, but what they had was always freely given. For all of us, she was less of a youth group leader, and more like a second mother. Many was the time when I would just go around to her place after school, unannounced, just because I felt like it, and I'd walk in to find a few other members of the group already there, having also decided to go around for a visit. And we'd just stay there for hours. If our parents were trying to find us, Daphne's was always the first place they would go to look. I'd even heard stories about how people would take the new person they're dating around to meet Daphne for her approval. Daphne was someone we all loved, so, so much, and she was one of the defining influences for all of us during our teenage years.

As I'm writing this, there's one moment that really comes to mind - something I haven't thought about in years. I was at church one night, and I had a thought come to mind; "Give Daphne some money." I won't say how much, but it was a specific amount of money, one that was very daunting as a high school student working just a few hours a week to have to give away. But I knew I needed to do it. So the next day I went to the cash machine and got the money out, then went to their place. Her husband was there, and said she wouldn't be available for quite a while. I said I'd wait. About 45 minutes later, Daphne emerged from her bedroom, looking grave, then surprised to see me. We went out, sat on the steps outside the house, and I handed her the envelope, saying that I felt I needed to give this to her. She looked in the envelope, was startled, and refused to take it. I pressed her, said that I was really certain that I had to give it. "Why?" she asked. "I don't know," I replied. Then she remembered a particular expense that had just come up, and the money was just enough to cover that. And then she started to talk in vague terms about another situation that she was going through. I don't know what the situation was - she never provided details and I didn't want them since it wasn't my business. But I know it was serious. She'd just spent the last hour in her bedroom praying for a resolution to that particular situation, and as she prayed she really felt that God was saying that He was in control and would provide a solution. And then she walked out of her bedroom, to find me with a gift that would help with a different problem. It didn't solve her big concern, but she told me how it restored her confidence that everything would be okay, whatever the situation. And her face at that moment, this mix of burden and relief, of discouragement and faith restored, was just wonderful. For all the encouragement, for all the support that she'd given me, it was a blessing to be able to encourage and support her when she needed it.

Long after she stopped actually working with the youth, she remained a central part of the church. Having a conversation with her after the service bordered on impossible. There were always people - her friends, people who were once part of her youth group, or as years passed even the children of those former youth group members - coming up for a hug or a talk. And she was inspirational - a number of the people who went to that group are now themselves involved in the youth ministry, either in after-hours work or in one case as his full-time occupation. And I know that they will all cite Daphne as a role model, and point to that group that we had as being the perfect example of what they want to see develop among their youth.

Sadly I lost a lot of that connection with Daphne when I left home. When I came home on holiday, I'd see her at church, and I'd say Hello, and she'd hug me, and I'd get embarrassed. I'd say "Certainly I'll come around to visit," and then often wouldn't, because I didn't get around to it, or I had other things on, or sometimes I'd just forget, or whatever excuse I had. But it didn't matter, because I knew that I'd be able to catch up with her next time. And that's how years would pass without my ever revisiting that house, years in which our relationship was made up solely of brief interrupted conversations after a church service.

About 18 months ago, I was back in my home town for a week, and was sitting next to Daphne during the Sunday morning service. During the sermon, Daphne just keeled forward and stayed there, her head resting on the back of the seat in front. She wasn't moving, just still. I was shocked, thinking "my gosh, is she dead?" But her husband didn't seem surprised or bothered by it - he just sat there, rubbed her back, and after a few minutes when she recovered, he got her a glass of water - so I figured whatever was happening, it must have happened before. But it was still significant enough that, during the following week, she went in for tests. When I saw her the following Sunday, she had the results: she had cancer, and it was serious.

There's nothing like the prospect of losing someone to realise just how much you actually care about them. Now, every time I went back home, I always made a point of visiting and spending time with Daphne. We'd catch up, she'd reflect on her life, tell me stories, and offer suggestions about how I should be living my life. It was wonderful to spend time with her, to see the way her face would light up with excitement whenever I'd appear and say Hello. But always there was that moment when I'd have to ask how things were going, and a cloud would come over. She'd talk about the treatments she was going through, and she'd ask that I remember her and her family in my prayers. She was always optimistic, never lost her faith, always believed that she would be healed. But she also knew that, even if she never recovered, she'd lived a good life, would be going to a better place, and her influence would live on after her in those of us that she worked with.

I was back home for a few weeks over Christmas, but just after I arrived, I became horribly sick. Even after I recovered enough to leave the house, I stayed away from Daphne. I was still sick, and figured it's not wise to go spreading bugs to someone who is already unwell. So, other than a quick "Hello, Sorry I Couldn't See You, Goodbye" at church on the day I left, I never saw her. And I was disappointed by that, but no matter. I'll see her at Easter.

And then I got a phone call this morning from a good friend of mine, someone who was also in the youth group. If the out-of-the-blue early morning phone call wasn't enough of a clue that something was wrong, you could hear the sadness in his voice as he greeted me. "My gosh," I thought, "what's happened?" And then he said it. "Aunty Daphne died earlier today."

Daphne - I love you. I miss you. I thank you so much for everything you ever did for me, for always being someone to talk to, for just being there. Thank you for your encouragement, for your constant joy. I hope you knew how much you really did mean to all of us. You've gone too soon, but I'll see you again, and I look forward to that day. Until then, I'll always remember you.
To her family - I know how hard things must be for you all. Just know that my prayers, and those of the many many people who knew and loved her, are with you right now.
And to all those who knew her - You'll agree with me that it has been the richest blessing to have her in our lives.

Goodbye Aunty.

8648 minutes

So here's the thing,

I first became aware of "the Facebook movie" when it was announced that screenwriter Aaron Sorkin had joined Facebook as part of research for the film. Most people reacted to this news with bemusement at the idea of a Facebook movie, but not me: Sorkin is a genuinely talented writer (at least when he's not using his writing to settle personal scores), and if he thought that the creation of Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg was a story that's worth telling, there must be something there. I was more curious about the idea of Sorkin having a Facebook page - Sorkin rather famously went onto the internet and engaged with fans once before (it didn't end well), and even Sorkin's announcement about his Facebook account (which stated that Sorkin's long-dead grandmother has more internet savvy than he does) implies that the common suggestion that "Sorkin hates the internet" may not be that far from the truth. All this had me waiting for Sorkin's entry into the world of Facebook to explode.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) there were no notable disasters coming out of Sorkin's Facebook account, and when David Fincher became attached to the project as director, my interest really shot up. Fincher is one of the most vital filmmakers working today: Se7en and Fight Club are two of the highpoints for filmmaking in the 90s, and the phenomenal Zodiac marked a maturation in the director's style, as he became less focused on show-off stylisations and more focused on simple storytelling and characterisation. My excitement rose even further as we started to see glimpses of the film - especially the film's main trailer, which frankly moved from mere promotional material to standing as a compelling work of art in its own right. (There were a number of times when I would watch and rewatch that trailer five or six times in a row, in awe of how just perfectly constructed it is.)

And then I saw the film.

(Comments on The Social Network, along with this year's other nine Best Picture Oscar nominees - The King's Speech, Black Swan, True Grit, The Fighter, Inception, 127 Hours, Toy Story 3, The Kids Are All Right, and Winter's Bone - follow after the jump.)

I turned my collar to the cold and damp

So here's the thing.

It seems to me to be pretty unusual to see a film or TV series these days that has a strong sense of place. Often, the difference between a film set in New York or Los Angeles may be an establishing skyline, and that's about it. It's a situation that certainly isn't helped by the common approach of filming in one place to fake another. Indeed, sometimes it almost seems as though the filmmakers are lucky to be filming in the same country as the film is set. Is there a major city in America that hasn't been played by Vancouver? How many times have Eastern European forests been called on to stand in for the country regions of the States? And often this all happens for a very understandable reason: money. Show business is, after all, a business, and if the filmmakers can save some millions of dollars by shooting a film somewhere other than where the story actually takes place, why not?

But the problem with that is that there seems to be something lost when you film somewhere else. Filmmaking is all fakery and acting, I'm not unaware of this, and it's certainly possible and reasonable to expect to be able to fake a location. But different cities, areas, regions, have different cultures. Filmmakers may gain a surface level idea about these differences in a short research trip, but when they go off somewhere else to film, you often end up with generic city, generic region, perhaps with a few obvious touches thrown in to signify the setting but without any sense of authenticity. But when you're filming in the area being presented, when you're spending weeks and months surrounded by the residents, filming in the house of someone exactly like your characters, casting locals in various roles, something about the representation of that area becomes real. It's difficult to define the difference exactly - it's often just richer in presenting the nuances and the sense of an area.

But even apart from the filming location, it sometimes seems as though filmmakers may almost be afraid of stories that are too location-specific. It's as though they're afraid to make a movie that is absolutely pinned to a certain location for fear of losing some universality. I sometimes wonder whether that plays a part in explaining why it often seems as though the location was chosen as an afterthought, a "we have to set it somewhere, so let's set it here" decision, rather than being a significant character in the story being told. And it's a position I don't understand. Specificity is not something to be afraid of. Rather, by presenting stories that are true to a place and exploring how different people behave in this environment and these types of circumstances, it gives a greater portrait of our world and who we are in it.

Winter's Bone (see the trailer here) is absolutely inseparable from its setting, and indeed is really about its setting. The film is set in (and was filmed in) the Ozarks, a region which was once notorious for moonshine, but these days has transitioned into being a centre for methamphetamine production. Ree Dolly, an impoverished 17-year-old girl raising her two younger siblings because her non-functional mother cannot, learns that her missing meth-cook father has put up the family home as part of his bail bond, and unless he turns up in the next week, the family will be evicted. So Ree goes off in search of her father, be he alive or dead, to try and save her family from being thrown out onto the dirt track that functions as a street.

There's a scene early in the film that in many ways summarises who Ree is as a character. Starving, her two siblings look longingly at deer carcasses that sit curing outside their neighbours' house, and suggest that they could go and ask the neighbours for some food. But even though you can see her own desperate hunger, Ree angrily rejects the suggestion, exclaiming "Never ask for what ought to be offered." Accepting a gift is fine, and asking for a big favour is okay if absolutely necessary, but asking for some small act of charity is intolerable. This is someone who doesn't have much, but who does have her pride, and who would fight to preserve what little she does have. In the main role, Jennifer Lawrence is utterly captivating. So much of her performance is carried in her eyes - Ree is a girl who has learned to be strong despite whatever life throws at her, and so as she moves further out of her depth, she continues to act strong and confident, and it's only through her eyes that we glimpse her fear, her exhaustion, or just how overwhelmed she is. Lawrence's ability to communicate a powerful performance with such subtlety is impressive, especially from someone whose previous career highlight was playing the daughter in a forgotten family sitcom, and one can only hope she receives some much-deserved awards recognition.

The self-sufficiency of Ree seems to be largely representative of the entire region. This is a film that could so easily fall into some awful clichéd portrayal of hillbilly life, but instead presents a living, astonishing, convincing world. There are moments where it almost feels like we're watching a film set 100, even 200 years ago, and it staggers the mind to think that in the United States there are entire communities of people that live like this. And in this society, at times almost unrecognisable as part of the modern world, the isolation and lure of easy money, as well the temptation of escape, make the growth in methamphetamine production and the rise of a protective culture around that seems inevitable. This is the story of an enclosed world where self-sufficiency is prized and the ability to protect your own interests from those who would threaten them is essential, creating a community where even your own family members are viewed with suspicion. So when Ree starts asking questions, everyone closes rank. These are people who don't want questions asked about where Jessup Dolly is, and even a 17-year-old looking for her father is a threat. She can't even rely on family and friend relationships for help - her recently-married best friend can offer no assistance, her uncle just tries to discourage her from investigating, and most of the remaining extended-family were in some way involved in whatever is going on.

To a large degree, the film is about the impact that methamphetamine has had on this isolated community, and it's handled impressively well. The film definitely has something to say about the effect of the drug in this world, and it's certainly not subtle in saying it, but yet it never once comes across as preachy. That's largely because the film is so rooted in character. The central character is someone who has grown up in the culture of drug production, who has seen the problems inflicted on those around by drugs and has chosen to avoid them. Any drug users are presented sympathetically and with realism, and even where people are actively involved in production, the situation that would lead them to that position is shown honestly. We can understand how this problem became so prevalent, even as the film argues that this needs to stop and points to the destructive influence that the drug is having on what should be a tight-knit community.

One of the things I love about this film is the fact that it had the potential to so easily turn into Precious-style misery porn. An impoverished girl, struggling to raise younger children, trying to survive in a harsh and hostile world - this could so easily turn into a film where the audience is expected to look at the film and tut-tut in amazement that someone would live like that. But it's not like that, and it's not angling for that reaction. When the film ends on a hopeful note, we can accept it because we've spent the entire movie with Ree Dolly - we've seen her resourcefulness, her intelligence, her determination, her bravery, and so we know we don't need to worry about her because she will be able to cope with anything that comes. This isn't Precious, where we're supposed to be hopeful just because the film is yelling "this is a happy ending and she's going to be okay, regardless of the actual evidence in the film;" this is a natural and honest moment of happiness for someone who we can genuinely believe will be okay because the film shows us that she'll be okay.

I worry that I'm making the film seem like some great exercise as a character piece or in portraying a community - something that may be worthy but ultimately dull. And it's not. Certainly, these are the areas where the film is strongest, but it's all an integral part of a genuinely suspenseful, well-made, and entertaining story. The film is basically a traditional noir-esque detective story, but with a 17-year-old girl as the detective. There are moments where Ree seems in genuine peril, relying solely on her own ingenuity and determination to avoid death. And in those moments, there is real tension and suspense. Director and co-screenwriter Debra Granik (working from a novel by Ozarks native Daniel Woodrell) has a masterful control on the narrative flow of the story, easing you into the story, then carefully building the tension until it becomes unbearable. By the time the film reaches its climax - with Ree going on an expedition to the middle of nowhere with several threatening figures to find a scene that is truly gruesome - you could feel your body completely tensed in fear for the possible outcomes. And yet, given that it's focused around a central mystery, the film does a really great job in almost avoiding that mystery - in one of the last scenes in the film, several characters draw the audience's attention to the fact that the question that would be the main point in any other film is left unanswered here. By the end of the film, we know enough to put together a vague picture of what happened and why, but key questions are unanswered. And yet the film doesn't leave the audience dissatisfied, largely because they're not questions that Ree is really all that concerned about. It's an unusual but fine thriller; one that has a lot on its mind, but that never forgets that its primary purpose is to entertain. I've watched it twice now (once at the film festival, once on general release), I'm picked up a copy of the book, and I'm looking forward to owning my own copy of the film. It's certainly not a typical thriller - the film has a gentle, cool, quiet tone that reflects this world in the middle of nowhere, and it comes across as so honest and realistic that it becomes all too believable, and is all the more horrifying for its realism - but it is absolutely beautiful and involving. I love this film.

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And a small side-note here: When, following its New Zealand release, I managed to see Winter's Bone for the second time, I walked into the cinema very excited to see this great film again. My excitement quickly died when the octogenarian couple sitting a couple of rows back and six or so seats along started talking. Often it was just a loud noticeable murmur, but not infrequently it would turn into audible comments: "Look, they're going to play the banjo;" "Where is this?" "I don't know, Missouri, maybe;" "Look, it's little chicks" "Yes, aren't they young" "And so cute." And this carried on through the ENTIRE film. And the fact that they were such a distance away from me, and yet I could hear them, really shows just how obnoxiously loud they actually were. Now, I realise they were old, but that is no justification for what they did. The problem is amplified by the nature of the film - it's often a very quiet film, which made their talking even more noticeable, and meant that their comments interrupted the calm still tone that the film was working so hard to establish. In fact, it ruined the filmgoing experience for me because I found I wasn't watching the film so much as bracing myself for their next comment, and then mentally erupting with every kind of profanity when they did say something. I actually stalked them out of the cinema, following them up the street (which, since they were 80 years old, took them a looooooooooong time to walk), trying to summon up the courage to tell them to SHUT THE HELL UP NEXT TIME. But I decided not to. The film was over, so it was too late to save my screening from be ruined. And given what I had imagined calling them during the film and how angry I still was, I was worried I might say something I would regret. I thought about the possibility that it might spare future audiences from their constant chatter, but then I realised that they're probably set in their selfish ways and one guy approaching them in the street isn't going to change anything. But this is why I hate people.

The pipes, the pipes are calling

So here's the thing.

I was going through my CDs the other day, when I came across an album I hadn't really listened to in years - the Forrest Gump soundtrack. I had the Special Collectors' Edition, which proclaimed on the front that it had "34 American Classics, " rather than the "32 American Classics" of the boring ordinary version. (Actually, the album has either 31 or 33 American classics, plus Alan Silvestri's Forrest Gump Suite - I like Silvestri and his music for the film, but it doesn't really count as an American classic in the same way as Sweet Home Alabama does.) I was looking at the CD, and realised, whatever you think of the film (I suspect even Robert Zemekis knows it should not have won the Best Picture Oscar over Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, or Quiz Show), the soundtrack has some genuinely great songs on it. So I thought. I'll load the CD onto my iPod. Now, as many of you will be aware, iTunes usually does a pretty good job in identifying any CD and accurately naming all tracks on the CD. I don't know what their source is, but other than the (very) occasional spelling error, it's pretty good. In this case, it identified the CDs as either disc 1 or 2 of the Forrest Gump soundtrack, so I converted the CD tracks and then synced the album onto my iPod without giving it much thought.

And for the first couple of tracks, I never noticed anything. They seemed fine - Hound Dog by Elvis Presley, Rebel Rouser by Duane Eddy. It wasn't until the third track that the weirdness started - Clarence 'Frogman' Henry's (I Don't Know Why) But I Do was misidentfied as The Fields of Athenry, apparently an Irish folk ballad. Now the key thing here is that iTunes correctly identified the artist as Clarence 'Frogman' Henry - it just weirdly thought that he was singing a 1970s Irish folk ballad. Which he wasn't.

Next track was The Rooftop Singers' Walk Right In, identified by iTunes as A Place In The Chior. Now, assuming that they misspelled the word "choir", again this appears to be the title of another folk song.

Land of 1000 Dances was correctly named. But the next song? We used to sing Blowin' in the Wind at school, so I know damn well that its title isn't Bold O'Donoghue, another Irish folk song.

Fortunate Son was fortunate enough to be spared renaming, while The Four Tops got away with only a misspelled "Myself" in I Can't Help Myseld (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch).

I have the soundtrack to the film Catch Me If You Can on my iPod - I enjoy John Williams' jazzy mock-Mancini score - and I have the Blues Brothers 2000 soundtrack on my iPod (what? The music was good, even if the film wasn't). So I am familiar with the song Respect, and I know it's not called Catch Me If You Can. However, before you wonder whether this is some crossover between tracks on my iPod, it turns out there is apparently an Irish folk song of that title.

Bob Dylan's Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 escaped unharmed, possibly because iTunes took one look at that title and assumed it had already messed with it. But Sloop John B became Four Green Fields, and The Mamas And The Papas California Dreamin' became Danny Boy, although much hunting has failed to find any sign of a folk song by that name, so that one's puzzling.

For what it's worth, For What It's Worth made it through unharmed - remarkably even the apostrophe was correctly placed (he says as he hurriedly checks the apostrophe placement in all the uses of its/it's in the post). But What The World Needs Now Is Love (incidentally, I really hate that song) became Dirty Old Town, which sounds like a much more interesting song.

And finally, The Doors and Simon and Garfunkel were spared, with Break On Through (To The Other Side) and Mrs Robinson correctly identified. Evidently those songs were too iconic to be confused with anything else.

And the second disc in the 2-CD set? No issues at all - not even a spelling mistake.

It's not a big deal - it took a couple of minutes to correct the titles and carry on. But it's a mystery. Unfortunately, hunting around on Google has left me none the wiser in learning exactly where iTunes sources its song titles (I assume it's not from the iTunes store, since it manages to identify albums that they don't sell on iTunes). But presumably somewhere in the world there is a database that weirdly confuses Forrest Gump with an Irish folk song compilation, but still manages to accurately identify the artist performing on the soundtrack. And I'm just curious how that happens.

The Day of the Lion

So here's the thing.

I was listening to Kim Hill a couple of months ago when she was interviewing one of the main people behind The Onion. During the interview, the fake newspaper's post-9/11 issue was mentioned as a key point in raising the profile of the website. There was a lot of hyperbole in the immediate aftermath of that attack about how this event entirely changed not just the world but humanity itself. Reputable magazines were publishing articles about how this was the "death of irony" or some such rubbish, that the world had changed irrevocably and that our flippant and cynical attitudes had come crashing down with the towers. It was all rubbish of course, and The Onion sought to demonstrate that. With articles like "Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves In Hell," "Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American-Flag Cake" or "American Life Turns Into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie," The Onion attacked the monsters that launched the attack, while also placing the attack in a wider history of religious intolerance, pointed out the ridiculous nature of much of the subsequent outpouring of patriotic expression, and examined the attacks in the context of a culture that consumes such attacks for entertainment. It even mocked the prevailing "death of irony" sentiments. And all the while it remained sensitive to the truth of the matter, targeting the jokes at the events around the attacks, but always aware that the tragic deaths of thousands of real people in a terrorist attack is not a laughing matter.

Of course 9/11 was a significant world-changing event - nearly a decade later we are living in a world that is much more sensitive to the risk of terrorism, and certainly there have been a number of horrifying and tragic terrorist attacks since then. But these days, you're just as likely to hear about the hilarious misadventures of unsuccessful terrorists. There was the shoe bomber (whose bomb didn't explode because his sweat dampened the wick), or the underpants bomber (the joke of which really doesn't need any more explaining). There was also the guy who left an ineptly-manufactured bomb in a car in Times Square - the bomb didn't go off, it was discovered, and police identified the attempted terrorist by his keys which he had accidentally locked in the car. Or there was the guy who planned to kill a Government minister from Saudi Arabia but succeeded only in blowing himself up with a bomb shoved up his anus. And there's something almost comforting about such stories. We see 9/11, or the 7/7 London attack, or some bomb going off in a nightclub somewhere, and it's horrific; you get an impression of coolly-planned operations efficiently executed. So it's a relief to hear these stories about the other guys and be able to laugh, knowing that terrorists apparently are still human, and some of them are just as stupid and bad at their jobs as the rest of us.

It's in this context that Four Lions (see the trailer here) works so well. The core idea, a group of British Muslim jihadists plan a terrorist attack, doesn't seem that promising an idea for a comedy, and I've even had some people questioning the taste of basing a comedy around such a horrific concept. But the success of a comedy lies in the quality of the humour within, not the core concept (After all, a surgical hospital in a war zone doesn't sound like a promising comedy either, yet M*A*S*H is one of the defining TV comedies of last century.) And who cares about whether it's seen as tasteless to make a comedy about terrorism? It's like Mel Brooks once said, "Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance." If we treat these people, be it Hitler or your local jihadist, and what they do as something so big and terrible that they can only be treated seriously, then they have power over us. But if we hold them up to mockery and ridicule, that cuts them down to a manageable level. It says that we're not frightened of them, they have no hold over us, and they're worthy of nothing but our laughter.

And there's a lot of laughter generated by this film. It's always a little difficult to describe comedies, since the success of the film ultimately rests on the quality of the jokes. And the quality of jokes on display in Four Lions is very high - in fact, this is easily the funniest comedy I've seen since In the Loop at last year's festival. But how does someone gets across just how funny it is to watch a bearded man describe disguising himself as a lady to purchase vast quantities of chemicals, or watch someone record a terrorist video while holding a tiny replica machine gun, or hear Barry lay out his plan to bomb a mosque in order to radicalise the moderate Muslim population. There's the fake suicide bombing, or the exploding birds, or the unsuccessful use of a rocket launcher. This is one of those films where the comedy just keeps giving; where you discuss the film with your friends, and every time someone mentions this scene or that, it reminds you of yet another hilarious scene or line that had slipped your mind.

A recent Onion News Network video exclaimed "Al-Qaeda Calls Off Attack On Nation's Capitol To Spare Life Of 'Twilight' Author," and the film takes a similar joy at exploring the uneasy way religious fanaticism mixes with western lifestyles among those living in the West. In one of the film's best moments, on their way to conduct their attack, the group find themselves cheerfully singing along to "Dancing In The Moonlight," Barry looking at the group in horror at their wholehearted embracing of the worst of Western pop culture and their inability to treat their upcoming mission with the seriousness it deserves. In another great scene, the uncertainties of Western architecture are debated in the context of prohibitions on being in the same room as a woman with an uncovered head; it's funnier than it sounds, especially when the water pistols come out.

The characters in the film are perhaps a little shallow - by the end of the film, I really only felt that Omar (the leader, and most level-headed of the group) and Barry (the most radical of the group, seemingly out of defensiveness due to his status as a Muslim convert) were well-fleshed-out characters. The remaining characters, while all getting their own very funny moments, simply aren't that developed as characters.

It's to the film's credit that it does follow through with the premise. It's a slight spoiler to say that the characters do end up dead, mostly blowing themselves up in the execution of their plan. There's no last-minute decision not to do it because this is wrong; for the most part the characters generally remain committed to their goal, even while the absolute pointlessness of their actions is illustrated. And I don't want you thinking the film adopts a simple "aren't terrorists stupid" approach. The film actually thinks everyone is stupid. (By the end of the film, when the final body count is tallied up, there's more than one person dead due to the incompetence or bad decisions of the people supposed to protect us.) It's just that, when the terrorists are the main characters, we get more opportunity to see their idiocies.

But it seems that less-than-competent terrorists is not strictly a post-9/11 phenomenon. In one surprisingly funny moment early in Carlos (see the trailer here), a couple of terrorists twice try to fire a rocket-launcher at an Israeli airliner, both times hitting other planes instead. Working with people with such poor ability, famed real-life terrorist Carlos (later nicknamed Carlos the Jackal) several times finds himself needing to act quickly to fix problems created by others. And Carlos himself isn't exactly perfect in his planning - his otherwise seamlessly-executed attack on an OPEC meeting ultimately fell apart because of one small miscalculation in his planning.

Carlos is quite an impressive achievement. Originally made for French television, the biopic runs for 5½ hours, spread out over three parts. It certainly makes for a long day in the cinema, but it seems much shorter than it actually is. (By comparison, I really liked last year's Che, but it really did feel 4½ hours long. Carlos, even at an hour longer, felt much shorter than that experience.) Each part has a very clear focus - the first looks at the rise in prominence of Carlos, and ends with the terrorist leading a group on their way to attack the OPEC meeting. That attack occupies a significant portion of the second film, before focusing on how that attack made Carlos possibly the most prominent terrorist of the time. And then the third film finds an older Carlos settled down to a degree, in a long-term relationship, trying to stay ahead and protect himself as the number of friendly nations slowly reduces, until finally he is captured and imprisoned for a couple of impulsive murders committed back in Part One.

While the whole film is excellent - exciting, involving, gripping - easily the most phenomenal section of the film lies in the OPEC attack. Running about an hour, it is easily one of the best suspense sequences I have seen in a long time. Every moment is filled with the threat of possible violence - Carlos by this point has been established as someone who will kill without a second thought, and he openly tells certain people "you will die." The raid is a success, but as Carlos takes his hostages onto the plane to fly to Iraq, he's frustrated to learn that the DC7 he's ordered doesn't have sufficient range to make it to that destination, even if they do refuel. It prompts hours of frustration, the plane and its hostages frozen while Carlos wavers in indecision. It's a phenomenal sequence, suspenseful and tense. And it really illustrates how a long running-time can be used well. There's no need to hurry the sequence, there's time to make clear every part of the operation, while being able to replicate the sense of being in that room or that plane, just waiting for something to happen, with the constant threat of imminent violence hanging over their heads. It's truly masterful. I read that a shorter 2½ hour cut of the film has been made for general release, and I shudder at the thought. While you could perhaps trim a half-hour from the final part if you had to (as Carlos stagnates and loses much of his drive, the film does run the risk of doing so as well), on the whole there is so little slack in the film that a shorter cut could only be damaged, and I can't imagine a heavily-edited version of the OPEC raid in particular having anywhere near the intended impact.

The film is also careful to remind us that it's not possible for someone like Carlos to operate without significant backing. There are scenes where the man meets with various recognisable presidents or prime ministers or leaders in various countries, who casually agree to accommodate and shelter Carlos; as long as he refrains from attacking them, they don't really care what he does to anyone else. And I think we all understand that there have been certain states that have, at times, given some level of support or backing to the activities of people such as Carlos, but there is something shocking to actually see such scenes play out in front of the viewer.

In the lead role, Édgar Ramírez gives an extraordinary performance. As a young man, he's all fire and passion for the cause, cold-blooded to his enemies, and full of fury at anyone with any less commitment to the fight, with an charisma that's so strong it seems natural that people would gravitate to this man and do anything to maintain his approval. As a result, it's a shock to see the Carlos of the final part, overweight and lethargic, holding to his ideals in a theoretical way only, having become one of those half-hearted pseudo-radicals that the young Carlos would have railed against. Much as we may hate the young Carlos, so callous with the lives of anyone that stands in his way, it's sad to see that fiery charisma gone, and replaced with an air of self-preservation. The character changes dramatically over the course of the story, and Ramírez skilfully navigates these character changes; convincingly determined in his youthful idealism, and in his later form subtly listless in his awareness that he has changed from one of the world's most notorious criminals to a forgotten and historic footnote.

Inevitably most people that see this film will either see the cut-down version (which you should avoid, since I can see no possible way it can work), or the complete version at home on DVD (since I assume big screen prospects for a film that occupies six hours of screen real estate are obviously limited). And since the film was originally made for television, no doubt it works very well on the small screen. But if you do get a chance to catch a cinema screening of the complete Carlos, do not miss it. Certainly I count myself lucky to have had the opportunity to watch the film in cinemas. But however you get to see it, it's well worth your time. One of the highlights of my film year.

Playing scrabble and eating petits-fours

So here's the thing.

Back in 2004, I was watching the Oscars as The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was sweeping every category it was nominated for. One of those categories was for Best Song, for "Into The West" performed by Annie Lennox. And I think we all knew that it would win, although going into the show I preferred "There's a Kiss at the End of the Rainbow", the song from Christopher Guest's folk-music-mockumentary A Mighty Wind. And that was my favourite song of the year, until Lady Haden-Guest came out to introduce a song from some animated film that I'd only vaguely heard of. For the next two minutes, I watched this. My reactions were probably the same as most people watching the song - I started at "This is a really cool song," quickly progressed to "Are they playing a bicycle?" before becoming "Is that a vacuum cleaner?" and finally "That is my favourite song of the year, and I really need to see that film."

Several months later, The Triplets of Belleville played at the film festival. And watching the film, I was delighted to discover that that song was the most normal thing about the film. For a start, the film's story is insane - a cyclist is abducted during the Tour De France race, so the kid's grandmother follows him on a pedal boat across the ocean to America, where she enlists three ageing singing stars to help rescue her grandson from an illegal underground gambling operation run by the mafia. The film is effectively free of dialogue, which seems give the animators free reign to use their art to carefully develop their characters as expressive actors. The highly stylised character design is often grotesque, but never not fascinating to watch. And the humour in the film manages somehow to simultaneously be absurd and farcical, yet nice, gentle, and honest. It's just a genuinely fascinating film, and one that I love to revisit.

The film was very clearly and openly inspired by the great French comic actor/director Jacques Tati, whose own films also minimised dialogue in favour of elaborate visual comedy. (Indeed, in one scene the triplets are seen watching Tati's Jour de Fête.) So I was understandably excited to find that this year's festival featured The Illusionist (see the trailer here), a new film from Sylvain Chomet based on an unproduced script by Tati.

The film follows Tatischeff, a stage illusionist in an era where the appeal of such entertainments is waning in favour of rock bands. Finding himself performing to ever decreasing crowds, or largely ignored as garden party entertainment, he eventually goes to perform in a small Scottish village. There he meets a largely-ignored young girl, who's never seen a stage magician before, and so believes that he really can do magic - a view that's reinforced after he buys her a new pair of shoes and gives it to her by performing a piece of magic. When he leaves the village, the girl follows him. This sweet father-daughter-style relationship develops between the two, with Tatischeff desperately trying to preserve that sense of magic, taking on extra jobs for which he is entirely unsuited to pay for the gifts he buys for her, while at the same time trying to hide his constant absence as he runs to one job or another.

When you have a movie that is based on a script by one of the great film comedians, and that is made by the man who created a hilarious film like Belleville, you expect it to be funny. And it is, absolutely, genuinely hilarious. There are great comic sequences - a particular highlight comes when Tatischeff believes Sophie has made a stew out of his white rabbit - as well as many simple funny jokes, and even some nice subtle jokes slipped into the image without comment. (I look forward to the Blu-Ray, if only to be able to examine the image for every joke.) But what is striking about the film is just how sad it really is. There's a tone of melancholy and sorrow infused into the film. And I think the reasons for that goes back to Tati's motivation in writing the film. It's generally believed that the script was written as an expression of regret by Tati for being so focused on his career that he missed much of his daughter Sophie's growing up (although Tati's first, illegitimate daughter claims that it was about his regret at abandoning her as a baby). Regardless of who Tati wrote it for, that sense of sadness is palpable in the film, with Tati seemingly trying to present himself as the father he wished he had been. To some degree, with that knowledge, it almost feels intrusive to watch the film, as though we're watching something too personal, too intimate, for public consumption.

What also hits you about the film is the incredible sense of nostalgia infused throughout it. Tatischeff is not portrayed as a great magician - he's actually pretty middling, with a fairly clichéd performance (he actually has a rabbit in his hat) - but still it's sad to see the simple pleasures of his show being rejected. Early in the film, we see Tatischeff patiently waiting while a grotesque Beatles/Stones amalgam band perform for hordes of screaming fans, who don't stay for his performance. And it's heartbreakingly sad, because it seems to mark a point where this unique and inventive artform went out of fashion. A few years ago, there were a couple of period films about stage magicians that both came out at about the same time, The Prestige and another film called The Illusionist. Watching those films, it was startling to realise just how big the general audience was for magicians was 100 years ago. These days, of course, the typical magician is relegated to a children's entertainer, and the only people who ever get a wider audience are EXXTREME magicians like David Blaine or Criss Angel, people who are more tiresome than magical. To many, maybe even most adults,stage magic is just kid's stuff, and that sense of wonder that comes with watching a good magic show, of questioning "how'd he do that?" almost seems to be lost.

It almost seems fitting that this paean to an "childish" art form should be presented as an animated film - after all, animation itself is an art form that was once intended to entertain all ages, but is today mostly regarded as kid's fare. Which is a shame, because animation really can be beautiful, and the animation work in the film is simply extraordinary. The character-design fluctuates wildly, from a very naturalistic look for some characters (the design of Tatischeff in particular is as close to a replication of Tati himself as animation could achieve) through to a more exaggerated look (similar to the look of the characters in Belleville) for some supporting characters. Yet the varying looks of the characters all seem to work well together in the film, and never feel incongruous. But the really great thing about the animation is this beautifully designed and detailed world they inhabit. Much as I love the Pixar films, and think some of their films (with Ratatouille as an obvious example) feature some stunning design work, there is something about looking at a traditionally-animated film and being able to see the careful intricacies in the hand-drawn detail that is quite breathtaking. (Again, the Blu-Ray will be an essential purchase.)

The Illusionist is not the film I though it would be, but in a good way. This is not the film that you might expect from a combination of the efforts of the creators of Mr Hulot's Holiday and The Triplets of Belleville. It's not as funny as that combination might lead you to expect, but it is deeper, richer, and a more moving experience, and one that stays in the memory.

Was it the same cat?

So here's the thing.

One of the highlights of my week is my regular visit to the film society. Every Monday night, they have a free film screening, and I try to go to those screenings knowing nothing about the film I'm going to see - not even its title. Sure, I check the year's schedule when it's initially released, and look for particular must-see films that I take care not to miss (this year, I've got the screenings of OSS117: Cairo: Nest of Spies, Swing Time, The Motorcycle Dairies, To Have Or Have Not, and Some Like It Hot marked in my calender), but other than those films, I try to walk into each film society screening with absolutely no idea what I'm about to watch. These days, every film you see is so promoted and spoiled and discussed that before you see a film your expectations are already well-formed. So it's nice to watch a film with absolutely no idea what to expect, and to just assess each film on the quality of film-making in front of you. Sometimes this lack of expectations can be surprising and thrilling (discovering that we're about to watch a Korean adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses - a novel that I really enjoy - or unexpectedly seeing the name of a favourite actor in the credits); occasionally it can be disorienting, demanding effort just to work out what it is that you're watching (it once took me a good fifteen minutes to realise that week's film was a documentary). Occasionally, a film may be dire, causing me to wish I had read up about the film in order to know in advance to avoid it. But other times there are films that I might have skipped because they sound awful in the writeup, but in fact prove to be an exhilerating experience. The key thing is that I have no idea what to expect.

Of course, sometimes you may just have a nothing response to a film. For instance, a couple of weeks ago, the film was a French documentary called Back to Normandy and, to be honest, I didn't care too much for it one way or the other. The filmmaker had, thirty years earlier, worked on a film based on a true crime from the 1830s where a young man murdered his mother, sister, and brother. The film had been shot in the region where the crime had actually been committed, and many of the local residents had been cast in the main roles. In this film, the filmmaker revisits the region and interviews many of the people who acted in the film, as well as showing us clips of the previous film and giving some background to the original case. And as I watched this film, my response sadly was "why does this even exist?" It seemed to have no purpose or reason for being. The writeup on the film society website talked very high-mindedly about how "the director’s sidelong, subtle approach has teased out modern-day parallels to the issues that surrounded the Rivière case," but if so, the approach was too subtle for me. I saw no real parallels, just a bunch of brief interviews that never seem to go anywhere.

Had I read up about the film before the screening, I would at least have been forewarned about the very first shot in the film - a closeup, fully-on-screen image of a pig giving birth. There are many things that I enjoy seeing on the big screen, and a few things I do not enjoy seeing. A pig giving birth would most certainly fall in the latter category. I did not need to see that. I would have been quite happy to never see that again. Later on in the film, we watched a pig getting a blow to the brain with a hammer, then having its throat cut and its guts removed. It was too much for at least one person, who I saw quickly leaving the cinema at that point, but I stayed. After all, I made it through watching the pig birth - the least I can do is watch how bacon is made.

But what they showed of that farming operation seemed very similar to what we imagine a traditional pig farm looks like, how they've probably operated for many many years. Certainly the pig farm I found myself watching the following night seemed very different. I'd been rewatching the TV version of the radio documentary This American Life over the previous week, and had coincidentally reached episode 6, "Pandora's Box," which featured a story about how the efforts of genetic science to breed particular characteristics into pigs has radically changed the process of pork production. There were images of the crew undergoing an extensive sterilisation procedure prior to entering the pig farm, because the pigs were so vulnerable to contamination. There were the expected images and issues - pigs in pens on metal floors, people questioning whether they could continue to eat pork having seen how it's produced these days, people discussing whether the supposed improvements introduced by genetic science have been advantageous. And then, all of a sudden, there was a closeup, fully-on-screen image of a pig giving birth. For the second time in two days, I found myself watching a pig giving birth. I ask you, what are the odds of that? When was the last time you saw something like that in a film?

Earlier that same night, I'd been watching Battle Royale, a Japanese film I'd heard a lot about. The film was about a group of schoolchildren who, under an officially-sanctioned programme, are kidnapped, put on an island, and then forced to kill each other under a only-one-person-survives-or-you-all-die system. The film was suspenseful and interesting, but I felt it was rather a disappointment. The explanation for how this bizarre situation arose didn't make any sense at all - exactly how picking one class at random from all of the country and forcing them into a fight-to-the-death would manage an out-of-control youth population just isn't clear, especially since the kids don't seem to have any prior knowledge of the existence of the Battle Royale that might motivate them to moderate their behaviour. The film definitely seemed like it was trying to say something, but I was never entirely clear on what exactly that was. Was it a commentary about how the older generations often view youth culture as something threatening? Perhaps, but if so that's a line that is abandoned pretty much as soon as the introduction ends and the battle begins. Is it some kind of Lord of the Flies situation? But there's a difference between that novel, where the inherent savagery of human nature is brought out without external influence, versus this film where the kids are only killing other kids in order to avoid dying themselves. I don't know that it's a big revelation to learn that, if forced into a kill-or-be-killed situation, some people would rather choose to die, others would kill reluctantly, and a few might enjoy killing. I'm also not sure what's gained by exploring that idea. So it was an interesting and enjoyable film, but frustratingly its message was so muddled that I couldn't help thinking it was just an excuse to justify a film where lots of under-age kids commit bloody and gory acts of violence against each other.

There was one scene that I found particularly interesting. A group of boys had banded together to try to fight back against the adults who captured them. One gives orders. "You, get some fertiliser. You, find some molasses. We're going to build a bomb." Shortly after, of course, all of them are dead, killed at the hand of the psycho who voluntarily came on the battle for fun. But I found it interesting because, while we obviously hear references to "fertiliser bombs" every now and then, I've never really understood how fertiliser ever actually gets used to make a bomb. But now I have (just a little bit) more information on the subject. Apparently molasses, a syrup formed during the refining of raw sugar, are involved in the process somehow. Just how, I have no idea (and I'm not going to look it up on Google for fear of accidentally ending up on some watchlist), but apparently those two substances somehow interact when combined in some way to create an explosive device. Who says movies aren't educational?

An hour later, I was watching the TV show Leverage. That week the show, an fun if inconsequential show about former criminals who perform heists to redress wrongs committed by other people, had our heroes trying to recover money stolen from various characters, only to discover that the stolen money was being used to fund the activities of a militia. Two of our heroes are captured by the militia but escape, before realising the significance of the strange smell at the militia camp. "Fertiliser and molasses. They're going to build a bomb."

Now I realise references to fertiliser bombs, if not common-place, are certainly not unique. And given the fact that I'm a guy, and guys like shows with explosions in them, it's quite possible that I might get a coincidental reference to fertiliser bombs in several programmes in a short space of time. But such references always focus on the fertiliser component of the bomb. I cannot remember the last time I ever even heard the word "molasses," let alone referenced in the context of trying to make a home-made explosive. To get two such references in the same night must be at least improbable.

The following night, I sat down to watch another Asian film, this time from Korea. The film, called The Host, was an enjoyable movie about a creature that mutates after chemicals are dumped into the river. The creature wasn't absurdly huge, running rampage and knocking over the high-rises of Seoul, but nor was it small. The thing was about the size of a truck, and could easily catch and hold people inside its mouth. The film itself was well-made, by a director (Joon-ho Bong) whose work I've discovered over the last year and with whom I've been quite impressed so far. His films seem to cross a wide variety of genres, but are always skillfully made and deliberately constructed, and this film, essentially a modern take on the classic Asian monster movies, was no different.

Finishing the film, I started to watch a new episode of Mad Men, the excellent drama about an advertising company in the 1960s. In one of the more memorable moments in the episode, the show's main character, Don Draper, goes out for a night on the town with the firm's financial officer, Lane Pryce, getting drunk, and then going to the movies. Now, I thought they had gone to see Godzilla, but it seems it was actually Gamera they were watching (my knowledge of the 60s-era Japanese giant monsters is evidently pretty poor). In any case, an on-screen appearance of a classic Asian monster movie (in a show like Mad Men, of all things) immediately after watching a modern-day variant on such films is definitely noticeable.

Now, I realise all these coincidences are meaningless. There's no significance to it. And, as a friend of mine said, when you watch as much television as I do, occasionally you get coincidences. (Indeed, I remember one night last year where, on two different programmes, I heard Europe's "The Final Countdown" played on a ukulele and a brass band. How improbable is that?) But it actually doesn't happen that often - that's why each of these coincidences in and of themselves were noticeable. When you get that many instances in such a short space of time (and remember, all of these took place in the space of three days), where different documentaries and movies and television shows, produced over a period of ten years in a total of four different languages and all different genres, all happened to be watched by myself in the same short period of time, where they all had distinctive elements that resonate with each other, that is unusual. It's not just a coincidence, it's a coincidence of coincidences.

Or perhaps it's not a coincidence. Perhaps someone somewhere is trying to warn me and prepare me. Who knows, perhaps one day we'll be attacked by a giant mutant pig giving birth to smaller mutant pigs. If that ever happens, I'll know exactly what to get from the garden-supply store and the wherever-the-hell-you-get-molasses-from store in order to destroy the monster.

Or perhaps it just means I watch too much television. Gee, I hope not.

Let's see what you can do

So here's the thing.

I'm looking at the Stuff website, and I come across this article. Now, I realise this is just an entertainment article, and we can't expect too much from such articles, but still, I was shocked at just how appalling it was. An extraordinarily pointless article lacking in any focus at all, jumping from topic to topic, seemingly just throwing any vaguely-relevant information into the text in order to pad the word-count out.

Here's what I mean:

'Hit Girl' in killer new role
By NATALIE HAMBLY - Sydney Morning Herald

Chloe Moretz, the young teen famous for playing a foul-mouthed assassin in Kick-Ass, will next appear on our screens as a vampire.

Okay, first question - how is this news? It's been several months since Kick-Ass was released, it's been ten months since her casting in Let Me In was announced, and it's several months until the film is actually released. And really, reading through the rest of the article, there is almost nothing that I can find in this article that could not have been written four months ago. So why is this supposed news article being written now? I read this thinking it was going to be about a new piece of casting, not one that happened last year.

The 13-year-old actress is starring in the Hollywood remake of the Swedish horror hit Let The Right One In.

I'll just say right now, Let The Right One In is a phenomenal film. It's chilling and haunting, and sweet in a disturbing way. It's also an interesting example in how a story changes between book and film, even when the film tries to stay close to the book (as Let The Right One In does). I finished the film with a very clear understanding of the story being told. But then I read the book by John Ajvide Lindqvist (which is also very good), and it completely changed my interpretation of what happens in the story. While the original film stays very close to the book in relation to the actual events during the main timeframe (albeit with one major subplot omitted), it does leave out pretty much all of of the backstory, particularly in relation to the vampire's 'father,' and that backstory actually meant that I interpreted the entire story differently to how I'd interpreted the film. Anyway, back to the article.

Based on a novel, the film follows the relationship between a bullied and lonely boy and his unusual new neighbour (Moretz). Around the same time the young pair meet, their quiet neighbourhood is reeling from a spate of grisly murders.

Now, I have two points to make about this paragraph. Firstly, note the first four words: "Based on a novel." I ask you, what does that vague generic barely-informative phrase actually have to do with anything? The original novel never gets mentioned anywhere else in the article - the rest of the article focuses solely on the remake and the original film. Now, the fact of the novel could have been relevant to the article - they could have mentioned, for instance, the fact that the remake's director defends the film by talking about it as a new adaptation of the book rather than a remake of a film. But they don't. The novel is irrelevant to anything else in the article, but still it's mentioned. And as you'll see, that's one of my problems with the article - the article, at least initially, appears to be about Chloe Moretz playing this role, but there's so little substance in that article idea that the writer starts throwing every piece of available information into the text to pad it out without considering what that information has to do with anything else in the article.

Secondly, pay attention to that paragraph. We're definitely talking about the remake right now - notice the reference in this paragraph to Moretz playing the neighbour. Now, watch what happens next.

The movie, described as dark, atmospheric and cold garnered rave reviews. The Sydney Morning Herald said: "At once quietly complex and profoundly creepy, this extraordinarily resonant work ... manages ... to breathe life into the oversaturated subset of the horror genre, the vampire film."

Wait - how are there reviews of this film already? It's several months away from release. I'm confused.

In David Stratton's review for At The Movies, he was dismayed that it was getting the Hollywood treatment.

But this film is the Hollywood treatment, so how... ohhh, he's talking about the Swedish film now. So when exactly did we make the transition from the Hollywood to the Swedish film? Can anyone point me to the place where they clearly and unambiguously switch from discussing the remake to the original?

"I'm horrified that they're going to make a Hollywood remake, because they're going to complete ruin it ... but it's really worth seeing," he said.

Okay, let's be generous and overlook the "completeLY ruin it" typo. Let's just ask, what does this sentence actually contribute? It's a Hollywood remake of an excellent foreign film, so we can all just assume the critics are, at this stage, against the remake. But the key point is, they haven't actually seen the film. It's just an assumption that the remake will be inferior - a justified one, because most remakes are. But there are occasionally good remakes of foreign films - Infernal Affairs became The Departed, Seven Samurai became The Magnificent Seven, Christopher Nolan's remake of Insomnia, all come to mind. So it's possible that this may actually prove to be a good film. The key point is that, right now, the critics have no idea whether this will actually be good or not. It's just speculation on David Stratton's part that they will ruin the film. And besides, what does any of this discussion about the merits of remakes have to do with Chloe Moretz, who I thought was supposed to be the subject of the article?

The Hollywood version has been renamed Let Me In and is directed by Cloverfield's Matt Reeves.

Young Australian actor Kodi Smit-McPhee (Romulus, My Father) will star opposite Moretz as the ostracised boy.

"Hey, we haven't mentioned the name of the remake, who directed it, or who plays the other main character. Find somewhere to cram that information into the article."
"Should we mention the Oscar-nominated actor playing the girl's 'father'?"
"Who? Richard Jenkins? Who cares about him? Besides, we don't want to have too much pointless information in this article. It'll lose its focus."
"Wait, this article has a focus?"
"Yeah, it's about Chloe Moretz."
"You mean the actress we haven't mentioned in four paragraphs, because we've been discussing how good the original was and how bad a remake will be?"
"Yeah. Actually, throw in a reference to her so that we can get the article back on track."

Moretz became famous for playing Mindy Macready, aka Hit Girl, in the film Kick-Ass.

Okay, the first sentence of the article already said that she was famous for her role in Kick-Ass, so we already know that. The only thing this sentence adds is her character's name, but if you've seen Kick-Ass you know who she played (there's only one foul-mouthed 11-year-old girl in the film), and if you haven't seen the film, knowing that the character's name was "Mindy Macready, aka Hit Girl" is useless information. So why is this paragraph needed again?

She was the subject of much controversy because her character was an 11-year-old skilled assassin who was prone to profanity - notably the f- and c-words.

My favourite story about Kick-Ass is that the original comic had the line with the c-word, but the script omitted the c-word (presumably because it would involve an 11-year-old actually saying the word). Moretz's mother was apparently reading the comic, thought the line played better with the c-word (which is probably true) and so talked the director into including the word. I repeat: the girl's mother had the c-word put into the film. Nothing to do with the article - I just find that amusing.

Parents were warned against taking their children to the film and questions were raised about whether a young actor should be asked to perform such a role.

Moretz is now 13 but there has so far been no controversy about her playing a murderous vampire.

And now we can see the point of the article. They're trying to draw people's attention to this film in order to create controversy about her playing a murderous vampire. The question is, what is the controversy they're trying to create? Is it (as with the alleged controversy around Kick-Ass) about a young girl like Moretz playing this more-adult role? If so, having made it through Kick-Ass seemingly well-adjusted, the role of the vampire is by comparison rather tame. Is the controversy over concerns that parents may need to be warned so that they don't accidentally take their young kids to see "that film where that nice girl from Kick-Ass plays a vampire," and are then shocked to discover that she does vampirey stuff? Or is it a controversy over the general audience being harmed by seeing a young girl doing scary stuff in a horror? If so, we'll just have to hope no-one in Hollywood ever reads The Exorcist, because that would really be a disturbing film.

And incidentally, the saddest part of the article is the fact that they now have to explicitly state that she's playing "a murderous vampire". I remember a time before Twilight when the word "murderous" didn't need to be used as a descriptor of vampires, because it was pretty much taken as read.

Let Me In is due for release in October. A trailer has been leaked on YouTube.

Strangely enough, this may actually be the part of the article that annoys me most. A trailer has NOT been leaked on YouTube. The trailer was officially released by the studio, and then posted onto YouTube. This is not some cloak-and-dagger surreptitious action of someone trying to release secret information. This was part of the official promotional campaign of the film, and to say that it was "leaked" is a patently transparent and pathetic attempt to add a little bit of excitement to a nothing story.

Look, I'm aware that it's silly of me to hold Stuff to any standards in its entertainment section. By definition, pretty much any article that ends up there is almost certainly not going to be news by any objective standard. Right now, the site is featuring articles about how Jennifer Aniston is enjoying single life, or how Zac Efron went to a strip club but didn't like it. And I realise that, as someone who probably went into journalism with dreams of being the next Woodward or Bernstein, it must be dispiriting work for the reporter to have to write articles about the career choices of a 13-year-old actress. So I realise how strange it is that I would be made so angry by this by such a small unimportant article. But that's exactly why it maks me so angry. This article wasn't tucked away in the Entertainment section of the website. It was given prominence on the front page of the website - you know, where real news is supposed to be posted. And yet, when I finished the article, my response was "why does this even exist?" And that's not a good thing.

Listen, Stuff, I've complained about your website before, and to your credit, you have thankfully stopped highlighting the CuteStuff articles on the front page. (It's still there on the site, and it's still pointless, but at least these days it takes several deliberate clicks to find.) [EDIT 4 August 2010: I spoke too soon. I hadn't seen it in a while, but guess what was up on the Stuff website today. Sigh.] But if you're going to claim to be a news website, the one thing you need to do when highlighting an article on the front page of your news website is ask yourself "Is this article news, or are we just publishing it to make it seem like there's something new on the site." If it's the latter, by all means use it to pad out the Entertainment section, but don't waste perfectly good, and limited, space on the front page of your website drawing attention to it.

And one last thing. I know last time I said how much I hated your "if our team don't break stories first, there are consequences" campaign. I take it all back. Please please please bring back the campaign, if only because I desperately need to know what you would do to the person responsible for posting a news article ten months after it took place.

By request

So here's the thing.

I first became familiar with the work of Steven Moffat late one night back in 2004. It would have been about 11:30pm; I was flipping through the channels during an ad break to see what else was on, and stopped on some British comedy programme. Less than a minute after I paused there, I found myself watching a beautiful blonde woman walk up to the counter of a science-fiction memorabilia store, smile at the guy behind it, and observed "isn't it exciting that they've found episode 2 of The Daleks' Master Plan?" (Ten seconds later, the guy behind the counter woke up from his dream.) But that scene made me take notice of the show. At the time the discovery of the previously-missing episode was still recent news, it had only taken place a couple of months earlier (we still hadn't actually seen it, since it wasn't released on DVD until the end of the year), so it was a surprise to me to see it referenced so soon. Whoever wrote this is clearly a Doctor Who fan.

So I stayed watching the show, which was called Coupling. It was certainly funny, and later in the week when I noticed a rerun of an older episode on UKTV, I turned it on. And it was that episode that turned me into a fan of the show. Literally half the episode revolved around a single scene where two characters try to have a conversation even though they speak different languages. The show presents the scene twice, once from each character's point of view. It was so perfectly written, the intricacies of the communication break-down and misunderstandings so carefully worked out, that I was genuinely impressed. As I watched the rest of the show's run, I discovered that it regularly broke free of the basic sitcom formats. Entire episodes were presented in split-screen, or chronologically took place before the previous episode, or contrasted drunken flashbacks against the reality, or replayed the same short period of time telling the stories of different characters in the bar. It's not so much that these are especially original ideas, but they're certainly not commonplace in the typical sitcom. Steven Moffat was clearly a talented writer who wasn't just content to write jokes, but was instead testing the boundaries of the sitcom format, trying to find something new to do with the form. And I liked that. It also helped that Moffat is a very very funny writer.

Meanwhile the revival of Doctor Who, under the control of lead writer Russell T Davies, was in production, and Moffat was announced as one of the show's writers.

Much spoiler-filled discussion of the last 5 1/2 years of Doctor Who (including detailed comments on the finale to the most recent series - Matt Smith's first) follows after the jump.