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.