Insidious Review

I can't help but think that with Insidious, if the trailer had been honest it might have been better received. Going back to the John Carter rant, it used to be that studios could just lie and refuse to give refunds. That way the advertising would trick people into going, which inflated sales. Under the old system it didn't matter if the film sucked harder than Debbie Does Dallas (in all the wrong ways) - studios just say that 'The numbers speak for themselves.' A cinema full of disappointed people is still a full cinema, once the money is in the bank. Now however, those pissed off people are walking out and spreading the word about how bad films are, or in the case of Insidious, how unlike Paranormal Activity they are - but more on Insidious in a second. There seems to be a heartening move away from the old success of mis-advertising, so it looks like the studios need a 'new trick.' I'd like to suggest maybe stop tricking people - just advertise the film honestly? Regardless, I can't help but feel that this was the problem with Insidious. The trailer does make it seem like it's rolling off the success of Paranormal Activity, and it kind of is, at least in the first half. But once the mediums appear in the middle of the film, it's like a different story; like the writer died halfway through and they had to patch the rest of the story up with bits of The Exorcist, Ghostbusters and Poltergeist. In a way, I wish they'd just skipped straight to that weird switch point. Normally the reason you sit through the boring first part is to establish the character's belief in an unbelievable situation - you're sharing the growing sense of unease as it builds up to 'OK, now they have to do something.' With Insidious however, the real moment of realisation doesn't come until the main character's mother calls in the medium. Note that it's not the couple that makes this choice, it's the mother - a decision she could have reached at any point during the film, or the missing three months near the start. It takes a moment of fridge logic to realise it, but she would have had to have spent that entire three months watching her grandson in a coma without once linking it to her son (his father)'s astral projection. In other words, there's little reason for the first half of the film to be there. They could have skipped straight to the switch point and had a completely different film. It's nice, and the scare moments are built up quite well, but it could have done with a lot more editing down. Not to say the second half is perfect of course. It creeps along nicely and pulls up some genuinely interesting frights, although the two investigators do feel slightly out of place in an otherwise straight-faced horror. The demon itself is a disappointing example of Nothing is Scarier and Monster Delay though. When the creepy dancing child is seen bursting from a cupboard, it takes a little freeze frame or attentiveness, but you can see if you look closely that something is wrong with it's face, almost as if it had Progeria, the premature ageing condition. It puts you off balance subtly, just as it does with the victorian dress. As Hitchcock was reputed to have said, "something something will never be able to show an audience anything scarier than their own imagination." (No I can't be bothered to look the real quote up). But in contrast, the demon itself that forms the focus of the film is shown near the end completely clear and out in the open, and it ruins the suspense almost as much as the credits listing it as 'Lipstick Face Demon.' Everyone watching with me laughed when it started to stomp across the room on hooves, because by that point most of us were thinking of Tenacious D. Contrast that with the first time you see it's face, half-seen hissing behind Josh's head, and it's a pretty good scare. Admittedly though, by that point there's so much happening you kind of forgive it, since it's far from their biggest problem. It just seems as though Insidious could have been a great film if it had stuck to it's guns and held thematically with the second half, instead of trying to make another Paranormal Activity. It's worth watching though. Gave me the willies something rotten.

Reorganisation & Phone Wars

As you may have noticed, I have finally caved and given in to the evils of using a premade theme, because sadly the internet has evolved to the point where design and content production are two different specialisations. I will admit, I do miss being able to tweak every last aspect of the layout, margins and colours. When I first got Quake II all those many moons ago it took me a month of playing every evening to get past the second level, because I spent all my time fiddling with the 3D settings. Mostly because it coincided with us getting our first 3D card, but I digress. The point is, I find myself fannying about less and less these days. It's not my focus any more. If I want this to be a site that people actually read, I have to concentrate on the content, not the looks. Not to say I won't be heavily editing the theme mind you - I will, as it currently looks lazy as hell, and the list of categories beneath the header has gone missing for reasons I have yet to adequately explain. Wait, no, it's just white against a white background. Ass. But this always happens to me when editing by hand. For years I've been banging on to people about the benefits of clean code, and why programs like Dreamweaver overburden your site with a mound of shite, and why Blogger was so overautomated it was nearly impossible to use. Premade never caters to your precise needs, and it's always ever so slightly wrong in a way that sits there nagging at you, like a child actor in a Steven Sommers film. Which brings up a worrying post I read yesterday, and more worryingly agreed with. An error with my phone led me to a blog post by Joel McLauglin, who has made me realise there may be something in the armies of people who get iPhones because they 'just work.' And I realised how much I do forgive my little droid. I forgive it the fact that it takes twice as long for the Facebook app to load my feed as the mobile feed takes. I forgive it the fact that it is hopeless at white balancing photos and everything ends up magenta tinted (yes it's an HTC). I even forgive using a bizarre hybrid of Android 2.1 and 2.2, which I only discovered the other day when I had to do a factory reset. The phone crashed halfway through downloading 2.2 and some of the features didn't update. But I forgive all this because it's the first touchscreen I ever had. And looking at the things that matter - battery life, paying less and freedom of usage - the Legend still outshines the more modern iterations of the iPhone. To me, anyway. I don't care if the phone talks to you now, I've always said: with the iPhone, you pay extra for fewer features. And yet... the user experience on Android is getting really shabby. Google effectively don't even bother patching a lot of Android issues - they'll work correctly in the next release, but if your phone won't support that release, you're stuck. And with UK users forced into 24 month contracts, you can guarantee by the end of the first year Google will have written your handset out of the list of droids compatible with their newest version, so you never get the promised bug fix. There are too many different phones with too many different hardware and software versions, and apps simply can't remain compatible with all of them. Apps drop out or freeze up all the time. All of your friends will be using an app your phone doesn't support. The battery life is only better if you turn everything off, and then you're not getting the extra features you're boasting about over the iPhone. So it occurs to me that sometimes you get what you pay for. And if you're willing to accept all these glitches, then that's the tradeoff. I used to be able to, but I'll admit it is starting to grate on my nerves. But some people aren't willing - they'd rather pay to have someone professional sort things out, i.e. someone they can sue or shout at if it goes wrong. So yeah. I finally understand why people buy iPhones. I'm not sure if I'm happy about that or not.

Good Men Doing Nothing

Sometimes I get the impression that nothing we say or do is ever going to get through to our dear government.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/28/verdict-uk-riots-stake-society
Verdict on UK riots: people need a 'stake in society', says report
Panel concludes that riots were fuelled by a lack of opportunities for young people, poor parenting and suspicion of the police

The report, by the Riots Communities and Victims Panel, concludes that the riots were fuelled by a range of factors including a lack of opportunities for young people, poor parenting, a failure of the justice system to rehabilitate offenders, materialism and suspicion of the police.

Well, I could have told you that. In fact I did, and I'm an idiot. Anyone who has lived in or near a poor area can tell you that they feel the government has turned their backs on them, a feeling worsened by constant bombardment with images of London parties and the excesses of the top 10%. The Tories are taking away the welfare, arts council grants, career guidance and now education that would have enabled the poor to get a foothold in society. Faced with that, why should they listen to a legal system they soon won't be able to access? Why respect someone that doesn't respect you? All the evidence is pointing to the conclusion that the lack of opportunity and connection with society is what's causing the problem. Even if you look at it from a right-wing perspective and simplify the rioters as 'scum,' why have they become that bad? What kind of society would section off people like that and leave them to rot, instead of finding a solution to deal with them? Chase the trail of 'why' to the logical conclusion, and you find that it's gotten this bad because successive governments have wanted to push these people to one side and forget about them. Now they're demonstrating that they're sick of being forgotten, sick of being conveniently 'othered' - someone for David Cameron to hug when he's on the election trail, and demonize when he riles them up. They're not others. They're not another species, another social class. They're human beings who are sick of being pushed, and the government's only response is to push harder. The austerity drive is asset-stripping the country starting at the bottom, taking from a social group that has nothing left to give. The amazing thing is the sense of sheer helplessness we're left with afterwards. The voting system didn't stop this, because we have a coalition government. Peaceful protest methods haven't stopped it, because the government would prefer to listen to self-appointed committees, to which none of the dissenters are invited. And even violent protests like the riots haven't worked, they've just been spun to make the rioters the enemy. There is pretty much nothing connecting the government's actions to the wishes of the people. Is this really a democracy?

"All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing."
Edmund Burke

Or maybe all it takes is for us to let ourselves get to the point where our actions account for nothing.

John Carter of Mars Flop

As much of a horrendous misanthrope as I can be, I am prone to brief bouts of hope that the public express the sentiments of the Who (via the CSI Miami soundtrack); namely, that they won't get fooled again.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17442200
John Carter flop to cost Walt Disney $200m

John Carter of Mars has elicited one such reaction. I am giggling with delight at the idea of people tiring of the visual spectacle, of moviegoers switching off from shit and only attending movies by word of mouth. I know this was the sentiment in our house about the film - we had the opportunity to see it, but everyone was just tired of brainless action, and frankly nobody trusted Disney to truly deliver on the advertised promise. But the obvious failure of John Carter this weekend must set Hollywood into a flurry of panic, since as William Goldman put it, "The single most important fact, perhaps of the entire movie industry, is that nobody knows anything". To continue from yesterday's rant, money men have been running the show for too long; and while they're undoubtedly good with money, they have no idea what makes a good film. So they do statistical analysis on films that have been successful, and hash together a list of rules governing blockbusters. There are now so many tiny rules to scriptwriting - there must be one joke/point of tension per page, there must be an action sequence on page 60... Reading the list of requirements, you imagine a room full of coked-up executives excitedly trying to out-do each other's pitches for how many explosions / sky battles the finale will include. The industry is being run by excitable children, and John Carter represents the absolute apex of their idiocy. Look at any of the classic films like The Graduate, Casablanca, The Godfather - these films would all have been turned down under modern scriptwriting rules. Films that don't meet the criteria are cast out, so the potential successes that could prove the formula wrong never make it. And now all we're left with is executives scratching their heads at why formulaic pap like John Carter - films designed by committee to fulfil a checklist of cliches - are bombing. Bizarrely though, Hollywood now stands on the brink of becoming the good guys for once. Since it's been proven that the suits don't know anything about what audiences want, it falls to the studios actually looking to the public for what they want. And this doesn't mean distilling a list of cliches from films that already sold well; if they actually start using social media to contact their demographics rather than thinking of it as a demographic in itself, they could get the feedback they need. It's all out there Hollywood. You just need to know where to look.

Of Berries, Brothers and Bad TV

This post is based on a draft that has been lying around for a while. In fact it's been more than a year. It's not very often I get to start a blog with "I was talking to a celebrity, last night..." and unfortunately I've missed that opportunity spectacularly. However, the fact remains I did speak to a celebrity, so I'm going to milk it for all it's worth. The anecdote that is, not the celebrity. Oh god, this is all going wrong already... I was talking a number of months (more like two years) ago with the most excellent Mr Matt Berry (he of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Snuff Box and the IT Crowd) about... well, whatever you fill the time with when talking to someone who's been professionally able to fire a Glock at an army of floating stationery. Part of the Winchester Film Festival and at the time I was lucky enough to be part of the backstage entourage, so headed off to the local to keep him entertained. And the conversation came round to the youth of today, and the lack of rebellion and originality in young TV writers. Does he have a point? Of course he does, he's famous. And TV is generally terrible. Even when something new and ground-breaking (or at least breaking old ground everyone else had forgotten) comes along, it's generally a month or so before every other network is scrambling to release their own rehash of it. For every Lost, there's a Flash Forward; for every Heroes there's an Alphas. And with these rehashes comes the armies of content control people, milking down any of the originality that might have dared poke it's head out. Applying stock characters on top of overdone plots in locations we're sick of seeing, they manage to amplify the mysteries at the core of the show's pitch only in so far as to make it look like nobody on the show has any idea what they're doing. Look at Big Brother. Endemol's original Channel 4 pitch was interesting mostly because it was an experiment. Stick these unknown people in a house, set them challenges and watch the little humans scurry around their little ant farm. Look, that one just done a poo, delightful. It was exactly as promising as a date with George Osbourne. And yet the utterly unexpected happened with it. We got riveting, Machiavellian evil at the hands of 'Nasty' Nick Bateman, voyeuristically revelling in every backstab and whispered accusation; right up to his surprisingly panto-free exit to genuine hatred. We had the "won't they / won't they" drama of Tom (looking like a sad version of Jack from Lost) and Anna (looking like everyone wishes all Lesbians looked). We got Craig sleeping his way through half the competition, emerging to a surprise win and donating it to a secret disabled relative who needed lifesaving surgery - that miraculously he hadn't even been milking in the press. And it all came through Endemol releasing the reigns and taking a chance. Seeing what happens. Now, Big Brother has descended into a kind of day-release program in which the real world is spared the presence of it's worst inhabitants so we can safely gawk at them from behind a TV screen. The same characters go in and have the same arguments over the same things because the content control people have stepped in and driven it into the pit of ADHD, where only ideas that have previously been proven to work are safe for the audience of ravenous plebs that await it. I'm sick of it and I wish the show would just die, except being on Channel 5 is a much worse punishment. Now, Reality TV has become one of those dirty but inexplicably common phrases, like 'Back Sack and Crack' or 'The Conservatives.' It's gone too far to take it back - Real people wouldn't trust Reality TV any more because they know there's not going to be anything new or interesting, just the same ideas rehashed to death. Maybe this is what's holding back the next generation of writers: there are no more Monty Pythons or Young Ones to inspire them to anarchy. Or as Matt Berry put it, "Stop ranting and get me another drink."