Cinema 2011

Here's my annual list of things I've seen at the cinema (see also: 2009 and 2010 lists). I still haven't quite managed the one-film-per-week average, but Dr B and I have been giving our Lovefilm list a good battering, so we've seen plenty at home on our lovely new sofa.

My highlights of the year were Never Let Me Go (which could really do with a new poster), Submarine, Drive and Super 8. The three big superhero films of the summer were also pretty damn good  (and I'm now very excited about next year's Spidey/Avengers/Dark Knight line up).

I'm pretty certain Tinker/Tailor/Soldier/Spy was excellent, but I may have to revisit it to make sure as I … so ashamed … fell asleep a little bit.

The cinemas themselves brought their own particular charms. Birmingham's Electric Cinema, with its leather sofas and waiter service, was a nice way to spend Valentine's Day. The Contagion experience was somewhat heightened by watching it in a crowded Leicester Square cinema full of incessant coughing and sniffling, only to then go into a crowded tube. It was a soggy pleasure watching the triumvirate of monster movies (Gremlins, Troll Hunter and Tremors) in Somerset House – made slightly surreal by the twitter-induced mumblings in the crowd about "something kicking off in Tottenham". And of course, York's City Screen continues to be the best cinema in the country.

A couple of disappointments: The Adjustment Bureau was a huge let down, and Hobo with a Shotgun had a great title and one amazing actor, but was mostly terrible. Confessions was a good idea wasted. The Tree of Life had amazing cinematography and one incredible sequence (hat tip to Douglas Trumbull), but was mostly a big old bore. The King's Speech (was that really this year?) was great except for the year's standout abysmal performance by Timothy Spall as Churchill (more like Baron Greenback, according to Charlie Brooker).

Anyway, here's the list:

• The King's Speech

• Peeping Tom

• Top Gun

• Bringing Up Baby

• The Fighter

• Rope

• Never Let Me Go (at Birmingham's lovely Electric Cinema)

• True Grit (ditto)

• The 400 Blows

• The Adjustment Bureau

• Blue Valentine

• Frankenstein (live from the National theatre)

• Submarine

• Limitless (at York's awful, awful Reel Cinema)

• Source Code

• Thor

• Confessions

• Win Win

• X-Men First Class

• Bridesmaids

• The Tree of Life

• Hobo with a Shotgun

• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two

• Captain America: The First Avenger (twice)

• Gremlins (at Somerset House, whilst rioting occurred elsewhere)

• Troll Hunter (ditto)

• Tremors (ditto)

• Super 8

• The Inbetweeners Movie

• Rise of the Planet of the Apes

• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

• Drive (twice)

• Crazy, Stupid, Love

• The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

• Contagion

• Ghostbusters

• Hugo

• Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows

• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

Rendezvous with reading

Even though my standard-issue Ikea bookshelves are bursting at the seams, I got plenty of beautiful books for Christmas. And in 2012, I'm going to read. In 2011, I barely read a thing, which is appalling behaviour.

Not only did Dr B manage to get me a sci-fi classic that I've been meaning to read for years, she  got the edition with the beautiful black and white cover. Quite how I've managed to not read Rendezvous With Rama before is beyond me, but I'm already halfway through it and it's incredible. But there's a problem: Sanda Zahirovic's design is just one in a series of other classic space operas, and being an obsessive completist (or "man"), I'm not going to be able to sleep until I get the entire set now.

Other printly wonders that fell from my stocking: John W Campbell's Who Goes There? (the novella that The Thing is based on), the 2012 TimeOut New York guide (honeymoon, here we come), 101 Things I Learned in Film School (from the same series as the excellent 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School), the 2011 D&AD Annual (which is … grumble alert … significantly cheaper than the almost identical edition available to D&AD members. How does that work?), and JG Ballard's Complete Short Stories, volume two.

I can only assume I was on the "nice" list.

Here I Mo again

It's almost that time of year again: Movember.

For those of you foolishly unaware of this annual festival of upper-lip fluff, it's basically this: throughout November, men across the world grow moustaches and kind, attractive people like yourself give them money for their hairy efforts. The aim is to raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men. It launched in 2003 with a meagre 30 men, but in 2010 almost half a million mo-growers were involved.

Last year I managed to raise £366 (thank you to my lovely sponsors!), plus I received a tweet from Stephen Fry for my efforts. Obviously, I want to beat that this year. To achieve this, I shall, of course, be modelling my tufty growth on that of Jason Schwartzman in The Darjeeling Limited (why wouldn't I?). First though, a couple of weeks of an excessive shaving regime, just to encourage something, anything, to grow.

To sponsor me and to keep up with my progress, visit my MoSpace page.

One month to go

In precisely one month, I will have finally broken the accursed shackles of a regular salary. I will be a freelance, self-employed, gun-for-hire design mercenary. It's been a long time coming, and it's involved quite a bit of panicking, list-making and boring the pants of you nice people with my incessant querying.

The studio (I've settled on calling it that – "office" sounds too much like my present place of incarceration, "atelier" is a bit too fancy for a small room with a rice paper lampshade … Batcave is still an option) is taking shape. The obligatory Ikea Expedit shelves are in place, and the Mac is nicely nestled amongst by the holy trinity of Braun clock, Anglepoise lamp and Muji clipboard. Website redesign sketches are piling up (yes, I'm fiddling with it again). There's still two thousand and one things to do/buy/comprehend, but I'm getting there.

Busy busy busy. Seems like a good time to plan a wedding.

Cardon Philip Webb

If you ever want a great source of beautifully designed book covers, hook up with an academic. The shelves in Dr B's office are bowing under the strain of gorgeous books and journals dating back decades, all with abstract graphic depictions of the complex ideas contained within. I'm slightly ashamed that she has more Pelican books than me. Good ones too. So I'm sure this new series of Oliver Sacks' key texts will soon be making an appearance on those shelves.

Designed by Vintage Books' in-houser Cardon Philip Webb, they're all sorts of pretty. My favourite is Migraine, simply because I'm a sucker for greyscale and yellow plus geometry (don't even get me started on Jon Gray's cover for The New York Trilogy). If Dr B gets them, I'll see if I can merge them into my own collection (shsh, don't tell her – this can be our little secret, okay?). Heck, I might even read one.

So yes, designers: get yourself an academic today. A valuable source of bookly goodness and intellectually intimidating, barely comprehensible conversation.

Found via Co.Design.

Hische

Amongst all the various portfolio recommendations you lot came up with the other day was a link to Jessica Hische's rather splendid site (thanks @kdigilio), which I'd somehow managed to neglect visiting up until now. Visiting the site, the very first thing you see (on a splash page, no less – do we still do those?) is a shot of Hische's beautiful workspace. A shelfy, chairy, printy, lovely workspace. Now that's pretty much what I want my home studio to look like, but I fear I may have to knock through a couple of walls first. Still, something to aim to.

I have already got some of those drawers, so that's a start.

This week, I have mostly been:

This week I have mostly been:

• Entertaining our El Salvadorian friend.

• Attending a City of York council consultation meeting, like a proper grown-up concerned resident type person. Didn't contribute to the debate though. I'm only a Level 1 Nimby.

• Changing the font on my website every single day, and basically coming to the conclusion that Google Web Fonts are abysmal. Odd – it's not like Google to release a poorly-executed, half-arsed product, is it?

• Appreciating, once again, you lovely people and your generosity of wisdom, knowledge and opinion. Lots of great thoughts regarding the fine art of portfoliory.

• Watching the final Harry Potter. By far the best of the bunch, but I stand by the opinion that the films are poorly adapted. They work as motion-illustrations that accompany the books, but for those unfamiliar with the texts, great chunks make no sense whatsoever. And that really is a three-film story, not an eight-film one.

• Having a second look around Potential Wedding Venue A. It's niiiiice.

• Finally making enough commission with my little shop to get my hands on another big Hellboy book. Except I can't access the money yet. It will apparently take Amazon sixty days to transfer an Amazon voucher from my Amazon account into my Amazon account. Ah the magic of the web.

• Investing in something rather exciting (in a sad, egotistical way) that will probably result in me changing the name of this blog. AGAIN. The first of several planned investments for the future self-employed me.

• Contemplating a taxonomy of twitter profile pics. I currently fall under "Head Tilt/Greyscale/Nose".

• Winning a lovely Last Exit to Nowhere t-shirt. Soon, my entire wardrobe will be based on the works of Stephen King, which will please Dr B no end.

• Marvelling at the web design skills of Daniel Howells.

• Getting the hang of OSX Lion, and realising that a trackpad would actually be really useful now. As would a new iMac for that matter.

• Having a lovely drink-and-quiz with some current and old work mates. As much as I moan about office life (see: every fifth tweet), there'll be some people I'll actually miss working with.

• Popping out to get some toilet roll and subsequently buying a sofa from the Habitat sale.

• Watching two burly men make a complete pig's ear out of getting a sofa up our stairs and eventually giving up, because they didn't listen to me when I suggested that maybe it could be taken aprt. It was basically this, but for two hours.

• Finally sitting down on our lovely new sofa, only to find that whilst all that was going on, it had developed sentience and started tweeting.

crtateup

Tate Britain, looking quite lovely

On Friday, Dr B and I popped down to London for a spot of torrential rain, shopping and an ever-so modern Creative Review "tweet-up" at Tate Britain. A "crtateup" if you will. This basically consisted of a couple of hundred creative sorts wandering around a gallery after hours (which felt ever so naughty) with crayons and Sharpies, trying really hard not to give in to temptation.

It was great fun meeting some twitter friends in the flesh for the first time, including Creative Review tweetsperson @neilayres and the @MatDolphin boys (who aren't Scottish, despite what my brain told me), plus making lots of new ones (although I really wish people would put pictures of themselves on twitter – I've subsequently followed a bunch of people and now I can't remember who was who …). To get us all off our iPhones and talking to to each other, they laid on paper and iPad-based games of consequences (you know, where you draw a head and then someone else draws the body and someone else draws another head and then you get confused about which way up the paper should be). I'm particularly proud of this chimeric masterpiece created by @internalmachine, @sweencreates and myself.

Dr B, contemplating Vorticism

We also got to have a look around the Tate's new Vorticists exhibition, which was jolly interesting. At the end of the evening, we were all given goodie bags (containing, amongst other things, a print by yours truly) and sent to the pub, for a crtateupdrinkup. Basically, a bloody good time was had by all. Thanks to Creative Review (who have a much better write-up on their blog) and the Tate for laying on such a smashing evening.

And now I shall impatiently await the announcement of the next tweet-up.

Gray

Let it be known that I am no longer @scandb on that twitter, I am now @gray. With an A. Because that's my name. Yes, it's awesome. No, I shan't be changing the name of this here blog. And no, I did not kill anyone to get it.

That is all.

Latitude 2011

I've just arrived back from a few days on the sunny Suffolk coast with Dr B, having attended Latitude Festival for the third time. With music from all sorts of genres and eras, non-stop comedy and arts, and a friendly family atmosphere all about, it continues to be the best festival experience that this green and pleasant land offers.

One lowlight, courtesy of technology: the festival app. if you're going to bother producing an app for your festival, don't make it so it only works with an Internet connection, especially if your festival takes place in a field where there is no Internet connection. And don't make it so that you have to buy the chunky festival guide – the thing that the app is meant to be an alternative to – before you can access the listings on the app. That's just stupid.

But that little moan aside, here are some of the many many highlights:

• Southwold. Yes, we went beyond camping, beyond glamping, we stayed in a bed and breakfast in what can best be described as Trumpton-on-sea. A lovely, peaceful coastal town, home to Adnams brewery and design agency Spring (whose windows I peered in a couple of times). It also has the weirdest pier, featuring a bunch of home-made arcade machines and a thing on the end. Plus we saw – and ever so briefly spoke to – Louise Wener at a bus stop. Although I didn't realise it was Louise Wener, which Dr B thinks is hilarious.

• There was a bit of an eighties vibe about the place, with surprisingly amazing performances from Adam Ant, They Might Be Giants, OMD, Edwyn Collins and Echo and the Bunnymen (who Janine Butcher apparently isn't a fan of).

• … but there were still plenty of your modern beat combos to enjoy. It turned out I knew more Cribs songs than I thought I did, Kele was happier and clappier than expected, and I'm a little ashamed to say Hurts had passed me by completely until now. Their cover of Kylie's Confide In Me was incredible, and quite possibly better than the original.

• Actually, Hurts was made even better thanks to a big ol' pile of bangers and mash. The food at Latitude really is pretty good.

• Preceding the rather dull Coogan/Brydon/Curtis Q&A, Mikey Please's animated short The Eagleman Stag was a lovely little unexpected discovery. Well worth ten minutes of your time.

• The National, still amazing and effortlessly cool. I could do with getting some pictures of Matt Breninger onto The Gray Suit.

• Stepping away from the crowds of kiddy-winks (and their terrifying object-hurling skills) for a minute, it felt particularly liberating and rebellious to have a play on Modern Toss' periodic table of swearing. My personal favourite: "stink like a piss Ceefax".

• Watching Dr B effortlessly display festival fashion whilst I looked like a drowned rat.

• Amelie composer Yann Tiersen being absolutely nothing like what we expected, but still a bit brilliant. A bit like a Radiohead backing track.

• The Grand Marnier tent. Oh the Grand Marnier tent. Orangey alcoholic salvation from the rain, we love you so.

• Sheep!

• Bright Eyes and Paloma Faith reminding me that some artists are just too much like annoying teenagers for me to tolerate. Apparently the only reason Connor Oberst was even there was because he didn't want to tidy his bedroom and you don't understand him and YOU'RE NOT HIS REAL DAD ANYWAY.

• At the other end of the scale, Seasick Steve and Wanda Jackson had the right idea of growing old disgracefully. His Royal Seasickness introduced every song by explaining how each instrument was made: one was a can of corn and a string nailed to a plank of wood. Brilliant.

• Magic Cons. A weekend of pouring rain and the subsequent mudfest is no match for a pair of Cons and a brisk stroll through some long damp grass, making them immaculate again.

• Dylan Moran and Adam Buxton. Funny boys. Funny, funny boys.

• Seeing Suede for the fifth time in fifteen years (not a bad average) was a great way to ened the weekend. A shorter set than I would've liked (what, no By The Sea? Stay Together? No?), but they will still stunning. Could've done without a random man passing out on my foot, but that's a risk you have to take when standing near lots of human beings I suppose.

Keeping calm

I popped into Clinton Cards on the weekend to get a couple of birthday cards. Aside from the fact that it's the bleakest shop in town – why are card shops so depressing? – I noticed a couple of odd things. First of all, the specificity of greetings cards these days is incredible. Think of any possible connection between two people, and there'll be a card for it. "Happy birthday from son-in-law", "To a fantastic step-sister", "Merry Christmas from Margaret at number 42" – that sort of thing. I even found a "Happy Easter from your cat" card. I didn't even know we were meant to send cards at Easter, now we have to send them to ourselves on behalf of our pets?

Good grief.

Secondly, York appears to be the epicentre for royal wedding tat. There are plates, figurines, teapots, t-shirts, cards (that you can send to the happy couple using Clinton's own royal wedding postbox – it was empty) and, rather bizarrely, there are commemorative "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters. Given that the poster was originally designed for use in the event of a German invasion, it doesn't really seem appropriate for commemorating a wedding, does it? Particularly when the groom's family have gone to great lengths to distance themselves from their German past.

Still, maybe it's just right. Despite its ubiquity, I rather like the fact it's been adopted as a kind of national flag. It's utter Britishness – with the Gill Sans type and the crown emblem and the stiff-upper-lipped sentiment – makes for a nice alternative to the sullied-by-the-right Union Jack. If only people would bother replicating it with some care. Shortly after Clintoning, I spotted "Keep Calm" print in town, set in Arial. Of all things, Arial.

Keep calm Daniel, keep calm.

Update on 2011-04-11 16:02 by Daniel Gray

Having given the original Keep Calm poster a second look – that isn't Gill Sans at all, is it? In my head it was, but those R's are just wrong. There's an old chat on Typophile that basically comes to the conclusion that it's a hand-drawn mishmash of various typefaces. I guess Macs worked differently in 1939.

Pavlus

I've just rediscovered the Fast Company's Co.Design. I unsubscribed from it ages ago … I can't remember why exactly. Anyway, it's rather smashing, isn't it? It's one of those sites I was talking about the other day, in that reading it in-site is far more enjoyable than reading it in-reader.

Whilst jumping around the site, one voice stood out. Within the space of two articles, John Pavlus has become my new favourite writer. Firstly, because of this paragraph in Why David Fincher is the best design thinker in Hollywood:

Calling a director a "designer" is almost a tautology: indeed, anyone making creative choices about what to leave in or leave out, in any medium, is designing. But Fincher's coolly intelligent eye, laserlike attention to detail, and (in his best work) apparent fascination with storytelling as problem-solving, all set him apart from other filmmakers as a true designer-auteur.

… and secondly because his piece on the the filmic pitfalls of the Uncanny Valley (and how Robert Zemeckis is clearly in denial of them) is the best summation of a subject I've been fascinated with for years. He basically takes stuff I'm thinking about and expresses my messy musings with concise, wonderfully written prose. Which saves me a lot of time.

Keep it up, Mr Pavlus.

Source Code, aka Jakes On A Train

Regular readers will know that I have a bit of a thing for Duncan Jones' Moon. I won't go over all that again here, but suffice to say it's my favourite film from the last few years (in summary: it's VERY GOOD, and it has a Muji clipboard in it). So it was with some excitement that Dr B and I went to see Jones' sophomore effort, Source Code, on Friday. Spoilerage ahead.

First things first: anyone expecting Jones to deliver another Moon will be disappointed. I kept my expectations at a realistic level – it's unfair to expect a masterpiece every single time, especially from someone so early in their career – and I didn't come away disappointed. Source Code is a damn good sci-fi action thriller that throws a lot of ideas at you, and most of them stick.

First of all, it's lean, very lean. With so much going on, it manages to avoid any plotbloat. With high concept science fiction, this is a lot harder than you'd imagine … just ask the makers of The Adjustment Bureau. The central conceit is convincing enough without needing to be over-explained. Like Inception and Limitless, it enough to just suggest the military development of the central technology, without spending half an hour showing someone inventing it. It feels really short, but in a good way.

It shares lots of themes with Moon, and explores them in different ways. The whole idea of an expendable character with multiple lives in which to complete a given task is central to both films, and is clearly informed by Jones being a bit of a gamergeek. As gaming and living become ever more fused, this current cycle of science fiction films are going to become ever more prescient.

Jake Gyllenhaal manages the tough central role really well and once again proves he's got oodles of star charisma. He's called upon to constantly juggle denial, anger, acceptance, etc. as he comes to terms with his own death – there are obvious comparisons to be made with Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. At times it's like watching an actor's workshop, showing how to approach the same scene in different ways, but he keeps it entertaining. His golden shininess was a little distracting though – presumably this was filmed around the same time as the forgettable Prince of Persia.

Actually, there was one other thing that distracted me a little, and it once again demonstrates the massive shadow of Christopher Nolan over these sorts of films. The film contains lots of rather lovely aerial shots of Chicago … and all I could think of was Batman. For me, Chicago and Gotham City are now synonymous.

Anyway, a great film. Well worth a visit to flicks, and one that'll certainly reward repeat viewings. Oh, and the casting of Jake's dad: nice.

B

Sorry to suddenly get all squishy and stuff, but I feel it's important to point out that the lovely Dr B is really rather smashing. She's been an absolute legend this week, helping me out with some wretched, Sisyphean paperwork and just generally keeping me cheery. Plus she's willing to accompany me to a lecture about computer games without even demanding some shoes in return. I strongly urge you all to marry her at your earliest convenience.

Port

I'm quite excited by Port magazine, if only for the article How to Manage the Effects of a Military Attack By Daniel Day-Lewis … which I now realise I may have misunderstood …

It's a decent looking men's mag, joining the likes of Man About Town and Esquire (the UK Edition at least) as titles that bother to treat men as grown ups. I have high hopes. Now for the big problem: where to get it. If you want to go out and buy a magazine in York, you pretty much have one option: WH Smiths. And they hate magazines. From what I can gather by the way the stock is flung at the wall with little respect for publisher or customer, they only stock magazines as a means of insulation.

Smaller titles are starting to avoid Smiths altogether. Angharad Lewis recently explained to Andrew at Magtastic Blogsplosion why the back-from-the-dead Grafik won't be appearing on the high street:

The aim is to cut down on wastage and sell to people more directly. We used to spend a lot of money and waste a lot of copies being stocked in WH Smith. They take a massive percentage of the cover price and pulp about half of all copies they stock. So we’re aiming to replace WH Smith and newsagent sales with direct online sales. You can buy a single issue online and have it delivered the next day.

I used to be part of this ridiculous machine myself. When I worked at Game (oh so many years ago), whenever new issues of Dreamcast Apologist Quarterly, Playstation Shut-In and Patrick Moore's Terrifying Floating Head Gazzette arrived, we'd have to tear off the covers of the old ones, post them back to the distributors, and then chuck the rest of the magazine in the bin. Absolutely ludicrous.

I understand why publishers would want to make the most of direct online sales, but it's a shame that I can't browse through physical copies magazines in a friendly environment anywhere. I don't want to have to buy a magazine just to see if it's any good. I need to flick through it first. Feel the weight. Smell the ink.

I think there's a real gap in the market for a shop that sells a considered, curated selection of magazines and, while you're at it (because we're probably about to lose HMV), books, music, comics and movies. A kind of miniature Borders/Fopp/Magma hybrid. Curation is the key. Shops – you will never be able to stock the quantities or range that websites can, so don't pretend that you can. What you can offer is tangibility and quality of selection. Make the most of the haptic. Do that and you keep the high street just that little extra bit more alive.

And that is how you manage the effects of a military attack by Daniel Day-Lewis.

Blade Runner Kick Stopper

I watched Blade Runner again last night. That film really isn't too shabby, is it?

And then this morning I read the news. The terrible, terrible news. Some production company has bought the film, television and ancillary franchise rights to produce sequels and prequels and other "multiplatform concepts", which I think that means games and apps and junk, but maybe also lunchboxes.

Now, I wouldn't turn down the opportunity to own a Blade Runner lunchbox and thermos set, and I'm reliably informed by my geek-in-denial other half that the old point-and-click computer game wasn't bad, but as for sequels and prequels and TV shows and … no no no no. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that. In fact, I imagine that the entire target audience for whatever it is they're intending would also be completely against it.

And that target audience must be pretty big. And they must have a bit of cash in their pockets that they'd be happy to put towards protecting The Greatest Science Fiction Film Mankind Has Made Thus Far, right? So here's a thought: how about setting up a Kickstarter project to raise enough funds to buy the Blade Runner rights and lock them in a vault, never to be messed with again? Would that be feasible? What's the most anyone has ever raised with Kickstarter?

You, at the back, what do you mean you don't know what Kickstarter is? It's 2011 … keep up.

The difference between remakes and remakes

This is just me thinking out loud.

There's been a lot of press coverage surrounding the Coen brothers' new film True Grit, and the word "remake" has been bandied about a lot by the critics and twitics. I'm a little uncomfortable with that word, as it serves as a blanket term for two very different kinds of film-making, and insinuates one with the qualities of the other.

Currently, it refers to both a film adapted from another film and a film adapted from another medium that happens to have been adapted before. The latter is a reinterpretation of a common source, much like a new interpretation of a play. In theatre, new stagings are welcome, but in cinema it's often perceived as a symptom of a dearth of new ideas.

The ambiguity of the word often complicates the reading of a film. For example, some are comparing the 2010 True Grit to the 1969 True Grit, as if that was the source material, as if it were the definitive version. They should be viewed as distinct, and equally valid interpretations of Charles Portis' original text.

So we need a new word. And before anyone suggests it, I should point out that "reimagining" is not valid, as it's become synonymous with "appalling drop in quality of Tim Burton films".