Soundwave 2011 – Brisbane

It’s taken me a while to get around to posting this, although I wrote it up not long after the event. Soundwave festival in Brisbane in February was awesome. Here’s my write-up:

Soundwave 11

Got there halfway through Nonpoint. Sounded good, but small crowd and I likely missed the songs I wanted to hear (Rabia, Done It Anyway), if they played them at all.

I went for a wander at that point as the next band was called Taking Dawn. The name put me off, but I caught the end of their act and they were actually pretty good – there’s a lesson for me there. I’ll check them out further I think.

First band I got to hear the whole set was The Sword from Texas. These guys are in the heavy rock bordering on doom genre (roughly – I don’t really do genres, that’s just to give you an idea. Heavy riffage instrumental to open then straight into Freya, my fave tune of theirs. They also played Maiden, Mother and Crone, another of my fave tunes of theirs. Great stuff, rocking Orange amps, Gibson V and BC Rich Mockingbird guitars.

The Sword

The Sword were followed immediately on the stage next door by Sevendust, and old favourite of mine. It’s been a while since I’d listened to them, so I didn’t have expectations about the set list. I recognised a few of the tunes, plus they did a nifty medley of Metallica’s Master of Puppets and Pantera’s Walk. I noticed Peavey 5150 amps and Dean and PRS guitars.

Sevendust

Next I sauntered over to the main stage to see Monster Magnet. It may be that it was a bit early in the day, but they seemed a little disappointed with the crowd reaction. To be honest, they’re kind of drone-y, and this might have made it difficult to get the crowd going. As you might expect, they were Marshall and Gibson all the way.

I nipped back to the 4th stage for Devildriver. They had a decent crowd and didn’t accept any slouching in the pit. I was hoping for I Dreamed I Died or Bear Witness Onto, which unfortunately I didn’t get. They had a new album out and played a few tracks from it. I think I saw Blackstar amps up there, and ESP guitars, with guitarists Jeff Kendrick and Mike Spreitzer recently getting a signature model each.

Devildriver

Back to the main stage again for Stone Sour. Say what you like about Slipknot, but Corey Taylor has an awesome voice and the frontman routine down pat. Again I thought I saw Blackstar amps alongside Orange, and I was surprised to see Fender guitars alongside a Gibson V and what I took to be Ibanez superstrats.

Stone Sour

Following Stone Sour the main stage crowd were treated to Primus, one of the bands I was most keen to see. They were pretty polarising, with as many people in the audience scratching their heads and wondering what they were witnessing as those of us that were grooving to it. Les Claypool was in fine form, laying down the classic grooves for (GUITARIST) to noodle over. (Guitarist) was playing Fender, while Claypool played a string of custom basses, including a six string that he wondered aloud why he still played. Fantastic to hear Those Damn Blue Collar Tweakers and John The Fisherman live after thinking I’d never get the opportunity.

Primus

Next up on the main stage was Slash, a far more crowd-pleasing act. He opened with Ghost from his solo album, and also played By The Sword, and my favourite track Back From Cali. The rest of the set was some Guns and Roses classics, including Night Train and Rocket Queen. The obligatory Sweet Child O Mine saw the crowd erupt in cheers, and Paradise City went down well too. Myles Kennedy is a fantastic singer, and I almost wished he hadn’t been trying to mimic the vocal sounds of the various singers on the songs that weren’t his. Unsurprisingly, Slash played Gibson through Marshall, while the other guitarist played a BC Rich Mockingbird.

Slash

After Slash I made my way back to the 4th stage for Slayer. By that time the crowd had really grown in that area and I could barely move around. As usual, Slayer were balls out aggression, and may well have been the loudest band there. I couldn’t get a decent position to see them from, so I chose to look for some food from the nearby stalls – I could still hear Slayer plenty well! This was also about the time I swapped my jandals for shoes. I couldn’t see what stand-in guitarist Gary Holt of Exodus was playing, but Kerry King was up to his usual BC Rich through a Marshall tricks. In fact, the Slayer wall of Marshall was definitely in evidence!

Slayer

I had planned to stick around the 4th stage to see Rob Zombie and his touring guitarist John 5, but there was no way I was going to get a decent spot to watch from, and I made the decision to head back to the main stage and secure a decent spot for Iron Maiden. When I saw them in Auckland I was in the crowd, and being a short guy, I decided this time I’d sit in the stands and take it all in.

I took up a spot in the stands directly in front of the main stage that Iron Maiden would be playing on. I caught the tail end of One Day As A Lion, but I didn’t find them all that exciting. There was a definite Rage-ish vibe, which I guess is unavoidable with Zac De La Roche being the frontman and seeming driving force behind the project, but with only a drummer and keyboard player on the stage with him, he struggled to fill the space the way RATM would have. The keys were going through Orange amps.

I was mildly disappointed not to be seeing Rob Zombie, although I could hear some of his set from where I was in the stand. Making up for it though was the fact that I could now see Queens Of The Stone Age. They played a great rock’n'roll set, Josh Homme is a great frontman and they had a cool stage set-up, which they filled with lots of energy. I saw a Gibson Les Paul and Homme was rocking a Gretsch, best I could tell. It was cool to hear Burn The Witch, The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret and of course, No One Knows. They had some minor sound issues, which is the second time that’s happened when I’ve seen them. I wonder if it’s something in their set-up?

Finally to the main event: Iron Maiden. I waited 20 years to see them, which I did in Auckland in early 2009 on the Somewhere Back In Time tour. I was pleased that I saw them then, because they played a classic setlist full of all the tracks I’d wanted to hear live. At Soundwave they were essentially touring their recently released The Final Frontier album, and the set list had a more recent flavour. They opened with the Satellite 15… The Final Frontier compound track from that album, with the Satellite 15 part playing over the opening video montage before the band burst onto the stage to fire into the Final Frontier part. They also played Coming Home, El Dorado, The Talisman and When The Wild Wind Blows from the album. They also played Dance of Death from the album of the same name, and Blood Brothers and Wicker Man from Brave New World. Blood Brothers was particularly poignant as they dedicated it to “our mates in New Zealand” in the wake of the Christchurch earthquake, which happened the day they arrived in Melbourne. As such, they’d been dedicating that song each night.

Iron Maiden

They managed to throw in a bunch of classic faves as well: Two Minutes To Midnight, The Evil That Men Do, Running Free, The Number Of The Beast, The Trooper, Fear Of The Dark, Hallowed Be Thy Name and of course, Iron Maiden.
These guys are still amazing. There was a minor irritation for me in that it seemed like whenever Bruce Dickinson had the mic anywhere other than pressedup against his lips, his voice just dropped away. With someone as energetic on stage as Bruce, this was quite a bit!

Iron Maiden

Guitar-wise, they’ve mainly been strat guys, with Adrian branching into Explorers and superstrats, but on this tour those two are both rocking Les Pauls for a good chunk of the set as well as their more traditional axes. Janick though is sticking with his beaten up strat, which seems to fit with his personality.

Iron Maiden

This trip would have been worth it for Iron Maiden alone, so to see so many great bands and be introduced to some cool new ones was an awesome experience. Like a lot of festivals, the heat, crowd and cost of eating were all issues, but minor ones given the quality of the event, including the marshalling of people to keep things moving freely and the free water and crowd safety patrols with water sprayers. Consider me impressed.

Soundwave crowd video on YouTube.

My preciousss

I resisted the temptation to blog about the whole fracas that went down when Warner Brothers contemplated moving production of The Hobbit overseas. There were far more connected and more erudite people blogging on the subject. While I did go a bit nuts on my Twitter feed, I didn’t think I could actually add anything by blogging on it, particularly when Russell Brown was doing such a good job of pulling it all together.

For the record I am ecstatic that The Hobbit will be filmed here. I would have loved to have seen Guillermo Del Toro‘s take on it, but having Peter Jackson at the helm will be just as good, and have better continuity with the Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

What prompted this blog post was reading this article on Stuff, particularly the comments attributed to Peter Elliott:

“It’s time to put our big boys’ pants on and get in the room and start talking.”

He said the impact of the conflict was unexpected.

“Emotions exploded,” he said.

“Now everyone is aware of how to play this game. It was a wake-up call.”

The phrase that really caught my attention was “everyone is aware of how to play this game”. I was a subscriber to the theory that the actors’ boycott of The Hobbit was the result of political machinations on the part of the Australian actors’ union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), with which the New Zealand Actors Equity (NZAE) union had aligned itself. In this light, I find Elliott’s assertion that lessons have been learned to be heartening.

New Zealanders like to think of ourselves as punching above our weight, but in some areas we just don’t understand how to conduct ourselves. If we treat Elliott’s talk of playing the game as a metaphor, then we should extrapolate that to consideration of what the stakes are in that game. In the case of The Hobbit, and the New Zealand film industry, those stakes are high indeed. Now it seems that all parts of the industry have a cast iron appreciation of how easily things could slip away.

As kiwis we seem almost to have “she’ll be right” deeply ingrained in the national psyche. Perhaps it’s our isolation, or perhaps it’s hard to hang on to our worries when we’re confronted by an abudance of natural beauty on a daily basis. Whatever the reason, I got the impression that this was exactly the attitude that the NZAE and even the Council of Trade Unions seemed to take into their boycott of The Hobbit. It is right and proper that a union should show unwavering commitment to their cause, but every statement and appearance by representatives of the union and council appeared to show a complete disbelief that Warner Brothers would take the actions that Jackson was warning of.

Clearly, when half a billion dollars is on the line, she most definitely won’t be right. It’s hard for anyone to conceive of that kind of money down here in New Zealand. There are likely to only be a handful of people working here for whom that kind of figure is a reality of their daily business. It’s almost certain that none of those people are actors. That’s not a criticism, and I can count myself among those people that aren’t operating at that level. My hope is that out of this whole sorry saga there is a better appreciation for the hardball tactics and commercial realities of big budget filmmaking among members of the New Zealand film industry.

New Zealanders are talented in all facets of filmmaking, from acting to directing, effects, costumes and the rest. Two out of the five top grossing movies of all time globally in Avatar and Return Of The King were made here, utilising local talent for a large part of their production. About the only thing we’ve really needed from overseas to make them happen has been the financing. If this episode allows our industry to move forward as a more integrated, cohesive and worldly entity, then perhaps the episode wasn’t completely without profit after all.

Battle lines drawn in the Mobile OS wars

It’s no secret that there are some major players lining up to get a slice of the smartphone / operating system market, but reading this article on Stuff got me thinking.

Who are the players and what are their strengths? What will the environment look like that they are competing in and how will this play to those strengths, or work against them?

The following has to be qualified by the fact that I’m most definitely not an authority on this stuff, these are just my (potentially flawed) observations as a casual observer.

THE PLAYERS

To my mind there are five main players at this point: Apple (iOS), Google (Android), RIM (Blackberry), Nokia (Symbian) and now Microsoft (Windows Phone 7). Microsoft are the latest to the party with WP7 seemingly regarded as their first credible foray into a smartphone OS.

Apple’s iPhone might not have been the first phone designated as smart, but it certainly was the first to really capture mainstream interest in the devices. The inbult Apple fanbase, slick marketing department, the “app store” and undeniable leap forward in user interface combined to really fire the public’s imagination, and that of the mainstream media. Suddenly it was more than just “geeks” that wanted a phone that could do more.

Of the incumbent players, Nokia is seemingly suffering the most from the smartphone revolution. I’ve owned a couple of Nokias, although none that could be considered smart, and I’ve always enjoyed the user experience in the main. Their current problems seem to be the result of trying to play catch up with the sea-change brought about by the iPhone. One are where they seem to be struggling is with the hardware – Nokia just can’t seem to come up with something that matches the iPhone for looks and performance. Without desirable handsets and competitive brand, Nokia will struggle to survive on the quality of their OS alone. It’s interesting to note that Nokia are basically in crisis mode despite still holding a majority share of the market.

Google are the up-and-comers in the market. Their Android OS is reportedly gaining market share at a faster rate than the competition. One of the central selling points that Google are promoting is the open nature of the platform. Interestingly their decision to be carrier agnostic in the USA has been a significant contributor to gaining a foothold in the market.

Microsoft are potentially onto a good thing with Windows Phone 7, so long as they can avoid tripping over their own feet. WP7 has been well received judging by the reviews that I’ve read, but Microsoft will need to avoid bloating the OS trying to make it compatible with MS-everything. I remember hearing a developer from Microsoft speaking at a conference once saying that they had the interoperability challenge with everything that they developed, with every department in the organisation having a finger in the pie. If this happens to WP7 it could be game over.

RIM are probably the odd man out in this equation. A recent (admittedly unscientific) impromptu Twitter survey by @nzben found that only one person out of around 70 said that they’d choose a Blackberry over an iPhone or Android phone, with the caveat “only if I required secure email”. Businesses love the Blackberry though, as it is the easiest option for the IT department to set up in many cases.

TRUST & SAFETY

The biggest single difference between Apple’s OS and Google’s appears to be a philosophical one: Apple’s “walled garden“, where they rigidly control the user experience, vs Google’s open approach that mimics the internet’s wild west. On the face of it this is a point that should work in Apple’s favour. They can be sure that nobody will ever deliver a substandard application or piece of hardware that could tarnish their image. Apple fans can usually distil their appreciation into a single phrase: “it just works”. Conversely, Google can’t promise that you won’t buy an Android phone that’s running an old version of the software and can’t be upgraded, or one with all manner of phone company alterations. They can’t guarantee that you’ll get a handset that is well built, works quickly and is easy to operate. The strength of Google’s challenge comes not from what it can offer the consumer, but from what it can offer to phone companies and carriers.

Already we can see Android appearing on phones that cost below $200, and that’s New Zealand dollars, not greenbacks. Google are prepared to spread their OS far and wide, and mobile makers and carriers are only too happy to ride on their brand recognition. Many consumers buy phones with a minimum of research, and being able to associate their products with household name must be an attractive marketing carrot.

I suspect that once Android well and truly takes off, malicious apps will start to become a big problem in the same way that phishing and other emails and websites are an issue for web users now. It’s difficult to know whether the consumer will seek refuge inside Apple’s walled garden or take their chances, much as they do now with the internet. Given the general lack of knowledge among consumers about these issues currently, it’s quite possible that it will be the latter, especially at the low price points.

OPEN

If Google has a point of difference to sell to consumers, it is openness. As previously mentioned, this isn’t something that the mainstream population will be likely to care about, but it will appeal to the segment of the community that values this trait. There’s a community of developers that will enjoy being able to craft apps that they can sell without going through Apple’s reportedly draconian vetting process. They can even mess with the Android source code if they want to. That could be a powerful attraction for some.

THE FUTURE

So what does the future look like in all of this? I believe that the smartphone is simply an evolutionary step, much like CDs replacing cassettes. Eventually when you go to buy a phone, it’ll be smart by default. Gadget lovers will continue to pursue high end options like the iPhone or HTC’s Android-powered Desire HD.

Interestingly enough, Microsoft could stand to be the dark horse that spoils Apple and Google’s two horse race. They cover the middle ground between  the extremes of Google and Apple. It could be argued that Nokia also fit this niche, but they’re yet to produce something to recapture the imagination of the public. Microsoft may not be popular among many technical people; however, like Google, it’s a household name, and that name recognition could prove beneficial. Windows Phone 7 will also be likely to follow Android onto a succession of entry-level phones, helping Microsoft to cement its foothold in the market. Microsoft currently set minimum hardware standards for their PC operating systems, but Vista in particular showed that they’re somewhat generous with those standards. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this continue in the mobile market.

My prediction is that Google will become the dominant player in the market as it engages Microsoft in a battle for the low-to-medium level phones. Both will compete with Apple in the high end market, but Apple will eventually wind up relegated to a niche market, albeit a large one. Nokia will continue to slide and may well end up battling for survival. They may even succumb eventually to using Android or WP7 and concentrate on producing quality handsets again. RIM is likely to continue in the business niche for as long as email is the dominant method of corporate communication.

Projectile vomiting? 3D meets Jackass

I’ll admit it, I’m a Jackass fan. I know it’s immature. I know it’s peurile. I just don’t really care. I’m mildly in awe of the audacity of the stunts that they pull, and the contraptions that they build. The gross out stuff is one of the few things on film that still makes me feel the need to look away, although that does nothing to block out the noises, which are somehow worse.

Chris Schultz in his review on Stuff wrote:

“Jackass 3D – the third film to emerge from the hit MTV TV show that first aired 10 years ago – proves Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera and co are starting to grow weary of their painful shenanigans.”

I agree that they do indeed seem to be a bit more reticent to throw themselves into harm’s way. The boylike glee that they used to exhibit has been replaced with an air of resignation. You almost expect one of them to bust out Danny Glover’s immortal line from the Lethal Weapon series: “I’m getting too old for this shit“.

Rather than being offputting, I found this endeared me to the film even more. It made the crew seem more human, and somehow easier to relate to. It gave it a bit more gravity when they took one for the team, so to speak, all in the name of entertainment.

Make no mistake, these guys haven’t taken all those shots to the groin in the name of entertainment alone. They might still get a kick out of the lifestyle – running round naked in the sun and pranking each other – but they’ve all done very nicely out of it. In one scene they use a Lamborghini as part of one of the stunts, and I’m fairly sure it belongs to Bam Margera. And it’s not the same one he had in Jackass 2. If I’d have known in my teens that this was possible I would have carted a video camera round everywhere and filmed my mates going about their usual business…

I appreciated the fact that they actually used the 3D for more than just gimmicks. They set up some shots to use the 3D to accentuate the action rather than just make stuff fly out of the screen at you (although there is an element of that). Some scenes really make the landscape pop. In one scene I almost felt like I was looking through an old viewmaster.

My verdict? If you’re already a fan, this is a worthy addition to the canon, and is worth seeing at the movies, even if 3D adds four bucks more to the already exorbitant ticket prices. If you’re not a fan, this is not going to convert you, it really is more of the same. Personally I loved seeing Johnny Knoxville laughing like a loon after being run over by several buffalo for what felt like the last time. I wouldn’t be too surprised to see Knoxville bringing through a new generation of Jackasses and acting as producer and mentor in order to keep the golden goose alive. On the strength of Jackass 3D, I know I’d keep paying, even if I can see ten thousand hours of the same thing on YouTube for free. Three and a half fractured femurs from me.

Expendable by name…

Unfortunately, as the title may suggest, Sylvester Stallone’s latest action flick The Expendables is exactly that. I went in with tempered expectations based on a couple of reviews I’d read, but even then I wasn’t prepared for the deficiencies the film displayed.

For those of you unfamiliar with The Expendables, this long-gestating project was the brainchild of Sly Stallone, and involved bringing together as many badass action stars as he could lay his hands on. The final casting is indeed impressive, with Jason Statham, Jet Li, Randy Couture, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Eric Roberts, Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Gary Daniels, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger all stepping up to join Stallone.

There’s a touch of misdirection in there though. Bruce and Ah-nold only make a cameo appearance, which is disappointing – but only a little. Why is this? Well, for one thing, Arnie is a little rusty in the acting department. Given that he was never much of a dramatic tour-de-force, the fact that this is worth mentioning gives you some idea of just how rusty he is.

The other thing is that this movie just feels at least ten years too late. Some of these guys like Sly and Jet Li have aged well. Even Mickey Rourke seems to have weathered a few storms and come out the other side okay. But a couple of them haven’t fared as well, and Arnie is one of them. When he comes striding into the church for his scene with Sly and Bruce, he’s dressed like a refugee from a Florida retirement village – high-waisted pants and all. None of this is taken into account in the story, with every member of the team as spry and sprightly as they were on VHS in the 80s and 90s.

Where this movie really falls down is the dialogue. The banter and chemistry in action movies is what elevates them from a simple exercise in “blowing shit up”. In The Expendables, the banter is pretty poorly written in most places, and anything that might be decent is generally masked by some average delivery (or worse). Contrast with something like Shane Black’s work on Last Boyscout or Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, delivered by the likes of Bruce Willis and Robert Downey Jr. There’s just a gulf there, and The Expendables suffers from the comparison.

I also found that a great deal of the action to be less than exhilirating. In some cases it was hard to follow, and that can get boring pretty quickly. What I had less of a problem with was the oft-debated use of CGI blood rather than practical effects. It was noticable in a couple of places, but not distracting or out of place in the hyper-stylised violence context.

All of this sounds like I hated The Expendables, and that simply isn’t the case. I gave myself over to the cheesiness of it and tried to bask in the nostalgic glow of a throwback to the action movies I enjoyed growing up. I appreciated the intent behind the film, and Stallone and Statham both come through it pretty well, which is just as well as they’re the core of the film. But good intentions can’t overcome the film’s deficiencies, and as such I can only offer 2 jaffas out of 5.

Slacker

Its been a while since I last posted on here, which may have something to do with the fact that my daughter just turned six months old. Having a baby in the house has seriously curtailed my movie watching time. As a result, I’ve decided to refocus my blog a little and throw in a lot more random thoughts and topics. Hopefully this will spur me to update more often, rather than just throwing my two cents worth in every time I go to the movies.

I have managed to catch a few over the last six months. My wife and I went to see Taika Waititi‘s wonderful film Boy for our first date night after the baby was born. Leaving our wee girl with her grandparents for the night was a tad difficult, but Boy was such a charming and engaging movie that we were able to survive with just a couple of texts back to Nana to make sure everything was okay.

I made a point of seeing the Nimrod Antal directed, Robert Rodriguez produced Predators. I enjoyed this film, but felt that it suffered somewhat from coming so long after the original, and couldn’t entirely escape the stigma of the Alien vs Predator films.

The real jewel in the crown of my cinematic viewing this year has to be Inception. Christopher Nolan‘s first film since his successful Batman sequel The Dark Knight cements Nolan as one of the most talented and exciting filmmakers working today. Inception, like The Dark Knight,  was lauded by critics and a box office winner. It’s smart, gritty, and moves at a pace that demands the viewer’s attention. If you can’t keep up, this film isn’t going to hold your hand. This sumptuously shot work of imagination demands to be seen on the big screen, so if you can find it still showing at a cinema somewhere I strongly advise seeing it there.

So there you have it: the last six months of my moviegoing life in three paragraphs. Like I said, I’ll try to blog more frequently on a more diverse range of topics. I’ll leave you with a pic of my little girl.

My daughter and her giraffe.

Avatar.OMG.

Okay, in the interests of full disclosure, for those of you that haven’t read my previous post, yes, I am in Avatar. I was an extra, and I’m on screen for approximately four seconds of the two hour and forty minute running time. I got to see it tonight in a free preview put on by The Rock radio station.

So with that out of the way, I now have to try and sum up what I just saw. We’ve been hearing for months about how Avatar was going to revolutionise film forever. Hype like that is hard to live up to, but here it is folks: Avatar really is like nothing you’ve seen before. Light spoilers ahead only.

The story is something you’ve seen before. It’s been described as Dances With Wolves in space, which isn’t entirely unfair, but it’s more of an eco-parable, borrowing from the modern themes of environmentalism and military incursions for the purpose of mining natural resources. The plot and dialogue are good enough, the characters are strong and most have some sort of story arc. But let’s face it, they only had to be adequate in this context, becuase they’re really just an excuse for James Cameron to kick your eyeballs out the back wall of the theater.

I cannot stress this enough: SEE THIS FILM IN 3D AT THE CINEMA. That is the only way you will get the full effect of what Cameron has done. You can see every dollar of the reputed $200 million that was spent up on the screen. You just don’t get any sense of how it looks up there by watching the TV ads or internet videos. The Na’vi are beautifully realised, as is the military tech that Cameron has been doing so well since Aliens. Weta Workshop have done an incredible job, and if they don’t get the VFX Oscar then the Academy should just stop giving them out.

Also Oscar worthy, in my opinion, is Zoe Saldana‘s performance as Na’vi woman Neytiri. The quality of the motion capture and effects work mean that her character work shows through completely. Saldana inhabits the character with a feral beauty and dignity, and her expressions and movements do more to make the Na’vi believable than any of the other actors.

EDIT: I rushed this review out last night, and forgot to mention the outstanding work of Stephen Lang as Colonel Quaritch. He is one tough, mean badass sumbitch, and imbues the action with a real sense of menace. With a dangerous adversary like Quaritch out there, you really don’t know whether your favourite characters are going to make it through.

So to recap, don’t go into Avatar expecting a new story that you’ve never heard before. DO go into Avatar expecting to see that story told in a new way, and expect that new way to blow you away. James Cameron has raised the bar on the visual spectacular to a point that even he will have trouble matching. See it. See it in 3d.

Famous at last – kinda

CBS 60 Minutes made this Avatar interview available with James Cameron as an embed. I can’t embed it here since it’s a hosted WordPress blog, but I’ve linked to it below over at CBS. I was shocked to find that at around the 59 second mark you can totally see the back of me! I was privileged to spend a day as an extra, and watching James Cameron and Stephen Lang work was something I’ll never forget.

I’m to the left of the shot wearing a blue shirt. Yeah, that’s right, the balding guy…

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5737218n&tag=api

EDIT 23/11/2009:

Thankfully this has been posted on YouTube by a couple of people, so here’s an embed of part one of the story.

R. Pats has a lot to answer for

Just watched The Haunted Airman. We needed a DVD that we could agree on, and this seemed to fit the bill. It’s an adaptation of a book called The Haunting of Toby Jugg by Dennis Wheatley, which I read when I was younger. It freaked the crap outta me then, and I’ve been waiting a long time to see an adaptation on the screen. My wife suggested it because it contained a healthy dose of one Robert Pattinson.
Turns out it was a made-for-TV BBC production packaged up on DVD to cash in on R. Pats’ new-found fame with the tween set. And it was awful.
See, when you’re adapting something, it usually pays to do more than just take the central premise and then turn it into something unrecognisable. The novel was tense and cerebral. The “film” was dull, slow and pointless, culminating in a nonsensical ending that made me wish I’d been more astute in Video Ezy and realised what a pile o’shite I had in my hands while I still had the chance to grab something else.
In a word: disappointing. Avoid, even if the tween in your life (or your wife!) is begging you to hire it.

Star Trekkin’

I’ve been fortunate enough to catch three movies on my “watchlist” in the past week: Wolverine, Flight 666 (Iron Maiden doco) and Star Trek. I’ve been a bit slack on blogging movies I’ve seen recently, having not bothered to record my thoughts on Role Models or Zack and Miri Make A Porno. I may well have continued slacking, but The Ascot asked me to provide a Star Trek review for their newsletter, so I’ve been stung into action.

First off I have to declare my colours as a Star Trek fan (but not a fanatic – no prosthetic ears or Klingon dictionary for me!), and also a fan of JJ Abrams. Consequently I went into the new Star Trek movie with high expectations, and I wasn’t disappointed.

The writers have done a fine job of interlacing aspects of classic Trek mythology and events into a story that rather cleverly allows for new adventures of a young crew. It’s not giving too much away to say that the script messes around a bit with time, but leaves very few obvious holes to get hung up on.

The cast give magnificent performances that are engaging enough for new viewers, but will recall the original players to existing fans. I have to single out our own Karl Urban for his Bones McCoy. He stamps his authority on the character while still giving a pitch perfect nod to the original actor DeForest Kelly.

Special effects pretty much shame every other Star Trek outing – the budget that Abrams had really shows here as being well above any of the other Trek films, and technology in effects is put to good use. Abrams also avoids the trap of CGI effects that are too obviously computer generated. The ships and planets have a real depth and weight on screen that can often be missed with CGI.

Overall I have to give this a solid 4.5 stars out of 5. There were only a couple of things that prevented this being a 5 star effort for me, but I can’t clue you in without getting into spoiler territory. Rest assured that they are minor nitpicks, and this is a must-see film.