Rob, Rambling - A lot of things interest me...

I went to see the Banksy film ‘Exit Through The Gift Shop’ last Thursday, in one of the most random locations (OK, the most) that I’ve ever watched a film in. It was in the tunnels underneath Waterloo station, halfway along a longer tunnel that was utterly covered in graffiti and through a non-descript door. Handily, a red carpet was painted onto the floor to guide you in…

There were a couple of pieces of art in the foyer bit, as well as a distorted ice-cream van selling the drinks and snacks. One bottle of red wine for two, cheers!

The cinema section was in one of the tunnels, with some raised seating, I guess for a total of about 130 people for each screening. It reminded me so much of some of the venues I went to over the last two summers in Edinburgh, where they convert just about every single space into a theatre or performance area.

It was a bit more professional that that, with banked (comfortable) seating, but every few minutes you could hear the rumble of trains overhead. It probably didn’t help that we were towards the back and thus close to the roof.

The venue was like this because it was a special preview event ahead of an eventual wider release in normal cinemas. As such, it seemed to be pretty dedicated Banksy fans in attendance, and a few journalists, who were making notes around me.

Anyways, the film: I was impressed, but not overwhelmed. The film is definitely in two parts, and the first one is the stronger by a long, long way.

First thing’s first: this film will not tell you who Banksy is. He’s on screen, but you don’t see his face, and his identity isn’t revealed at all. His voice is distorted, although the strong accent comes through. He’s constantly shot in the dark, almost in silhouette, and any other footage of him has his face blurred out.

Hell, I think the talking head/interview parts with him are probably a fake anyway, just Banksy messing with us once more.

Instead of Banksy, the film concentrates on a French guy called Thierry, who lives in Los Angeles, and videos absolutely everything around him. He eventually gets involved with the street art scene, and accompanies loads of different artists as they go out in the dead of night to put their art up on buildings, walls, roads, and whatnot.

Most of this footage is from the early ’00s, when people like Shepard Fairey (he of the Obama poster fame) were big on the scene, and being French he had good access to a guy called Invader, who does those Space Invader mosaics everywhere. But what Thierry really wanted was to get Banksy.

Without spoiling anything, of course he gets to meet him, and eventually gets accepted into Banksy’s inner circle, documenting his preparations and installations. This includes works in London, and then a load more in Los Angeles, culminating in Banksy’s big show there a few years ago.

One amusing aside: Banksy’s utter refusal to pronounce Thierry’s name in anything other than the classically English style of “Terry”. Very funny.

This is all within the first half of the film, and is definitely the most interesting. The artists themselves are engaging, and Thierry is utterly mesmerising, if a little mad. It’s great to hear him talk with such enthusiasm about the artists and their methods, and how he loved to just tag along (ha, “tag”!) with them on their escapades.

You’re not watching Thierry’s documentary (believe me, you don’t want to), but it is a pretty solid overview of the street art scene over the last decade, culminating in its crossover to the mainstream. I was thoroughly impressed.

Where things start to unravel though, is the second half. Cue the:

SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!

I can’t really think of how to say why the second half is weaker without spoiling the plot somewhat. Yes, there is a plot, even though it’s a documentary. Dare I say mockumentary? Anyways, spoilers from here on out.

After making his (frankly terrible) film, and showing it to Banksy, Thierry starts to believe that he can become an artist in his own right, rather than just the documenter of it all. Starting small, with stickersof a stylised icon of himself, in the style of Shepard Fairey, he quickly graduates to much larger posters, and from there it’s onwards and upwards.

But rather than spending years and years on the streets, Thierry wants to jump straight to a huge installation and gallery, just like Banksy’s LA show. The documentary thus moves to following him, rather than vice-versa.

Becoming ever more megalomaniac, and believing in his own hype, somehow Thierry (now calling himself Mr Brainwash) manages to get LA Weekly to cover the opening of his show and build the anticipation.

Whilst still in preparation for the show, art buyers are calling him to pre-purchase, and he just plucks numbers out of the air ($18,000, $30,000) for each piece. Oh, and these pieces are pretty much factory-produced by a relative army of assistants.

What’s amazing about the art, is just how much of a rip-off of all these other street artists it is. Banksy, Fairey, and loads of others all comment on this during the documentary, and it really isn’t even derivative. It’s just the same fucking stuff.

Anyways, the hype machine rolls on, and soon there are huge queues ahead of the show’s opening. We then see loads of mini-interviews with attendees, saying that Mr Brainwash is amazing, the next best thing in art, and ya’know like totally original in what he’s saying about he world around us.

The film closes with Banksy bemoaning the fact that he’s created a monster, amazed at how Mr Brainwash can be so feted without any talent at all. He says that this caused him to make this film, from Thierry’s footage.

What I was left with, however, was the distinct sensation that it’s all one big joke, Mr Brainwash. Thierry only starts making art after he’s come into contact with Banksy, and got into his inner circle.

I left the cinema thinking that Mr Brainwash was a long-term project by Banksy, acting through the proxy of Thierry to show how the art world can be utterly vapid and a slave to publicity. This makes the whole second half of the film a mockumentary of sorts, as I mentioned above.

You can see how he’s picked out the gallery attendees who have said the most nonsensical things to camera, and have utterly bought into the hype. Banksy is mocking these people, is mocking the art establishment for paying such ridiculous sums for art, whoever it is by.

I appreciate what he’s trying to do, but it just didn’t grab me as much as the first half, the true documentary, did. That was genuinely interesting, with great characters and settings. The second half left a bad taste in the mouth regarding Thierry’s change in personality. Originally, he was a bumbling, clumsy, excitable, idiot, but by the end of the film he was just another art twat.

It wasn’t a journey that I particularly enjoyed.

END OF SPOILERS. END OF SPOILERS. END OF SPOILERS.

Overall, the film was worth seeing, if only for the first half and all of the behind-the-scenes looks at the street art field. The methods these artists employ to get their pieces out there, and some of the daring-do to get up on roofs and out of windows, are a joy to behold, as is Thierry’s incessant use of the question “Why?”.

If you subscribe to the idea of the art world being a bit pretentious and pointless, you’ll like the sentiment behind the second half of the film too. I do agree with it, but can’t help but feel that it could’ve been done better.

Go see it, it’s a solid film and a bit of a different documentary from the norm. Is it stunning? No, but it is good.

Just be glad this wasn’t Thierry’s original film, is all I’ll say.

The Observer newspaper relaunched itself yesterday, with a new design, and apparently a new mentality. Its TV ads spell out its intention to take a wider, deeper look at the week’s news, seeing as we now live in a headline-driven 24/7 media world that often fails to do anything more than scratch the surface.

I’ve been an Observer reader for many years, and buy it probably twice a month, on average. I’m a big fan of its reporting, and it had a simply fantastic sport section in its old guise. I also read its weekday sister, The Guardian, when I pick up a physical newspaper, although more often I’m a website reader instead. It’s with that in mind that I want to make a few points on the re-design and the new direction.

The paper wants to give the reader an opportunity to really get into a story that they’ve probably heard a little about already over the course of the week, without having had a chance to “Pause. Review. Reflect”, as the tagline has it. And how does it do this?

To put it in simple terms, it does this by carrying barely any news whatsoever. Seriously. In the 60-page main paper, I count about 7 pages of news, and that’s being a bit generous to the science and arts news pages. The other 53 pages could’ve been written a week ago (and in this case probably were, given that it’s a full re-launch) and not have been altered by the week’s subsequent events.

I know that Saturday is a pretty slow news day, but stuff does happen. Christ, Monday’s newspapers are usually pretty full of news. The old Observer had easily twice as much actual news in a reduced page-count, and was very clear in its split between British and international news. This new Observer is a bit of a mish-mash on that front, with domestic NIBs (News In Brief) coming five pages after the pair of pages on bigger domestic stories.

I can see what the Observer is trying to do, I really can: longer-form journalism, more reflective and insightful. But still, some sense of organisation in the actual news pages would be nice.

One particular highlight is the Dispatches report on page 2, which is usually where crappy non-stories are buried. The big picture and some great writing, detailing the drug trade in Argentinian slums, was a fantastic introduction, and I hope it holds its place in coming weeks.

The re-launch was given some oomph with exclusive extracts from Observer columnist Andrew Rawnsley’s new book, detailing the fall and fall of the Brown government in recent years. The front-page story, concerning accusations of bullying within 10 Downing Street, did lead the news agenda yesterday and today, so kudos on that.

But to fill eight (count ‘em!) pages with extracts, as well as the front-page story and follow-up inside? That’s a sixth of the entire newspaper! Apparently next week has a similar number of pages devoted to extracts, and I wonder whether the page-count will dip a little in coming weeks when there’s not so many easy column inches to be had.

I enjoyed the expanded In Focus section, which used to be just a 2-page spread on one story, and then maybe another half-page on something else. That now covers a much broader range of subjects, and is definitely the centre-piece of the Pause. Reflect. Review mantra. I couldn’t help but feel a little bit that it was telling me things I already knew, though.

On a similar line, a new section (well, competely revamped so as to be unrecognisable as its predecessor with the same name) is Seven Days, which is the newspaper’s “Review of the Week”. It highlights some of the biggest stories of the week, with extracts from various other media to pull the stories together.

Again though, the International Dispatches section within this, erm, section, is surely just news?! Yes, there’s a nice little globe graphic in the middle of the page, but these are just news stories by the Observer’s own journalists. Not really a “review of the week”, for me.

Extracts from non-news media are welcome though: this week we had the New Scientist, New York magazine, El Pais, and the New Yorker. Always nice to see a slightly different take on matters, even if the section reminded me of, well, The Week magazine.

Thankfully, the Observer Profile has survived the re-design, although this week’s was a bit of a hatchet job on Vanessa Redgrave. Equally, I’m glad that Victoria Coren still has a column, and that Peter Preston’s media column hasn’t bitten the dust.

The latter (and the entire Business section) has been brought into the main paper, albeit at the back. It’s still pretty thorough, but this week there was sod-all news, really. I had that recurring feeling of reading something written at any time between Christmas and now. Hopefully that will improve as time passes.

The front page of the business section was a large interview, a trick repeated in the (separate) Sport section. A three-page interview with Alex Ferguson, which is admittedly a bit of a scoop, but only once did it mention the result of the game his team played on Saturday lunchtime. They lost, a fact which could’ve been used a lot more throughout the write-up of the interview. As it was, it seemed a little ass-kissy.

I’ve no complaints about the rest of the sport section, which seems to have come through pretty much unscathed. I still love that for each Premiership and Championship match they get fans to give their opinions on the performance, because fans will be a lot more honest than the typical football player/manager, and will feel safe in saying something other than “it was a team performance”, “just glad to get the three points”, etc.

A couple of minor style issues: I know that the Observer is the sister paper of the Guardian, and that the latter has the bigger online presence, but does every URL to further reading online really need to be guardian.co.uk/thestoryname? The Observer is an important, historical brand and needs to be kept that way.

If you believe all of the media reports, it sounds like the Observer will soon be the Sunday Guardian to all intents and purposes anyway, but they’re doing it a little stealthily for the time being.

I’m just about to delve into the Observer Magazine (please still have Jay Rayner’s restaurant reviews!) and the new New Review arts section, which has swallowed up the TV listings among other things.

A quick word though for those sections that have fallen by the wayside: no longer will we have Sport Monthly, Music Monthly and Woman Monthly, although Food Monthly has somehow survived that cull. I’m going to miss Sport Monthly in particular, because it was great long-form sports journalism that you just don’t see nowadays. Surely that would’ve fitted in nicely to the Pause. Review. Reflect mentality?

Also, goodbye Escape, the travel section. That’s now a poor little half-page at the back of the main paper, which is essentially a series of paragraphs urging people to go read it online (at the Guardian’s site!). Oh, and three pages in the Magazine.

Overall, it’s a good re-design. I like that the business/media section is now in the main paper, and the expansion of the In Focus articles is a good sign. Familiar columnists are retained, as have been the excellent sport team.

And I like where it’s heading, in terms of providing a chance to do that Pause. Review. Reflect they would so love us to do when we’re not absorbing headlines and blogs 24/7 from the Guardian’s website.

I just wonder how they’re going to fill the pages after Rawnsley’s book extracts…

Now, there’s nothing I love more than some absolutely rank hypocrisy from those who we elect to govern us. One of the news stories that caught my eye today involved Birmingham City Council making 2,000 workers redundant in an effort to balance the books.

This is despite saying in October last year that only 800 jobs would be lost, and that these would be through natural wastage, not redundancies. Of course, the latest news is that voluntary redundancies will be a big part of the 2,000 jobs to go.

It got me thinking about whether those at the top of Birmingham council are planning to undergo similar financial hardships this year, as a sign of solidarity with their underlings.

A little investigation later, and it turns out that council leader Mike Whitby and his fellow councillors aren’t exactly in step with their comrades.

Last June, Whitby and three other senior councillors awarded themselves an extra £15,000 for attending a few more meetings each year. Previously, attendance at these meetings came with no extra salary.

A mere two weeks ago, Whitby joined the board of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, which I’m pretty certain isn’t an unpaid role.

I hate to link to the Taxpayers’ Alliance, despite their well-placed apostrophe, but in June they looked at Chief Executive Stephen Hughes’ pay packet: a whopping £200,000+ per year. This is as a result of an 18.2% pay rise over two years, way, way above the inflation rate. Not exactly a minuscule salary, is it?

To cap it all, the council’s auditors have refused to sign off on the 2008/9 accounts, citing a number of shortfalls in the budget. Most notably, the council claims that their property assets amount to £6.6 billion, whereas the auditors value them at £5.5 billion.

This has lead to a “black hole” in the council’s finances of around £60 million, resulting in the job cuts.

There’s been no statement from either of these senior councillors that they will take any pay cuts or forgo bonuses because of the perilous state of Birmingham’s finances. No doubt they’ll quietly award themselves various bonuses for meeting targets…

It may only be the 14th of January in 2010, but I think I’ve just seen the best film of the decade. If I see another film that is better than this in the near future, I will be amazed.

‘Mugabe And The White African’ is a documentary following one white farming family as they try to take the Mugabe government to an international court to dispute the legality of the Zimbabwean land-grab programme of the last 10-15 years.

Whilst Mugabe and the farmer never meet face to face, Mugabe’s influence is felt heavily in their everyday life, from intimidation tactics by his war veterans to delaying tactics in court by his lawyers. The documentary uses voiceover excerpts from Mugabe’s speeches over the years to illustrate the sheer power that the man wields in the country.

Shot covertly and under major threat of being discovered, this truly is a harrowing tale of how a country can be absolutely destroyed by the megalomaniac tendencies of just one man.

I’m usually not one for hyperbole when it comes to reviewing and describing films, books, TV shows and the like, but this film is genuinely the best thing I’ve seen in many, many years. I’ve not felt an emotional connection to a film like this before, and I spent at least the whole final third with tears in my eyes and running down my cheeks.

It’s a film about bravery, about stoicism in the face of absolutely soul-crushing hatred, and about being prepared to sacrifice everything in order to fight the good fight. It’s also a film about family, about love and about love for one’s homeland.

Whilst I’ve learnt a lot about Zimbabwe over the last few years from the girlfriend and from getting interested in the subject, this film really did open my eyes to the levels of racism and strife that are being fermented in the country. The racism is something else, and for someone who has grown up in a multi-cultural society and doesn’t have a racist bone in his body, it is horrifying.

It genuinely blows my mind that people can base any kind of decision purely on someone’s skin colour, but Mugabe and his supporters have done just that for over 30 years. The white farmer(s) in the title aren’t old-school colonialists; they’re all born and bred Zimbabweans, trying to work a farm in the country.

They employ and support a community of over 500 people, and it’s the effect on these kinds of people that the land-grab scheme just does not think about. The land is given to some friend of the government, and then left to ruin. Not only are the white family forcibly evicted and basically kicked out of the country, but their employees and their families are left to ruin.

The whole (tiny) cinema was sniffing and crying throughout, with some scenes truly disturbing and heartbreaking, but necessary. It doesn’t pull any punches, but at the same time it doesn’t dwell on the negatives more than it has to.

If it is on anywhere near you, track it down and go see it. Get the DVD, download it, watch it on TV. This is an important film, one which truly displays the lowest lows and highest highs of human nature.

I could go on about this film for many more paragraphs, such an impact has it had on me. I’m still seeing the faces in front of me, hearing their voices and living their story.

This film needs to be seen. It needs a bigger audience and it deserves one.

Do you think it’s gonna snow again in the new year? I missed it this time. :(

Well, the general theory behind global warming (I refuse to call it ‘climate change’ because that’s a cop-out weasel word that doesn’t acknowledge the true threat behind the impact that human industrial activity is having on the planet) is that we will see more extreme weather everywhere. Whilst temperatures on average will be 2-3C higher, there will be more hurricanes, more monsoons, more high winds, and colder winters.

And the UK in particular will be adversely affected by the change in global temperatures. If you look at a map of the world, the UK is on the same latitude as Moscow, and is further north than the coldest parts of the USA. And yet we have a moderate climate, warmer than we should have for being this far from the equator.

This is due to the Gulf Stream, an oceanic and atmospheric current which tends to bring warmer weather from the Caribbean Sea towards the UK. Admittedly, the tropical temperatures gradually decrease, so we don’t get 30C+ temperatures here on a daily basis, but it means that the UK is a lot warmer than comparable places on a similar latitude.

As I understand it, the change in sea temperatures will cause the Gulf Stream to change direction. I can’t remember whether it moves further north or south, but from what I have read the UK will be one of the few places in the world to get colder as global warming takes effect.

Of course, this is probably decades in the future, and not really relevant to the question of whether it will snow again in London this winter. But I’ll stand by the theory of more weather extremes each year, and will predict that London will see more snow in early 2010. It’d be nice if it were on a par with the snowfall in February this year, or last week, but who knows.

Ask me anything.

Well, it’s that time of the year decade: best of lists are ten a penny, endlessly discussed and criticised. By their very nature, they are subjective in the extreme, and also limited by what that person/group has actually seen, heard and read.

Nevertheless, in no particular order, here are my favourite films of the noughties. In compiling this list, I’ve realised that I watched a lot of films this decade, and I’ve watched a lot of good films in that time. Whittling this list down has been difficult, but I’ve tried to really pick the ones that have stayed in my memory for years since I first saw them, and/or have stood up to repeated viewings.

There are some obvious choices, but also some not-so-obvious films too. My tastes range from fairly juvenile comedy to heavier, wordy dramas, and via most places in between. As I said, it’s a hugely subjective list, but in no particular order:

• Anchorman: Probably the funniest film of the decade. Ferrell and the ‘Frat Pack’ at their peak.

• Battle Royale: Ultra-violent, yes. Powerful message, definitely.

• Infernal Affairs: So much better than the Hollywood remake, The Departed.

• Elephant: Exquisitely crafted, and gloriously understated.

• City Of God: A fine exploration of how paths differ from the same background within Brazil’s slums.

• Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind: Sci-fi taking on relationships, with Jim Carrey’s best performance of the decade.

• Closer: The rise and fall of interweaving relationships, really capturing human interaction, and how we can be so cruel to one another.

• Zoolander: Effortlessly funny, camp as fuck and absolutely hilarious.

• No Country For Old Men: An action film with brains and insight.

• Shaun Of The Dead: Invented a new genre: zom-com. Britain’s funniest moments on screen.

• Sin City: Hyper-stylised, hyper-violent, with a great ensemble cast.

• All Or Nothing: A melancholy study of a British family, coming apart at the seams but somehow holding together. Massively under-rated.

• Vexille: A random little CGI-anime vision of the future in Japan.

• The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy: Does this even need an explanation? Epic in every sense of the word.

• Mulholland Drive: Twisty, turny, suspenseful, gorgeously shot with one of the best scores I can think of.

• 28 Days Later: The other side of British zombie films: bloodthirsty and rampaging. Worth it for the shots of a deserted London.

• Bowling For Columbine: One of the most important films of the decade, a documentary with a shot aimed squarely at America’s right.

• Solaris: Slow-burner that is stunning visually and has some great performances.

• The Grudge (Japanese original version): Scared the living crap out of me for days afterwards.

• Kill Bill Vols 1 and 2: Tarantino’s peak, and Uma Thurman at her best too.

• Thirteen: What does it mean to be a teenager nowadays? Again, under-rated.

• Timecode: Experimental cinema that also works in terms of the stories shown on the four screens.

• District 9: 2009’s best film, for my money. Apartheid in a truly xenophobic setting.

• Dear Frankie: A single mother’s lies to her young deaf son are in danger of being found out. Moving, and brought tears to my eyes.

• Der Untergang (Downfall): I’ve never heard a cinema so quiet as at the end of this film.

• Night Watch: Matrix-inspired Russian vampires and fantasy in a techno-action-thriller.

• Team America: World Police: Puppets featuring in the hardest-hitting satire of the decade.

• Good Night, And Good Luck: A history lesson in celluloid form.

• Superbad: I laughed constantly throughout this film, even on the fifth viewing. Ridiculously funny.

• In The Loop: British politics and spin satirised ruthlessly, and you have to feel quite accurately too.

• Avatar: A massive technical leap forwards, even if the plot was a touch weak.

• Waiting: Practically ignored low-budget comedy that had one of Ryan Reynolds’ best outings.

• Death In Gaza: An absolutely haunting end to a documentary about Gaza.

Of these, I’d say that the ones that really stand out as my favourites are Battle Royale, LOTR, Anchorman, Der Untergang, and All Or Nothing.

So, Avatar.

It’s been a couple of days since I walked out of the cinema in a state of awe and having been visually overwhelmed, and I’ve managed to gather together my thoughts on the film somewhat coherently.

I’ll come straight out with the executive summary and say that it was a very, very good film. The plot was somewhat thin and predictable, but I can’t help but feel that what I’ve seen is the future of cinema.

The story centres on an alien planet on which humans are involved in a mining operation, with a large military support presence to counteract the indigenous population that threatens its expansion. A massive current-day allegory, obviously, and one which is followed quickly by a pretty strong environmental message too.

The military-industrial complex wants to mine right under the main alien village, and so they have created some empty shell alien bodies of which human minds are temporarily given control through a techno mind-meld type device. Until now, only scientists have been given the opportunity to do so, but through a (fairly formulaic plot device) mishap, a soldier (Jake Sully) is given the chance.

Oh, and he’s disabled from the waist down too, so his first delight in the new body is being able to walk again. He gradually connects with the alien society, becoming ever closer to them and their ability to be at one with the nature around them.

Of course, this leads to friction back within the human community, as well as within the alien people who distrust him too. It all sets up for a massive final act, which is more action-y than the preceding two-thirds.

Re-reading this as I write it, I can see how the plot may be viewed as simple, or formulaic. It is a little, I guess, but it carries the film forwards well enough. Yes, it has the type of foreshadowing elements that you’d expect from an action film, and some clumsy character development, but the film moves swiftly and without too many holes.

The character development of Sully is a bit quick for my tastes, especially when I compare it to the somewhat similar path that Wikus van de Merwe takes in District 9. Admittedly, their reasons for adjusting to the alien societies are a bit different, but van de Merwe’s character has a slower, more nuanced change within him.

But the film isn’t necessarily about the plot and the characters; it’s about the visuals, and the overall impact of the style of the drama on screen.

Thankfully, it is utterly, utterly fantastic. It is stunning, in terms of the world that has been created, and technically it has taken cinema to a whole new level. It doesn’t feel like just another CGI-fest; it genuinely feels like you’re watching something which happened and has been captured on a real camera.

Various attempts at doing computer-generated faces recently have fallen into the ‘uncanny valley’ as they get ever closer to being photo-real. Our brains can just tell that they are fake, and this means that the illusion is destroyed, as your brain continually refuses to accept the faces as capable of truly portraying emotions or reactions.

Avatar overcomes this. At no point did I feel that there was a massive distinction between the live-action and the CGI footage. It’s that good. Weta Workshop, who also worked on LOTR, are at the absolute top of the special effects game, and this work is truly exceptional.

There aren’t a huge number of scenes in which the aliens and humans directly physically interact, but even in these you really struggle to see the divide, so well is the whole scene visually interwoven.

And it’s not just the aliens themselves that are technically astounding. The landscapes, the forests, the animals, everything is incredible to see on the big screen. I can’t think of a single moment where I slipped out of the film and realised that I was watching something fake.

The use of 3-D is also expertly handled. It’s not gimmicky, it’s not overwhelming, and it definitely adds something to the overall impact of the film. The opening shot involves a little 3-D, just to make it clear that you’re watching a 3-D film, but after 20 minutes or so you barely notice it for standing out, if you’ll excuse the awful pun.

Even in fast-paced action scenes, the use of 3-D is incredibly well done, not distracting you at all from the intensity of the images before you. And they also add something to the slower, more poetic scenes, giving a little stylistic twirl to what could otherwise be a bit of a pause in the plot.

I really do feel as if I’ve seen an evolution in cinema. 3-D is going to be massive, although not everything is going to be executed as well as Cameron has done in Avatar. Similarly, the overcoming of the uncanny valley in terms of human(oid) faces is a massive step forward. Compare the visuals of this film to those Final Fantasy which was at the forefront of CGI technology 8 years ago. The leap forwards has been astounding.

This film deserves to be seen on a big screen. The plot’s a bit thin, but it’s enough to provide a foundation for what is simply the most visually impressive film I’ve ever seen.

As ever, the food was an important part of the holiday, none more so than the first night, when the girlfriend and I continued our habit of somehow managing to pick the most expensive restaurant in town for our first meal. We did it in Portugal, sort of repeated it in Paris for lunch, but managed to avoid it in New York (Brother Jimmy’s FTW).

A mere two corners away from our hotel was Laekjarbrekka, where we shocked (shocked!) the maitre d’ by not having a reservation, but managed to get a table anyway. They had a Christmas buffet on with all manner of herring, puffin, and other such delicacies, but we decided to go a la carte instead.

She had lamb and langoustine, whilst I went for the whale. Well, when in Rome…

Lamb is the main meat in Iceland, with pigs considered dirty in general, and beef being very expensive. I had lamb later in the holiday in a quite fantastic soup that was just the ticket on a bastard cold day.

What can I say about whale meat? Well, it’s certainly the heaviest red meat I’ve ever eaten. It’s comparable to venison, I guess, but even darker and richer. I was expecting it to be a little oilier, but whether that’s because I had a good piece or it’s just a misconception I don’t know. It wasn’t tough either, which was a surprise.

Yes, I had the guilt thing about, you know, eating whale, but minke whales are not at all endangered. I’d feel much worse about eating sharkfin soup or similar.

The food for the rest of the trip was a bit more continental European in nature, although fish featured heavily. We tried some of their fish in batter, which was a whole lot lighter and better than the British equivalent. Heh, better batter.

The girlfriend had a seafood pasta dish one night, which I reckon had at least 8 different kinds of seafood in it, including the biggest mussels I’ve ever seen.

Other than that first night, it wasn’t too much of an adventure, food-wise. I did enjoy the sweets and chocolate there, although almost everything had liquorice in it. The duty free shop at the airport stank of the stuff!

Wine was very, very expensive, which was odd because beers and spirits were pretty cheap. Cheaper than London, anyway! Even the house wine at a pretty normal restaurant was more than £20 per bottle, which is ridiculous. Anything with a recognisable name or grape was double that.

To be honest, we didn’t really go out late at night, owing to the amount of early starts we had, and one evening we were freezing our asses off watching the Northern Lights, in any case. I hear that the nightlife in Reykjavik is pretty good, but it seemed quiet during our brief stay. Maybe we were just in the wrong part of town.