I saw the Avatar: An IMAX 3D Experience presentation at the brand new Odeon Metrocentre cinema in Gateshead, the only digital IMAX theatre outside of London, and opened in the week of the movie’s release. Screenings were fully-booked days in advance, and we struggled to get tickets for a couple of weeks.

When we did eventually get to see it, we were sat at the front right corner – not great seats for the £12.50 ticket price. The screening was preceded by a brief introduction from a man in a suit who reminded us to return our hefty 3D specs for sterilisation after the movie, and warned us that the immersive nature of the experience might cause illness. But there was no warning of physical injury. Looking up and left at the huge screen for 162 minutes required a painful twisting of the neck and back that left me in pain for a few days afterwards. Injured by a 3D movie! Pah!

The 3D effect certainly works, although the final image appears to be made up of several flat layers, almost like a paper diorama, and so is not particularly realistic. The end result is a little like leafing through a child’s pop-up book. Amusing, and worth a look, but hardly the holy grail of cinema. It seems to me a technology that will be better suited to video games rather than movies. And the sum effect of Avatar is a bit like watching someone play a video game for the best part of three hours.

The movie itself – well, it’s Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure on a bigger budget, isn’t it? To be fair to Cameron, he has obviously tried hard to ensure that the 3D doesn’t get in the way of the story. For example, there are noticeably few arrows and pointy sticks flying out of the screen. But the overall experience still detracts from the movie’s content. Moviegoers around me were constantly removing their glasses to see how the effect worked, and looking around the cinema to see how it was affecting others. Hardly the immersive experience Cameron was trying to create.

And that’s the problem with 3D. Unlike sound and colour, 3D doesn’t represent an advancement in cinema technology. In many ways it’s a backward step. Rather than immerse the cinemagoer in the movie, 3D is an unwelcome distraction. Using 3D for the odd novelty slasher movie is fine, but surely no one want to see it become the standard for every blockbuster movie?

Unfortunately, the amount of money invested in 3D suggests that we’re going to be seeing a lot more of it. Better get used to those specs.

So far Voddler has attracted at least £10 million of investment, and has signed deals with Disney and Paramount. It’s been labelled as a Spotify for movies, but can it live up to the hype?

Voddler beta is currently only (officially) available by invitation in Sweden, but I’ve had the opportunity to try it here in the UK. (It’s possible to register for an invitation at www.voddler.com, and on receipt sign up using a Swedish zip code – thanks Andy.)

The initial impressions of the Voddler client are poor. Navigation is via the keyboard arrow keys, with no mouse or QWERTY use, and username and password entry is incredibly laborious. Setting up the screen resolution size is a similarly annoying process. It seems to have been optimised for wide screens – great for TVs, but not so good when viewing on most computer monitors.

Once logged in, you’re presented with a very underwhelming menu screen – essentially a load of movie poster thumbnails that can be sorted into recommended, free, premium and genre categories. Highlighting a thumbnail brings up (very) brief details, such as director, runtime, and year of release. Again, navigation is annoyingly slow. But what’s available?

The free-to-view movies include the likes of Chinatown, Crash, Chopper, Bridge To Terabithia, The Italian Job, Lucky Number Slevin, and Saws I-IV. So there’s plenty to keep you occupied, although perhaps nothing to really excite.

Premium movies, costing around 24 to 37 Swedish Krona (£2 to £3.25) each, include titles such as Angels and Demons, The Proposal, The Wrestler, Watchmen, Hanna Montana, and Saw V.

The TV show category is home to a forgettable selection of cheap documentaries of the type that play on unwatched Sky channels.

The actual viewing experience is more impressive. After a brief period of buffering, your chosen movie is preceded by a couple of (Swedish) ads, and a trailer. Movie playback is very good, certainly comparable with the BBC iPlayer, although again the clunky controls let Voddler down.

Overall, Voddler seems to have the under-the-hood technology in place, but needs to work on its user interface. One of the real joys of Spotify was how instantly and easily it worked. Voddler, in contrast, is slow and difficult to use. The movie selection isn’t great, but this will no doubt expand as it moves out of beta and into other territories.

For the time being there is enough here to make it worth installing on your laptop for long train journeys, but, unlike Spotify, Voddler is far from essential.

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In music, the big news of 2009 was the UK launch of Spotify, the streaming music service that has already changed the way millions of us listen to music, just as the iPod did at the beginning of the decade. Most of the music picks below are linked to Spotify for your listening pleasure. (The other links point to Amazon.co.uk.)

In terms of actual music, 2009 wasn’t a vintage year. There were enjoyable albums by A Camp, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Noah and the Whale, but the only couple I really had on repeat play were Sigh No More by Mumford and Sons and the odd but fantastic indie-prog opera that was The Hazards of Love by The Decemberists.

Great movies were equally difficult to find in 2009. I wasn’t as blown away as the Oscar voters by Slumdog “Milliner”. Much better were Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, The Hangover, Swedish kiddie-vampire flick Let The Right One In, and JJ Abrams’ surprisingly entertaining re-imagining of Star Trek.

No 2009 movie was as good as the best of 2009’s TV. Season two of Mad Men was a joy, with Don Draper developing into one of TV’s most intriguing characters. The Thick of It was the best British offering, with Peter Capaldi’s Malcolm Tucker spinning fantastically out of control. And any Seinfeld fan will have loved the reunion storyline that ran through the hilarious final(?) season of Curb Your Enthusiam.

Books? Maybe it was weariness in my first year away from book publishing, but I’m not sure I found a single 5-star book in 2009.

But what about the noughties as a whole? It was a great decade for music, and I’m struggling to whittle my selection of faves down to less than ten. So I’m going for Gold by Ryan Adams, Josh Rouse’s Nashville, The Trials of Van Occupanther by Midlake, Glory Hope Mountain by The Acorn, O by Damien Rice, Come On Feel The Illinoise by Sufjan Stevens, The Crane Wife by The Decemberists, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco, Funeral by Arcade Fire, and Give Up by The Postal Service. (Annoyingly, my two top picks aren’t available on Spotify, so the service is by no means perfect.)

The best movies of the noughties? They’ve got to include The Lives of Others, The Royal Tennenbaums, Donnie Darko, and Daniel Day Lewis in Paul Thomas Anderson’s incredible There Will Be Blood.

The noughties was quite possibly the decade in which TV came of age, thanks in no small part to HBO. The Sopranos ran through until 2007, and the intelligent, multi-layered mob drama, with every episode better than most movies, probably deserves to be called the greatest TV show ever made. Perhaps only David Simon’s intricate, addictive onscreen novel The Wire can challenge for that accolade. HBO also brought us Curb Your Enthusiam, Six Feet Under, Deadwood and Band of Brothers, all brilliant in different ways. Elsewhere in US TV, the reimagining of Battlestar Galactica was approximately one zillion times better than any reimagining of a really quite rubbish 70s sci-fi soap had any right to be. From US network TV, Arrested Development was a brilliant and much-missed sitcom, and The Shield was a brutally gripping cop drama that literally pulled no punches.

As for books, my favourites of the decade include Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, The Damned United by David Peace, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers meddled brilliantly with the formula of how books are supposed to be written. And The Road by Cormac McCarthy was quite possibly the best book I’ve ever read.

So that was the noughties. What will the next decade bring? Will the album format survive? Will the CD become obsolete? Will Voddler do for movies what Spotify did for music? Will electronic books take off?

As for that catchy name for the years 2010 to 2019, anyone for “tennies”?

Liam Neeson is a former Government “preventer”, which basically means he can do karate and shoot some guns. But he has given that up to be closer to his estranged daughter, who is meant to be 17 but inexplicably acts like she’s 12, skipping around in pigtails, yelling “Daddy!” and cuddling ponies. Then she does what all 17-year-old girls dream of – she heads off with an equally gormless friend to Europe to follow hip young rock cobblers U2 on tour. Unluckily, within minutes of arriving in an apparently lawless backwater known as Paris, France, the two girls are kidnapped by a people trafficking gang, chained to a mucky bed and shot full of heroin. Luckily, Liam knows a man who can work computers, and soon he has the name of the gang boss, and a private flight to Paris. There he crashes cars, blows up buildings, shoots a policeman’s innocent wife, and murders 40 or 50 henchmen. He rescues another kidnapped girl, leaves her in a grubby hotel connected to a drip and conveniently forgets about her. His daughter’s thick mate suffers a worse fate – Liam finds her dead in a pile of sick. Cue 15 seconds of sad eyes, then back to the action. Eventually, he tracks down his daughter, in chains and a bikini, up to the eyeballs in heroin, and sold to a big fat sheik. Liam shoots more henchman, then shoots the sheik, and whisks his daughter back home. Thankfully, despite being brutally kidnapped, hooked on heroin, presumably repeatedly raped, and experiencing the horrible death of her best friend, she appears to have made a complete recovery in time for an airport reunion with her mother (“Mommy!”) and loaded stepfather. Everyone is happy. (Except, presumably, for the dead mate’s parents.) Probably the best brainless action flick available on DVD from Asda for £3 since Crank.

3/5

Watching Anvil! The Story of Anvil, the feature documentary about a hapless Canadian heavy metal band, at the weekend I couldn’t help but be reminded of one of my all-time favourite documentaries – American Movie.

Anvil! catches up with the titular rockers some 25 years after they flirted with stardom. We see footage from 1984 of the band playing packed stadiums alongside the likes of Whitesnake and Bon Jovi. Talking heads like Lars Ulrich, Slash and Lemmy explain how influential Anvil were, and how they were expected to be huge stars. “These guys were gonna turn the music industry upside down,” says Ulrich. But that never quite happened.

Cut to the present, and frontman Steve “Lips” Kudlow”, now in his 50s, delivers school meal for a living. But by night he and best mate and drummer Robb Reiner are still rocking out as Anvil – albeit in front of modest crowds in local bars. The chance to embark on a European tour reignites their dream. Can Anvil make a comeback?

Cue scenes of the band travelling around the arse end of Europe in a Winnebago, playing in front of a handful of people in basement clubs, arguing with venues over payment, missing trains, falling out with each other, and generally having their dream thoroughly stamped on.

It’s obviously full of Spinal Tap-esque moments and lines, but it’s more than just a freak show. Both Lips and Robb are eccentric characters, but they also come across as very likeable. “I started out with Robb when we were 14 years old, and we said we’re gonna do it til we’re old men,” says Lips. “And we really meant that.”

What emerges is something of a “bromance”, to use a current Hollywood buzzword. Director Sacha Gervasi was an Anvil fan as a teenager, and here he offers an affectionate, and often very funny, account of two friends who just don’t know when to stop the rock.

Chris Smith’s American Movie, released in 1999, follows independent filmmaker Mark Borchardt as he attempt to make his great American movie Northwestern. Mark, lanky and lank-haired, lives about one step above a trailer park in a run-down part of Milwaukee, and is utterly obsessed with movies.

Before he can get started on Northwestern he needs to complete the horror movie Coven, which he insists rhymes with “woven”. Trouble is he has no money, a dysfunctional family, oddball friends, and a host of personal demons.

Marks’ best friend is Mike Schank, an affable drug casualty (he happily tells the story of a brain-damaging overdose) with a permanent grin and the loyalty of a puppy dog. “We used to do a lot of partying together, but I don’t party anymore,” explains Mike.

The friendship between Mark and Mike is central to the movie – like Anvil! it’s a “bromance”. Throw into the mix Mark’s decrepit but loveable Uncle Bill, with his bizarre improvised poems to his dead wife, and you have a trio of unforgettable characters.

American Movie is fascinating, hilarious, touching and genuinely uplifting, all soundtracked by Mike Schank’s gentle acoustic guitar rendition of Mr Bojangles. Probably as good a feature documentary as you’ll ever see.

Anvil! 7/10
American Movie 10/10

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First up, Victor Keegan on music downloads, explaining why the music industry’s insistence that ISPs stop the flow of illegal downloads is boneheaded and unworkable.

‘The music industry simply won’t give up blaming everyone but itself for the sorry state it claims to be in,’ he writes. ‘If ISPs are responsible for pirate music flowing past them, then ditto for pornography and everything else. Great idea: I can sue my service provider whenever a virus gets onto my PC. How dare they let it through!’

Keegan points out that the companies offering solutions for the furture of music – Apple with iTunes, Nokia with Comes with Music, Spotify, Last.fm etc – are coming from outside of the music industry, which is presumably too busy getting all litigious about teenagers illegally downloading the odd track they can’t yet afford to pay for.

It’s easy to see the future of music moving away from the outdated big record companies, with artists linking up directly with the likes of iTunes and Spotify, leaving Simon Cowell and co wondering whatever happened to the 1980s.

Next, Mark Harris on movies, and the RealNetworks vs Hollywood trial. Seven movie studios are suing Real over its RealDVD software, which allows users to make digital copies of their DVDs – with copy protection left intact, and without the ability to burn extra discs.

Harris quotes Real vice-president Bill Way: ‘Here’s the interesting thing. They have not brought a copyright infringement case against us. They have not brought the classic Universal v Sony VCR case, I presume because they knew they would lose it.’ As Harris points out, Sony is now one of the studios suing Real.

Is ripping a DVD to a PC any different from ripping a CD to an iPod? If you pay £16 for a DVD or £11 for a CD you should be entitled to watch or listen to it in any way you choose. Making a copy for personal use cannot be piracy, otherwise 90 percent of the population must be criminals. How about the studios focus their efforts on developing alternative delivery methods (ad-supported streaming movies, perhaps)?

Harris says DVD sales are declining by 20 percent a year in the US. This has little to do with piracy. If Hollywood really wants to save its skin it should probably stop churning out so many crappy movies.

The movie takes its basic premise and title from Enzo Castellari’s 1978 movie Inglorious Bastards, but doesn’t borrow from that movie’s original soundtrack. Instead, Tarantino’s spellcheck-infuriating movie takes a lot of Morricone, mixes with a dash of Bernstein, and throws in a few oddball ingredients such as Georgio Moroder and David Bowie’s Cat People. Those looking for Inglourious Basterds’s break-out track – its Little Green Bag or Misirlou – might look at Billy Preston’s Slaughter or The Devil’s Rumble by Davie Allen and The Arrows.

Here’s the full soundtrack listing, taken from the Cannes press notes and tidied up a little to remove a couple of inconsistencies. I’ve provided iTunes and Spotify links where available. Happy listening…

Inglourious Basterds Soundtrack Listing:

The Green Leaves of Summer
(From The Alamo)
Dimitri Tiomkin

On Spotify

Dopo La Condanna (After The Verdict)
(From The Big Gundown AKA La Resa Dei Conti)
Ennio Morricone

L’incontro Con La Figlia
(From The Return of Ringo AKA Il Ritorno Di Ringo, also used in The Secret of The Sahara AKA Il Segreto Del Sahara)
Ennio Morricone
Available on this CD

White Lightning
(From White Lightning, also used in Kill Bill Vol. 1)
Charles Bernstein
RZA version available on Kill Bill CD

Il Mercenario (Ripresa)
(From The Mercenary AKA Il Mercenario)
Ennio Morricone

Slaughter
(From Slaughter)
Billy Preston
On Spotify

Algeri: 1 November 1954
(From The Battle of Algiers)
Ennio Morricone, Gillo Pontecorvo
On Spotify

La Resa (The Surrender)
(From The Big Gundown AKA La Resa Dei Conti)
Ennio Morricone

Un Dollaro Bucato
(From One Silver Dollar AKA Un Dollaro Bucato)
Gianni Ferrio

Bath Attack
(From Entity)
Charles Bernstein
No download or CD, but on this DVD

Davon Geht Die Welt Nicht Unter
Zarah Leander

On Spotify

The Man With The Big Sombrero
The Michael Andrew Orchestra
Specially recorded, see here

Ich Wollt, Ich War Ein Huhn
Lilian Harvey, Willy Fritsch and Paul Kemp

On Spotify

Cat People (Putting Out The Fire)
(From Cat People)
David Bowie and Giorgio Moroder

On Spotify

Mistico e Severo (Mystic and Severe)
(From Death Rides A Horse)
Ennio Morricone

The Devil’s Rumble
(From Devil’s Angels)
Davie Allen and The Arrows
On this CD

Zulus
(From Zulu Dawn)
Elmer Bernstein
On this CD

Un Amico
(From Revolver)
Ennio Morricone

Tiger Tank
(From Kelly’s Heroes)
Lalo Schifrin
On this CD

Rabbia e Tarantella
(From Allonsanfan)
Ennio Morricone
On this CD

Notes: The Cannes press notes, in French, list After The Verdict as The Verdict, Zulus as What I Say Zulus, and Rabbia e Tarantella as Eastern Condors Rabbia e Tarantella. In the latter two cases, my guess is that this is a printing error, and there are possibly two extra tracks on the soundtrack, What I Say and Eastern Condors, artists unknown. What I’d Say has been recorded by the likes of Maceo Parker and Ray Charles. Eastern Condors is a Hong Kong spaghetti western, cited by Tarantino as an influence. Finally, there are several tracks on the soundtrack of The Big Gundown AKA La Resa Dei Conti that begin with the title ‘La Resa…’, including this one on Spotify.

[UPDATE: The Inglourious Basterds soundtrack CD is now available from Amazon. The tracklisting is:
1. Green Leaves of Summer - Nick Perito
2. Verdict (Dopo la Condanna) - Ennio Morricone
3. White Lightning (Main Title) [from White Lightning] – Charles Bernstein
4. Slaughter – Billy Preston
5. Surrender (La Resa) – Ennio Morricone
6. One Silver Dollar (Un Dollaro Bucato) – The Film Studio Orchestra
7. Davon Geht Die Welt Nicht Unter [From Die Grosse Liebe] – Zarah Leander
8. Man with the Big Sombrero – Samantha Shelton
9. Ich Wollt Ich Waer Ein Huhn – Willy Fritsch, Lilian Harvey
10. Main Theme from Dark of the Sun – Jacques Loussier
11. Cat People (Putting out the Fire) – David Bowie
12. Tiger Tank – Lalo Schifrin
13. Amico – Ennio Morricone
14. Rabbia E Tarantella – Ennio Morricone
15. Mystic and Severe – Ennio Morricone
16. Devil’s Rumble – The Arrows
17. What I’d Say Zulus – Elmer Bernstein
18. Amico – Ennio Morricone
19. Tiger Tank – Lalo Schifrin
20. Bastero Gondors Rabhia E Tarantella – Ennio Morricone]

Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson (Mickey Rourke) is a washed-up pro wrestler, popping pills and bandaging limbs in an effort to keep his broken body in the ring and pay his rent. His estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) hates him, and the only person he has any connection with is disillusioned lapdancer Cassidy (Marisa Tomei).

Rourke, with his puffy, reconstructed face and battered body, looks a bit like a plastic He-Man action figure that’s been left on top of a radiator all winter (or, alternatively, Meg Ryan on steroids). He’s essentially playing himself here, but that shouldn’t distract from what is a really gutsy and compelling performance (Jack Nicholson has played himself for 40-odd years, and won three Oscars in the process). Both Rourke and Tomei are deservedly BAFTA and Oscar nominated.

Tomei is a consistently watchable actor who previously won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar a full 16 years ago for My Cousin Vinny. She offers a brave and heartfelt turn as the lapdancer who, like The Ram, knows she is too old for her chosen career. Like Rourke, she puts everything out there on the screen. Surprising film fact: Marisa Tomei is 45 years old.

But the most interesting thing about The Wrestler is that it manages to avoid ‘doing a Rocky’. There is nothing too sentimental or overblown about it, and the ending feels pitch-perfect. It’s a great little movie, sympathetically told by screenwriter Robert D Siegel and director Darren Aronofsky, and driven by two huge performances.

8/10

The Mist: DVD Review

Despite containing only half as much moisture density as John Carpenter’s The Fog, this Frank Darabont/Stephen King affair is fun CGI-monster B-movie, with Thomas Jane leading a group of smalltown folk trapped in a supermarket by a plague of supernatural beasties. It’s pretty standard fare – until the last few minutes, because The Mist has one of the darkest and most memorable endings you’ll ever see in a mainstream Hollywood movie, changed by Darabont from King’s original novella ending, and is worth seeing for that alone.

7/10

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A former Mumbai street kid takes part in India’s version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and, despite having no education, goes on an incredible winning streak. The show’s host, and the police, reckon he’s cheating, but in fact it turns out that each answer has played a part in young Jamal’s eventful life. How very convenient.

The first thing to say is that Slumdog Millionaire looks great. It’s stylishly shot by directors Danny Boyle and (his overlooked co-director) Loveleen Tandan, and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, and Mumbai makes a thrilling and colourful setting. But is it worthy of the blanket of plaudits it’s currently receiving? I’m not so sure.

The central concept of events in Jamal’s life matching, chronologically, the quiz show questions, is a contrivance perhaps more suited to a knockabout comedy than a sometimes gritty (and sometimes brutal) drama. There are also fundamental holes in the plot – for a start, it relies on the conceit that the Millionaire TV show is transmitted live, which is obviously not the case.

So why so many five-star reviews and award nominations? I dunno. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a decent film. But it’s by no means a great film. (I’m not sure it’s as good as Boyle’s previous movie about a kid magically coming into money, Millions.) It’s entertaining and rattles along a a fair old pace, but if Slumdog Millionaire sweeps up during the forthcoming awards season that doesn’t bode too well for the rest of this year’s offerings.

6/10

If you thought M Night Shyamalan couldn’t make a movie worse than Lady in the Water, or if you thought Mark Wahlberg couldn’t turn in a more risible performance than he did in Rockstar, then I’m here to tell you that you were plum wrong.

The Happening is a pompous, idiotic waste of celluloid that falls most definitely into the category: so bad it’s just plain bad. There has been a ‘Happening’, by which Shyamalan means plants are releasing airborne toxins that make people commit mass suicide. ‘Plants can talk to each other,’ someone with a beard explains. ‘Trees talk to bushes, bushes talk to grass.’ Imagine Day of the Triffids written by a five-year-old.

Wahlberg plays a science teacher (you can tell he’s a science teacher because he wears a tank top sweater), and, boy, is he bad? To be fair, he is woefully miscast, and is forced to deliver dialogue that would make George Lucas blush, but Wahlberg really is pushing hard for the much-contested accolade of Hollywood’s worst leading man. John Leguizamo and Zooey Deschanel (ruining the cred her recent indie-pop record afforded) also go down with this sinking ship. As for Shyamalan, who wrote and directed this gunk, his output has been in total freefall ever since the moment in Signs when the rubbish alien turned up.

The most annoying thing about The Happening is that Shyamalan clearly sees it as some sort of eco parable about us pesky humans getting our comeuppance for treating nature so horribly. It is such a cack-handed effort at persuading us to change our ways that it has precisely the opposite effect. So rev those engines, spray those aerosols, chuck your recyclables into a landfill. If we have to destroy the planet to stop M Night Shyamalan from making another rotten movie then that, good people of Earth, seems a very small price to pay.

1/10
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