1. I've really enjoyed watching Polar Bear Week with Nigel Marven (wow, what a bolt from the blue, eh?) but I couldn't help noticing something familiar about the main man...
Oh, you don't think so ? Well, it's all too easy to crit there siticizing... (sorry)
2. Went to see "I am Legend" at the flicks the other day and it was mostly bloody marvellous. Surprisingly thoughtful and restrained in tone for the first three quarters or so, intelligent and un-Hollywood like, and a good few divisions above the no-brainer shoot-'em-up b-movie fate that I feared it might have been heading for when reading of it's troubled development over the years. In fact, it turned out (mainly) to be less an action movie, more a meditation on the central character's desperate attempts to stay sane in the face of the starkest isolation possible... with the revelation of big Willie nailing his role down as easily as cracking open a can of cold beer. That lad is a proper actor, yet he can still somehow bring through his old Fresh Prince likeability and have it as just another string to his bow, not the credibility millstone it might have been. Yes, in fact, he was even better than Chuck in The Omega Man. High praise indeed from this particular seventies sci-fi nut, believe me...
The subtle CGI for the empty, overgrown New Yoik setting was astonishing, utterly convincing from the get-go, a prime example of the sfx field at its very apex - sadly the work done on the infected "zombies" when they eventually surfaced was the diametric opposite, rubbery, unreal, cut-and-paste baddies (who all shared exactly the same f***ing face, jeez, this is 2007 FFS!!!) which never once threatened to look like they were ever real, individual, human beings in the way the story demanded, putting the kibosh on any of the unsettling undercurrents that the audience is supposed to feel in this sub-genre (say, the "they're coming to get you Barbara" Johnny moment when he comes back near the end of "Night of the Living Dead"). In fact, the whole thing did finally head out of the door in the rush to the usual generic, action packed climax - we couldn't really expect a movie of this epic budget to hold back the barbarians of idiocy from the door for the whole duration. But, thankfully, they didn't fully sell out on the ending. It deserved that at least. I just wish that the old Johnny Depp as Ben Cortman rumour had been true. I'd certainly buy that for a dollar...
3. I didn't succumb and buy a Wii but the potential of the kind of thing shown below makes me hope the big N will continue to hand $ony and M$ their collective a$$e$ in 2008. I implore you to watch this, honestly. Bottled brilliance.
Anyhoo, folks, I'm off to watch "The Third Man" - all the best in 2008... Slàinte Mhath !!!
