James Galvin

Moviestar.ie DVD rental by post; Ireland’s answer to Netflix. It’s none of my business but, if everything is done through their website, then step 1 is to make a website that works.

Consider the amount of resources that Netflix have spent in developing their site to improve search and recommendations. Now consider Moviestar.ie, where you enter the exact movie title into the box, select “search by title”, and your search string is then processed by a team of retarded blind dwarves who return a thousand random Gregory Peck movies for you to choose from. So you spend ages searching by director or by year of release to assemble your queue of movies, and a week later they send you Terminator 3.

I like Moviestar.ie - the free trial is a nice bonus. But seriously, and this is something I see with nearly every new Irish web initiative, please speak to professional web developers who know what they’re doing. Ask Irish-Roots - it doesn’t matter how good your database is if you can’t search even search it.

I saw Rescue Dawn last night, a movie starring Christian Bale about the German American navy pilot, Dieter Dengler, who crash landed in North Vietnam during the war and was held in a prison camp. Rescue Dawn had some good points, but it was not quite up to Bale’s high standards, and definitely not worthy of the high rating I’ve seen it get on the internet. I was suspicious of a few plot holes and inconsistencies, since this is meant to be a true story, and Google turned up this site built by some friends and relative of the prisoners with a 12 page account of the escape told by the other survivor, Pisidhi. The site has video clips of Pisidhi and Dieter, and others, and offers a new perspective on the story - particularly on the character “Eugene” who was apparently portrayed very unfairly in the film.

Via Fence I found this preview for the new Batman movie: “The Dark Knight“. Looks really promising - very much a follow-up to Batman Begins as opposed to “a new Batman movie”. I was saying just yesterday how much I love the atmosphere in the films directed by Christopher Nolan, and how great Christian Bale was in The Prestige and Batman Begins, so I’m delighted to see that this configuration has remained in tact. IMDB lists Cillian Murphy in the credits, so I assume the Scarecrow will be making a return (good stuff).

No matter how many times I watch this scene it doesn’t get old. The way Pappy O’Daniel and Junior look in opposite directions… reminds me of The Big Lebowski!

Apple has the trailer for the Coen Brothers’ upcoming release: No Country for Old Men. I have been looking forward to this for a long time. For what it’s worth, Ebert saw it and he says it’s perfect.

Sinéad Gleeson is back with a flurry of activity this week. A lot of new music I’ll have to check out, and a good question here:

Has anyone, who isn’t born and bred here, ever managed to pull off a decent Irish accent

A good few comments but I don’t think anyone has really hit the nail on the head. The only one that springs to my mind is Daniel Day Lewis, but he is an Irish citizen with an Irish father.

Graham Linehan, on his Hompendium of Dorithies, has taken a quick look at the new His Dark Materials film. They have reuinted the Casino Royale leads Daniel Craig and Eva Green, and opted to cast Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter. Choosing the child actor is always a gamble, so they played it safe with another Dakota. Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel - good stuff.

I have to agree with Graham though, they’ve got Lyra all wrong… and those daemons/polar bears look a bit dodgy too. There’s no better way to cheapen a film than with second rate CGI. A game, made by SEGA, is also announced for this December - that has great potential, but video games which accompany movie releases are always disappointing. Have a look at the website - there’s a lot of stuff on it, including a ‘Meet Your Daemon’ utility, which must be broken because it said my daemon is a crow.