This year, Morris released a film called Four Lions and if it ever had an official Australian cinematic release, it must have come and gone in a flash.  It sounds like a ridiculous and implausible proposition on paper:  an ensemble buddy comedy about a group of aspiring British Jihadists who are planning to suicide-bomb a Boots chemist in Britain.

Somehow, Morris pulls off this tight rope act.  I rarely found Four Lions to be laugh out loud funny as the subject matter is so dark, and yet I found I was smirking and enjoyed the film throughout, almost inspite of myself.  What Morris does, is take a group of five aspiring terrorists and humanize them.  There is the charismatic leader Omar who has a loving wife and child, his gormless best friend Waj, the klutzy Fessel, the eager to please Mal and Barry who I can best describe as the Islamic equivalent of Walter Sobchak from The Big Lebowski.

Morris talks about researching the film and how he found that a lot of the real life stories of terrorist training camps were so farcial and ridiculous that they translated into comedy surprisingly easily.  Certainly in recent times there have been a number of high profile blunders from aspiring terrorists such as the ‘Underwear’ bomber from last Christmas and its from these sort of moments that Four Lions draws its inspiration.

Although the film is primarily an observational comedy about the idiocy of suicide bombers, it does also take some potshots at Islam itself, albeit with a gentler tone.  There’s a scene in which  Omar and his wife give Omar’s brother Hassan some flack for keeping his wife locked up in a cupboard which he insists is actually a ‘small room’.  Omar’s wife delights in getting into pedantic arguements with Hassan.  When he declares he can’t enter the room because of her presence, she argues that she is technically in the kitchen and he’s in the lounge: they just happen to live in an apartment with an open floor plan.

The great irony of course is that Omar wants to impose Sharia law on Britain but does not impose the same strictness upon his wife who he treats an equal and has a progressive relationship with.

Given the rather sensitive subject matter, Morris manages to ‘normalise’ Four Lions by giving the main characters familiar archetypes that you see in plenty of other films.  You’d be surprised how easily that works.  The 40 Year Old Virgin, The Full Monty, The Hangover and other buddy movies may all have wildly differing objectives (get to the wedding, get laid etc.) but what holds the film together is the bonding between the friends and Four Lions is no different.

My favourite character is Barry.  He is aggressive and full of bluster, yet underneath the gruff exterior, he just wants to be part of the gang.  Some of the film’s best scenes are when Barry fiercely argues an absurd stance that he has selectively chosen from the Qu’ran.

The sting in the tail of Four Lions is in the final act when Morris switches gears and shifts to a darker and nihilistic tone as the boys attempt to enact their plan.  Omar is the most interesting, contradictory and frustrating character as he is shown to be a loving husband and a good father so the path he takes into oblivion is the most affecting.

This is definitely one of the most entertaining, unusual and subversive films I’ve seen this year.  It doesn’t sound like it should work and yet there it is.  It has an 87% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes and at least one religious organisation has called for a boycott of the film.  A Life of Brian for the 21st Century?

Australia’s political stand-off has finally ended, to Julia Gillard’s immense relief and Tony Abbott’s deep disappointment.

Labor will hold onto power after winning the support of two regional independents – Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor.

- ABC News

I’m not really sure what to make of this myself.  I was pretty disillusioned by the campaigns that both parties ran.  It’ll be interesting to see if Gillard can make this coalition with the Greens and Independants work.  I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.

From there, Pilgrim gets to know Ramona better and does battle with a series of bizarre and colourful characters whilst fending off a jilted Knives and the disapproval of his band members.

What I found interesting about Scott Pilgrim vs The World is that there seems to be a misalignment between the references in this film and what I presume its target audience is supposed to be.  Its stacked full of video game references.  In fact, its central conceit of defeating seven exs is based on the boss-fighting structure of many video games.  The film uses chiptune audio samples from the original Legend of Zelda, the band name is a reference to a Super Mario Bros 2 character and the coin explosion from the defeated enemies pays homage to River City Ransom.  The film also spoofs an episode of Seinfeld and has a ‘chapter title’ named after a Smashing Pumpkins album.  All of these references I believe would strike a chord with someone born in the early Eighties.

However, the film is actually cast, written and edited for someone much younger.  Most of the cast are only just in their early Twenties.  They wouldn’t have been born yet when Super Mario Bros 2 was released.  They would have barely been seven years old when Seinfeld started airing and its unlikely any of them listened to the Smashing Pumpkins around that time either.  Instead, the visual language of the film uses rapid jump-cut editing and the continual use of non sequitur jokes in the dialogue made me feel more like I was watching a very long episode of Family Guy.

My interest and enjoyment of Scott Pilgrim started pretty highly in the opening half hour and gradually I felt browbeaten into indifference by the end.  It has such a  rigid structure.  Any momentum the film gains is then stopped and punctuated by yet another protacted fight scene.  Visually, they are bombastic and full of colourful special effects but it didn’t distract from the fact that the fights were also highly repetetive and pretty tedious by the third or fourth one.

I wanted to like this film a lot more than I did.  I’m a big fan of director Edgar Wright and the pop culture references in the trailers suggested this was a film made with me as a target audience.  I don’t even thinks its necessarily a bad film.  However, it is definitely a film with a different audience in mind.  If you like things that are ‘random’, find Family Guy style non sequiturs funny and enjoyed the visual style of the recent Speed Racer film, then Scott Pilgrim is for you.

Jen decided to make a ratatouille and cous cous dish and she prepared it in the style shown in the Pixar film Ratatouille, which itself is based on an interpretation of the dish created by French Laundry chef Thomas Keller.  It looked pretty kick ass when she finished slicing and dicing.

Ratatouille preperation: first get a bazillion slices of cucumber, pepper, squash and eggplant

Ratatouille - looks awesome, tastes better

It was quite a merry night to say the least.  You may remember that I spent a day at a microbrewery in July and the three crates of beer from that particular excursion arrived on Saturday.  A few days earlier, our wine collection that we won from our online auction also arrived.  Lastly, being a very social whisky drinker, I was keen to have a few rounds of the new single malts that I picked up in Scotland.

Our well-stocked computer room floor

The whisky collection is coming along nicely

After a big Saturday night that finished up around 3am after watching the Wallabies last gasp win over South Africa, we had a nice quiet Sunday indoors as it was chucking down with rain.  So what better way to pass time on a lazy Sunday afternoon that building a 3,000 piece puzzle depicting the bombardment of the Algiers?

Sunday afternoon in the Inoue house

When we visited Scotland, Jen and I had a chance to visit our first ever Michelin star rated restaurant Martin Wishart.  Located in a rather unassuming beige coloured building in Leith, it doesn’t look like much on the outside but it is home to some of the best food in Britain and has been recognized as such by Gordon Ramsay and The Good Food Guide.  We came in with pretty high expectations.

We booked the six course tasting menu with matching wines and here’s what we got:

Haggis bon bons!

Raspberry and goats cheese, octopus and carrot, some weird wafer thing and a duck liver pate

Presse of foie gras with praline - Apricot puree, black olive tapenade and madeira cream

Ceviche of halibut, mango and passion fruit

Risotto of spelt grain, Perthshire girolles

Octopous and ayrshire new potatoes, sweet paprika, lemon and tosazu sauce

Comically small portion on enourmous plate course - Tortellini of Borders Roe Deer, cauliflower cream, sauce grand veneur

Loin, trotter and crispy ear of Drumlanrig pork, choucroute, apricot chicharron and grain mustard sauce

Le smelly cheese - range of cow, goat and sheep cheese from France

Valrhona Ivoire chocolate mousse, Glen Ample raspberries, tarragon ice cream

Poached nectarine with yoghurt, mango sorbet and warm madeleines

A kickin' rad dessert platter

And a hot cuppa to end the night

Martin Wishart was an amazing experience that didn’t disappoint.  There was imagination and skillful presentation with every course.  We had a pleasing variety of unusual experimental dishes (the halibut course) and more conventional dishes that were just absolutely delicious (its the best octopus dish I’ve ever tasted).  The staff were exceptionally knowledgable, happy to have a chat about the wine and were colourful characters themselves.  The maitre’d had the appearance and mannerisms of a Rowan Atkinson but with an outrageous French accent.  He was amazing.

My one observation at the end of the night however, was that while it was an excellent experience, it definitely was not any order of magnitude better than what we’ve had at Buffalo Club and Tetsuyas.  I think that if Michelin ever hauled their asses down Australia way, there’d be more than a handful of restaurants who’d be picking up Michelin stars.

Two weeks after the Election and we’re still sorting out this hung parliament business.  As expected, both of the major party leaders have been holding talks with the Independant candidates and offering a crapload of pork in exchange for their support to form a government.  So while the major election issues were around the National Broadband Network and population growth, now Abbott and Gillard are going to have to scrape over the line by putting forward policies about the banana industry, rural transport infrastructure and the pokies to appease the demands of the Independants who hold the power.

The most considerable offering so far has been Tony Abbott’s offer of a BILLION DOLLARS to a Tasmanian hospital in an attempt to woo Independant MP Andrew Wilkie.  I can’t really imagine how you’d spend that kind of money.  Particularly on a hospital for a town that has a population of just 200,000 people.  Still, Wilkie turned away from it and declared an allegiance with Julia Gillard.  With Rob Oakeshott indicating he’ll make a decision over the weekend we may finally have a decision made by this coming Monday.  And its looking more and more like Julia Gillard will remain as Prime Minister of Australia.

I finally found myself with a couple of hours spare tonight to sit down and get stuck into some games that I got around my birthday a couple of months ago.

Firstly, lets talk Red Dead Redemption.  A game set in the dying days of the Old West, just as America is about to undergo an age of industrialization.  The game does an incredible job of recreating a living, breathing world set in this era.  You can play poker at a bar, round up cattle at the ranch and go hunting for outlaws – sometimes to further the story, sometimes not.  In fact, I wonder if the game doesn’t maybe do too good of a job at this.  I’ve sunk about seven hours into this game and I haven’t really done much more than work as a ranch hand and messed around town playing cards.  While this does a terrific job in encapturing the pace of life in the Old West, it doesn’t really make me feel like I’m getting anywhere close to completing the story.  Hell the story hasn’t even really started.  Much like reading books, I always prefer to stick to a single game and see it through to completion before starting anything else but I felt like if I did this, then I’d be getting left behind the glut of excellent games that are shortly about to hit the market.  I’d also been dying to get a chance to play Alan Wake which Jen got me for my birthday.  So for now, I’m going to put down and come back to Red Dead later.

Alan Wake is a game that I’ve been waiting four years to play.  This game has been a looong time in the making.  In fact, there were trailers circulating for it at the launch of the Xbox 360 and it was the promise of this title that made Jen interested in picking up a 360 back in 2006.  Wearing its influences on its sleeve proudly, this game is a hodge podge of Twin Peaks, Stephen King horror novels and The X-Files all rolled into one.  So how is it?

My initial impressions weren’t that great.  I had read a lot about the criticisms of the game that certainly hold true.  For a game aspiring to create a cinematic feel, its a strange design choice to couch the screen with a lot of visual baggage.  There’s a health meter, a navigation radar and a big fat line of text directing you where to go.  It’s initially quite difficult to immerse yourself in the suspenseful set pieces that Alan Wake strives for when ‘REACH THE GAS STATION’ is permanently stamped on the screen.

Alan Wake: too much crap on the screen

Also, Wake’s voiceovers feels intrusive, offering little other than to state the bleeding obvious.  In the opening chapter, he is attacked by an axe-wielding madman who attempts to chop down the door he is locked behind. ‘This is just like Nicholson in The Shining!’  We got the reference thanks, Alan.

However, slowly but surely, I found myself getting used to the game’s presentation and began losing myself in the story also.  Its the sort of thing I can really sink my teeth into, particularly having just finished reading Under the Dome not long ago and being in the mood for more Stephen King style storytelling.  What definitely works in the game’s favour is the fantastic lighting which is dynamic and fills the forests of Bright Falls with a great sense of foreboding.  Also, the decision to use a soundtrack with artists such as Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Roy Orbison pays off handsomely.  In fact, the audio in general is excellent.  The game has some wonderfully creepy ambient sounds that really does begin to fray at your nerves.

I also like the television style pacing of the cutscenes and the episodic format that breaks up each chapter.  Every chapter from the second onwards also includes a brief ‘Previously on Alan Wake’ highlight reel of the story so far which is well put together.

So while its not without its annoyances, there is still plenty to like here.  I look forward to playing more and seeing how the story unfolds.

Skip forward to 2 min 33 seconds for Harry.