So. Avatar, then. And not just any old Avatar. This was Avatar with 3 of them thar Ds. It’s the blockbuster of the year, possibly the decade. Where to begin?

Well, they say there are seven types of plot. No matter what the movie, book, TV show, whatever, when you boil it down to its constituent parts, it’s going to be a story of Rebirth, Quest, Comedy, Rags to Riches, Overcoming the Monster etc etc etc. After watching Avatar, there are still seven types of plot. That’s not particularly a bad thing, but it does lead me on to quite a bad thing. I’ll save that for later.

In case anyone reading this doesn’t know, Avatar tells the story of Jake Sully, a wheelchair bound ex-marine who flies out to the moon-planet of Pandora where he’s been chosen to fill his dead twin’s boots (yeah, I know. And it’s never really explained) to become an avatar of the planet’s humanoid Picasso-tinged inhabitants. Essentially, he lives as an alien in a Virtual Reality type way, only here it’s Reality Reality. Once there, he’s to infiltrate this band of tree-hugging hippies and spill all their juicy secrets because hidden below the planet’s surface is some very valuable material. All good Sci-Fi is really an analogy to the real world. You don’t have to be particularly alert to spot the message here and you may well leave the cinema hating your own species. Which is always nice.

Good news, then. It’s an incredible visual experience. It’s stupidly beautiful and in many places it is literally breath-taking. The hybrid of CGI and reality is a quantum leap. Never before has something you simply know can’t be real been so convincing.

Now, I had my reservations about watching a 3D movie at the cinema, for the following reasons:

• Jaws 3D.
• Friday The 13th Part 3.
• Jaws 3D again.
• sitting in a cinema with 3D glasses on makes me feel like I’m part of an audience witnessing nuclear tests.
• it makes an expensive experience that little bit more expensive.
• did I mention Jaws 3D?
• it drains something like 30% of the colour from the film.
• it was never really 3D, was it? It was always more like watching the Duck Shoot game at the fair … there was depth between the planes, but the people occupying the planes were very much as flat as the pancakes you could wrap round a freshly shot duck.
• it was used as an excuse by the film makers to include shots they would never think of using in a regular film, eg. poles getting thrust into the camera, eyes popping into the camera, all of which just served as a reminder that we’re in a cinema, watching a film.
• fuck it. Jaws 3D.

I don’t know if 3D’s just evolved or if Avatar is truly groundbreaking, but the 3D here is awesome. There’s depth, contours, the occasional thrusted pole and it feels about as close to hologramatic cinema as we’re likely to get.

Continuing with the good news, it absolutely flew in. Two-and-three-quarter hours have never passed as quickly.

If there was a sense that through all of this good news there was going to be a “but”, well here it comes.

But.

As hinted at when I was going on about plot types, this isn’t the most original story in the world. The first section is Dances With Smurfs. The second section is Episode 3: Revenge of the Smurf. It borrows heavily from James Cameron’s own work and others. Tick the boxes when you see the robotics from Aliens, hear the soundtrack from Titanic, spot a Hippogriff from Harry Potter or transporters from Halo. There’s déjà vu round every corner of this brave new world.

Performance wise, it’s a bit hit and miss. Sam Worthington — he of Terminator Salvation fame — is solid in the lead role and Giovanni Ribisi, who I’ve always liked since he was Kevin Arnold’s pal in The Wonder Years and Phoebe’s half-brother in Friends, might have been missing the wicked laugh and twirlable moustache but is an enjoyable, if overplayed, hench baddie. Sigourney Weaver, who I expected to be a safe pair of hands, was strangely wooden throughout. Given her experience in the Alien quadrilogy, she should be pretty much at home with stupid lines of dialog, but I didn’t find her believable at all. That said, the dialog doesn’t help her. In places, it could curdle tar. Perhaps the best performance comes from someone who doesn’t actually get any screen time in her own right. A blued-up Zoe Saldana is perfect as Neytiri and she was very believable.

My main gripe may be precisely the point James Cameron wants to make, but it made me question the role of cinema. Cameron says he couldn’t have made this movie 12 years ago. I say, bollocks. Of course he could have made it. He could’ve used animation in the true sense of the word and made a cartoon. It wouldn’t have looked as nice but I bet with the world’s best artists at his disposal, it could’ve been close. I guess my point is, he could’ve told his story, and what’s more important; the story or the telling? So instead he waited 12 years, spent foomftillion-gargillian dollars and made a film whose prime objective was to wow its audience with visual smoke and mirrors, which it does exceptionally well, and hope that distracts from the fact that the story it’s telling is well worn.

There’s another but coming.

But.

I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot. It’s not perfect, but I loved the ride. It made me smile twice for every time it made me roll my eyes. Cameron has created something of incredible detail and beauty, a vibrant world full of flaura and fauna where it would be forgivable to come away thinking these creatures actually exist somewhere. For that he deserves all the praise he’s going to get. It just seems a shame that for all the innovation, time and money spent on the aesthetic, they forgot to come up with a storyline to match.

I got a poem accepted at Every Day Poets recently and it went live this morning. Here comes the link:

The Last Red Light in the Valley

You can vote and add comments if you so desire. Don’t expect ryhmes. Do expect little-known, highly restrictive form.

The December issue of Jersey Devil Press went live this morning and features a short story by little known Clackmannanshire author, me. It’s called The Boy Who Threw Rocks at Trains and you can read it by clicking that wee link doo-dah. I can say with some degree of certainty, that this will be the first and last issue of theirs to feature the words Larbert and Croy. Please take time to have a read of the whole issue. There’s some stonking stuff in there.

Warning — I’ll be along to bug you about poetry later in the week.

I didn’t like Twilight. Either the book or the movie. I found both terribly repetative and dull. So it was with some trepidation that I went along to see the second movie in the series, New Moon, tonight.

Putting my cards on the table straight away, I didn’t hate it and I don’t think it’s the worst movie ever made, which was a serious concern as the lights went down, but in the minutes since the movie finished, I’ve been trying to put my finger on what exactly I didn’t like about it.

I didn’t mind Robert Pattinson. In fact, I thought he was pretty good. No surprise there, as he was also pretty good in the first movie. He does an excellent American accent and even manages to laugh and sigh convincingly. So even though he whispers a bit too much for my liking, he’s off the hook.

I didn’t mind Taylor Lautner and his ridiculously buff torso that dominated large sections of the movie. I fully expect him to win a WWE belt before he picks up an Oscar, but he was a more than decent support and that big, thick neck of his scored highly from a curiosity point of view. Even if none of this was the case, his character of Jacob is also more interesting than Edward so on that controversial note, he’s off the hook.

I didn’t mind how it was shot. The movie is lovely to look at and the drained palette that’s used in the Forks sections gives it a detached, disaffected, grungy feel which was an interest in itself and worked even more retrospectively when the contrast of a vibrant, primary-coloured Italy pops up towards the end. It’s like when the colour kicks in during Wizard of Oz. Cinematographer is off the hook.

And I didn’t even mind the terrible CGI wolves. Honestly, the first time one appears, I wasn’t sure if it was an alsation, Bungle Boggs from Rainbow or a beefed-up Ewok. They get better as the movie progresses so amnesty on the stupid Ewok things.

It’s her. It’s Kristen Stewart who plays Bella. She’s pretty enough without being distractingly so but she’s the problem and unfortunately she’s in pretty much every shot. I don’t think she’s a good actress. I didn’t find her engaging, sympathetic or believable and, if anything, I found her a bit of a relentless sour puss. I had the same problem with her in the first movie and, to some extent, her character in general in the book so some of this problem is shared with the source material, I’m sure, but apart from one excellent scene where a camera revolves round her as the months roll by, she just didn’t sell it to me and I’m starting to reach for adjectives like repetative and dull again. I mean, Alan Rickman has been miserable for most of his career, but he does it with a certain pinache.

And she sulks an awful lot. When she’s not sulking, she’s grumpy. And when it looks like she’s about to cheer up a bit — oops-a-daisy — she’s dumped again and it’s hello, Mrs Rainy Cloud. Credit where it’s due, though — she’s totally unflappable when people she’d previously assumed to be human turn out to be anything but. Vampires, check. Werewolves, no problem. In the eventual third movie, if she finds herself strangely drawn to the new guy at school who has inexplicably bandaged hands, I’m sure she’ll cope admirably when, at the dramatic end of the movie’s second act, he reveals himself to be a Mummy.

I fully appreciate I’m in a minority on this. The makers have thrown enough movie at the franchise that they must be happy with Ms Stewart in the role, the cinema was packed with people who were equally happy and the general consensus on the way out was that it was a favourable way to spend a couple of hours and they can’t wait to do it all again next year. I might just sulk in a corner and wait for the DVD.

I’m taking a well=earned break from Writers’ Group and playing Modern Warfare 2 to announce that the inaugural edition of Vanilla has been released with downloadable and hard copy content to follow. I’m not telling you this just to be nice to them (although they are lovely people) but, as you may recall, you’ll find my story — The Air Is Getting Thinner – betwixt its electronic pages.

Have a read of the fine work on offer and I hope you enjoy.

A quick update for those of you not amongst the 100s of people who end up here looking for the Zombieland poster.

• Terry Rogers from Menda City Press — who I’ve always maintained is a lovely chap — has nominated The Spirit of Shackleton for inclusion in Dzanc Book’s Best of the Net 2010 anthology, which is nice.
• Vanilla Press have taken The Air Is Getting Thinner for their inaugural edition, which is due to go live in the next few days and shall be re-announced separately with links and everything. This is also nice.
• This year’s attempt at NaNoWriMo has stalled at a feeble one word. That word is Kebab. Kebabs are nice.

Now that’s out of the way, I’ll let you scroll down to that poster, shall I?

So recently, I’ve been bitching about horror movies masquerading as other things and then up pops Paranormal Activity which more or less delivers exactly what a viewer expects. It doesn’t set out to make you laugh. It doesn’t set out to bend your mind as you try to compute the continuity and implications of multiple time jumps. It sets out to scare the bejesus out of everyone who watches it.

The frights borrow heavily from chapter one of Alfred Hitchcock’s Scary Movie Making For Dummies and follow the master’s advice that the man with the axe is far scarier if you don’t see him.

The format comes from Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, et al. And yes, that means shaky handicam shots, a half-assed explanation of discovered footage, a seemingly improvised script and a time stamp in the bottom right hand corner.

The result, despite the rather hackneyed set-up and devices, is a film that made me jump several times in the first half and would’ve continued to do so right to the end if it hadn’t been for a couple of major problems that I’ll get to in a minute.

Paranormal Activity, according to its own website, is the film that everyone is talking about and judging by some of the soundbite reviews, I could be forgiven for thinking it was going to scare me to death, or maybe turn some of my grey hair back to black. It tells the story of Micha and Katie who’ve just moved in together, into a strangely large house in suburban San Diego. Micha brings his guitar and PC, Katie brings her CDs, a sizable collection of pyjamas and the notion that she’s been tormented by an evil spirit since she was eight-years-old. For reasons never fully explained, Micha reacts to this latter discovery by investing in some home video equipment and becomes determined to capture evidence of the spooks and spectres who’ve been scaring his girlfriend. For equal reasons, Katie lets him.

Actually, this all works rather well. The two leads, like the other five characters featured in the 99 minutes, are unknowns, but they convincingly bounce off each other, have a good chemistry and authentic relationship and manage to give rather understated performances which makes the opening premise a fairly easy sell. Katie talks about this possession like it was an old teddy bear that’s just been with her forever and has really become part of her. I warmed to her and her story and wanted to believe, which is half the battle.

So. What’s the problem with the other half of the battle? Well, part of the problem is that the scares become so clearly signposted that some of the suspense just evaporates. When, for the fifth time, Micha sets up the camera in the bedroom and they go to bed, we know that something is going to happen and something always does. At the start, this amounts to nothing more than distant footsteps, whispers, shadows and a moving door. This builds as the movie progresses, and that door becomes something of a focal point, but because it’s all framed in exactly the same way, some truly shocking and terrifying moments are diluted. Katie standing motionless over Micha as he sleeps while the clock in the bottom right hand corner fast forwards through the early hours of the morning is a very effective and eerie tool the first time we see it, less so the second time. Add to that, Micha’s nonsensical discovery of internet footage of a similarly possessed woman’s exorcism and my right eyebrow is moving north.

Still, all that I could just about overlook if it wasn’t for The Main Problem. As the scares increase and lives are in danger, the reaction from the two protagonists becomes utterly unbelievable and the continued filming of both the spooky events and the daytime tension and arguments is simply baffling. By the time we get to the denouement, the main question isn’t, “What’s going to happen?” It’s, “Why are they still there, still filming?” Of course, no filming equals no film, but first-time writer and director Oren Peli needs to come up with better reasons for these things to happen and these reactions to play out. The film put down some great work in the first hour and this decision to abandon logic and hope no one notices just strives to undo all that.

None of this should detract from the fact that in places this is a scary, atmospheric film and despite the repetative nature, the bedroom scenes, more often than not, delivered a sense of dread. The fact that everything is filmed within the house on a hand-held does give the sense that there is no escape either for the couple or the viewer. Did it make me check under the bed at night? No. But it did make me realise that if I ever secretly film a ouija board’s cursor moving on its own before board bursts into flames, the least I’m going to do is check the Yellow Pages and if Bill Murray’s number turns out to be unlisted, maybe I’ll settle for an estate agent.

One of these days, I’m going to go to see a horror movie and what I’ll actually sit down and watch will be a horror movie. Zombieland was a comedy and Triangle is a thiller and at this rate, Saw VI will be a western.

What ultimately makes this review a bit of a bugger to write is that Triangle is one of those films where saying too much about what it’s about would spoil the experience and what is safe to say doesn’t make it sound particularly rivetting.

Melissa George stars as Jess, a single-mother of an autistic child who goes on a sailing trip with some buddies. They go through a freak storm, their boat is overturned and they’re eventually picked up by a passing cruise ship that appears to be deserted until things go a little crazy. They stay that way until the end.

It’s the “things go a little crazy” bit that makes this such a challenging, absorbing and initially confusing film. Up until the storm, the pace is quite relaxed — pedestrian, almost — but all the way through, there’s a sense that something’s not quite right.

Apart from the remake of Amityville Horror, my only frame of reference for Melissa George was God knows how long ago when she was Angel in Home & Away so I was pleasantly surprised by how good she is here. She’s the centre of proceedings and it’s the convincing way she plays Jess as tired, edgy and distant that shepherds the movie successfully through the tentative scene-setting of the opening act and she really excels once “things go a little crazy.”

Director and writer Christopher Smith keeps the anticipation palpable and, somewhat tiring if my nerves are to be believed , never really presents the jump he promises until near the end. The result is uncomfortable, claustrophobic and unsettling for all the right reasons.

Couple of gripes. Some of the CGI is terrible. When things fall into the ocean, you’re never really in any danger of believing that something has fallen into the ocean. It happens a couple of times and only serves as a reminder that you’re in a cinema watching a movie. The second gripe, well, I can’t really mention without giving too much away, but there’s a fourth instance of something that never explained … and it needs to be explained because instances two and three are more than adequately covered.

It took Smith two years to write the movie, such were the demands of the structure and continuity. It’s been time well spent and he’s created a conversation piece. While I can live with possible plot-holes and without concrete explanations of why that ship and why the thing is called Triangle in the first place, I did feel he could’ve been more explicit in how the film should be interpreted. Was it all real? Was a Faustian bargain at its heart? Well, yes, no, both, neither, maybe. I dunno and perhaps I should.

I do enjoy quick turnarounds. I wrote The Boy Who Threw Rocks at Trains last Monday, subbed it out on Sunday and today it’s been accepted by Jersey Devil Press and will feature in the December issue. So consider it my Christmas present to you. Expect a reminder at the time (of the story being published, not Christmas).

… those who understand binary and those who don’t.

I thank you.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, that segues quite nicely into the news that my short story — Everything Binary — has gone live over at Neon Magazine. It’s a cracking journal and I’m loving the stark, black & white photography they use. And it’s British, which is something of a rarity and all the more reason to click that link if it wasn’t attractive enough as it is.

For those unfamiliar with the drill, go have a read of the story along with all the other work in Issue 21. There will be a quiz later.