Review: Why does E=MC²?

In my experience non-fiction books come in two categories: mind-blowingly fascinating or eye-wateringly crap. There is very little in between. Thankfully, Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw’s book is squarely in the fascinating camp.

The concept of the book, unsrprisingly, is to take the question Why does E=MC²? And why does it matter? as a starting point for explaining why Einstein’s famous theory is so important and – as the authors are at pains to stress – why it is so elegant. This involves a tour through the history of physics and some of its most important theories on the way to General Relativity. It’s a slim volume with a tight goal but does it succeed?

This is one of those science books you wish you got given when you were in school, written with a clear passion for the subject and a gentle, clear prose style that complements the author’s goal of illuminating Einstein’s theorem.  The principle challenge of the book is to stay on subject because, due to the nature of the theory, it is possible to go off on lots of interesting tangents. An admirable job is done of avoiding this trap whilst still including plenty of interesting asides that add to the understanding.

It is the nature of physics that it is extremely difficult to refer to more interesting theories and laws without referring to formula and mathematics. This is troublesome as mathematics is usually the aspect of physics that turns most people off and this provides something of a quandary for the writers. For the most part they handle this well with a series of well-crafted explanations of the mathematics involved but I’d be lying if I said I followed all of it, particularly the Standard Model of Particle Physics. It should be noted this may say more about my mathematical ability than the authors’ explanatory skills.

I thoroughly enjoyed Why does E=MC²? As a basic primer on Einstein’s theory of relativity it serves its purpose and moreover is an enjoyable read. I recommend it for anyone with a desire to understand a little bit more about physics.

Review: Franklyn

Britain doesn’t make many films anymore let alone Science Fiction or Fantasy but that wasn’t the reason I decided to watch Franklyn. In truth, it sounded like an interesting film with the kind of narrative play that I tend to like a great deal.

Franklyn follows several characters across two worlds. In Meanwhile City, a dystopian world ruled by a kaleidoscope of religious sects, the masked vigilante Preest searches for his nemesis, a man known only as the Individual. Nursing a vendetta for the death of a girl Preest has a clear purpose: to kill the Individual. In London, Emilia is a fucked up art student struggling to put her past behind her and find her creative centre without killing herself in the process. Milo’s been stood up by his fiancé and can’t stop dwelling on his childhood sweetheart. While Esser trawls the streets and hospitals for his runaway son ignored by his estranged ex-wife and holding onto the last thing he has: his faith.

There are many things to like about Franklyn. The cast includes some standout talent including Bernard Hill (Lord of the Rings, Boys from the Blackstuff) and Eva green (Casino Royale). Even adequate performers like Ryan Phillippe. The set design for Meanwhile City is interesting, if confused, and sections of the film’s photography are very nicely done. The film’s central conceit, about the nature of memory and reality, is an interesting one with a great deal of promise. And so the whole should be greater than the sum of these parts?

Alas, no.

The film falls short of its promise. On reflection, I think this is at least in part to do with the decision to follow four lead characters over four distinct story arcs in a ninety-minute film. It’s simply too much for this length of film and inevitably it makes it difficult to identify with or feel sympathy for Milo, for example. This also makes it far too easy to work out the film’s somewhat inevitable climax that falls like a damp squib rather than an emotionally satisfying close.

This is the most obvious symptom of a good idea that has not been thoroughly thought through. On delving closer there is further evidence: the logic of Meanwhile City is not clear and the story arc that takes place there is weak due to an onerous flashback. In general the transitions between the two worlds are handled badly in away that only the most forgiving audience would characterise as planned. But these are not its greatest sin.

Perhaps it’s a symptom of the truncated running time but the film falls foul of the greatest of sins: logical consistency. Be it fantasy, horror, SF, slipstream or whatever: it should be logically consistent within the framework of the story. There simply isn’t enough build around the hospital cleaner or Milo’s childhood sweetheart for their presence to feel like anything other than a clunking deus ex machina.

For all of its many failings Franklyn is a bold and brave attempt at an interesting idea. Writers and directors will find a useful lesson in the flexibility of narrative while more general viewers can enjoy a solid set of performances and some interesting cinematography.

Worth a view but don’t expect to be blown away.

Review: No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

Before the Coen brothers got their hands on it there was just a book by Cormac McCarthy.  Several people whose opinions I value had recommended McCarthy and so I avoided the film, opting instead to read the book first and save the film for another time.

No Country for Old Men tells the story of a drug exchange along the Texas/Mexico border that goes, it’s fair to say, a bit wrong. Llewelyn Moss blunders into the aftermath whilst out hunting and finds everyone dead or dying as well as copious amounts of cocaine and a satchel full of cash. What to do? A vet of the Vietnam war, a welder, and general ordinary guy, the money represents a chance at a life that he would otherwise not have and so Moss picks up the satchel and gets out of Dodge.

Meanwhile Sheriff Ed Tom Bell has a dead deputy and a truck load of dead drug dealers to investigate which leads him on to the trail of both Moss and Anton Chigurgh, a psychotic hitman tasked with regaining the money. The story follows the subsequent chase across the state and the musings of Ed Tom Bell, an the old lawman who finds himself dislocated from the world in which he is living and unable to cope with a manifestation of evil in a form he simply can’t comprehend (Anton).

I wasn’t sure I was going to like the book at first. McCarthy has opted for a third person limited view point for the majority of the novel with a first person monologue from Ed Tom Bell weaving through the story. He eschews the use of anything but the sparsest levels of punctuation making a new reader have to physically reset a great deal of their literary cues to distinguish between dialogue and thought. This book doesn’t want you to glide over it in a couple of hours, it wants you to take in every word and every idea because there is important stuff going on.

Once I settled into the style I found the sparse use of language powerful. McCarthy doesn’t inject every sentence with poetic fervour but has surgically sliced each word back to create a more immersive experience where he, as writer, disappears from view. However, when he does choose to flex his poetic muscles the lines he produces are wonderful. This, from early on in the book, is a good example of McCarthy’s style as a whole:

“A half hour he parked and walked out along the crest of a rise and stood looking over the country to the east and to the south. The moon up. A blue world. Visible shadows of clouds across the floodplain. Hurrying on the slopes. He sat in the scabrock with his boots crossed before him. No coyotes. Nothing. For a Mexican dopedealer. Yeah. Well. Everybody is somethin.”

The story itself is a classic Western template that on the face of it is riddled with cliches and doesn’t really have enough in it to sustain a novel. McCarthy deal with this by applying a classic technique of genre fiction and at traditional high points in the story his tale veers of in a completely different direction. I’m not sure if this is a conscious decision of the author and imposed on the characters or simply the result of rigidly following through the logic of each of his three protagonists given the story set up. I suspect the latter but McCarthy’s skill is such that I think only he could answer that.

No Country for Old Men is not an easy book, either stylistically or content wise. It is full of paradoxes: at one moment full of beautiful description, at others brutal violence drips blood from the page. McCarthy weaves three character stories into a simply rendered story that belies the complexity of the individual threads. It’s billed as a thriller but personally I think No Country for Old Men, like all good westerns, is as honest and gripping a morality play as I’ve read in recent times.

I urge you to read it.

Review: Transformers – Revenge of the Fallen

Michael Bay returns to cinemas with a second installment of the Transformers franchise, that glorious silly commercial-in-disguise piece of Americana film making. I’m not being sarcastic: I enjoyed the first film as I marked on this blog at the time.

The question for me was: could Bay continue to surf the nostalgia or would he wipe out?

The story picks up a couple of years after the first film. The Autobots are working for the U.S. government hunting down Decepticons, Sector Seven has been disbanded and Sam is still seeing Mikaela as he heads to college. Things are ostensibly going well but that would make for a dull film. It turns out the federal government are growing concerned that the Autobots are actually attracting the Decepticons, in reality the Decepticons want something called The Matrix of Leadership for someone called The Fallen and Sam appears to be channeling the same information that drove his great grandfather mad.

Keeping up?

No, and to be honest I didn’t either. The film has plenty of Bayesque action sequences that do exactly what you’d expect and involve big explosions, breathtaking CG and provide plenty of spectacle on the IMAX. There’s also the requisite leering camera all over Megan Fox and Isabel Lucas pushing this film hard as the boys own adventure that it is. Plenty of laughs from a comedy double act of Autobots, John Turturro back as the mad Agent Simmons and Kevin Dunn and Julie White are a cringeworthy delight as Sam’s parents. All the elements are there for a successful sequel.

But.

The film is plagued by odd decisions and poor choices. There is a confusing, complex storyline that really has no place in a film that should be light-hearted fluff.  A poor choice of actor for the character of The Fallen in Tony Todd*. Todd’s distinctive voice is instantly recognisable, as well as totally out of place, and breaks the suspension of disbelief because of his association with other iconic characters, destroying the point of doing photoreal CG. I didn’t see the Fallen, I heard the Candyman.

I am flummoxed by the decision to have Shia LeBoeuf play the straight man as it throws off the dynamic of the central characters and necessitates the presence of an extremely irritating sidekick in Ramon Rodriguez. LeBouf is entertaining as a comedic lead but dull as a straight out hero verging on the tragic.

The combined impact of these flaws is to make the narrative arc much harder to follow than in the first film. This lack of coherence is further compounded by sloppy editing and poor continuity that makes the first act feel more like an episode of the cartoon than a multimillion pound blockbuster and not in a good way.

That said, at its core Transformers is – selling toys aside – about giant alien robots kicking the shit out of each other and that’s something I, for one, can live with. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy Revenge of the Fallen. Unlike it’s predecessor there are much more extended and frequent Transformer fight sequences, sweeps of new robots and the welcome addition of Soundwave. The film hits enough of the high spots to provide the spectacle and enjoyment of a decent popcorn film that doesn’t tax the brain too much. Even G – who has no childhood nostalgia built up around Transformers – enjoyed it.

If you’ve seen the first film, are prepared to go in without expectation and enjoy popcorn films then you’ll have a good time.

Otherwise: give it a miss.

* Note: I am not saying Tony Todd is a bad actor, just that his casting in this role is problematic because his voice is so distinctive he is recognisable and that I find it hard to hear his voice without thinking of Candyman.

Review: Star Trek

I managed to see the new reboot of Star Trek.*

Some background: I am, for my sins, a long term fan of the series although I lean towards TNG over any of the other offerings, and best not to get me started on the TNG films. I do not consider Star Trek to be science fiction, it’s space fantasy – the science is bad, the speculative elements minimal and the amount of tech predicted has more to do with the number of fans going into science than any hard graft by futurists. I do not dress up.

The point being I was sceptical about a) the need for another film and b) the wisdom of rebooting some of the most iconic characters in television. It’s hard to imagine anyone but Shatner as Kirk and no one has ever really successfully out Vulcaned old Nimsy. Throw in the painful wounds inflicted by Enterprise’s attempt to go retro and….well:  I was a hard sell.

Yet, despite not thinking of myself as a full on fan for some time, the thought of not going didn’t really enter my head.

For that I am infinitely grateful because JJ Abrahms somehow – in a trick worthy of Scotty – managed it.

The film takes us back to the moment of James T. Kirk’s birth but it soon becomes clear that something is wrong, things are not unfolding as the canon dictates: Kirk’s father sacrifices himself in order to save his crew and his family, James T. grows up fatherless, a perpetual troublemaker that has no intention of going into the fleet and people know what Romulans look like. Things change when Kirk meets Captain Pike in a bar room brawl and follows the pretty Uhura into the academy promising to beat his father’s record to the Captain’s chair.

Keeping up so far?

Yes, the plot is horribly complicated and convoluted as time travel based stories usually are but don’t let that put you off. You see the tricky plot is there to attempt to keep the likes of me amused and interested (granted many won’t be but I was). For the wider audience, that JJ is hoping to convert to new fans, the film is loaded with high action sequences peppered with light camp comedy (it is Star Trek after all) and some full on operatic villains. JJ was never going to please everyone but he’s done his best to create an accessible film and for the most part he’s succeeded.

There are plenty of nods to the original series including the pursuit of an abandoned storyline but it’s really the changes JJ brings that I think make the film enjoyable. The cast is more the ensemble piece the series was supposed to be, diverting some of the attention away from Kirk to Uhura, Sulu and Chekov. While Pegg is woefully under-utilised as Scotty, his performance is bang on the money without slipping into parody as does Karl Urban as McCoy with a wonderful homily to the late Deforest Kelly. Zachary Quinto, as the rebooted Spock, manages to riff off Leonard Nimoy, neatly sidestepping trying to match the elder Vulcan’s performance, and bringing his own strangeness to the part.

Chris Pine, stepping into Shatner’s boots as Kirk, is the man with the hardest job. Shatner is iconic not because he’s the world’s greatest actor – he isn’t – but because the Kirk was such a large part of sixties pop culture that he’s imprinted on western culture. He was the figurehead for Trek – so bad he was good. Pine doesn’t even bother to do a Shatner – it would be silly and risking parody – but lets the supporting cast provide the feeling of familiarity, while he injects Kirk with a character more recognisable from Star Trek’s apocrypha than its canon. It is only at the end of the film, when Kirk ascends to the command he will hold for the majority of his career that Pine allows an element of Shatner to enter his performance as he takes the chair, legs crossed in an improbably camp pose. It is, perhaps, the most well judged shot of the whole film.

A great romp and a successful if pointless reboot. See it – popcorn optional but recommended.

And yes: I don’t understand the lensflare either.

* Why they feel the need to reboot everything in sight I have no idea but that’s a subject for a different post.

Review: Little Brother

I’m a little late to the party on this one and really given the long list of distinguished readers* singing the praises of Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother you don’t need little old me to tell you it’s good. Only I’m going to. And here’s why:

Thursday morning I was rooting around the shelves for something to read on the train into work (I can’t use the bike at the moment as I can’t get it through the house as we still have boxes everywhere). Anyway, I picked up Little Brother having ordered it some time ago and have been slightly embarrassed that I hadn’t read it yet. I started on the train on the way in, continued on my lunch break (I never do this normally) and continued on the way home, reading as I walked from the station to the house and finished up around about midnight having pretty much inhaled the whole book.

It’s that good.

Marcus is smart, Marcus is a hacker, Marcus is a teenager, Marcus is a gamer and Marcus is about to land himself in a whole pile of trouble when he plays truant for a game- inadvertently placing himself in the middle of a terror attack on San Francisco. Held prisoner by the Department of Homeland Security Marcus finds himself treated as a potential terrorist before being released back into a city that has been transformed into a Police state. Angry, alienated and fearful for the future of his country Marcus decides there is only one thing for it, to take down the Department of Homeland Security. Calling on all his technology skills Marcus goes to war with the Department of Homeland Security, a war he can’t possibly win – after all, a seventeen year old kid can’t defeat his government, can he?

It would be easy to wax lyrical about how topical this book is or how well researched or how it’s pretty much a handbook for how to manage your data in a world where before long even your toaster will be online. And all this is true. I mean: it’s Cory – did you really expect anything less? Yet, I feel this misses the true success of the novel and that is the quality of the writing. Not the story – which is great riff on 1984 – but the actual technical process of how the words have been put down on the page to provoke a particular emotional reaction from the reader, the nuts and bolts of the book. Artfully constructed – like a Swiss watch – Doctorow plays the reader like a fiddle carrying this one from laughter to fascination to outrage to horror to celebration and back to outrage, all the while peppering the tale with real world information.

Although relying on the Internet quite heavily for the story you really don’t need to be a geek to enjoy this story and, in all likelihood, you may get more out of it if you’re not. For those who do – like me – spend large amounts of time online through work or whatever, you’ll see some really elegant explanations for things you see day in, day out and probably learn some stuff you should have known already, I know I did.

I don’t want to give the impression the book doesn’t have its weaker points. Some of Marcus’s first person narration isn’t entirely authentic as a seventeen year old – at least to my ears – but this could be down to the culture differences between the US (where the book is set) and the UK (where I am) or the generation difference**. The peppering of information also gets a little OTT in places and skirts the white line of info-dumping but as someone who really enjoys Neal Stephenson’s work I feel churlish pointing this out because Cory is nowhere near as prone to this as Stephenson. The novel’s faults, such as they are, do not clunk or throw the reader out of the story.

I found Little Brother to be a gripping, page turner that I really couldn’t put down. I would happily recommend this to any reader, old or young, SF fan or mainstream junkie. This is an important book, it won’t just entertain you, it will give you pause and change the way you think about the world you live in now as well as the one you’ll be living in tomorrow, all the while entertaining your socks off. You can’t ask more of SF than that.

Read it, read it now.

* Neil Gaiman, Wil Wheaton, Eric Brown, Farah Mendlesohn, StrugglingWriter and too many more to go on listing.
** Though it pains me to admit it.

Reflections on Wuthering Heights

I just recently finished reading Wuthering Heights but I feel kind of silly writing a review of a book that’s been in existence for well over a hundred and fifty years. However, I am trying to make sure I synthesize my reading properly and so I did have some thoughts on it, reflections that I thought would make a post:

- I really liked the opening, a strong hook and a nice gothic feel.
- However, the opening seemed to lock Emily Bronte into a flashback structure that kept getting in the way of the story.
- I loved the prose and found it still stood up very well to a modern reader.
- Heathcliff was well crafted for the most part although there were a few raised eyebrow moments.
- Linton was about as convincing as Alastair Darling on when the recovery is going to start. A bit of a shame really.
- Catherine senior was irritating but Catherine junior was a much more interesting three dimensional character.
- Very much a novel of its time it’s remarkably close, in places, to the moral line of the period and this is probably why it stands up so well today.
- The propensity for death inducing breakdowns in Yorkshire is portrayed as high, some might feel this is melodrama but those of us who have, at one time or another, lived there know it is simply the way it is.
- It was surprisingly violent in places, particularly where Heathcliff beats Catherine.
- Despite providing a clear template for subsequent tragic romances it still managed to surprise me, albeit in the first half of the book.
- If you’ve never read it I would definitely recommend it although her sister’s work Jane Eyre is the stronger work.

Anyway, that’s just my opinion, feel free to jump on the comments thread and give me yours.

Right, now I have to return to working on the kitchen.

New review up at bookrater

After months of neglect I finally have a new review up at bookrater.co.uk.

You can see what I thought of Ian McDonald’s Brasyl here. A short preview follows:

Marcelina Hoffman is a reality TV producer who likes martial arts and will contemplate most things in the interest of good telly. Desperate for her next break she’s searching Brazil for the footballer that shamed the nation in the world cup half a century before. In the mid-21st century a street-wise Edson finds himself embroiled in the illegal trade in quantum technology. In the 18th century Quinn, a Jesuit priest, searches for another of his order who has gone rogue deep in the jungle where he is harbouring a dark secret. Such are the threads of story on which McDonald embarks in what is an entertaining but flawed novel.

Film Review: Australia

Truthfully, I did not have high hopes for this film. I do rate the director Baz Luhrmann, being a secret fan of Moulin Rouge and a vocal advocate of what he did for Romeo & Juliet. Never seen Strictly Ballroom – god willing, I never will. My concerns were not based on Baz. Nor, to be fair, were they dwelling on Hugh Jackman who, despite having questionable script choice, is not a bad film actor when cast well and that Kidman can act is not exactly a newsflash. On paper the constituent parts of this film look like they could work.

No, my concern was the concept. A 1940s style sprawling epic shot in Australia and centring on the run up to the Japanese attack on Darwin did not seem to this reviewer to be an obvious choice for the Baz Luhrmann. Indeed, recalling the last such attempt (albeit by another director) to recreate this kind of epic film making the only film I could bring to mind was Legends of the Fall. I have not watched that film in at least five years, largely because it’s like an endurance test.

Early reviews seemed to bear out my opinion and so I wasn’t really planning on seeing this film. It was quite by accident I found myself in the cinema with G and some friends, settling down to watch the bloody thing.

Australia is not about Australia. Australia is about a small boy, Nullah played by Brandon Walters, who has the misfortune to be born of mixed race (part aboriginal and part European) at a time in Australia’s history where the government segregated such children. The purpose of this exercise was supposedly to “re-educate” the children and prevent them from being “contaminated” with aboriginal beliefs. Walters narrates the story of how he goes from boy to man.

And what a story it is. Eccentric English ladies, mystical medicine men, world war, corrupt beef ranchers, murderous fathers, high adventure and a prickly rogue who underneath it all is a stand up bloke. It sounds silly doesn’t it?

To be honest it is. Combining a huge smorgasbord of clichés and giving it to a director renowned for high camp, hyper real, critically acclaimed treatments of films does not seem to be a recipe for success. And to be honest at points between him and Kidman he nearly manages to kill the film.

Recognising the need to seduce the audience into this sprawling epic gently, the first act contains generous amounts of the humour and high camp we’ve come to expect from Baz. However, Kidman’s performance is too much of a caricature and the over stylising simply didn’t fit – it took me out of the film. I can see what she was trying to do but it really didn’t work because she just didn’t seem natural in the way she does in other performances. Only when the cast moved onto the desert did the film and Kidman settle down.

The rest of the film moves, for the most part, with the degree of skill and flexing of styles that I’ve come to expect from Baz’s films. Although I can understand why the untidy multi-tiered ending leaving the audience confused as to why the film carried ongoing. To be fair, this is largely due to the zealot like adherence in Hollywood to the three act narrative structure and so I’m sympathetic to Baz’s desire to break out of that straight jacket. I’m just not sure he succeeds.

The steady hands of ex-LOTR star David Wenham as the murderous father show the value of good casting and I look forward to seeing him in a role that stretches him. I think he’s got potential. Hugh Jackman is good because he’s basically playing Hugh Jackman but that’s fine because frankly he’s at his best when playing Hugh Jackman. He clearly knows his value judging from the way he plays up to some of the shots and judging from the sighs from most of the women in the audience he’s not wrong. And yes: G sighed as well – alarmingly.

The real star of the movie is not a name you would recognise. Brandon Walters plays the boy and narrator. A small boy being asked to carry the vast majority of the film in a genre that’s pretty much been in deep stasis (if not actually extinct) for a number of years is a tall task. That he pulls it off is astonishing. That he does it with aplomb is breathtaking. An emotionally nuanced performance that carried the audience on a rollercoaster of laughter, drama and sadness that in and of itself is a reason to watch this movie.

And I surprised myself: I enjoyed it. I really did.

Film Review: Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

Constant readers will know that I am something of a Guillermo del Toro fan having lapped up both Cronos and Pan’s Labyrinth. It will therefore come as a bit of a surprise that I didn’t manage to see Hellboy 2 in the cinema and I can assure you, having now seen it on DVD, I wish I had made it to the picturehouse.

Hellboy 2 picks up Hellboy’s story a short while after the first film. Hellboy, Abe and Liz are now once again a functioning team at the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense where they continue to cause headaches for the government by appearing on camera at every opportunity. Liz and Hellboy’s relationship is running into the usual now-we’re-living-together issues such as the place being a mess, the cats getting everywhere, important secrets being kept and being the destined to end the world.

Meanwhile, Prince Nuada, the son of the King of the Elves, has been hunting down the pieces of his father’s crown in order to dethrone him and take control of the Golden Army and lead the creatures of myth against mankind. Why? Because mankind is evil, corrupt and has forced the creatures of myth into cracks of the world. There’s a problem: his twin sister Nuala has run into the world of men carrying with her a piece of the crown and Nuada has inadvertently drawn the attention of Hellboy in his attempts to capture another piece. Hellboy is all that stands between mankind and The Golden Army.

Although openly hailed as a tribute to Hellboy comic creator, Mike Mignola, there are plenty of del Toro’s own traits on display here. Although less explicit than in Pan’s Labyrinth there is a clear reference to del Toro’s oft used theme of humanity being the real monsters and this is shown in a surprisingly effective performance from Luke Goss as Nuada. Nuada is not a straight forward bad guy and in places you find yourself routing for him, realising that he is not actually wrong in his opinion of humanity.

As ever, the artwork and monster effects are spectacularly achieved with del Toro’s team using their trademark mixture of traditional effects makeup and CGI to bring the world of Hellboy alive. The results are gorgeous with a richly realised underworld that is – like much of the best fantasy – worth exploring without even coming onto the plot of the story. Doug Jones shows his usual versatility taking on no less than three roles – one of which I failed to recognise as being him until the second viewing and I think a new drinking game could reasonably be created around “spot Doug” as I suspect he plays another unaccredited role.

Perlman is consistently effective as Hellboy, a role that he seems to have been born to play and Selma Blair makes good use of quite restricted screen time. I found the plot of the film good in the sense it explored the themes I’d come to expect from del Toro but weak in the sense that it didn’t seem to have enough meat for the length of the film. There is a clear set up for subsequent installments in the franchise and certainly this sequel is better than the first film but I suspect the writing will need to be upped a notch to carry it beyond one more film. That is not to say the writing is weak because it isn’t, just that I felt the running time was slightly over-stretching the legs of the idea. I digress.

If you love well crafted fantasy films utilising creative creature effects and intelligent CGI backed up by solid performances then this film is for you. To truly appreciate it I highly recommend the largest TV you can find with the best sound system available and at least two viewings to drink in all the visual detail on display. Like a comic there are layers here and if you only take a way a cool action film then I think you’re missing out. A damned good film.