The Real Valley

Review of Charlie Wilson's War

How the heck did I not hear about this movie? We only got it as part of our Moviestar list and left it unwatched for ages. Amazing movie which I already want to watch again. Two words - Aaron Sorkin.

For some bizarre reason I thought this was going to be some sort of soldier movie, I somehow had missed all the reviews. Tom Hanks tends to alternate between garbage and greatness. Within minutes we had realised that this was the latter.

The plot is very straightforward. An unremarkable congressman from Texas, who is owed favours by everyone on Capitol Hill, takes an interest in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He is a hard drinking, womanising professional networker. For the first time in his career he genuinely starts caring about something.

He discovers that the entire budget for covert ops into the region is $5m. He gets it doubled to 10. But then he discovers that far more is needed. By the end of the movie he has funnelled $500m into Afghanistan matched by another $500m from the Saudis.

But the plot is not why you watch this movie. It's the screenplay and the acting. I kept thinking "what a fantastic ensemble piece; what amazing dialogue; it's like a movie version of the West Wing". Of course I got to the end and who did I see in the credits? Aaron Sorkin! Now it all makes sense.

Whilst Hanks is on top form, my favourite actor of recent years, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, is absolutely on fire in the movie as the CIA station chief. He takes the great script and transforms his lines into something sublime. Laugh out loud funny. Even the usually weak Julia Roberts shines as the rich Texan Grand Dame who wants to save the Afghans from the godless Soviets.

Charlie Wilson's ability to network, to be everyone's friend, to work quid pro quo to the maximum, is just a joy to watch. The guy got the Israelis, Pakistanis, Egyptians and Saudis to work together! The quote from Zia of Pakistan is hilarious "if I see one fucking Star of David on those crates......".

I don't know how true to life this movie is, but I don't care. When I see how many bad movies have been made with some political point to make, it makes my heart glad to see pure qualty like this. Go git it now!

Review of Cloverfield

The hype was huge and, for once, justified. What a superb roller-coaster action/terror movie. Loved every minute of it.

I have to admit I was a bit dubious about the whole Cloverfield thing. Anything to do with the creator of that nonsense Lost is suspect in my book. How can anyone watch a series where the writers openly admit they have no idea where the plot is going. Luckily Cloverfield was different.

It's all shot using handycams which I know annoys some people but worked incredibly well here. Comparisons to Blair Witch were worrying since I thought that movie was a boring pile of old doo-doo.

The basic plotline is well known and I won't put too many spoilers in here. Guy sleeps with best friend, guy has going away party (heading to Japan). argues with girl who leaves, monster lands in NY, all hell breaks lose, guy has to rescue girl and his friends tag along.

The entire movie is done from perspective of loser buddy with handycam who always manages to say inappropriate things. The guys are all buff, the girls sexy. Twenty somethings in their prime. Monster changes all of that.

The initial phase of the movie with the party went on a little too long for my liking, but once the monster hit, it was a non-stop intense pounding action movie that never lets up for a second. People drop dead like flies but I was pleased to see minimal gore. It actually makes it more scary in a way.

The movie nods to a ton of the classics from Godzilla to Alien to Escape from New York. The ending worked well and I found it interesting that you didn't need to have paid any attention to the "viral marketing" campaign to enjoy every minute. I did some reading afterwards and there are lots of the usual Lost-style clues around the place. You can take or leave em.

Now for the $64000 question - a sequel? My money is on yes. Tons of threads left dangling, lots of opportunities for follow-up. If it's an alien it could be an invasion, if it's a deep sea monster unleashed by Japanese drilling - well that's just Godzilla isn't it. This movie is everything that the 1990's remake of Godzilla should have been.

Sunshine the Movie

Review of Sunshine Movie

I always want Danny Boyle movies to be great but his record really is more misses than hits. This snoozefest is yet another miss.

Kubrick has a lot to answer for. It's like everyone is trying to out-do him by making the most boring space walk of all time. Boyle succeeds.

We get no character introduction at all, so as various calamities befall them, you really don't give a crap. Plot? Deliver bomb to sun to restart it. Previous mission failed. Things go badly. The end.

I assume the "you have no idea what's going on" school of camera-work is mandatory in a space movie but it hits a nadir here. It took me five minutes to realise the two ships had docked!

As for spooky melted skin man, cmon, about as scary as Wurzle Gummidge.

Generally I hate it when everyone in a movie dies but in this case it was appropriate with the only let-down being that the director and scriptwriter didn't join them.

MOO Stickers

Review of MOO Stickers

I got a free pack of MOO Christmas stickers with my most recent mini-cards order. I've been meaning to get some made with my own designs but just haven't got around to it. These free ones have convinced me that I should.

They are around 2cm x 2cm ultra-glossy and look to be of very high quality. In the free booklet they were all different which seems to match the approach with the mini-cards.

I have no real concerns about ordering these given how well the cards have worked out for me. Generally with the cards I find it takes the full two weeks for them to arrive. I did a rush order last week and paid the extra 21 quid for courier delivery. They arrived less than 5 days after the order which is fantastic.

Review of House Season 4 Premier

House Season 4 Premier

Still wonderful TV. As good if not better than any previous season. The same old plot-line but fantastic comedy and the twist of no team to help him yet.

Spoiler warning. Don't read if you haven't seen the episode. 

We came late to House MD and spent the past few months watching all of the first three seasons. We adored it, viewing up to three episodes a night. Luckily we only just recently got to the end so we didn't have long to wait for this.

A quick re-cap from the end of Season 3 - he lost his entire team making this episode doubly interesting to see if/how they are replaced. I was very fond of those characters so it is important they get it right.

A large part of this opening episode revolves around House not wanting a new team and the others trying to "convince" him to hire one. This includes kidnapping his flying-V guitar and sending him ransom notes. Being House, he escalates by kidnapping a cancer patient.

Instead of interviewing a team he decides to use a janitor as his sounding board. He names him Dr Buffer. In the funniest line yet, they are discussing what the patient may be suffering from and the janitor says "it could be lupus". I laughed out loud.

The patient this time is a woman who was pulled from a collapsed building but is showing symptoms not consistent with that. As always, every treatment reveals new stranger symptoms which make less and less sense.

I have to admit for the first time ever in House, I guessed the solution. I think you will too. But that does not take from it at all.

Wilson is still a bumbling joy and I adore Cuddy. I have no idea where they are going with "the team". Will we see the old characters back? New characters? No characters? It's hard to tell but I love the producers and writers for having the balls to run with this story line. It's something the Heroes people could learn from.

I'll be watching every brilliant minute of this superb TV series. 

Rated 5/5 on Sep 26 2007 by The Bandonian
Review Tags: comedy, drama, humour, medical, series, tv
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Review of Heroes Season 2 Premier

Heroes Season 2 Premier

Very disappointed by this. Felt utterly flat with no surprises, apparently no dead Heroes and only a couple of new characters.

Spoiler Warning. Don't read this if you haven't seen the episode. 

I was so looking forward to the new series after loving all of the first. Lots of rumours raced around over the summer. Sadly it looks like none of them were true and Heroes may be settling into soap opera territory.

The episode starts with a quick summary of what has happened so far. Then we start seeing how each character is getting on:

• Claire and family are in California. She is starting in a new school. Dad works in a photocopying place. No-one is happy. She immediately meets cool loner dude (you can guess what we discover about him later in the episode)
• Parkman the cop didn't die. Gets detective badge. Taking care of little girl who is having nightmares and doing scary drawings.
• Suresh is lecturing to empty rooms on virus that is killing the Heroes. Dodgy character from "The Company" tries to recruit him. But Suresh is playing him
• Hiro is back in the 1600s and meets his hero who turns out to be a gaijin mercenary.
• Hiro's dad and Nathan's mum get messages indicating that they will soon die
• No sign of DL Hawkins and family
• Oh look, Nathan survived but is an alcoholic

The only additional characters are two people from Central America trying to get to the US. The girl can kill with her mind. 

And so it meanders on. Nothing vaguely approaching a surprise. Then it weirdly cuts to Cork Ireland where English people put on bad Irish accents and open a container in the port. It is empty except for, yes you got it in one, Peter Petrelli alive and kicking.

All we need now is for Sylar to appear in next weeks episode to realise that the writers are complete chickens and need a serious kicking. 

If this is as good as it gets, I have to wonder if Heroes will make it out of pilot season this year. Very very poor effort.

Rated 3/5 on Sep 26 2007 by The Bandonian
Review Tags: action, fantasy, heroes, kids, sci-fi, series, tv
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London-Eating Site

Review of London-Eating Site

In our search for some top-class places to eat in London we kept ending up on this site. They have clearly done their SEO well as generally on Google they came in right after (or in some cases before!) the official sites of the restaurants.

The thing that is most surprising about the site is just how good it is. Coming from a Web 2.0 world, we started with TrustedPlaces but found ourselves frustrated by the lack of content, the lack of "collections" like Top Ten X and the general navigation.

London-Eating is much more old-fashioned looking with no snazzy Ajax or tagging. The ads are horribly intrusive but the content is pure gold. Great great reviews showing breadth, depth and conflicting opinions. Many of the reviews really popped the bubble of some of the high end places.

I hope the LouderVoice site starts building content of this level for other places around Europe.

Cent The Pete

21:19 25 June 2007 25062007320

A ZX Spectrum game from 1985 running on SpeXtrum Emulator on an XBox.

Review of The Brothers Grimm

Starts very badly but draws you in bit by bit. Scary for a 12's movie!

Review of product: The Brothers Grimm

Rated as 4/5 on Apr 22 2007 by The Bandonian

I've tried watching this movie a few time on satellite TV but gave up after a couple of minutes each time. The opening is very poor and doesn't get you involved at all. You feel like it is going to be a kids movie.

However I've always been a fan of Terry Gilliam, even tho he often gets it wrong, so last night I stuck it out and it improves hugely over the first 30 minutes until you really want to keep watching.

Basic plot is that the Brothers Grimm are con-artists who travel around Germany pretending to rid villages of witches, ghouls and curses. They are experts in mythology and know the local lore of each village they con.

However the occupying French forces capture them after watching them and force them to do their bidding. There is a small village where many young girls have disappeared and the general wants them to go in and sort it out.

Throughout, Gilliam cuts in classic fairy tales like little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel which to my mind don't work very well.

The guys arrive and quickly discover that there is a real problem involving a cursed forest, a wolf, a forbidden tower, trees that attack and an ancient story of a queen.

From this point on the movie is genuinely scary and spooked the hell out of me. This is balanced with the "romp" style of the two guys. Visually it is stunning which is always to be expected in a Gilliam movie.

The climax is superbly done and has you on the edge of your seat. it's a pity Monica Belluci does not get more screen time as she is excellent.

At two hours it's just about the perfect length for such a movie. Both Heath Ledger and Matt Damon are excellent but I felt the overacting of Jonathan Pryce and Peter Stormare grated at times and their accents were indeciperable at times. Lena Heady was very good and her comic timing was better than the others.

Overall, highly recommended but not for small children and not in a dark house on your own!

LouderVoice Tags: design, fairy tale, fantasy, folklore, historical, horror, movie, romp, scary

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Review of Snakes On A Plane

The blogerati tried to play us with this nonsense. They failed. Garbage. Not a B-movie.

Review of product: Snakes On A Plane

Rated as 2/5 on Apr 22 2007 by The Bandonian

Last year, a bunch of A-list bloggers tried to con the rest of us into thinking that SOAP was a viral phenomenon that came from the blogosphere and would catapult into the popular imagination.

The movie flopped and the back-tracking started immediately. All of a sudden it was a "long tail movie". It was "not for a mainstream audience". "Great B Movies are slow burn".

What a pile of old shite. This movie had Toby Emmerich as a producer and Mindy Marin did casting. Samuel L Jackson played the lead. By no stretch of the imagination was it a proper low budget B-Movie. It was a rubbish "A-Movie" pretending to be something it wasn't.

If they had done an "Airplane" on it, I might have enjoyed it but it was just utter rubbish with maybe two memorable lines. Which I've forgotten.

If you see it for free, it'll pass 90 minutes but do not pay to see it on any media. Bittorrent might be good.

LouderVoice Tags: action, b movie, comedy, long tail, movie, niche, schlock

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