Lucky Number 2D6

Not dead, just busy

Been quiet around here for a while now, thanks largely to a stinking cold and a job interview (not the ideal combination, but fingers crossed), as well as my innate laziness. I'll try to post a bit more regularly this week, but in the meantime, here's a quick summary of things I have seen/done/played:

• 500 Days of Summer is a fun reaction to rom-coms, and one of those rare movies where the ending is actually the best bit, as opposed to tacked on, implausible, just downright bad, or some combination of all three. Dead Air is okay, but not as well produced, intelligent or effective as the almost-identical-in-basic-premise Pontypool. Pandorum and Spread are both extremely forgettable. Gamer is just downright bad. And not in that appealing, so-bad-it's-actually-genius way, just in a bad way.
• Have been working my way through Seinfeld, finally. It takes some time to find its rhythm, and the short first season is very weak, but it gets much better from the second season on, and I can already see why it was such a big hit in its day. 
• Haven't seen the latest Doctor Who special yet, but I do have it recorded for a rainy afternoon, which are becoming increasingly frequent here in sunny Brighton.
• Modern Warfare 2 is very slick and very good, at least in multiplayer - haven't actually done much single player yet, as online always beckons. It's definitely more of an evolution than a revolution, but when the previous version was so strong, that's no bad thing.
• Work on the Superman car design for Forza 3 has been slow, but I'm hoping to have something to show for it this week.

Go see Zombieland

On first hearing about it, I have to admit that I expected it to be nothing more than a pale American imitation of Shaun Of The Dead, but I was wrong - Zombieland is a damn funny movie in its own right. It may not be the world's first 'rom-zom-com', but it neatly sidesteps the long, lurching shadow of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's masterpiece to become one of the only new films I've seen this year that I actually hope gets a sequel.

At some point I'll probably go on and on about what's so good about it, but for now, just go see it for yourself.

Blockbusters revisited: Star Trek

Sadly, as much as I enjoyed it in the cinema, J J Abrams' rebooted Star Trek didn't really hold up nearly so well the second time around. Instead of allowing me to notice more things that I liked, knowing what was going to happen just allowed the problems to become more and more glaring.

A lot of these problems are fairly minor things that only a science fiction geek would even stop to consider (the revolving barrels on the phasers started to bug me for a number of reasons, for example) and several would probably only bother fans of the original show or are a matter of personal taste (the reduction of Scotty to little more than ineffective comic relief being a personal bugbear), but there are some more serious issues as well. What really started to spoil things for me was the story structure.

Pretty much the whole second half of the movie relies on the fact that not only does young Spock uncharacteristically choose to maroon Kirk on a nearby planet instead of just throwing him in the brig (surely a far more logical option), he also 'just happens' to drop Kirk off within walking distance of the original universe Spock. Hanging a major plot development on a pure coincidence has been seen as poor storytelling since at least 18 BC, when Horace's Ars Poetica instructed poets that they should never resort to a 'deus ex machina', and what was true for the ancient Greeks remains just as true today. Throw in the fact that both the antagonist's motivation for committing genocide and his approach to doing so become less convincing (especially as the reason for the whole reboot) the more you actually think about them, and the whole thing starts to fall apart fairly quickly.

My biggest concern, though, is that the movie lacks most of the core values and ideals that make Star Trek what it is - or at least, what it was. The characters face no significant moral, ethical or philosophical challenges in the course of the whole film, there aren't any particularly interesting science fiction ideas, and the lack of Trek's clearly stated humanist values becomes more and more apparent as the action sequences - gripping though they may be - rush by.

It's perhaps a testament to Abram's skill as a director - as well as the generally excellent casting and effects work - that I was only vaguely aware of most of these concerns the first time I saw Star Trek, when I was as swept up in the spectacle and carried along by the pacing as most of the professional critics seem to have been, and in that sense the movie definitely works as a 'summer blockbuster'. But a big, dumb roller-coaster ride is all that it really is - once you start to scratch the slick and glossy surface, it rapidly becomes apparent that there's precious little underneath. 

Guilty pleasures: Blood and Bone

As a child of the '70s and a teenager of the '80s, more of my youth than entirely necessary was spent watching action and martial arts movies of wildly variable quality and production values. Which probably goes some way to explaining why I still spend too much time watching straight to DVD releases, and why I enjoyed Blood and Bone so much.

Make no mistake, this tale of a taciturn ex-con entering the world of illegal street fighting in LA is no work of art, or even a particularly great movie. It does, however, have three things going for it.

The first is star Michael Jai White. It's not unusual for the lead in a low budget fighting movie to be an accomplished martial artist (White has no fewer than 7 black belts and 26 Karate titles to his name, including the US Open and North American Open). What is unusual is for him to bring so much acting experience and ability. His character, 'Bone', is a man of few words, but White imbues him with the iceberg-like sense that there's a whole lot going on beneath the implacable surface. In addition to which, he can really move.

Which leads to the second thing that Blood and Bone has going for it - the fights are great. From the opening scene in a prison bathroom through to the inevitable confrontation with the film's principal antagonist, 'James' (also very ably played by British actor Eamonn Walker), the action is varied, well paced, cleanly shot and very well choreographed. White has impressive speed and agility for a man of his equally impressive physique. The fight scenes make the most of it, and aren't afraid to let him kick loose (literally) with some flashy airborne moves.

Unarmed combat purists might point out that such techniques aren't particularly practical or 'realistic', but then that leads to the third and, for me, biggest thing that Blood and Bone has going for it - and why I found so much guilty pleasure in what, on the surface, would appear to be just another B-grade action movie. Strip away the modern trappings - the neon and bling, the questionable music choices and the already cliched 'illegal street fighting' setup - and what you have is an old-school martial arts movie in which a lone hero kicks serious ass in the pursuit of retribution, justice and honour. Those are exactly the kind of movies I most enjoyed on grainy VHS back in the '80s, and it would seem that I'm still a sucker for them today.