One, Two, Trilogy....

I begin this blog as I have so many others by apologising for the distinct lack of action this page has seen recently. Other things have been going on this year, and my mind has been elsewhere.

That said, I've decided to dip my toe into the world of blogging again, and upon glancing through my blogger account I found a half-written article that I felt I should revive, as it has been on my computer for ages. (Although this article will probably bear remarkably little resemblance to that post as I am writing this one on my notepad on a particularly quiet day at work (Except obviously the version you are reading now has been typed up, so this is the version I have written in the future from my current point of view, but when I type this up the current will be the past, and the typing will be the present, but from your point of view it's in the past@$%Q($£!$$£-----------------------------------TEMPORAL ERROR--------------TIME=-1<45-----------------------------------------------------

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Trilogies.

(And yes, I know I hadn't mentioned trilogies at any point in the previous paragraph, but trust me, that's where I was heading before I got sidetracked with all the temporal confusion)

Something that annoys me a great deal in life, is the misuse of the word trilogy. Just because there are three films/books/games in a series, does not automatically make it a trilogy. In fact, dictionary.com describes a trilogy as:

"a series or group of three plays, novels, operas, etc., that,although individually complete, are

closely related in theme,sequence, or the like."

To me, the most important word in that sentence is related. So it's not just a case of them showcasing the same characters (in my opinion). To me, a trilogy should be a trio of stories that come together to tell one over-arching story (And no, this doesn't mean that are not watchable within their own right, simply that the total trilogy is greater than the sum of its parts.)

A quick search of amazon for the word trilogy (narrowed to the Film and TV section for the sake of this blog, as otherwise I start to get lots of make-up in the search...) returns 1,061 results. And an awful lot of these are not really trilogies. The Robocop trilogy, for example, is not a trio of linked films, it is a trio of films that have Robocop in them.

I would like to point out, at this time I am not here to argue the artistic merits of third films in series' (as we know most of them are rubbish) and I will only pick examples of films I have seen to support my argument.

The number one result is Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, which is no surprise since I am writing this the weekend the fourth film opens at the cinema, and that, to me is a proper trilogy. You can watch all three films individually, but for the most satisfying experience, you watch all three of them, and by the end the characters have reached a suitable conclusion. (Plus, Kiera Knightly ends up on an island with a sprog, far away from any future sequels!)

While scrolling down the list, a lot of those that I would consider not real trilogies are older films, from back in the day when you simply sequalised a film by putting the same character(s) in a new situation (Naked Gun, Die Hard, Beverly Hills Cop, Mad Max) or two older films and then a more modern addition to the canon, which simply takes one element of the previous films (Obvious example here is the Predators Trilogy box-set. Which contains Predator (the original), Predator 2 (The shitty sequel, only really noticeable for having an alien skull on board the Predators ship, which began the years of cross-pollination between the franchises) and then Predators (The most recent entry from a couple of years ago, which apart from the titular alien has bugger all to do with the other two))

Am I arguing that artistically, real trilogies are better than fake ones? Not at all - I just wish that there would be some differentiation between the two. And don't get me started on trilogy sets that only exist because they can, even though there are more films in the series.... (There's a box set called the Omen trilogy on here, and I'm pretty sure there's four films in that series (not including the remake)). But it could be worse, at least they don't use the word quadrilogy....

Death is not the end...

OK, after writing about Michael Jackson's ridiculous posthumous record deal a few weeks ago, I've seen two more stories about posthumously adding to peoples legacies, and they are both as dumb as each other.

First is this, a sequel to Treasure Island. Now, I don't see a point in writing such a sequel, but I'm not going to complain about that - each to their own. However, I'm astonished to see that a sequel written by "the former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion" has apparently resorted to a plotline that sounds like it would have been used in a Disney direct-to-DVD sequel for a classic film (and we can all agree that they're rubbish can't we? I mean, obviously, except the Aladdin ones... :P )

"In Return to Treasure Island, Jim Hawkins lives with his son, Jim Junior, in a pub on the Thames outside London. Jim Junior is visited by a woman who turns out to be Long John Silver's daughter. She convinces Jim Junior to steal the original map of Treasure Island from his father and go on a trip organised by Silver so they can find the rest of the treasure."

OK. Firstly, Return to Treasure Island? I know it's hard thinking of titles for things, but really? Not only is that an amazingly obvious title, but that title has already been used by several sequels (as proved by this search page on Amazon). Why wouldn't a man with such a prestigious background come up with a title that hasn't been used before in that franchise?

Secondly - not only is he going with the whole "children of the old main characters decide to almost exactly replay the plot of the original novel" trope, but he hasn't even bothered to come up with a decent name for Jim Hawkins' son, instead calling him Jim Junior! Seriously, this is majorly lazy. Anyone would think he was dashing this novel off quickly to earn a bit of money... except it's not even likely he'll make a great deal, judging from the lack of success of most posthumous sequels (the exception being, of course, the Bond books).

Did he really think that this was a story worth writing? A story he was invested in? Or was he just offered a big advance cheque?

"Dan Franklin, publisher at Jonathan Cape, said Motion's sequel was a work of "literary ventriloquism"."

Well if he's managing to write it as R.L. Stevenson would have done, and he's basically re-hashing the original's plot (except, I am sure, for adding a romance subplot where love blossoms between those two main characters (and no, I don't have inside information, I'm just guessing)) then surely it'd be a more rewarding experience for all concerned to just READ THE ORIGINAL AGAIN!

And then, yesterday, I saw this. Now, I do believe Kubrick was a master film-maker, and having only seen a couple of his films, there are many of them on my mental "list of films I really ought to watch sometime." However, to claim that this is Kubrick's lost film is, frankly, MENTAL.

Look at the story - "It was a few years' back now that Stanley Kubrick's son-in-law, Philip Hobbs, discovered the work for a film called Lunatic At Large in amongst the masses of paperwork the director left behind after his death. Hobbs told the New York Times in 2006 that his father-in-law was "always saying he wished he knew where it was, because it was such a great idea". It wasn't so much a screenplay, to be fair, that Hobbs put his hands on, rather a treatment that was written by Jim Thompson. Kubrick had commissioned that treatment in the late 1950s."

OK. So Kubrick commissioned the treatment. So he didn't write it. (He may have had the original idea for the film, it's hard to tell from the limited information in the news story). And he obviously won't direct it, seeing as he's dead! And since Kubrick was a writer/director/editor/producer then he will have done NONE of these jobs on the film - so how is it his film??

I mean, don't get me wrong - even A.I. (which incidentally is a much better film if you stop it as the robot boy (who's name I forget) drowns, and you ignore all the alien stuff at the end) was at least assembled from "the various drafts and notes left by Kubrick and his writers " (And yes, I did just quote the Wikipedia Stanley Kubrick page - I know Wikipedia is often not a reliable source, but I remember seeing this elsewhere at the time), so I can see why it was thought of as an unmade Kubrick film - but surely just commissioning this treatment for Lunatic at Large doesn't make it his lost film??

Look, if I were ever to be famous and to die leaving lots of half-written things on my computer (which would be likely, as my computer is ALWAYS full of half-written things), then any of those being developed could be credited as a lost Michael Braunton film - but if it was based on me asking someone to write a plot for an idea I'd had - then it wouldn't belong to me - it belongs to the writer...

What's worse is I have a horrible suspicion this "lost Kubrick film" will end up with a generic director and be average - thus tarnishing Kubrick's record (which both A.I. and Eyes Wide Shut have already done to an extent...), whereas at least with this Treasure Island sequel, the only name to be tarnished will be that of the author, because no-ones claiming it's based on an idea R.L. Stevenson had.. thankfully.

What do you think? Are there any posthumous films/books/albums that you think add to the artist's legacy rather than tarnish it?

Kicking the Daily Mail's Ass

Firstly, I'd like to apologise for not writing sooner, I know you feel neglected, and I'm sorry about that... I'm just really busy at the moment (at work, which is full of irritants.... you know what? Don't even get me started on it...)

So yesterday I saw a link to this story, and I felt that I had to let rip. OK, I grant you, it's the Daily Mail YET AGAIN, and I did wonder whether I've done too many blogs about their news stories of late (quick check of my blog shows that I haven't written any for a while though, so I feel vindicated) but I wanted to have a laugh at this.

This is the Daily Mail picking up on the information that the film "Kick-Ass" is going to be released in April, and, shock horror, it has a swearing 11 year old assassin in it. Now, from my perspective, the film looks fabulous (and if you don't believe me, just watch the trailer - I was going to embed it here, but Youtube appears to be broken... will attempt to link/embed it later) but I can see that it might be unsuitable for young kids. You know, in the same way Watchmen was... but it's not marketed at them. It's expected to get a 15 certificate, and you don't hear the Mail moaning about other films that are rated 15, so what's the difference?

The difference is, they can attach a name to it that will shock the average Mail Reader. They have managed to attach Jonathon Ross' name to the film, trying to build on his "shocking" behaviour from 'Sachsgate' (Seriously? Is everything a -gate now? How about when I left my keys in rehearsal the other night and had to walk back in to get them? Is that keygate? Stupid media..). How have they connected him? Well, I'll print their headline in it's entirety for you here:

"Jonathan Ross's wife Jane Goldman causes outrage with film featuring a foul-mouthed 11-year-old assassin"

Ignoring the appalling way that headline is crafted (I mean, come on, that's not a headline, it's the first line of the article surely! I'm sure they could have thought more about it - maybe "Ross's wife writes twisted tale" or "Child Killers: Ross approves" or my personal favourite "Quick, we're the Daily Mail, let's over-react to a film because we can vaguely link it to a celebrity we dislike!" Yes that's right, his wife Jane Goldman wrote it. Except actually, she co-wrote the script, which is adapted from Mark Millar's comic book....

Needless to say, the article goes on to tell us how films and TV influence impressionable children and that ‘This promotes the idea that infantilising adulthood is okay and that we are no longer expected to draw lines between us and kids". What a load of rubbish. The point is that kids are not SUPPOSED TO SEE IT. It's going to be rated 15.

It goes on, saying that the "film has already provoked complaints in the U.S. after children were allowed to access violent trailers of the film online." Um, as far as I know they weren't ALLOWED to access it, they will have clicked through a screen that says "I certify that I am over 18". And kids click on those all the time...

A media analyst (is that a real job? Really?) from L.A. (Oh OK, he doesn't count as a real person then, he's from L.A.) tried to invoke even more celebrities into the article by saying "One of the joint production companies involved is Plan B, which is owned by Brad Pitt. I wonder if he and Angelina Jolie would want their own young children to hear kids cussing in Kick-Ass." No, they probably wouldn't, which is why it's coming out with a certificate to PREVENT KIDS SEEING IT!!

But my favourite bit of argument is this: "Protests about the film have also erupted in Australia where John Morrisey of the Family Association said: ‘The language is offensive and the values inappropriate – without the saving grace of the bloodless victory of traditional superheroes." OK, so it's OK for kids to want to be a superhero, like, for example, Robin the Boy Wonder, who works outside the law and regularly beats people up and all sorts of other things, but because it's bloodless it's OK and he's a good role model? Dumbass Aussies!

The article spends it's last two paragraphs reminding us how Jonathon Ross is involved in this story, presumably to satiate those people who looked at the headline because it had his name on...

Can we have some better journalism than this? Please?

Ridiculous News Round-Up

This is going to be another decent length blog post, as I catch up on several small stories that I felt all deserved to be looked at through the eyes of Brawny, beginning with an idiot, moving through some more idiots, and ending with... well, you'll have to read all the way to the end to find out won't you! (But I wouldn't rule out it being more idiots...)

So apparently there's an American Professor called Sidney Perkowitz has been making suggestions to Hollywood. He says that he is "... not offended if they make one big scientific blunder in a given film... But after that I would like things developed in a coherent way."

Yeah. Because that's the problem with most Hollywood films today. The science is wrong. Never mind all the re-makes, re-imaginings, returns and re-boots populating the release schedules (and yes, I know a better word for return would have been sequel, but then I'd have lost the rhythm of the writing using the prefix 're' in each word in the list. So there.) if we get the science right then that's the way forward.

What an idiot.

Whats worse is when you keep reading through the article, the films he cites are Starship Troopers, The Core, and Angels and Demons. His issue with the Core is fairly reasonable from a scientific point of view (although I still don't think it should stop people from making such films), as it's about the geology of the earth. With Angels and Demons he bemoans the use of a small battery powered forcefield to keep safe an anti-matter bomb. Would he have been happier, one wonders, if they had just made up a new name for the bomb, so that it didn't relate to any scientific reality?

But the one that bugs me the most is "Perkowitz said he liked Starship Troopers, but criticised its giant insects, saying if you scaled up a real bug to that size it would collapse under its own weight." Yes, this is probably true. But bear in mind that the insects in Starship Troopers are not earth bugs, they are ALIENS! With a physiology that no-one knows about! SO IT DOESN'T MATTER!! Talk about picking on a pointless reason for films being bad nowadays.

Oh and the other thing that made me laugh hysterically. This man who is suggesting films and TV should be more scientifically realistic has apparently had an impact as the article states "the exchange has advised on the Watchmen movie and the TV series, Heroes."

Let's for a moment ignore the bad grammar, wondering how an exchange can have advised on something, and just laugh outright at the concept that Heroes obeys any form of scientific law. Other than the law of diminishing returns....

In other recent news, the Tories got in trouble for misplacing a decimal point, and therefore proudly announcing that 54% of teenagers in deprived areas are pregnant. 54%. That's more than half. I live in a deprived area, and work in an all-girls school, and if half of them are pregnant, then they're hiding it very well! What makes me laugh more is that this error wasn't someone reading it in a speech, it was published. Which means whoever proof read the report thought that it was an accurate representation of the truth... Out of touch much?

Talking of idiotic teenagers (well we weren't, we were talking about idiotic Tories believing that all teenagers are idiots, but it seemed like a good link at the time) there's a scandal going on in Germany at the moment around the teenage author Helene Hegemann. Apparently, her cult teen bestseller Axolotl Roadkill contains passages "that are plainly lifted wholesale from another novel, Strobo". However, the writer of the Guardian news article (Robert McCrum) seems to think that she "a child of the internet age, simply does not understand, or recognise, the charge of plagiarism. To her, coming from the cut-and-paste world of blogs and Facebook, what she's done is no more than "mixing"

Um, OK... except I come from the cut and paste world of blogs and Facebook, and I understand right from wrong... I'm not passing judgement because I haven't read either book (as I don't read German. I can say the word for Pedestrian Zone and claim to be a doughnut, but that's as far as my German education in year 9 went) but if the plagiarism is as obvious as Mr McCrum states, then she deserves to be brought up on whatever charges are suitable. And don't say she didn't know it was wrong, I bet she did. (Oh look at that, I said I wasn't going to judge, and now I'm being judgemental. Oh well, that's my right as an internet blogger, I can criticise anything I want, and who will stop me? No-one!! Hahahahahahahahah..... (Continues evil laugh for a while, realises I am alone, and stops, sheepishly) )

And on a final, slightly lighter hearted note, I watched the first episode of The Bubble on BBC iPlayer the other day, and while it was a perfectly respectable time-wasting show (made all the funnier this week by having the brilliant Reginald D Hunter on it), there was a point in it that made me laugh.

The Bubble (for those of you who don't know) is basically a comedy show where they lock three guests away for the week so they don't see the news, and then they show them various news reports and newspaper headlines and the guests have to guess which are real and which are made up. So far, so humorous (I particularly liked the news article about introducing a gay character into Thomas the Tank Engine. That's right, a gay engine. That was made up, but still amusing) . However, this BBC-produced, BBC-aired show has been told that they cannot use any BBC reporters to create the fake news reports, because the BBC don't want to undermine them.

So the news reports on this BBC show are being provided by their direct competition, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky News.

Seriously, could the BBC be any stupider?

How do we fix the Entertainment Industry?

First and foremost, I apologise for not having written for a couple of weeks. It's not that I've fallen out of love with you, oh wonderful blog readers, it's simply that I haven't had the time. The problem with this is of course that I now I have a large backlog of things I want to blog about, so you may well get lots of blogs over the next few days.... so there's a bright side :) (That is, if you enjoy reading my blog. If you don't then I'm sure that the news there are more on the way will fill you with dread, but if you don't like them why are you reading this? Anyway...)

There's been a lot of talk recently (and by recently I mean over the last few years) about how the Entertainment industry can adapt and survive due to the advent of the internet. The other day, the wonderful Graham Linehan tweeted about this article in the New York times written by Damian Goulash Jnr, the lead singer of the band OK Go. What makes it interesting is that it is a discussion about the current state of the music industry from the perspective of a moderately successful band rather than a giant star.

In this piece (which I think you should read) he starts by lamenting their record company for not being flexible with regards to the use of the internet and viral videos to promote the band. It's a well thought-out argument, pointing out that when they had put a music video online in 2006, which they had made and paid for themselves, and, in his own words the video"... brought big crowds to our concerts on five continents, and by the time we returned to the studio, 700 shows, one Grammy and nearly three years later, EMI’s ledger had a black number in our column. To the band, “Here It Goes Again” was a successful creative project. To the record company, it was a successful, completely free advertisement."

However, now that the band has released a new album and a couple of videos, they are unable to get the same help in spreading the viral video due to the record companies agreement with YouTube.

As it stood - when they released their first video, it made them no money, but worked as an advert. However, YouTube and the record companies have now reached an agreement for an amount (however small) to be paid whenever the video is watched, but only when it's watched on YouTube's own site, so embedding has been disabled.

And this is the problem. Without embedding the video, large amounts of blogs and sites are unable to promote the music they enjoy.

Damian Goulash (which incidentally is a FABULOUS name) does then go on to say that "It’s decisions like these that have earned record companies a reputation for being greedy and short-sighted. And by and large they deserve it. But before we cheer for the demise of the big bad machine, it’s important to remember that record companies provide the music industry with a vital service: they’re risk aggregators."

And he's right. Who else would pay a bunch of people with instruments to go and make a record that has a 98% chance of being a complete commercial failure? (That figure is completely made up by the way, it's just a guess). But as record companies tighten their belts and only finance the acts that they are certain of, the entire industry is at risk of implosion, with very few new, interesting acts coming to the fore...

Why are record companies tightening their belts? They tell you it's because of piracy. This is a common statement amongst record, TV and film producers, and to an extent, I am sure it's true. I know that I have, in the past, pirated music, TV and films, because I want to hear/see them and don't have any money.

Disney are at the moment having a large spat with Odeon over Alice in Wonderland. This has been going on for a couple of weeks, and is basically due to Disney saying "Because of Piracy, we want to shrink the theatrical-DVD window from 17 weeks to 12 weeks." So 12 weeks after Alice comes out in the cinema, it'll be out on DVD. Odeon feels that this is unacceptable, as it will cause them to lose business if they have to pull the film after 12 weeks.

Now first of all, I can't remember the last time I went to see a film at the cinema more than 2 weeks after it came out, and (apart from possibly Avatar, which I have STILL not seen, which I am aware makes me part of an increasingly tiny minority) I can't think of a film that's stayed in a cinema for 12 weeks! So how, realistically are they going to lose business?

And the second, and more important point, Alice is being strongly marketed on it's 3D. You can't watch proper 3D on a DVD yet... so even if it came out early, surely Odeon could continue to show it anyway?

But on the subject of 3D, I would guess that the very nature of 3D will limit the piracy of Alice anyway, so Disney needn't be in such a rush to release the DVD surely? I mean, I know there'll be a 2D version, and this I am sure will appear online very quickly, but if you want to see it in all it's glory, the pirated version will be nothing like watching the proper, full screen, 3D version. (Of course, this assumes that the 3D will be good, as with Avatar (allegedly), rather than pointless, as with every 3D horror movie ever made)

This spat is just more proof that the industry is in chaos and no-one knows how to deal with it. The only people who have it remotely right are the TV channels. I don't remember the last time I watched a BBC show from an illegal copy, since I can just catch up with it on iPlayer, and now 4oD exists (and works, to an extent) as well as ITV Player (which doesn't work very well at all...) and I'm sure Five have one too which I would try to use except nothing of any interest is ever on Five...

So, the question I am sure you're all wondering, is how would you fix it Brawny? How would you make the Entertainment industry great again?

Well, before I continue, may I point out that I am no expert, and certainly don't think that I should be in charge. But if I was, then I'd do the following...

1) Embrace the Internet
This is, in many ways, the most important thing. The industry is slowly beginning to do this, but it's taken way too long. The internet isn't just a more modern poster where you can put trailers or clips from your film/show/album, it's a genuine two-way communications device between you and the people who are going to part with money for your creation. Work with them. Find out what sort of thing they want to hear/see and work out how to fill that gap. If 1000 people on the net want to hear a jazz/techno trio, then work out a rough estimate of how many people that'd translate to in the real world, set aside a percentage of budget that covers that many sales and then get the album made (Yes, I am aware it's impossible to create accurate projections from what people on the internet say they'd like, but you could try...)

2) Use Common Sense
If you come across someone using your music/video in order for them to make money, then arrest them, sue them, do whatever you want with them. A fan has put a home made video up on Youtube soundtracked by your song? Leave it alone... I know that finding the dividing line is hard, but surely the interest generated by the non-commercial use of your song/video pays more in goodwill than demanding the video be removed...

3) Don't expect to wipe out the Pirates.
Piracy exists. It will always exist, no matter how hard you try. You can't erase it, so instead try and learn from it's distribution methods etc...

4) Control your overheads
You know that there is a niche for a film about a fish who wears a top hat and speaks only in rhyme? Then make the film on a low budget - don't risk all your money on it. On the other hand, don't spend $209 million on Superman Returns because A) it was a rubbish film anyway (although Kevin Spacey was a delightfully scene-stealing Lex) and B) it means that the studio consider it a disappointment when it brings in a box-office return of $391 million...

Seriously. Name me another business to whom a profit of $182 million is a disappointing return??

5) Buy from the internet
If you're a film distributor/music publisher, look around online for low-budget home-made films / albums and embrace them. Quite often these types of projects could easily be tidied up and released with very little extra money spent on them, so why not do so? The artist will be grateful for the exposure and you might make some money out of it

6) Don't give up.
At the moment the music industry seems to be financing more and more manufactured artists and mega-stars, because it thinks that they will definitely sell. There's much less innovative, new, and interesting music being released, certainly by major labels.

7) No more staggered releases
Films that come out in the UK three months after the US? Why? That's more than giving the pirates a window, that's leaving a window open, turning the alarm system off and providing them with a map of the house that clearly shows the value of every item within it...

8) Make legal downloading easier
Now don't get me wrong, whilst I prefer to buy a real, physical product (I love CDs, and Vinyl, and DVDs) it's pretty easy to download things legally right now (and much as I hate it, iTunes is a big part of that) but I still notice that we, as members of the UK audience, pay more for things than our US cousins. The way around this from my perspective is - create a new currency.

Now before you think I've gone insane, let me clarify. This thought came to me the other day, when I recieved a paypal payment for a CD i sold. This payment was for £12, which is a small amount, so Paypal would charge me a percentage for withdrawing it to my bank account. I am therefore left with money that I may as well spend on something on eBay, or CDWOW, or CEX, or anywhere else that takes Paypal.

If you had an equivalent of this for music or film, then people would buy it rather than be penalised for returning their money to their account, and also you could side-step all currency issues, meaning that everyone gets a fair deal.

9) Everything has an audience.
And as a studio / record label, your job is to find it, not to tell the artist that it doesn't exist.

And before you think I'm blaming it all on the companies, I have a word for the artists too..

Make it because you want to make it.

I write scripts and stories, record music, make films and short videos because I want to. Do I want to be paid for it? Sure, that's the dream, but just because I don't doesn't mean I'll stop doing it... I may even self-publish my novel if I feel like it and I can establish whether more than 5 people would buy it (once I've finished the endless re-write process)

So that's it. Brawny's suggestions. And it's not like not saying that I should be taken as a "Voice of the People" because I'm a voice of one person. Me. But something needs to be done, because just blaming the internet as the source of all evil hasn't worked so far...

So as a bonus to you all - some bands who are on minor labels / self-published that I think you should check out:

The Wildhearts - Fabulous Rockers - Used to be on a major label, now kicking ass on their own. Also, their frontman Ginger has several wonderful solo albums and side-projects.
Jackdaw4 - Lighter Rock, but still wonderful musicians
Reel Big Fish - The SkaPunk kings. Again, used to be on a major label, now doing fine on their own
Brawny - Because I may as well plug myself :P (Also, check out my Youtube for my videos and film)

If you have any further suggestions please post in the comments, and I'll update this list.

Apologies for the length of this post, I promise I'll be back with something short and irreverent soon. (Well, maybe just irreverent.. I've always been bad at short posts!)

Is Bigger Better?

Good morning all you blog readers! Today's blog will be one made of pure awesomeness...

Well, no it won't. It'll be like all the others, it'll have bits that make you laugh (hopefully) and bits that make you think "You're not as intelligent as you think you are Brawny..."

But seriously. Over the weekend, which I spent once again with the wonderful Neety, we ended up having a conversation as to whether her new blog entry "MEN: Your Best Feature (Part 1/5)" was too long. Now just to clarify, we weren't wondering whether the 5 parts would be too long, this discussion was about part one (although, how impressive is it that she PLANS blogs in 5 parts? I barely plan mine at all before I start rambling!)

And it got me to thinking. As a fast reader (And I'm not kidding, when I was about 10 I did the whole of the Chronicles of Narnia in a day, when the last Harry Potter book came out I read it in two and a half hours), I'm a big fan of long blogs. Because if they're interesting (or at least semi-interesting at least) then I read them and they occupy a few minutes of my time, as opposed to a few seconds.

And I'm the same for other forms of entertainment. Put two DVDs in front of me, both films I want to watch equally, both priced the same, and tell me to choose one, it'll be whichever is longer / has the most special features. Anything that adds value for money to it. I originally balked at the idea of buying the Family Guy: Blue Harvest DVD when it was originally announced it'd be selling as an individual DVD - Pay for a DVD with only 43 minutes of episode?? What a rip-off! But of course it's not. If you want to see it. Which I did. Now they did bulk it up with special features so that I didn't feel quite so ripped off, but it seems to be an in-built part of me, that things generally can't be too long.

Many people moaned in reviews about Funny People, which I saw in the cinema a couple of months ago, that it was too long. Not a problem for me at all, it held my attention and I laughed throughout it. Which underlines my point. What is too long? Is Bigger always Better?

Well no. Not always. On Thursday night I had the wonderful (mis-)fortune to have to see a film that had been shot by a "professional" with some of the students from one of the courses at work. (Apologies for being quite so vague, but with recent stories about people getting sacked for posting innapropriate tweets/blogs about sensitive workplaces, I am not taking any chances!). The original brief for this film was that it should be a promotional film to highlight what the students do on the course. What we ended up with was a half hour documentary, which, frankly, could easily have had 10 minutes cut from it, and not been any worse, in fact, it probably would have been better.

Going back to my opening story, my response to Neety was that I thought that it was a good length and that she shouldn't worry about it. Because I enjoy reading long, well-written blogs, just as I enjoy reading books, magazine articles, graphic novels etc...

So do I think everything should be longer? Bigger? Well no. If the film last Thursday had been bigger I might have gone on a mad rampage and torn up the screen, if the extended film of "Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" was any longer, I'd have fallen asleep in it more times than I already have, and if all Books had to be at least 1000 pages or more, a lot of books would be full of filler and bad writing. (A bit like this blog, I apologise for that, my defence is it's a Monday morning).

In my eyes, things have an ideal length. And that length should be obvious. For example, if I had an album of music which I enjoyed casually in a background noise kind of way, but was only 30 minutes long, I'd probably think was too short. However, the Wildhearts album "The Wildhearts must be Destroyed" (which is excellent) is only about 30 minutes, but it feels complete when you listen to it.

I myself fell victim to this trend when making "Norwich and Saggers: Smarter than the Average Bear" (to watch it on Youtube - CLICK HERE) I had written the script, and it felt the right length, and when I edited it, it mostly felt the right length, except for the improvised "Gruntfuttock" sequences, which seem to me now to be obvious padding....

So all of you writers / creators of artistic events/items/recordings/etc... my suggestion? Be aware of how long your final product FEELS like it should be. And make it that length. Don't try to pad out a 60 minute film to 90 minutes just because that's how long you think a film should be. Don't write a 10 chapter story and then add another 6 of extraneous rubbish just because you want it to look more impressive. When you've reached the end, it's the end.

And I promise, on my part, that I'll stop worrying so much about how long things are, and just enjoy the ride.

(Oh, and be impressed, I made it all the way through a blog entitled "Is Bigger Better?" without making ANY innuendos. :D )

Transformers 2 and other stuff - Spoilers Be in this review

So, I just came back from seeing Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen... and I have to say, I think that the best description of it comes from Sprog who named it Transformers: Revenge of the Explosions.

It was pretty good, suffering mostly from all the thing that a sequal suffers from - too many characters, certain "contracted" actors returning with nothing to do, an attempt to make it bigger and better making it more convulouted and overlong....

Oh. And way too long a climax.

Seriously, the whole Egypt section - WAY TOO LONG!!! And how long does it take Sam and Mikaela to run a mile!!

Devestator was quite cool, but pretty well wasted... the plot didn't need him AND the Fallen AND Megatron....

Oh, and Sams parents? Not needed. And the stoned mum bit at the beginning.. not funny.

Why didn't we get any answers about the decepticon college girl?

If there's two chunks of the allspark left, and one of them is able to revive Megatron, then why doesn't Sam just take the other one straight to Optimus Prime, rather than use it to wake Jetfire?

Why in every film like this do we have the irritating Government idiot who tries to shut down the project? What did that do to aid the plot?

And how much money did Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson get for however few minutes of screentime they actually had? I wonder, was there a lot more of their plot that was cut?

I know this sounds negative, but there were bits I liked a lot... the editing style was much better than the first one, you could mostly see who was fighting who in the fights without the camera cutting every five seconds....

Oh and I know I'm echoing every straight man who saw it.. but Megan Fox.... droool.....

There were some good jokes, the return of Agent Simmons was done in a great way, and it was partly great popcorn entertainment.

All in all, it was fun, but by the end it was dragging. I'm usually a fan of long films, especially if I'm paying a fortune to see them in the cinema, but even I was wondering how long it had been going on by the end. Then I thought we'd reach the end... then I realised the Fallen hadn't turned up yet.....

So yeah. 7/10 i think.

Moving on... in other news, my deadline for Out of Time has been extended a week, so it should be done by next Friday (26th), although that'll depend on work - which will be madly hectic this week.

And also, I am ridiculously excited by New Super Mario Bros Wii... and Mario Galaxy 2... and the new Metroid Game... click here for trailery goodness!

Talk soon

What the fuck happened to Deadpool? (SPOILERS for WOLVERINE if anyone cares)

Just saw X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Too angry to type much.

Why, why, WHY did they do that to Deadpool?

Let's take a character called the Merc with a Mouth and..... GET RID OF HIS MOUTH!!!

ARGHGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

FAQ About Time Travel

Today, I decided to take myself off to the cinema to see the film "Frequently Asked Questions about Time Travel" as it seemed to contain everything I like in a film:

Sci-Fi (CHECK)
Time Travel (CHECK)
A Pub (CHECK)
Something nice to look at (CHECK)
Comedy (CHECK)

And it was well worth it. I know it's only a low budget film, and that by next weekend it will be being forced out of cinemas, firstly by X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and then after that by Star Trek (Both of which, it has to be said, appeals to much the same demographic) and I expect that FAQATT will never make any money and be forgotten about. Which is a shame. Because it's a well shot, well thought-out and well crafted little film that everyone who likes those subjects deserves to see.

I was alarmed, however, that when I went to see it this afternoon, I was the ONLY person in the cinema watching it. I really hope it makes money, because otherwise people will be even less inclined to fund small films in future.

So here's a plan. This week sometime, go and see it. I know it won't be on in every cinema, but I would imagine it's showing somewhere close to you (Yes you, I am talking to YOU blog reader, not any other blog reader, this is personal). If you have a significant other, go on Orange Wednesday so it's cheaper for you :) But go and see it. Support the british film industry.

Plus did I mention, it's rather good :)

Well it looks like curtains for that plan...

OK, so I was vaguely prepping to make my Record Shop Film in summer, but after a lot of thinking and maths, I've realised I can't afford to :( Which annoys me, because it puts yet another year between making films. At this rate I'm going to become the Terence Malik of the no-budget cinema world!

(For those of you who don't know, Malick has, between 1969 and this year (assuming his latest comes out on time) managed to direct only 6 films.)

Plus, I'm still suffering from writers block, with the Wonderland songs still nowhere near, my Alien Invasion screenplay stalled at 30 pages, my short story finished but rubbish, and various novel/story ideas not progressing.

ARGGGGGGH!!!!!!!!!