Post A Week 2012
As we entered 2012 it didn’t seem right to continue using the postaweek2011 tag on my posts even though I’m still working towards my goal of posting every week for a year. I was late starting so I still have another month of posts to go and hope that I will continue after that. The original plan was to hope that something would come up each week that I could write about but it seems to have turned out I’m usually scratching my head on a Sunday trying to think of something to write. That’s certainly the case this week. As with every Sunday I though that this coming week I’d write during the week and not leave it to the last minute. I thought I would write about the Oscar nominations on Tuesday but they were actually fairly uninteresting and then I was busy with something else (going to see Carnage, great film, if that came out last year in the US it really should have got some acting nominations).
It’s quite scary that January is almost over, I’ve spent most of it trying to catch up with things from 2011. I still have hours of television to watch but have caught up with a lot of thing now. The Slap is excellent (still a few more episodes to go), it made me want to read the book although I did question if there was any point now I have seen the television version. Mongrels was some of the smartest and funniest writing on any show and it’s such a shame it’s been cancelled. I wondered how many people, like me, had not yet got round to watching it before it was decided to be a ratings failure. In this digital age, should we not have an accurate way of knowing how many people have watched or recorded something to watch later.
Misfits doesn’t seem as good now which is a shame. Life Too Short wasn’t as bad as everybody was making out, it’s just a shame they couldn’t create a new character for Warwick Davies to play instead of him basically being television’s “Ricky Gervais”. I still haven’t started Pan Am and keep wondering if there really is any point in watching The Killing (the US version, obviously).
Award Season
Award season is now under way, I nearly got up in the middle of the night to watch the Golden Globes last week but sensibly decided against it. It doesn’t sound like I missed much, the obvious winners seem to win. I was pleased that Tintin won Best Animated Film because I don’t understand all of the negative reviews. I suspect it only won to get Steven Speilberg on stage, the Globes are odd like that, so it will be interesting to see how it does at the BAFTAs. I haven’t seen Rango but from the reviews suspect more people would be happier with that taking away the prize. I don’t really have a lot else to say about the Golden Globes. My Week With Marylin seems misplaced in the Comedy or Musical category but I haven’t seen it so shouldn’t comment.
The BAFTA nominations also came out and I took these a bit more seriously. To be completely honest I wasn’t that impressed with the list. Everyone has rightly kicked up a fuss about the lack of Olivia Colman for Tyrannosaur so I guess that means nobody really saw the film. Carey Mulligan was better in Shame than Drive but again I suspect people just haven’t seen Shame yet. I suppose the Marmite effect of The Tree Of Life explains it’s complete absence but I had hoped BAFTA would recognise it in some way. I’d hate to think that people forgot about it just because it was released before September. Nearly everything on the list has a late summer release.
I was really pleased with the outstanding début by British writer, director or producer. I haven’t seen Coriolanus but Black Pond, Submarine and Tyrannosaur were among my favourite films of 2011 and I image more worthy of the Best British Film award than My Week With Marilyn and possibly Tinker Tailor Solder Spy. I also really liked Attack The Block so it’s good to see Joe Cornish in that category as well. Really pleased that Black Pond is getting some recognition, even the Empire writers claimed they hadn’t heard of it.
3D Or Not 3D?
Surprisingly I don’t really have that strong opinion about 3D. I do resent having to pay more to see something in 3D and absolutely think there is no point in retrofitting films in to 3D, surely this is just as bad as colourising black and white films. In the right hands 3D can be very effective, just look at Pina or Hugo (although I still fail to understand why some 3D was added to the Méliès films shown within the film) and I imagine Cave Of The Forgotten Dreams works well. Pixar seem to make 3D work with their new films but perhaps it is more suited to bright CG.
In the end 3D is just a technique and in the right hands it can be made to work well. In the wrong hands it can be distracting and pointless. I half saw Monsters vs Aliens on TV over Christmas, early on somebody is playing with, what I have just found out is called, a paddle ball; the ball bounces straight towards the camera and back again, to and fro multiple times, it looks horrible and is completely pointless and that’s my really issue with 3D. If you take the 3D away the scene still needs to work and when you’re just pointing things at the camera it does not work. Anybody making a film in 3D should be forced to watch it in 2D and remove all of this pointless pointing.
I saw Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol at the Imax and suddenly understood why people were saying Imax is the way forward and not 3D. The Imax scenes were just as immersive as any live action 3D I’ve seen and without the need for glasses and the darkness that follows. My biggest problem with Harry Potter and Tron in 3D was that most of the film took place in the dark and the glasses just made it even harder to make out what was happening. I don’t really understand how Imax can feel 3D when it’s not so maybe it is really just down to the cinematography and a bloody huge screen.
And finally to the world of gaming and the reason I was prompted to write this post. The Edge review of Rayman Origins ends by saying “playing Origins feels like stepping into an alternate reality in which the 16bit era evolved by increasing in fidelity, not dimensions.”, how I wish I lived in that reality, if only so we could get another great Sonic game.
Film 2011
In 2011 I watched 212 films which is only slightly more than the 203 I saw in 2011, with the Leeds International Film Festival I thought it might be higher. A third of these films were released in 2011 and I saw just over half of then (52%) in the cinema, mostly the wonderful Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds. Just under a quarter (22%) were repeat viewings of films I’ve already seen which means the vast majority were new to me.
It’s time to try and work out what I thought the best films of 2011 were. It’s hard enough to pick out a number (ten seems to be the tradition) so it makes sense for me to do this is mostly chronological order. The year kicked of a lot of the award favourites got their release in the UK: The Kings Speech, Black Swan, True Grit, Animal Kingdom, 127 Hours. I enjoyed all of these films quite a lot apart from The King’s Speech which I think was highly overrated but in my opinion the best of these films and my first choice is…
#1. Black Swan
It’s completely bonkers and I loved it. Seeing it with a highly shockable full house at Hyde Park Picture House certainly added a lot to my enjoyment.
#2. Blue Valentine
I still haven’t seen the end of this film due to a power cut and in a way I don’t want to because I often have a problem with endings. Brilliant performances, soundtrack and story all brought together in such a clever but not too clever way.
#3. Submarine
Simply wonderful.
#4. Senna
This does exactly what a great documentary should do; take a subject I have zero interest in and tell a story that it’s impossible not to be fully engaged by.
#4 1/2. Life In A Day
Nobody told me to select 10 films so there’s no need for me to cheat but I wanted to include another great and completely different documentary. I only saw it in the last few days of the year and was unsure how to rate it for my film diary. Straight after seeing it I wanted to give it 5/5 but then dropped it down to 4.5 and finally settled on 4, I’m not entirely sure why. There are some really remarkable sections throughout the film and some other less interesting parts but that is life and the purpose of the film. The final scene sums it up perfectly and made me forget any previous flaws I had with the film.
#5. Tree Of Life
Love it or hate it. The people behind me thought it was a “pretentious piece of crap” but I fell firmly into the love camp. I didn’t expect to like it but it completely absorbed me and stuck with me much longer than many other films that simply fade from memory as soon as you leave the cinema.
#6. The Guard
I want to say this was the funniest film I saw all year but I’m now not sure exactly how much of a comedy it was. I really enjoyed it though, whatever it was.
#7. Living In A Material World
Another documentary, a subject matter I was interested in this time but t’s mostly on this list because it’s nearly three and a half hours long and I my usually distracted wandering mind never once got the slightest bit bored.
#8. The Artist
I had a few minor issues with the film but it’s still probably the most enjoyable film of the year. I want to see it again because it was so much fun and I think I might even like it more a second time around.
#9. Black Pond & Tyrannosaur
Another cheat. I wanted to include Black Pond because not only did I really like it but I also feels like it needs some more attention so more people get to see it. I left the cinema thinking that Black Pond was probably the best British film I’d seen all year. I was sure there were other films but I couldn’t recall them, I quickly remember about Submarine from earlier in the year which I think I preferred slightly. Looking back through my film diary the only other serious contender was Tyrannosaur.
#10 The Deep Blue Sea
The first film I saw in 2012 was this Terrence Davis film from late last year. I had no real expectations from it and (perhaps as a result) it completely blew me away. Once again I’m not entirely sure why I liked it so much but liked it I did. There’s something amazing about the hopelessness portrayed throughout the film which I somehow found realistic and engaging.
∞∞∞∞∞∞
So those are my best films of 2011, the year I increased my cinema going but kept away from the multiplex, as a result I’ve missed a lot of the big releases but no doubt I’ll catch up with them at some point. The only films I really regret not seeing are Bridesmaids, The Inbetweeners and A Separation (which I’ll hopefully see at Keswick Film Festival next month) although there are probably many more I’ve simply forgotten about (I’ll try and do a list, like I did last year, so I don’t forget).
There were lots of good films and only a few disappointments so all in all, it was a good cinematic year.
Honourable mentions: True Grit, Animal Kingdom, 127 Hours, Source Code, Attack The Block, Never Let Me Go, X-Men, Super 8, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, Tangled,Tomboy, We Need To Talk About Kevin, The Adventures Of Tintin, Melanchonia, Another Earth, Take Shelter and Hugo.
Disappointments: The King’s Speech, Hanna, Drive, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
More TV
I remembered* some more great television from 2011 so it seems only fair to mention them here:
- Sirens
- All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace
- The Promise
- Holy Flying Circus
- Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle
- Eric and Ernie
TV 2011
At some point earlier in the year I realised that, come the end of year, I wouldn’t be able to remember all the great television I’d seen. There are plenty of ways to record films and books you watch and read but I’ve never found anything that works really well for television. GetGlue has probably come closest but being US based means it’s missing a lot of international content. So what I’m trying to say is that I find it quite to difficult to write an end of the year round up of television.
It’s easier to start with what I didn’t see. Really recently I’ve yet to see Great Expectations which sounds wonderful. Sat amongst nearly other 200 things on my PVR I have Top Boy, Pan-Am, Frozen Planet, Life’s Too Short, Misfits, The Slap and the US remake of The Killing. It almost seems too obvious to point out the excellence of Forbrydelsen, I was late to the party but really enjoyed it when I did finally get there and I am still interested to see what the Americans did with it.
The second series of Glee and Downton Abbey were big disappointments. Downton Abbey was far too close to a parody which isn’t great for drama, it picked up towards the end and the Christmas episode was rather good. ITV shouldn’t have rushed out a sub standard series or edited it down into fewer episodes of a higher quality.
The Closer, The Good Wife, How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory and Californication all maintained their high standards. I’m not sure where I am with Nurse Jackie and The Big C but both still seem good to me.
Closer to home the second series of Luthur worked when it really shouldn’t have. New programmes such as Fresh Meat, Twenty Twelve and Friday Night Dinners were all smart and hilariously done. Only Connect continues to be my favourite quiz show (not hard) and by adding in play-along walls one of the few things I’ve started watching at the time of broadcast.
I’m happy to show my support of 10 O’Clock Live, it took a few weeks to settle down and probably still needs some tweaking but when it worked (Mitchell and Brooker rants) it was really worth it. Speaking of Charlie Brooker if he did any Wipes or How TV Ruined My Life this year they deserve a mention as does Black Mirror which felt like another must see series.
I feel like I’ve not mentioned so much, including what is probably my televisual highlight. Shadowline, Rubicon, Southland, The Hour, The Fades, Being Human, This Is England I recognise as being good but failed to engage me like I wanted them to.
My favourite piece of television throughout 2011 has to be Doctor Who. Obviously there were weaker episodes in the split series but to be none were weak. When it was good, it was really good and one of the few things I immediately wanted to watch again and for me who rarely watches anything multiple times there can be no greater praise.
So This Is Christmas
Yesterday I finished the last bits of work for others, wrapped presents and drove back to my parents for the holidays and so it feels like it is finally Christmas. I usually finish for Christmas earlier than this but with the big day falling on a Sunday and so many other things to do the last few weeks have been quite hectic.
Most of the films for the 13th Keswick Film Festival are now on the website and if you know where to look you can find the full programme. I finished reading the books I got last Christmas but yet to start many of the ones I bought this year. I’ve just read about Andrew Collins 2011 resolution of not buying any new books until he’d read all the ones he’d already bought. I should do this, definitely for books and probably for films and maybe games. I was hoping to finish Skyward Sword before Christmas but it’s huge. It would be nice to play it over Christmas but family and things will probably prevent me being able to give the game my full attention (which I really think it deserves). More likely I’ll be trying to reproduce my progress lost with the Arkham City bug which wiped my saved games.
I have a PVR full of things, mostly films that I’ve deemed not good enough to see before now but lot’s of full TV series: Pan Am, Misfits, Frozen Planet, Top Boy American Killing, Life’s Too Short, The Slap.
I keep thinking I’ll find time to watch them and do so much more over then next week or so but I already fear that the festive period will fly by so quickly. Next week I do hope to do some Best Of 2011 posts but I’d quite like to find the time to read some other people’s first.
I’m glad I started this postaweek challenge even though I started late and I’ve found it quite a chore as you will no doubt see from nearly every post happening on a Sunday. I hope to continue it beyond the 52 weeks but I’m also hoping for lots of great things in 2012.
Merry Christmas
Metropolitan
The Xbox 360 Dashboard got updated last week and like many I don’t seem to be that impressed. Adding in Apps is obviously a great idea, covering the place with adverts not so great. My biggest concern is down to the design, it seems to be build around Kinect navigation which is obviously Microsoft’s intention. This seems wrong to me, just like the redesigned BBC website appears to have been designed for a swipable touch screen. What happened to designing interfaces to be optimised for the most popular hardware? The thing that surprises me most about the Xbox redesign is how none of the dashboard layouts ever really take advantage of the Xbox controller. There are more ‘slideshow’ panels in the new design which automatically scroll through 4 or 5 different panels, why on Earth can I not scroll these using one right stick or D-pad?
In terms of functionality I haven’t really seen any improvements, this is mostly because I haven’t been a Gold member for quite some time. Nearly all of the new Apps and functionality required Gold membership. Microsoft made a big mistake having a free weekend before the majority of the apps had been released because there was nothing for the non-Gold members to sample for free. I’m really interested in the LoveFilm, Blinkbox and YouTube apps (and the 4OD and BBC ines coming next year) but I’m unsure about paying to use them. Rather annoyingly you are allowed to download the apps before being told they require a Gold membership to use them; thanks for wasting my time and bandwidth Microsoft. It also seems a mistake not being able to view anything in LoveFilm, Blinkbox or YouTube, why not just have some clips up there so I can see the quality of the video and the app’s interface.
No doubt I’ll end up paying for Gold and upgrading my LoveFilm account, neither are really that expensive if I will actually use them which has always been my problem with Gold up until now.
Twenty Eleven
So it seems it’s that time of year when various end of year lists start to appear. I’ve already seen a few pop in various places but haven’t had chance to read any of them. That also means that I haven’t started to think back over the year myself. Once again I suspect I’ll be side stepping the music category but I hope to be able to come up with some television, film and game choices from the last twelve months.
I suspect it might take me a while to get round to writing anything, there seems to be far too much I’m trying to get done before the holidays. Perhaps I’ll find time between Christmas and New Year to make some lists. The biggest problem will be trying to remember what television has happened over the year. I’ve tried various ways of trying to remember great television I’ve seen but still think I’ll forget something. Films are easier but it takes a bit of effort to go through my Film Diary, something that I hope will be easier for various reasons this time next year.
Rules of Video Game Design #1: Never Repeat
A video game should never force you to repeat or sit through any non-interactive part of the game. We just about have this sorted for big cut scenes which now nearly always have a skip button but it’s still happening far too often. In Red Dead Redemption every time you skin an animal there is a four second* animation which adds nothing to the game, actually it rather annoyingly breaks the flow of the action. Now four seconds may not seem like a long time but I’ve skinned around 250 animals and wasted 15 minutes of my life. It would be longer but I actually stopped skinning things because of the animation.
I feel let down that Skyward Sword breaks this rule so often, I always held the Zelda series up as a great example of game design. I’m sure you used to be able to press a button to bring up all the text dialogue on screen instead of slowly appearing in front of you, not any more. That’s almost okay the first time but when you bump into people again and they’re repeating themselves you need to be able to skip past it quickly. Fi is the worst case of this, you are constantly teased with a “more” option only to be slowly told there is no more information available, if that’s the case then don’t provide the option in the first place. Asking the wrong question leads you through screens of slowly repeated non-skipable text, just let me get on with the game. As much as genuinely love the treasure chest opening animation you shouldn’t have to be forced to watch it over and over again.
I realise I’m being petty and complaining about a few lost seconds of time but it will all add up and I have other things to do. I’m mostly annoyed because it isn’t a difficult problem to fix but more importantly shouldn’t be a problem in the first place.
*I’m sure it’s 3-4 seconds, I did time it but can’t remember now.
