OBJECTION! (+Shutter Island review)

This afternoon was spent in town with Danny and Lou shopping for zombie apparel. I found an awesome leather jacket which will do nicely, amongst other things including some Ivory No7 Foundation. It was a low point of my life walking up to the oompa loompas in boots asking for makeup to match my skin tone. In my defence it is for blending liquid latex to my skin for special effects next Saturday for the zombie march. I also exchanged my faulty Watchmen Bluray without hassle even though I bought it two months ago; thanks HMV; I was ready to do battle but wasn't at all disappointed when it all went smoothly. Trawling through almost every charity shop in Inverness for fairly specific clothing was made much easier when we started humming the Crystal Maze theme tune in all of them. Seriously; if you're ever doing something difficult or boring, imagine or even hum out loud the theme tune and the most mundane task will seem like a majorly exciting event; for every part of the task you complete (in this case finding a suitable item of clothing) a crystal is obtained granting you FIVE SECONDS IN THE CRYSTAL DOME.

We then went on to Pizza Hut where I had tried to book a table on the phone to find they were not longer taking any bookings; it would have made my post tonight a bit more heroic as I was going to book it under the name of L. Lawliet; a character in the manga/anime Death Note. This did not happen unfortunately but the Pizza was delicious.

The penultimate section of today was the cinema. The best part of this was seeing Angus for the first time in a while; I have missed his endless, limiteless cynicism and pedantry. I say "best part" when in fact it was the only good part of the cinema. We went to see Shutter Island. I went in knowing very little about the movie, only having heard critics raving about it and the promise by word of mouth of an amazing twist. First of all, the movie as a whole; it is verging on diabolical technically. Yes it has an "ensemble cast" who all play their parts from very well to brilliantly; everyone is cast well and they all put true effort into their parts. However, some simple fundemental flaws ruin it for me to start with; editing is atrocious at times, with characters speaking without moving their lips before a change of shot shows them now speaking. Horrific continuity makes all sorts of craziness occur; one example would be Leo taking an asparin and being given a glass of water. An immediate angle change skips him drinking and shows an empty glass sitting the other end of the room. It may sound petty, but such basic elements should be kept control of. On a larger scale the "arty" scenes of the movie are respectable for cinematography and atmosphere but the film tries too hard to adopt an arthouse, "stylish" tone, leading to the film becoming tediously drawn out and terribly self-indulgent; little more than an hour into it I was mentally begging the movie to just cut to the end to show me what happens so I could leave. The final point remainf however; the twist. Had all these flaws lead the movie to a breathtaking pay-off as has been suggested to me, they would have been so much less important in my crtiticism. However, with no exaggeration Angus and myself had an idea of the twist within fifteen minutes of the opening; our theory was one that we desperately hoped would not be the truth. As the movie progressed, this theory became more and more the obvious outcome, but we were assuming that we were being mislead by intelligent writing, waiting (albeit frustratedly) for the real twist. However, at the point where there could be no other revelation than the one we thought up 90 minutes previously I looked across at Angus and we exchanged a look that conveyed true suffering and despair. We were forced to leave the cinema slightly before the ending to catch a bus (I despise doing this, but I would not like to be stranded in town). As we were leaving, we discussed the very slight possibility of the "true" twist occuring in the last ten minutes or so. A quick look on wikipedia on the bus confirmed however that we were correct and that after this "revelation" there is an end to the plot that served only to heighten our already soaring fury at the movie. It is difficult for me to rate, as it is filmed very nicely and acted superbly with a very good if long-winded script. However, the basic technical errors, dragged out art elements that tend to miss the mark, and enfuriating final chapter bring its mark down to a 4/10 for me.

Finally, I got the bus home where I also met Jamie. As always this was a great journey where we spent much of the time discussing the Crystal Maze and screaming "Objection!" at each other; referencing the Phoenix Wright games. Somewhat sad most may say but we have fun so get over it.