Spring Cleaning

Well it’s not Spring yet but the new year brings out the organiser in me, and nowhere more prominently that on my PC. Admittedly as it wasn’t too long ago I got my current machine so it’s not exactly in bad shape, but I thought for today’s post I would share some links and ideas for giving your computer a sprucing up, or just for cool apps, links and programs that I have found useful in the past when customising my own desktop.

Lifehacker The source of many of these discoveries, Lifehacker is a blog devoted to this subject with a wealth of useful little ideas, tricks and links. Well worth checking out to keep up to date with the latest tech.

deviantART Where else to start customisation than with the desktop itself, choosing the right background is always tricky for me, partly now because Deviant Art has such an extensive and wide ranging collection of amazing images in all categories. The site has lots of other pictures as well, for desktop backgrounds follow Customisation > Wallpaper

FileHippo The go-to source for the latest versions of software and applications. FileHippo is constantly updated and a fantastic source for checking your programs are up to date and even to get downloads of the latest Beta’s as well if you want a go at some up-coming programs. You can now download an Update Checker which will automatically scan your system and let you know which programs have updates available. All the programs listed below can be downloaded from here; I’ve linked to make it easier as well.

AVG The best free anti-virus I’ve used and never had any issues with, a lot smaller and less invasive than something like Norton which you would have to pay for.

CCleaner An excellent little program which helps delete unwanted and unused files that can often clutter up your computer. Also lets you select the programs to load up on start-up and even fiddle with your registry if you’re feeling brave.

Google Desktop A great customisable way of being able to keep track of a lot of things from a neat sidebar on your desktop. You can download loads of apps from it, so can have a radio, keep up to date with your RSS feeds from websites, show calenders and clocks and even keep mini to-do lists.

Firefox / Chrome / Opera There are now three viable alternatives to Internet Explorer, all are less prone to virus attacks and such. I use Firefox as it’s quick, easy and again customisable with loads of free add-ins and themes you can download.

Skype Want a way of calling someone for free? Skype works as a voice and video system, just get a webcam, a friend with the same and go crazy!

Joe’s Goals A very useful website, especially for the new year allowing you to easily track your progress on goals you set yourself.

I’m sure there’s plenty more of these and chances are you’ve heard of a few of these already but hopefully this has given you some ideas to get the most from your computer!

The heart of style

Bah, work and rush and excuses and hand cramp. It’s a conspiracy I tell you, to disrupt my newly energised, three post old posting schedule. For the record I would like to stick to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday habit of posts, not all of them lengthy (depending on aforementioned distractions) but routine is important and something I’m notoriously bad at. The subject of this post was brought about by two unrelated but thematically and creatively similar films that got me thinking about how realism is perceived within cinema. Rushmore and Son of Rambow are both comedies of sorts, they are also both slightly offbeat and, though I’m hesitant to use the word, quirky. But both in a way that doesn’t draw particular attention to it, or do it for attention grabbing reasons, as in both cases the style perfectly fits the story and the world in which they are set. So back to realism, I think there’s a material realism that many films employ, and an emotional realism which is a lot harder to pin down and trickier to achieve. Both these films are excellent cases in point for the latter, neither from a stylistic point of view are set in ‘the real world’, now you could argue no films ever are for arguments sake lets talk about it in terms of recognisable reality. Not that they are set in fantastical lands, but exaggerated versions of the recognisable. Rushmore is set in a fictional private school in America, and Son of Rambow in 1980’s Britain, but it’s the way these worlds are constructed that lends them their own reality. Rushmore is a school seemingly perfectly created for Jason Schwartzman’s Max Fischer,a student who seemingly excels at everything except study. The way Wes Anderson presents Max’s world is in perfect keeping with his character, detailed, strange and unpredictable. The opening montage of Max’s extra-curricular activities (which features him as captain or founder of nearly every club) is hilarious but also tells us a lot about Max’s character. The thematic use of plays is clever as well, from the ham versions of popular movies Max writes and produces at the school to the stage curtains which introduce each act of the film. It presents the film as artificial, and yet emotional reality of the film remains intact and strong. Similarly Rambow features frequent and affectionate references to British styles and fashions of the 80’s, and manages to evoke an era perfectly without recreating it through concrete housing estates and gloomy urban sprawl. As it deals with the lives of two schoolboys who bond whilst trying to make their own version of Rambo First Blood, it has a child’s view of the world as well with occasional flights into dream sequences and over the top violence. But the artificial nature and construction of these films does not make them distant or unfamiliar, instead, through the characters and story they both manage to be immensely touching and moving by remaining true to their inherent humanity. This is where many films with much more focus and emphasis on historical accuracy or realism in terms of visuals or story fall short, because if the characters don’t ring true or act believably then the audience is taken out of the story. I may not believe the worlds of Rushmore and Rambow, but I believe the people. It is the same way that animation can tell amazingly human and compelling stories whilst also presenting foreign and visually arresting new worlds. Pixar managed to make me feel more for a small box of a robot this year than many other fully populated films did, and this comes down to this ‘reality’ not in a visual sense, but in a behavioural way, a way that speaks to all of us in our shared experience. After thinking about this I think that when it comes to reality and believability within films it has to come down to the characters, the films have to earn their moments and there is nothing more wonderful to watch than a film get it just right. When making Jaws Steven Spielberg came up with the films now famous ending, whereby Brody would shoot the oxygen tank in the shark’s mouth causing it to explode. The author of the book however at the time was against it, he felt that the audience would never buy it as it seemed so ridiculous and over the top, Spielberg reasoned however that if he didn’t have the audience by that point in the film he never would. True enough the sequence made it into the film and elated cheers from audiences upon its release. But if that moment hadn’t been earned, if the characters had been lazy and tired it never would have worked. The same can be said of Rushmore and Son of Rambow, if either had included lazy characters or poorly contrived decisions they would have come off as indulgent and unbelievable. As it is they remind two potent reminders of how, regardless of the packaging, the best films simply show us something about us as individually, and together.

My year in film: 2008

I think it’s only natural for our horizons to become broader as we get older, partly down to familiarity I guess and partly down to a greater understanding and willingness to try something new. Musically this has been something I’ve witnessed before and I think 2008 was the year it really happened for me with film. Now I’ve always been a big fan of films and watched as much and as many films as I could, but last year I really felt like I stepped out of what I had always watched and liked to catch up on some history, seek out more esoteric and lesser known works and to get to grips with film more as a medium as well as entertainment. Not that I’ve suddenly come over all avant-garde where I won’t even consider a film unless it’s 3 hours long with subtitles and set in 1936 Paris with extended shots of clouds and trees, but I think the range of what I have seen and enjoyed has greatly improved. A large contributor to this change has been the existence of a certain film-rental company from whom I receive regular films through the post. The ease of adding films to my list and the random nature of what I get sent I have really enjoyed, and the depth of the library has helped me start to plug the great gaps on film knowledge that I have regarding films dated earlier than 1980. In fact my previous aversion to older films, born I presume of a relish of the new and an unfamiliarity with cinema history, along with a stubbornly held belief that such films were old fashioned or boring, is slowly dissipating. One of the advantages however to being averse to older films for so long means that I now have a wealth of significant films to dive into and discover. In the last few months alone I have seen for the first time films such as Apocalypse Now, Duck Soup, The Apartment, and Vertigo which is just the start. However I’m not completely recanting my modernistic leanings, and have of course watched and enjoyed many more up to date films as well, though from a slightly wider spectrum than in the past. So if I talk about the year in film to me it is not just about the films released in 2008 but those I have seen and experienced for the first time in the last 12 months. A year in which I was floored by the manic genius of the Marx Brothers, in which the greatest love story I witnessed was between two machines hundreds of years in the future, where for once the highest grossing film of the year was also one of the best, where I finally understood at least some of why the Coen brothers are so highly regarded and where I still had time to enjoy the low-brow but puppet filled hilarity of Forgetting Sarah Marshall (well OK not puppet filled, per-se but certainly more puppet filled than any other film I saw this year.) Oh and lastly an honourable mention to the worst film I saw this year which was undoubtedly The Happening, as a fan of M Night it is a shame to see how far he has fallen, it really was a painful experience. And whilst it would be unfair not be mention the horrible performances in the film as well I will simply attribute them to a director who rather lost the plot, thus exonerating the lovely Zooey Deschanel from any criticism, as it should be. So there will be no top [insert number here] list from me this year, but I will leave with a list of the films I appreciated, enjoyed and that affected me the most in the last 12 months and the hope that this voyage of discovery I find myself on (one filled with awful cliché’s apparently…) continues throughout 2009 and that I am able to at least share some of what I find in this very space. So I hope you’re having a fantastic new year and I’ll be back real soon. Not a best of list for 2008 but a list of films I liked a lot in no particular order: (catchy title, huh?) The Assassination of Jesse James Wall-E Cloverfield There Will be Blood Brazil Duck Soup Gone Baby Gone The Dark Knight Apocalypse Now The Apartment Rushmore Crimes and Misdemeanours Before Sunrise Lars and the Real Girl Into the Wild

My Nintendo Problem

By the end of January it’s almost safe to predict that the NPD Numbers for the US will contain within them the single largest monthly sales number of a console since, well, ever. The Wii decimated the November record (by a cool 700,000 units, or nearly as many as the Xbox360 sold all month) and is bound to do the same again, the current record of 2.7 million PS2’s is in serious jeopardy. Now I think it’s easy to take these numbers in without really appreciating the sheer scale of this achievement. Just to think that over 2 years since its release the Wii is still hard to find, it is still the number 1 searched for and desired gift. Its sales are only getting bigger as supply finally begins to meet demand. From Nintendo’s position 3 years ago this would have seemed impossible and faintly ridiculous, yet now its constant outselling of all the other consoles combined is not only expected, it has become the norm.

As a Nintendo fan this has made me happy, I liked the Gamecube but as it drew to the end of its life I held out hope for the Wii, but only to keep Nintendo in the game for one more round, I honestly couldn’t see them catching up to Sony and Microsoft, let alone breezing past them as if they weren’t even there. You see Nintendo have always marched to the beat of their own drum and I liked their focus on the games rather than the technology, and their step away from the macho one-upping of Sony and Microsoft was a wise one. They were never going to have the resources to be able to compete on that level and by creating their own market they have changed the rules, moved the playing field and left Sony and Microsoft to fight for second place.

So why is it that I can’t help feeling twinges of disappointment and regret when glancing at the Wii sat in the corner of my room? Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not writing it off, nor assuming in anyway that this feeling will prevail but it is worth analysing I feel. I think the sense of regret is what has been lost in the clamour for this new market, this new way of playing. Nintendo have gained a huge audience, massive popularity and shedloads of money, but their cutting edge has been dulled, their innovative company line compromised at the altar of the all-powerful dollar. Case in point the latest Animal Crossing game, a game I was anticipating upon its announcement, the promise of an online world which is customisable and inhabitable by people all over the world sounded exciting. Having only played a bit of the previous games I was struck by the possibilities available on the Wii. Even with the friend code restrictions the idea of visiting friends within the same game world and impacting their game was intriguing. Maybe there would also been tasks and challenges you could complete together online? The annual celebrations could be witnessed globally perhaps, and the idea of leaving presents, or notes and messages with others and receiving such thing yourself on returning to the game was an appealing one. Animal Crossing to me always felt like a game hindered by a lack to true connectivity and one that would, or could, flourish in an online environment.

Yet the final game achieves very little of this inherent promise, it is in fact more an upgrade of the Gamecube and DS games, retaining all the previous features and adding very little new. The voice chat add-on is welcome but restrictive and has no great purpose in the game. The graphics and world are near identical to those that have gone before and the much touted ‘city’ of the title is a small collection of shops previously accessed from inside your own village. More than any recently released or even historically released first party Nintendo game this is the one that has felt most like a lazy and cynical upgrade. And the worrying sign is that this may well be the direction Nintendo head towards as time goes on. Now I don’t think that the major franchises will ever be treated with such disdain (Mario Galaxy after all was a magnificent game full of innovation and creativity) but I feel that this style of more casual releases (apologies for using the word, I am not a fan of categorising everything into hardcore and casual games much in the way that I would not categorise films as art-house or populist) will be one we see more of.

For starters next year sees the beginning of Nintendo’s re-releases of Gamecube games with added Wii controls, another fad that has plagued the Wii from becoming home to truly new and innovative games that are built to take advantage of its unique control style. Now I will concede that for games that never saw the light of day on a Nintendo console such as Okami this can be a good thing, and I am enjoying the game very much, but for games such as Pikmin it feels like another rather lazy way of gaining some extra money rather than pouring resources into creating new games. Just because the Wii isn’t much more powerful than the last generation of consoles doesn’t mean it should languish alongside them in terms of content and gameplay.

But what’s wrong with milking something that is so popular for some more money? After all there is a definite justification in spending a small budget on an upgraded game and gaining the same or even more revenue than you might from spending millions on a new and innovative product. I understand the business logic and Nintendo are perfectly justified in doing this, you could even argue they would be foolish not to. But this is where, as a fan, it hurts. Nintendo have never been a logical company, whilst everyone else moved to CD’s they stuck to cartridges out of a stubborn dislike of piracy. Rather than use DVDs with the Gamecube they manufactured their own mini-DVD’s and their fabled reluctance to get involved with online gaming is well documented. But that is partly why I loved them; they zagged when everyone else zigged, they planned crazy add-on’s and extras for bizarre Japanese games such as the N64 DD and gained fame from naming a Gorilla after a Mule. So for a company like this to suddenly seem so profit-focused and predictable feels a little bit sad. Now I’m not saying Nintendo were not profit oriented before, the prevalence of Mario licensed games in their history is more than testament enough to this, but they always had this crazy edge as well and they always had a focus on quality and innovation; even when it didn’t always work. Now it seems that beyond the Wii remote itself there have been fewer and fewer glimpses of this in recent years.

But all this does not mean I have given up hope. 2008 was a quiet year in terms of gaming from Nintendo and it has been a barren few months for Wii owners in terms of games as 3rd party developers get to grips with the system and how to produce quality games for it, but 2009 is full of promise. Nintendo’s recent strategy of announcing games only months before they will be release may well prove successful this year, the thought of a new Zelda, Mario or Pikmin game (or an entirely new game of course) being announced in May and released in November is an exciting one and much more preferable to the old system of announcement then release 2 or even 3 years later.

Where they go from here no-one knows, but the fan in me has his fingers crossed that the old Nintendo makes an appearance soon, if only briefly, to confuse and surprise us once again.

On blogging...

It’s all Steven Spielberg’s fault. Everything else looks alright, the system is working. Until now. Except for that damn Jurassic Park 3.

My Spielberg problem highlighted above as you may have worked out was related to the organisation of my DVD collection. You see I don’t want to simply go alphabetical, as I have some series of films or groups by the same director that seem to go well together. For example all the Pixar films or Studio Ghibli films belong together, they may have different directors but they shouldn't be scattered throughout the shelves. So I put all the Spielberg films together, except in doing so I separated the Jurassic Park films, leaving number 3 in the J’s on its own. Gah, and it was all going so well.

You see blogs are personal things, even when what you write about isn’t. Some will identify with my DVD dilemma, others, probably quite rightly, will think me rather odd. The focus within blogs on opinion and instant reaction lends itself to the format perfectly, but in doing so you assume, I think, a certain amount of narcissism. To think that what you think about something matters. But I love reading peoples opinions or reactions to things. Or even just finding people engaging about the things I too am interested in. A moment of shared opinion and agreement with something written thousands of miles away by someone you have never met is always thrilling, and I find it fascinating and rewarding that the personal reaction I can have to certain things, be they films, games or even world events, are not unique and that others can share my feelings unknowingly. I guess what I’ve been wrestling with this year in this site is the notion that it’s okay to put my opinion out there, and to do so without expectation or ego.

So with a new year comes another start. Rather than reviews as have come before on the site I will instead offer my thoughts on a variety of topics that interest me, including the films I watch. I do so not because I believe I am more qualified or knowledgeable on these subjects than anyone else, nor because I believe my words deserve to be read and judged, but because I believe one of the best outcomes of entertainment in all its forms is that it promotes discussion and opinion. So often our culture is what unites and divides us, and even defines us in some respects. It’s not all going to be serious, but I hope that I can at least prompt a reaction or an interest in at least some of the things I cover. If not I can only apologise in advance.

Now to get back to my DVDs, I think I was just sorting James Cameron…

First up, Aliens.

Damn it.