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Cinema 2012 – the review

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CINEMA

At the beginning of the year I embarked upon a challenge: watch 100 movies in the cinema in 1 year. I thought it would be fun, but difficult.

It was fun.

It was difficult.

This is a not very brief account of that year, starting with the best movies that were released this year and that I saw in the cinema. In no particular order, I *think* the best movies released this year that I saw in the cinema were:

  • Moonrise Kingdom
  • Beasts of the Southern Wild
  • End of Watch
  • The Hunt
  • Rust and Bone
  • Sightseers
  • The Artist
  • Argo
  • Killer Joe

The Artist was really fun and original in a non-original way, showing us nothing that hadn’t already been done before, but doing it in a fashion that nobody is used to, and that many people will never have seen. No, it didn’t deserve the plaudits later awarded to it by the Academy et. al, but it was certainly one of the better movies this year. Moonrise Kingdom was beautifully Wes Anderson, full of wonderful visuals, subtle humour and outlandish scenarios, all wrapped around a strong and affecting emotional core. The acting performances from the two young leads were really good, and as usual the soundtrack was fantastic. I laughed a lot, and still chuckle now on recalling much of the film. No, it’s not as good as The Royal Tenenbaums, but then what is? Killer Joe was strongly disturbing, a brilliant showcase for Matthew McConaughey. I’d never really thought he was much cop before, but his performance in this movie was amazing, as were many of the performances by the rest of the cast that made this brutal and depressing tale far more watchable than it should have been. Argo surprised me; I’d had high hopes but was waiting for them to be destroyed upon watching. How pleased I was to see that Ben Affleck had pulled it off, crafting an involving and suspenseful film that was massively entertaining. On the whole I was amazed at how well the movie managed to keep the suspense going in a movie where the outcome was already known to me. Sightseers was hilarious and yet brutal, a great mix. The characters were perfectly formed, the type of people you could find in any local midlands pub, but with a far darker edge than most (I hope!). The movie whipped along at a great pace, leading to the inevitable final scene that still surprised. I wasn’t expecting to be as affected by Rust and Bone as I actually was, but I found Marion Cotillard’s performance completely amazing. The depth of emotion she was able to put into the character was outstanding, and I found the film to be quite moving. A similarly brilliant character performance came from Mads Mikkelsen in The Hunt, a powerful film showing just how badly lives can be affected by rumour and false accusations. Again I was impressed with the acting on show, and the final few moments of the film left me with a deep feeling of unease.  In contrast, Beasts of the Southern Wild was just a delightful movie, I loved the semi-real dreamlike feel to the movie and was astounded again by the acting on show, particularly from the young main character. The strange parable of the wild beasts fit perfectly throughout the movie, and as an offbeat coming of age story it works amazingly well. Finally, End of Watch surprised me with the level of quality and realism. A `buddy cop’ movie where the cops actually talk and act like real buddies was a refreshing take on the genre. Yes, the half ‘found footage’ half ‘normal movie’ style grated for a while, but upon consideration I’m giving the movie a pass because the characters were so well done and the story so well presented that it deserves it.

There were plenty of other great movies, honourable mentions are required for Young Adult, Carnage, Headhunters, Chronicle and Searching for Sugarman, plus probably others that I’ve forgotten. It was also a good year for more mainstream blockbuster fare, with Hunger Games, The Avengers, Looper and The Dark Knight Rises all impressing over the course of the year.

Unfortunately, having to see so many movies in a year also meant that I watched some unspeakable shit. Anyone involved in these movies needs to have a word with themselves, so, anyone laying claim to anything to do with Man on a Ledge, The Cold Light of Day, Lockout, MIB3, Red Lights, Lay the Favourite, Expendables 2, Taken 2, Room 237, Gambit, or Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, consider yourself chastised. I’m not even going to grace these poor excuses for movies with reviews, but mostly they were formulaic, poorly written and poorly acted shit. Except for Room 237, which was just a terrible documentary full of utter tripe and conspiracy nuts.

CINEMA – RE-RELEASES

I also watched a number of re-releases that I’d either missed first time around or that were getting special showings. Of these, a few really stand out and had they been released this year would probably be pushing for my best of 2012 list. In no particular order, I found Tyrannosaur, The Skin I Live In, and Chariots of Fire to be the best of the movies I saw for the first time as a re-release, while the special showings of both Jaws, and Manhattan, deserve mentions as they are both excellent movies that I could watch over and over again, and have, but that upon re-watching on the big screen gained something new.

HOME VIEWING

Then there’s a bunch of movies I watched at home this year that are worth remarking upon, mostly as I was watching them for the first time and found them to be completely brilliant. Network, Drive, Animal Kingdom, Dr Strangelove, Blue Valentine, Brick, We Need to Talk about Kevin, Shame, Bronson, Barton Fink, and Moon are all well worth checking out if you haven’t already.

So, how was the year overall? Well, I watched a number of shit movies that I probably wouldn’t have bothered with previously. I saw a number of great movies that I also perhaps wouldn’t have seen if I wasn’t doing this challenge. I missed a number of movies that I really wanted to see, but just couldn’t fit in or was too fatigued to get to before they left the cinema. On the whole though, I’d say it was a positive thing. So much so, that this year, I’m upping the challenge. 150 movies in the cinema in one year. BRING IT ON.

Select a tag and the other bands with that tag appear in the lineup column

SWN Artist Explorer

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It’s that time of year again: SWN Festival is once more upon us. It’s the highlight of the musical year in Cardiff, and probably the one thing I’ll miss about the city when (if?) I leave. In fact, I’m pretty certain that even if I left the city I’d make the pilgrimage back once a year for SWN because it’s just too much fun to miss.

The lineup this year is another cracking one, but as usual with four days of bands spread across so many venues there are a whole bunch of names that I don’t recognise. As per usual I’ve cooked up a Spotify playlist, but even sorting through that takes some time:

I decided this year that it would be nice to have an easy visual way to see what the bands are like, so decided to build myself a little artist explorer. This uses tags from Last.FM and generates word clouds using a nice javascript plugin for d3 written by Jason Davies. Most of the word cloud js was hacked together from Jason’s example, with some mangling and modification from me. I downloaded the tags for artists offline and stuck them in a .json file so it doesn’t hit the Last.FM servers on every page load. What we end up with is a fairly simple tag cloud example that allows you to see at a glance how Last.FM users have categorised the bands. Selecting a tag in the word cloud will show you the other bands in the lineup that have also had that tag applied to them. Screenshots of the site are below:

but of course it’s also online here!

Meanwhile, the code is available on github, with no guarantees that any of it actually works.

Truckers of Husk + Gallops + Kutosis Review

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Last Saturday I went along to The Globe in Roath, accompanied by my excellent musical companion Ms. Jones (and joined later on by our token northener Mark) to watch a number of bands that we’d seen before, but in a new setting. This is a review of that what happened there.

Let’s start with the venue, The Globe. The Globe is not the worst venue in Cardiff (Bogiez/Barfly, The SU Great Hall). It’s tucked out of the way in the corner of Roath, so anyone going to a gig there is *meant* to be there, which is nice. It’s an old cinema and has a lovely balcony, meaning a great view of the bands, and most importantly the sound in the place is not terrible. The only bad thing about the venue this week was that they’d sold out of tolerable ale, which is no great problem. We arrived about twenty minutes after doors were due to open, and unsurprisingly the doors were not open yet. For some reason The Globe exists in a timezone that is about 45 minutes behind the rest of Cardiff, so don’t ever bother getting there on time, it’s just not going to happen. Rubbish timekeeping and crappy beer selection aside, it’s a decent venue in which to watch a band and on this night there were three on offer.

KUTOSIS

I’m fairly sure I’ve seen these guys a number of times before, at least once or twice at the SWN festival, maybe somewhere else as well. They’re a decent band rocking a mid-late 90′s vibe that marks them out as guys that grew up with grunge and late 90′s indie and decided the best thing to do when they started a band was to emulate that. Unfortunately you sometimes feel that they forgot to really add anything to that era, and haven’t quite managed to push things on. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a totally bad thing – they play well, they put effort into what they do, and their songs have a catchy uptempo feel. I enjoyed watching them, they were having fun and playing well, with some good riffs, tight playing and a good overall feel to the music. There are some interesting things going on with their songs, but it just feels like they need to push things a little bit further out of a safe zone and do something a bit more interesting. That all being said, they’re well worth a watch, especially if you’re like me and you grew up with grunge and late 90′s indie and enjoy that kind of thing.

This track of theirs has a real White Stripes feel:

This is a more recent track that seems in parts to show more development, it’s got more going on:

Overall they were enjoyable, played well, and I’ll give them 4 out of some.

Gallops

Again, I’ve seen Gallops a number of times before, mainly at SWN. On paper they’re not my thing, focusing fairly heavily on electronic sounds, but in reality I really love them. They’re an awesome live act and every time I see them they have something new to show. The main driving force behind them is the thundering and perfect drums; their drummer is an absolute animal, arrogant and agressive and with every right to sit behind the drumkit with the knowledge that he’s almost certainly the most talented guy with a set of drumsticks in the room. He almost imbalances the band, as with his drumming there’s not a lot the other band members can do to match his talent, which is probably one of their only weak points. The only other glaring weak point would be the guy with the mac. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, a laptop is not an instrument. If your job could be replaced with someone pressing play on a tape deck you’re superfluous, get the fuck off the stage. That aside, this band have grown massively in the two/three years I’ve been watching them, and I’m looking forward to their album in the next couple of months to see where they’re going next.

Once again these guys were great live. They clearly spend a lot of time practising getting it right, and it pays off. I’ll give them six out of some.

Truckers of Husk

Ah, the main event. A band that I first saw at the 2nd SWN Festival, in whatever Y Fuwch Goch was before it was that (and then failed to be that and became the Moon Bar). A band that have swiftly become one of my favourite live acts in Cardiff, a band who I love going to see. Their post-rock math vibes are great, and they are another band (like Gallops) who continue to grow and push stuff forward. Their first album, (released last year) is on permanent rotation in my Spotify playlist, and I still can’t get enough of it. In case you didn’t get it, I love this band.

Today’s gig was exceptional, the band presenting themselves along with the 1924 documentary ‘The Great White Silence’, the fairly harrowing documentary about Scott’s ill fated voyage to the South Pole. Dressed all in white the band played their songs along with the film, fitting the tracks to the projection behind them, timing things beautifully to coincide with the action. I’m fairly certain they’d put the effort in to trim songs here and there to make them fit, cutting some noise here, adding some there and it all paid off. They presented themselves on stage as a band having fun and doing well doing it, but you could tell that they recognised this was (one of?) their biggest gig to date and had put the effort in to make it something special. The songs flew by and by the time the movie drew to a close, with our intrepid arctic explorers dead in the arctic wasteland and the band themselves moving the drumkit down into the crowd for the last flour covered intense burst, we were all thoroughly sated. Plus the saxophonist kept his shirt on.

This track of theirs is off the latest album and is really good:

I think this is my favourite:

I give them 8 out of some.

All in all, a thoroughly excellent night of entertainment. Top marks.

100 Movies in the Cinema in 1 Year

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After reading this blog post at the end of January I decided that watching at least 100 movies in the cinema in a year was the kind of challenge I could get behind. Last year’s challenge to get fit and healthy was fairly successful and seemed like much harder work than going to the cinema a few times could ever be. After all, 100 movies a year is less than 2 a week, so it must be easy, right?

Unfortunately I started this project late, so at the time of reading the article and deciding to go ahead with it I was four weeks into the year and had only seen three films at the cinema. This is not the kind of progress needed for this challenge! So, I got myself a cineworld unlimited card and hit the cinema hard, aiming to get through February and be caught up to where I should be by the end of the month.

Of course, being a massive data geek I have been recording everything, making a note of every movie I have seen this year so far, which means I’m amassing a fairly large amount of data on my movie watching habits, which can mean only one thing. Crappy Excel Graphs! I’ll be posting some throughout the year to mark how the challenge is going, and the first lot are here.

The first shows the number of movies seen in total for each day of the year against the number of movies I would need to see in order to hit the target of 100 by December 31st. As you can see, the late start in January did me no favours, but by the end of February I’ve almost caught up to be where I need to be.

Movies Seen against Target Number

The second crappy excel graph shows the movie viewing rate (the number of movies seen divided by the number of weeks elapsed) against the target rate, along with the actual number of movies watched that week. It’s clear to see that January was a wash out, but that February was excellent and helped to bring the target rate down below 2 movies a week.

Movie viewing rate against target, presented with actual number of films seen in a week

So, that’s where we’re at. It’s March and I’ve seen 16 films at the cinema, at an average cost of £3.18 per movie. I’m well on the way to 100 and I’ll keep you updated with more crappy excel graphs and rubbish averages along the way…

Foursquare Hackathon

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Along with Matthew Williams and Chris Gwilliams I’m helping to organise the Cardiff edition of the Foursquare global hackathon this weekend. I’m hoping it’ll be a pretty good event. Signup‘s are looking pretty positive and I’m hopeful that we’ll get some decent apps being created.

The organising is actually quite fun, but it is remarkable how much there is to do and remember. Thankfully the School of Computer Science & Informatics are being very supportive and allowing us to host it there, which makes things easier. I’ll be posting here throughout the event (and afterwards).

Edinburgh Festival… Day Five

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It’s the last full day at the festival and we wake up even later than the day before. It’s so late we decide to skip breakfast, and as it’s time for lunch we’ll head out for curry. A quick curry and rice and we’re up and running for the day once more. The shows today don’t start until later on, so we have a bit of a walk around, grab a coffee and cake, then once more split, as Lisa decides to go back to the flat briefly while I head to pub. I sit out of the rain doing the crossword, have a pint and await Lisa’s return. She arrives, we finish the crossword, and head off to the show. The first show of the day is Ruby Wax in her one woman play (that’s got two women in it): Losing It. It’s a fantastic and honest play about mental illness, really well done, with some laughs and a lot of truth.

Following the show we take a walk over to near Arthur’s seat, then back towards town for the last show of our festival. On the way we find a really ace pub that I think will be my local when I make it to Edinburgh full time. We have a quick pint, then go to the Queens Hall for Henry Rollins. The man is amazing, he gets up on stage and just talks for the evening, and everything he says is amusing or thoughtful and brilliant. He’s basically just telling us what he’s done for the last year, with some old road stories thrown in for good measure, but he’s such a great speaker its one of the highlights of the week. I think most academics I’ve seen talk could learn hugely from the passion and thought he puts into telling stories.

Post show we head back to the pub for a couple of pints, then grab a chinese takeaway and head back to the flat. With that, we’re done. Wasted, destroyed. Great week.

Shows: 2
Pints: A few
Chinese Food: some
Aging rock stars: one

Edinburgh Festival… Day Four

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Wednesday we wake up later than intended, so miss the planned start to the day at the Shakespeare breakfast. In all, it’s a very slow start to the day, the pace of the previous few days is beginning to get to us. We head off for a walk and a bagel to wake up, and I get butter all over my face from a very lovely, but very buttery and bacon filled bagel. After soaking up a bit of sunshine in the cafe we head down to town for our first show, an adaptation of Secret Window, Secret Garden. The venue is at C soco, which is the massive hole in the ground in the Old Town where the fire was a few years back, the one that took out the original Gilded Balloon and the School of Informatics’ AI department. The venue itself is in one of the buildings left standing on the site, which may well have been part of the University from looking at it, and the specific venue we’re in is right at the top. I estimate we climbed about 4000ft to reach it, but I may be wrong.

The play itself is nicely done, they’ve cut the story down to the minimum of necessary elements to cover everything in the plot while still bringing the play in at an hour, and the acting is pretty solid, if not stellar. The lead character is by far the best actor of the lot, doing a very good job at playing the role of the author losing his mind. They stick to the plot of the book too, rather than the film, which is pleasing. The guy playing John Shooter troubles me a little, and it’s not until afterwards that I realise it’s because he looks, sounds, and acts very much like someone at COMSC.

We’ve got a gap in the afternoon, so we head down to one of the ‘attractions’ of Edinburgh we haven’t visited yet, the Botanic Gardens. It’s a fair enough walk, mostly downhill. We cause a problem in the cafe at the east gate by attempting to buy things with a twenty pound note, the horror. They have nowhere near enough change, but there’s a solution to the problem if they let me off the odd 35p and I just pay them £5. They agree, so I effectively steal 35p of goods off a registered charity. In your face, plants.

It’s a nice place for a wander round, as lovely gardens tend to be. We decide to put up the cash to go into the hothouses, being as we’ve walked all the way down there. Surprisingly, they’re hot, and full of plants. I can’t get the Jurassic Park theme out of my head as I walk around, the whole place is reminiscent of the science labs in the sequels that have been taken over by plants, there’s a nice bit of ageing decay to them. Very few dinosaurs though, luckily.

After the botanic gardens we head to a pub down the road for a pretty decent dinner and a couple of pints, then make long trek back up the hill and into town. Lisa wants to head back to the flat, but I can’t be bothered, so I head down to the Brewdog bar on Cowgate to wait for her. I’m quite a fan of Brewdog beer, and it’s a nice bar (if a bit small), serving some very lovely booze. While I’m stood at the bar reading the paper it begins to absolutely piss it down with rain, so by the time Lisa gets back into town she is soaked through once more. As ever, the theory ‘go to the pub, not home’ has paid off.

We head up to the Assembly Hall to meet Lisa’s colleague and his wife for a pint before Sarah Millican. We have a nice chat for half an hour, then get into the longest queue yet for a show. We end up with seats up on the balcony, but it’s a fine venue that seems to hold a lot of people without feeling massive, so the view is pretty good and you still feel pretty close to the stage. Sarah Millican is good, but the show seems like a collection of one liners and jokes rather than a coherent whole. Despite that it’s hilariously funny, and a good time is had by both of us. I steal two badges at the end of the show, making it both a registered charity and a comedian that I’ve effectively cheated in one day.

Following the show we head down to the Conference Centre for an Amnesty gig. I thought the queue for the Millican show was big, but the queue at the EICC was huge, snaking all the way round to the back of the building and out into the street. I have a minor altercation with some old ladies in the queue who are queue jumping, and refuse to move when I inform them of the fact. Another chap also tries to let them know, but they ignore him too. So we talk loudly about the older generation just thinking they can do what they want, and how old people have no manners anymore and don’t understand about how being British means we treat each other decently and are polite and so on. I’m half convinced we quite embarrassed the one old lady, but her friend was made of sterner stuff. The old ladies have annoyed me massively, but it’s wearing off by the time we get into the venue, until I discover that bottles of beer at the bar are £3.80 each, which almost makes things even worse. Luckily the show is laugh balls funny. It’s basically ten minutes sets from a whole mix of comedians that we wouldn’t have otherwise seen, with a large number of laughs coming from making the signers at the side of the stage make inappropriate gestures. It’s a great gig, with performances from Mark Watson, Ed Byrne, Russell Kane, Jenny Eclair, David O’Doherty, Holly Walsh and Roisin Conaty. Once more we both enjoy it, laugh too much, and leave happy. We head home satisfied for the evening.

Shows: 3
Pints: God knows
Queues: Massive
Old ladies: Three (irritating and rude)