Two things: someone at work has contracted swine flu and id Software has sold up to Bethseda.

id Software has sold up!
Jesus. The last bastions of digital independence, programming heroes for whom innovation means freedom of the soul. When Frank Miller turned into a parody of himself and started strip mining his past rather than creating anything new or interesting, when Alan Moore seemed as petty as a six year old girl not being given a pony, John Carmack kept plowing the same path with zeal, integrity and ingenuity. He forced corporate behemoths to bend to his will, showed up his entire industry and became the de facto market leader in any segment he dabbled in. This is a man who is more responsible than any other for the longevity and adaption of OpenGL on the PC platform. Who bequeathed 3DFx, NVidia and ATI their entire (and lucrative) markets through sheer innovation and quality, who revolutionised gaming at every turn and very nearly went into space in his free time. I admired the man more than anyone else alive.

And now he has gone and (seemingly) sold out. More than George Lucas’ inability to realise not everything he does is great, more than Fatboy Slim releasing mediocre albums, more than bad films and dubious politics, this is the moment my childhood is laid bare and any certainty I had rent asunder.

Also, the lack of a sudo command in the command prompt in Windows Vista is really, really annoying.

A while back I complained about an advert with a faux American accent promising that a sale was strictly limited. This was then superseded with an advert using that same irritating voiceman but saying that the sale (while extended) would still end soon. This, duly, ran forever. And made an enemy for me of the store that it was advertising. Thankfully this run has finally ended. To be replaced by yet another advert with the same incredibly bloody annoying voice. So it shall come to pass: when he flies into a rage his enemies shall be struck dumb by his anger. And possibly incontinent.

Speaking of mad regimes, I felt proud to be British for the first time in a good long while yesterday. Too long, truth be told. The Ayatollah (I don’t know how to write or pronounce his last name, but it is not dissimilar to “ham and cheese”) has singled out Britain for particular scorn in a speech he made about how his country men should all stand behind his good buddy the mad holocaust denier in the cheap suit. You can judge a man by the quality of his enemies. Or country.

Bradford’s town hall clock continues to be a source of particularly inaccurate time. This week it was wrong on three of the mornings I went into work, stopped at midnight and two in the morning (or possibly afternoon). I live in a city where the council doesn’t even know what time it is. And possibly run by people so ugly their faces can stop clocks.

Up is bloody brilliant. Not as good as the Incredibles or Wall-E, but head and shoulders above most films. It’s genuinely touching, depressing and uplifting, beautifully animated and terse and pacy. Once again Pixar have opened up a gap on their competitors when it comes to quality of animation, knowing when to hit us with incredibly detailed textures and polygon rich scenes, and when to use the simple quality of their design. More than ever they seem to perfectly realise their vision, and their only limitation if their (very high) standard of writing.

Last weekend I saw Davod for the first time in over a year and saw his son for the first time. I saw people that I haven’t seen in years and spent the time explaining who I was. I feel I look the same but I have mellowed a lot. Or it could be I am not memorable. Juliette looks just like I remember her. She hasn’t aged a day in 8 years, even after the baby. Davod looks the same as his dad, just with fewer white hairs. His sister looks an elfin teen. I felt undistinguished and liable to age badly.

I have upgraded the computer. I may go into it in detail (mind numbing, spirit crushing detail at that) later, but the basics are:
Many SATA 2 drives have the facility (through jumper settings) to allow the user to force them to work as SATA 1 drives, this means they are effectively backwards compatible with a lower data transfer rate without corruption while enabling you to reuse them when the motherboard is finally replaced.
I have read a lot on short stroking. By using the higher capacity of a drive at an exterior edge compared to the inner portion of the drive for distance traveled by drive head I can get much faster seek and transfer times for data. Oddly Windows loading doesn’t benefit massively from this. Loading applications within Windows and general responsiveness does benefit though. Some programs load instantaneously and typing faster than the refresh of the computer can handle is a thing of the past.
Dual boot Ubuntu. Which I will be taking advantage of once I have an internet connection working with it. The idea of being able to code PHP and see the effect instantly appeals to me greatly. I know a WAMP implementation is possible but it feels more right, more proper, this way.
Google Sketch now works. A soft benefit as much as anything else.

I bet on Middlesbrough to stay up. I thought 16 to 1 was impossibly generous odds for such a result. They weren’t.

I saw Crank: High Voltage tonight. Whereas Crank was a pure action film, stupid and adrenaline fueled, Crank 2 is an altogether more insane beast. Starting with an altogether more improbable premise and afforded a budget which allows it to indulge it’s madder whims. This isn’t an action film, it’s a full blown acid trip that I would recommend to anyone. Anyone who isn’t offended by anything. Or squeamish. Or inclined to actually think about narrative structure or logic.

The cinema was virtually empty. A couple who no doubt intended it as a date movie left within minutes. Weak stomachs or a lack of sense of humour, the film didn’t even get going till after they had gone. In the rafters two girls laughed like drains. I was reminded of the time we went to see From Dusk to Dawn and stumbled across a pensioners’ day out at the cinema. Disapproving tuts to our every guffaw . . . .

The recurring soap opera at work inches forward. Apparently someone I tangentially knew (but strongly disliked) used to work where I do. And died of a heart attack. In the office. I shall find a delicate (not at all) way to ask about it.

The Post Office down the road is for sale and I have seen the listing. The asking price is 113,500 pounds. Apparently the weekly turnover is 5,000 pounds and the stipend for being a post office is 33,000 pounds per year. Something in those figures does not add up. At all.

Toni and Guy in Bradford appears to be closing. Where will the chic denizens of this multi cultural and cultured metropolis go for sleek bobs and avant garde hair now?
I seek to start unsubstantiated rumours it will be replaced bya shop selling naught but Kappa, LaCoste and velvet tracksuits. Or do I mean velour?

I had a dream last night. I probably dream on lots of nights but it is rare that I remember one. I was helping to supervise a school trip with the people I work with largely being the children on the trip. We were on the coast (although we were in Calderdale, which is land-locked) and I wanted to look at some huge motor or engine (not sure what the distinction is, to be honest) and the children/colleagues wanted to go and see Mickey Mouse. So I ended up watching a man in a not convincing Mickey Mouse costume do the same thing over and over again while I never saw my beautiful engine/motor and the children loved it while I stood at the back. Fuming.

At work today (he says, by way of segue) a girl who works in the main office (I work in the little adjunct where things actually get done and people aren’t desperately scurrying around trying not to get noticed) was dumped by her boyfriend. Who works in the staff canteen. Via text message. First he tried getting another girl (who I also work with) to tell the girl he was dumping to move her stuff out as he needed more space, then he just ended it via text message. She looks about twelve and I have never seen him, but I have an image of a spiky haired urchin who is all swagger and practiced nonchalance. It felt like I was at school, only this time hanging out with the normal kids and bemused by them rather than sat finding out about technology or drawing.

The bane of my working day is an advert for Coral Windows. In it, the announcer puts on a really strained American film trailer voice and tells anyone unfortunate enough to be listening about Coral Window’s sale. Initially it was a ten day sale, so as much as I hated it I knew it would be over. Now, unfortunately, the sale has been extended. And gives no firm date as to when it finishes. I fully intend to boycott Coral Windows and would beseech everyone else to do the same. Unfortunately, this course of action would leave them with excess inventory that I now know they will advertise indefinitely. In an annoying way.

Terminator Salvation looks like a good film from the trailer. Christian Bale has yet to turn in a bad performance (although he has been in some bad films) and the special effects look incredible. What I can glean of the plot is promising too. And yet. And yet it is a McG film. And he is one of those rare people with a reverse Midas touch. I’d say he is the anti-Christ of American cinema but that is unfair: the anti-Christ could at least blame his upbringing and parental pressure . . .

The Sunday Express has a headline screaming (I am paraphrasing) “Gordon Brown least popular PM since polling began - Worse than Michael Foot.” Now, I am confused. I know I was but a small child but I am sure I would remember Michael Foot’s triumphant victory following the Falklands War and headlines such as “Incontinent PM soils himself at peace summit” and “The wheelchair’s not for turning.”

The Inbetweeners finished a triumphant second series in the week. Not the saccharin ending of the first series, a savage and very funny look at exams and heartbreak instead. Often intermingled. Quite simply this series has been one of the funniest things ever broadcast and I would recommend everyone seek it out and hunt it down.

I didn’t go swimming this morning, I appear to have broken Wayne using the medium of water.

Wolverine is apparently doing quite respectably for a leaked, poorly reviewed film with bad word of mouth. Fox are not so much happy as breathing a huge sigh of relief. Or, at least, until nest week when the new Star Trek comes out and Wolverine loses over 60% of its sales.

South Park seems to be on summer hiatus without having delivered any truly great episodes. Stewart Lee has finished and The Inbetweeners is already on the penultimate episode of the series. The Inbetweeners may be the biggest loss, the new episode is brilliant and the series has been consistently better than the last one.

Swine Flu, luckily is the new SARS rather than the new Spanish Flu. The media reported it in hysterical terms, then reported on the panic and hysteria they created, and are begrudgingly reporting how it isn’t that dangerous really while trying to suggest everyone got it wrong but them. All the while I stood wondering what the big deal was, only for the thing I was wondering about to be in a constant state of flux, just not my reaction to it.

Gordon Brown is being rallied around. At the moment there seems little going round to rally round him because of, which either means it is pre emptive or the leading lights of the Labour party (a phrase chosen for alliterative value rather than any semblance of accuracy) are so used to him needing their collective support that they just do it out of habit.

A guy I work with was apparently resident at Bradford City’s Valley Parade ground the day it caught fire. It’s one of those things I understand as an abstract but never really had any first hand appreciation of. Shocking, really, considering I live in the city that it happened in.

I got a book on Escher, all the things I remember as being examples of his great use of perspective are, in fact, isometrics. All the things I thought looked a bit odd are examples of perspective. It’s a funny old world and I don’t know how to draw any of it.

I went swimming at an unearthly hour this morning with Wayne. There were 3 partitioned areas, one for the slow, one for the less slow and one for serious swimmers. Unfortunately I am above less slow in less speed and nothing like a serious swimmer. I kept running into the person in front while being lapped by people who actually wear swimming caps. I now ache in places I didn’t even know had musculature.

Last night I went through a lot or Jim Lee art and was inspired to draw. Which I have done, and it looks nothing like Jim Lee. It’s hard lined and has no feathering or hatching, at all.

Apparently you can now catch death from sausages. And Mexicans. Especially from Mexicans wielding sausages.

Last weekend, through poor planning and a lack of foresight, I found myself at Asda in Shipley of a mid morning on a Saturday. It was horrendously busy and full of people ambling along with trolleys they periodically abandoned on the aisles as they browsed and couldn’t find what they wanted. “Never again” I said to myself, and promptly forgot about it. This morning I found myself in an identical situation some 10 minutes later than the week previous. I really have to keep the promises I make myself, or at least remember them.

Bradford Town Hall Clock has now been corrected. The morning it was telling the right time for the first time I sauntered, knowing I was very early and was in fact merely on time as a result. However, if I need that blast of incorrect time keeping in my life there is always the clock on Bradford Cathedral, which runs about five minutes fast and caused some concern having been around Forster Square.

It’s been a week of little sleep as well as incorrect clocks. One night I went to bed at about ten thirty only to get a call at ten to eleven. a text at half eleven and then three phone calls from a drunk with the wrong number at around two. The following night one of the neighbours decided to set off a whole battery of loud and bright fireworks between about one and one thirty. I spent the following morning with the idea of reporting them for child abuse, drugs offences and benefit fraud they almost certainly not commited keeping me warm and awake. I also toyed with the idea of using a window trembler alarm through their letterbox as a more directed way of letting them know how not fun being woken in the middle of the night is. They’re late risers, I could do it on my way to work.

One of the few TV shows I watch, and the only one I watch as it airs rather than using BBC iplayer (or other means) is The Apprentice. It was the first week I picked both the losing team and the person who would be fired. I don’t know if that means it was more obvious this week (it did seem singularly obvious, but I have been wrong on that before) or I am just getting better at working out what is fair representation and what is a swerve to make the boardroom scenes more dramatic at the end. It’s well orchestrated television, but I don’t think it represents anything like business reality, especially in the current climate.

I also saw the new The Inbetweeners, South Park and Stewart Lee. The Inbetweeners suffers only in that it came off the back of a truly excellent episode and doesn’t compare. By any normal standards it is brilliant. South Park is amusing but rarely laugh out loud funny and feels oddly slack, I expected more ferocity and a greater density of jokes. I don’t know if Stewart Lee suffers in the editing, but his timing seems off and he sometimes comes across as bitter without being venomous. He’s funny, but sometimes he’s too deconstructionist and he wants you to intellectually appreciate the artificiality of it all, the construction and craft, rather than the humour.

I am slowly reverting back to the sleep pattern I had when I worked at the bakery, short hours during the week and catching up at the weekend. Three and four hours a night Sunday to Thursday and Friday as a decadent excess, burrowing into my mattress and getting eight or more hours.

I have a new job which involves working in the largest office I have ever worked in. The office is so large that different areas have distinct temperatures. Fortunately I am located at the cool end, which I find to be merely too warm rather than stifling. I sit opposite a girl in a shirt. And jumper. And fleece. Who complains it is too cold.

The office is largely full of (mainly girls) teenagers and the middle aged, with me being one of the two in that odd middle ground of old enough to shave but too young to shop in Greenwoods. The other is a woman who is a year older than I am but looks like she is in her mid forties having had a largely disappointing life (remember this, it is important). Anyway, apparently people have been guessing how old I am. And, for the first time in my life, they have got the age wrong by guessing too young! Apart from the woman who looks to be in her forties, who thought I was about her age.

Going to work, of a morning, I pass Bradford Town Hall. On Bradford Town Hall is Bradford Town Hall Tower. And in Bradford Town Hall Tower is Bradford Town Hall Tower Clock. Which is eight minutes fast. And causes me to hurry to work only to find out that the clock is in fact fast. Every single morning.

Today I went shopping in Asda. Now, when I shop in the supermarket, I carry a large sports bag on my shoulder to put things in. This is not so much to reduce my carbon footprint by using fewer carrier bags but rather because I find it easier to carry things like that. Today, in Asda, there were some form of scouts packing bags at the checkout with large buckets in which they hoped to receive a donation for doing so. Having had a bad experience a decade hence with a boyscout deciding eggs were a suitable foundation on which to throw tins of vegetables I don’t let any of them near my goods. So I told the girl I wasn’t interested and she went and stood to one side to talk to her friend on the next line and I packed my bag. Now, when my bag is packed I sling it over my shoulder with an expansive swinging motion. This is normally safe to do at the end of a checkout because no one is stood next to you. You know, talking to their friend or anything. So not only did I not give any money to the scouts, I also hit one of their number. That is how much I don’t want any of you dib dib dabbers packing my bags.

The new episode of The Inbetweeners is uproariously funny. Funnier than anything I have seen on television since the best moments of Father Ted. Better than anything this decade. It is cring inducing, embarrassing, crass and hilarious.

The new South Park had a really funny South Park joke and some good moments, but couldn’t really compete.

I finally watched Death Proof and Planet Terror. Assuming you’re even further behind with films to watch than I am, may I just offer the following advice?
Watch Planet Terror but not Death Proof.

In Bradford City Centre there is a bin designated for used chewing gum. Which is a great idea. On the bin is a sign saying “recycle your gum here.” Which is a truly disgusting idea. What is recycled gum used for?

The Inbetweeners is back, and is very good. Again. Astonishingly the entirety of the cast seem to be back also, which, when you consider it is an ensemble piece and many are just in cameos and that a year has passed, is quite an achievement.

Stewart Lee is as provincial and urban as any other comedian in the country. His jokes are largely routed in city living, especially London. I like him, but I think he could be better and find myself longing for Rob Newman.

Red Dwarf has a new set of episodes airing over the Easter Weekend. Is it possible to go home again?

The new South Park series is uneven. Sometimes funny, sometimes mildly amusing. When it comes back for the second half of the series it will probably revert to multiple part stories to stretch out what material they have remaining. It isn’t great but even when it isn’t great it’s better than most things out there.

Jaqui Smith has turned into a huge source of amusement. Firstly, she seems confused as to where she lives. Secondly, she seems to think that the taxpayer should pay for her and her family’s TV. Thirdly, she employs her husband (looking something like a cross between a sex offender and trendy college lecturer) to work for her which categorically isn’t nepotism. Fourthly, most amusingly, her husband watches porn on her expense account. That she is borderline incompetent isn’t the issue here, nor is it the corruption and stench of her dealings, it’s how funny and ludicrous she now appears. This one will run and run.

Stewart Lee’s comedy vehicle was plodding along as an exercise in mediocrity until this latest episode. The latest one is VERY funny. Even the linking sketches are far better than normal and there is a pleasant sense of absurdity running through that was missing in the two previous episodes.

The new South Park is also good. The global economic downturn seen in purely biblical terms. Only just not how you thought it might be. When South Park is good, it is very, very good. And makes comparisons that seem utterly ridiculous at first but are so well done they become obvious by the end of the show.

And this marks my 200th post, apparently.

The Guardian is the most transparent, honest and fair purveyor of financial news and recommendations in Britain, if not the world. I know this because The Guardian tells me so. In an offensively smug manner. Do you know how you can tell how good it is?
Because it has the financial news before the comments and not after them. On this basis the Sun and Star are even better at reporting the death of Jade Goody because they had it on the left hand column on the cover rather than the right hand one. And the Independent and Telegraph are utterly useless at reporting her demise because they don’t have her death on the cover at all. How can they sleep with themselves?
As an aside, the Star costs less than half as much as my local paper. And has just as little you’d actually want to read in it.

On the topic of newspapers, did anyone catch David Baddiel’s piece in the Times at the weekend about starting off his career with the Mary Whitehouse Experience?
Crap, isn’t it?

The new South Park starts with a Watchmen parody and descends into a sub Batman rip off. It has a couple of good jokes but isn’t great. In fact, I only laughed out loud a couple of times.

Watchmen has been released after months of hype and years of expectation. It cost $150million to make, required an unprecedented deal between Warners and Fox and has beaten many producers and screen writers. It opened below expectation and declined precipitously in the second week of release. This saddens me, but I am not sure how much it surprises me. Watchmen is a good film. It may even be a great film. It is not, however, a blockbuster. Too many threads are left unresolved, good does not conquer all and there is no final act of revenge, redemption and resolution. Not a crowd pleasing one.

In many ways the ending is that of the middle film of a trilogy, the sense that the real struggle is just beginning and that the heroes can still triumph. Unfortunately, that is not to be (and on the box office numbers we can at least feel confident that there wont be a sequel) and many viewers may leave feeling cheated. It’s also a long film that has to move at breakneck speed to get everything that needs to be in covered. It’s sumptuous and I think would reward repeated viewings. I await the DVD excitedly.

There is a new South park. It echoes what I feel about Disney and manufactured pop music perfectly. It is also as vicious as it has ever been. And probably disgusts and offends far more people that it entertains.

Stewart Lee has a new tv show. He was young and represented the shock of the new when I was growing up. Now he is overweight in too tight a suit and has white hair at his temples. His targets are deserving but obvious and he sounds snobbish throughout. I feel the same sort of sadness as I do at realising that no new pop act is ever as old as I am: I grow old and my future never came to be.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is not a short film. It clocks in at something approaching 3 hours, and there is a suspicion it would have benefited from extra editing. It is not a film with a particularly happy ending, although there are moments of sentimentality and happiness throughout the film. It is, in places, extremely funny. The framing technique seems unnecessary initially and jarring in places. It is, however, a beautiful and interesting film.

The special effects are consistently excellent. We know that Benjamin Button has to be the product of special effects in early sequences, and him walking on crutches is incongruous and my brain had trouble processing it, but I am not sure that that wasn’t the desired effect. The man child is rendered believable, whether it is the result of CGI or make up or both. There are also special effects that don’t even occur to you: tracking shots that are impossible, the seamless recreations of long since destroyed vistas of period America, sea effects and animals that were never there.

Visually the film is remarkably consistent, wonderfully assured and of a piece. The framing scenes have a different palette and lighting to differentiate them and the main story is subtly sepia but warm and inviting. Fincher has become a wonderfully versatile director, but he hasn’t lost his eye for dressing or lighting a scene.

Brad Pitt is eminently believable, but also appropriately blank. His character is that of an everyman with a singularly unusual affliction. He is not fantastic in any other way and Pitt keeps someone who is nigh impossible to relate to human and easy to empathise with. Cate Blanchett is also brilliant as the proud and strong love of Button’s life. The supporting cast are good, with none being annoying nor obviously solely as comic relief.

Benjamin Button is a triumph of vision and a brave film, considering. It is, also, not quite as brilliant as it could have been.

Throughout the history of Cinema the Oscars have served to celebrate the best of film making, the most convincing and powerful performances, excellence in technical aspects and visionary direction. The list of winners through the years is long and illustrious. In the best picture category alone we have had:

Gigi (1958)
Oliver (1968)
Braveheart (1995)
Titanic (1997)

Of course, in these years there were films that weren’t even nominated that some may consider to have been overlooked:

Touch of Evil (1958)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
The Usual Suspects (1995)

There are great films nominated and didn’t win in years with far less worthy winners, but not even considering a great film at all, particularly genre movies, has happened on too many occasions. And this year is another of them.

The Dark Knight has not been nominated for best picture. The Dark Knight, which is in step with the prevailing climate of anxiety and discomfort and decay, that has layer upon layer of complexity and ingenuity, that dares not have a happy ending and happily encompasses a whole spectrum of moral ambiguity, has been left uncounted as Hollywood again seeks to reward the trite, the boring and the self satisfied.

Slumdog Millionaire, in particular, makes me angry. Slumdog Millionaire is written and directed by a couple of nice white people who have a set of assumptions about India that seem to have been gathered from telephone conversations with call centres, having watched “Goodness, Gracious Me” and “Gandhi.” It’s a variation of a rags to riches tale in which there are actual brown people! In starring roles! Of course, it’s nearly all in English, makes little to no sense, has some awful acting and is as moral, trite and predictable as one can imagine. To hide this the locales are a little unusual and there is a sprinkling of sadism on what is otherwise the most moralistic and predictable tale imaginable. The betrayer? Gets to die redeeming himself!
The bad guys? Get killed!
The hero? Does anything for love, even giving up money, so he deserves happiness and riches!
This is a festering turd of a movie. It’s family fare with a slight calculated edge to hide the fact it could have been made by Disney.
And the sodding Oscars want to reward it in place of anything that may make you think or reflect social concerns, moral ambiguity or actual craft and inventiveness.

Wayne tagged me on one of those seven facts memes. To my memory I did one once before when Sam tagged me for the same thing. I am not sure I know seven people who keep up to their blogs enough to tag going forward, but here goes the facts of no consequence:

I briefly did both ballet and tap dancing lessons as a child. The first known instance of me breaking a promise is “I will keep doing ballet” in order to shut my mother up on the subject.

I’m effectively tee total. I drink on occasion but, when I do, tend to drink to excess and forget parts of the night. I also can’t escape hangovers no matter how much alcohol I drink and what form it takes.

I don’t have the first clue how to drive a car but have some ability on a forktruck. Hopefully cars are easier to reverse.

I watch far, far more “television” online than I ever do sat in front of an actual television. I don’t actually understand the mindset required to watch some programs, especially soap operas.

I hate shaving and have spent the vast majority of my adult life needing a shave.

I’ve always found Neil Gaiman and Mark Waid overrated and the current failure of The Spirit film makes me hope that Frank Miller will reappraise his current work. Also, Quentin Tarantino isn’t very good, really. He appeals to people who take pride in recognising his riffs and people too stupid to realise they are.

I love the Dark Knight even though, deep down, I know it is too reliant on coincidences and contrivances.

Apparently, as soon as the US government acknowledged there was a recession, consumer confidence there dropped measurably. In this country companies are going bust left, right and centre. These are the end times.

Apart from they’re not: Barack Obama gets sworn in inside a month and, at some point, the economy will cease contracting. One thing that cheered me up more than it should is a list of billionaires who have lost significant quantities of their paper fortunes to the global recession. Paper fortunes could be the key words here, with the whole thing brought about my 63 trillion dollars that never existed vanishing. Part of me feels that a similar sized contraction has to occur, but the whole recession is about confidence and perceived worth rather than anything more tangible.

Comics wise I have no idea how the year has been. Both Marvel and DC are doing huge crossovers and steeping their books in inter-connectivity and continuity. This doesn’t interest me and a lack of time and money means I haven’t been following them as I may have otherwise.

Films-wise it hasn’t been spectacular and, again, time and funds have conspired to make sure I didn’t venture to the cinema often. The Day the Earth Stood Still is a mixed bag of a film with great sequences and large swathes that just don’t work. The Dark Knight is very good indeed, but is less good when you actually ruminate on it. What else was there?
Tropic Thunder isn’t as funny as one would hope.
Jumper was a special effect stretched into a movie.
Wanted was wrecked by being utterly stupid.
Iron Man wasn’t bad, actually.
Speed Racer looks fantastic but it is aimed at kids and not for adult consumption.
Indiana Jones 4 is the continued rape of childhood by George Lucas.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall is really funny, and quite brave for a mainstream sex comedy.
Righteous Kill is singularly disappointing but doesn’t allow Pacino to be as awful as normal.
The Hulk is ok, but pales in comparison to other superhero films this year.
Get Smart isn’t funny and is too obvious.
The Love Guru I seem to be the only person alive who likes.
Wall-E is brilliant, daring and beautiful.
Hancock has the beginning of a much better film and a fairly awful ending around a standard middle.
Hellboy 2 is visually great, but the tension seems missing.
How to lose friends and alienate people is good for 20 minutes. Then an insipid romantic comedy.
Quantum of Solace is like a tacked on sequel to the previous James Bond film without being a James Bond film. Some of the action sequences are a bit shaky, but I actually prefer it to Casino Royale.
Zack and Miri make a porno isn’t very funny.

Still, to 2009 and all the promise I will bemoan squandering in 12 months’ time.

A member of the opposition Conservative party has been arrested under anti terrorism laws for daring to hold the government to account. Earlier this year Icelandic assets were seized under anti terrorism laws. Ian Blair stood down not because of his force’s shooting of innocent men under anti terrorism initiatives but because Boris Johnson forced him out. And then called for it to be made impossible for that to happen again. Something has gone seriously wrong and the state of the economy means that the government is not being held to account.

In America there is an air of optimism that will probably translate into perceived security when Obama comes to power and starts his infrastructure plan. Here we have the same old incompetents arguing amongst themselves while knocking 2.5% off (the already too high) VAT. Which will likely achieve precisely nothing. The country has a huge pile of debt carried over from the boom years which means there is nothing to spend now we need to. We need a change and some new policies. As much as I would love Vince Cable to steer the economy (because I believe he says sensible things) it looks like it will be the Tories and not till 2010. Which means we’re relying on everyone else getting better before we do to give us even a slim chance.

I’ve tweaked the site slightly, and made it look less good in both chrome and firefox in the process. But it now works nearly as it should in IE.

Wall-E is better than I gave it any credit for. Or than it should be. It’s beautifully rendered and very, very touching. Even with a minimum of dialogue.

Madagascar 2 is funny, but I think I blinked and missed the plot. And it leaves everything wide open for the sequel. On the plus side the giraffe and hippo are marginalised early on.

The second half of the South Park season was largely underwhelming, as it has been the past few years. Hopefully it will come back better in the spring.