Hooah

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

After the block-busting success of the first Modern Warfare iteration of the Call of Duty franchise, and fourth in the series, a direct sequel was inevitable. The first three games were successful takes on the World War 2 first person shooters that had gained popularity since the Medal of Honour games arrived on the Playstation, but Modern Warfare saw the series leave history behind to plump for a ‘near future’ take on conflict.
Rather than attempting to capture the feel of present day warfare, CoD 4 opted for a globe trotting action-fest which split missions between different military forces and perspectives (mixing mainly ground-based first person segments with aircraft fire support via grainy camera footage, for example). In its desire to deliver the big thrills it even included the aftermath of a nuclear explosion, albeit in a mainly scripted form.

This forced perspective is used fairly liberally in the follow up, with a couple of key sequences seeing your avatar fairly helpless and forced to observe the action with little chance for input, allowing the developers to keep you locked in on the narrative rather than wander off and look at the sky while something important happens.
Despite the mainly linear nature of the game and the use of inter-mission briefings to push along the distinctly 80s plot the message is still a little garbled with little background before you’re suddenly in the shoes of a CIA mole in a Russian terrorist’s gang, following as they gun down dozens of civilians in a Moscow airport.
The outrage sparks a war between Russia and the US, allowing the game to flit between the efforts of ground troops trying to reclaim heartland USA and special forces trying to hunt down the terrorist behind it all in clearly defined locations - a Rio favela, an oil rig, snow-bound military base, forest compound etc.

Whilst the plot wouldn’t look out of place in one of the more ambitious actioners fronted by the likes of Seagal or Van Damme in their heyday, the game offers undeniably exhilarating action as you often find yourself scrambling between cover, a near-overwhelming enemy force crawling out of the woodwork and taking out members of your AI controlled team. On the higher difficulty settings the intensity is almost too much, forcing you all too frequently to dive behind walls as the screen goes blurry and blood-smeared in the preferred way of announcing imminent death since games achieved the visual fidelity to do away with health bars.

On normal difficulty the campaign can be breezed through within a day of solid gaming, but aside from the challenge of going back to find the in-level collectables (intel), there is also a series of one-off ‘special ops’ missions which utilise certain play styles (stealth and sniping, riding a snow-mobile, defusing bombs against the clock) and have more of a score attack feel as they tempt you to go back for short bursts of action and beat you previous performance.

What has made the series a success, however, is the combination of hardware ownership and broadband access at the time of release that gave enough consumers the option of taking the game online in order to shoot friends and strangers in the face. I’ve no doubt that it’s a very polished aspect but not having played online for about three years (partly due to a stint of poor net access and partly due to the many late nights with Halo 3 and the like) I wouldn’t know.

Without this element CoD: Modern Warfare 2 is a highly polished shooter which offers up enough of a challenge to keep FPS fans happy, fairly decent AI and varied levels which manage to disguise the open corridors with some gorgeous artwork. It stands up well in a crowded market, but as a single player experience it’s not special enough to compete with the likes of the innovative Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath or the daddy of single player FPS’s, Half Life 2.

Wouldn't you like to be a Pepper too?

 I love Short Circuit.

I'm not sure why I always thought that Dr. Pepper would have a peppery taste, probably the name and the ad campaigns that try and persuade people to give it a try, as if it's the leper of the fizzy drink world. 

Dr Pepper Zero
This smells a lot like cherry cola, but not much of a head compared to diet Coke.
Fruity taste, not a hint of a pepper's heat or sweetness. Less harsh than cherry Coke (not so much of that artificial flavouring) so a nice alternative in the fizzy pop world. From the ad tagline “What’s the worst that could happen?” you would expect a taste a little more divisive than vague fruitiness.

Diet Dr Pepper Cherry

Barely has more than a hint of a cherry odour beyond the normal Dr Pepper fruitiness, but the one different ingredient from the usual cola additives, ‘Red 40’, probably contributes to the reddish tinge to the usual dark caramel brown and a strong, dark pink colour to the bubbles (while they last).
The smell once in a glass is no stronger, the cherry having less of the artificial feel found in cherry Coke.
I can barely detect more of a cherry flavour than the general ‘fruity’ flavour that Dr Pepper has as standard, so what this is giving the Pepper devotee I have no idea. Shiny can?

Dr Pepper Diet Cherry Vanilla

The cherry smell is lighter than the non-vanilla version, so barely there. Red 40 is still present so the red tinged bubbles are still in effect in the intial froth build.
Rather than the vanilla adding anything to the mix, instead all tastes - fruit, cherry, vanilla, seem to cancel each other out and the drink seems like sparkling water with a vague, undefinable aftertaste. Very poor.

Dr. Pepper makes for a nice, fruity alternative to that sweet cola tang I seem to be vaguely addicted to, better than the straighter tastes of your Fantas and Sprites, and with less of an artificial hit than Cherry Coke. Nowhere near a diet vanilla coke beater though, that so called 'vanilla' cherry Dr. Pepper is a massive let down.

Drown your spirits

Crabbie's

Crabbie’s alcoholic ginger beer has a stout, impressive looking bottle, trying to emulate the kind of vessel associated with real ale.

On first crack there is a light, spicy aroma of ginger, the head is very impressive and the  amber tint neither too cloudy nor too clear - the substance is there but it’s not all sediment. On tasting, however, the beverage is deceptively light. Crisp and benefitting from being chilled, the ginger taste itself is very mild, even if it does linger, and the bubbles aren’t really in evident. The drink is a very easy one, and it’s a wonder that there was any need for the invention of alcopops at all if this were an available alternative. With none of the bitingly sweet tones of the chemically enhanced likes of WKD and Smirnoff Ice, this feels like a much more preferable choice for those who prefer their alcohol to be sweet rather than bitter, even though the ingredients do point to the use of sulphites, sugar and sweeteners. Much is made of the elephant trademark dating back to 1801 and the emblazoned statement in ‘original’ ginger beer, but the ingredients are unlikely to set this far from the alcopop crowd. Still, this is ahead in taste and I would recommend for those who are after a refreshing brew with a light kick (4%).

Diet Pepsi Wild Cherry

On cracking there’s only the faintest hint of cherry, certainly not the sweet tang of cherry drop boiled sweets I’d associate with flavoured cola. The high fizz factor of a diet cola is present and correct, but the large head soon gives way to a tamer brew with that familiar brown-hued darkness to the liquid. With the drink loose in a pint glass the cherry aroma is no stronger than from the can; the first taste isn’t 100% smooth, but there certainly isn’t that acidic hit you’d get from a badly made artificial flavour. As with the odour, the taste is light, supplying an edge to the usual diet pepsi taste, doing the job of adding highlights without overwhelming the original. This is something I could get used to, if it were a standard addition to most shops’ pop lockers.

The ingredients feature the usual suspects with only calcium disodium an unfamiliar addition. Crucially the can states ‘contains no juice’ in order to cover themselves against people assuming that the use of ‘wild’ and ‘with other natural flavours’ goes hand in hand with organic or the drink being good for you.

Guarana Antarctica

Subtitled O Original Do Brasil, so I’m assuming that this is Portuguese and it’s a Brazilian drink with guarana as a chief ingredient. Guarana was marketed in the 90s, before Red Bull achieved fame, as a natural stimulant, appearing in drinks and chewing gum with promises of alertness. I tried the gum but don’t remember it having any particular effect

That ingredient list is dense as hell.

On cracking the can there’s a quick citric whiff, but this weakens quickly. The fizz on pouring is moderate, with a small head that subsides almost immediately. The colour isn’t that appealing, piss yellow in keeping with energy drinks but slightly less radioactive looking than red bull.
The odour in a glass is less citrus and more sugary, hinting at syrupy thickness. IT goes down smooth though, the sugar not leaving an unpleasant coating and a taste somewhat like muted lime. This does taste more natural than your average buzz beverage.

Tab

Made by the coca cola company, this beverage smells a bit like diet coke on first cracking the can, it looks like diet coke after you first pour, and it also tastes like diet coke, albeit with an unpleasantly metallic/soily aftertaste. I remember Tab clear being basically a way of having clear cola, but I can’t see the point in Tab at all.

Diet A&W root beer

On the crack you get a strong whiff of liquorice, very reminiscent of dental mouthwash. Whilst the gloop looks like your standard cola in the glass that medicinal taste is overpowering, with only a hint akin to sweet caramel from the ‘aged vanilla’ underneath.
Not something I’d like to sample again, definitely a stronger taste than the naturally brewed root beer I’ve tried before.

Metro 2033 - Xbox 360

Metro 2033 is heavily based on the novel by Dmitry Glukhovsky. In 2033 a nuclear war has resulted in Moscow becoming an irradiated wasteland populated by mutated creatures, whilst the surviving people live underground in the metro systems tunnels and stations. The player controls a typically mute character Artyom, who finds that his home station is under threat from mutants called Dark Ones, more deadly than the usual tunnel dwellers that attack those who wander beyond the safety of the stations.
As Artyom you venture out looking for help from other stations, coming across outposts of communist and fascist groups who seek to control what remains of the city until ultimately finding an old nuclear weapons facility. There are hints in cut-scenes that the mutant beasts are some sort of radioactive evolution rather than mindless killers, but this idea isn’t really fleshed out at any point. There may be more made of the idea towards the end of the game depending on the moral choices you make at various points (giving money to a beggar etc.) but these decisions don’t seem significant in and of themselves.
The game is ultimately a first person shooter with a few tweaks on the standard genre tropes. Certain areas of the metro, and most of the surface of Moscow, necessitate the use of a gas mask, which needs filters to keep fresh or Artyom’s breathing becomes heavier and harsher. Additionally it can becoming damaged in combat meaning you will need to scavenge new ones from your victims. Ammo comes in two different flavours, expensive military grade pre-war ammo, which is understandably rare, or the botch job amateur produced gear knocked out in the metro system. Ammo is used in the stations for trade, though what you can buy is restricted to trading ammo types, guns and upgrades and health kits.
As well as the gas masks another consideration is light - much of the metro system is swathed in darkness so a torch is essential, and although use is limited it can be recharged using a hand pump.
Much of the combat takes place in a state of mild panic as you wheel about in the dark, mutants clambering across ceiling and walls, so it’s more relaxing when you come up against the human enemies in their dens. The action is fast and violent, the game allows a certain amount of damage which ‘regenerates’ - the screen gets increasingly red which fades when you find cover - and much like the charging of the torch and opening your log book, using health kits is done in real time, opening a box of vials and administering a quick dose of something with a syringe.

Due to its setting within the metro system, the game architecture is often limited to corridors and tunnels, and when the world opens up on the surface you still have the standard apocalyptic ruin seen in everything form WW2 shooters to Gears of War and Fallout 3. Opting for Russian dialogue with subtitles gives the game more atmosphere, but there is essentially little deviation from the survival horror style of the FPS genre as you battle monsters and bandits in the dark. As the genre inhibits much of the storytelling and characterisation that an RPG allows, the combat is pretty much all Metro 2033 has to fall back on, so happily this is as meaty and involving as you could expect.
Nothing truly exceptional but a nice change from the CODs that currently dominate the overcrowded FPS stable.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs - Xbox 360

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is illustrative of a change in the way film tie-in games are now produced. Typically seen as cash cows and chiefly a way of milking the last drops of cash from a franchise, games were often rush produced to meet the film launch deadline, inevitably resulting in sub-standard fare.
These days the film production companies are more savvy, preferring to be associated with a more quality product and therefore involve the development companies at a much earlier stage.
Meatballs certainly seems to capture some of the film’s magic, allowing for the fact that an inevitable lack in characterisation means a heavier emphasis on the art style and fantastical situations.
The gameplay chiefly involves platforming and combat, as is tradition with a tie-in aimed at kids. The mechanics are fairly basic owing to the perceived skill levels of the pre-teen intended audience, but the use of inventor Flint Lockwood’s gadgets to overcome the obstacles in the levels and deal with the sentient food aggressors lends it a little complexity. There are collectables hidden throughout each stage which accumulate in order for you to upgrade the devices, including a vacuum for sucking in and shooting out substances, a slicing blade, extending boxing glove and overpowered hair dryer.
The introductory animation is presented in a charming 8-bit style and this is repeated between each stage, while the levels themselves are bright and chunky, fitting the look of the film perfectly.
As the challenge is so slight the whole game can be wrapped up in a few hours, but they are satisfying hours. It would have been nice to have something a little harder (the NES era games were all aimed at kids but were pretty unforgiving - Ghouls n Ghosts anyone?) but it’s a fun diversion.

Word, Riggs

All the movies, all the time

Gummi!

Already into the second week of January in this year of 2010, it seems a little late to start adding to the avalanche of 'best of year's and 'best of decade' lists that spread through the world of written media like a particularly infectious rash. Do these lists ever get used as a way to avoid the mistakes of the past? Sure, there's value in revisiting and praising great art, especially if it was passed over the first time around.

Music is a particularly hard one to put down. Ever since I started using an mp3 player to feed me tunes, I've found myself a fan of the shuffle and therefore have trouble naming a given track, let alone the album it's from. Plus I can't pin somethign down as a 2009 release or one of the last decade without a lot of trawling back through my ipod's listings.
Perhaps a top ten 'most played' would serve as some indicator, in terms of songs?

Films are easier to pin down by virtue of the relative density - it's a lot harder and more expensive to make a film, so there are fewer, especially those that gain distributiom. But still, without referring to a list of what I've seen this year it's easy to forget some gems, what with the dozens upon dozens that I've sat through on the big screen in 2009. I can sympathise with, if not forgive, the lazy journalism that sees the lists populated by the more obvious contenders, as those which took the most bank or column inches are more likely to be remembered. Although a little more recent, and having the advantage of me seeing it twice at the cinema, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is genuinely my favourite film of 2009.

Not tending to keep up with the developments of family cinema, the film only came across my radar very close to release and not having read the book all I had to go on was the quirky name. I only got round to watching it a few weeks after release, after getting seeing the generally positive swathe of reviews that it earned.

Making a special trip out to Chelsea early on a Saturday, as it was only screening in early weekend time slots, I found myself surrounded by a number of families. At this point in my cinemagoing career I have come to tolerate certain behaviours - talkign through adverts is perfectly acceptable, people being a bit noisy is okay if it's not too frequent and the film isn't the kind of thing that necessitates intense concentration (stuff like the Twilight sequel or Paranormal Activity for example), so I wasn't automatically in violated mode at the prospect of infant burblings - ths was a kids film after all, and I felt confident I could follow the plot even with a few interruptions.

It turned out I had more to wory about from my own behaviour - Meatballs is a delight, rather than going the more recent kids film route of 'one for the kids, one for the parents' joke rationing to keep everyone happy, it seems that Meatballs just decided to have a fuckton of jokes that everyone would find funny all the way through. One particular scene, my favourite - and you should probably skip this paragraph if you intend to see it - involved a scene where our hero, amateur inventor Flint Lockwood, discovers snow (or rather vast quantities of ice cream having fallen from the sky) for the first time. Having never been in a snowball fight, he relishes the experience and joins the fray with gusto, leading to a scene whih plays out with an over-the-shoulder handheld cam style, following Lockood as he delivers headshots in a strange reading of slasher flick visual stylings that had me in literal danger of bursting into uncontrollable laughter - the prospect of which may no doubt have rather worried the parents in attendance at that screening.

I wrote about the film elsewhere:

"Excellent stuff, packed full of great characters, one-liners, visual gags, play-on-words, slapstick and it has a talking monkey. One scene in particular threatened to start me off on a giggling fit; I was expecting something at least passable and quirky, and came out very impressed. I didn't find out until later that the writer and director team were also responsible for Clone High - I can definitely see a similar scattergun approach to the humour and some of the mannerisms and movement of the characters. For a crazy gag-packed kids animation, this is up there with Emperor's New Groove"

Clone High was an MTV cartoon show that I caught thanks to the internet and is one of the few greats that it seems that I still don't know anyone who has seen it. The premise is that historical figures have clones made of them using their DNA, and are all sent to high school together. Abraham Lincoln, gangly and awkward, is the focus of the show, and from what I gather the series was cancelled after complaints from India over the portryal of Ghandi, whose clone finds the weight of history so heavy to bear that he shrugs it off and instead launches into a hedonistic part due lifestyle. The show is wonderfully written, packed full of throwaway gags, visual motifs, recurring in jokes and laughs based on character development and interaction, not to mention the occasional interjection of historical personality quirks when appropriate. Quick snippet - the school principal is a would-be evil genius who has a robot butler that refers

to everybody as 'Wesley'.

Although Clone High was very much aimed at a teen audience, the creators seem to have had no trouble redirecting their mirth targets to a group altogether more wholesome, and manage to fit in some sort of Lynchian nightmare into the final climactic act.

Once the DVD is released at the end of January, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs could easily become my favourite film of 2010, too.

Oh, and Bruce Campbell does one of the voices.

-

My updates on this web space are pretty erratic, and hardly thematically consistent. In an effort to keep myself writing more often I have pledged to write about every single film I see this year, whether it is the Oscar baiting The Road which I will no doubt see shortly, or the Sunday afternoon TV screening of Uncle Buck that I caught last week. There's little point in linking just yet, as I've not finished writing about anything I've seen in 2010 just yet (I think it's six so far, which isn't bad for nine days), but if last year is anything to go by the updates will be thick and fast, or at least thin and often.

Great malenky yarbles

Paul W.S. Anderson has earned some deserved notoriety for being a bit shit.
His debut feature, with bright-eyed, chisel-cheeked Jude Law when he was still unfamous, was the grindingly shite Shopping, and a prime vehicle to allow Jude’s rubbish side to shine.


Mortal Kombat followed as Anderson’s first videogame adaptation. Seemingly blind to the steaming afterbirth that was Super Mario Brothers, someone decided that desperately trying to squeeze a film out of a one-on-one beat ‘em up remarkable for its gore was a good idea. The result was a Western action movie in the pre-Matrix days, meaning the action scenes were pedestrian and the game’s gore had been toned down to gain a bigger audience. It’s rancid excuse for cinema didn’t prevent it from spawning a sequel and a TV series. Wonders never cease.


Soldier was Anderson’s fourth feature, was universally panned and was at least an important factor in the downfall of Kurt Russell, who if it weren’t for a few unwise projects could have found himself in the position Bruce Willis enjoys today, mixing interesting work along with the clag.


Resident Evil was the second videogame adaptation, somehow coming up with a plot worse than the original game, infamously bad voice acting and all. Essentially an excuse to watch Milla Jovovich kick ass and use a little bit of dodgy CGI, this is exactly the kind of filler horror bilge that somehow manages to appeal despite the correct knowledge that it will inevitably disappoint. So many people have managed to do zombie movies right, it’s almost insulting when someone cocks one up. Still, I get the feeling that even though I have avoided them so far, the small part of me that yearns to see the sequels will never die.


Whilst not quite evoking the reaction I had to Terminator: Salvation in terms of Franchise Necrophilia, Alien Vs. Predator deserves special mention for making Resident Evil seem like it actually didn’t cock up as a zombie move that badly, in retrospect. Two of the most popular alien horror series had already met in the comic world with some excellent results. A number of stories had envisioned a universe in which the species co-existed and inevitably intruded into the lives of humans, with some success both critically and commercially. So you’d think that making a half decent movie featuring the two xenomorphs would be a piece of piss, and maybe it is. Maybe Anderson went out of his way to fuck it up, just to see if Fox would still release the thing. It achieved an age rating of 15, which can only be seen as a mistake. If your aim is to re-envision it as a subtle psychological horror where any physical trauma is artfully implied rather than splattered on screen, that’s fine, but to go for a halfway house with not enough of anything for anyone we all just go home miserable. And then set it in pyramids, under the Artic ice. Basically a setting as far removed from the earthly or intergalactic arenas you would ideally use, and basically looking like a leftover Young Indiana Jones backdrop that hadn’t been dismantled because they ran out of ideas and money.


Four years later Anderson came back with Death Race one of a number of remakes of classic 70s films that almost certainly didn’t take the original title of Death Race 2000 as it was released in 2008. To be fair, I have heard a number of positive reviews of this, in terms of “it’s good for a bullshit empty action movie”, and it does feature Mr. Jason Statham as the lead, but the trailer really put me off being packed as it is with clichés of clichés in some sort of post-anti-meta-critique of base action films. I did go and see Gamer in the cinema this year, so I think Death Race probably does deserve to get a look in at some point.
The latest project is apparently a return to the Resident Evil franchise; this time subtitled Afterlife, although he did write the two existing sequels so it can’t be argued that he is resorting to a return to past successes. Perhaps this will prompt me to finally watch the sequels in some sort of masochistic Resident Evil marathon which climaxes in a visit to the cinema to see the fourth instalment and a subsequent trip to hospital after gouging out my own eyes?



Speaking of which…



The one Anderson film I haven’t mentioned so far is also unique in that it’s quite good. Event Horizon was Anderson’s third feature, released in 1997, and featured the sublime Laurence Fishburne as our hero spaceship captain, seemingly existing in a universe with an alternate sci-fi film history where none of the films exist that would dissuade one to ever captain a rescue vessel in outer space.

When I say “quite good”, I’m really using the word “good” far more freely than many would be comfortable with, but in terms of Andersons catalogue it is truly a diamond in the rough, Argos diamond or no.

Event Horizon could hardly be accused of being original and lifts elements from
Alien – space rescue going wrong
Various haunted house movies – hallucinations of ghosts caught just going off screen, through doorways, up ladders etc.
2001 – cramped, circuit-board lined passageway
Jaws – crash zoom in said tunnel
Star Trek - the Event Horizon echoes the design of a Klingon Bird of Prey
Hellraiser – hell as a dimension, Neil’s Weir character ‘going native’ and becoming a demon involves a fair bit of self harm (ultimately the worst hell has to offer is physical pain, with the psychological element used to butter you up, whereas it should be the other way round)
The false ending of Scarlet(?) dreaming that they are rescued by Weir is a well worn horror staple, found memorably in Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street.
One of the deleted scenes features Neil’s Weir climbing headfirst down a ladder after Cooper and Scarlet, in bloody demon mode, and in the commentary for the scene Anderson admits it was inspired by the deleted “Spider Walk” scene from the Exorcist, making it unlikely that the similarities with myriad other films are coincidences. Most films, of course, can rarely avoid being influenced by previous works, but in this case it smacks just a little too much of recycling.
Two sequences in its favour are both based around vacuum – the well worn genre staple of a hull breach causing violent air loss is enhanced by Captain Miller’s rag doll buffeting as he struggles to escape, and an excellent sequence of a rescue mission for a crewmember caught in an airlock and about to be exposed to space without a suit.


One of the original elements comes from the set design, which does often try to offer something a little unusual even if it doesn’t always work.
The captain’s chair design, suspended from the ceiling of their ship, means that Fishburne’s Miller looks odd, like a toddler sitting at the grown-up’s table with his legs dangling.
The random spikes and ornate symbols on the surface of the gravity drive and its chamber seem highly unlikely for a scientific experiment – ornate decoration doesn’t really go hand in hand with cutting edge technological development.


To expand on nonsensical choices somewhat, the idea that no one on Earth would have attempted to analyse the first message of the newly returned Event Horizon, leaving the crew to have a quick crack at it on the way also seems unlikely. There’s an argument that the rescue mission would have been assembled with haste, but they undoubtedly would have wanted to try and get an idea of what they were sending the team into.

Thankfully the cast are good, with Fishburne standing out in particular as an evident leader who desperately tries to keep control in both himself and his terrified crew as everything goes tits up, and Sam Neil managing to keep close to the line separating camp from menace which probably adds to the atmosphere of unease. Jason Isaacs and Sean Pertwee also feature and help to avoid the cats becoming characterless victims waiting for their death scene.

The CGI tends to stand out, these days it’s so ubiquitous that for every shot of a car jumping into a helicopter for which you think “aah, CGI” there are a thousand shots with added buildings, added people and altered skies that you will never notice. All of the CGI shots here just look that bit too shiny and basically computerised, though they tend to only be used when necessary, to depict zero gravity for example. This may seem a cheap shot at a film made in 1997, but when Moon was released eleven years later with such excellent use of model work it is hard to believe that CGI would be the better choice, either aesthetically or economically.

For all its faults Event Horizon is perfectly enjoyable and doesn’t compare too badly to more recent examples of the genre such as Sunshine, so it’s a shame that based on the rest of Anderson’s output it looks like a fluke the likes of which he won’t produce again.

Comfortably numb

All About Lily Chou Chou is a study on contemporary Japanese youth culture, an attempt at examining the situation that has led to some Japanese teens becoming violent and despondent, an outcome which has bewildered the older generations since the Japanese economic bubble burst back in the early 1990s.

Centred around a young teen named Yuichi, the film deals with bullying, shoplifting, prostitution, suicide, rape and murder, and how he and his school mates submerge themselves into their culture to escape their grim realities - in this case an obsession with the titular pop star, Lily Chou Chou.


Rather than just being a gritty expose of modern Japanese youth, the film is often lyrical to the point of being willfully abstract, with the long opening scenes consisting of little more than Yuichi standing in a rice field listening to a discman, whilst text from the fansite he runs dedicated to Lily flashes on screen, as different fans discuss Lily's music and the idea that it taps into an alternate state of being, known as the "Ether".

The films is shot on handheld DV throughout, most obviously in a long sequence following Yuichi and his school friends on holiday on a southern island in Okinawa, which is shot in POV of the boys’ own hand-held cameras.
These scenes are a welcome escape from the school and home life of the characters, but as the sequence plays out it’s obvious that getting away doesn’t help the boys get away from themselves.


The cruelty that adolescents are capable of inflicting on each other is always disturbing, and the situations here ring true as similar incidents are a regular occurrence in the news, but the film's attempt at elevating the kitchen-sink subject matter with an arthouse eye doesn't entirely succeed, instead serving to highlight the insular thought processes of the kids and thereby making them less sympathetic. The concentration on the look of the film brings the audience away from the characters and results in you investing less into what happens to them, leaving you to passively absorb the injustices rather than be pricked into anger or sorrow. The essential core to the story is that one of the bullied becomes the bully, and is even worse than those that came before – it’s a situation that should evoke feelings of bitter irony but the isolation of the characters, whilst on the one hand doing a good job of conveying the numbness they impose on themselves to cope, results in the audience feeling a similarly subdued reaction.


The performances are all decent but some of the characters are less than well rounded, particularly the bullies, and this lends the atmosphere a more exaggerated cartoony feel that only detract from the more artistic directional aims.

Extras are confined to a trailer for the film and trailers for other ICA DVD releases.



It's not a bad film but the subject matter has been handled often within Japanese cinema and more imaginatively, and although shot two years before Gus Van Sant's Elephant it still manages to feel like a cheap copy.