Toy Story 3 - Is isn't Inception!

I went to the cinema with the intention of watching Inception last night. As has been the case on a couple of occasions recently, the queues at Winnersh Triangle Showcase were out the door and - for the first time I can remember - the film I wanted to see was sold out.

For this I blame a number of factors. Firstly, the world cup. The world cup has generated a backlog of blockbuster films which the distributors had been reluctant to release until the football was finished. A couple of weeks after the final and we now have a choice of all the films people would normally have been watching over the month of June. Secondly, Orange Wednesdays. Despite only ever having an Orange phone I have only recently started making use of the 2-for-1 offer they run on Wednesday. This was because in the past I was convinced that I would rather pay full price and have an enjoyable experience at the cinema than get a discount and have to fight against the texting chatting masses. I think that after last night I'm going to return to my previous opinion and avoid cinemas on Wednesdays altogether (apart from the Bracknell Odeon - which is relentlessly empty).

I commonly don't make use of 'offers' like the Orange Wednesdays (or Tesco Club Card points) because it is self-evident that the organisation providing such offers is making a return on them somewhere, and that consequently I am (or someone like me is) getting screwed at some point down the line. It has been pointed out to me that this might be something of a paranoid fantasy, but last night offers hard empirical evidence. By using the Orange Wednesday offer I joined the throng of humanity trying to get into the cinema on the cheap and ended up seeing a film that I probably otherwise would have waited for on DVD. Since I am definitely going to see Inception in the cinema at some point the net result is that Showcase cinema has squeezed money out of me. Even if I had arrived at the cinema earlier and got into see Inception last night, the theatre would have been packed to the rafters with pick-n-mix-toting teenagers more interested in their latest apps than the film. Net result: I enjoy my cinema trip less and Showcase increase their margins. Either way we all lose.

Call me a grumpy old 30-something paranoid Luddite if you must, but no more Orange Wednesday for me. What they need to do is get the other mobile phone companies to provide similar offers on different days and spread the load out a little bit. O2uesday anyone...

The upside of all this was that I got to see Toy Story 3. Rather than being a rather feeble excuse to generate a bit of extra revenue out of an old franchise by making a 3D version of it (I saw the 2D version and can't think of any bit when I wished it was in 3D), Pixar have done rather well. Like the original, Toy Story 3 follows the adventures of a group of toys trying to do their best for their owner - the now grown-up and soon off to college Andy. The films are renowned for being funny and poignant with fantastic digital imagery - the third instalment certainly delivers on both of those. I am convinced that if Pixar wanted to make a movie that looked 'real life' they would be able to, but they retain the cartoon appearance because it looks cooler. There are a couple of awesome visual sequences, most notable in a tip towards the end of the film, where the technology they use to generate these images has clearly moved up a level since the original 15 years ago.

The Toy Story films were always very funny, and some of the best laughs come in the interaction between a Barbie and a Ken doll. Some great throwback material to the heyday of those toys for anyone who can remember it. I do hope though that the appearance of a Barbie doll as a toy wasn't some kind of expensive product placement - that would sadden me, the last thing the cinema industry needs is Pixar selling out.

It's not all about comedy and effects though. As with all of Pixar's films there's a great story that's intensely sad and uplifting. Although it doesn't touch the emotional rollercoaster of last year's 'Up', Toy Story 3 is about growing up and moving on. The toys, Andy, and Andy's family all have to cope with Andy becoming a man and moving off to university. To be fair to them, Pixar have done a lot more with this second sequel than simply re-hash a lot of old gags. They've created a rather good film.

Also, the short that comes before the main feature - 'Night and Day' - is charming and funny; a nice touch from Pixar there. So Toy Story 3 was a good film, but it wasn't Inception. I've got a very busy few weeks coming up now with house moving and a couple of holidays, but I'll squeeze it in somewhere.

Surrogates - making Bruce Willis look younger

Yet another film that didn't motivate me enough last year to break out my wallet for a cinema trip - Surrogates arrived on my doormat last Wednesday morning. The trailers last year seemed to be advertising a summer blockbuster with explosions and Bruce Willis jumping around on moving cars; that's what had put me off really, since I'd expect a film with a concept like this to be a little more science-fictiony (great English there). It almost seemed like this was going to be another blueprint for a Hollywood destruction of good science fiction ideas; i.e. take an interesting concept and ask the question - are there enough explosions in this? I was fearing another Paycheck, so my £7.50 stayed in my pocket.

The concept: it is the future and 99% of the world's population (well, 99% of America - but we're supposed to take that to mean the world) live their lives through the use of 'surrogates' - robots through which one can interface remotely and do whatever you want without fear of injury or prejudice and without leaving the comfort of your bedroom. An interesting enough science fiction trope, one which I'm sure Arthur C Clarke would have dissected the physics of over the course of 5 books, but one which is thrown at us here in the space of a 2 minute compilation of news clips from the future. The clips tell of the invention of surrogates (by James Cromwell => EVIL CHARACTER!), their mass-production and introduction into everyday use. We are told that crime is at an all time low and that only a small splinter group of refusenicks remain unconvinced by the new technology - kind of a bit like IPhones I guess. Anyway, barely has this set-up had time to be digested by the average viewer (me) than the plot begins; someone has a weapon that can fry a surrogate and kill its user - OMG! Fear not though, Bruce Willis and his youthfull-looking hair are on the case.

What follows is 80 minutes (nice and short) of a fairly good mix of science fiction imagine-ifs, beard-stroking future history concepts, action and special effects. There are a few flaws in the science and sociology of the use of surrogates (example: why would the use of surrogates result in a zeroing out of crime?), but there wasn't really enough time to think about that too much. Also I'm sure that the culmination of the main plot doesn't make sense, but I'm trying not to think about it. And talk about a quality Chekov's Gun when the police visit the nerdy bloke who can disconnect people from their surrogates at will:

Police Woman : "So you can disconnect people from their surrogates - isn't that illegal?!"
Nerdy bloke : "Useful though!" [actor playing nerdy bloke does well to not wink at the camera]

Nicely done.

Something I really did like about the film was the acting and the subtle differences in movement and reactions when the actors were playing surrogates or 'meatbags'. Goes to show that no matter how much cash and CGI you through at a science fiction movie it still in the end comes down to script and performances. Verdict - well worth 80 minutes.

Next up on Fried Gold: Inception - the most exciting film I haven't seen yet since before Lord of the Rings came out.

Up In The Air

With a synopsis that runs along the lines of 'George Clooney is a loner with a thankless job who finds a new love and perhaps finds the happiness that has eluded him for so long', you'd think this isn't the film for me. The trouble is though that I think Clooney is a very good actor, up there with the best in the last decade, so I always check out his new stuff.

As soon as I finished watching 'Up in the Air' I was annoyed. Annoyed because the film seemed to portray a picture of life and work in which being made redundant is an opportunity for growth and where living life outside of the mainstream is a disease to be cured, in addition to the expected trauma. You see, Clooney plays a guy who flies around America firing people who have bosses too shit scared to fire people themselves. His job is to avoid a scene, to dress redundancy up as a chance for new life, an opportunity to shake out the cobwebs and start again. He spends over 300 days a year on the road and has the sole goal in life of amassing 10 million air miles. After a chance encounter in a hotel leads to a one night stand with a similarly over-travelled business woman, Clooney's new work partner (a very young, sparky and intensely irritating graduate type) slowly convinces him that what he really wanted all his life was to settle down. It's winding me up to even recall this bit of the plot.

This is basically it, and after 80 minutes of I was getting pretty tired. Thankfully the film doesn't end quite as twee as you'd expect, there are a couple of twists and turns that result in a very different message coming out at the end. It took me a good 24 hours and a discussion with a friend to decide this, but in the end I recon 'Up in the Air' has a positive message about following your dreams. I wont give away the ending too much, but by the final credits most of the characters have ended up following a path that they had always wanted to, but never did because of thinking they wanted something else. This links in with the concept of sacking people being a good thing. Although I think dressing redundancy up as an opportunity is managerial bollocks to make the process easier for employers, the idea of willingly living your life in a dead-end job because you either can't be bothered to leave or feel you have a responsibility to stay has some merit.

So, 'Up in the Air' gets a tentative thumb-up from me. Eventually.

Charlie Brooker on Twilight

I saw this on the Guardian website today, it made me laugh out loud. I watched the first Twilight film as I was in one of my 'see everything so I can have an opinion' phases when it came out. I thought it was entertainingly silly but certainly not worthy of any kind of second thought, let alone the worldwide success it has generated. I think that not being a teenage girl doesn't help, but do girls really want to be as wet and bland as Twilight's lead? Seriously?

Brooker also has a go at vampire drama 'True Blood'. I watched the first series of that program and was initially entertained, but I soon got tired of the fast character turnover and fickle characterisation of the leads. I wont be watching season 2 any time soon. Maybe Brooker has a point about vampires being rubbish though, even in Buffy the vampires themselves were generally rubbish (they regularly got beaten up by Xander and Giles FFS!).

Anyway, now the world cup's over I'm sure some good stuff's going to come out soon. Like Inception - which is somehow scoring 96% on IMDB despite not even being released yet. Stupid IMDB.