Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

Edgar Wright's new film is his first one that takes a very conscious step away from his British roots and toward the Atlantic. Scott Pilgrim is not a Hollywood film, though its main actors are American. In fact it takes a great deal of effort to align itself with Canada by being based in Toronto and including many references to the boom in films made in Canada ("They make films in Vancouver"). This focus on Canada might perhaps be an indirect way of informing us the last thing we will be watching is a formulaic slice of Hollywood. Perhaps it is also a way for Wright to indicate the last thing he intends on doing with Scott Pilgrim Vs The World is selling out (to use a cliché) while watering down his individual talent. In fact Scott Pilgrim Vs The World shows Wright developing his talent. Where his first two films, for all the merit, felt like continuations on a theme in a Spaced world Scott Pilgrim feels like a complete fresh approach from the director. Deciding to break away from Simon Pegg and company for the new film and adopt Michael Cera and company in their place pays great dividends, showing that Edgar Wright is much more than a mere collaborator for Pegg. We can all look forward to the final part of what is termed by Pegg, Wright and others as the Ice Cream Trilogy. The, perhaps surprising, news is that Scott Pilgrim Vs The World is better than Hot Fuzz and Shaun of The Dead. In fact Scott Pilgrim is one of the very best films we have had this year and certainly one of the most unique.

Michael Cera has never been better and fills the title role with charm, confidence and vulnerability, not an easy combination it should be noted. Kieran Culkin is also a revelation taking on the role of Pilgrims gay flat mate with gusto and he goes well beyond in showing that his starring role in 2002's excellent Igby Goes Down was no fluke. Is it just me or does Culkin look exactly like I imagine Holden Caulfield to look like were he real (minus the grey silvery patch of hair)? Acting aside the source of real merit in the film comes from the two main areas. The script adapted from the comic book, which I cannot say I have read, is witty and clever without being smug or indulgent and genuinely touching without being reductive or sentimental. There is more than a touch of the old Spaced humour present, I found it to be most welcome and it feels somehow incredibly fresh when executed by this young troupe of actors. It manages to weave together a type of hyper unreality and mundane reality to great effect while still faithfully managing to suspend belief in the narrative. Of course all this work on a great script with some sharp one liners would be wasted if the film making went on to be a mess. To be honest this is what I feared about Scott Pilgrim Vs The World the most, that it would be a self indulgent mess with a director at the helm keen to show his colours to the audience, kind of an over eager peacock syndrome. Tim Burton engaged in this to detrimental effect with his misjudged remake of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, the song set pieces with abundant CGI proving conclusively that more is not necessarily better. Tarantino fell victim to this peacock syndrome as well with the absurdly bloated Kill Bill which seemed so concerned with style that the rizla thin narrative seemed to just blow away. One of the few to succeed in using highly stylized film making to the advantage of the narrative was Darren Aronofsky with the traumatic Requiem For A Dream. Then Aronofsky went and fell victim to peacock syndrome with The Fountain before ultimately regaining his footing with the sparse The Wrestler. Scott Pilgrim is a world away from the work of Aronofsky of course, it never takes itself terribly seriously but this is one of the reasons the film is so successful. That painstaking work has gone into post production, right down to the editing which uses a vast array of styles to draw us emotionally in is clear. Part of what makes this work so successful and seamless is that Pilgrim is a film with music at its very heart and good music it is too. Nigel Godrich is the producer of all original music and the genre hopping Beck is behind many of the original songs. From the title sequence onwards we are led into an intriguing world that mixes music with video games / video game culture along with a romance that never feels contrived. The romance is also never idealized, tempered with a kind of Woody Allen neurosis and balanced with comedy which disdains the easy laugh. It will prove to be too much for some of the young audience it is aimed toward, not a film that you can go to and actively switch your brain off, letting the film do all the predictable work. For those that give undivided attention though it will more than reward. It is a bold piece of work by Edgar Wright which as a comic book film compares most closely to The Watchmen but then proceeds to better it in every single way - which is no mean feat. Who would have thought that Edgar Wright after Hot Fuzz would be presiding over a film that is not only progressive in the literal sense but also takes delight in smartly smashing conventions with aplomb. It also stands alone as a film which instead of adapting video game culture incorporates it thereby creating a new beast which is as elegant as it is purely entertaining. In short a real unmitigated treat which in all its sheer joy and effervescence is very hard to resist. Can be seen to be running laps around the clever but po faced critical darling Inception - which I only mention in passing to emphasize what a superior piece of cinema we are dealing with.

State Of The Arts - The Three Dimension boom - HBO's sheer quality and Other Side Dishes.

Being at once a lazy man and a committed film pirate (thankyou Piratebay) It has taken me sometime to come around to seeing one of the new in vogue 3d films that are now seemingly in production everywhere. Toy Story 3 was oddly enough the film that caused me to pay what is now ten pounds to go the cinema and don the quite attractive looking new 3d glasses. I had time for Toy Story 3 - although I thought a similar narrative had been done elsewhere and arguably better by Finding Nemo (and they only needed two dimensions). So Toy Story 3 was a solid piece of intelligent animation that we have come to expect from Pixar but did it need the novelty of 3d? Well, no, it did not and you suspect the only reason they had it in three dimensions is just because it was the third film in this series. If they add a dimension each time we should certainly be expecting big things of Toy Story 6, although the potential for it regressing into a bad acid trip is certainly present. A good film, not the best pixar film but you feel the 3d is just tacked on, nothing seems built especially for the technology. The same cannot be said for Piranha 3d. Aja who was such a promising horror film director with the remake of The Hills Have Eyes (which I felt was superior to at -the-time Rookie Wes Craven's original) goes for high camp along with high gore. Its disappointing because it is a one note film and while I kind of admire the fact that Aja writes himself into the history books by providing the first 3d severed cgi penis the film is a let down. Much of the problem is that contrary to Toy Story 3, Piranha is a complete slave to the technology. Its fun at first and the opening sequence which is a great homage to the terrific Jaws has Richard Dreyfuss sucked into a whirlpool on his boat before meeting a grisly demise, The 3d works great here, providing a real feeling of going down a plughole. The Jaws references don't let up there either, The musician friend I saw it with who is obsessed with Jaws counted many other knowing in jokes. A big notable one is the use of the famous zoom in - out shot of Shnieder on the beach which has the disorientating effect of flattening the picture (Easy to forget how fantastic Spielberg was at this point - a rival to Kubrick in terms of film making genius. Pity the fact that he blew it and seemingly invited the studios to interpret his work). Piranha is not a long film at under 90 mins but it certainly feels it toward the end as the film relies on sheer wow and gross out factor to the detriment of characters and narrative. A lot of people get eaten but its impossible to give a monkeys and we see the Piranha so often that they become entirely devoid of any excitement or thrills. The references to Jaws reflect very badly in the end as where that film played on tension and music to genuinely make people scared to go in the water, Piranha just manages to illustrate how absurd the whole thing is. Additionally the whole film is screaming out for a character even a third as compelling as Quint. In conclusion its a disappointment, more so as its come from Aja - who seems just to be content to take the pay check for this one. The film is just overpowered by the sledgehammer comedy and Camp quotient, so much so that you start to wonder how cynical a move this is by Aja. Well its sure to be a box office hit for the 3d sequences alone - we can only hope Aja uses his ill gotten gains for the next project he actually wants to make a mark with. I also caught Knight and Day and Grown Ups recently but won't waste space on them. Both can be summed up as incredibly indulgent films with a big star behind them (Cruise and Sandler respectively). Both films are essentially glossy vanity projects. At least Knight and Day seems to hold some hope at the start aiming for Romancing the Stone / Emerald Isle territory, before it falls apart under a weak script that just does enough, barely, to keep the whole thing on rails. Pity no one actually bothered to write an ending of any quality whatsoever. Grown Ups is very bad stuff though indeed and means the Jury is still out on Adam Sandler. He can be funny and and he also has range, of that there is no doubt and Punch Drunk Love proves it. Grown Ups though is only marginally better than the excremental Remote Control (which I doubly hated because it slurred Walkens fine name). Sentimental, Crass and stuffed with jokes about peeing Grown Ups is really a film for cow people. People with the brains of cows. It will probably be very popular but it is the epitome of manufactured tat and its disheartening that Sandler felt the need to not only do it but do it with such a uniformly fine cast - wasting them and staining them at the same time.

Cinema output of late has definitely had its real stinkers. Alexander Payne remains quiet since Sideways unfortunetly and Paul Anderson hasn't done anything since the incredible There Will Be Blood. Taking this into account it is at least good to know HBO are turning out high quality series that look more and more like fully fledged and very long feature films. The Sopranos and the Wire may have finished and are missed. I still resent HBO for axing Deadwood in its prime as well. There cannot be any argument though that the new kid on the block is True Blood by Alan Ball and what a witty, violent, sexy, intelligent show it is. The third season is seeing its influence and viewing figures grow - everthing in the show is excellent in truth but Dennis O'Hare as the charismatic and deadly Vampire King of Mississippi is a revelation. It is surely the edgiest thing on television anywhere at the moment?

HBO are also still running the Payne co-produced Hung with the adorable Anne Heche. It seems to have been cut though to half hour episodes for the second season. Or perhaps it was always half an hour, the point is it always leaves you wanting more. It has a definite American Beauty flavour to it and the cast and writing is consistently fantastic.

Scott Pilgrim will be my next port of call. I like Michael Cera very much - he seemed to turn his best performance as of yet in Youth In Revolt but I have reservations about Pilgrim. Perhaps its because I am wary of overly stylized work - Aaronovsky can do it well enough in Requiem For a Dream but as in Tarantinos hands in Kill Bill it can become grating and terribly showoffy. Perhaps its due to me not having any knowledge of the rated comic book. All reviews have been uniformly excellent so far - I do hope its not down to the recent dearth of quality mainstream cinema. I will go with an open mind and report back my findings in due course.

Transformers 2: A 150 minute car wreck, often literally.

I was not a fan of the first film but I found it be an entertaining novelty. I found it fell apart at the end but the first two thirds of Transformers was watchable thanks in part to Shia Lebeouf as the unlucky high school guy trying to woo the alluring Megan Fox. I had misplaced hopes for Tranformers 2 Revenge of The Fallen thinking perhaps that Michael Bay had weighed up what did and didn't work in the first and adjusted the sequel accordingly. In fact all Bay has done is crank everything up to eleven, the clumsy witless humour in the first is accordingly amped up here, so we have two dogs humping each other and bizarrely the mother consuming hash cakes and going reefer mad in the first half an hour. A host of goofy robots and tranformers are added much to the detriment of the film but at least it contrasts well in continuity terms with the acting from all involved which is uniformly hysterical and hammy aside from Megan Fox who is mostly passive and always awful. Shia Lebeouf who I felt to be charismatic enough in the first Tranformers to help save the film is a big liability here, he is a twitching, shouting mess and remains utterly unconvincing. In mitigation the lines given to the actors are bereft of imagination, wit or insight. Although these are fundamental points on which any film should be judged Tranformers 2 clearly wants to be judged on its action, namely the battles between the autobots and the decepticons. The special effects are suitably state of the art but without suspense, without any care for the charecters the lengthy fight scenes get old hat very quickly. The last half an hour of the film essentially forms one long fight sequence between the robots. It is a loud, blurry, kinetic and above all else boring state of affairs. Part of the reason that the film becomes so boring is because it is so predicatable, Optimus Prime is defeated and dies but we know he cannot stay dead, for sequel and marketing reasons. Shia Lebeouf dies in a slo-mo sequence that is so over the top it is unintentionally funny, but we know he can't stay dead, Transformers 2 treats us as idiots milking the scene for all its worth. Its this general disdain for the audience that shines through in the end. You get the impression that Michael Bay is well aware of the deficiencies in his actual story, the predictabilty of it all, the sheer stupidity and mumbo jumbo in the plot devices that bring the Decepticons back to hunt down Lebeouf. Bay's simple answer to this is just to make the film as loud, busy and by extension as obnoxious as possible. Sometimes bodies fly across the screen, mostly its sophisticated computer generated pixels and throughout we might gawp at times but we remain totally uninvolved in the whole affair. Transformers 2 Revenge of The Fallen is a soulless lumbering titan of a film that has well outstayed its welcome by the first half hour, I fail to remember a less entertaining film and felt oddly dirty after I left the cinema. The campaign to stop Michael bay making films begins here

Post Ferrell Comedy with new Star Zach Galifianakis: The Hangover

With a film like The Hangover so much depends on the acting and chemistry between the actors. I was not aware of any of the three main leads in the film bar Bradley Cooper. I only remember Bradley Cooper from Wedding Crashers where he did such a good job being smug and obnoxious that I actually started to wonder if he was smug and obnoxious. Here Cooper dispels that myth by turning in a likable performance who along with two others have ended up losing the groom of the wedding. Zach Galifianakis steals the show often, playing the funny guy to the straight act of the two others. The script works nicely without ever really grinding or becoming too predictable and unlike this years I love you, Man, The Hangover successfully paints a sweet natured view of male comaraderie without slipping into all out sentimentality or homoeroticism. The manner in which unlikely caper is topped by next unlikely caper called to mind Scorsese's After Hours, What Todd phillips has made is a lighter altogether less surreal After Hours. Its an improvement over his earlier effort Old School and arguably works better without any huge stars attached. Its almost certain to be very popular and very likely to make Galifianakis a star. It has some delightfully un P.C moments as when Galifianakis openly laughs about driving around completely wasted on booze. Heather Graham does a fine job in a cameo as a stripper and still looks great enough to pull it off, recalling the fine old days of roller girl. Tyson just about keeps it together in a one note cameo. Its to the credit of The Hangover that it ducks being too overtly laddish. It is true that women are sidelined in the film, having only a handful of minutes in screentime but the narrative calls for as much. It surpised me being a better film than I had anticipated, the funniest is saved for last with a great credit sequence in which we get to see the activities of the night displayed in a camera found. Best comedy so far this year.

Drag Me To Hell Vs Terminator Salvation

I caught the opening of two hyped early summer films both pitched towards broad audiences and both looking for box office gold. The finished articles themselves couldn't be any further apart though. Drag Me To Hell is Sam Raimi returning to Evil Dead territory and after two somewhat jaded spiderman sequels the switch to his brand of black comedy horror pays off. The narrative is not complex and is a typically generic take on horror but it lets Raimi loose to orchestrate a brillantly crafted piece of film where timing, editing and excellent camera work combine with an almost perfect score. The tone is painted with consummate skill, many parts of the film remain disturbing with a streak of black comedy shot through that bemuses without turning the whole excersise into a joke. Special mention has to be given to the old gypsy persecuting our antagonist, she is by turns menacing and wickedly grotesque, espicially when she frequently resorts to 'gumming' the young lady who she curses. You could say, perhaps, that Raimi throws a few too many jump moments into the film. I did find on my second viewing of the film to be anticipating more than actually experiencing Drag Me To Hell. However this is a small quibble, when I first watched the film I came away not remembering the last time I enjoyed a horror genre film at the cinema quite as much. This is all the more remarkable as Drag Me To Hell only boasts a 15 rating. Although not graphic in blood and guts the sense of dread that the film conjures up early in its running time really does push the 15 rating to its limit. Or so I thought, I suppose 13 and 14 year olds now are as used to gunning down policemen, running over pedestrians on the pavement and picking up prostitutes for some hand relief behind the train station as passe as a bowl of cornflakes for breakfast. This is the Grand Theft Auto generation. As much as I love those games (and I can proudly claim to have beaten the recent intstallment, The Lost and The Damned) it does make you wonder how this morally bankrupt chaos effects young impressionable minds. However, I digress, Drag Me To Hell is a welcome addition to the recent slew of unimaginative remakes and torture porn nastiness that forms the horror genre. The greatest accolade I can give is that some sequences almost rival Jaws in the tension they create. In fact I left the cinema proclaiming that Raimi had made his 'Jaws' which in retrospect is a bit generous but is testament to the thrills that Drag Me To Hell conjures up on first viewing. Drag Me To Hell is a great film to watch in the cinema with its often dazzling camera work and special effects (Raimi just about gets away with dipping quite liberally into the CGI box of tricks). Finally the ending of the film impressed me a great deal, I had a great deal of respect for Sam Raimi embracing the nihlistic take on the genre that Night of The Living Dead and more recently The Blair Witch Project gave us.

From a film that has a streak of black comedy and involves its audience with a sly wink to a film devoid of any good humour at all. Terminator Salvation is as a po-faced and serious film you will find released this year. The plot clearly involves time travel and the future but none of this is really explained, we are just expected to buy into the world of Mad Max meets Transformers with Helena Bonham Carter's disembodied head. From what I could tell towards the end of the film Miss Carters head was behind the whole thing, placing terminators here, there and everywhere. I can't be totally sure of that however because halfway through the film I dislodged myself from my seat and went for a leisurely smoke outside the cinema before trying to pay for a bag of wine gums, then giving up and just taking them because no staff could be seen. They certainly could not have been glued to Terminator Salvation because simply put the film has one of the worst problems any film can have, its very boring. The most exciting parts of the film, at least for diehard fans of the series, come near the end, at which point Terminator Salvation has long outstayed its welcome. The film starts at a pedestrian pace but with lots of noise and typical explosions, Christian Bale looks as serious and intense as possible doing his action thing. The Terminators themeselves make an apperance quite quickly but distinctly underwhelmed me, being filmed generally from waist up I found myself mulling on the crew just out of shot pulling levers to make the shoddy robots turn this way and that. This is clearly indicative of how Terminator Salvation eschews any imagination leading to originality and instead uses a series of tired cliches in its visual design. Which is to say it really does look like Mad Max, a lazy shorthand depicting post apocalypse earth. So far, so drab but the moment when I started to actively find the film to be grating with me in an unpleasant way came with the bizarre giant transformer/terminator human prison that drops robot motorbikes. It really did seem to be the material of videogames rather than cinema. From here Terminator Salvation introduces to us a mute child dressed in rags with an afro, who I found to be incredibly irritating and about as convincing as the mandatory love interest in the narrative which is devoid of any chemistry and about as unlikely as director McG being Oscar nominated this year. I do not wish to be prejudiced but my hopes were slim for this film when I noted McG at the helm. This principally dates back to seeing Charlies Angels full throttle at a cinema in Chicago because the people I was with could not be persuaded to see another film (it may explain that they were Australian women). I loathed the film. I also dislike McG films simply because he calls himself McG, its the kind of self branding that aches to be hip but reeks of vapid, shallow desperation. In essence thats really what Terminator Salvation is, vapid and shallow and in Hindsight its clear why Christian Bale lost his mind and indulged in his famous rant. He must of realized at some point that he had signed on to make shit. High octane shit. For someone with quite high quality control and dedication to the craft (see Bales work in The Machinist and also with Werner Herzog if you doubt his credentials) this must of been a somewhat painful realization. In mitigation he should of done what any self respecting actor would do on hearing the word McG, run. The material and Bale do not make easy bedfellows, his acting is too intense for the material and he seems he is constantly reaching for a depth that just isn't there. Consequently it is a disjointed performance that Bale gives, he seems to be acting in a different film than the rest of the cast - at least kudos to him for this. I genuinely cannot tell if the best really is at the end of the film or if I was so relieved to see the end in sight that I made more of an effort to engage with the film. Either way the introduction of a comically over muscled Arnie as the original Terminator did raise a smile, as did the absurd manner in which he tore into everyone and everything and just kept coming. The latter was, however, unitentionally comical. I found this to be the only part of Terminator Salvation that came close to being entertaining. The whole project has the distinct feel of being played far too seriously, without fun, almost as if McG was well aware of his lightweight credentials going in to direct the film - This would also certainly account for the hiring of Bale, to give the film credibilty. Its all very ironic because the film has no credibilty whatsoever, if it was directed by Martin Scorsese featuring Phillip Seymour Hoffman Terminator Salvation would still be a failure because it has a lousy script with lousy dialogue. In a perverse way at least they got the right man for the job in McG, few have more experience with lousy scripts and dialogue. The most damning appraisal I can give Terminator Salvation is that in visual style and in plain quality of script it echoes the clunky and dreadful remake of Deathrace that was inflicted on the cinema going public last year. The best we can hope for now is that the box office returns are not quite good enough to encourage McG to return to this project, like a dog returns to sniff his vomit, and churn out another sequel. Looking at his track record with the two Charlies Angels films and already seeing McG talk about further installments in various interviews it seems that this is too much to hope for. This is a dystopian future that is far more depressing than the one offered to us by skynet.

Opposite ends of the Spectrum: Thoughts on the films I Love You, Man & Crank 2

I was fortunate to catch a couple of films In Brighton this week. I love You, Man stars the likeable Jason Seigel as the charismatic best friend to be to Paul Rudd. The film is a novel spin on the romantic comedy genre in as much as it focuses on the mechanics of male bonding more than the romantic relationship that Rudd has with Zooey, played well by Rashida Jones. Jon Favreau returns to the front of the camera here as a moody husband amid some obvious weight gain jokes, he literally is twice the man he was in Swingers. Talking of Swingers, I love you, Man falls some way short of capturing the pleasure of close friendship and kinship that Swingers did. Still, it is an entertaining and breezy film. Perhaps it is hampered by the schtick of Paul Rudd who in playing someone unsure of himself finds himself constantly suffering from putting his foot in his mouth, many cringe worthy lines are uttered by the man and it becomes slightly laborious later on in the film culminating in a feeling of frustration toward the protagonist. Jason Seigel by comparison is a joy and while the writing might not be as sharp for him as it was in Forgetting Sarah Marshall or Knocked Up he still revels in his part - bringing the character of Sydney Fife alive. Jason Seigel really does save the film from a certain blandness that often threatens the film. I found the highly contrived happy ending agreeable, I was just hoping for some slightly more adventurous antics from the two male leads. I am still no wiser to the appeal of Rush either, lets hope the revival does not start here. Still, I would rather watch an extended five hour cut of I Love you , Man than sit through Marley and Me again - so it can't be all bad. Its just all slightly formulaic and predictable despite its novel angle. It is this that makes Crank 2 about as far away from I love you, Man as you can possibly imagine. Crank 2 is rather unlike any film I have seen before though, while the souped up hyper real violence might owe something to Japanese and Korean cinema, the graphical design in the film, high speed cutting, and the general filming of the narrative combine to create something unique. It is a chaotic meshing of genres that at times threatens to implode in on itself, some parts of the film flat out do not work. What makes the mistakes forgivable though is the sheer joy and joy in creation the film rumbles out. Its a highly sexed, highly graphic film but it never feels nasty or explotative because it has such good humour at its core. It is disposible perhaps but it the highest quality disposible film you are likely to have seen. Against my expectations I liked Crank 2 very much in contrast to I love You, Man it is fresh, new and exciting. It might go on slightly too long and the hint at a third film didn't seem promising but as of itself Crank 2 is a frenetic take on the medium that plays fast and loose with its story with complete conviction. These are the reasons that it will be as loved as it is as hated, a definite case of marmite.

Changes to approach and mandate

I am writing just to outline some changes to the blog. The blog has been renamed to reflect a more casual tone in the prose of the blog, I would like to cover discourses and debates over current films as well as just offering reviews of them. Popularity of certain films will be discussed and I wish to give the notion of autuership strong application. In general though I wish to make the tone less academic and more free flowing.

Having said that there are a few films now I wish to quickly discuss to keep up us to date. many will be missed out and I shall just trust my memory to guide me. I know I have not see a better film since Paul Thomas Andersons There will Blood, I always thought that the director was headed for greatess since Boogie Nights. Andersons grasp of the technicalities of film and just always creating a scene that resonates testifies to his skill. I have seen many bad films and have been disappointed by some that I judged would be great. I was vastly underwhelmed with Burn After Reading espicially since No Country for Old Men seemed to mark a high point for the talented Coens. I am at the moment watching The Machinist, an ex girlfriends favourite film and I am appreciating it more the second time around. Christian Bale is great, truly great in the film but also the palette of the film with its blues and metallic hues brings a hyper real feeling. Besides it is also extremely eerie and suspenseful for the majority. With being so unsure of where reality lies in the film comes an extremely spooky sensation, anything seems possible and the dread increases in the viewer. In many ways the ambiguity of the vast majority of the film invites viewers to bring thier own nightmares. The ghost house must be been the most effective I have ever seen. If I had encountered that ride at my local fair during my youth I would not have slept for as long as Bale himself. Its a shame when a film like this, so dependant on atmosphere is broken by adverts. I realise now why I try as often as possible to skip films shown on television. I want to also give special mention to Eden Lake, the recent British horror film. It is nasty, brutal, and cleverly taps into contemporary fears about society, namely the uneducated, unemployed, working class teenager. In sheer pacing and execution it recalls genre greats like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The ending is nilhistic in much the same manner as Night of The Living Dead is. Its the most effective horror I can remember of recent times and perhaps more importantly considering the glut of horror comedies we have had recently, it is played straight. People disinclined toward the genre or casual fans may spurn it because of its relentless violence and insisitance on negating the happily ever after scenario. Its certainly important it ends as it does - There is room for debate about revenge and vengeance in the ending. The shot of the main antagonist teenager staring into the mirror with his shades on towards the end is haunting because of its ambiguity and because it hints in reflection at the self perpetuating nature of the violence that the film inflicts upon us. For all these reasons its a genre classic.

Finally and off subject really (as its a TV series) wanted to mention how disappointed I have been with the second season of the Inbetweeners. The first season hinted at something better than what we were actually given. At times the awkwardness of being a teenager along with the pathos that brings worked well, the charecters just needed to be given room to be written with more depth so we had greater empathy for them. They needed to be more than just caricatures. There was a tendancy in the first season for all of the friends just to be used for the butt of jokes, with little time devoted to actually fleshing out the idosyncracies of each teenager. What saved most episodes and undercut this was an under the surface sweetness that had Will making friends with the other three 'inbetweeners', the merit was in how promising the premise was. The second season should have jettisoned the unlikely premises and situations in favour of more charecter based comedy. Instead the series approach has gone the other way concentrating on packing in as many crazy happenings as possible. Also there is something mean spirited about the first two episodes of the second season, its almost as if the writers want to humiliate the four teenagers as much as possible. This would be passable perhaps if the writing wasn't so dim witted and dependant on a series of characters who have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Spaced for example worked so well because it humiliated people we cared about and within reason. Its meant to be edgy presumably to have the mechanics at Wills workplace talking about tits to him all the time and to have the head of the sixth form finding all this funny beyond belief in the second episode of the season, it just comes across as obnoxious though. By the end of the work experience episode I had given up on the previously promising inbetweeners. The structure of the show now just seems to call for a sling as much shit as possibile approach hoping something will stick, and in consequence be funny. The creators of the inbetweeners should heed the well trodden advice that less is more, for an example they could look back to the Seinfeld episode where the whole show just revolves around the foursome waiting for a table at a chinese restaurant, nothing happens yet it is funnier and more engaging on an incomparable level. The first season of the inbetweeners coasted by on viewer nostalgia and jokes about fingering. The second season sees nostalgia gone and so the jokes about fingering have been doubled, its lazy and ultimately disappointing writing in what seemed to be such a fertile and promising world. Consequently its impossible to see where a third season will go, clearly it should have stayed at one season long. In comparison I am always happy to see a new South Park season or episode, its edgy, controvertial, and foul mouthed with a sharpness that wittly belies its crude animation technique. I also await the new series of Curb Your Enthusiasm although much as I love Larry David the format is leaning toward being somewhat tired now. The same is true of Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, its still amusing, still funny but the older series are funnier. There is just a feeling with both these programmes that they have had their high water mark. What with the end of Deadwood (very premature in my eyes), Sopranos and the Wire perhaps we should just be glad that some quality is still being produced no matter if it is a little tired. With genuinely funny comedy series being scant at the moment I find myself hoping that Gervais will put his Hollywood ambitions aside (Ghost World was tame and predictable, nothing more than mediocre) and team up with Merchant for another innovative take on comedy.