Leopard

I've decided (with some encouragement) that I don't post often enough, so I've decided to write something on here as often as I can. In the past, I've posted random things on here just to keep the old fingers clacking away at the keyboard, and although that's exactly what I'm doing now, this time I'm not going to tell myself it was a pointless blog entry and not post anything again for ages.

So anyway, the new version of Mac OS X came out recently; it's called Leopard. Incidentally, if Apple decide to carry on releasing new versions of Mac OS X before they release OS XI, I can't help wondering what they're going to do when they run out of big cats. Anyway, I've been playing with Leopard at work. At first I thought it was great; it solved so many of the problems in Tiger for Active Directory (Microsoft's enterprise network management tool) domain administrators. So many things seemed to work straight away, and I didn't have any problems upgrading over the top of our existing Tiger installation. I installed it on our IT department's test Mac, a low spec Mac mini, and seeing how wonderful it was, immediately recommended the upgrade for some of our other Mac users. Only once I installed it on machines being used by people day to day for their work did the problems start to show themselves!

The users started complaining about extremely long log in times, sometimes of over three minutes, and also of extremely slow reaction times from the network. After trawling through the Apple forums, I found out why this was. Apple have a little tool called Bonjour which automatically sets up any attached devices for you. This includes printers, so is obviously quite useful for our users who want to connect to all the network attached printers. The problem is, Bonjour is designed to work in an Open Directory (Apple's AD equivalent) environment being administered by an XServe. As such, the .local suffix, used by probably millions of AD administrators over the world, is hard-wired into Bonjour, so if your domain uses it, your Mac will be trying to do all your network authentication through Bonjour rather than through the Directory Utility.

Hopefully Apple will release a patch that will fix this, but in the meantime, the workaraound is to rename your domain and use a different suffix. This is obviously not a viable solution for network administrators running a predominantly Windows environment with just a handful of Macs, so the only other solution is to disable Bonjour. This is also not a problem if none of your devices depend on it, and I think at this early stage in Leopard's life, this is a fairly safe assumption to make.

So, anyone out there having this problem, download iservebox and use it to disable Bonjour. This will solve your problem until Apple find a more permanent solution.

LexCorp SBOX

My modded XBOX so far. Not quite finished, still a WIP. Want to make some changes to the colour scheme. I'll post pics of the finished product when its done. Also want to hack the flubber to come up with the Superman logo at startup.

Changing an iBook Hard Drive

Some time ago, a little over a year maybe, my mother's G3 iBook died on her. She was obviously very upset, as she pretty much ran her entire business on it. Anyway, she went to see a Mac technician who basically told her it had had its day, and after some soul searching she bought herself a new G4 iBook.

Not wanting to see a laptop go to waste, I asked her if I could have the old one. I fired it up, and it seemed to be going OK, until it got into Mac OS 9, and then would just hang. I thought about it, and decided the hard drive needed changing. This was not an easy process, and in fact took months to finish!

What you Have to Do

Well, the first step is physically changing the drive. This is a very, very lengthy and complicated process. I'm no going to go into it here, as I have seen that there are a number of very good websites around with detailed instructions and lovely photographs showing you how to do this. One word of warning (which you will hear repeated anywhere else you look on the subject), this process requires a lot of patience. Clearly, Apple don't want you opening up their computers.

So anyway, what no one else on the Web seems to tell you, is how to get the thing working once you actually have it in your iBook! This is why the process took months for me; I changed the drive, but was not able to use the new one.

When I fired it up, the Mac OS X installer disc would start up, and the installation process would start, but it wouldn't show any hard drives when it came time to choose where to install the disc. This was very frustrating; I knew the drive worked, which left three possibilities. One, I had not connected it properly. I was dreading this one, as it meant opening up the iBook again! Two, the drive was incompatible, or three, the iBook was not sufficient for Mac OS X (I'm not a Mac user, so I wasn't aware of how ridiculous an assumption this is, plus it shouldn't really affect the computer's ability to at least detect the drive).

So eventually, after months of it sitting there, getting occasional thoughts and ideas on how to get the bloody thing working, I tracked down a copy of OS 9. This changed everything. When you boot from the OS 9 disc, rather than boot to an installer, it actually boots a copy of the OS from the disc, and you run the installer from the desktop. I tried this, and same problem as before; no hard drive. But here's what I eventually found.

After some poking around, I came across something called System Profiler. This gives you a hardware list of what is installed on your computer. And to my joy, lo and behold, listed there in the list was my newly installed hard drive. So, I knew it worked, and that the iBook could see it. So why was it not being listed when I ran the OS installers? Well, next to where it listed the drive, were the words 'No Mounted Volumes'. So there was the problem. Although this may seem something Mac users are familiar with, or definitely Unix users (as Mac OS is in fact built on Unix), for a Windows user this might seem unfamiliar. This kind of stuff is hidden away. In older versions, you needed to use the fdisk utility, and there is now the Drive Manager, but anyway, I digress. Back to Mac. So knowing now that the problem was that there were no volumes mounted on the drive, I set about Googling (yes, its a new verb!) how to mount a volume on a drive. Again, no joy. No one out there seems to want to tell you how to do it. And I think this is because its so simple, and so obvious, that people familiar with the environment just assume that users know how to do it. But, as I said, being a Windows user, all this was new to me. So, the short version, of how to get your new hard drive working in your iBook (or other Apple computer) is as follows:

1. Install the drive physically
2. Boot from an OS 9 disc
3. Go to System Profiler to make sure your drive has been recognised by the machine
4. Go to Applications/Utilities and run Drive Setup
5. From here, you can initialise a volume on your drive
6. Install your OS

And voila! I now have a working iBook.

NB One more point for Windows users. You can't just install OS X (well you can but it's not advisable). A lot of stuff needs OS 9 installed to run, so you actually need to install both. Whenever something that requires 'Classic' mode (as its referred to) runs, it fires up a VM running OS 9 and runs your program from in there. I guess that's another indicator of the brilliant simplicity of Apple's OS environment.

Books

I love to read. I just wanted to share that. :)

Why the Pressure?

My ex called me today. It's funny, because she calls me every now and then, and she always wants to make a big thing about how we're still friends, and have to make an effort to see each other, and keep in touch and so on and so forth. The thing is, she can never just call and say hi. She always has to slip in all this stuff about her great new social life, professional life, love life. I sometimes think that she's trying to make me jealous. I mean, she's not stupid, she knows I don't want to hear any of that, about how great she's doing without me, how happy she is, and certainly not about the new man in her life. But the thing is, she's not trying to make me jealous. She's trying to get one over on me. That's weird, isn't it? That kind of macho rivalry from an ex-girlfriend! It's good though, because as much as she's burying herself in all this stuff, it's all a front to hide the fact from herself that she still hasn't actually faced up to any of her problems. She's still a scared little girl trying to make her way through the world with bluff and bluster. And any time anyone gets close enough to start to get a peak through that exterior at the broken and scarred thing that cowers inside, she jumps ship and builds a new false life elsewhere.

So no, she's not doing great at all. She's just running, only this time in another direction. Eventually she'll run out of track in that direction, and have to turn again. Me, I'm facing up to the pain. And yeah, even after all this time it still hurts. But at least I've got my eyes open, and I know that in spite of how much it hurts, and how much I'd love to just sit here and feel sorry for myself and cry until the world swallows me, or do what she's doing, and build up a group of superficial friends and a superficial life, I know that in spite of all that, I'm still getting my shit together and fighting my way through. I'm keeping my eye on the prize, and taking the steps, as hard as they may be, toward where I want to be.

And I'm proud of that.

The New Job

It's far too late and I'm far yoo tired to go into any details now, but I started my new job yesterday, and it's going great so far! I'm glad I chose this one in the end, the people are really nice, and although I haven't really got stuck into the work properly yet, I can see already its going to be much better than it would have been in the other one.

Anyhoo, off to bed now, will write more when I'm less tired! :D

Thoughts today

I don't really update my blog very often, but I guess that's because when I started it I had quite a lot to say very often, whereas now I don't, and also I don't think anyone really reads it anyway. Nonetheless, as I don't keep a journal or anything, I guess its a good way of documenting my thoughts.

I got offered a job today, but decided to turn it down in favour of one that pays less money. There are reasons for this, and they are that it seems to be a much better job, is about a five minute walk from home as oppose to a long journey, and after I work it all out the difference in money is only about £30 a week. So I've decided to go for the one I think I'll enjoy more, and they're going to review my salary after six months anyway.

I also need to add some random thoughts because I keep meaning to put them on here and keep forgetting:

I HATE benches at bus stops that are angled downwards. Why would they do that? It just seems cruel and pointless, to make a bench that you can't sit on comfortably, while waiting what could be up to an hour for a bus!

Superman: Doomsday Trailer!!! :D

Portable XBOX?

Rumour has it that there may be an official announcement made at the E3 show this year about a handheld or portable console from Microsoft. These rumours are nothing new; an article from T3 magazine, complete with an artists impression of what the console may look like was around last year. However, as time has gone on, the possibility of a console from Microsoft to challenge Sony's PSP is starting to look a lot more plausible.

I certainly hope so. I have a PSP, and wonderful bit of kit that it is, there are some flaws which I hope Microsoft will take on board, and also Sony when they release the PSP's successor:

• A distinct lack of decent games! Good games for the PSP are few and far between, and seem to be almost exclusively targeted at the Japanese market.
• No second analog stick! This is a real pain, especially for FPS games, although these are in short supply on the PSP.
• Inadequate support for media files. Converting all my movies to the PSP supported formats is a bit of a pain, but tolerable considering the space saving benefits. But using any standard encoder to convert files of any format to a lower resolution would be much better. Support for QuickTime and DivX would be good, as would support for various audio formats, and the ability to organise media files into playlists and use in a kind of media player application would be much better - although I imagine this would be a given on a Microsoft system.
• Better external peripherals would be a massive benefit. For example, right at the beginning a keyboard was developed for the PSP. This never got released, and the fact that you have an extremely powerful piece of hardware in your pocket whose features you can't exploit for any kind of PDA functionality is very frustrating. Obviously a console is a console, however seeing as it is more than capable of running rings around most PDAs, extra hardware and software to enable you to use it as such would be awesome.

So, Bill, I hope you're paying attention! We'll have to wait and see what happens, but I'm already excited at the prospect of a portable XBOX! Imagine being able to play Halo on the train! :D

Boredom Takes Hold

Being unemployed sucks. I'm so bored! Funny really, because I consider myself to be quite employable. On the plus side, I've had plenty of time to catch up on some reading I've only been ploughing through slowly recently.

Also, I have had some good news. I went to meet a guy at the University of Gloucestershire on wednesday about an MA in film, and he seemed quite keen to have me on the course, and gave me some really helpful suggestions as to how I can deal with it financially. Also, I got given a heads up about a runner position at a production company in London, so fingers crossed, one of the two should pan out!


I'm also getting quite bored of Stroud. It's a lovely place, filled with really friendly people, but I don't really know anyone here, and all my friends are scattered across the four corners of the country. I guess I should give it a chance, I've only been here two weeks! I'm just getting fed up with sitting at home all day reading. I need people, people!

Still, things are slowly starting to look up one way or another. Oh, and I went to see Die Hard 4.0 on wednesday, which was awesome! :D

State of Play

Hi No-one!

My life is very strange at the moment. Last week I moved out of the flat with my ex. It's really strange because I miss her every day. I still love her, despite how much she hurt me towards the end. Without trying to be too dramatic, I've kind of had my whole world ripped out from under me, and I'm floating in a bizarre limbo without any idea of how to claw my way back to the world and start building a life for myself again.

It's not all about her. We met in the third year of university, just as I'd got to a point where I'd started to get used to the idea of being on my own. I was planning to go to Japan for a year after I'd finished my degree to teach English as a Foreign Language, and then just see what happened when I got back. The only thing I've ever really wanted to do was work in Film and TV, but when we got together all that changed. I had a serious girlfriend, and bumming around hoping something inspiring would come along was no longer an option. So, I decided to opt for the nice, stable, respectable career of teaching physics, so that we could build a life together and have a stable home. It was a fiarytale come true; she was going to be a teacher as well, and we'd have the same holidays (15 weeks of them every year!) and spend our time off travelling the world and working on our own creative projects. Everything was perfect.

I lined up a job as a trainee teacher in Bath, because we decided it was a place we'd both like to live. I'm not really that fussed about where I live, because I know that if you don't like a place, you can move and try somewhere else. But for her, it was either Bath or Nottingham, and I just didn't fancy the idea of Nottingham, so Bath it was. After we finished university (our fourth year by this point - she'd had to defer her final year and I started a Masters), we moved into her parents house for six months. This wasn't so bad; I get on fantastically with them and they made me feel like a son. This was great in terms of living there, but not so good in terms of our relationship. As with any new relationship, sex was a staple part of our lifestyle when we first got together, but wild nights of passion weren't really an option at her parents house. At the time I thought that this wasn't that big a problem, and that when we moved into our own place we could bring back the magic. I realise now how much of a strain this put on the relationship, even though I didn't see it at the time. A woman has her needs, and wants to be made to feel sexy and wanted.

But that wasn't the only problem. Once we got into the flat, the preasures of real life started to weigh down on her. She'd never had to fend for herself before, she'd always had a large group of friends around and her parents to fall back on. She just wasn't cut out for the strain of having to build a life for yourself in a new town from scratch, as well as dealing with the realities of responsibility. Meanwhile, I was becoming desperately unhappy on my path to a teaching career. It wasn't something I wanted to do, and with the realtionship breaking down, I was seriously starting to doubt whether or not I could get through it without her love and support, especially seeing as she was making no effort to be a part of our new life together.

Eventually, we broke up. There was no arguing or shouting, and although it wasn't so much an agreement that it wasn't working (I still thought and still do think there were so many ways we could have saved it), we had a sensible discussion and agreed to be mature about it and stay in the flat together for the remaining three months of our tenancy. Part of that discussion was an agreement that neither of us would start seeing anyone else while we were still living there. And agreement that I, at least, honoured.

So now we have moved out of there, and I'm staying at my mum's while I try and figure out just what the hell it is I want to do. I know I still want to work in film, but I also want to learn a trade or practical skill to fall back on, as I've got a degree and a post-graduate certificate but no qualifications! I'm not actually qualified to do anything. So where do I go from here? As soon as I figure it out, I'll let you know!

It's a funny old business, this life stuff.

Lies

I hate lies. I used to tell lies when I was young. Some big, some small, some seemed necessary, some were to protect other people, some were to protect myself. But the thing about lies is, they always come back to bite you on the arse. And when you lie to protect other people, you're only hurting them more. The truth will always set you free, and people will respect you for being honest with them, even if they may be angry or hurt by the truth. No matter what you do, people can always forgive you if you are honest with them, and genuinely sorry. But if you are a liar, people won't want to know you; who wants to have someone in their life who they are always second guessing, who they can never be sure is being completely honest with them?

When someone lies to me, I feel like they are poisoning my soul. It makes me feel unclean, even though it is not me doing the lying. Sometimes I can understand it, things like "No, I didn't eat the last chocolate" or "sorry, I didn't forget to put the washing on, but I was stuck in traffic and didn't get back in time". Things like that are unnecessary, because nobody would hold those sort of things against you, but at least they're not harmful lies.

As I said, the lies to protect people, although I disagree with them and think that the truth will be better for everyone in the long run, at least I can understand the why of them. But what really gets me, what really makes me angry, are the completely pointless lies.

Some people make up entire other lives for themselves, complete fantasy worlds that they actually believe they live in. I cannot for the life of me understand why people do this. First of all, it can't be attention seeking, because as often as not these other lives people invent aren't likely to impress anyone; making them too exotic and exciting would just make them impossible to believe and remove all credibility. But secondly, and most importantly, the truth will always come out. Always. And when it does, these people all react the same way. They get angry.

Rather than put their hands up and admit the truth, they get angry. If they would just own up, people would be angry with them and feel hurt, but they would forgive them respect their honesty and eventually learn to trust them again. Why do people not see this? Instead, they get angry, blame everyone but themselves, and then go and form superficial friendships based on lies with another group of unsuspecting suckers, until eventually the truth comes out and they are forced to go through it all again.

It just boggles the mind.

Essential Viewing

Everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE, has to see this!!!!!

How To Prevent Destruction of Earth due to Asteroid Impact

1. Amass an arsenal of nuclear weapons
2. Locate and employ Bruce Willis and his rag-tag band of gung-ho, oil-drilling roughnecks
3. Provide said band of roughnecks with said arsenal of nuclear weapons
4. Supply rag-tag crew with space craft with which to deliver 'Hand of God' (nuclear payload) to offending asteroid
5. Instruct roughnecks to poke hole in asteroid with 'Finger of God' (drilling equipment) and to place nuclear payload into the hole
6. The roughnecks are then to detonate the nuclear payload while making a daring last minute getaway from the asteroid
7. All of the above is to be done while churning out witty one-liners at at great personal sacrifice in order to achieve maximum dramatic effect
8. The final stage of this preventative measure involves chugging a cigar in a control room full of clapping and cheering operators while announcing "Well if the good ol' U.S. of A. ain't just the greatest damn nation on God's green Earth!"
9. The destruction of Earth will now have been successfully prevented.
   

A very good day...

1. I passed my driving test today!!!
2. I spoke to a production designer who I am meeting with soon who is going to help me get itno 'the biz'!
3. I know this should always happen, but its the little things...I checked my bank balance this morning and had exactly what I expected!

All in a all, a very good day. And now I'm going to Cardiff for the afternoon!

Networking Windows Vista and Windows XP

I have been trying all day to get this to work, and have been researching it on the web and found basically nothing. Vista has basically been released as a Beta version and some of the features do not yet work properly, including networking.

If you are experiencing the same problem as me, see if this helps. Both machines could ping each other, and see each other in Explorer, but could not access each other. A dialog came up saying that access was denied.

I have found that there is a semi-solution to the problem, and its one of those things that for XP users you'll kick yourself when you realise what an idiotic, simple thing to miss it is.

When you set a folder as shared on your XP machine, you HAVE to add 'Everyone' as a user in the sharing permissions! Doing this will solve the problem, however, it will only allow you to access the Vista machine from the XP machine, and not the other way round, as the Vista machine will still not access a shared folder unless it has explicitly been told it has permission to. This will however enable you to use the Easy Transfer feature, as you can use a shared folder on the Vista machine, which both PCs can see. If you do this, don't forget to set 'Everyone' as 'Co-Owner', otherwise the XP machine will not be able to write to the folder.

Hope this helps! :)

Superman Returns!

After nearly twenty years, Superman has returned to the big screen! Regular visitors to this site will inevitably know that I have been following the progress of this production since long before the inception of it's current incarnation, and have been none too quiet on the matter. So, after over a year of anticipation, excitement, and wild ranting, I have finally seen the film, and am in a position to make an informed opinion.

First overall impressions: very well done. My major concern with this film had been that they would make fundamental changes to the nature of the character, and I am happy to say that this is something that they have very respectfully maintained. There is one point, and quite a major one at that, that I am not happy about, but I will come back to that in due course.

As with any film, the most important elements are the plot and the storyline. These were not too bad, but there were holes in them, and specifically holes in the plot that related to casting issues, but again I'll move on to those. The film begins with Superman returning to Earth after a mysterious absence of five years, and Lex Luthor swindling the heirs of a dying old lady out of her estate on her death bed. After Superman saves the day and makes his big comeback, Luthor hatches a plot to grow his own island using Kryptonian technology, which will eventually consume America, and make him sole proprietor of the most important real estate on the planet, as well as the most advanced technology. Little does Superman know, but this island has been infused with Kryptonite. Cue a dramatic confrontation between Supes and Baldie, Supes on his death bed, some more dramatic rescues, and an anticlimactic ending, and there you have it in a nutshell.

The plot's not too bad, but it's also not particularly inspired. The film carries it off well, and all in all its a fairly passable action movie. But is it any good? Well, this depends on your point of view. From a technical point of view, it is flawless. And by this I mean there is no fault I can find with the film; all the boxes are ticked, so to speak. I did however find it somewhat lacking in a number of respects. The first is that the director does not have an understanding of how the theme music works. This may sound like nitpicking, but the Superman theme music is actually an ingenious composition. Every movement in the piece tells a part of the story of the Mythic Hero's journey, and each bit of the music has a particular significance, but this was not used to good effect. All that has been done is that the title theme from the original score has been a little re-hashed and used in the opening sequence just so they can claim to have respect for the original films, without any true understanding of its application or meaning.

My second gripe with this film is the casting. There have been many incarnations of Lex Luthor, and my favourite has always been the corporate billionaire version, as I find it is the most versatile in terms of story possibilities. I have been saying for years that Kevin Spacey would be an ideal choice for the role of Luthor, because I envisioned him playing this kind of role, of someone who outwardly and publicly appears philanthropic, yet is in fact a murderous and genocidal master criminal. Kevin Spacey is perfect for this, as he is easily able to portray a character as good-natured as he is to portray him as sinister and brooding. Rather than following this route, and using Spacey to what would inevitably have been fantastic effect, director Bryan Singer chose to have Luthor portrayed as an underground villain, and as downright angry rather than sinister. There was nothing wrong with Spacey's performance, but considering that it was him cast for the role and not someone else, I felt that his talent was wasted on such a dry interpretation of the character.

My second casting problem was Kate Bosworth. As I have never seen her in any other film, I do not feel well placed to criticise her talent as an actress, but I will however say that her performance in this film was diabolical. She portrayed a 'teen-angsty' kind of Lois, who came across as being constantly bitter at being unfairly treated because she is a woman (despite this not being the case) for no better reason than feeling like it. There was no chemistry between her and Routh, either as Superman or Clark, and not even any chemistry between her and James Marsden's character Richard, Superman's supposed love rival for her attentions. Overall, her performance was flat, dry, unemotional and uninspiring.

Routh was also, in my opinion, poorly cast. I can see what Singer saw in him as the potential to play Superman, and personally I feel that given a few years seasoning, he could give a memorable performance as the Man of Steel, but as it stands, he is too young and too inexperienced. Spatially, he is a very good actor, and the way he moves is very convincing. But he falls staggeringly short facially and with his dialogue. His voice is horrible to listen to, and lacks intensity, and his facial expressions just seem like a strained and artificial attempt to imitate Reeve's cocky and confident style. As I said, I can definitely see him playing a very convincing Superman in a few years, but I think he needs those few years first. Also, his age doesn't quite work. This ties in with the plot flaw I mentioned earlier. At the beginning of the film, Superman returns having been in space for five years looking for Krypton. The problem with this is that Routh looks young, certainly no older than about mid-twenties, and add to this the fact that he has brown eyes and had to wear blue contacts (contact lenses make your eyes appear much larger), and you have a Superman who would have been well established when he left Earth at the age of about twenty. It just seems wrong to me.

As with the rest of the film itself, the supporting cast were proficient and passable, but again uninspired, with the exception of Marsden who, in my opinion, managed to steal the show from even Spacey. Which brings me to my biggest problem with this film.

***MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!!!!!***

Superman and Lois Lane have had a child together. Superman doesn't know this at first, as he thinks the kid she is dragging around must be hers and Richard's, but it becomes undeniably apparent that Superman is the father when the child throws a piano across the room. I don't have a problem with the notion of Superman and Lois Lane having a child together, but I feel that out of sheer respect for the medium if nothing else, it is not the place of a film director to explore what is quite a significant life changing event in a movie if it has not been done in the comics first. Again, this may seem like nitpicking, but it is justified in my opinion, especially seeing as Lois and Clark are married in the comics, and in the film it appears to be the result of a one night stand (presumably from Superman II, just after he gives up his powers). Superman's relationship with the child and Lois is left extremely wanting at the end of the film. I would expect Superman, on discovering that the child was his, to want to discuss the situation with Lois. What in fact happened was that he went to see the child briefly and then essentially told Lois that he'd see her around. This left me feeling very uncomfortable.

The action scenes in the film were all fairly good, although they didn't have me on the edge of my seat. It is far easier to criticise than it is to praise, but I will say that there were a couple of scenes in the film that were fantastic, particularly the rescue scenes, which very nearly had me wanting to clap and cheer! I did however feel that the CGI looked incredibly plastic in places, especially considering that this movie had a final budget of over a quarter of a billion pounds. Two last points, there were a number of references to the comics, Lois & Clark, Smallville, and the original films, which would appear to anyone who recognises them to be homages, but with the exception of a scene near the beginning with a model train set reproducing key moments from the first two films, these references, like the music, did not appear to be understood, and were seemingly placed in the film at random without any meaning. Finally, it is shown in the film that Lois has won a Pulitzer prize for an article entitled “Why The World Doesn't Need Superman”. There is not a chance that a writer unable to produce a more inspired headline than this would a) win a Pulitzer or b) hold down a job at a 'major metropolitan newspaper'.

As a whole, the film isn't bad, and I will admit that I'll be seeing it again. But I am quite disappointed that I can't say that its an outstanding movie. The film is technically flawless, but it lacks passion and a certain spark. The whole film seems a bit shallow and mechanical, as if produced by a skilled craftsman rather than a talented artist. This I hold Bryan Singer entirely responsible for. His previous work on the first two X-Men films demonstrates this. Fantastically made movies, but flat, lacking depth, and while there is no reasonable fault to be found with them, lacking inspiration and passion. While Superman Returns is by no stretch of the imagination a bad film, it lacks the intensity and energy that made the original Donner movie a classic, and I would class it as more on a par with Superman III and Superman IV than with Superman The Movie and Superman II.

Originally published on The Difference Engine in July 2006

One Month til Superman "Returns"!

One month from today, Superman Returns will be released. By now most people who are interested have seen the trailers, they are available on the official site. I'm not going to give another in depth analysis of these trailers, as there's really no point. The film is out in such a short time that I might as well just wait. I will say however that I am still woefully unexcited about this movie, and every day that passes that nothing happens to make me say 'Wow! I can't WAIT to see this film!", another little piece of me dies inside.

What I would like to talk about however is Brandon Routh. As I have said since the first promotional material for the film was released, I don't think he is right for the part. Granted, I haven't seen the film yet and I could be wrong, but I really don't believe he is right to play Superman. He looks far too young, especially for a Superman who has been away from earth for five years (he can't have been a day older than 20 when he left, as an already established Superman - it just doesn't work), he doesn't have the right physique, in fact he just doesn't look impressive or inspiring at all. But worst of all, nobody knows whether or not the guy can actually act. The trailers show NO dialogue of him as Superman, and only a painfully small amount of dialogue of him as Clark. Why so secretive, especially about the one wildcard in the film, the one unknown, and the one the entire movie hinges on? What the trailers do show is a lot of Kevin Spacey's Luthor. Why? Everyone knows Spacey can act!

So, is Routh right to play Superman? Maybe, I'll wait and see. But he sure as hell aint no Chris Reeve. I've been having arguments with fanboys on internet forums about this (yes, I'm that much of a geek) for a while, and it amazes me how swept away in fads people become. People who had the same opinions as me a year ago now not only bang on about how awesome Routh is going to be, but even go so far as to say how wrong Reeve was. These are die-hard Superman fans, who last year couldn't believe what a travesty the new Superman suit was, who now can't get enough of it and make a point of saying how wrong it can be in the comics.

I find it really upsetting. One of the arguments I've heard used over and over again is the comparison to James Bond. A lot of people say that audiences accept new actors playing Bond all the time, and no one of them is better than any other. Well, this is complete nonsense for two reasons. First of all, Bond is not a visual character to the extent that Superman is, but secondly, everyone knows that Connery is considered the definitive Bond by the majority of fans, and even those who prefer Moore, Brosnan, Lazenby or Dalton will admit that Connery is the people's favourite.

Reeve is considred Superman in popular thought. When he had his accident, and then when he died, nearly every newspaper headline across the world (that's right, I collected them all! - Ok so I didn't but I'm sure you get the point) announced not news of Christopher Reeve, but of Superman. In Chris Rock's Bigger and BLacker show, he says "Superman can't walk! What sort of a @!*&ed up world do we live in where Superman can't walk! That's like finding on the news that Aquaman drowned in the tub!" Reeve is not mentioned by name once!

In fact, so sure am I that Christopher Reeve is the one, true Superman, that if Superman was suddenly real and made his debut in the 'real' world to prevent some huge disaster, not only would he look like Christopher Reeve, but the Superman: The Movie theme music would start playing out of thin air because even the very fabric of the universe would recognise the presence of the real Superman himself!!!

Life in the Bus Lane

Well, it seams that life doesn't seem to move as fast as one might like, even if I am a month away from turning 25 and starting to feel like time is running out! (Excuse the amateur dramatics). I've decided that I want to train to be a physics teacher. It's something I'm extremely passionate about, and I definitely think that I'd be good at it. Only problem is, my degree isn't really good enough. What I need to do in order to begin Initial Teacher Training is something called a subject enhancement course. These are designed for graduates who have a degree in a subject different to the one they want to teach. Now, here's the catch. I can't get accepted to ITT unless I complete the subject enhancement course; but I also can't get accepted onto the subject enhancement course unless I've been offered a place on some form of ITT. Catch-22? It certainly feels like it!

Hopefully, by talking to the right people, I will be able to get a kind of double conditional offer. I'll be able to do the enhancement course on the condition that I get accepted onto a Qualified Teacher Status programme on the condition that I do the subject enhancement course. It's not as complicated as it seems. The only other problem is that the enhancement course doesn't start until January, meaning it will be September 2007 when I finally start my teacher training! In the mean time, I have to work for the rest of this year, and with a degree as mickey-mouse as mine - well, I can't actually get a job that I couldn't have got without it! I've managed to find a new job that I start next week, doing pretty much the same thing as what I'm doing now, but for a little bit more money (but unfortunately not significantly more), but with guaranteed work for at least the next three months.

Now, on to my money woes! I still owe my landlord a backlog of rent, and to cut a long story short I need to give him just over a thousand pounds to cover me up until the end of June (I'm still in student accommodation). With the money I'm earning, I can just about afford to pay that, but I can't afford to put anything aside so that I can actually move when my contract is up! At the rate I'm going, I'm going to have to try and get a second job working in a bar on weekends.

Oh well, life trundles on. I guess for now, I just have to deal, and try as best I can to fit in time for my uni work. C'est la vie...

The Adventures of Matt

Whew! What a week! I've had explosive arguments at work, family issues for both me and the other half, managed to get drunk (twice) for the first time since new year, and still found time to have my first driving lesson for seven years! (Not while drunk ;) )

Aside from that, this week has been the same as any other. Still working in a boring, poorly paid, dead end job that forces me to compromise my integrity; and now everyone at work hates me because I refuse to turn a blind eye to certain 'inconsistencies' (unfortunately I can't really say much more at this point in time). Still having trouble finding a graduate scheme I can get onto that I actually want to do, worrying about how I'm ever going to get onto the property ladder, and not doing a damn thing about any of it.

On the plus side, I am now working (sort of) on no less than three graphic novels, which with any luck I might get interest from a publisher (hopefully DC - but I'm a realist). In the mean time, I still need to find a literary agent that handles this kind of stuff, and find the time to actually work on them between my day job, taking time to de-stress after work, uni work, learning to drive, play guitar better, and a whole heap of other stuff. Man, do I wish I was organized...