Stop looking at me, Swan.

To start, some help from my best friend Wikipedia:

"In fiction, folklore and popular culture, a doppelgänger is a tangible double of a living person that typically represents evil...The word is also used to describe the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no chance that it could have been a reflection. Doppelgängers are often perceived as a sinister form of bilocation and generally regarded as harbingers of bad luck. In some traditions, a doppelgänger seen by a person's friends or relatives portends illness or danger, while seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of death."

Literature and film is littered with the idea of the double: they can be your evil twin, a colleague who's better at being you than you, or a dead ringer for your equally dead girlfriend. But in the end, they're nearly always you. The part of yourself you can't admit exists. The part of you that does what you can't. They may cause you pain, but they get what you want. But to become one again, whole, almost always necessitates violence. You can merge with them, or you can kill them, but whenever there is two of you, by the end there must only be one.

Swan Lake is probably one of the best known ballets in the world. The story is this: Odette, a chaste young princess, is put under an evil spell by a wicked sorcerer. By day she is a swan and only human at night. The spell can only be broken by true love. A young prince sees her and falls madly in love with her, and it seems she will at long last be freed of the spell. But the wicked sorcerer has other plans. He sends in his daughter Odile, who looks like Odette, to seduce the prince at the ball where he is to declare his love for the princess. She succeeds and the princess is imprisoned in her spell forever. Unable to live without her prince, she throws herself off a cliff and is freed only in death.

In the ballet, Odette is identified as the white swan, Odile the black. They are played by the same dancer, meaning the dancer must be able to capture the fragile, pure qualities of the white swan and the cunning, dark qualities of the black swan.

In this tale, the black swan, the evil twin, is victorious, and the white swan dead. But the dancer herself must be both; must divide herself in two and merge by the end. Or perish.

Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky, is the story of Nina, a ballerina in the prestigious New York Ballet Company. She lives and breathes ballet, at the cost of perhaps a normal life. She lives at home with her controlling mother, in a room that doesn't seem to have changed since she was five. It's a suffocating pink, with stuffed toys lining the room. She is determined to play the Swan Queen in the company's performance of Swan Lake.

She is a perfectionist, which makes her an amazing dancer, but it has failed to impress the company director Tomas enough to feature her. He questions her ability to embody both roles - the virginal white swan and the sensual black swan. She accidentally convinces him and wins the role. The role of understudy is given to Lili, a dancer new to the company.

In the ballet that is Nina's life she is the white swan, and Tomas the prince. To her, Lili is the black swan, and is a threat to everything Nina has worked for. But not all is as it seems. Is Tomas really the prince? Or is he the wicked sorcerer? And is Lili really the black swan, or is she merely an incarnation of that side of Nina that she and her mother try to bury deep within her mind every day?

This is a very dark and twisted version of Swan Lake in which the doubles are not restricted to Odette and Odile (or Nina and Lili), but to all the major players. Accompanying Nina's descent into madness is an uncomfortable, unnerving experience. We are in Nina's point of view throughout the whole film and whether we ever escape is impossible to tell.

It would seem that the theme of the double becomes an integral part to the plot's classical trajectory; in the classical Hollywood film, we are presented with a protagonist with one desire that motivates all their actions and the narrative. The story unfolds in the service of this all-encompassing idea. To keep the viewer engaged with the protagonist and their struggle, the filmmaker must create obstacles for the protagonist. In the end, the protagonist achieves their desire (or not), and the story has no need to continue. In this case Nina, as the protagonist, desires to play the Swan Queen. The obstacle in her path is essentially her own mind. But she cannot accept that fact and so her mind must create versions of herself and defeat them in order to achieve her goal.

Lili, Tomas and her mother all represent Nina in some way and her reenactment of the Swan Lake story in her own life. But Lili, as Nina's black swan, is the doppelganger. The double that threatens Nina's career, relationships and her life. Nina's evil twin that threatens to consume her. To fully embody the role of the Swan Queen, Nina must kill Lili and become whole; Nina and Lili.

Aronofsky uses conventional Hollywood storytelling to engage us the viewer. The theme of the double is revealed through several visual devices; mirrors and reflective surfaces are everywhere - bathrooms, studios, nina's bedroom, the New York subway windows. Characters resemble Nina and become her; Veronica, the girl Tomas threatens to give the role to; Beth, the dancer who is pushed aside because of her age who attempts suicide and damages her legs; Lili, even people Nina passes on the street. Lili often becomes Nina, pushing her further into madness.

The camera too becomes one way in which the viewer is pulled into Nina's mental instability. The primary way the viewer always engages with the screen is the camera. Sounds simple, but few filmmakers seem to realise the possibilities this opens up - Aronofsky uses careful handheld camerawork to stalk Nina through the maze of New York and the ballet company, the repetition of shots symbolising the routine that she has imposed on herself. We follow her and become involved with her.

This is not the first film to trick the viewer into adopting the point of view of a mentally unstable protagonist; but not many films do it so well. Films that allow us to question the reality presented have a dangerous tightrope running across them, which the filmmaker must navigate to emerge with a successful film. While the viewer craves the revelation of the reality of the world presented in the film, for many the confirmation that we have been inside a troubled mind all along represents the film falling off the tightrope and dying. Films like Secret Window, Inception and Shutter Island fail because the reveal is too obvious - we see it too early on that tightrope. Films like Memento, The Prestige and now Black Swan walk the tightrope to the end. In the latter, it seems it is the viewer and Nina who fall off. Nina literally falls just as the Swan Queen does. But maybe some of us are left, panting, on the edge.

It is a credit to Aronofsky that we never truly know when Nina is lucid or having a psychotic episode, but it is Natalie Portman as Nina that is the stunning glue that binds us to the screen, to the story. For as we long to know what is really happening, there's a part of ourselves that doesn't care. She is our protagonist - we want her to achieve her goal, whether that comes at the price of her mind and even her life.

Mila Kunis as Lili is extraordinary in a supporting role, the perfect complement to Portman. Vincent Cassell is more than convincing as the prince/sorcerer Tomas. Barbara Hershey is the feather in the cap of pitch-perfect performances from the main cast. Portman is a revelation, on track for a grandslam in this year's awards season, but she would be nothing without her colleagues.

The costumes by Rodarte are incredible, particularly the Black Swan costume, and the cinematography is beautiful; a haunting visual metaphor for Nina's internal struggle.

It's difficult to sum up this film, so I'll let my friend do it for me:

"Black swan did not disappoint. It's a phenomenal film - intense, passionate, sad, melodramatic, disturbing, visceral, exhilarating..."

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

A film lecturer I had, David Boyd (Hitchcock guru), once said in a lecture that perhaps Puck's final speech of A Midsummer Night's Dream may have more in common with cinema than theatre:

"If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
If you pardon, we will mend."

I finally watched Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010) last night and I have to say I was a little disappointed. An interesting premise, sure. Stunning visuals, yes. A tragic love story. Of course.

But whether I took too much of my friends' criticisms into this movie, or they were totally valid, I didn't find Inception as mind-blowingly awesome as I expected. I think perhaps it feels as though the filmmakers were scared to let the film unfold and decided to try and explain everything. Not saying I could do better, but it felt like a lot of exposition. And it was incredibly long. Or felt it. Maybe I actually fell asleep during the film and the time passed more quickly. That said, it's an important film for so many reasons, not least of all that it is an interesting look at the way in which the dream is such a recurring topic in film.

So this could easily be a properly researched, critical analysis of the idea of the dream in cinema, but I'm lazy. Give me a break, ok? I have important Facebooking to do. And to be honest, if I put that into Google Scholar, it will probably find me hundreds of better stuff than I could produce in my current state of sorry affairs.

Some interesting things to note about film and its relationship to the dream:

Many have likened the experience of viewing a film to that of a dream. Let's look at it - you're in a darkened room, you're in a resting state, everything is quiet and people (I mean me) get really cranky if that quiet is disturbed, and your mind is processing complex thoughts and images while in this resting state. I was asking a friend why the cinema was so fucking cold and she said, 'it's probably so people don't get too comfortable and fall asleep.' Interesting. But then again, the emergence of Gold Class (recliners, food, alcohol) have suggested that the experience of watching a film is supposed to be getting more and more comfortable. That's probably more a strategy to counteract people preferring to watch films at home than making the venue more conducive to a dreaming state. At the least, it's worth mentioning perhaps an unconscious understanding that watching a film and faling asleep have more in common than people think.

The Surrealist art movement on one hand strove to recreate the absurdity of the dream and this idea is reflected in the films of Salvador Dali and Louis Bunuel - most notably their collaboration, Un Chien Andalou (1929).

Characters recur throughout the film, in different ways. Time skips forward, then jumps backward. People move from one room into a beach. There is some seriously odd moments (a character drags through a piano attached to dead asses and two Catholic priests). Explaining the film is like explaining a dream. Ever recounted the plot of a film and found that it sounded really weird? Things that you accepted as logical while you were watching it suddenly seem ridiculous when you describe them. Characters appear, then disappear, some you recognise, some you don't.

So, for those of you who've been under a rock like me, the plot of Inception is thus: Through the use of advanced technology, Dom Cobb is able to engineer and enter people's dreams in order to extract vital information. He's also a fugitive, trying to avert extradition to the US. While on a job, he is given a proposal that could earn him his freedom and the chance to see his children again; engage in Inception, wipe out a businessman's competition and go home. Inception is the planting of an idea in another's mind using dreams to enter the person's subconscious. Tom has been able to do it once before, and now he must attempt to do it again.

The title doesn't just refer to the plot; it refers to what the filmmaker's are trying to do to the audience. Within the film, Cobb and his team need to do set up a very complex structure in order to enable the idea to be planted. They need to design and create a world in which it is possible for the idea to seem logical. They need to populate that world with characters to establish the relationships necessary to cement that world. And they need to fight off attacks of suspicion and disbelief. Sound familiar? Not only that, but in order to be successful, the dream requires three levels. Three acts, three levels, geddit, geddit, geddit?

The idea that Cobb and Co. must plant is the idea that the heir to a major corporation should dissolve the company rather than take it over. To do this, the team uses his relationship with his father and exploits it.

The idea that Nolan and Co. are attempting to plant is much more than an idea but a question; how do we know that we are not in a constate state of dreaming? They construct a film with three acts (well, one could argue that it's all first act), an overall world in which the viewer can accept the concept that other people can enter your subconscious through your dreams and that going too deep can cause you to question your reality, and uses predominantly the characters of Cobb, his wife and Ariadne, the young dream architect, and their relationships, exploiting the tragic nature of the relationship between Cobb and his wife to further attempt to take the viewer too deeply into the world and question reality.

In the film, Cobb is successful. The team manages to plant the idea of dissolving the company and Cobb goes home to his children a free man. Or does he? You see, in the world of Inception, the players need personal cues, what they call a Totem, to tell them when they are dreaming, and at the film's end the viewer gets a personal cue to Cobb's state of mind. But does the viewer have any such totem?

When Cobb is first explaining the project to Ariadne, he explains that dreams always begin in the middle of the action, and asks her to explain how they got to their current location. She can't and he reveals they are dreaming.

I read an article for a Communication Studies course (turns something fun into something ridiculously boring and hence is the worst discipline in the world, ever) that argued that due to film's temporal relations (the action, no matter when the film was made, is always current, always in the present), the film must begin In Media Res, which translates roughly into In The Middle of Things. Cobb could just as easily be talking about film.

Nolan's Inception attempt is incredibly complex and clever, but does it actually work? By the film's last level, do we actually care? It's not the first time a team like this has attempted Inception on the filmgoing public. Films like The Matrix, The 13th Floor, Existenz, and Waking Life all construct a world in which the idea that reality is a questionable notion. And to be honest, they all do it better.

Existenz in particular is most successful at asking us to think about the blurred lines between the 'real world' and the world of the subconscious. Though it's premise is different, referring to video games rather than dreams, it offers an interesting parallel. It was made in the late 90s, but it's especially timely today in a world in which video games and video game users are constantly intertwined with the advent of the Nintendo Wii and the Xbox Kinect. There are striking parallels in the two films; in Inception, the characters are linked to a console that allows them to stay asleep for a fixed period of time, and can be done as a group. In each level of the dreams, the technology still exists in varying forms. In Existenz, a group can be connected to one console and in each level of the game, the technology to enter a game exists. Dying in both the game (Existenz) and in the dream (Inception) causes the player or dreamer to leave the world of the game or the dream and can produce a diminished ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy.

As I said, I think Existenz does it better, with the film's structure perfectly mirroring the structure of each level of the game. The final moments are more chilling and to me, open the film up to more debate than the final moments of Inception. The final line, "Hey, tell me the truth... are we still in the game?" is shocking because the characters in the world are asking the exact same question as the viewer, and probably at the same time.

Another film that also does this fairly well is Richard Linklater's Waking Life (2001). Using an animation technique called rotoscoping (painting over frames of film to give a sense of accurate movement), the film recreates the shifting temporal and spatial relations of the dream to reflect the need to establish a difference between dreams and reality, but also to suggest the following idea: if time in the dream world is different, seemingly eternal, what if what we conceive of as the afterlife is merely our subconscious shutting down and using the last of our brain function to enter a dream-like state? It's certainly a compelling one.

And let's not forget the first attempt at this kind of inception, of the questioning of dreaming and reality was not done using film. It was one dude freaking himself out one night. For Rene Descartes to get to 'I Think, Therefore I am,' he had to think, 'how can I tell that I'm in the world? How can I know for sure that I am always in a dream?' He decided that if an idea can be doubted, it can be rejected in order to use them in order to acquire a firm foundation for genuine knowledge. If we can realise that thought exists, and accept a concrete form of reality, then we can be certain that we are not stuck in a dream. Or crazy.

Having a double major in Film Studies and Philosophy (I know what you're thinking; EMPLOYABLE), and having taken a course called Philosophy and Film, it seems that a lot of fundamental philosophical concepts are constantly examined and explored. It seems that the question of who we are and what we are will remain an everchanging philosophical concept and if it's the role of the arts to reflect these questions, then it seems Inception will not be the last film to address Descartes' ideas.

It seems to me that sometimes the Cinema is the last refuge of the philosopher. Is Nolan a filmmaker or philosopher, you might ask? I say, can't he be both?

Oh, and if you are actually interested in reading about films that explore fundamental philosophical concepts, read Philosophy Goes To The Movies: An Introduction to Philosophy by Chris Falzon.

Back to Facebook!

Only Friends on Facebook

In 2009's Zombieland (Ruben Fleischer), Columbus, played by Jesse Eisenberg, remarks that "you want to know the best thing about [Zombieland]? No Facebook status updates. 'Rob Curtis is gearing up for Friday.' Who cares?"

It may seem funny that Eisenberg would go from complaining about Facebook in film to playing its co-founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg in film. It's safe to say that every Facebook user (or boycotter) has a fairly complicated relationship with the world's youngest billionaire. Not least Facebook's other co-founder Eduardo Saverin.

A recent E! Online article said that The Social Network, David Fincher's take on the history of the world's biggest social networking site, may be one way to rebel against the site's "iffy privacy policy or personalized ad bars...without having to delete your account."

The film, an adaptation of Ben Mezrich's book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook; A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal, is the story of Mark Zuckerberg, a socially awkward Computer Science major from Harvard and his friend Eduardo Saverin, also socially awkward and a Business major. The two boys are united by their common goal of social acceptance and, well, getting laid.

Mark is obssessed with getting in to a prestigious and incredibly exclusice Final Club and Eduardo is on his way to being accepted by one, The Phoenix. After a disastrous date with his now-ex-girlfriend Erica, Mark, angry and upset, creates Facemash.com - a site where users are given two pictures side-by-side of girls on campus and asked to vote which one is more attractive. Not only does this understandably upset the female population of Harvard, it gets attention from the Administrative Board for breaches of privacy (Zuckerberg downloads photos from each dormitory's online Facebook, which is simply a profile of all students living in halls of residence), internet security (to download the photos, Mark hacks into secure servers), and no doubt improper use of Harvard's internet service. Not to mention the womens groups on campus and the offence it has caused them. Interestingly, the most damning piece of evidence comes from Mark himself - a true practitioner of problem-based enquiry, he blogs his process as he goes.

This event is the catalyst for everything that will follow. His stunt garners the attention of two seniors, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who approach him to write code for their social networking site, The Harvard Connection. He feigns mild interest and goes on to create something better using Saverin's business sense Phoenix connection - TheFacebook.com.

Now, if you're yawning by now or wondering why the founding of a website is worthy of book and film treatment, then you're exactly where I was a few months back when I first heard the news. A movie about Facebook? Starring Justin Timberlake? And Jesse Eisenberg? What the hell is he doing there? He's better than a movie about a website people use to keep their friends and acquaintances posted on their every move, including probably their bowel movements?

Now, as someone who is on Facebook a lot (it's currently open on my laptop in another window as I type these words), I didn't know the story of it's inception. All I knew was that it started out as a social networking website similar to MySpace or Friendster or Xanga or Bebo made exclusively for US college students. By the time I'd created a profile, history had already been made. It had spread from US colleges to the rest of the world.

When I saw the trailer and the film's tagline ("You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies."), I was hooked. Suddenly the story of some website was interesting. Had created rifts in friendships, kids suing each other, and music by Trent Reznor. And of course there was Jesse Eisenberg, who I've had a crush on since Adventureland.

The power of this story comes ultimately from watching the breakdown of a friendship, and watching two people discover they don't know each other as well as they thought. The tragedy isn't that Saverin got screwed over by his best friend, it's that Saverin and Zuckerberg aren't best friends any more.

While the story of the founding is Facebook is compelling, it might seem hard for other people to find it such an important story, especially people who don't use it. It is in this regard that the film bears resemblance to another film called Shattered Glass, released in 2003 and directed by Billy Ray.

Shattered Glass is the story of journalist Stephen Glass, whose meteoric rise as a journalist ends abruptly when many of his articles are exposed as fraudulent. This is a story that is instantly compelling for the people involved, journalists and media commentators. However, I read a review of the film's release on DVD that concluded the film's power came from the director's ability to tell a compelling story about an issue that isn't all that compelling for the wider public.

I can see that the same argument can be made about The Social Network - a business deal that sees a co-founder screwed out of a deal that, if you believe the story, he lost control over must happen all the time in Silicon Valley, Hollywood and even the independent film industry. It is Sorkin's script and director David Fincher's ability to bring the relationships among the major characters to the foreground that makes The Social Network such a strong film.

In the same E! Online article, scriptwriter Sorkin is quoted as saying that Facebook wanted no involvement in the film unless Zuckerberg was portrayed in a positive light, the clearcut hero. Because the filmmakers aimed for historical accuracy and Mezrich's book as its source material, that would never really be possible, not necessarily because of Zuckerberg's actions but because of his silence. As such, neither Zuckerberg nor Facebook has any involvement in the film.


While Mezrich has relied on court documents, interviews and media during the time, his narrative style leaves him open to criticism of the validity and credibility of his tale. Given that, after reading the book his impartiality is clear, with his prose regarding character motivation delicate. Much like the book, The Social Network remains largely speculative when it comes to Zuckerberg's character and motivation. However, this is precisely what makes him such a compelling character.

Director David Fincher is now a veteran of this kind of film. Whether it's a family trapped in their own home, or a man fighting his own sense of self-worth, Fincher is a master of the exploration of technology and its impact on the dynamics of human relationships. That his attention has turned to social networking now seems obvious. He excels once more, taking Mezrich's narrative structure and improving on it, using the 'kids suing each other' as the frame for his exploration. Enlisting Sorkin's assistance was also a master stroke, as Sorkin's experience is primarily in providing engaging analyses of what goes on behind the scenes of things the public is either not privy to or not interested in. The great feat of the two men is that while the narrative might reflect a clear hero and villain, the characterisation and unfolding of the story means that by the end we are questioning that very idea.

However if anyone can be said to be the hero of the film, it is Saverin, which is because Saverin, the main consultant to Mezrich during the writing of the book, has had the most involvement with the project. His side of the story is more accessible, much like the Winklevosses (or Winklevi, as Zuckerberg calls them in the film).

Despite the material appearing to favour Saverin as the victim, the film goes some way to humanising Zuckerberg and revealing him as a complicated, flawed human being (aren't we all?). It also leaves the viewer with so many questions; did Mark intentionally remove Eduardo from the deal or was he brainwashed into doing it by Sean Parker? Is he truly an arsehole or just incredibly socially awkward? Did he invent Facebook just to have friends? Did he really steal the Winklevosses idea and prevent them from competing with him or was he unable to get up the courage to tell them he didn't want to work on their project after all?

Playing real people can be difficult, which is not to say it isn't more difficult than playing a fictional character. It's difficult first of all because the person is alive and capable of criticising your performance and second of all because you have to choose whether or not to absolutely immerse yourself in becoming that exact person or bringing to the screen your own experiences and using that to identify with the character and become that character. Eisenberg's performance is understated and as a result it is brilliant. To play a real life person who remains elusive in the media and criticised by the people who would appear to know him best must have been a challenge but like many actors before him who take on the challenge of playing a real life character villified in public, Eisenberg is able to reveal another side to Zuckerberg; not just faithful to the picture painted by Mezrich but so much more. The final scene, as he continually refreshing the facebook page as he patiently waits to be added as a friend by his ex-girlfriend is touching and may as well have the title 'Oscar Clip' flashing at the bottom of the screen.

Newcomer Andrew Garfield also puts in an incredible performance as Saverin. He is playing the hero, for all intents and purposes. He perfectly captures Saverin's shyness and vulnerability, and makes his journey from Zuckerberg's friend to foe engaging. It's very easy for us to side with Saverin; he's attractive, extends a hand of friendship to someone in a similar position to him and to watch him being bitten by the hand he has fed (both socially and financially) is gut-wrenching. Not only that, the shifting dynamics between the two actors make it obvious that both actors have worked hard at establishing the complicated relationship between the two men. It's easy to see why he's slated to play Spider-Man in the re-energising (reboot is such a stupid term to me when applied to cinema) of the franchise. He's got the vulnerable hero role nailed down. Have I already mentioned how attractive he is?

The rest of the cast is also strong, and yes, that includes Justin Timberlake as Napster founder and dubious mentor Sean Parker. Sean Parker sees himself as a rockstar, a role Timberlake is no stranger to. Don't be fooled, Timberlake's comic turns with The Lonely Island gang and Saturday Night Live hosting duties have in some ways allowed him to become something of a, dare I say it, character actor. He may just be another successful popstar-turned-actor. Rooney Mara is also strong as Zuckerberg's ex-girlfriend Erica. It's a small role but Erica becomes the driving force for a lot of Zuckerberg's actions and if she was an unsypathetic character, or simply a lost love interest, it might be harder to understand why Mark would want to repair his relationship with her. Possibly the best of the supporting cast is Armie Hammer, who plays both Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and had me fooled - I thought the role was played by real-life twins.

The work by Trent Reznor cannot be discounted and is a superb contribution to the film's compelling story. His dark electronic score provides an ominous edge to the computer-based action sequences. Most people won't understand the power of writing computer code and algorithms, but his score allows us to feel the impact of these codes and logarithms, and allows us to feel more fully the consequences they bring.

Mark Zuckerberg, 2010's Time Magazine Person of the Year might denounce the film as fiction, but that's not the insult he might think, because The Social Network is the best kind of fiction.

I first saw the film in New Jersey in October, and a week or so before it's official Australian release one of my Facebook friends had the following status update:

"just saw the social network and now I love facebook even more :) great movie!"

Delicious treat

So I done a script...and that. I think people should read it? Yeah? Read? Yah? Good. Great. Glad we covered...that...

Christmas Dinner

Another story of Americans Abroad

The Tourist
Rated: M
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmark
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Johnny Depp, Paul Bettany.

Plot: Alexander Pearce has just stolen billions of dollars from a gangster. He now has the gangster's Russian henchmen and Scotland Yard following him. Only problem is that he's had plastic surgery and no one knows what he now looks like. The only way to get to him is to follow his mistress, Elise Ward. But rather than leading them to Pearce she leads them to Frank Tupelo, an American math teacher. Tupelo is now the wrong man, chasing Elise and running from the Russians. Who will get to who first?

I watched this film thinking that instead of Jolie and Depp, Elise and Frank should have been played by Grace Kelly and Cary Grant. Mostly because this film would have been superbly executed 60 years ago. But it was made in 2010 and unfortunately lacks the Hollywood touch.

Not that they haven't tried. The film has some beautiful visuals, not least the two leads. It's an impressive cast and a stunning location, but neither the plot nor the story seem to do any of them justice.

When Elise sits down across from Frank, you can't help but think of other great swindle thrillers like North By Northwest or Charade. But where those thrillers are exciting, covering potential plotholes with more twist and turns and rapid location changes, The Tourist is a little flat, covering plotholes with 'twists and turns' and costume changes for Jolie. The costumes are amazing, by the way. But they sadly can't detract from the fact that this is a little boring. And neither can beautiful Venice. Or Paris. Or Johnny Depp.

The film is based on a french film made in 2005 called Anthony Zimmer, written and directed by Jerome Salle and starring Sophie Marceau and Yvan Attal (looked him up on IMDB and he is a babe). While I haven't seen the original, I suspect that in the tradition of remakes of French films, The Tourist loses the substance of Anthony Zimmer and just barely replaces it with style.

Those costumes really are amazing.

How I learned to stop worrying and love publishing

Hello.

So along with writing on this here blog, and writing scripts about Christmas dinners, I've been writing DVD reviews for a local street press, Reverb.

Here are my two latest pieces. If you'd like to see them in their full glory (and c'mon - who wouldn't?), click here:

The versions of my pieces that appear on this blog are my personal opinion only.

Please to enjoy!

Article 1: DVD review of Scott Pilgrim Vs the World

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
Rating: 4/5

They say every Hollywood film is a romantic comedy. No matter the genre, at the end of the day it's about the union of two people.

Director Edgar Wright has taken this idea to heart. Shaun of the Dead is a Zombie Romantic Comedy, or Zom-Rom-Com, Hot Fuzz is a Buddy Cop Romantic Comedy (Bud-Co-Rom-Com?) and now he brings us Scott Pilgrim Vs The World, a Video Game Comic Book Slacker Romantic Comedy (suggestions welcome on how to shorten that one).

Scott Pilgrim's precious little life is turned upside when he meets the girl of his dreams, Ramona Flowers. Literally. She rollerskates through people's minds, or the subspace highway for those in the know. But she also has a rather interesting dating history. And now Scott will have to face it in a series of battles to the death if he wants to win Ramona's heart forever.

From the awesomeness ratings of the main characters to the video game references to the fight scenes, it's obvious that Wright has captured the essence of the graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O' Malley. It's very much grounded in the slacker genre, perfectly made for a generation who grew up on Super Mario Brothers. It also has the Edgar Wright touches – comic dialogue, visual gags, television references, and the hip hop montage that has become his stylistic trademark. And the 8-bit version of the Universal logo.

That's not to say there aren't flaws; is Michael Cera playing Scott Pilgrim or George Michael Bluth again? And why does someone as boring as Ramona have so many exes obsessed with her? And it has also become a trademark of Wright's films that you can see where the finish line should have been, which is usually ten minutes before the actual finish line. But that's not to say you should let these flaws stop you from enjoying the film, because it's a whole lot of fun. And some of the music was written by resident cool guy Beck. It's no Hot Fuzz, but it's one of the best movies of 2010.

Extras: outtakes, feature commentary and technical commentary. Unpreviewed.

Article 2: The best comic book movies of 2010

Graphic Action
Film and comic books represent a world of possibilities for telling stories visually and it's little wonder they inspire one another regularly. 2010 was another interesting year for the comic book movie and these are some of the year's biggest ordered from most to least awesome.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World (dir. Edgar Wright)
That a story of a no-hoper obsessed with video games forced to battle his girlfriend's exes appeared unadaptable now seems silly since Wright made it seem so easy. Get indie royalty to write some music, add video game sound effects and an RPG structure, get Michael Cera to grow his hair and it's done. Not Edgar Wright's Finest Hour, but certainly Scott Pilgrim's.

Kick-Ass (dir. Matthew Vaughn)
A bunch of vigilantes fighting crime may not be an original idea, but Vaughn's take on this dark anti-Superhero graphic novel is deceptively brilliant. Costumes tailor-made for wearing at Halloween parties, references to the comic book world, car-dancing to Gnarls Barkley, and a 13 year old girl calling a scary bunch of drug dealers the C-word. This film really does have it all!

Red (dir. Robert Schwentke)
Warren Ellis's tale of former black-ops agents targeted by their old organisation for a more permanent retirement is brilliantly brought to the screen by some of the best actors of the last 30 years. And with Dame Mirren shooting the heck out of FBI agents in a white gown and combat boots, how can it go wrong?

Iron Man 2 (dir. Jon Favreau)
Tony Stark has no super powers other than his intellect, resourcefulness and utter disdain for being ordered around. This is his second outing and while it's not a patch on the first one, it's a fascinating insight into the high visibility of national security – something the US military deals with daily. It also has Robert Downey, Jr. No further explanation of its awesomeness required.

Jonah Hex (dir. Jimmy Hayward)
Exploding steam trains? Check. Prostitute girlfriend with sass aplenty? Check. Grumpy antihero who shoots first and asks questions later? Check. Some weapon far advanced for its time? Check. We all know how well the technology thing worked for Wild, Wild West. But maybe the director didn't. Shame on you, Josh Brolin. You're better than this. You're not, Megan Fox.