Farewell Don, Peggy, Roger, Pete and Joan. Especially Joan. This week’s Mad Men season four finale means we’ll have to wait the best part of a year for our next wallow in the glamour and drama of 60s Madison Avenue. And that’s tough, because Mad Men is a show that completely absorbs its viewers, the kind of show that makes sitting on the sofa in front of the telly seem like pretty much the best thing in the world…

Read the full story article over at Sabotage Times.

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I have a Facebook account, obviously, but I very rarely use it. (Yes, that’s why you never got a response to that friend request…) And when I heard they were making a Facebook movie I was less than enthused. The story of a privileged geek inventing a website that I don’t really use? No, I thought, no thanks.

But then I found out that Aaron Sorkin had written the script, and that David Fincher had directed it. The West Wing was one of my favourite TV shows, and Fight Club one of my favourite movies. So, it transpired, I had to make a date to see The Social Network. I wasn’t entirely disappointed.

The opening exchange, where soon-to-be Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) is dumped by his girlfriend, is unmistakably Sorkin, with quick-smart dialogue fired back and forth at an almost bewildering rate.

It takes a few minutes to adjust to the frenetic pace of the movie – surprising really, as much of the ‘action’ involves sitting in front of a computer monitor typing in code. But the script and direction keep the movie rattling along, and fears over the potentially dry subject matter are soon dismissed.

My real problem was with the characters. Eisenberg does a great job of making Zuckerberg seem thoroughly unlikeable, and few of the other characters, with the possible exception of Andrew Garfield’s Eduardo Saverin, the co-founder screwed over by Zuckerberg when Facebook takes off, are able to command any sympathy.

The most interesting character is probably Napster founder Sean Parker, ably played by Justin Timberlake. His throwaway comments about destroying the music industry made me wonder whether a Napster movie might have been a more entertaining watch.

You have to admire The Social Network. It’s brilliantly written, and well-directed and acted. But, like Facebook itself, I found it difficult to care about.

Film

Inception is essentially a heist movie that takes place inside someone’s head. Leonardo Di Caprio is an expert in ‘extraction’ – the technique of entering subjects’ minds via dreams and stealing their thoughts. As the movie begins, he’s hired to perform the apparently much trickier task of ‘inception’ – placing an idea into a subject’s mind.

Di Caprio’s character, Cobb, assembles a team of experts and sets about the labyrinthine process of infiltrating a dream within a dream inside the mind of the mark, played by Cillian Murphy. The stakes are high. If Cobb succeeds he will be reunited with his family. If he fails, he and his team face being trapped in some perpetual dreamlike state from which they won’t be able to wake.

What follows is a complex and confusing journey into the puzzle that is the human mind, with Cobb and his team switching back and forward between reality and multiple layers of dreams, allowing director Christopher Nolan to deliver a brainbusting series of plot twists and big ticket visuals.

One of Cobb’s recruits is an architect, played by Ellen Page. She’s charged with designing the dream world in which the inception will take place, and the sequence in which Cobb introduces her to the possibilities of dreams is spectacular, with city streets and architecture bending and morphing around them on an epic scale. Later scenes in which a team member played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt tries to jolt his colleagues awake without the assistance of gravity are also amazing to watch.

I’m a big fan of Nolan, loved Memento, really enjoyed Insomnia, The Prestige and Batman Begins. I really liked The Dark Knight, too, although I thought it was a little bloated. Now, having made a billion dollars from that enterprise, he’s been given free reign to make a blockbuster apparently free from the usual studio constraints. What a rarity.

It’s incredibly refreshing to see a blockbuster that isn’t a sequel, or based on a comic book, or a theme park ride, or a toy range. It’s an original idea (extracted) from the mind of its creator, which in an ideal world would be the case for all movies, but it isn’t, so for this we should be grateful. It’s original and ambitious, and as adeptly executed as you’d expect from Nolan.

And, crucially, it makes you think. Granted, not all cinemagoers want to engage their brain when sat in front of the big screen, but this cinemagoer definitely does. Surely all movies should at least demand that the audience pays attention? Inception certainly does that, and remains in the thoughts long after the credits have rolled.

I do have a few quibbles, however. Although the dream worlds were purposely designed to facilitate the inception, they weren’t as strange as I’d have liked them to be. In dreams, people and places are never quite as you remember them. They’re odd, sometimes literally nightmarish, and I’d have liked to have seen that explored a little more. Certainly, the snow-bound world in which the climatic shoot-out takes place seemed very dull when compared to the possibilities suggested by the movie’s initial ventures into dreams. As for the shoot-outs, well it’s disappointing that a movie that promises so much ends with a fairly typical noisy blockbuster bullet fest.

So I’m not sure Inception is quite as good as some critics are claiming. Only repeat viewings will reveal whether it matches Memento. (And, for the record, I don’t think Inception is as satisfying a moviegoing experience as Toy Story 3, also out this week.) But it’s an exciting, thought-provoking, worthwhile picture that goes a long way to renewing your faith in the summer blockbuster. More films like this, please.

Toy Story 3 review: Has Pixar cracked the 3D conundrum?
Pretty Bird DVD review: Pretty Bad

Film

Pretty Bird is the rocketbelt caper movie definitely not based on my Rocketbelt Caper book. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2008, received some pretty bad reviews, failed to find a distributor, and eventually got a straight-to-DVD release in the US a couple of weeks ago. A copy finally landed on my doormat this week. Worth waiting for? Absolutely not.

I should emphasise from the start that I had no involvement or contact with anyone involved in the production of Pretty Bird, so I when I say it’s one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen I’m doing so from a (thankfully) detached position.

Pretty Bird is pretty bad. Perhaps not M Night Shyamalan bad, but still pretty woeful. But my overriding feeling after watching it was one of bafflement. Pretty Bird is just so odd, so half-hearted, so dull that it’s hard to figure out what exactly it’s trying to achieve.

The meandering first hour sees quirky entrepreneur Curt (Billy Crudup) recruit rocket propulsion expert and super-grouch Rick (Paul Giamatti and moustache) and chequebook-happy bed salesman Kenny (David Hornsby) for an unspecified scheme that is eventually revealed to involve building a rocketbelt.

What’s so special about this rocketbelt, the device around which the whole movie and any conflict within it hinges? Why are these guys so driven to build it, to fly it, to fight over it? We never find out. They build the thing without much effort, Curt and Rick fall out over nothing much, Kenny’s money runs out, and the rocketbelt disappears. And that’s pretty much it. It’s all deeply unsatisfying.

Although the leads do perfectly fine jobs, they’ve got very little to work with. The script is bland, the characters are underdeveloped, and the little conflict that exists is introduced too late. It’s pitched as a comedy, but there’s nothing remotely funny in it. It’s a really difficult movie to care about.

I was left wondering whether production problems played any part in Pretty Bird’s downfall. The best scene, Curt’s (very short) meeting with a potential investor played by Garret Dillahunt, almost seems like it’s been cut and pasted from another movie. And Curt’s romantic fling with one of Kenny’s employees, played by Kristen Wiig, shapes up interestingly, only for both the subplot and Wiig to be immediately forgotten about.

The movie labels itself as a work of fiction inspired by real events, and certainly the characters of Curt, Rick and Kenny are based on the real-life Brad, Larry and Joe. And there’s a rocketbelt in it. But comparisons with the true story pretty much end there.

I’ve no problem with the film makers playing loose with the facts. The real rocketbelt caper story is too complicated, too sprawling, maybe even too far-fetched, to be transferred to the screen without a thorough condensation of characters and events. But if you’re going to leave things out, you don’t leave out the most interesting bits, surely?

Pretty Bird makes dull work of unique and fascinating true story. It feels like a huge opportunity missed, and that’s a shame. I’m certain there’s a still great rocketbelt caper movie out there. It’s just that no one has made it yet.

Read more about The Rocketbelt Caper.

Film