neuro.me.uk

So two things i’ve been looking forward to for a long time are going to see The Dark Knight and finally getting to see a movie at the IMAX cinema out at the Glasgow Science Centre. It’s a crying shame that the actual experience of going to watch the movie didn’t match up to the movie itself at any level.

So the movie itself is just frickin’ awesome. All kinds of awesome. Every performance is note perfect, and makes me itch for more. I don’t want to go too much into the movie, as I tried to stay clear of any pre-release hype to keep the movie fresh for me when I saw it, and I don’t want to spoil the experience for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet. However, if you’ve seen it, you hopefully know what I’m talking about.

No, the reason I’m blogging about going to see the Dark Knight in IMAX is sadly rationale for yet another “neuro is ranting” post.

The actual experience of the IMAX segments of The Dark Knight were truly stunning, expanding the more traditional widescreen segments vertically up- and downwards to absolutely fill the field of vision. However, the non-IMAX segments of the movie had terrible black level definition, as though someone had turned the brightness way up on your television. That’s my only real complaint about the movie presentation itself, as the IMAX segments were amazing (I’ll keep reiterating that to make the point that there’s nothing wrong with the IMAX process itself), and the sound system was leg-shakingly loud.

Well, except when the ushers used it as a PA system. Just before the start of the movie, after seeing some postage-stamp sized ads, and a 5 minute fluff piece on Christopher Nolan and crew espousing how awesome IMAX is to shoot with, one of the ushers gave us the lowdown on where the exits where (I’ve just gotten back from a couple of weeks travelling; the last thing I want to hear is someone on a PA telling me where the exits are … are there lifejackets in this cinema too?) and to “keep your feet on the ground, get ready for The Dark Knight: the IMAX Experience”. Just get on with it!

I should point out that my agitation at this point was that it was around 11pm by now. We’d gotten to the Glasgow Science Centre at about 9pm to get our tickets and avoid a massive queue — indeed, we were amongst the first into the cinema itself — but then we were made to queue until around 10:45pm for a 10:15pm showing. It was nearly half one in the morning by the time we got outside.

So the movie starts. I’m sat in my rather uncomfortable seat, drinking my bottle of Coke which had gotten lukewarm between my buying it and actually getting sat down. Our little movie going group had already eaten most of our movie munchies. And we still had two and a half hours to go. This was not going well.

And so the movie finished. Not five seconds after the end credits have appeared, the lights went up (well I say “lights”, it was a massive spot up in the rafters somewhere) and another usher grabbed the mike to tell us to take our rubbish with us, and to use the exits at the back of the theatre. Meanwhile, the credits have gotten to Michael Caine’s name. I don’t mind the lights coming up after say 10-15 seconds of end credits; most movie-goers are on their feet by that point anyway, but to actually interrupt the movie by blabbering on a PA is massively disrespectful to not only the feature, but the process too.

I now have an indelible impression that going to see a movie or feature in IMAX will be marred by dreadful pre-entry procedures, awful seating, poor herding of patrons, and shoddy treatment by the staff to whatever’s being shown; sadly I shall never return to the Glasgow IMAX cinema. For every moment I was enjoying the movie, there was another wishing I was back at home, in my comfy chair watching something in HD on Sky or on my Mac mini, and that surely is a damning indictment of any “experience”.

After seeing Iron Man last night, Robert Downey Jr. has firmly cemented himself into the canon of my “mostest awesome favourite actor types”. I’ve always liked Downey Jr. — highlights for me were his roles in Air America, Chaplin, and most recently, A Scanner Darkly, Good Night, and Good Luck and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. There’s a pattern in those roles: he excels at playing complete fuck-ups, mainly because his life in many regards has been one big long fuck-up. He spent most of the 1990s in and out of both rehab and jail for repeated drug use and offences. This guy knows more than most what it’s like to get on, and most critically to get off a substance abuse habit.

And that to me made him perfect to play Tony Stark in Iron Man. The guy goes from arms dealing playboy to armour-clad philanthropist after seeing his life’s work being used by insurgents to kill innocent people (Vietnamese in the comics, Afghans in the movie). Downey Jr. seems to have taken a similar path, seeing how fucked up his life was becoming, and now resuming a successful movie career. For me, starring in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang in 2005, alongside fellow career fuck-up Val Kilmer, was the first big “I’m back” statement he made. Iron Man is his coming out party. Holy crap, is Robert Downey Jr. back.

As for Iron Man itself, there’s a ridiculous amount of stuff to love in this movie, the first to be developed from scratch by Marvel itself: explosions, dogfights, great comedy, pathos, more explosions, no long-winded unrequired exposition pieces and … well, even more explosions. It’s a balls-out, no-bullshit summer event movie, and it doesn’t give a shit about who knows it. In fact, there’s actually quite a few key things that make this movie as great as it is — and it really shouldn’t be as great as it is given that the movie is shallow and predictable in places — Downey Jr. being the primary element both holding the feature together and driving it forward to a satisfactory ending. In a nod to both Downey Jr.’s and director Jon Favreau’s comedy pasts, there was dialogue improvisation on set, partly due to an incomplete script, assisting in making this movie more believable on a human level. Aside from that, a consistently good performances from the rest of the cast, taut direction from Favreau and utterly stunning visual effects from houses at the top of their game (ILM, Pixel Liberation Front, Stan Winston) combine to make this one of the strongest event movies in recent years. And it really shouldn’t be. It’s not a complaint, just an observation: the stars have some how aligned in such a way to make this movie great. In lesser hands, perhaps, it would have floundered.

Combine all this with Downey Jr.’s appearance as Tony Stark in the forthcoming The Incredible Hulk, starring Edward Norton, and the tantalising promise of a series of Marvel Studios movies featuring other members of the Avengers — Captain America, Thor, Ant-Man — all leading to an Avengers ensemble movie around 2010, and you have one of the most impressive and smart ways to build a franchise ever heard of in movies. Good luck, Marvel: surprise us all and keep making these awesome comic-book movies!

Oh! Tip: stay to the end of the end credits. You’ll thank me.

I was wondering why my iTunes Music folder was taking up so much room on my hard disk, and in checking I realised: it’s because I subscribe to the 720p HD Trailer Podcast and I’d forgotten to expire out watched ‘episodes’. It’s a neat way to catch up with new HD trailers without having to keep visiting the Apple or Yahoo! sites off my own back. Don’t worry about the fact it doesn’t look to have been updated in a while from the episode list, the feeds are bang up to date with such awesomeness as the new Indy 4 and Iron Man trailers.

Oh, and is it just me, or does it look like Iron Man is going to kick some serious ass? Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark: absolutely inspired casting.

… designed the titles for Star Wars, they’d look something like this.

Last year, I thought “how cool would it be to have a Talk Like Yoda Day, you know, like Talk Like a Pirate Day?” I wasn’t the first to have the idea — and I certainly won’t be the last — but I’ve finally managed to throw content onto talklikeyoda.com in time for the proposed Day on the 21st of May (the 1980 US release date of Empire).

I should have done it much, much sooner, but you know, I suck et cetera. Anyway, enjoy.

UpdateDigg this, you will.

I really can’t tell if this is planned, or due to my arsiness, but Sky appear to have stopped playing the minutes-long Phill Jupitus voiceover espousing how great the next Star Wars movie they’re showing will be. They’re now playing a 20-30 second voiceover by a regular Sky continuity person reminding you a Star Wars movie is coming, and to visit Sky Movies to listen to what Phill has to say — not that I can find any sign of that on their site yet.

It’s an interesting development, and if Sky have done this on the strength of my and possibly others comments, then well played!

Sent to Sky and Phill Jupitus a couple of minutes ago:

I hate complaining to Sky, you rarely get somewhere unless you’ve really been messed about, i.e. by installers. I doubt anything will come of this, but with luck Phill might get shamed into making some sort of public apology for whoring himself so blatantly on Sky. I mean really, a good two minutes spent over the credits filled with waffle. Were John Williams dead, he’d be spinning in his grave. In prestissimo, no doubt.

I kinda ripped into Kevin Smith the other day for some of his more-than-usually-over-the-top media whore antics in the past few months, but his disgust at movie critic Joel Siegel walking out of Clerks II when only 40 minutes had passed is well placed and well described. If I was to be paid to watch a movie to review it for a publication, I’d damn well make sure I watched the whole thing.

Thanks Kevin, you’ve restored both my faith in humanity and in your capability to bitch about the right things in life!

Die Hard 2: Die Harder was on itv2 last night, so this was a nice bit of serendipity — Kevin Smith has published the comp artwork for the cover of the forthcoming An Evening With Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder DVD:

He’s never looked cooler^†. Absolute genius, can’t wait.

^† … well, as cool as a fat man leaping around for the camera in dramatic poses can do, I suppose.

Sorry, it wasn’t Natalie Portman being photographed topless on a beach by paparazzi, or being cast in V for Vendetta, or shaving her head, but this segment from a recent Saturday Night Live which makes me think “hey, Natalie Portman, not a kid anymore” …

Cheers to NBC for letting a kosher version finally become available.