iand.net

Following on from Listen 07, here are my favourite films and TV from 2007. Again, no order to the list.

	Hot Fuzz Better than Shaun of the Dead for me, this was laugh out loud comedy at its best spliced with in gag’s and nod’s to the buddy cop films that we all know and love. You have seen Spaced haven’t you?
	Bourne Ultimatum When the Bourne Identity came out I didn’t hold out much hope for it - how wrong I was. The final part of the trilogy has delivered a great ending, neatly wrapping up the question of who Bourne was and the people that made him who he is today. A great end to the Bourne series…I hope. Don’t ruin it by taking it one film too far.
	Heroes My favourite American import this was a great watch from beginning to end although it had a touch of the Lost season 2’s about it in the middle. Season 2 though has been disappointing only picking up pace as it nears the end. Still worthy of watching when the BBC gets their act together and airs it later this year.
	Life on Mars While showing signs of running out of steam compared to series 1, Life on Mars was still a drama highlight. The series finale was a news worthy item and many speculated on what actually happened, including me. A great watch and sadly missed…although Ashes to Ashes starts in Feb on BBC. Time for an 80’s revival?
	Blade Runner - The Final Cut Why is a 25 year old movie in my list of great watches for 2007? Well in many ways Blade Runner still feels unsurpassed even today and the final cut (especially on Blu Ray) is a visual treat. If you have an HD player this is a must buy. While some scenes have been re-shot and some small changes made it’s the fact that they are in HD and re-scanned at a really high resolution that makes the biggest difference. A classic.

There were other highlights well worth catching. Knocked Up and Superbad were pretty funny films and Top Gear was consistently good. I don’t care if they stage all their reviews, challenges, stunts. I enjoy them. Lost also picked up the pace and was back on form. Dexter was a good watch, all the better for being a short series. 30 Rock is usually pretty funny as is Mock the Week (Frankie Boyle being the highlight for me). Finally, try and catch Friday Night Lights - very different to the film but pretty good.

I just hope stalwarts like 24 and Battlestar show a return to form once the writers strike finishes. Especially 24 - it was pants this year.

Ok, I’ll take the bait. BBC reported that readers of SFX magazine had voted Serenity as best sci-fi movie. Eh? Bloody fanboy’s. It’s good but not that good. So if it was me choosing the top ten it would be, in particular order…

1. Blade Runner
2. The Empire Strikes Back
3. The Matrix
4. Star Wars
5. Terminator
6. Aliens
7. 2001: A Space Odyssey
8. Serenity
9. Back to the Future
10. Starship Troopers

Anyone like to add one I’ve missed or should have considered?

Offer DVDs for $1.50….that 84p according to Google. Mad?

Well in China Warner are offering The Aviator for the exact price mentioned above. So the packaging is cheap and nasty and there’s probably no extras but would anyone go to the bother of pirating a DVD if it could be bought so cheaply? Not me.

Makes you wonder how much profit they make in the UK when it can be sold so cheaply elsewhere. Maybe it’s time for everyone to pirate and boycott official DVD purchases to see what impact it has elsewhere around the globe.

I guess you could say the film The Girl in the Café is typical Richard Curtis - doddery english guy falling for lovely woman, and a woman way out of his league. All the usual content is there but I’m a sucker for it and always like his films. This also had a political…edge isn’t the word but you know what I mean…undercurrent - that’s better. Set against the G8 summit the politics were dumbed down but the message still hit home more down to the acting of the two leads - Bill Nighy and Kelly MacDonald. Kelly MacDonald was superb and also had the best quote of the film:

dirty dirty dirty John

I could listen to her saying the word dirty all night but enough of my fantasies. Her speech to the G8 dinner was superb with the clicking fingers every 3 minutes really hitting home. The end was left open - G8 summit in Scotland and what will these 8 men do, but it should have been more. Where was the appeal to support Make Poverty History? Where was the plea to march to Edinburgh? Live 8 has always struck me as ‘disorganised’. This just added to that feeling - I hope the organisation doesn’t let it down.

The last of the new trilogy and hopefully the last Star Wars movies Lucas directs, Revenge of the Sith is without doubt the best of the new bunch but isn’t on a par with New hope never mind Empire. Word of warning - spoilers ahead. Considering everyone watching the film knows the outcome and who lives/dies it’s still a good film to watch mostly due to it’s darkness. There’s a beheading, wife beating (ok…strangling) and probably the scene that got most gasps at the cinema was the killing of the child jedi’s (although I couldn’t help laugh at the use of ‘younglings’ throughout the rest of the film - it just sounded so false).

The special effects are stunning although there’s maybe too much in certain scenes - the opening space battle for example requires 3 or 4 watches to catch everything that’s happening. Even then the feeling of ‘falseness’ is throughout the film as scenes are ruined by the overuse of special effects - the final battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin is a prime example. I was enjoying the fight and the lava looked amazing. Then both Jedi jump onto small robots in the middle of the lava flow - rather than enhancing the battle it made it feel more like a computer game or a battle of between graphic artists and cgi modellers in an attempt to outdo each other.

I also had a few issues with the structure and storyline, namely:

The actors in the film did a pretty good job. Ewan McGregor was pretty good (much better than Episode I) although some of his dialogue was pretty sucky. Same can be said for Hayden Christensen. The best was undoubtedly Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine. The evil pored out from him at all times - great to watch. Christopher Lee was underused and yet again a good character in Dooku (like Darth Maul in I) was lost to easily.

It will be interesting to watch IV, V and VI again - I’ve not seen them in years but I feel the 6 episodes will not gel well at all. R2D2 for example is like a super droid in II & III compared with the last three films - I guess he got old. I’ll be treating the Star Wars films as two separate trilogies - one a great space story, the other a good tale and a good use of new technology.