Only A Movie updated: Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

New review up on Only a Movie for Lars and the Real Girl. Warm, heartfelt film that you’ll enjoy.

Sonisphere 2010

The last few weeks have been fairly quiet, punctuated by moments of great activity. The highlight was undoubtedly the Sonisphere festival at Knebworth. I’d been there once before in 1996 to see Oasis, and remember it as being a logistical nightmare. However, I was pleasantly surprised at how well Sonisphere was run, probably to do with having only a third of Oasis’s audience. We drove in each day, and didn’t have to queue at all. Even on the last day we only had to wait about 10 minutes before getting out of the site. The quality of the food was good, and there were so many vendors you didn’t have to queue at all. The two stage set-up meant you could see all the main bands from a central point, and it was easy to get quite close for your favourites. The weather was also kind, with only ten minutes of light drizzle during Gary Numan despite forecasts of heavy rain all weekend. On Saturday we drove to the site in heavy rain only for it to stop as soon as we got out of the car. An hour later we were applying sunscreen under a blue sky and baking sun. The atmosphere was relaxed without a hint of trouble, and it really was one of the best festivals I’ve been to.

Musically, I enjoyed the opening acts of Delaine and Turistas on the first day. Europe fell so flat even The Final Countdown wasn’t as much fun as expected. Gary Numan was interesting, with versions of Cars and Are Friends Electric better than the originals. Alice Cooper put on a theatrical show that was okay, but highlighted the lack of enthusiastic hits that a festival really needs to get going. This was remedied by Terrorvision, whose Greatest Hits set in the Bizarre tent after the main stage closed was a highlight of the weekend.

There was a full day line-up on Saturday, with the early highlights being Soulfly doing Roots Bloody Roots and Refuse/Resist. Fear Factory and Anthrax were good, and Papa Roach were a good band to picnic to. I’d been looking forward to Good Charlotte, and I really enjoyed their set while the rest of my friends went to see Tim Minchin. Placebo were as good as always (never been bothered about their albums but always enjoy them live), though Motley Crue were a bit disappointing. Rammstein closed the show and put on a spectacular display, though I’m told the absence of Engel was a shame. We then went off to see Therapy in the Bizarre tent, but a problem with the power meant that we ended up listening to their gig with a cup of tea, sitting on the grass outside. Rock n Roll!

Sunday started with the excellent Henry Rollins doing a talk in the Bizarre tent. He was a very charismatic speaker as well as being entertaining and funny, so I’d certainly recommend him if he does a speaking tour in the UK. The music wasn’t as good as the previous day, with only Skindred and The Cult being surprisingly good. I’ve never been into Alice in Chains and nothing changed here, and Pendulum don’t really do my kind of music. Iggy Pop and the Stooges stuck to Stooges material, which wasn’t surprising but disappointing for those of us who don’t know much Stooges stuff. However, this was all just leading up to the highlight of the festival. Iron Maiden were their usual brilliant selves, with a set mostly made up of the last three albums. This was a minor let-down for those who wanted a greatest hits set (that was last year’s tour!), but great for those of us who have seen them play the same stuff again and again (this was my 13th Maiden gig over 20 years). They still finished with a classic encore of Number of the Beast, Hallowed Be Thy Name and Running Free (which they haven’t played for ages) to send the whole crowd home happy.

Wonderful weekend, although I may have sacrificed a couple of toes to the Metal Gods, as they’re still numb and don’t show any sign of improving. I bought Terrorvision’s Greatest Hits album after they reminded me how great they were, and discovered some new bands that I’ll keep an eye out for in the future.

Justin Hannard updated: Chapter 2

“Through the rubble he could see the occasional tip of a rocket fin sticking out, usually surrounded by the bodies of some of his least reliable lackeys.”

Thou Doth Protest Too Much

While not a World of Warcraft player myself (tried it, got bored), the recent fury around Blizzard’s decision to force players to use their real names on their Forums caught my attention. While their motivation of trying to remove trolling from their Forums seems fair enough, there are some reasonable arguments being made for keeping people’s names secure. However, what interests me in particular aren’t the ins and outs of this particular case, but rather the increasing trend of using forums, Facebook and Twitter to mount campaigns against whatever happens to have annoyed someone this week.

It seems that almost every day I get invited to join a Facebook group damning the BBC to hell for daring to move Eastenders one night, or invited to sign an online petition calling for some person I’ve never heard of to be sacked or disposed of for some minor transgression that may not even have been their fault in the first place. I suspect that this is mainly the result of Rage Against the Machine’s success in claiming the Christmas Number 1 single in the UK last year because of a Facebook campaign to prevent X-Factor winning again. Up until then you’d see the occasional campaign come up, but nobody really took them seriously as they could never have any real effect. The Rage Factor then changed all that by actually managed to succeed. The traditional media seemed stunned, and they slowly started to suggest that perhaps there was something to this social networking malarkey after all.

The trouble is that it’s now gone too far. For a geeky example, let’s compare The Rage Factor to The Matrix’s use of the bullet-time effect. When it was first seen audiences were amazed and astounded and wanted to know what this new tech was all about. Then everyone else started to copy it. Eventually it was everywhere, and instead of drawing gasps of wonder it became annoying when it ended up appearing in every advert, let alone films and TV shows. It lost its effectiveness due to over exposure, and I fear that social networking is losing its power almost as quickly as it gained it. Campaigns that probably deserve support are lost among the white noise of a thousand outrages, and campaigns driven by social networking are in danger of becoming the new Annoyed from Milton Keynes.

So in my own unenforceable, biased opinion I ask The Internet to please stop protesting everything. If you don’t like what a company is doing, just don’t use them. If enough people agree with you the company will find out when they have no customers left. Stop to think if having to change channel one day to watch your favourite programme is really that much of an issue before starting another campaign. Is that really the most important thing you have to worry about? By taking the irrelevant protests out of the system, when a protest appears regarding an issue that really will affect your way of life, not just what you like to do in your free time, the impact will be that much greater.

Only a Movie updated: Killers (2010)

New review up on Only a Movie for Killers, starring Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl. I enjoyed it, but you couldn’t call it good…

An Introduction

Whenever a new blog is born, it’s into a world of optimism and delight. I shall write about many interesting things! People shall read my blog and become enthralled by my wisdom! I will NEVER run out of things to write about! Well, maybe that’s what I thought when I started my first blog back in 2003. However, you soon find out that you only know enough interesting things to write about five posts. Then you start to write about uninteresting things just to keep posting. Sooner or later you even run out of uninteresting things to say, and the blog dies unmissed by all those people who never read it (including those friends who tell you they read it, but never got further than the first post). Time passes, and eventually you remember the fun you had writing up the ideas you did have. New ideas start coming, and you find yourself thinking ‘That would make a great blog post’. And sooner or later, you end up setting up a new blog, ready to get stuck into it again. 

So, here I am. 

One thing I’ve learnt from other bloggers I respect is not to write about the everyday. Writing about what you had for breakfast, or how your day at work was, or what the weather was like today aren’t really interesting to other people and belong in a diary. A blog should be full of your experiences of the unusual, even if they incorporate the above list. Write about your breakfast if it was your first experience of eating smoked kippers on the beach by sunrise. Write about your day at work if part of the kitchen exploded and you spent the day handling local news crews while three fire engines tackled the blaze. Write about the weather if you’re caught in a heavy storm miles from anywhere, your car breaks down and you’ve left your mobile phone at home. This is what I intend to do with this blog. 

Of course, part of the fun in this is making sure there are enough interesting things going on in my life to blog about. I won’t be talking about movies – they will be handled at my dedicated film blog Only a Movie. I may talk about any cool developments with my online story The Many Adventures of Justin Hannard. I am likely to talk about practically anything else and may express opinions that you disagree with, so please don’t be shy about letting me know your thoughts. You can also check my Twitter on the right hand side there, for ideas not really worth more than a casual mention. Above all, I will be writing about me. Whether that is a subject worth reading about I’ll leave for you to decide…