Oscar predictions 2008

Trying to second-guess who and what the Academy will deem gong-worthy at tomorrow's 80th Annual Academy Awards ceremony is almost the dictionary definition of a fool's game, but hey, I've never shied away from fooldom before (or, for that matter, from making up new words). Below are my predictions for who will be waking up with an Oscar in their pocket on Monday morning.

If you think I'm way off beam and you could do better, please post your predictions before midnight (GMT) on Sunday (either by commenting on this entry or by posting on your own blog and linking back). The highest score gets a bag of Jelly Babies. It's out of fifteen (I've omitted some of the more specialist categories) and the full list of nominations can be found here.

Interestingly, the category I spent longest agonising over was Best Cinematography which boasts five genuinely outstanding nominations, including two from the magisterial Roger Deakins ('No Country For Old Men' and 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford').

Best Picture: No Country For Old Men a
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood) a
Best Actress: Julie Christie (Away From Her) r
Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem (No Country For Old Men) a
Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett (I'm Not There) r
Best Director: Joel & Ethan Coen (No Country For Old Men) a
Best Adapted Screenplay: No Country For Old Men a
Best Original Screenplay: Juno a
Best Original Score: Atonement a
Best Song: Falling Slowly (Once) a
Best Foreign Language Film: The Counterfeiters a
Best Animated Feature Film: Ratatouille a
Best Art Direction: There Will Be Blood r
Best Cinematography: No Country For Old Men r
Best Documentary Feature: Sicko r

Update (25th February 7:00): I got 10/15 - the Jelly Babies are mine, all mine... (full winners here)

Related fabric of folly posts:
My Top 25 Films of 2007
40 best songs from film soundtracks
Mild peril: The inadvertent humour of film advisory warnings

Photo: Caleb Sconosciuto. Used under licence

My Top 25 Films of 2007

Yes, it's that time of year again when Dan makes lists. First up is my Top 25 Films of 2007 (pared down after last year's rather excessive 30). As always, only movies released in UK cinemas during the last calendar year are eligible (hence no There Will Be Blood or No Country For Old Men - early front-runners for my 2008 list). First, a bit of preamble...

All said and done, 2007 wasn't a great year for mainstream Hollywood, with the box office dominated by a procession of lacklustre threequels (Ocean's Thirteen, Spider-Man 3, Rush Hour 3, Shrek the Third and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End), over-hyped gross-out comedies (Superbad, Knocked Up, The Heartbreak Kid) and an unwelcome second serving of 'torture porn' (Captivity, Hostel Part II etc.)

It wasn't all bad of course - some of Hollywood's biggest hitters turned in some pretty fine films. Ridley Scott (American Gangster), David Fincher (Zodiac) and Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Ultimatum) all acquitted themselves admirably and The Simpsons' first big screen outing was way better than widely reported. There were also a couple of modest US indie gems in the shape of Waitress and Half Nelson.

However the real cinematic gold was mostly to be found on this side of the pond, for 2007 was another golden year for European cinema and drama in particular. Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Ireland and the UK between them account for ten of my top fifteen films. Australia also punched above it's weight with Ten Canoes and the haunting Jindabyne, adapted from the Raymond Carver short story 'So Much Water So Close to Home'. It was a strong year for adaptations in general with Atonement, The Last King of Scotland, Tell No One, The Counterfeiters, Blame It On Fidel! and Zodiac all making successful transitions from page to screen.

After a couple of outstanding years for documentary film-making, pickings were slightly slimmer this year, although In The Shadow Of The Moon proved thoroughly engrossing and Michael Moore was as watchable as ever in his latest polemic, Sicko.

Biggest cinematic disappointment of the year for me was David Lynch's Inland Empire. As a huge fan of The Straight Story and an admirer of The Elephant Man and Mulholland Drive, I had high hopes, especially after reading Damon Wise's five star review in Empire. Unfortunately it's 3 hour running time felt more like 6 as one overly portentous scene followed another. The man is clearly a genius but a bit of discipline in the editing room frankly wouldn't go amiss...

In terms of performances, my Best Actress shortlist would have to include Laura Linney (Jindabyrne), Rinko Kikuchi (Babel) and Julie Christie (Away From Her). Best Actor would be between Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises), Forest Whitaker (Last King of Scotland) and the now sadly departed Ulrich Mühe (The Lives of Others). Best cinematic debut would be between the contrasting but equally brilliant Jodie Whittaker (Venus), Markéta Irglová (Once) and Ai Qin Lin (Ghosts).

So without further ado, here's the list:

		The Lives Of Others (dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
		Jindabyne (dir. Ray Lawrence)
		Once (dir. John Carney)
		Atonement (dir. Joe Wright)
		Tell No One (dir. Guillaume Canet)
		The Counterfeiters (dir. Stefan Ruzowitzky)
		Eastern Promises (dir. David Cronenberg)
		The Last King Of Scotland (dir. Kevin Macdonald)
		Babel (dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu)
		In The Shadow Of The Moon (dir. David Sington)
		Zodiac (dir. David Fincher)
		Blame It On Fidel! (dir. Julie Gavras)
		Ghosts (dir. Nick Broomfield)
		2 Days In Paris (dir. Julie Delpy)
		The Science Of Sleep (dir. Michel Gondry)
		Amercian Gangster (dir. Ridley Scott)
		The Simpsons Movie (dir. David Silverman)
		Sicko (dir. Michael Moore)
		Half Nelson (dir. Ryan Fleck)
		Blood Diamond (dir. Edward Zwick)
		The Bourne Ultimatum (dir. Paul Greengrass)
		Waitress (dir. Adrienne Shelly)
		Black Book (dir. Paul Verhoeven)
		Ten Canoes (dir. Rolf de Heer & Peter Djigirr)
		Venus (dir. Roger Michell)

Related posts:
My Top 30 Films of 2006
My Top 25 Films of 2005
My Top 20 Films of 2004

40 best songs from film soundtracks

Thursday's post on Listphile has got me itching to create a new list and with over three months to go until my end of year film and music rounds-ups I thought I'd tide myself over with a list of the 40 best songs from movie soundtracks. Obviously wholly subjective so don't go complaining that there's no Celine Dion or Bryan Adams...

The rules:
- No themes (hence no Star Wars, E.T, Raiders, Bond etc.)
- No musicals (although I've given The Blues Brothers a special dispensation)
- Nothing from before the Summer of Love
- Nothing from an irredeemably bad film

1. Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley (The Edukators, 2004)
2. Stand By Me - Ben E. King (Stand By Me, 1986)
3. You Never Can Tell - Chuck Berry (Pulp Fiction, 1994)
4. Mrs. Robinson - Simon & Garfunkel (The Graduate, 1967)
5. Son of a Preacher Man - Dusty Springfield (Pulp Fiction, 1994)
6. Wouldn't It Be Nice - The Beach Boys (The Big Chill, 1983)
7. Things Have Changed - Bob Dylan (Wonder Boys, 2000)
8. A Life Less Ordinary - Ash (A Life Less Ordinary, 1997)
9. It Ain't Me Babe - Joaquin Phoenix & Resse Witherspoon (Walk The Line, 2005)
10. Stuck In The Middle With You - Stealers Wheel (Reservoir Dogs, 1992)
11. Sinnerman - Nina Simone - (The Thomas Crown Affair, 1999)
12. Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Is In) - Kenny Rogers & The First Edition (The Big Lebowski, 1998)
13. Dry The Rain - The Beta Band (High Fidelity, 2000)
14. Blister in the Sun - Violent Femmes (Grosse Pointe Blank, 1997)
15. Where Is My Mind? - Pixies (Fight Club, 1999)
16. Layla - Derek And The Dominos (Goodfellas, 1990)
17. Tiny Dancer - Elton John (Almost Famous, 2000)
18. Wise Up - Aimee Mann (Magnolia, 1999)
19. Come What May - Nicole Kidman & Ewan McGregor (Moulin Rouge!, 2001)
20. You Can't Always Get What You Want - The Rolling Stones (The Big Chill, 1983)
21. Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You - Andy Williams (Bridget Jones's Diary, 2001)
22. Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison (Born of the Fourth of July, 1989)
23. Feeling Good - Nina Simone (The Assassin, 1993)
24. The Power of Love - Huey Lewis & The News (Back to the Future, 1985)
25. I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow - The Soggy Bottom Boys (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, 2000)
26. Everybody Needs Somebody To Love - The Blues Brothers (The Blues Brothers, 1980)
27. Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon - Urge Overkill (Pulp Fiction, 1994)
28. Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head - B.J. Thomas (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969)
29. Everything In Its Right Place - Radiohead (Vanilla Sky, 2001)
30. Playground Love - Air (The Virgin Suicides, 1999)
31. Talk Show Host - Radiohead (Romeo + Juliet, 1996)
32. Porcelain - Moby (The Beach, 2000)
33. Born Slippy - Underworld (Trainspotting, 1996)
34. Perfect Day - Lou Reed (Trainspotting, 1996)
35. Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen (Wayne's World, 1992)
36. Mad World - Gary Jules and Michael Andrews (Donnie Darko, 2001)
37. Lose Yourself - Eminem (8 Mile, 2002)
38. I Want You To Want Me - Letters To Cleo (10 Things I Hate About You, 1999)
39. Eye of the Tiger - Survivor (Rocky III, 1982)
40. Live and Let Die - Wings (Live and Let Die, 1973)

Update: Added to Amazon UnSpun (thanks for the suggestion, Fraser)

VHS videos - free to a good home

Somewhat belatedly (and more than two years after technical laggards Dixons) I've decided to clear some shelf space and bid a final farewell to what's left of my VHS collection. Rather than spend hours listing the tapes on eBay/Amazon or carting them down to my local Blockbusters (only to be offered a derisory sum for what are some of my favourite movies of all time), I've decided to give them away for free on a first come first served basis. Just email me (dan at fabricoffolly.co.uk) stating which video(s) you'd like (freeloader pays postage). Will be interesting to see whether the VHS market has now dropped away to the point where you can't even give tapes away for free. Will give it a couple of weeks then whatever's left will be dispatched to a charity shop on the Walworth Road...

8 Mile
Aliens
The Big Lebowski
Boogie Nights
Carrie
Chinatown
Close Encounters on the Third Kind
Dr. Strangelove
Fargo
Fight Club
Get Shorty
Ghost World
Go
The Godfather Part II
The Graduate
Jackie Brown
JFK
L.A. Confidential
Live Flesh
Memento
The Negotiator
Nixon
Orphans
Pulp Fiction
Raging Bull
Rain Main
Reservoir Dogs
Seven
Stand By Me
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Taxi Driver
Trainspotting
The Truman Show
The Usual Suspects
Wonder Boys
Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave

My media consumption diet

With nods to Jeremiah Owyang for kick starting this meme and James Cridland for alerting me to it via his blog, below is a rough approximation of my media consumption diet.



(chart created using Zoho Sheet)

Web

The web is undoubtedly my main media channel (maybe because it encompasses all of the below in one?). Excluding work access, I reckon I stack up around 18 hours of web access a week, which probably breaks down something like this: reading blogs/news feeds (5 hours), trying out new sites (4 hours), writing this blog (4 hours), emailing (2 hours), searching for information (1 hour), Flickring (30 mins), buying stuff (30 mins), selling stuff (30 mins), website design/maintenance (30 mins).

Estimated time spent per week: 18 hours

Music

Having parted company with the bulk of my CD collection last year, the vast majority of my music listening (excluding radio) is now done either via iTunes or on my iPod. According to last.fm I've listened to 11,355 tracks since registering at the end of February 2005, which works out just over 100 tracks a week. Assuming a average track duration of 3 minutes, I'm averaging around five and a half hours of music listening a week. Factoring in the listening which last.fm fails to capture I reckon the actual figure is nearer 7 hours a week.

Estimated time spent per week: 7 hours

TV

As previously posted, I don't watch a great deal of live TV, with DVD boxsets and downloads accounting for the vast majority of my TV viewing. It also fair to say that I have something of a penchant for US drama. In the past 12 months I've plowed through assorted seasons of Lost, House, Desperate Housewives, 24, The O.C., The Sopranos, The West Wing, Six Feet Under and Entourage. For my money, the standout UK series of last year was Planet Earth which just blew me away.

Estimated time spent per week: 7 hours

Radio

It's a dilemma whether to count ambient radio listening as, like Mr. Cridland, I work in an office where the radio is always on. In terms of active radio listening then its Jonathan Ross on Radio 2 on a Saturday morning, Stephen Merchant on 6 Music (via the BBC Radio Player as I'm not normally near a radio on a Sunday afternoon) and snatches of the Today programme as I get ready for work. Excluding ambient listening I reckon it's around 5 hours a week; including, it's probably more like 35.

Estimated time spent per week: 5 hours

Books

I have something of a famine or feast mentality when it comes to books, depending on whether I'm on holiday or not. I read 18 books last year but almost none of them whilst in this country. Last year's reading list was predominantly a mix of contemporary fiction (Rupert Thomson, David Mitchell, Jonathan Safran Foer, Patrick Neate) and media geek must-reads (The Long Tail, The Tipping Point, Freakonomics, Everything Bad is Good for You). Assuming an average reading time of 6 hours per book, I spent 108 hours reading last year which works out at just over 2 hours per week.

Estimated time spent per week: 2 hours

Newspapers

I buy The Guardian on Mondays (for the Media supplement), Thursdays (for the Technology supplement) and Saturdays (for the magazine and The Guide). I occasionally get caught without something to read on the tube and pick up one of the London freesheets but invariably feel dirty afterwards.

Estimated time spent per week: 2 hours

Films

Films are an enduring passion of mine although I try to only see films I think will be worth the investment (which I guess is why 30 of the 40 films I saw last year appeared in my films of 2006 list). Of that 40, I watched 23 at the cinema and 17 on DVD. Assuming an average running time of 2 hours (the days of the 90 minute movie are all but gone), I spent 80 hours watching films last year which works out at one and a half hours per week.

Estimated time spent per week: 1 hour 30 mins

Magazines

My long-standing subscriptions to Q, Sight & Sound and PC Format all fell by the wayside some time ago and the only magazines I still subscribe to at home are Empire (still the bible for movie lovers) and Web User (can't be wrong for £1.99). I also tend to leaf through the office copies of Stuff, T3, .net and Wired, although less so now that Engadget is taking care of my gadget obsession in a more timely fashion.

Estimated time spent per week: 45 mins

Podcasts

Despite the dozens of podcast subscriptions currently eating up my hard disk/bandwidth, there's actually only one podcast which I listen to religiously and that's Mark Kermode's Film Reviews. Clipped from Friday's edition of the Simon Mayo show on BBC Radio Five Live, it's half an hour of pure radio gold. More occasional listens include the Best of Moyles enhanced and Media Talk from Guardian Unlimited.

Estimated time spent per week: 30 mins

Video games

Until the arrival of my Wii on Tuesday I would've put a big fat zero down for video games, but having had a quick go on the game-changing Wii Sports (and with WarioWare Smooth Moves and Zelda: Twilight Princess waiting to be unwrapped) I think I may have to revise that figure. Let's start with a conservative estimate of 20 minutes.

Estimated time spent per week: 20 mins

Conclusions

- I spend 44 hours a week (39% of my waking hours) consuming some sort of media (although some of those hours are concurrent)
- My media consumption habits aren't very typical

Flixster vs. IMDb

Much as I love The Internet Movie Database, it's fair to say that it hasn't changed that much in recent years, either in appearance or functionality. Don't believe me? Check out the site as it was back in October 2000 (courtesy of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine) and then play spot the difference with the current site.

Whilst there's certainly something to be said for the 'if it ain't broke' approach, the IMDb's reluctance to mess with a winning formula has created space for a new kind of online movie database to take things in a different direction.

Launched in January 2006, but largely kept under the promotional radar until last November whilst the site was developed, Flixster is hoping to be that new direction. Unable to compete with the IMDb in terms of comprehensiveness, it's key differentiator is that it places its users (rather than the movies) centre-stage.

Whilst music-lovers have been spoilt for choice with regards to social networking sites, film buffs have been somewhat under-served in the Web 2.0 department. It's not that the IMDb is without any interactive features (it has ratings, personalised showtimes, message boards, polls), they're just not very well executed or integrated with the rest of the site. Not so Flixster, which has taken every opportunity to weave its users into the fabric of the site.

Below is a look at some key areas of functionality and how the two sites compare.

Ratings

Ratings are at the heart of the Flixster offering. In addition to rating movies you've seen (a feature which the IMDb also offers), Flixster encourages you to flag films you've not yet watched with either 'Want to see it' or 'Not interested', not only allowing the site to build up a more detailed picture of your viewing preferences but also generating a list of films you're keen to see, both at the cinema and on DVD. Whilst it is possible to create similar lists using the IMDb's cumbersome 'My Movies' area, it's a laborious process compared with Flixster's one-click approach.

Another nice feature from Flixster in the ratings area is the ability to see how your community of friends rated a particular movie. You can also see the gender split on any given title (the IMDb does have demographic breakdowns of its ratings but they're tucked away on a separate page).

Recommendations

Both sites offer Amazon-style 'Like This? Try This' recommendations. The difference is that Flixster's recommendations can be voted on by other users (thumbs up or thumbs down), whereas IMDb users only have the option of disagreeing with a recommendation (i.e. they can't endorse an existing suggestion). Recommendations are, by their nature, subjective but I have to say I was more convinced by Flixster's suggested alternatives to Magnolia (Boogie Nights, Short Cuts and 21 Grams) than by the IMDb's (The Living and the Dead, Blue Velvet and The Devil's Advocate).

Flixster also enables you to recommend a title to specific friends in your network or you can make use of its simple (but awesome) 'Movie Night Planning Tool' which compares the films you want to see with those your friends have earmarked, to come up with a list of mutually agreeable titles from which to plan your evening's viewing.

News

The IMDb's News area features syndicated celebrity news from the World Entertainment News Network and movie news from Studio Briefing. Flixster adopts more of a digg approach, allowing users to submit and rate news stories from anywhere on the web. The quality may be variable but it feels a whole lot more dynamic.

Interface

Whilst Flixster is unlikely to win any design awards anytime soon, its interface is a damn sight more visually appealing than the IMDb which is in desperate need of a lick of paint. An intriguing design element of Flixster is user-submitted 'skins' themed around particular movies or actors, which can be applied to your own profile. Admittedly some of them look like bad MySpace pages but you can always switch them off.

There's a lot of talk about machine-readable URLs these days. Well, Flixster gets bonus points for having human-readable URLs. Unlike the IMDb, which assigns each entry a number, Flixster uses the actual name of the film in the URL (appending year of release where there's more than one title) making it easy to find pages without having to use the site's search engine.

Information

The one area in which the IMDb comfortably walks it is quality and quantity of information. Having existed in some form since 1989, the IMDb is unrivalled as a source of movie data and it's unlikely that Flixster will ever catch up in this area (not least because it isn't currently capturing cast and crew information beyond the names of the director and lead actors). Whilst I can understand why Flixster has opted not to go head-to-head with the IMDb in this area, it does put a ceiling on potential converts, with serious movie buffs unlikely to put up with Flixster's more superficial treatment of production information.

Discussion

The IMDb's primary discussion forum is its message boards, although it also allows users to submit comments (which tend to be more like reviews). Flixster doesn't have a message board but does offer separate reviews and comments sections. In terms of quality of debate, the IMDb currently has the edge, with Flixster's demographic skewing the conversation towards discussion of the attractiveness of the leads.

Associated media

Their approach to associated media is another point of difference between the two sites. Whilst the IMDb only hosts photo galleries for a selection of entries and links to external photos and A/V clips, Flixster invites users to upload images and videos for any entry in the database.

Summary

Whilst the IMDb is undoubtedly more comprehensive and authoritative, Flixster has taken advantage of starting with a blank piece of paper in a Web 2.0 world and has outflanked the IMDb on almost every aspect of interactivity. I will doubtless continue to use the IMDb as a reference but suspect I will be spending more of my time on Flixster.

It's a cautionary tale for other established Web 1.0 players tempted to rest on their laurels. There are no sacred cows in the online space and if another site is providing a better service then your users will defect. Flixster is still not in the same league as the IMDb in terms of usage, but it has seen rapid growth in the past 12 months whilst traffic to the IMDb has remained flat.



Right, I'm off to play The Never-Ending Movie Quiz...

UPDATE: Somewhat inevitably, the IMDb began rolling out a phased redesign (starting with the name and title pages) just two days after I posted this. In development for almost a year, the changes are mostly cosmetic at this stage although they've still managed to cause consternation amongst a section of IMDb die-hards. Kudos to Col Needham (founder and managing director of the IMDb) for his full and frank responses to the criticisms on the site's message board and for attempting to ease the transition by keeping the old design up for a while. It's a useful reminder of just how resistant to change an established user base can be.

My Top 30 Films of 2006

Thanks to easyCinema's online DVD rental service and Virgin Atlantic's on demand entertainment system I've finally caught up with most of the unmissable films of 2006 which I somehow managed to miss at the cinema.

What I've not managed to do is to keep my list down to the customary 25 titles. Whether this is because 2006 was a bumper year for quality cinema or I'm just getting less discerning in my old age I'm not sure.

It was certainly another good year for documentary film-making with four appearing in the top twenty. Of the four, 'An Inconvenient Truth' was the most essential, proving that you don't need a big budget and special effects if you've got a compelling script and a charismatic leading man (see earlier post). 'Grizzly Man' and 'The Devil and Daniel Johnston' both skillfully pieced together archive footage and contemporary interviews to explore the psychology of two enigmatic outsiders, whilst 'Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room' delivered more drama than the whole last series of '24'.

The rest of the list is somewhat eclectic with no obvious unifying themes. If I had to pick a trend it would be that 2006 was seemingly a good year for Mexicans with Gael García Bernal (star of 'The King'), Alfonso Cuarón (writer and director of 'Children of Men') and Guillermo Del Toro (writer and director of 'Pan's Labyrinth') all featuring in the Top 10.

'Pan's Labyrinth' is one of a trio of rewarding European language films on the list. 2005's list saw two German films in the top five. This year it was Spanish cinema which made the greatest impression. After teaming up on the criminally underrated 'Live Flesh' (1997) and the justifiably lauded 'All About My Mother' (1999) Pedro and Penélope once again proved an irresistible combination in 'Volver'. From France, Michael Haneke's 'Caché (Hidden)' proved to be a classic Marmite film (you either love it or hate it). I loved it but a colleague recently described it to me as the worst film he has ever seen.

The UK held its end up with four quintessentially English productions ('London to Brighton', 'A Cock and Bull Story', 'Glastonbury' and 'The Queen') and an imperfect but irresistible Bond ('Casino Royale') which will hopefully put an end to all the Daniel-Craig-is-not-Bond nonsense.

Over the pond, Hollywood proved it can still do 'big' with Ang Lee's sumptuous cowboy epic 'Brokeback Mountain' whilst Spielberg and Spike Lee both played very effectively against type to produce two of the year's finest thrillers (the best being Alfonso Cuarón's 'Children of Men' which rendered cinema's most convincing dystopian vision since Nineteen Eighty-Four was adapted for the screen). Hollywood also continues to mine a profitable seam of quirky indie hits (see 'Junebug', 'The Squid and the Whale' and 'Little Miss Sunshine') whilst George Clooney proved himself smart as well as handsome (damn him) with a impressively mature follow up to his directorial debut 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind' (2002) in the form of 'Good Night and Good Luck'.

Talking of directorial debuts, 'Brick' was quite a way for Rian Johnson to hit the ground running (I'm overlooking his 1996 black and white short 'Evil Demon Golfball from Hell!!!'). A neo-noir detective story set in a high school, 'Brick' cost under $500,000 to shoot and gave its big budget peers a bog wash at the box office. Equally refreshing was John Turturro's kitchen sink musical 'Romance & Cigarettes'. Kate Winslet's portrayal of a sexually voracious potty-mouthed Yorkshire lass is worth the entry/rental fee alone.

As for the top 3; 'United 93' was a wonderfully bold piece of cinema which could have got it wrong it so many ways but never faltered. 'Walk The Line' was for me the most enjoyable film of the year with two Oscar-worthy performances and a cracking soundtrack (see earlier post). However there was only one film which scored top marks in every department and that was 'The Departed'. With a cast which reads like a Who's Who of Hollywood's finest (Jack Nicholson, Leonardo Di Caprio, Matt Damon, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, Alex Baldwin), dialogue to make Tarantino weep into his Fruit Brute and some jaw-dropping cinematography, 'The Departed' marks a true return to form for Scorsese who I feared might be "doing a Coppola" after the bloated folly that was 'The Aviator' (2004).

So, all in all, a pretty good year. If I had gongs to hand out for performances, Best Actor would be a toss up between Joaquin Phoenix in 'Walk the Line', Leonardo DiCaprio in 'The Departed' and Philip Seymour Hofman in 'Capote'. Best Actress is an even tougher call with standout turns from Resse Witherspoon ('Walk the Line'), Penélope Cruz ('Volver'), Helen Mirren ('The Queen'), Lorraine Stanley ('London to Brighton') and Gretchen Mol ('The Notorious Bettie Page'). Best Director would have to be Paul Greengrass for deftly helming a mostly unknown cast on 'United 93'.

Anyway, enough waffle, here's the list:

		The Departed (dir. Martin Scorsese)
		Walk the Line (dir. James Mangold)
		United 93 (dir. Paul Greengrass)
		An Inconvenient Truth (dir. Davis Guggenheim)
		Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (dir. Alex Gibney)
		London to Brighton (dir. Paul Andrew Williams)
		Volver (dir. Pedro Almodóvar)
		The King (dir. James Marsh)
		Children of Men (dir. Alfonso Cuarón)
		Pan's Labyrinth (dir. Guillermo del Toro)
		Grizzly Man (dir. Werner Herzog)
		Caché (Hidden) (dir. Michael Haneke)
		Little Miss Sunshine (dir. Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris)
		A Cock and Bull Story (dir. Michael Winterbottom)
		Brokeback Mountain (dir. Ang Lee)
		Brick (dir. Rian Johnson)
		The Squid and the Whale (dir. Noah Baumbach)
		Inside Man (dir. Spike Lee)
		Junebug (dir. Phil Morrison)
		The Devil and Daniel Johnston (dir. Jeff Feuerzeig)
		Munich (dir. Steven Spielberg)
		Casino Royale (dir. Martin Campbell)
		The Queen (dir. Stephen Frears)
		The Notorious Bettie Page (dir. Mary Harron)
		Capote (dir. Bennett Miller)
		Glastonbury (dir. Julien Temple)
		Good Night and Good Luck (dir. George Clooney)
		Romance & Cigarettes (dir. John Turturro)
		Thank You For Smoking (dir. Jason Reitman)
		The Last Kiss (dir. Tony Goldwyn)

Channel 4 on Demand - first impressions

Tomorrow sees the official launch of Channel 4's UK on demand broadband TV offering, 4oD, which they've been previewing to newsletter subscribers over the past week or so. I received my preview invite last Friday. Four days on and I've finally got around to installing the client following a couple of abortive attempts, first on my Mac (4oD is PC only), then using Firefox (4oD requires Internet Explorer 5.5 or above).

The download and installation of the 4oD programme itself (basically a shell for Flash-heavy IE pages) didn't take long, although the compulsory installation of .NET framework 2.0 did. It then refused to recognise my up-to-date copy of Windows Media Player 10 and I had to download WMP 11 in order to get it working (followed by a mandatory DRM update, natch).

Once up and running, I was pleasantly surprised to discover a relatively clean and simple interface, running in a full-screen (but re-sizable) window. The 'homepage' offers five primary navigation options (TV, Film, Schedule, Recommendations and A to Z) plus one giant wallpaper promo (currently Mr Gordon Ramsey) and four smaller promos which expand and start playing video on rollover in a rather attractive fashion. The schedule strip along the bottom of the homepage, offering a view of last night's prime time, is less successful, falling below the fold at a 1024 x 768 screen res and bumping up against the bottom of the screen on rollover.



So, what of the content offer? Unsurprisingly, quite a bit of the schedule is labelled as "Not currently available for download" although there are an impressive 128 programmes listed in the A-Z. It's perhaps indicative of the on-demand world that the schedule proves to be one of the weaker element of the 4oD proposition. Whilst it's helpful that the schedule is colour coded to let you know at a glance which programmes are and aren't available, it's still feels frustrating to be reminded that you can't watch The Simpsons, The Channel 4 News or Without a Trace, but you can watch Hollyoaks and 8 Out of 10 Cats...



A more fruitful way of browsing for content is via the genres and recommendations. There are currently seven TV genres (Comedy, Docs, Drama, Entertainment, Food & Health, Homes, Music) and three film genres (Comedy, Crime & Thriller, Drama), augmented with a 'Popular' list. The 4oD Recommends section currently includes a selection of Merchant Ivory films and U2 to you - the palindromatically titled U2 season.



In terms of pricing, there appears to be two main prices points: 99p to 'rent' a TV programme and £1.99 to 'rent' a film or 'own' a TV programme (although this isn't an option for many programmes). There's also a smattering of free content, grouped under the heading 'Free for All', which is mostly teaser episodes for longer series.

Once downloaded, you have 1 month to watch a programme and 48 hours to finish it once you've started watching. It is also possible to pre-book content up to 2 weeks in advance. Download times aren't too bad, especially if you're used to BitTorrent. A 24 minute episode of Trigger Happy TV (166.52MB) took 45 mins to download on my 8MB connection. The playback window offers three choices of image size (Regular, Large and Fullscreen). The image quality is pretty good when viewed as Regular or Large but inevitably starts to pixelate in Fullscreen mode (the clips are encoded at 576 x 432 pixels, 1Mbps).



Unsurprisingly for a still wet-behind-the-ears beta there are one or two rough edges which will hopefully be ironed out over the coming weeks. The search engine doesn't seem to be indexing films at the moment and the text sometimes spills out of the playback frame to name two minor quibbles.

Infinitely more frustrating are the things which are a great deal harder to change, such as the across the board Microsoft dependency, determined by the use of the Kontiki P2P client and the Microsoft Plays For Sure DRM package (both also employed by the recently rebranded Sky Anytime). The inability to transfer content to portable devices is also likely to prove annoying for seasoned BitTorrenters.

Not that these issues are unique to Channel 4. The challenge of how to assuage the anxieties of nervous rights holders whilst simultaneously meeting the growing expectations of digital consumers is going to continue to exercise the whole spectrum of digital media providers for some time to come.

An Inconvenient Truth

Strange but true: the scariest film of the year is now on general release and it has a Universal certificate. That's because we live in a world where a catastrophic and irreversible change in the planet's ecosystem is deemed less disturbing than Janet Jackson's nipple. Still, if it means more people will get to see An Inconvenient Truth then it gets my vote. In fact, it makes a lot of sense to show this to your kids (it's their future after all) and then have to answer the commonsense questions they are likely to ask as in response, such as "so why aren't we doing anything about it, daddy?"

For the uninitiated, the film is essentially a celluloid rendering of an Al Gore Keynote presentation (stay with me people) on the consequences of global warming. That such a unlikely premise has spawned such a compelling movie is testament not only to the hitherto well-hidden charisma of Mr Gore but also to the potency of the message itself. The facts really do speak for themselves. The term "must see" is applied way too liberally to movies in my opinion, but in this instance it might just be true - your future really may depend on it...

The BBFC: cutting down on cuts

Whilst trawling the BBFC website for the previous post on film advisory notes I came across their stats area which details the number of films they have cut every year since 1914. I've charted the percentage figures (click on the above image for a larger version) which makes for fairly interesting reading/viewing (assuming you're a film geek, that is).

That the early-mid '50s should come out top in terms of raw numbers (1,770 films were cut between 1950-55) is perhaps unsurprising, especially when you consider that almost 1,500 films a year were being classified (almost three-times the current volume). More surprising, to my mind, is the year with the highest proportion of cut films: 1974, when over a third of all films released in the UK fell foul of the censor's knife (although bizarrely some of the year's most notorious releases escaped the chop; Badlands, The Exorcist and Chinatown were all passed uncut in 1974, albeit with X certificates).

While you wouldn't necessarily guess it from the hysterical rantings of the red-tops (actually, maybe you would), BBFC cuts have been on the decline ever since '74 (with a couple of modest spikes in the early and mid '80s) and now stand at their lowest level since 1930. Just 7 films were cut last year and 5 the year before.

To what extent this decrease is attributable to an active change in the BBFC's approach (artistic merit and context started entering the equation in the late '70s) or simply a reflection of UK society's shifting moral compass is ultimately impossible to determine, although the Student BBFC site has a rather splendid history of UK film classification which pin-points some of the landmark decisions over the years.

Mild peril: The inadvertent humour of film advisory warnings

I saw a trailer for new Dreamworks animation Over The Hedge the other day which caught my attention partly because it features songs by the mighty Ben Folds, but also because of the quite brilliant advisory warning that the film contains "some rude humour and mild comic action" which was frankly more of an inducement to go and see the film than the rest of the trail.

Once upon a time, the life of the censor was a bit dull, dishing out U, PG, 15 and 18 certificates and demanding the odd cut with only the occasional tabloid controversy to spice things up. The advent of the 12A certificate and the associated advisory notes changed all that. Describing the potentially disturbing content of a film in a few measured words has now become something of an art form.

Much of the challenge (and consequently the humour) derives from the seemingly limited range of adjectives at the censors disposal which, in the main, appears to be restricted to 'mild', 'moderate', 'strong' and 'disturbing'. It is the combination of these adjectives with the equally limited choice of nouns which results in vaguely oxymoronic terms like 'moderate sex', 'mild peril' and 'comedy violence'.

However, it is when they are forced to abandon generic terms to address a specific indecent that the most surreal guidance notes are produced (for example, The Cave of the Yellow Dog 'contains one scene of sheep skinning').

Below is a selection of some of my favourite advisory notes:

contains potentially dangerous behaviour
contains mild slapstick
contains frequent moderate sports violence
contains dangerous motorcycle riding
contains very mild comedy violence

Danny Way / Regina Spektor Sky advert

Loathe though I am to take my hat off to the broadcasting brute that is Sky, I have to admit to a certain admiration for one of their current 'What Do You Want To Watch?' cinema ads (it may be on TV but I've only caught at the cinema). It features pro skateboarder Danny Way breaking two world records in one run on a custom-built 'Megaramp' back in June 2003, jumping 75 feet from ramp to ramp and clearing 23.5 feet of air. The icing on the cinematic cake is the accompanying music which is the sublime 'Us' by Regina Spektor. Unfortunately I can't find a copy of that trail online but here's another trail of the same jump from Danny Way's official site.

Walk the Line

Went to see Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line, at Brixton Ritzy last weekend and can't recommend it highly enough. Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon burn up the screen in the lead roles and in taking care of all the singing themselves, have inadvertently produced one of the strongest albums of the year so far in the shape of the soundtrack. Even if you're not a Cash fan, I challenge you to be unmoved by their version of Bob Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe - it's a thing of great beauty. Go see/listen.

What's wrong with Kong (it's too damn long)

Enough already. Peter Jackson's King Kong is not a masterpiece. Or a classic. It's not even a very good film. It's an entertaining 90 minute popcorn movie inflated to a monstrous 3 hours by a director too in love with his subject to edit for his audience. Not that a lengthy running time is in itself a crime - Downfall warranted every one of its 156 minutes - but Jackson's mantra whilst editing (or rather, not editing) Kong appears to have been 'Why show something once if you can show it three times?'

Maybe its because I saw it around the same time as Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit, which struck me as an infinitely more nuanced piece of filmmaking. Weighing in at a slender 85 minutes (vs. Kong's 187 minutes), Wallace & Gromit is a masterclass in cinematic economy, where every frame is made to count, brimming with a level of detail which demands repeat viewings (I find it hard to imagine Nick Park okaying the ropy CGI on display in Kong's Brontosaurus chase). Wallace & Gromit also delivers a more compelling narrative arc and three-dimensional characters you can engage with. Much has been made of the emotion conveyed by Kong's facial expressions, but for my money Gromit achieves a far greater range with his plasticine mono-brow.

The harsh reality when it comes to big screen blockbusters is that size does matter. By stuffing Kong until it was twice its original size, Jackson was hoping for the cinematic equivalent of Fois Gras. Unfortunately he's wound up with a bloated turkey of a film, which tests both the patience and posterial circulation of its audience.

My Top 25 Films of 2005

Reserving the right to make a few alterations once I've caught up with the films I missed at the cinema on DVD, below are my Top 25 Films of 2005. It's been another good year for films based on real events, be they dramatisations (Hotel Rwanda, Downfall, Ray, Vera Drake) or documentaries (DiG!, Beautiful Dreamer, Guerilla, Inside Deep Throat, Tarnation, In The Realms of the Unreal). The UK managed to keep its end up with an impressive range of dramas (Bullet Boy, Pride & Prejudice, Vera Drake and Wallace and Gromit's first big-screen outing) whilst mainland Europe produced it's statutory three outstanding films (The Edukators, Downfall and The Beat That My Heart Skipped). Even Hollywood managed to tackle some potentially thorny topics with some aplomb (Hotel Rwanda, Crash, The Woodsman). Anyway, enough waffle, here's the list...

1. The Edukators (dir. Hans Weingartner)
2. DiG! (dir. Ondi Timoner)
3. Sideways (dir. Alexander Payne)
4. Hotel Rwanda (dir. Terry George)
5. Downfall (dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel)
6. Crash (dir. Paul Haggis)
7. A History of Violence (dir. David Cronenberg)
8. Ray (dir. Taylor Hackford)
9. Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (dir. Steve Box & Nick Park)
10. Silver City (dir. John Sayles)
11. The Beat That My Heart Skipped (dir. Jacques Audiard)
12. Everything is Illuminated (dir. Liev Schreiber)
13. Million Dollar Baby (dir. Clint Eastwood)
14. Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson And The Story Of Smile (dir. David Leaf)
15. Guerilla: The Taking Of Patty Hearst (dir. Robert Stone)
16. Bullet Boy (dir. Saul Dibb)
17. Inside Deep Throat (dir. Fenton Bailey & Randy Barbato)
18. The Woodsman (dir. Nicole Kassell)
19. Tarnation (dir. Jonathan Caouette)
20. Vera Drake (dir. Mike Leigh)
21. Broken Flowers (dir. Jim Jarmusch)
22. Closer (dir. Mike Nichols)
23. Lower City (dir. Sergio Machado)
24. Pride & Prejudice (dir. Joe Wright)
25. In The Realms of The Unreal (dir. Jessica Yu)

This is NOT Spinal Tap

Just been to see DiG!, a glorious behemoth of a documentary charting the contrasting fortunes of two Portland-based bands, The Dandy Warhols and the lesser known Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Filmed over a seven year period, the story of the two bands is really the story of their two leads singers, Courtney Taylor and Anton Newcombe, who's divergent personalities ultimately determine the fate of their bands.

Beginning their journey as friends and coll