Film: Avatar

A rumoured $350 million production budget. James Cameron's first film in 12 years. The invention of an entirely new camera to facilitate filming.

To say that Avatar has been suffering from pre-release hype would be to put it mildly. James "King of the World" Cameron has hailed it as a masterpiece, the template for which all future film-making will take it's cue. I finally got to see the spectacle tonight, and one word summed it up: Underwhelming.

Before I get assailed by legions of fanboys who seem to track Cameron's every waking movement, let me first say that Avatar succeeds to some extent. The 3D technology and clarity of definition is certainly impressive, as is the imagination Cameron to create the world of Pandora.

Unfortunately, that's where the good news runs out, as we are subjected to a turgid storyline, clunky script and woefully predictable action sequences. For a film that has been announced as groundbreaking, Avatar does nothing new. The Matrix's bullet time technology was so fascinating that we'd never seen it's like before. Avatar rehashes action film clichés again, and again, and again. If this is the future of film then I'm worried about the direction that cinema is headed.

We have the peaceful Na'Vi of planet Pandora set upon by the human military, in order to get a precious stone which is worth untold millions of dollars. Parallels drawn with the American war on terror are easily made, with the words "shock and awe" actually making it into the script. Besides some occasionally stunning visuals, the animation fails to convince at every turn. The reason why Lord of the Rings was so successful is that it triumphantly married two worlds together. On one hand, the skilful artifice of computer technicians at Weta Workshop, creating monsters which both looked ferocious but intriguing, mythical but somehow realistic. The animation had a lived in quality. Beasts were animated to look dirty, tired and look as though they were battle-hardned. On the other hand, we had real depth of character in each actor and a realistic effort was made to develop and explore storylines.

Avatar does none of this. The world of Pandora looks too perfect, it's edges too smooth, and it's people with no sense of realism at all. Likewise, it's proof that CGI effects and explosions are no substitute for old fashioned storytelling. James Cameron certainly knows how to throw the kitchen sink at a production budget, but there's little evidence here of any craft or diligence to create a good plot.

I wanted to love Avatar, I really did. But it's such a pristine and squeaky clean looking film, that there's no emotional heart to it. Like both Transformers films before it, one simply can't get over the fact that you're watching a computer game, a collection of graphics and a dull, uniform battle scene.
 I didn't care about any of the main characters, be they bad or good. Even Sigourney Weaver fails to save the day. This type of film normally relies on its hero being a maverick, slightly out of his league, or wise-cracking. Jake Sully, Avatar's central character, is none of these. He's an uncharismatic paraplegic marine, who you simply don't believe when he's in the middle of delivering a cod-inspirational speech (in the same league as Leonidas's "This is Sparta" tirade. That bad, honestly).

Avatar is guaranteed to be a box office smash. Perfectly timed in order to lap up the Christmas holidays market, it's set to be a big draw. Indeed the London Imax is sold out until January 11th for every single screening. All I can ask is don't part with your money to go and see this trash, it simultaneously fails to be anything revolutionary, whilst not even offering mindless entertainment. It bored me. How sad.

Avoidance Tactics? - Business as usual re: Afghanistan

It's remarkable how some people in power either ignore, or refuse to see things which are staring them straight in the face.

This was the prevailing theme today when myself and an audience met with Ivan Lewis, Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth affairs. The topic on the agenda was primarily the war in Afghanistan, the logistics, ethics and practicalities involved in such a war. Lewis spoke for around a quarter of an hour before opening it up to the floor for questions.

It's here when I'm going to check myself slightly. I am constantly defending politicians against others' insults. For every expenses abusing, sleaze ridden corrupt cabinet minister, there are constituency MPs who work hard for their electorate, and want (to use a cliché) "to make a difference". But given the responses supplied by Lewis today, can you blame young people for feeling disenfranchised and apathetic about politics? Typical politicians answers were given, instead of answering the question directly, policy was trotted out with all the panache of a Michael Howard Newsnight interview. The audience looked on incredulously as good, constructive questions were left unanswered.

Lewis is currently on a roadshow (his own words) visiting every region in the UK to stir up support for the war in Afghanistan, to "assure forces that the British people support them". I have no doubt that the British people support them, but their ringleaders...I'm not so sure. Lions led by Lambs indeed.

Furthermore, Lewis constantly emphasised that we were in Afghanistan to rid the world of the greatest threat to our way of life. It would be churlish to point out the not-insignificant problem of climate change as our greatest threat, but you can't have everything. For a man so clearly preoccupied with the modern threat of terrorism (Lewis voted for the Iraq war, for ID cards and against an investigation into the Iraq war) he seemed stupendously blind to it's root causes. Much of the argument seemed to take the view that we stamp out any insurgents in Iraq and by proxy safeguard our own country. What he fails to take into account is that much of the terrorist bombings in the UK (including July 7th in London) were propagated by British residents. How exterminating members of Al-Qaeda 3000 miles around the world is going to help us, I don't know.

Moreover, he incessantly referred to the British people being in a state of fear as "the security of the people of this country lay in the hands of extremists". Have I ruptured the space-time continuum into a Daily Mail alternate reality? I've yet to meet a single person who is genuinely worried about the threat of terrorism to this country. It's happened before, but the chances of you being in the wrong place at the wrong time are so minute that it's hardly worth thinking about. Did people stop using the Tube when London was under threat? No, because they had to get on with their lives and it was business as usual.

Towards the end of the talk we were bombarded with statistics showing "improving" living conditions in Afghanistan. Much has been made of the effort to rebuild and reinvigorate Afghanistan. While this may be true, it still doesn't explain the fundamental point of the whole debate:

Why are we there in the first place?

Higher Education - For Everyone?

So, Lord Mandelson, Prince of Darkness, Secretary for Business, and now, apparently all round “good guy” unveiled his higher education policy at the beginning of this month. 

Entitled ‘Higher Ambitions’ , the framework set out a more science and technology based system, where the aforementioned sectors would be given priority with regards to funding and access.

It’s here when my position as a left leaning liberal is called into question. Mandelson’s idea is to brand universities with the same kind of traffic light system that you find on ready meals, defining their calorific content and fat etc. He wants to further expand the idea of universities as a brand. While there’s no getting away from it, universities are a business (Trinity College Cambridge recently bought the O2, no doubt), I think that this is a step too far. I find myself more in tune with the Conservative Policy than Labour on this one.

On the party website, Labour declare that “more young people are attending university than ever before”. That may be so, but does that take into account whether these extra people should be at university at all? ‘Going to Uni’ is the cool thing to do right now, and has become less a thing to aspire to, than part of the status quo. What this leads to is a huge amount of university students who really shouldn’t be there at all. Their skills are far more suited to apprenticeships, which have died out in current years, and which the Conservatives pledge to bring back. 

University is a place for someone to learn, grow in knowledge, and then hopefully apply the skills learnt into an increasingly competitive job market. What Labour has done, is create an entire new class of university student. That is, who floats through their degree course, not really paying much attention, graduates, and then is suddenly lumped with thousands of pounds of debt, but crucially, without having benefited from the university system. On the whole these people would be better suited to learning practical skills. The whole reason why Polish plumbers have become an in-joke is because there are no native plumbers to fill the ranks. We now expect people to go to university, when in fact we should be taking individual cases into consideration. A huge amount of self-made entrepreneurs never went to university, and I doubt any of them regret it. We need to see what suits the individual, rather than applying generalised conventional wisdom to everyone.

That said, I still believe university in this country offers a good service for the fees paid. Tuition fees, although obviously higher than in years past, are still cheaper than the cost for one term attending some private secondary schools. A lot of it is down to how you use it. Use the facilities, books and lecturers that are on hand to offer support. More and more, it’s becoming clear that it’s what you do outside of compulsory work that counts, rather than within it. 

Era of mass miscommunication

So, we're nearing the end of 2009. By the end of 2010 it'll be 10 years since all the hassle about the Y2K virus, remember all that? The terror that threatened to bring civilisation to a standstill because the ticking clock wouldn't be able to handle the date ending with "00".

Computers and technology back then were a contradiction. On the one hand, they were innocent compared to todays powerful behemoths. Slow chugging processors powered us through cyberspace, and hard drives were filled up by the presence of one or two games. Dial up internet gave particularly sinister access to the internet, I always thought it sounded like a character from Doctor Who being murdered in an air shaft. However, on the other hand, computers were endlessly more frustrating and jargon based than they are now. To us "normal" people, techies like to make computers deliberately complicated, in order to keep their kudos, and moreover, their jobs. Web 2.0 has democratised and de-cluttered the internet, to the extent that even an idiot like me can make an online magazine: http://thefzine.com

Of course, "social networking" "micro-blogging" and the rest of the idiot terms applied to Web 2.0 do come at a price. That is, it's a lot like a lifetime membership. Once you've signed up, it's very difficult to get away.

Take this example: I must be one of the only people in my age group to not watch The X Factor, judging by the endless Facebook updates. Opting out of watching the program isn't enough anymore. One has to turn off all radios, computers, phones, and just about any other piece of technology that looks shiny enough to pick up a signal to get away from it all. Instead, idly minding my own business, I cheerfully click the "refresh" button on my browser. Suddenly I'm hit with a torrent of updates:


"can't actually believe that jedward are still in xfactor!!!!!"


"JEDWARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! whhayyyyyyy" 


"hope lloyd goes!"


I remember fondly when my dad would coincide his bike rides with England's efforts to progress through the World Cup. Time after time, the streets would be deserted as he joyfully cycled around in peace for 90 minutes. Whenever there was a penalty shoot out he got an added bonus. A few years ago, I could've been him. I could've turned off the television when Simon Cowell and his Will Smith circa '91 haircut hove into view, and that would've been that. Now because I've signed up to a whole range of mailing lists, networks and websites, I have to turn all of those off aswell. "But that's your fault!" you're screaming at the screen. Yes, of course it is, but do people really have to tweet and exchange such bland information? If the technology is there for Alan Rusbridger to tweet about Trafigura and overturn an injunction, it's a massive waste of resources if we're using this to talk about deluded fools singing their hearts out with all the melody of an irate chimp.

Essentially the banter which was previously only privy to the seats at the back of the bus have been brought forward onto the internet. Meaningless chat and general idiocy dominate the feeds. I'd love it if people thought before typing a bit more, but what can I do about it? Simply watch the conversations unfold, and subscribe to the X Factor Twitter page...

Red Hill, the border of England

To visit Penrith, Cumbria, is to visit one of the loveliest market towns in the UK. The town centre is based around the market square and shops are housed in hardy Georgian buildings, similar to Lancaster.

Checking through a newsagent, I was taken aback by the amount of local media. Granted, there were a lot of Have I Got New For You-worthy publications like Farmers Guardian but so too were there multiple local newspapers, including the Cumberland and Westmoreland Herald which unusually, came in a broadsheet format.


Leafing through these publications, one article kept popping up, the mass opposition to a huge Sainsburys superstore. The proposed development is due to take place in the southern part of Penrith, but there is massive local opposition. Talking to a salesman in the excellent Gents Outfitters, Arrnisons, it became clear that Penrith is proud of its stoicism in the face of chain stores and the endeavours to keep independent shops viable. Admittedly, Penrith has a branch of Morrisons, but it is outside the town centre, and small compared to the 98,000 square feet store proposed by Sainsburys. He went so far as to say that the new development would "kill the town centre" and that the sense of community created by close knit shops would be lost. Unfortunately the council seem to be in favour of this new development, but there is an open meeting at the Town Hall on 12th November where locals can voice their opinions.


Enough of the doom and gloom, as Penrith has so much to keep you occupied. The aforementioned outfitters is magnificent. Don't come here looking for the new deconstructed avant-garde jacket by Junya Watanabe, because you won't find it. What you will find is traditional high quality men's formalwear, excellent service, and a brilliant selection of shoes. All the "classics" boxes were ticked, with chelsea boots, brogues, desert boots and oxfords, on sale in a variety of styles and colours. Hats were available in a range of measurements which were all catered for.  No wonder the men of the town dress so sharply when such an excellent shop is on their doorstep. The service is helpful, knowledgeable, and crucially, unintimidating, which will allay most men's fears about clothes shopping.


Pop across the square from here and you find the excellent delicatessen, J&J Graham. I wish I'd managed to stay longer but they were shutting by the time I arrived. What I did garner is that it had a mouthwatering range of cheeses, meats and freshly ground coffee on sale, as well as a vast selection of preserves and wine. It was impressive to find a shop like this so busy just before closing time, especially with the supermarket on the outskirts of town. A revisit is surely in order to pick up some treats for Christmas.


My final pick of the town is the Lonsdale Cinema, a two screen cinema built in 1910 in the city centre, adjoining a bingo hall. While it showed the typical multiplex fare of mainstream films, it was lovely to see the original building had been kept whilst having a modern interior. Sunday afternoons are host to the "Alternative" showing, which this week was Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces.


Penrith is only 20 miles from Carlisle. A quick google shows that it takes next to no time to come south from Scotland down to Penrith, nor does it take long if you live in any other part of the north west. It deserves a visit, and any money that can be put in the pockets of local retailers rather than money hungry supermarkets is much appreciated. The people of Penrith deserve better.