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Could I just point your attention towards…

Dec 8th, 2009
by Dan.
22 comments

Just as humans evolved from apes, blogging evolved from lists of links. And while it’s nice to have speech, art, and tools at our disposal; sometimes it’d be fun to shed all our clothes and swing about in the trees for a while.

There’s been something missing from my feed reader for quite a while now (since July of this year in fact). And that something is NYC Watchdog’s Sunday Smorgashboard. While there’s no way on earth I’d want to take up such a mighty mantle, I do think that there is value in pointing out things that you’ve enjoyed from within the blogosphere once in a while. People don’t link to each other enough any more in my opinion.

First up is Heather from Notes From Lapland who has made my blog reading about 300% less frustrating with her post 5 tips to make blog reading, commenting, subscribing faster and easier. Primarily by pointing out how to deal with reading truncated blog feeds while remaining within Google Reader:


Read and comment on blogs without leaving Google Reader – comment shows up on blog.

With the FireFox extension Better G-Reader this is now possible.

  1. Add Better G-Reader FireFox add-on.
  2. Re-start FireFox
  3. The add-on pop up box will appear when you re-start.  Click on the Better G-Reader add-on and click options.
  4. Under the general tab click on the ‘preview item (click button or headline)’ box, click OK and exit (the ‘preview item automatically’ option doesn’t work for me)
  5. Open Google Reader and click either on the little blue arrow next to post title or on the ‘preview’ button at the bottom of the post.
  6. The blog will now open inside google reader.  You can read and comment as if you were on the actual blog and your comments will show up on the blog as if you were too!

Read the full post here

This is especially exciting to me as my new blog project (Lee and Dan’s Midnight Movie Club, opening this Wednesday) is going to have to have a truncated feed due to the unique way it’s formatted, and I’ve been feeling very guilty about it.

Andrew Collins (writer, 6 Music DJ, and co-host of my current favourite podcast) wrote a marvellous rant about the campaign to make Rage Against The Machine Christmas number one rather than the X-factor:

Others on Twitter seem to think that Simon Cowell’s “empire” needs “toppling.” Why not Google’s empire? Or Amazon’s empire? Or Microsoft’s empire? Maybe they think those empires need toppling too. I suspect not. Because those empires provide things that people on the left approve of, whereas manufactured pop music – eek! – is for idiots and plebs, who are too stupid to know how bad the music they like is, and the choices they make on iTunes or in HMV are in some way inferior to the choices made by Rage Against The Machine fans. (By the way, the #ratm4xmas campaign seems to have little to do with Rage Against The Machine, and plenty to do with the fact that the song has “fuck” in it, which isn’t magically going to be played on Radio 1 or the Christmas Top Of The Pops anyway.)

Read the full post here

Ian from Single Parent Dad wins my award for vaguest half hearted film review made by someone who can’t be bothered watching the film:

Santa Buddies has been on, but did not really engage us, we had visitors – including girls, aged four and two – and none of them appeared very enamoured for very long. And I was too busy roasting a gammon joint, answering the wishes of the little ones and nattering to our adult company to notice much about it.

Read the full post here

I had to sit through that monstrosity this week Ian. I demand you do likewise

Mrs W from Clinically Fed Up has some very interesting insights into the nature of grief:

When you’re 19 you also think that these things always happen at Christmas. At Christmas there’s always a house fire that wipes out a family, a new born baby found abandoned, a car crash. It’s only with the benefit of years that you realise these things happen all year round. They are, however, highlighted at Christmas, aggravated by their incongruous setting at this happiest of times. When we are so full of goodwill and joy it’s just worse. Which is why my tummy flipped and my heart grew heavy when I read a report on the BBC website on Saturday and I mourned the tragic passing of three strangers in a car accident in the Highlands. A mother and her two sons, here one day and just gone the next. Like that.

Only it turned out they weren’t strangers.

Read the full post here

And finally, my brother Sam, of Rabbit Confused With Raisins fame, has been out walking again, and took some pretty stunning photos too. All the more impressive when you consider he is a complete imbecile.

See the rest of the post here

And that’s all I have time for now, although there have been a multitude of other great posts this week. The “Letter to a 16 year old me” meme that’s been going round has been particularly facinating, although I wouldn’t like to pick out just one for praise.

I’m, not sure if I’ll be doing this kind of thing again, but I better make a sort of standard disclaimer: just because you are not listed here doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy your post or don’t think it’s as good as or better than the ones I have mentioned. it just means that I didn’t list you this time, that’s all.

Blu-ray review: Bolt

Jul 13th, 2009
by Dan.
17 comments

When boiled down to it’s elements Bolt is made of the same ingredients as Beverly Hills Chihuahua. The protagonist is a dog which has been ripped out of it’s comfort zone, the sidekick a reluctant and world weary ally, the plot surrounds the heros efforts to get back to it’s owners (in LA no less), and there is a strong motif of “finding your bark” running through both films.

But the difference is, Bolt works.

The story is well paced, the protagonists sympathetic, the comedy funny, and the tragedy poignant. Sure, it doesn’t break any molds as far as plot goes; but it’s a kids film, it doesn’t need to. It’s story of love lost and then regained, an archetypical tale that never goes stale.

To steal a synopsis from the mighty Wikipedia:

The film’s plot centers on a small white dog named Bolt who, having spent his entire life on the set of a television series, thinks that he has super powers. When he believes that his human, Penny, has been kidnapped, he sets out on a cross-country journey to “rescue” her.

The vocal acting was very good. I was particularly taken by Mark Walton as Rhino the hamster, but even have to give a grudging nod of respect to the normally excruciating Miley Cyrus who portrayed Penny, Bolt’s owner, excellently.

And the animation? Well I must admit that I approached the movie expecting something a little under par. Despite being a Disney film, Bolt did not have any input from Pixar studios and so I wasn’t anticipating anything overly spectacular. Other non Pixar CGI films include Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons which, while they were perfectly acceptable, didn’t really raise the bar as far as moving the genre of CGI forward.

But the animation in Bolt was spectacular. It could have something to do with the Blu-ray but blimey, the first ten minutes of the movie really took my breath away. it wasn’t so much the rendering of the character’s themselves (although they were great), but the backgrounds. Wonderfully realistic textures that meshed exquisitely with the main action. The cinematography was pretty damn good too. Visually the movie was very satisfying.

I’ve read a few negative reviews from my fellow Disney reviewers criticizing the movie for being overly melancholic and even a bit hypocritical (the villains of the piece being a large money driven movie studio, a bit like Disney in fact). To them I say a respectful pish and piffle. Bolt’s a great film, a bit sad in places true and there is a certain irony to it if you’re in a cynical enough mood. But it’s overwhelming message is that of doing the best you can with what you’ve got, and that seems a good enough thing to be teaching my kids to me.

Blu-ray review: Beverly Hills Chihuahua

Jun 25th, 2009
by Dan.
6 comments

Just why the commissioning producers thought that that a film entitled Beverly Hills Chihuahua would draw in an audience is a mystery to me. The very prospect of watching it instilled me with dread as I put the disk into the Blu-ray machine and I’m sure I wouldn’t be alone in that.

Other films in the talking animals genre feature cute animals like pigs (Babe) or parrots (Paulie), and of course Dalmatians (Full Metal Jacket). Chihuahuas however are not cute, they are pretty much repellent as is the vacuous celebrity culture that appears to have adopted them.

So, perhaps unfairly, this film had quite a bit of ground to make up with me even before it started.

So did it pluckily beat the odds and win over the sullen heart of this cold blooded cynic?

Well no, not really.

It was OK I suppose. The acting was reasonable and some of the characters were entertaining, if not a little by-the-numbers( I’m always a sucker for the gruff veteran with a heart of gold and took a particular shine to Delgado, an ex German Shepard police-dog voiced by Andy Garcia).

The plot is your basic fish out of water story, with spoiled Chihuahua Cloe (voiced by Drew Barrymore) getting lost in Mexico and finding her way home whilst being pursued by an evil dog-fighter and his demonic doberman El Diablo (voiced by Admiral Adama from Battlestar Galactica interestingly enough). There are no surprises and no upsets in the story line, which to be honest is fine. Well worn plots are like well worn footpaths; they are worn because they are pleasant to follow. The thing I object to is the lack of humor in the piece.

On the odd occasion Kerry cracked a smile, but I was pretty stoney faced through the whole affair. The obligatory comedy duo was present (in the guise of a rat and an iguana voiced by Cheech Marin and Paul Rodriguez ), but were underused and ineffectual.

But my main issue with the film was that I just couldn’t get over my distaste for the core conceit of having a Chihuahua as the central character. So to be fair the film never really stood a chance with me. If you’re into yappy little dogs that look like rats but without the charm, then you never know, this film may hit all your buttons.

Scanning through other reviews on the internet I noticed that many people were critical of the movies stereotypical treatment of Mexico. This surprised me as I really didn’t pick up on that at all, in fact I thought the movie was relatively enlightened. A fair proportion of the dialogue was in Spanish, and the main human character’s prejudices against Mexicans were held up and challenged quite early on in the film. The mexican police in particular were treated as being competent and modern rather than unsophisticated idiots from a third world country as I’ve seen in other movies. Of course I’m no expert in these things, Mexican stereotyping is probably a lot more basic here in the UK than I imagine it is in the States. I find the further you get away from a country the more unsubtle and broad your archetypes surrounding that place become. Our racial stereotypes of the Scottish are a lot more intricate and refined than those we hold about Eskimos for example.

As always with movies I’ve seen on blu-ray, the picture quality was excellent. The only criticism I have is the length of time it takes to actually start playing, but that’s the same with all of the discs I’ve used and I imagine is something to do with the sheer amount of information that’s stored on it. I’m sure that will improve as time and the technology moves forward

You can buy the Beverly Hills Chihuahua Blu-ray for about £15 on amazon.co.uk. Amazon also do a pretty good range of Blu-ray players as well should you fancy one.

Blu-ray review: High School Musical 3

Jun 9th, 2009
by Dan.
15 comments

downloadTo say Amy is a fan of the High School Musical franchise would be like saying Scooby-Doo has a faint penchant for Scoobysnacks. In Amy’s wardrobe alone she has High School Musical socks, shoes, t-shirts, pajamas, and jewelry. That’s not even to mention the High School Musical dolls, stickers, albums, posters, school bags, mugs and activity books that burst from every toy draw and bookshelf.

Oh yes, we know all about High School Musical in our house.

There’s a lot of snobbism abut this sort of film. Cynical mutterings about them being manufactured product rather than artistic expression. But to be fair you could say that about 90% of all forms of popular culture. Excellent as it was, the Iron Man movie would have been no less focused grouped. Just because a film is not targeted at you doesn’t mean to say that it’s automatically rubbish.

There is quality in the High School Musical trilogy. The dancing and choreography is good, the catchy pop songs well crafted, and the acting is above par for a product from the Disney Channel (you want to see bad acting then just take a look at the Hannah Montana TV show). It may be artificial and manufactured, but so is Diet Coke and it still tastes damn good.

Which is not to say that I don’t have problems with the franchise. The all pervasive merchandising leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. I saw some High School Musical kitchen roll in Sainsbury’s the other day. If there is a more blatant attempt by manufacturers to harness the force of pester power then I don’t want to see it. Although to be fair it’s probably no worse than that attached to my own childhood’s holy trinity of movies, Star Wars. In fact even the thought of a roll of R2D2 kitchen roll has me reaching for my wallet.

But I digress.

High School Musical 3 had a significantly bigger budget than the previous two movies, and it shows. The musical numbers are more spectacular, the sets more expansive, and the whole thing feels more polished. Despite this however I think it’s probably the weakest in the trilogy.

The problem isn’t the increasingly obvious age disparity between the actors and the characters they are portraying (Amy: “Why are those grown-ups still at school Daddy?”), but the storyline.

I accept that in a musical the plot is really only something to link the songs together, and certainly have no problem with a basic story; especially in a film aimed at children. But I do like my movies to at least go somewhere. High School Musical 3 just wanders around aimlessly without a purpose. There is an underlying theme surrounding others trying to choose the main protagonists future for them. But that vein was pretty effectively tapped for High School Musical 2, and to use it again just feels like a bit of a rehash. And also, while that motif is very relevant to people actually of the age of the characters, it pretty much goes above the head of the core audience of the film.

There are also far too many characters. The bigwigs at Disney no doubt wanted to leave the franchise open for more sequels and so needed to shoehorn some younger characters in there so there’d be someone to take up the baton for High School Musical 4. This left the film feeling cluttered and a little confusing. In my view they should have just focused more on Troy, Gabriella, and Sharpay with all the other characters and their subplots much further in the background.

We’ve already got High School Musical 3 on DVD, so watching it on Blu-ray was a good opportunity to compare and contrast. And I must say I’m still very impressed with the format. There were quite a few interesting questions asked in my previous review which I intend to tackle in a dedicated post of it’s own; but in short the best way to describe it is it’s like watching a moving photograph rather than a TV screen. Everything is just crisper and sharper.

One thing I did notice however was the length of time it takes to actually start playing the movie and the special features. I’m assuming it’s because the discs have a lot more data on them than DVD, but it certainly does take a noticeably long time to fire up. Still, that’s only a minor annoyance.

So would I recommend High School Musical 3? Absolutely, despite its flaws it’s still a highly enjoyable movie. It’s not one I’d recommend for those without kids though. Unlike Wall-E or some of the other Disney movies it doesn’t really hold up to adult sensibilities all that well. Certainly not my own sensibilities anyhow. But that’s OK, because it’s not supposed to.

You can buy the High School Musical Blu-ray at Amazon.co.uk for about £15. You also get a normal DVD version of the film included with it so you can watch it on the normal players in the house too. Amazon also do a pretty good range of Blu-ray playersas well should you fancy one.

Blu-ray review: Wall-E

May 25th, 2009
by Dan.
11 comments

Wall-E Bl- RayI must admit that I’ve seen Wall-E before. In fact the movie was the first film both my kids saw at the cinema. It made quite an impression on Evan in particular. When we were watching Hannah Montana at the pictures the other week Evan kept asking indignantly when Wall-E was going to show up. To be honest I had a fair bit of sympathy for his protestations myself.

So, just in case you aren’t familiar with the plot, it concerns a lonely little garbage compactor robot left all alone on a polluted and desolate earth that has been abandoned by a consumerist and wasteful humanity. A probe droid, EVE, turns up looking for signs of life. Wall-E falls in love with her and follows her back into space.

It’s a good film. In fact it’s a great film, certainly amongst the best animated features that I’ve ever seen. It’s funny, engaging, innocent, and satirical all at the same time. But most of all it’s incredibly brave. Brave to spend the first 40 minutes or so with no dialogue at all, relying on body language, emotive beeping, and the pure skill of the animators in order to communicate what’s going on. And also brave to completely discard the convention of getting big name actors to do the voices. And as a result the movie comes across not just as a 98 minute advert for merchandising like so many animated films these days, but as a piece of lovingly executed art.

In short, I like it. I like it a lot.

And what’s more I like the Blu-ray format too. When we first got the player Kerry and I rented the Incredible Hulk just so we could put it through its paces. While we were impressed with the picture quality it didn’t really move any mountains for us.

But Wall-E on Blu-ray? Wow.

To say the picture was crisp would be an understatement. It’s so sharp that you could cut yourself on it. The scene where Wall-E and EVE are dancing in space made me come out in goosebumps just like it did in the cinema. It was beautiful; there’s just no other word to describe it. It’s obvious to me that Pixar and Blu-ray are pretty much made for each other, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how the relationship between the two develops. The trailer alone for the forthcoming film Up was awe inspiring (those balloons look fantastic).

The features were pretty impressive too. Much more extensive than your average DVD. Of particular merit was a bonus exclusive blu-ray short cartoon called Burn-E, which is a story of a maintenance druid that takes place in and around the various scenes of the mean feature. Both Kerry and I found ourselves laughing out loud at it, and we’re generally a family that keeps our chuckles to ourselves. There were also games, commentaries, a documentary on the history of Pixar, 3-D set fly throughs, deleted scenes and all manner of other goodies. Not bad for about fifteen quid.

You can buy Wall-E at Amazon.co.uk here. Amazon also do a pretty good range of Blu-ray players too.