I started watching this show about a week ago and since then I’ve seen all 14 episodes of the series and Serenity, the film spin-off based on the show. It’s brilliant and witty and engaging and full of memorable characters played by actors who deserve to be more successful than they already are. I really can’t think of anyway in which the show could be improved; the writing is excellent and the special effects, while clearly done on a limited budget, are perfectly functional. I love the humour in the show too.

Captain Malcolm Reynolds bringing the awesome.

A word to the wise: don’t watch this film if you love dogs and your sinuses are acting screwy and you’re dosed up on lots of Lemsip and you’ve just eaten spicy food, because someone could look at you at an inopportune moment (like, say, when you’re blowing your nose) and think that you’re crying, which is obviously totally ridiculous.

I never watched the original series, or many of the films, so I’m not really in a position to say how faithful this is to the source material. I can say, however, that the film is a blast, full of strong performances, and entertaining from start to finish. There’s a lot of script to get through, what with having to introduce the characters and all that, but nothing feels contrived and the casting is great. Chris Pine as Kirk is particularly impressive.

Just go see it; it’s Hollywood at its very best.

A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world’s most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case.

Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.

They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages.

[...]

Speaking to the BBC, the chairman of industry body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) John Kennedy said the verdict sent out a clear message.

“These guys weren’t making a principled stand, they were out to line their own pockets. There was nothing meritorious about their behaviour, it was reprehensible.

“The Pirate Bay did immense harm and the damages awarded doesn’t even get close to compensation, but we never claimed it did.

“There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that,” he said.

I’m downloading six torrents as I type this; nobody’s going to stop downloading music and films because of this trial. If anything, it will only make people less likely to pay for music and films, since everyone has been given fresh evidence that record companies and film studios are run by unpleasant people. I’ll never buy a CD again, but if I had the money I’d buy a Pirate Bay t-shirt to show my support for Messrs. Neij, Svartholm Warg, Lundstrom and Sunde, who are nothing short of internet heroes.

Long live The Pirate Bay!

I’ve never been a big fan of Pixar films, but pretty much everything about this one is beautiful. The story’s simple yet elegant, it looks fantastic, and there’s remarkably little dialogue throughout (which is just one of the ways in which it subtly echoes 2001). Plus, much of what little speech there is in the film is provided by Curb Your Enthusiasm‘s Jeff Garlin, who voice-acts the role of the ship’s captain with deft aplomb. The message of the film, such as there is one, is right on the money too.

The real stars of the film, of course, are the two robots WALL-E and EVE, and they’re a perfect example of what CGI animation studios can do well. They’re expressive, they’re funny and they’re human without being too human. In WALL-E Pixar have somehow succeeded in crafting an endearing love story around two robot characters with no facial characteristics other than eyes (and even then, WALL-E’s are little more like movable light-bulbs; EVE’s are essentially a flat, computer-light glow). However, right from the open sequences WALL-E is entirely believable not only as a living thing, but as a being with complex emotions and anxieties. Maybe Pixar have been pulling this stuff off in films for years (I haven’t seen too many of their films; the ads always deter me), but it seemed pretty remarkable to me.

If you haven’t already seen this movie for whatever reason then I highly encourage you to do so. It’s charming, warm and perfect for what it is, and, much as I am loath to admit this (given how often I’ve decried CGI films to a friend), probably one of the ten best films I’ve seen.

It looks like he’s cutting back on explosion special-effects…

Some background information is necessary here. The film came out around 1999, and back then I was 13, and a big WWE fan. Thus, one night I stayed up to watch one of the big monthly events that used to be broadcast live from the US on Sky Sports or Channel 4 in the early hours of Monday mornings. American television is afflicted with a high frequency of ad breaks, and so whatever station I was watching went to commercial breaks every 10/15 minutes or so, and every goddamn time I got hit with an ad for the film, the one with the girl looking all pale and teary-eyed and staring into the camera. Also, earlier on that week I’d had the grave misfortune to see some promotional ‘documentary’ about the film on Sky One, which was really just a big long ad full of fake interviews with actors who were presented as real people who had known the characters in the film.

Point is, I thought the damn thing was real, i.e. that the film was real documentary footage that someone found in the woods of the single most terrifying story/plot/ordeal my dopey little 13 year old mind could conceive. I’d lived a relatively sheltered childhood in terms of film watching; while other kids’ parents would allow them to watch all kinds of age-inappropriate stuff, mine always stuck pretty rigidly to the age-ratings. In many ways this was a very good thing, but it didn’t help me develop any kind of horror/shock hide, with the result that even to this day I’m quite jumpy in horror films.

This isn’t to say that I abhor gore or violence in films; in fact, I’m a big fan of well-made zombie films and American Psycho‘s Patrick Bateman is one of my favourite ever film characters. There’s just something about the tension and suspense in effective horror films that sets me on edge in a very uncomfortable way and I do not like the feeling one single bit. It’s unpleasant and disturbing and frankly I just don’t see the appeal.

So yeah, take a life-long intuitive dislike of horror films, a 13 year old mind with no frame of reference for such films, and about 10 visually arresting ads for a particularly unpleasant horror film that said 13 year old mind encounters around 4 a.m. in the dark. And then add to this jarring stew the fact that the naive 13 year old thinks that the film is a real-life documentary of true events.

The thing set my nerves on edge for months. I hated reflective moments of thinking during this time, because if ever had a few moments of idle thought and started meta-thinking (by which I mean thinking about thinking, in the sense of choosing what thoughts are rolling around your skull), that pale, terrified face would launch into my consciousness with a debilitating, animal fear. The fact that I live in a rather secluded area, with plenty of nice trees, probably didn’t help much either. My aversion to the film, and any thoughts about it, was so bad that I’d rip ads for it out of my computer game magazines and throw them away so I wouldn’t have to see them more than once.

Eventually, with passing years, I got over this, learned that the film was not, in fact, an audio-visual account of real events, and forgot about the film almost entirely. I never watched it, but it stopped forcing itself into my head and so it no longer concerned me. However, any time I thought much about it I still got a distinctly unpleasant feeling, so I steered clear of it entirely whenever it was on television.

And then tonight I tried watching it, and all that shit came back with a vengeance. I’m now 22, and I’ve watched hundreds of 18s film (though admittedly not too many horror ones). I’ve seen countless ‘shock’ images and videos on the internet without batting an eyelid. I don’t think I’m particularly easily frightened. And yet, I kept flicking away from the channel, unable to stomach watching what was unfolding onscreen. Stomach is definitely the right verb for it, because my reaction was physical as much as mental. Watching it made me feel sick.

Towards the very end of the film, when the girl and remaining guy are in the house (spoiler alert here, but I’m presuming most people have seen it by now – you’ve had 10 years) I couldn’t look away as they stumbled around the ruins, with the shouting off camera and the confusion and all-round awfulness of the situation, and I felt a tangibly better when the camera finally broke, seemingly during some kind of struggle. The last shot of the guy was still on my mind though. Why was he standing like that in the corner, facing the wall? It didn’t seem like the most disturbing thing the director/writer could have closed with.

I didn’t much feel like going to bed right after something like that, so I stayed up for a few hours more watching dreadful television and playing videogames with my brother. When I eventually headed to my room at around 5 a.m. (which is even quite late by my own screwed-up insomniac standards), I went online with a mind to reading the Wikipedia entry on the film before bed, and I instantly felt that sickening discomfort when I saw the promo picture. Even reading though the plot made me uncomfortable. I got as far as the thing about the 1940′s serial killer and the house and the pairs of kids he’d kill, making one stand facing the wall as he killed the other first. I think that’s part of the made-up back story that’s alluded to in the film. Frankly, I’m not going back to the article to check.

I guess that’s about all I have to say about this bête noire of mine. Ordinarily I’d dig up some picture to go with a post like this, but that’s certainly not happening with this one. It’s getting bright outside now so I think I can finally go to bed and sleep. Maybe this post makes me sound like an enormous coward, but whatever. At least it’s off my chest now. I think, looking back, that this is easily my worst childhood memory, so writing about it has got to be helpful in some way.

I vaguely remember this children’s book, or at least the wonderfully creepy illustrations in it. I’m a little confused as to what to make of the trailer: at best it looks like a tasteful re-imagining of the book; at worst it looks like a a bunch of guys running around the woods in fursuits. Still, I’m cautiously optimistic about it.

Via Ross Douthat.