Despicable Me rolls in to show itself as a competitor to Disney

Despicable Me - I've been waiting for this for months, the website with its minions and catchy music had me already. I even tried to work it so that my daughter's 6th birthday would coincide with the release and she could be the first in her class to have a cinema party - but I was thwarted by that good old distribution clause whereby the cinema does not know until 7-14d before what date they will release the show, so we settled for Wizzy world which was comparitively easy and we were quids in with my daughter when after the party we announced she could go to the cinema, this resulted in a 'this is the best birthday ever mummy'. Brilliant.

Job done we opted to see it in 3D which I must admit I was dubious about, not because it has not been developed completely with 3D in mind - unlike Clash of the Titans, it has and to good effect but it wasn't the mind boggling brilliant 3d I saw in Toy Story 3 but it really does work those cliches with a particularly brilliant roller coaster ride that in Imax would have you going I bet.

Was I impressed? Yes.
Did I laugh? Lots.
Would I see it agin? Probably once or twice on DVD but this is where my main gripe comes into effect.

Yes we have Russell Brand playing a doddery 60 year old, and yes it is Mr Carrell who is perfect with a fake russian accent but the gags are so on the nose with the dramatic irony just playing out moments after they show you what is going to happen the humour is good but once you've seen it on a trailer or the web it's old news and I felt it.

The minions are fab, the girls grab the younger audiences but it is the tom and jerry antics between Gru and Vector that win hands down.

Illumination Entertainment have sunk $70 million estimated budget and will return more than treble that with great initial takings, but it is not an Ice Age 3 but they are going inthe right diretion as a new studio.

Will they give Disney Pixar a run for their money?

They may have before opening weekend but who knows once the marketing guys and franchise for minions takes off who knows where despicable me will go but I can practically guarantee a sequel.

Well done Chris Renaud for directing an entertaining animated film but I want more and soon please.

I give this film 3 1/2 out of 5

A Single Man shines on both Colin Firth and Tom Ford

I remember seeing Days of Thunder and coming out convinced I had just seen a two hour coke advert so it was with some trepidation that I watched this film by a fashion aficionado no less and was very pleasantly surprised.

I couldn't shake that feeling that every scene, every set had been mood-borded for colour contrast and tonal quality before being overlaid with the actors but what a feast for the eyes, beautiful 1950's clean cut clothes suited the subject matter in hand - of Prof George Falconer's loss of the love of his life, the subterfuge and of being 'invisible'. I particularly liked Ford's use of so lttle dialogue and just the visuals to purvey the story itself and very little in the way of conversation to provide those little insights into the characters. Delightful.

Ford reverted to tonals to illustrate when Falconer was sitting on the edge of life with a washed out quality and then vibrant blown out colour whenever he was struck by emotion, it lost it's subltleness in places but was otherwise helped provide that internal view of the character - very simple but effective.

I like Julianne Moore and think this film allowed her to show off her versatility, she has immediate presence and completely filled her short time on the screen.

So Ford has impressed me but Mr Firth more so and I look forward to seeing more of him in the future, I give this film 4*s.

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

Faced with a Saturday evening watching the #2 Girl with a dragon tattoo 'The Girl who played with Fire' or a light hearted teen-flick guess what we went for .... yep and was not disappointed. The first dragon was so brutal will probably wait for DVD on the second installment.

Edgar Wright first noted for 'Shaun of the Dead' and 'Hot Fuzz' is now officially allocated to Directing the likes of 'Them' and with what I've seen of his punchy visual style I hope his macabre sense will really shine through.

Scott Pilgrim is not just for fourteen year olds, it is about young love, the boundaries and the utter obscure fascination we all have with someone with wherewithall aka Ramona Flowers the one with all the Ex's. The fight scenes are immediately cool and he fits seven in! And its funny not in a ha ha sort of way but chuckle way - but maybe that's that teen thing I've put behind me.

Thoroughly recommend and well done Edgar!

Review of Astro Boy

The Japanese manga character has had a hollywood makeover and David Bowers who wrote and Directed the animated feature has certainly delivered a simple take on Arthur C Clarke's robot rules mixed with a story about a father and his frankenstein son in the shape of a robot brought to life with 'Blue energy'.

The voice overs are provided by the likes of Charlize Theron, Nicolas Cage and Donald Sutherland, impressive and almost too big but what starts out as a simplistic good versus bad energy from outer space turns into quite a delightful tale.

I was also impressed by the take on fighting, as Astro Boy is specifically endowed with rockets for legs and torpedo arms and his refusal to fight with his fellow robots was surprisngly refreshing yet the story delivers on the emotional tugs with his real father and his refusal to be twisted by the humans.

The animation itself is clean and crisp, the gags simple and endearing and will wow the kids even with its predictability.

Seeing as I chose to take the little ones to Battle For Terra at the cinema over Astro Boy this was by far the better choice, less violent and far more stunningly visual than Battle For Terra.

Astro Boy may be a simple storyline but it doesn't fail to entice the kids with its charm.

That last ten pages

OK I had a plan for the last 10 pages, well more of a sentence which ties everything up. The problem is I spent a whole evening writing how they get to the end in 8 pages which leaves me 2 pages to tie everything up. Oh well.

Then I was thinking are there enough up and downs? I will leave those till after the first read-through. Once I've cut it all down a bit.

That's the problem with going to see The Karate Kid when you're writing the last act.

Real Dreams

OK I've had enough of dreams of volcanos erupting and tidal waves, I must admit the volcano dream was right after seeing Toy Story when they face a moment of death,a nd it was in 3D, say no more ...

So how's my dream going? well if you read my twitter I'm trying to right that screenplay - you know the one that does it for you, that possibly just possibly gets you an agent and then a writing assignment, that one. Well I'm on my third draft of the same story, well actually the characters changed before I started the story (from initial outline) and now the story has reverted back to sort of what I had initially but more characters bu I'm having fun, ad a spec script should be a bit of that I think.

But it's taking me so long, it's a complete re-write but at least I can pull in the good bits from the last version, and I'm getting tighter but I want to finish it already so I can work on my next one. It has been narly a year ago I started the MA and writing said script. But I'm over half way through now so gotta go, got ten pages to write today ... and it;s the middle act, so we'll see ....

Everybody has dreams right?

If you think about it everybody sleeps and whilst some people may say they never dream I don't really believe them, we all dream whether it is in our sleep or just simply day-dreaming.

For me being a writer day-dreaming is enormously important and I'm learning also the power of self-visualisation, that thing that Olympic contestants do, visualising where you want to be, how you want it to be can be extremely powerful - as well as mind-boggling tiring sometimes, but the upside is that you start to believe in it so much you can sort of ride that crest of the wave until what you want becomes almost irritatingly possible and you want it to have happened already!

So go to it, just remember to have some fun on the way.