So I went to see Iron Man 2 at the weekend it had a lot to live up to the first one was wonderful probably a example of a textbook perfect superhero film great cast fun story good pacing great special effects.

The sequel for the most part works pretty well they keep a lot of the same relationships and attitudes that made the first one great and introduce more in the way of action. The enigmatic shield pops up more and there is more teasing about the avengers initiative that since I'm not really a comic geek doesn't get me worked up, I'm sure when a film comes out of it I'll be more than happy to peruse the results.

The cast is pretty solid and the new additions blend in fairly well with Sam Rockwells egotisical Justin Hammer trying to userp stark's ironman tech and the bitter and twisted Ivan trying to avenge his father and kill of Stark. They also swapped out the actor playing roadie which though the new guy is still good just felt a bit odd as far as the relationships went he came off as a lot colder and more serious which was a slight tonal shift for the character from the first film.

All in all its a very good film that suffers a bit in the pacing, there is a lot going on and at times it looses some of the slick streamlined pacing that the first one managed.

Still well worth seeing and a great film highly recomended

So another year yet more films to see. I tried and failed to see Avatar last year and so decided to go see it today. I saw it in eye popping 3d, which is why you need those glasses it keeps the eyeballs in. The 3d is impressive in the way it works in the live action portions (3d in the cgi bits is not technically exciting you get it by default) it's nothing we've not seen before though it is on a very grand scale and a degree of finesse that in and of itself is nice. As with all 3d movies after a while you don't even notice it and it might as well be in 2d.

The story is basically "Dances with wolves" mixed with "furngully" with the cast of "full metal jacket". If James Cameron was working on this for 20 years he must have been taking some pretty big coffee breaks, the story is highly derivative but acceptable enough if a trifle preachy, Humans with technology Bad! Hippy aliens Good!

The acting is good enough and the environments though extremely stupid in parts (why do the flying mountains have waterfalls where the hell are they getting the water? a flying lake? And why they hell does everything glow at night and flash when touched?) it does all look wonderful. The cgi blue people work well the avatars looking a lot like the actors they represent and the facial animation and motion capture is really superb it seems a genuine step forward in that respect. All the flora and fauna are all colourfully deadly.

The vast majority of the human characters tend to be dastardly and from the over the top pantomime school of evil. They are as a result very funny the Colonel bloke especially. The head of the mining operation is pretty funny too for sheer denial.

It was a very enjoyable film though visually very impressive interesting from a technical point of view and with just enough story to keep you interested. Well worth checking out.

So we managed to get a cinema session in with decidedly whimsical air to the subject matter. Also Christopher Plummer was in 3 out of the 4 films.

We saw the visually amazing cgi film 9 which lacks a bit of story Plummer #1.

Following it up with Fantastic Mr Fox this stop motion animation film based on the Roald Dahl book of the same name had a lot more depth. No Plummer in it though.

Then Up in 3D pixars latest film which is a wonderful flight of fantasy. Plummer #2.

And finally Terry Gilliam's latest film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus a title that is just too long. This is a surreal film with a good if slow burning story. This is Plummer #3.

Not a bad session some good stuff there and we even done the reviews for them all, Enjoy.

Well I'm back in the UK again, recently it seems like I only just get on GMT before I fly off again to the US. Hopefully I'll get a bit more of a break this time.

Had a hell of a flight out where a normal 10-11h flight took 17h. We had equipment failure that kept us on the ground for three of four hours at Heathrow then when we did get airborne the crew had run out of hours and had to be swapped out with an unscheduled stop in Chicago for a few hours. I was also in the middle seat on a 777 which had the old 7 vhs machine approach to inflight movies. I saw Star Trek twice and the Hangover twice then got a good chunk into Robert Jordan's epic "Wheel of Time" series in the three weeks plus flights I've managed to read book 0-4 as well as a few others of different authors to keep things interesting.

Anyway when I wasn't reading or working I saw a few films I'll give a summary of my impressions for your delectation.

Surrogates the new Bruce Willis Action thriller where everyone uses perfect robo bodys instead of their real ones and as a result we are all extreme couch potatoes. Though initially promising this film lacks depth. It sets up an interesting premise and then tries to wrap it up in a mystery but it's not very well executed. The message is a bit muddled and partly due to the theme and the cast it feels a bit like it's IRobot lite. Some of the themes are undeveloped the whole you can be anybody theme early on, a sort of extreme extension of the internet/MMO avatar stuff where the persona someone has is not necessarily what they look like, is never developed. The themes of isolation and how this technology separates people from each other is there but it feels a bit like hippy preachyness at times. The two options shown happy simple religious nuts who deny surrogates with there technologically backwards communes where everyone gets along and is happy (except they kill on sight anyone who disagrees) and then the super human robot body surrogates that keep the people isolated. It's an odd unrealistic black and white world and the choices and options come off as forced.

All in all though it's a fairly decent action adventure film and worth a look but the story does let it down. It's disappointing because it could have been so much more.

9 which is a very visually appealing CGI film in a steam punk style. It features little robot rag dolls surviving some sort of apocalypse in this case generic apocalypse type 4: machine's overthrow humanity. It's very pretty with great atmosphere and the animation is top notch but the story is very straightforward there are twists you can see coming a mile off. This is the directors first feature and it shows but there is promise there it was adapted from a short he did as a student and perhaps part of the lack of substance comes from taking a short form idea and stretching it to full feature length. Anyway much like the film beowulf see it for it's visuals but don't expect too much of the story.

UP, the latest pixar film featuring an old codger who makes his house fly away with a load of balloons ... as you do. A charming film with some great little character studies the curmudgeonly old man Carl Fredricksen who feels alone and left out who finally decided to fulfil his life long dream. The geeky wilderness scout kid who gets swept along with him desperate for his fathers love and approval but seems to just get neglected by his business obsessed father. It's all very well done with some nice subtle performances and character studies. The animation is top notch as always and the visuals are great. Pixar are always producing good stuff and this is another great well worth seeing.

Transformers 2:revenge of the fallen saw this on the plane back ... it was awful I will say no more.

So anyway I've got jet lag to recover from and expenses to claim. It's good to be back and later this week the game Brutal Legend comes out which I'm really looking forward to.

So I'm off to the USA again tomorrow and figure a film would be a good idea before I went. I picked the CGI animated comedy "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs" partly because I'd heard good things and partly because there was nothing else on that I hadn't seen already at my small local cinema.

It was in 3D which basically uses alternately polarised projection of the left right views of each frame so that a pair of specs with appropriately polarised lenses filter the frame so the left eye sees left and the right eye sees right and you get 3d, more or less. There is a little ghosting, probably partly due to the cheapness of the polarising filters, and the more extreme the 3d projection they are attempting the more noticeably the effect breaks down. Still if you sit more or less central you get a pretty good 3d effect.

The 3d thing is a gimmick and one that these CGI films get away with as a by-product of their process, to be honest it doesn't add much you notice it a few times mostly when it first kicks in and in a couple of the set pieces but for the most part it just means you are wearing a fairly uncomfortable pair of spectacles while watching a film.

Anyway the film itself follows the adventures of Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader) a hapless inventor whose creations either don't work or backfire in some alarming way. His latest creation is a machine that turns water into food and through a series of events it ends up embedded in a rain cloud thereby making it rain food. The power hungry mayor of the town Flint lives in sees an opportunity he can exploit and manipulates Flint for his own ends, there is also a love interest in the shape of a weather girl Sam Sparks (voiced by Anna Faris) who is out to make her career on the weird weather the machine creates.

It carries a fairly strong walle style criticism of excessive consumption and the throw away consumer culture. With food just raining from the sky all the time people gorge themselves and also a huge literal left over mountain is created. It's not too preachy though and the message doesn't obscure the entertainment.

There is some depth to the film as well with some fairly detailed characterisations more so than you'd usually get in a kids aimed animated film. Flints technophobe father (voiced by James Caan) who can't relate to his son, talking in fishing related metaphors which his son doesn't understand. The brainy nerd weather girl Sam Sparks who hides her intelligence behind a ditzy blonde façade to be popular. The town cop (voiced wonderfully by Mr T.) who's a typical bad arse cop but also shown as loving father and thoughtful and steadying influence on the town as the film pans out.

The voice cast is very good with people like Mr T and Bruce Campbell (as the mayor) giving the film some wonderful performances. The visuals are also pretty top notch with some great shots of food related weather, the spaghetti tornado is particularly impressive.

It's a fun film with some good comedy moments and plenty for all the family to enjoy as they say.