That is all.

I’m really looking forward to seeing Coraline, one of Neil’s books that’s been adapted for the silver screen by Henry Selick. (No, not Magnum PI. That was Tom Selleck.) It’s out in the US on 6th Feb, you lucky people, but doesn’t get to the UK until May. Meanies. This trailer is wonderful though.

Regular readers will know that I'm what you might call a bit of a fan of Mr Neil, so it should come as no surprise to discover that I've been rather looking forward to Stardust, the film version of Mr Neil's book of the same name. It's been a while since I last read the book – it's currently packed away in a box in my parents' loft, along with about 75% of all my belongings – but like all Mr Neil's work, it's a book of which I have fond memories.
Unlike the awful mess that has been made of another of my favourite books, The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, I never much worried about what the film makers would do to Stardust. Mr Neil was involved, and occasionally gave us snippets of news, so it always felt like the film was in good hands and that the only thing we need do was to sit back and await the day.
Well, the day turned out, in fact, to be a night: Last night. Tom, MrA*, Phil Gyford (whose name I've seen around for ages, but had never met before – seemed like a lovely chap), and I met up at the Odeon Leicester Square and went in for a not-quite-full 8.25pm showing.
OK, so herewith the short review: It's wonderful. Truly, truly wonderful. If you are hesitant about going, then don't be, just go. If you hadn't considered going, then take my word for it and go. And if for any bizarre reason you'd written it off as yet another crappy fantasy film that's not worth your hard earnt readies, then put that thought behind you and go. Because this is a film that will warm the cockles of your heart. It'll make you laugh, make you smile, make you giggle, and make you feel all warm and fuzzy, when it's over you'll wish that it was just beginning.
Now for the long review (and I'll try not to give you any spoilers, but if you're concerned, stop reading now and just go see the film).
Tristan Thorn (the fabulous Charlie Cox) is 18, works in a shop and is hopelessly in love with the beautiful, but shallow, Victoria (Sienna Miller). But Victoria, who never seems to get herself out of her nightie, has got her eye on the more dashing Humphrey, who's more well spoken, gives her roses in comparison to Tristan's rather tatty daffodils, and who is better than Tristan at everything. Especially fencing.
Tristan, in an effort to woo Victoria, takes her on a candlelit picnic, spending all the money he's saved on a bottle of champagne. She's duly impressed by the champers, but drops the bombshell that she's expecting Humphrey to to propose to her on her birthday, in seven days time, with the ring that he's going all the way to Ipswich to buy. Poor Tristan vows that he would go to London – London! – in order to buy a ring good enough for Victoria. He would go to Paris! He would go to the Arctic to kill a polar bear and give her the head! Together, they see a star, falling from the sky and, ever the romantic, vows to find the fallen star and give it to Victoria as a token of his love for her. She gives him a week – until her birthday – to retrieve the star.
Meantime, in Faerie, the land on the other side of the wall for which Tristan's town of Wall is named, the King of Stormhold (Peter O'Toole) is dying. Traditionally, the princes should have assassinated each other, with the last one standing being able to claim the crown. But the trouble is, there are four left – Septimus, Primus, Tertius and Secundus. Well, three, after Septimus pushes Secundus off the King's bedchamber balcony. So the King resorts to magic – he bleaches the red out of the royal ruby and casts it into the sky – the heir that finds the ruby and restores the colour will be king. As the King dies, and his sons set off to find it.
But in falling to earth, the ruby knocks a star from the heavens, and so Tristan's quest and that of the royal heirs is intertwined… But then there are also the witches after the fallen star, and the missing princess and Captain Shakespeare…
I just popped over to Rotten Tomatoes to see what their reviews are, and out of curiosity I read some of the bad ones, and frankly, did these people see the same film I did? (No links – I frankly don't want to give them any Google juice at all.) Apparently, it was poorly cast… let's just review that a second. Robert de Niro as Captain Shakepeare, Claire Danes as Yvaine, Michelle Pfeiffer as Lamia, Mark Heap as Tertius (aaaah, Spaced). Even Charlie Cox as Tristan was fabulous, and I'd never heard of him before.
Another charge was that Stardust had no plot. No plot? Er, hello? Were you asleep? It's got plenty of plot! And no, it doesn't have too much plot, either. It's got enough plot to keep you happy, with enough unexpected turns to keep you interested, but not so much twistiness that you get lots and confused.
My advice? Ignore the bad reviews. They were obviously watching a different movie.
Highlights, then. Michelle Pfeiffer plays evil witch Lamia, who has two sisters, Empusa and Mormo. They want the fallen star for themselves – it has the power to restore their youth and beauty. As it is, they have only the littlest bit left of the last one they caught, so Lamia uses it to recover her looks so that she can go out into the world to get the latest star to fall. Unfortunately, every time she uses her magical powers, it erodes her now good looks, exposing the ugly witch underneath. First to go are her hands, then her hair… and eventually, in one rather hysterically funny scene (probably more to me than most), she casts a spell and her boobs rather precipitously drop.
Robert de Niro plays Captain Shakespeare, the ruthless captain of a lightening-harvesting airship – a ship held aloft by a huge balloon. There's not much I can say about de Niro's performance that wouldn't totally give the game away, but he's fabulous.
Ricky Gervais does a guest turn too. To start with, I was really annoyed – it was Gervais doing Gervais, in a really annoying manner, but his come-uppance is one of the most satisfying moments of the film. Indeed, when Kev and I were walking round the park this morning, we saw a flock of seagulls (that is, a large group of white, sea-going birds, not the 80s band), and Kevin said “Oh look, a flock of Rickies!”
But Claire Danes and Charlie Cox really shine as Yvain and Tristan. They have a real chemistry together, and there are moments when Danes truly shines. As with all fantasy heroes, Tristan has to grow up, has to turn from the self-absorbed boy he was into the man he's destined to become, and Cox handles that transition very subtly. Mind you, he has some help, not least from a haircut that magically (as in, magic is done, not as in 'that was a continuity mistake') makes his hair longer, and the acquisition of a really rather lovely set of clothes.

Indeed, when young Tristan got his new suit, Kev turned to me and whispered “I think I've just had an idea.” Hmm, I had the same idea, and it has to do with what he's going to wear one day in February next year.
Stardust is a really wonderful film. It's got a wry, but subtle sense of humour. It's got real warmth and heart. It's smart, and not scared of being intelligent. But more than that, it's fabulously romantic, the kind of romantic that we need more of – not soppy or schmaltzy, but proper fairytale romance, the sort that's a little bit dark in places, but has a true and faithful heart.
* I'm not sure I should call MrA “MrA” anymore, not after seeing the documentary on Steve Ditko, in which came to light that he did a cartoon called Mr. A, all about someone who saw things in rather too stark a black and white. Maybe it's back to T'Other.

I've had an interest in extreme weather events for as long as I can remember. Indeed, I very nearly did a meteorology degree at Southampton University, but had decided that it was just too close to home – only half an hour across the New Forest from where my parents lived. As it was, I opted for a joint geology/chemistry honours degree at Aberystwyth instead, only to find myself transferred to the geology department of the University of Wales, College of Cardiff when Aber's geology department was closed down. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had done meteorology instead.
I've been particularly interested in flooding since reading Richard Doyle's Flood, in which London drowns under 10m of water. It's one of those books where the actual writing style is a bit clich?©d and clunky, and where it would have benefited from being a third of the length, but despite its shortcomings it's a gripping read. Pulp disaster fiction, maybe, but enjoyable stuff.
I had two reactions to Flood when I read it. The first was that I never looked at the London Underground quite the same way again. The second was that I wished I could have adapted it for the big screen. It would be just such a joy to take a book like this, with such potential, and turn it into a first-rate disaster flick.
So it was pretty inevitable that when I saw the headline on the BBC, Review of London's flood defences, that I'd click. Colour me surprised, however, to see this photograph:

Last I looked, London's never been flooded like that!
Turns out to be a still from the forthcoming disaster film… Flood. Fab! It's got Robert Carlyle in the lead, who I love, and Poirot, er, I mean, David Suchet as the Deputy Prime Minister, but what's more, it's being directed by Tony Mitchell. Mitchell also directed Supervolcano, a two part TV 'docu-drama' looking at what would happen if Yellowstone National Park – which is actually what's called a supervolcano – erupted. I rather liked Supervolcano, it seemed to me to be a pretty well thought-through piece of speculative fiction which was grounded in reality and which had paid attention to detail. I can see why someone like Mitchell would be attracted to a story like Flood.
Watching TV last night, I saw a documentary on flooding in the UK, which happened to include interviews both with Richard Doyle and a guy from the Met Office who, surprisingly to me, seemed to be supporting Doyle's point of view that the Thames Barrier is becoming inadequate and that London really could be at risk of a flood event. But according to that wonderfully reliable source of journalistic purity, The Daily Mail, the 'Environment Agency dismissed it as nonsense, saying: “It may make for a good read but it is not good science.'”
The reaction from the Environment Agency, who are responsible for the Thames Barrier, is slightly strange. On their website they say:

Media reactions to the fictional tale are being compared to the hysteria that swept the United States in 1938, when a radio adaptation of HG Wells' War of the Worlds saw Americans gripped by panic at the thought of martian invaders devastating their country.

Really? Where? The press release is dated 1 August, just a few days ago, but I can't say that I've seen any media hysteria over this film. Indeed, I've had to look pretty hard to find any sort of reaction at all in the media, and have found only the stuff on the BBC and The Daily Mail. That's hardly a media frenzy, now, is it? Unless you count the East London Advertiser (nice photos there, by the way).
The Environment Agency then say:

As a result of the interest, Lionsgate and the Environment Agency have resolved to work together to highlight the actions that people can take in the face of real-life flood events and to reassure London of the Thames Barrier’s efficiency.
In reality, a team of Environment Agency engineers and operations staff at the Thames Barrier work continuously to ensure that this type of scenario remains firm fiction, with most recent modelling showing that the Barrier can withstand expected flood pressures for many years to come.
The possibility of London’s defence structures succumbing to a major flood is currently estimated at having a 1:2000 or 0.05 per cent chance of occurring. The last major flood was a 1:300 event in 1953 and it was this event that led to the construction of the Barrier.
Steve East, Thames Barrier technical support team leader said: “The recent flooding and heavy rains in Britain will have made people more aware of the dangers of extreme weather. In fact, our current modelling already takes into account the many different factors that contribute to tidal flooding including weather conditions, fluvial flows and known tidal cycles.
“Even with all of the possible worst case scenario statistics included, our calculations can not be combined to create a wave that could pass over the top of the Thames Barrier. The defences that we have in place can presently cope with the worst that can realistically be thrown at it, but of course it is right that we plan for the future, to ensure that this level of protection is at least maintained in the decades to come. The Thames Barrier protects 125 square km of central London ‚Äì encompassing 1.25 million people and an infrastructure valued at ¬£80bn.”
The Thames Barrier does not stand alone as a defence system – rather it is part of an integrated system of defences stretching from Teddington in west London, to Shoeburyness in the outer estuary. The estuary is also protected by over 300 km of floodwalls, embankments and numerous small gates and barriers. London’s flood defences compare with some of our European neighbours such as Italy where for example, flood protection in Venice is also being designed to 1:1000 year level. Defences in other major cities such as St Petersburg are also designed to the same level.
Producer Justin Bodle said: “The best way to create a programme about an unpredictable scenario like this one is to work with the real-life experts. The Thames Barrier is a structure admired the world over for its efficiency and resilience. Our production may be a work of fiction but it has served to highlight the challenges and investment needed to maintain effective flood management programmes in the UK.”

So the Met Office say on TV that the Barrier is getting on a bit and needs to be reassessed, and the EA are saying that all's well, and Lionsgate will say whatever they've agreed to say. I find it rather disturbing that the EA should react to the release of Flood by immediately going on the defensive, especially when there actually are causes for concern. London is sinking and sea level rising; the Barrier was designed after the 1953 floods and so isn't cutting edge anymore; and a report by the London Assembly's Environment Committee into flooding in the Thames Gateway found 1.25 million people living in areas at risk from flooding, 5% of East London defences in “poor or very poor condition”, and that flood planning is inadequate. I find it even stranger that the EA and Lionsgate should form an agreement to 'work together'. Perhaps it was a condition of their being able to film in the Thames Barrier itself. If so, that's more than a little distasteful to me.
But back to the BBC article that set all this off:

Westminster's head of contingency planning, Brian Blake, said: “Central London is very well protected thanks to the Thames Barrier to the east and Teddington Weir to the west.
“But given the uncertainty created by climate change and the intensity of some of the downpours we've had recently, it is only prudent to review our plans.”

In my opinion, it's only wise to ensure that London's flood defences are up to snuff, but that's something to be determined by the evidence, not through media posturing and press releases. Saying that the Barrier is fine doesn't make it so – I want to see the evidence. Equally, Richard Doyle has done a fair amount of research but he's published only his conclusions, and not his sources, so it's hard to see if he's on the money or grasping at the wrong end of the stick.
Anyway, back to the film. Here's another still I found:

The trailer is on the official Flood site, although I can't find it on YouTube so I can't embed it, sorry.
Unlike The Dreck, sorry, Dark is Rising, I fully expect Flood-the-film to be a good adaptation of Flood-the-book, not necessarily because the source material is as good as Susan Cooper's books, but because I don't see any evidence that Mitchell has messed about with essential elements of the story in the way that Cunningham did. I fully expect Flood-the-movie to be a fun romp, with some great special effect and possibly, even, a better plot than the book, although we'll have to see whether I'm right or not.
Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing it on the big screen!

Walden Media have changed the name of their abominable adaptation of The Dark Is Rising to “The Seeker: The Dark is Rising”, and have reposted a new version of the trailer to YouTube. Conveniently, this gets rid of all the comments from the old one, so I suggest that if you're as unhappy about this movie as I am, go rate it low and leave a comment expressing your feelings.

I don't think I've ever got so wound up by the film adaptation of a book that I've found myself struggling to express myself. But from what I've read today about David L Cunningham's adaptation of Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising, the second book in the eponymous sequence, well, I'm horrified almost to the point of muteness.
I first read The Dark is Rising sequence when I was about 19 or 20, introduced to them by someone I met at university. They didn't form a major part of my childhood (I was more into Asimov than CS Lewis), but as an adult I loved them. They are a series of books that I take great care not to read too often, because I like to try and forget them in between readings so that I'll experience the thrill of discovery each time. Of course that doesn't entirely work, but I try. And I only ever read them in winter – in an ideal world, I time it so that I'm reading The Dark is Rising in the run up to Christmas so that I can wring as much atmosphere out of it as possible.
Last year, through December and January, Kevin and I read the five books together, reading aloud to each other before bed. He loved them as much as I do, and it was just lovely to watch him experience the key revelations along the way – I'll never forget the moment he realised who Professor Merriman Lyon really is, or who Bran is.
And I'm not the only one who holds these books in high esteem. Cooper won the Newbery Medal in 1976 for The Grey King, and was the only recipient of the Newbery Honor in 1974 for The Dark is Rising. Indeed, Cooper has a quiet but loyal following, and it looks like most of us are utterly dismayed at the reports we're getting of what Cunningham and screenwriter John Hodge have done to these wonderful books.
Now, I'm not going to get into the whole thing about Cunningham's religion or attitude towards the truth, nor am I going to discuss his past films – none of which I have seen. I am going to admit to dismay at the thought that part of the reason why he might have butchered this adaptation is so that it fits in with his own religious beliefs, but that's as far as I'll go. Bellatrys does a good job of examining this over on LiveJournal, and I think she's better placed than I to comment.
I am surprised, though, that John Hodge should be involved in the adaptation of what are definitely children's books – or maybe we could say 'young adult' if you really want to get picky. This is a man better known for his work on edgy, disturbing and gritty films like Shallow Grave or Trainspotting, or the black comedy of A Life Less Ordinary. Hardly classic children's stories, unless you like scaring the bejeesus out of your children. Although I'm sure some would accuse him of being familiar with how to butcher an otherwise good book, The Beach. I've neither read the book nor seen the film, so I couldn't possibly say. Still, an odd choice.
What I find disturbing, from all of the stuff that I've read and the trailers that I've seen, is the total disregard for the source material. I understand very well that you need to change things to translate a book into a film. Books are very good for telling you what someone is thinking and feeling, but films need to show you. So sometimes you need change scenes from 'tell' to 'show' in order to make it work. Or maybe you need to cut out some of the less important scenes and some of the back story in order to keep the film to a reasonable length. All this I understand.
What I do not understand is why you would take a really gripping story, with sympathetic and well-developed characters, and which has some wonderful mythology underpinning it, and strip out all the stuff that makes it good.
If you haven't read The Dark is Rising (book), it's about an 11 year old English boy, Will, who suddenly discovers that he is the last of the Old Ones of the Light, and that he must find the Six Signs to help the Light in their battles against the Dark. (The battles span five books, so this is just a step on the way, not the final confrontation.) Will is helped by the oldest of the Old Ones, Merriman Lyon, and must deal with the Dark Rider, who tries at every turn to stop Will completing his quest. You've got lots of Arthurian stuff in there (including Merriman/Merlin and the Lady – possibly of the Lake, although that's never explicitly stated), lots of local British folklore, such as Herne the Hunter, Wayland Smith, and the idea of 'old ways' – roads as old as time and with magical properties.
Most importantly of all, is Will's character and background. A quiet, reflective boy who seems a lot older than his 11 years, Will is the seventh son of a seventh son. His family is big, but loving. His parents are kind, intelligent, fair-minded and thoughtful, and the family is painted as stable, supporting, and principled, but fun and rumbustious too. Will struggles to grasp the importance of his role, but he loves his family and when they are threatened, he goes all out to save them (oh, and the world).
This is all pretty much removed from the film. Will is a brattish blond American 13 year old, with “emotionally unavailable” parents, siblings who bully him, and a brother, Max, who's been corrupted by the Dark. Indeed, the family has been fucked up beyond all recognition – with Mary, Will's sister, becoming his mother, his older sister Gwen becoming his younger sister, his dad becoming Roger instead of John, and the introduction of a twin (I'm not sure where the twin comes into this – is the twin Max? There are twins in the original, but Will wasn't one of them). And all the Arthurian stuff has gone, along with the folklore, and suddenly the climactic battle is no long one fight in a longer war, but the final banishment of the Dark.
So instead of all the cool mythology, we've now got Will accused of shoplifting, blowing up a car, a big fight with snakes, a karate fight on a cart in a Viking village, a love interest… Oh, and I nearly forgot. There's a giant snow globe. Right, that'll help.
Authorblog has a comprehensive list of changes that have been made, as ascertained from clips, interviews and articles, and links to all the sources. Frankly, by the time I got to the end of the list – which is very long indeed – I had lost the heart to click on all the links.
If I could see any reason why those would improve on the book, I think I'd be ok with it. But they just don't. One otherwise dreadful article about the film says:

A joke among the journalists covering The Dark Is Rising set visit in Bucharest over the last couple of days was that the movie has only changed three things from the Newberry-winning novel on which it’s based: they’ve changed the lead kid’s nationality from English to American, they’ve changed the lead kid’s age from 11 to 14, and they’ve changed everything that happens in the story.

This isn't the end of it though. It seems that hardly any of the cast have bothered to read the original books, nor are they fussed that the books are being trashed. Ian McShane, who plays Merriman Lyon says:

Ian McShane: I don't think they've been very faithful to the book. I don't know how many of you've read the book. I know they sold a few copies, but I couldn't read it very well. It's really dense. It's from the 70s, you know? [...]
Where [sic] you familiar with the books before signing on to this?
Ian McShane: No, I never heard of them. I did try to read the book, but they were a little…I think…I don't know how…There's four of them apparently. Or five. Oh, god. That means I might have to do a sequel.

It's hard to tell how much of this is down to McShane being bad at doing interviews, or whether he genuinely couldn't give a rat's arse.
But let's just rewind a little. Ian McShane? No offence, but Merriman Lyon is supposed to be white-haired, hawk-nosed man, the eldest of the Old Ones, he has a timeless, ageless quality to him. He's Will's mentor, old and wise, but still fallible.
Ian McShane is short (5' 9″), black-haired, and about as timeless as a yesterday's Metro. Worse, to many Brits of the right age to be Dark is Rising fans, he's Lovejoy. A cheeky scamp of a dodgy wide-boy antiques dealer whose best mate was an alcoholic called Tinker. But let me be clear. It's not that I don't like McShane – he's great in what little Deadwood I've seen – but he's totally wrong for this part.
On the other hand, the choice of Christopher Eccleston as the Rider is a very good bit of casting. The rest of it, I'm not sure about.
I'm relieved to ay that it's not just me who's pissed off at this. Other fans are just as upset. Ragnell is unhappy:

So, the thoughtful, introverted youngest member of the Old Ones? Our gentle little hero who was loaded with ancient power despite all appearances to the contrary? The guy who was responsible and thoughtful and didn't waste his power in showy displays? Gone! Replaced by a Harry Potter clone!
Oh, but they changed all the surface stuff that would make people mistake him for Harry, but they went ahead and took Will's unique personality and exchanged it for the more popular boy's so they could clone Harry Potter but not be accused of cloning Harry Fucking Potter.
Fuckers.
You know, I hate to be one of those fans who gets mad whenever they change any little thing about a book I loved, but seriously, this sounds like mass-produced shit that's trying to capitalized on the Potter popularity. They're killing this book, dammit. Killing it (And yes, you can quote that for your fan entitlement rants, thank you very much.)

Soyo is too:

With everything I'm reading about The Dark is Rising, not much but the barest shreds of the book are left alive. Will is American instead of English, 14 instead of 11 (and not the youngest in his family!), an outcast instead of an alarmingly normal kid, worried about girls instead of… not seeming to notice girls exist. Also, he apparently has an evil twin. There's less emphasis on British folklore, almost no Arthurian elements left, and the magic's flashy instead of subtle. The Stantons don't get along as much as they do in the book, and Robin and Paul sound like Fred and George 2: Electric Boogaloo. There's some glowy teenage girl with eyeliner on the poster. There are also mentions of a scene with evil mall cops. Let me repeat that: EVIL MALL COPS. I just… what? Oh, and it's all modern.
The thing is, I can see changing almost any one of these things, or adding in any of these things that are… additiony… but altogether it gets to be a little much. No, really, just watch!
[...] In conclusion? It's like they were working with a copy of the book that had been mostly eaten by termites. Some of the names are the same, and that's about it. And what bothers me more than that they're changing so many things? It's the way they're taking every Hollywood cliche available and packing it into the spaces left.

The comments on MTV's Movies Blog are universally unhappy, as are many of the threads and comments over on Walden Media's forums, where we are treated to what appears to be a wonderful display of astroturfing (that is, faking grassroots approval). Oh, and here's the official site, which appears to include a name change to “The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising”, like that'll do any good.
I can't imagine how on earth Susan Cooper could possibly be happy with what's been done to her creation, but sadly it doesn't matter if she's happy or not. Authors generally don't get to be involved in the process of turning their book into a film, and there's little to nothing one could do if they objected to what was happening.
Ah, there's so much more I could say about this, but I'm going to stop now before I plunge myself into chronic depression. Here's the trailer. Watch it and weep.

Technorati Tags: tdir, susan cooper, the dark is rising

In the autumn of 2005, I was out on a second date with a rather lovely American guy that I'd met a month or so before. That Sunday, we'd arranged to meet for lunch – which is always a fairly safe bet for a second date, given that one can make up an afternoon engagement if one needs to escape. But lunch went well, and we went for a wander around Covent Garden, had dinner, and finally found ourselves on Shaftesbury Avenue outside the Curzon Soho. Some Russian film called Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor) was playing, about which I knew precisely nothing, other than that the poster looked quite cool. (Although, I suspect that, at that point, I would have agreed to see anything if I thought it meant I could spend more time with my American companion.) My companion knew only that it had vampires in it.
Now, truth be told, I was focusing a little more on the physical proximity of said American – the way that he held my hand, and the way I could hide my face in his clothes if a potentially scary bit came up – than I was the film. Yet, despite the distraction, we both really enjoyed Night Watch. I was struck by the cinematography, the fabulous subtitles, and the almost incomprehensible yet still entertaining plot.
Last week, my American and I were invited to a press screening of Day Watch (Dnevnoi Dozor), the sequel to Night Watch and second film of the trilogy that will be completed by Dusk Watch (Sumerechnyi Dozor) (listed on IMDb as 'Twilight Watch'). The films are adaptations of Sergei Lukyanenko and Vladimir Vasiliev's novels, are directed by Timur Bekmambetov.

Svetlana enters the 'gloom', the netherworld into which the Dark escape from the scenes of their crimes.
So… the Earth is a battleground for the forces of Light and Darkness, who are held in check since medieval times by a truce. The night is ruled by the powers of Darkness, but the Light's Night Watch is always there to ensure that the Dark doesn't overstep the mark. Similarly, the day is ruled by the forces of the Light, but their power is constrained by the Dark's Day Watch. The Others are people who live amongst us humans, but who have supernatural powers – psychics, vampires, witches and sorcerers. And thus Light Other and the Dark Others live in a fragile harmony.
SPOILER WARNING – There might be some… that's all I'm saying.
In Night Watch, we met Anton Gorodetsky (Konstantin Khabensky), an Other who comes to the attention of the Light after hiring a witch to terminate his ex-girlfriend's pregnancy by another man and make her love him again. Just before the witch completes her spell, members of the Night Watch burst in and stop her. Twelve years later, Anton meets Svetlana (Maria Poroshina), a woman with a sort of magic vortex that brings disaster to everyone around her. And then there is the boy Yegor (aka Egor in the press materials, Dima Martynov aka Dmitri Martynov), who could become a Great Other for either side, depending on who gets to him first.
By the time we get to Day Watch, Yegor has chosen to side with the Darkness and Sveta has turned out to be the Light's Great Other. Anton has fallen in love with Sveta but is, in typical bloke-ish manner, pretending he hasn't. Moscow, meantime, remains blissfully unaware that anything's going on at all.
But things take a turn for the worse when Anton is framed by the Day Watch for murder, and has to go into hiding, swapping bodies with Olga (Galina Tyunina). Sveta and Yegor are both getting stronger as they learn how to use their powers, but we're told that they can never meet, or the ages old truce would be broken, and war resumed. The only thing that can save the world from the Armageddon that would ensue is the Chalk of Fate, which can be used to rewrite history.
END SPOILER WARNING
Day Watch is just as beautifully shot as its predecessor and is rich with glorious cinematography and CGI. It has hints of The Matrix in it, and somehow manages to meld the best of the Hollywood action thriller with an international arthouse cult sensibility, never becomes as trite and vapid as Hollywood, nor as pretentious, worthy and miserable as arthouse cinema can be. Instead, Day Watch wraps you up in its reality, immersing you in this parallel Moscow and barrelling through the streets at dizzying speed.
I really loved both Night Watch and Day Watch – they really appeal to the vampire lover in me, although there's actually very little that's vampiric about the second film. Yegor has some fun with hollow needles, and Anton gets his drink spiked with blood, but that's about it. Nonetheless, the supernatural goings on are exciting anyway, particularly the one that sees Alisa (Zhanna Friske) drive a red Mazda up the side of a building, parking it neatly through a window on, I'd guess, the 16th floor.
The plot, though, does get a bit convoluted and confusing at times. I found this with Night Watch too, that I would have sudden moments where I'd suddenly think “Eh? What just happened?”, but I had assumed that Kevin, my adorable American, had simply distracted me at a crucial moment and that I'd missed something. I was concentrating much harder in Day Watch, though, and still had moments where I wondered what on earth was going on. But the film moves fast enough that you're soon swept away again, even after the strange and incongruous Timotei ad-like sequence in the middle.
But you forgive all that for the fabulous finale. There are many ways that Armageddon could be brought about – flood, fire, earthquakes, alien invasion, killer cockroaches, rage-infected monkeys, a plague of boy bands that cause everyone who hears their insipid whinings to immediately commit suicide. The list is infinite. But I've never seen Armageddon brought on by a ________. Very, very impressive, and well worth the price of admission. (And no, I'm not going to tell you what. That really would be a spoiler!)
Again, the subtitles were a work of art. I remember being astonished at how much thought went into the subtitles for Night Watch – the text itself moves and changes colour and shape to emphasis certain words. In Day Watch, I thought that the subtitles seemed a bit more subdued than in Night Watch, but my friends told me afterwards that they weren't. Regardless, the subtitles actually add something to the film, they don't just give meaning to the Russian dialogue, they also add to the feel of the film, the style, the atmosphere.
Thus it is with horror that I see on IMDb that, because Fox Searchlight is co-financing Dusk Watch, it's going to be filmed in English. Please, don't do this to us, Fox. –ù–æ—á–?–æ–? –¥–æ–?–æ—Ä and –î–?–µ–?–?–æ–? –¥–æ–?–æ—Ä are Russian films, that's why they have Russian names, and they are better for it – the characters have more complexity and nuance than some their equivalents in the West. I mean, I love The Matrix and all, but Neo has all the depth of a puddle. Don't ruin Dusk Watch by turning it into a formulaic Hollywood piece of shit summer blockbuster. Film it in Russian, give us the subtitles, and if you must, dub it for your multiplex audience, just don't ruin it for those of us who love to see films in their original language, just as their director intended.
Indeed, in the press pack, director Timur Bekmambetov says:

‚ÄúUnlike in America, there were no fantasy movies shot in Russia before this one. But in reading the book, I suddenly realized Sergei had managed to distill magic and miracles, the transcendent and the supernatural, into our way of life. I found that the story really was something special because in it, fantasy not only meets reality ‚Äì but Russian reality ‚Äî and it‚Äôs the first Russian movie that has this unique point of view. The story takes place in the real world, in real Russian life, but it‚Äôs also fantastical.”

Dusk Watch won't feel like real Russian life, it won't take place in the real world, if everyone's speaking English.
So… the trailer! (Note: subtitles are nothing like the ones in the film itself.)

Sadly, I haven't been able to find Day Watch listed at any cinemas in the UK, and it's unclear what the release date is – some sites say it came out on 1 June, but comments on YouTube indicate it's not out til 1 October here.
The release date is 5th October, and if you like your films dark, fantastical and with a wry sense of humour, then Day Watch is a fine way to spend a couple of hours. Do make sure that you've seen Night Watch first, though – Day Watch won't entirely make sense if you haven't. If you can't find a copy, then you could do worse than read the synopsis over on Moria, (although you have to scroll down past a bunch of annoying Google ads to get to it).
Fox Searchlight have put a ton of Day Watch-related stuff up on their official site, too, with a fair few number of photos, vidoes, reviews, etc. Not an awful site, I suppose, but no blog. Dear lord, why no blog? This is the sort of cult hit that really needs a blog! Plus there's quite a bit up on YouTube, so there's plenty to keep you occupied until Day Watch hits a cinema near you.

It's really hard to describe David Mackenzie's new film, Hallam Foe, without missing out something really vital. The story of a soon-to-be 18 year old boy who's still struggling to come to terms with the death of his mother, Hallam has retreated from the world and views it almost exclusively via binoculars, spying on his neighbours and family. After a confrontation with his hated stepmother, Hallam runs away to Edinburgh where he gets a job in the same hotel as a young woman who looks very much like his dead mother.
There's also a badgerskin headpiece involved, lipstick, a dress, and a lot of rooftops. The badger is sort of vital, but it's very difficult to explain why.
I first saw Hallam Foe last October, at a blogger preview of a rough cut of the film, and struggled to describe it then too, but it's slightly easier after the passage of a few months and time to digest what it's all about. I said then:

It's partly about reaching maturity, partly about sexual awakening, partly about coming to terms with death, partly about the nature of love, partly about the boundaries between private and public.

It's also about the hidden places of the world: rooftops, clock towers, and those bits of your mind that maybe you don't want to expose to the light.
Much as I enjoyed watching Hallam Foe last year, I enjoyed it a lot more this time round. I discovered last summer that I have a pretty strong phobia of precipitous edges such as cliffs, and as Hallam spends a lot of time climbing about the rooftops of Edinburgh I spent much of the film worrying that he'd fall off. Second time round, I knew that he doesn't, so I could just relax and enjoy the film.
I can't say that I noted any significant differences between the cut we saw last night and the one we saw in October. The sound was more polished, and the sountrack and titles finished, but to me those were details. Jamie Bell and Sophia Miles both give such fabulous performances, with Jamie in particular playing Hallam in such a way that you end up feeling a lot of sympathy for a character who starts off the film as someone really quite hard to like. As Jamie said in the Q&A afterwards, Hallam is arrogant and distant to start with, but by the closing scene of the film, you're really fully behind him.
Colin Kennedy, who writes the Hallam Foe blog, was there last night filming the Q&A, at least until Gia turned the tables on him, getting Jamie to take the camera and asking Colin the final question of the evening. I'm looking forward to seeing all that online soon!
After the Q&A, (which I didn't live blog, but did live Tweet), we went on to a drinks and nibbles at Kettners. As always, it was fun to see all the bloggers there, but it was also really lovely to be able to talk to David, who's a sweet and gracious man, and to meet Jamie, who was delightful.
I must confess, though, that the highlight of my evening was talking to David's brother Alastair, who used to play Archie in Monarch of the Glen. It's always slightly strange to meet people whose face is so familiar that you would recognise it anywhere, but about whom you know absolutely nothing. Alastair is just the most lovely man, who turns out to have a real passion for food and blogging. I don't know if he has a blog, (I couldn't find one), but he really ought to get one!
Hallam Foe is finally getting its theatrical release on 31 August, and I can't recommend it highly enough. This is such a wonderful, funny film – sometimes sweet sometimes sour but always heartfelt – and possibly one of the best films to have come out of the UK in years. It's right up there with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and it doesn't have a single zombie or Spaced reference in it.
Although it does have a badgerskin headpiece.

I don't know if posting videos is sort of cheating on my whole 'will blog daily' thing… but this one is so fab you really have to see it. (Thanks John!)


Lip Dub – Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger on Vimeo
Later… Whilst I was googling for Harvey Danger to see if it really is spelt 'sitta', I discovered that not only is the band still going, they've also got a new album out, Little by Little…. They've made it available for free download, either via bit torrent or direct from their site in both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis format, as well as selling really nice packages from their store which include sets of badges and stickers, as well as a second bonus CD.
I think this is a fabulous idea, and one that I'm really glad to see bands experimenting with. Indeed, I think Harvey Danger really have their heads screwed on right, as their explanation for why they are giving their music away for free chimes very much with the way I look at things.

Given our unusual history, and a long-held sense that the practice now being demonized by the music biz as “illegal” file sharing can be a friend to the independent musician, we have decided to embrace the indisputable fact of music in the 21st century, put our money where our mouth is, and make our record, Little By Little…, available for download via Bittorrent, and at our website. We’re not streaming, or offering 30-second song samples, or annoying you with digital rights management software; we’re putting up the whole record, for free, forever. Full stop. Please help yourself; if you like it, please share with friends.
Of course, the CD will also be for sale on the site, as well as in fine independent record stores across the country, in a deluxe package that includes a 30-minute bonus disc that serves as a companion piece to the record proper (retail price for the package is $11.99). [...]
However, it’s important that people understand the free download concept isn’t a frivolous act. It’s a key part of our promotional campaign, along with radio and press promotion, live shows, and videos. It’s a bet that the resources of the Internet can make possible a new way for musicians to find their audience – and forge a meaningful artistic career built on support from cooperative, not adversarial, relationships.
We realize that digital files are the primary means by which a huge segment of the population is exposed to new music; we also believe that plenty of music lovers in the world will buy a record once they’ve heard it – whether via radio or computer.

I've downloaded the album and I'm going to give it a good listening to. If I like it I'll buy it and, if I do, then that will be a sale they made explicitly because some people at some company called Connected Ventures did a mad lip-dub version of Flagpole Sitta and because Harvey Danger let me hear their music for free.

Last Friday I had the good fortune to be invited to see Sunshine, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's new movie, along with a bunch of other bloggers and film website reviewers. We have been asked not to officially review the film, because there are still press previews to be done and they didn't want piss off the journalists. So this isn't a review, even if it might at some points seem like one.
I had no idea what Sunshine was about before I turned up, despite the fact that I've known that Gia Milinovich was working on the official website for months and months. I hadn't even seen the trailer.

I'm not quite sure what I expected, to be honest, but what I got was a beautifully shot film. The golden colours are gorgeous, as are the shots of the sun, some of which I've been told are real. It's quite amazing to sit and watch images of the sun fill the screen in front of you, this huge enormous ball of seething fire, writhing and boiling in all its white and golden glory. That alone is breathtaking, but the contrast between the brilliance of the sun and the black coldness of space serves well to make both seem so much more fearsome.

Sunshine concerns the mission of the Icarus II, Earth's last best hope of salvation. The Sun is dying, and with it the Earth – now a hostile icy place. The Icarus I was sent seven years previously to deliver a bomb to restart the Sun, but when it fails the global community gathers together the last reserves of fissile material to create Icarus II upon which the fate of mankind rests. The eight astronauts' voyage goes well until Harvey, the ship's communications officer, hears the distress beacon from the Icarus I which is now drifting in space inside the 'dead zone' from which no signals can be sent to or received from Earth.
At this point, things all start to unravel.
One of the best bits about Sunshine, other than the fact that it's one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen, is the sound design. It's just amazing. It reminds me of how it used to feel to play bass guitar with a really good amp and speaker set-up. The bass just reverberates through you, it connects with you in a very physical way, from heel to sternum, and feeling the sound like that changes the way you hear it.
When you combine the almost overwhelmingly intense look of the film with some incredibly powerful sound design, you end up with something that is a bit like being thumped in the chest. If I'm honest, I found the tension almost too much – I'm not very good at dealing with tension in films, primarily because I'm squeamish so at any sort of a hint that there may be violence I get scared and want to hide behind a cushion. Of course, there were no cushions so I hid under my coat instead.
As for the acting, well, Cillian Murphy dominates any film he's in, if only because he has those amazingly blue eyes that just seem to bore right through me. But the whole cast of Sunshine is strong, no one really hits a bum note, and there's a great group chemistry that's often lacking from ensemble pieces. Equally, whilst Cillian's Capa – the physicist who is the only person who truly understands how the bomb works – is central, he doesn't overshadow the other characters. I particularly liked the ship's engineer, Mace, played by Chris Evans, who is possibly the only one with a clear character arc and who gets to have fun with redemption.
But if Sunshine has a flaw, it's that it doesn't really know what it's trying to be, weaving from genre to genre in a slightly unsatisfactory way. It starts of as a standard sci-fi, thence develops into disaster movie, then on to a psycho-drama, a slasher flick, a running man flick until finally the hero triumphs. There are big dollops of 2001: A Space Odessy, of Solaris, of Event Horizon (I'm told – haven't seen that one), and Alien. And there's one particular plot twist, which I'm not going to give away, that I saw coming from a mile off and which I was really disappointed they used.
When I came out of the screening room, Gia asked me what I thought, and I couldn't answer her right away. Sunshine, even with its slightly predictable plot, is a breathtaking movie. It honestly stunned me into silence, and I had to have myself a little quiet moment and a think and a sip or two of wine before I could start to speak coherently again. You see, Boyle lulls you into a false sense of security through the first act, but once the first turning point is reached, he never lets up, building the tension all the way through until the climax comes and when it does you're left feeling winded, all the air knocked out of you.
I said to Gia on Friday that Sunshine wasn't a film that I'd want to go back and see again, but now a little time has passed and I've had the chance to reflect, I can't wait for it to open in the cinema so I can go back and watch it a second time round. Films like this I tend to get more out of on a second viewing, because I know what's coming so I can enjoy myself instead of hide under my jacket.
So, go see Sunshine. It's just like The Weather Project on steroids.

Technorati Tags: danny boyle, sunshine

The trailer for Black Sheep is disturbing on so very many levels… but yet I can't wait to see it. Should I worry what that says about me?
(Thanks for the heads-up, Dan.)

Last night, ten days ahead of general release, I was lucky enough to see Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright and Nick Frost's latest masterpiece, Hot Fuzz. I haven't really managed to keep abreast of the Hot Fuzz pre-release news, despite being on their mailing list (god knows how far down in my inbox those emails got buried), and I hadn't built up any sort of sense of excitement about the film. To suddenly discover that release is imminent felt a bit odd. I mean, it's only just over a year ago that it got the green light, and those 13 months seem to have disappeared rather too quickly for my liking. In fact, I'm so not on top of things right now, I wouldn't have got tickets at all if James Cox hadn't told me as soon as they became available.
SPOILERS: I'm not sure how many real spoilers I have in this post. It's hard to talk about without some spoilage, so if you're spoiler-sensitive, don't read on.
All that by the by, Kevin and I met up with James last night at the Finchley Road cinema and prepared to enjoy the preview of a film that we thought might be, well, quite good. After all, I quite liked Shaun of the Dead, so I had faith that Pegg, Wright and Frost might just come up with something that could potentially provide a laugh or two. But I really wasn't prepared for Hot Fuzz.
Pegg and Wright have said that their preparation for writing this movie was to sit down with all the cop shows and movies they could lay their hands on, soak up all the references and cliches and then spit them back out in that warped Spaced way. OK, so they didn't use exactly those words, but that's what they did, and they did it in spades. And lo, tis wonderful.
So, the plot basics. Over-achieving city-boy Nicholas Angel (Pegg) is sent to the country to work with wet-behind-the-ears PC Danny Butterman (Frost) and hates every second of it. Angel's colleagues in London are jealous of his overachievement, and his new colleagues in Somerset hate his London ways and the fact that 'e ain't from rown these parrts. Butterman befriends him, and from that blossoms the kind of buddy movie all buddy movies wish they were. There's no romantic interest in this movie – the emotional relationship that the movie hinges on is, of course, the relationship between Angel and Butterman.
But Hot Fuzz is not just a buddy movie – there are slatherings of Inspector Morse, Bergerac (Timothy Dalton's moustache is pure Bergerac) and Midsomer Murders too. Angel has to learn that he's moved to the countryside now, and that things are done differently here. For starters, there are no murders, just… a few unfortunate accidents. The village is close, very close indeed. In fact, Butterman explains, the local supermarket 'trolley boy' – a big, brutish man with a very low IQ who says 'Yarp' a lot – actually “lives down the road with his mum and his sister”, but when Angel asks about his mum and his sister, Danny says “Oh no, there's only one of them”.
The first part of the film, whilst a little sedate as they establish characters and relationships, has its fair share of laughs, especially if you know and love Spaced and Shaun of the Dead. There are liberal references to both, including a lovely moment in the opening sequence which sees Angel looking rather suspiciously like Tyres from Spaced. The leisurely pace starts to pick up, though, after a tragic car accident which immediately arouses Angel's suspicions, but which is soundly written off as nothing more than a road traffic collision by the rest of the force. As the body count rises, in a series of increasingly gruesome accidents, Angel gets frustrated with his colleague's insistence that nothing is wrong, and the way the villagers all toe this party line.
SPOILERS: Are these spoilers? I'm never sure how spoilery my spoilers are, so if you're worried, stop reading here.
As a viewer, this is all pretty much what we know and saw in the trailers. It's not until a little later that things just get… well, really weird and a lot more icky than I expected. I mean, don't expect a blood-free film here. If you're squeamish, don't watch the closing part of the churchyard scene, for one. And the bit in the model village is a bit icky too. It's cartoon gore, but still… there's more of it than I was expecting. A lot more of it.
Although that said, one of the most discomforting moments in the film is when Angel kick's a gun-toting little old lady in the face, as she proves that indeed yes, the only people guns in Sandford are farmers and their mothers.
Hot Fuzz does an extremely good job of lulling you into a false sense of security with Inspector Morsian plot turns and then bam!, slapping you hard in the face with the gore. But just when you think you're falling into a complex and intricate plot that will require much detecting and consideration a la Inspector Wexford, the whole thing goes back to its Bad Boys II/Point Break roots (two films held up in the movie by Butterman as the epitome of cop films) and segues into an unlikely finale – possibly one of the best, certainly most bizarre, shoot-outs ever. If you can imagine Lethal Weapon in Somerset morphing into Inspector Morse and thence into El Mariachi, you're about there.
Hot Fuzz is packed full of belly laughs, winces, moments where you want to hide behind a cushion, and the best kind of adrenaline-fulled excitement you could ever hope for. It's a work of genius, and I know that it's going to take repeated viewings for me to get all the jokes, notice even half the references, and spot all the foreshadowing. In Shaun of the Dead, when Shaun and Ed are in the Winchester planning their night out, they are also outlining the whole of the rest of the movie… you just don't realise it unless you understand the code. I can't believe they could possibly resist doing similar tricks with the script to Hot Fuzz. And if they did, I'll be disappointed.
So, in conclusion, go see Hot Fuzz. Don't wait for it to come out on DVD, go see it as soon as you can. It's worth it, I promise you.
…And then go and buy the DVD so that you can watch the extras and have Pegg, Wright and Frost personally reveal all their in-jokes.

Earlier in the year, someone, somewhere bought the Amelie DVD for me, from my Amazon wish list. I don't know who you are, but thank you.
Because I hadn't changed my address on Amazon, the DVD went to my parents' house in Dorset, and arrived whilst they were in Australia. My brother forwarded it on, but it arrived when I was away, and it was sent back to Dorset. So what with one thing and another, I've only just received it!
It's a film I love, so I'm really chuffed to have been sent it. Thank you, whoever you are.

One of the hardest parts of the film making process, as any aspiring scriptwriter will tell you, is describing your film to people who haven't seen it. When I was a regular on Zoetrope, we'd frequently have discussions about writing the logline (a one or two sentence description) and pitch (one or two paragraphs) for our scripts. I was uniformly rubbish at loglines and pitches, and I discovered that it actually gets harder the closer you get to finishing your script. By the time my own feature film script, Tag, was complete, it had basically become impossible for me to figure out how on earth to describe it, other than 'unfilmable'.
It was was no little sympathy, therefore, that I listened to David Mackenzie introduce his nearly-finished-bar-a-bit-of-spit-and-polish film, Hallam Foe, with a plea that we not really review it on our blogs, but help him figure out what how to describe it, what its identity is.
Hugh MacLeod, one of David's old friends, organised a screening last week for a bunch of bloggers and people involved in the film at a snug little cinema De Lane Lea in Soho. The film's not finished yet, the opening credits are hand-drawn rough animations, and apparently there were a few other things not quite right yet. (Not that I could tell, really.) But Buena Vista had agreed that despite its unfinished status, David could show it to us.
And I'm really glad he did. Hallam Foe (sorry, this is a bit of a review coming up), is a beautifully shot, wonderfully written film. The score is a delight, the cinematography lovely, and there are some fantastic performances. Jamie Bell as the eponymous Hallam is no longer a ballet dancing young boy, but plays a gangly, rangy teenager who, underneath his troubled exterior is cheeky and confident. And Sophia Myles is suitably sexy as a – I believe 'minx' is the right word – as Kate Breck.
But I can understand David's concern that it's a very hard film to characterise. If one were to be lazy, one would say something trite, like “It's a cross between Stand By Me and Trainspotting”, but that would be selling the film short in so many ways. Hallam Foe is a coming of age film, yes, but not like Stand By Me or The Breakfast Club – it's not about rites of passage it's about growing up and gaining maturity. And the only similarity it has to Trainspotting is that it's full of Scottish people and filmed in Edinburgh.
Hallam Foe is indeed a difficult film to describe. It's partly about reaching maturity, partly about sexual awakening, partly about coming to terms with death, partly about the nature of love, partly about the boundaries between private and public. Certainly the logline on IMDB does it no justice, focusing as it does on voyeurism instead of the nuances of Hallam's behaviour and the struggles he faces: dealing with feelings of anger, disengagement from reality, suspicion, confusion.
Sadly, I'm still rubbish at writing loglines and pitches, so I'm not even going to try here. But I am good at spotting a good film, with characters who develop, which has a sterling ending. Hallam Foe has all of those, and I look forward to endlessly going on about it as we approach the release date of 9 February 2007, much as I did for Shaun of the Dead when it came out on DVD here and was released in the States.
Indeed, Hallam Foe has a blog, written by Colin Kennedy who has been working on the film. I have to disclose here that in May 2005, David and I were talking about me blogging his upcoming film (at that time I had no idea what it was even going to be about). I was very excited about the opportunity to blog a film, but David had a son and I got busy and it never came together. Seeing how fantastically Colin is blogging, though, confirms what I know (but which I was then conveniently ignoring then, because of my enthusiasm), that it's far better for someone on the inside of a project to blog rather than to parachute some 'blogging expert' in. The character Hallam also has a MySpace page, as does Kate and Verity Foe (Hallam's stepmother).
It's going to be interesting to watch how the Hallam Foe team promote the film using blogs. I think there's likely to be a lot of things they could do, although I'm not going to go on about them right now. But building up some momentum and keeping it going until February is going to be a fun challenge for them. I wish I were involved.
Hallam Foe

Thanks to everyone who, before Christmas, sent me the news that Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's new movie, Hot Fuzz, has been greenlighted by Working Title.

The movie, which will star Pegg and Shaun cohort/real-life best mate, Nick Frost as two mismatched cops who team up in a West Country backwater, has been mooted for over a year now, with the delay in official news causing some people to fear that it would ever get made. However, just to put to bed the pernicious rumour (in no way started by us) that Pegg and Wright may have been slacking in any way, Pegg revealed the real reason for the delay.
“We’ve actually been writing it for most of the year!” laughed Pegg. “We’ve been working so hard on it. It’s such a complex script. I think the first draft was 235 pages long because we thought ‘oh fuck it, let’s just go for it, let’s just vomit it onto the page and see what happens’. And we’ve shaved off a hundred-odd pages, but it’s one of those things where if you remove one thing, there’s a pay-off later on that needs to be addressed.”

Oh I just can't wait!! (Although I'm going to have to. It's not out til 2007… *sobs*)

The Movie Show is up. Cam does his own show notes, but all you need to know is that I get heckled a lot, provide a piss-poor review of MirrorMask, which goes along the lines of 'it's beautiful, you should watch it', get heckled a bit more, talk about Dead Man, to the tune of 'it's wonderful, you should watch it', get heckled a lot more, enthuse quite sickeningly about the forthcoming Beowulf, something like 'it's going to be brilliant, I can't wait to watch it', and finish off with a round of heckling, just for a bit of variation.
No one should have to listen to this. No one. Specially not t'other or Neil Gaiman.

Some films are easy to sum up in a sentence. I always describe my script as 'Buffy meets Highlander in Reading', which neatly encapsulates the fantasy sword-weilding twisted suburban nature of the story and generally results in people saying 'Aaaah. I seeeee' in that knowing way that means they've never watched Buffy, can't remember Highlander and haven't been to Reading. (Lucky sods.)
Failing that sort of easy, pithy summation of the nature of the film, one can fall back on simple descriptions of the plot: Guy meets girl. Guy looses girl. Guy fights zombies. Guy wins girl back. Guy and girl live happily ever after with zombified best friend living in the garden shed. Sweet.
MirrorMask, Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's first feature film, does not really submit to either tactic:
MirrorMask is like… um… well sort of like… except no, not really. Maybe a bit like… er… well… actually not at all.
MirrorMask starts off with a girl who wants to run away from the circus and then her mum falls ill and then… well… it's just really hard to describe what happens then. Not without horrifically long and involved explanations which would do more to completely ruin the film for you than tease you into going, which is what I would rather do.
So this means I end up having to fall back on adjectives and, as Valentine indicates to the Orbiting Giants, adjectives just don't cut the mustard.
Superlatives?
No. I don't think so. I don't want people think I'm sucking up to Mr Gaiman.
If you know Neil and Dave's work already, then you're probably really looking forward to seeing MirrorMask anyway, and there's probably not much I could say to sway you either way. Not that I would want to talk anyone out of seeing it, of course, because I think it's a wonderful film. As one would expect from a Dave McKean film, it's as beautiful and lush and delightful (damn adjectives) as you would expect, with a fabulous performance from Stephanie Leonidas as Helena. Stephanie was there at the screening, along with Dave McKean (!!squeee!!), and my god, that girl is skinny. I had to fight down the impulse to run over and thrust a sandwich into her hand.
The story is 100% Gaiman, as dreamlike and fairytaleish as you can get, but without ever losing the feeling that something real is happening, something important, something life-changing. There are, of course, echoes from Neil's past – the Tower is like a souped-up Baba Yaga but without the witchiness, and Helena reminds me of Timothy Hunter from Books of Magic, and the feel of it is more than a little Mr Punch.
But if you don't know Neil and Dave already, if that last paragraph made mainly no sense, then you should seize the very first opportunity you get to go and see MirrorMask. Don't ask questions, don't think about it, just do it. And you'll have to just take my word for it that it's worth it.
(And failing that, read my friend Steve's proper review, which is much, much better than my paltry effort.)

All children should be aware of these seven words. (Thanks Nat.)

Movie Show #11 is up – me and Cam chatting about Shaun of the Dead and 28 Days Later. Go download!

So, you've seen the trailer, you've read the (admittedly crap) blog, now at last you can watch the film! Nothing Travels Faster Than Bad News is finally available online for your delight and delectation. It's about 125 meg, in WMV format, and available as a bit torrent (note: there are other bit.torrent clients available).
You can download the torrent from boinkor.net (thank you Andreas!) using any bit torrent client.

We know the sound is a bit pants in places, and we know that some of the acting is a bit pants in places, so all we can do is beg your indulgence and point out that we made this on a budget of precisely no quid whatsoever with a cast and crew of friends who happened to be kicking around at the time.
The film is released under a Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivative Works licence, but if you do want to do something with it that's not covered by the licence please email me and tell me what you're thinking of (especially if what you're thinking of involves re-encoding in different formats). If you want to mirror it, please do! Email me a link and I'll add it to this post.
Props to everyone who helped out, it would have been a very, very short film without you. Thank you.
Next stop: the festival circuit.