Banned Brands no. 1: Vauxhall

Having just watched France beat New Zealand in a very exciting Rugby World Cup quarter-final (which would have been better if we had more than a very rudimentary understanding of the sport) we then were assaulted by one of the most annoying adverts around: the one for the Vauxhall Zafira where the two fat kids act like the parents and say pompous po-faced shit. Yes, it's been around for a while but I've decided to keep a list of so-called banned brands - brands whose marketing is so offensive that I refuse to buy any of their products. So Vauxhall is entry number one on our Banned Brands list. This was swiftly followed by BT broadband for the fuck-awful one where the wife has lost her files and folders on the laptop (including the pics of her kids when they were little) and the bloke says "It's OK we can make another one" and she makes weird "I'm not sure what to think" eyes to camera until he says "It's all backed up so we'll just make another folder".

She looks mightily relieved at not having to shag this obvious nonce who's only with her to get near her kids. I digress somewhat but I notice on YouTube that there are many spoofs of the Vauxhall ads. They all seem to be done by teenagers and are of varying degrees of funny. I've chosen this one mainly because it doesn't have the racist overtones of the re-dubbed version of the asian family moving in next door (also to be found on YouTube) and its implications that they're drug-smuggling bombers.

Another Control entry

One of the comments for this YouTube Joy Division video - about John Cooper Clarke ("Who the fuck is the prick talking about 'bloody queues' at the beginning?") - reminded me about something that happened at the screening we went to the other night. Yol pops out of the cinema just before the film starts and the 20-something barmaid asks her what's on. Yol says 'Control'. The woman looks blank. 'A film about Joy Division,' says Yol. 'Ian Curtis?' The woman shakes her head more blankly, the words passing over her head meaninglessly. Young people, eh? They know nothing, happy to wallow in their ignorance.

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw agrees with me: Control is the film of the year

Not so much about Control not being The Commitments part 2 (that was all my work), but about being the best film so far. I also noticed that sneaky Peter Bradshaw (one of the best film writers around) has upgraded his star rating for Control (Four stars at Cannes in May, five out of five for the UK release).

Ugly Betty Returns

Ugly Betty returns to Channel 4 this Friday with each episode TXing a week after it's aired in the States. I'm not sure how much of an anti-piracy move this is but ultimately TV distribution will move towards a cinema model with simultaneous world wide releases. The upside is that we won't find ourselves watching Christmas specials in late-July. You can also watch Ugly Betty for free on the now award-winning 4oD service.

AVOD and TVOD: I'm so wasted in this job

I get an email littered with the terms AVOD and TVOD. Nothing on Google. So to help out the rest of you:

AVOD: Advertising-funded Video-on-demand
TVOD: Transaction-funded Video-on-demand

There you have it. TVOD=PPV; AVOD=free with ads

Control: it's not 'The Commitments II"

It's probably the best film I've seen so far this year with excellent performances by Sam Riley, Sam Morton and pretty much all the cast. I wasn't expecting a huge amount from the film as I'm always suspicious about most films made of true stories, particularly music biopics, but this was the honourable exception and succeeds in making the telling of Ian Curtis's short life hugely resonant and deeply touching. Yol said she found the look of the film too dour and oppressive. I pointed out that she'd spent the years in question in London and that Birmingham at least pretty much looked and felt like that. Other good things include the cinemascope, the understated camerawork (it would have been easy to mimic director Anton Cobijn's photographic style that was such a defining part of the look of the early 'eighties NME), the quality of the music (the original plan had been for the band to mime but they actually play while Riley sings and it's wholly convincing), John Cooper Clarke now playing himself 28 years ago, and my favourite bit - Joy Division's manager Rob Gretton (Toby Kebell) offering Crispy Ambulance's singer twenty quid to go on stage to sing vocals to a hostile crowd after a depressed Curtis has been unable to go on.

Channel 4 clips

Channel 4 (Full disclosure: where I work - allegedly) have launched what looks at first testing an excellent clips viewer full of Channel 4 programmes. This is a Brian Potter from Phoneix Nights clip. Where most TV companies fail in putting their videos online is that they make it harder for people to watch them than it would be to go to YouTube etc. Maybe a corner has been turned.

John Humphrys on Facebook

Pretty much every morning I listen to the Today programme while I lie in bed drinking tea. I switched on today in the middle of an item about Facebook. The report was fine - my take is that it's a slow time for news so we're getting lots of Facebook items (they're easy to do) - but the best bit's back in the studio after the report. John Humphrys is handing over to the sports reporter Gary Richardson, and asks him if he's on Facebook -
JH: Are you on Facebook, Gary?
GR: No. Are you?
JH: (The briefest of pauses) What do you think?
That'd be a no then.

William Gibson on BoingBoing Podcast

Regular readers will know that I went to see William Gibson talk about his new novel Spook Country. There's an excellent interview with Gibson on BoingBoing that you can find here.

Atonement: includes mild plot spoiler

Director Joe Wright's adaptation of Ian McEwan's Atonement is beatifully made and probably fully deserves the standing ovation it received in Venice. Having said that while I enjoyed seeing it - it's a much better film than most I'll see this year, an experience that was enhanced by the intelligent Bafta-organised Q&A with the director, Keira Knighley and James McAvoy, the over-riding emotion for me on leaving the cinema is one of detachment. So why is it with some films, when all the film elements seem to be more than in just in their place - the characters, the storyline, the acting, the camera-work are flawless - the whole isn't quite the sum of its parts?

I don't really have an answer, but here for me, the interior monologue and motivation of Briony wasn't sufficient. The first half of the film feels like Cecilia and Robbie's film with Briony an incidental character but the second part makes a radical shift, focusing on her tortured existence living with what she's done. I think the issue for me is that it's her single mistaken action that determines the course of these people's lives and there's just not enough put into this moment.