Blockbuster Catchup

Last weekend saw the double-whammy that was The Simpsons movie and Transformers hitting the multiplexes, and I ventured to the Limerick Omniplex, intending to catch the first, but finding it sold out and so having to make do with the second instead.

I'm too old to have got caught up with the whole Transformers cartoon series/toy mania that hit the 80s generation, but the movie magazines had given the film the thumbs up as a brain-dead popcorn blockbuster movie so I figured it was worth giving it a ago. What I hadn't realised was that the broadsheets had taken a distinctly different view, and if you want to hear a hilarous, long rant about why the film is so awful, awful, awful download Mark Kermode's Film Review podcast for Five Live from the BBC. It's even better than his long Pirates of the Caribbean rants!

So what did I think?

I think both sides have valid points. Personally I'm glad I got to see the film on the big screen. It has the most impressive visual effects I think I've ever seen in a movie, and Lord knows there are a lot of them because the film is so damned long. There's not a bad bit of CGI to be found, and the massive budget is all up there on screen.

The trouble is that director Michael Bay is not a man with any kind of subtlety. The plot is thin, the dialog truly appalling (when, that is, you can actually hear it over the loud crashing bombastic noise that permeates the entire film) and the editing style is so frenetic, with far too much hand-held blurred 'action', that most of the time it's impossible to make out what the hell's going on.

What you ultimately get is two hours 20 minutes of visual and aural assault, that leaves you exiting the cinema suffering from sensory overload. But for all that I was glad I caught the film on the big screen. It may be a big, dumb, stupid juggernaut of a movie, but it KNOWS it's a big, dumb, stupid juggernaut of a movie, and ultimately what saves it is a lot of knowing, if somewhat cheesy at times, self-deprecation and humour, and an outstanding acting performance from the young male lead Shia LaBeouf. LaBeouf impressed in A Guide to Recognising Your Saints (a better movie than the critics had lead me to expect, released on DVD a few weeks ago and well worth a look if you can cope with the street language and occasional outbreaks of violence) and Disturbia, an excellent Hitchcock-inspired thriller which hits British cinema's in a few weeks time (but is already available on import on an excellent region-free HD-DVD),

Transformers hasn't converted me to being a Michael Bay fan - the man just has no class and doesn't seem to realise that films need peaks and troughs if the peaks are to truly seem like peaks. Transformers itself is pure tosh. But it's quite enjoyable tosh and well worth catching on the big screen if you think your eyes and ears can stand the visual assault and aural battering.

The Simpsons film isn't really aimed at me. Truth is I don't mind the TV cartoon show, but don't understand the global obsession with the series. If I'm bored and can catch an episode I'll watch it, but it's not the sort of TV I'd make a point of tuning into on a regular basis.

The film starts with an 'Itchy and Skratchy' cartoon which is interrupted by Homer Simpson standing up in the cinema to protest about having paid money to see something that he could get for free on TV, and unfortunately that's how I felt about the film. It's not cinematic in any way. At barely over 80 minutes it's just an extended version of a TV episode. I don't understand the point of making the film - other than to extort a lot of money out of gullible fans. It's just not a film that needed to be made.

Personally, I expect a 'comedy' movie playing to a packed audience of fans to raise more than just two or three titters, as was the case at the viewing I saw. I went with a colleague from work who's a big fan, but who had to admit he'd found it slightly disappointing. The only real laugh for me came from baby Lisa's first spoken word, which many will miss because it appears towards the end of the credits when many will have left the cinema. Marge tells Homer that Lisa has just spoken her first word and excitedly Homer asks what it was. Marge coaxes the child to repeat itself and out comes the gargled word 'Sequel'. Alas I have a horrid feeling that it will prove all too prophetic, with the profits on this extended TV episode having proved to be so vast within days of opening. This is one film that's worth a DVD rental if you're a fan, but not something you need to pay money for at the cinema.

Last night, being back in London for a weekend, I went with Miss Deadline to see the new Harry Potter film at the BFI Imax, the main reason for going being that the last 20 minutes are in 3D.

The film itself was, for me, by far the best in the franchise. I haven't liked any of the other films - far too messy with incompehensible plot points for those that haven't read the books, continuity errors galore, and too slavish a devotion to following the books instead of giving us a coherent cinematic experience. This time round I felt everything came together, and Imelda Staunton gave (another) performance of a lifetime. Even Daniel Radcliffe, who hadn't really proved to me he could act - despite the rave reviews for his stage debut in Equus all the play required him to do was shout a lot and flash his bits - gives far and away his best screen performance to date. And of course Gary Oldman is as effortlessly brilliant as ever. I thought the film was (again!) too long, but otherwise had no real complaints.

As for the 3D - well it was slightly disappointing if I'm honest. Before the film we got a set of 3D trailers that were absolutely fantastic. Potter, by way of contrast, was a bit of a smudgy mess - as if the 3D had been generated by some sort of post-processing of something shot in 2D rather than actually having been filmed with 3D cameras. To be sure there are some nice 3D moments, but too often one was adjusting one's eyes and thinking 'That's not real' or 'Why are the flesh and blood characters so flat and two-dimensional, even though they're in a 3D space'. The 3D version (sold out for several days in advance - I'd booked my tickets a few weeks ago) is certainly worth a look if you're a fan - and the IMAX screen and sound system are absolutely superb and well worth a visit anyway - but I felt that Superman Returns did a far better job with its 3D sequences when I'd seen it at the same cinema last year.

BFI Library Open Evening

A last-minute business meeting in London last Monday meant a quick, if somewhat last minute, trip back from Limerick in Ireland and the chance to attend an Open Evening at the British Film Institute Library, which was held for BFI Champions (BFI Champions are people who've taken out a tier of membership just above the standard level). One of the benefits of BFI membership is access to the organisation's Library, just off Tottenham Court Road in central London.

The library is a treasure trove of delights for movie buffs, providing access to pretty much all back issues of the different movie magazines almost back to the dawn of the silent era, together with numerous books, scripts and other movie memorabilia. If I were to stay in London for my retirement I can see where I'd be happy to spend a lot of my spare time! Not all the BFI's archive material is stored at the London site, which doesn't have the strict environmental requirements needed for older, more fragile material, but it seems most can be viewed if pre-booked some time in advance. There are microfiche viewers for some of the older material (I had to chuckle at the choice on one of the displays: an apologetic letter from Louis B Mayer, over which the unfortunate recipient had written the word 'Bullshit' in rather large letters), together with computer screens with access to not just the BFI's own resources, but others related to film and television too.

It's even possible to arrange viewing of archived television footage (there is a charge for this, based on running time) and I suspect that part of the reason behind this open evening was because the excellent facilities the BFI is able to offer with its library and archive are currently under-utilised because many of us haven't paid much attention to the flyer we get when we join.

The staff at the open evening, almost out-numbering those of us who attended - very disappointing given the effort they'd put in but I guess a few thunderstorms put some potential attendees off - did a wonderful job of explaining what the BFI Library does: everything from the sort of stuff you'd expect, outlined above, to writing the extensive credit notes for Sight and Sound magazine's film reviews, putting together the showcase displays at BFI SouthBank and answering general queries from the public and members alike. Their enthusiasm was contagious and all were generous with their time and knowledge in answering questions or just listening to those of us wanting to have a rant about the loss of the Museum of the Moving Image, or the possible diversion of government funding from the BFI to The Olympics!

Some examples of the sort of thing available from the archives were laid out for our perusal, and it was fun to see a copy of the script for "Brighton Rock" with sidenotes by the book's author Graham Greene, Dirk Bogarde's personally bound film scripts with his doodles and notes alongside, the continuity editor's personal book of endless polaroids and notes from the making of Oh! What a Lovely War!, or the quite astonishing Derek Jarman book which resembled more a scrapbook of clippings, pressed flowers, convention passes, letters and thoughts than the script it purported to be. Old promotional material for the industry, with advice to cinema owners on how to maximise ticket sales, from the early days of cinema in the 30's contrasted rather sharply with the modern, lavishly glossy but somewhat more superficial equivalent for Die Hard 4.0 that was on display.

Glasses of wine (or soft drinks for those who preferred) and snacks were provided and the evening had a mixture of formal talks and informal chats that helped make for a very pleasant evening, and one that reminded me that there are many perks available for those who live in London which we tend to take for granted until we find ourselves elsewhere. The evening also proved a great piece of marketing in persuading some of us whose annual membership was up for renewal to switch our BFI Champion membership to an annual direct debit! One thing's for sure - I'll be making several return visits to the library when my sojourn to Ireland is over later this year. It's hard to believe this wonderful resource has been just round the corner from all the electronics shops near the Tottenham Court Road tube station for all these years and I've only just become aware of it!

Mini-Reviews: Ghost Rider on Blu-Ray and Blood Diamond on HD-DVD

After the disappointment of The Hitcher I was much happier with Ghost Rider - which came as a bit of a surprise given that the starting point for this movie is a comic book universally acknowledged to be one of the weakest in Marvel Comics' seemingly never-ending B-list canon of 'variations on a theme'. Nicolas Cage is also one of my least favourite actors, and the director, Mark Stephen Johnston doesn't exactly have a great previous track record, with critics everywhere panning his previous directorial debut, itself another Marvel comic book adaptation, Daredevil.

I had seen the trailer at a theatrical showing of Hot Fuzz, and like most in the cinema, been positively underwhelmed by it, to the extent that it was added to my list of 'films to avoid this Summer'. So the final movie comes as a pleasant surprise. It tells a story that's been told many times before, but as popcorn movies go it's well put together, well structured and written (no, really!) and features CGI work that doesn't keep drawing attention to itself in all the wrong ways.

This UK Blu-Ray version of the film is apparently more than 10 minutes longer than the theatrical cut, but still managed to keep me engrossed for pretty much all of its 2 hour running time, which is more than can be said for the much shorter The Hitcher. This is despite the extremely thin premise for the series which is based on Cage's 'Johnny Blaze' motorbike-riding character selling his soul to the devil to save his father from cancer and now having to pay the price by acting as his bounty hunter, tracking down those who've escaped from Hell.

Cage is much too old for the part that's been written, but apparently we have him to thank for keeping the script on track as he's an obsessive fan of the original comic book, and also for the inspired casting of Peter Fonda from Easy Rider as his evil boss Mephistopheles. Sam Eliott helps too by effortlessly channelling the spirit of Lee Marvin into his role as the grave-digging superhero side-kick of the main Ghost Rider character.

As comic-book movies go Ghost Rider is certainly a much more rewarding film experience than the execrable Fantastic Four or Pirates movies which have done such great business all over the country, if not in the same league as the first two X-Men films, Batman Begins or the Spider-Man franchise.

Against all expectations, given the source material, the film was a surprise box-office hit earlier this year, taking more than double its costs, which were hardly insignificant at over $100 million. Unlike the new Fantastic Four film (which cost more, but looked cheap and unconvincing a lot of the time) and Evan Almighty (which had a budget of $175 million - the world has officially gone mad when it comes to budgeting mediocre scripts!) ALL the money is clearly visible on screen. As a side note Evan Almighty, which I previewed in a blog entry last week, pulled in a pitiful $32 million in its American opening weekend so it needs to do some REALLY good business when it opens over here in August if it's to be regarded as anything other than an unmitigated financial disaster!

I've been generally unimpressed with the Blu-Ray discs I've bought so far - the quality control, especially on the picture transfer front, seems in general to be much lower than that for HD-DVD. Add region-encoding into the mix which means the best US titles from Sony and Fox aren't available to UK purchasers and the Blu-Ray story is pretty grim compared with HD-DVD. But this UK Sony release shows what the high definition format is capable of, and easily serves as a 'reference quality' disc for the Blu-Ray format. The extra's, which include an hour and a half of 'Making of' documentaries, albeit with frequently incorrect captions for different individuals, and several commentaries, are generous too.

If you want to see a film with subtlety and strong characterisation then Ghost Rider probably isn't for you. But if you like a good old-fashioned, roller-coaster ride movie with thrills, spills and a high standard of consistency then this is a 'must have' for any UK Region 2 Blu-Ray disc player owners - a disc to stick alongside the recent James Bond Casino Royale disc which, until now, has been the only 'must have' title that is exclusively available on the Blu-Ray format.

If Nicolas Cage's name on a film normally has me turning away from the DVD shelf, Leonardo de Caprio's is enough to send me running out the shop door as fast as my legs can carry me. I guess the pudgy-faced actor can't help looking like an over-fed teenager, but for the viewer this makes it hard to invest any kind of believability in any 'fully grown man' roles he gets selected for.

However, I have to admit he's overcome his physical limitations in films like The Good Shepherd, Catch Me If You Can and The Aviator, proving he has real acting chutzpah beyond that which was on display in the disappointing Titanic. He seems to have genuine talent that many of his 'cult of celebrity' contemporaries at the Hollywood box office (Orloono Bland anyone?!) are sadly lacking.

Blood Diamond, released on the United Stated HD-DVD high definition format this week, shows that these previous surprises are no mere flash in the pan. The story may be somewhat clichéd and rather unsubtle in its political 'hit you over the head' message about the wrongs of the diamond trade, but DiCaprio and his co-star Djimon Hounsou lift it above the norm with performances that are never less than totally believable.

Jennifer Connelly as a humanitarian journalist, playing against DiCaprio's gung-ho smuggler, isn't given much to do, but makes the most of what she's given, even if I never for one moment felt there was any real chemistry between her character and DiCaprio's. In some ways the whole romance thing comes across as a repeat performance of that between DiCaprio and Kate Wynslett in Titanic - an annoyance that distracts from the main story and is never believable in any real sense of the word.

There's been rather a glut of South African movies just lately and this one doesn't pretend to be 'based on a true story', the way others have done. That being said much of what is shown is based on the experience of a campaigning journalist, and the film has a realistic feel to it (including much violence that will put the rom-com brigade off) and some background history that I hadn't been aware of before. The film was nominated for five oscars, but so far as I'm aware didn't win any of them - I guess Hollywood is all Africa'd out after Hotel Rwanda, Shooting Dogs and The Last King of Scotland because there's plenty in this film that impresses and it's not hard to see why it was nominated.

Beautifully shot with an excellent cast this is well worth two and a half hours of your time (yes, it's a bit of an epic!), and was released on standard DVD in the UK a couple of weeks ago, so you have no excuse for not checking it out, even if only as a rental.

Extra's wise the HD-DVD has a 'worthy but rather dull' hour long documentary on the 'conflict diamond' trade, with just three short five-10 minute featurettes on the film itself, although a commentary track from writer/director Edward Zwick, perhaps best known for The Last Samurai, is also included.

There is also the much-hyped HD-DVD 'In Movie Experience' but anybody who is prepared to sit through a two and a half hour film for a second time just for the odd snippet of 'in picture' video has far more patience than me. This is also the first HD-DVD to include Warner Brother's 'interactive web feature' - a deadly dull, and unbelievably slow-to-download web site that invites you to take part in an online poll or play trailers for other HD-DVD movies, inbetween asking you if you are happy to accept a Warner Brothers cookie every 15 seconds!

But it's the film that's important here, and Blood Diamond is a corker of a film for those that like their films to have some depth.

Mini-Reviews: Doctor Who on TV/The O.C. Season 4 DVD Set/The Hitcher HD-DVD

This was supposed to be the weekend that I returned from Ireland solely to attend the Microsoft developer community event Developer! Developer! Developer!.

Alas, a delayed flight (again!) followed by an hour long queue for the privilege of being able to pay £70 for a black cab home because the tube was no longer running meant that I got to bed shortly before 3am. When the alarm went off at 6.30am to advise it was time I caught the train to Reading I decided sleep was more important, especially with a 3.30am start ahead of me again on Monday. Of course if I'd known the flights would be such a mess I'd have stayed in Ireland for the weekend instead of rushing home, but...

I haven't posted much about Ireland, and probably won't until my contract's over in mid-September and I get a chance to breathe again (the time schedules are crazy). What I can say is that circumstances on the flat front are not great - I seem to be paying twice what everybody else is paying for a flat that's an hour instead of 5 minutes away from work, with not so much as an iron, bedside table or chair in the place and circumstances mean that I don't get to watch the TV I'm being charged 25 Euro's a month for on top of the basic rent when I'm over there.

So Saturday in the UK was a chance to play catch up on the 'relax in front of the telly' front and watch the Doctor Who season finale, as well as the first part of a repeat of The 100 Greatest War Movies which I missed the first time round (but which was so good I wish I could catch the second part next week).

I didn't think Who could get much worse after the last couple of episodes, which admittedly suffered badly by being scheduled after the superb Blink episode written by Stephen Moffat. But I was proved wrong and even die-hard fans are blogging about how dire it was. It's hard to remember the last time I saw such a bad example of television writing: Appalling narrative structure, dreadful dialogue and 'hit the reset button to resolve the cliff-hangers you keep introducing' nonsense were featured throughout in an episode that was a great steaming turd of incompetence in the writing department. It leaves me wondering if the franchise can ever recover from 'the Billy Bunter effect' that has plagued the new series (and Torchwood too) since it started. At least I won't have to worry about trying to watch the Christmas episode, as there is absolutely no reason why anybody would want to watch such infantile drivel unless paid great wads of cash for doing so. Billy Bunter, who insists on writing the Christmas episode himself every year, has shown that any writing skills he may have shown with his excellent Queer as Folk and Casanova series disappeared a long time ago. The man is way past his 'sell by' date on the creative front. It can surely only be a matter of time before all the fawning 'But it's a British institution and a national treasure' newspaper critics and David Tennant fangirls finally wake up and realise the emperor really has got no clothes. I'd rant more, but really it's not good for my blood pressure and there seem to be a lot of very good out-of-work professional writers doing a much better job on their blogs of explaining why Davies should have been fired for gross incompetence a long time ago.

Over in Ireland the main source of 'out of hours' entertainment, a team bowling match and meals out aside, has been watching DVDs on the laptop. The small 'ultra-portable screen' has meant my avoiding 'big screen' blockbusters better seen on the plasma at home, and concentrating on the numerous TV box sets that have been piling up.

The O.C. is a bit of a guilty pleasure, although I've always thought that this particular 'teen soap' was somewhat over-rated by the critics, and wasn't surprised that this fourth season, just issued on DVD after finishing its run on American TV in February, was cancelled prematurely and short of its normal full season run. When the show started the critics were all over it for its 'cool' factor, invariably pointing out how much better it was than what had apparently suddenly become an embarrassment - Dawson's Creek. It's amazing what a marriage to Tom Cruise will do for an actress's previously highly-lauded TV show! I've never understood this constant 'rewriting of history' from the critics, and sure enough The O.C. itself suddenly became victim of this trait when actress Mischa Burton left at the end of the third series, just as Dawson's Creek before it had done. In truth Dawson's Creek was a far better show, if only because the writing, albeit featuring teens speaking deep, meaningful lines that only adults over the age of 30 would be likely to use in the real world, was so much better. The O.C. stole all the best bits, including most of the plot lines, from Creek and recycled them in an inferior way, trying to add a dose of Desperate Housewives over-the-topness to the mix which only served to show how inferior it really was.

So it's somewhat ironic that the show should get cancelled just as it seemed to be getting into its stride, after a particularly poor third season. If you're a fan of the show then the Season 4 DVD features some of the best episodes of the entire run, although the extra's are appallingly thin and certainly don't warrant a disk of their own as presented here. For a show that went out on a bang you'd expect at least a retrospective rather than a few 10 minute 'making of' featurettes on a couple of the show's central themes.

The Hitcher only entered UK cinemas two or three weeks ago, so its availability on High Definition DVD disc on import, for about the cost of a West End cinema ticket, seemed too good an opportunity to resist, despite the universally bad reviews. Sean Bean is a fine actor so surely the film couldn't be as bad as most critics were insisting?

Unfortunately this remake of a film that's apparently a late 80's classic (I haven't seen the original) is even worse than most of the reviewers have indicated, and even with a short running time of around 88 minutes it seems way too long. Somewhat surprisingly the problem here is not with the direction (which is slick) or even the acting (which is more than OK, especially from Bean - who plays a character very different from his Boromir role in The Lord of the Rings films), but with the totally unsympathetic central characters. I suspect most viewers will just wish the irritating American brat couple at the centre of this piece had been killed within minutes of their first appearance.

A much bigger problem than the annoying 'American brat' leads though is, yet again, a truly dreadful script. How on earth did this get green lit?!! It's become an expected norm in the horror genre that the central characters lose any of the basic vestiges of common sense, but here we're asked to follow a film that has as its basic premise the assumption that police would automatically assume any innocents anywhere near the scene of a murder were the people who committed the murder, no matter what the evidence around them might indicate to the contrary. At one point, barely two minutes after arresting our two 'heroes' on a road trip a long way from home, the police have miraculously got hold of professionally taken colour photographic prints of the couple, complete with potted versions of their life histories! I could go on with more examples of the silliness on display here, but suffice to say the plot is unbelievable and downright laughable it's hard to understand what on earth the producers were thinking of. Actually scratch that - Michael Bay is a co-producer - enough said!

Despite an interesting turn from Sean Bean I found myself continually wanting to just hit the stop button and go do something more interesting. The Hitcher is 88 minutes of my life that I'll never get back, and although the high definition transfer is exemplary, featuring some frankly stunning pictures of the Californian countryside that are at times almost 3D-like in quality, overall this is a disc to be avoided by anybody other than HD-DVD collector completists.

Insomnia = A Bunch of Quick Film/DVD Reviews

My alarm is set for 3.30am so I can catch the flight back to Ireland, and yet here I am at 11pm, having struggled to get to sleep since 8pm, feeling wide awake. Aaaaarggh!

I still have no internet connection in Ireland. The "I can get it connected within 24 hours" promise of the landlord has dragged on for 2 weeks now and the latest is "It should be there in 7-8 days", which explains the complete lack of activity on the various review blogs. I'm not holding my breath for the fact that this is going to get fixed any time soon!

Lack of internet access in Ireland is probably not the end of the world as my current contract there is consuming many hours, with the specs for what we have to deliver in 5 weeks time still not even close to being tied down. Despite that and the horrendous weather (an hour long walk to work when it's nearly always raining is no fun!) I'm enjoying the "Emerald Isle" experience, mainly because of the group of people I'm working with and the fact I'm getting to learn some new stuff and work with the technologies I really want to.

I spent last Saturday (in Ireland) checking out the local cinema, in the form of the Limerick 12-screen 'omniplex'. Alas, I made the mistake of choosing the new Fantastic Four movie as the film to see. The first FF movie got panned by the critics, but I thought it was far better than the reviews implied, albeit with some serious mis-casting for the chief villain 'Dr Doom' and the super-hero leader 'Mr Fantastic'. This time round the director is supposed to have responded to criticisms of the first film and turned in a more adult offering. Alas, he's made a much worse picture, and the first half hour is a disjointed, badly edited mess. The whole film is barely 90 minutes long, but feels longer, and special effects house Weta clearly didn't have the time or the budget to finish off the CGI on the central Silver Surfer figure that gives this sequel its main title. The Surfer looks like a demo version of the metallic figure we got 20 years ago in The Terminator 3 movie, and things should have moved on a lot since then. The audience I saw the film with seemed to have an average age of about six, which seemed to me to be the one the film-makers were aiming for. The mis-casting of the main leads in the first film were even more obvious this time around, with only the under-used Chris Evans really delivering. Overall, this is one to avoid!

This morning, thanks to Brian, I got to see a preview of Evan Almighty, the follow-up to Bruce Almighty starring Steve Carell (The Office (US), The 40 Year-Old Virgin and Little Miss Sunshine), due to hit screens in the UK officially on 3rd August. Alas, it's a weaker follow-up to the original and although Jim Carrey is one of my least-favourite actors, he worked far better in the original film than Carell, who replaces him this time round, does in this one. The basic premise this time around is that God tells Carell, a former news-reader recently turned congress man, that a flood is coming and he has to build an ark to rescue all the animals just as Noah did in Genesis 6:14. There's some big budget special effects but I couldn't help wishing the money had been spent on something with a lot more substance than this meaningless tosh. That being said, it's a fairly innocuous 90 minutes, and will undoubtedly make back its money as it's a good 'date movie', albeit one that could have done with a bit more structure and a lot more jokes.

On DVD, whilst in Ireland, I've seen Black Book set in Holland during World War 2, which was excellent, and Goal 2: Living the Dream which wasn't. This latter film is the sequel to... erm... Goal which was perhaps most notable for the 'deer caught in headlights' acting debut of one David Beckham. This time round the paper-thin story of the first film is even slimmer, and Beckham is thankfully relegated to endless background shots and a non-speaking part, but this is not enough to save the film, despite moving the action from dreary, rainy Newcastle to sun-soaked Real Madrid. The third film of a planned trilogy, with the final film having apparently been shot mainly around last year's World Cup, is apparently now looking like it will be shelved - based on Goal 2 I'm not surprised!

On DVD I've managed to finish the Complete Season 2 of Rescue Me, a brilliant drama series about firefighters in New York post 9/11. The second series, against all expectations, not only lived up to the strong writing and performances of the first season but, if anything exceeded it. The third season is already available on import Blu-Ray high definition disc (and region free to boot. Hoorah!) so that's going to be moving to the top of the 'To be watched' pile.

The surprising highlight of the weekend's viewing though has been Shortbus, which has received a lot of publicity for its 'explicit' sex scenes. Actually explicit doesn't really cover it - in the first 10 minutes alone we get self-fellatio, explicit sexual intercourse and cum shots, with rimming and Lord knows what else to follow later in the film when a background orgy scene featuring a lot of 'sextra's takes place. The surprising thing is that unlike Michael Winterbottom's equally controversial 9 Songs, which was just plain dreary and borderline sleazy, the film doesn't, to this viewer at least, feel at all gratuitous. It has a sweet, quirky, good-natured feel to it that made it totally watchable, with some cute cartoon sequences, witty writing and a 'feel good' ending. Of course the explcit sex scenes are always more watchable when your cast are all young, uninhibited and very attractive. British critics have been surprisingly enthusiastic about the film, despite the explicit sex scenes, and it's not hard to see why, although you need to be VERY liberal minded to cope with nudity which is frequent and sex acts which are numerous. The strange thing is that although there's a lot of sex in the film, the film doesn't come across as being just about sex, and is actually more about relationships and character, with the sex making the whole thing feel more real. The characters here are very sweet, with a nice little pay-off for all of them at the end but the sex grounds it in a reality too often missing from rom-com's. Absolutely not for Daily Mail readers, and it would be hard to find screen caps that could be considered 'safe for work', but otherwise highly recommended.

Talking of rom-com's I also got to see Music and Lyrics on high definition HD-DVD disc this weekend. It's enjoyable fluff, particularly for those who like to take the mickey out of 80's pop acts like Duran Duran. Hugh Grant is a real surprise (he can sing AND dance!) and Cameron Diaz is naturally warm and sympathetic, with some surprisingly witty writing. I don't generally like rom-coms but after Shortbus and this I may have to revise my opinions.