Kung Fu Panda 2

The original Kung Fu Panda was a fairly solid and fairly typical Dreamworks Animation film: stellar voice cast (Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Lucy Liu, Seth Rogen and Jackie Chan); well done animation (although not up to PIxar standards) and an entertaining story mixing humour and action. It screamed competence rather than inspiration, it was a decent second rate effort that failed to match Pixar or even Dreamworks own best efforts (the original Shrek or How to Train Your Dragon).

Hardly surprisingly, Kung Fu Panda 2 gives us more of the same - the voice cast gets more stellar (Gary Oldman on villain duties; Michelle Yeoh and even Jean-Claude Van Damme!). The animation remains attractive and effective and there are some nice touches in  mixing in different styles of animation for the flashback sequences. It has some funny moments and some decent action, without ever being truly hilarious or emotionally engaging.

The story, having sorted out Black's Po at the end of the last film, has to un-sort him to give him a new character arc (or rather the same arc repeated). To do this, they fall back on the old-hat daddy issues. Although, to be fair, this does knowingly play on one of the most perplexing aspects of the first film - how a panda has a goose for a dad. On the positive side, Oldman is a delight, hamming it up to great effect as the villainous Lord Shen and the interplay between him and Michelle Yeoh's soothsayer goat is one of the strongest aspects of the film. The rest is never less than entertaining, but never much more either. And it loses marks for the shameless link to a possible third film in the final scene.

Overall - 6.5/10  Solidly competent with a few nice touches.

X-Men First Class

After the success of the first two Brian Singer directed films, the X-Men frachise took something of a nosedive through the messy Last Stand and the hugely disappointing Wolverine prequel. Once again we return to prequel territory with this origins story. On paper there was reason to be optimistic - the director's chair was taken by Matthew Vaughn (fresh off the success of Kick Ass) and the cast includes Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, January Jones and Kevin Bacon.

So, does this film work to heave the franchise back on track. The answer would be an almost unqualified Yes. Almost unqualified in that it has some faults - it probably tries to introduce too many characters so that some are poorly served - Riptide has little to do and less to say and some of the new characters' powers are either a bit derivative of previous characters (Havoc) or just a bit naff. But on the whole it works very well.

Vaughn, re-teaming with Kick Ass scripter Jane Goldman, has delivered a film which combines a bit of wit and humour with some good characters and some great action set pieces. The final battle of the coast of Cuba is one of the best handled and most thrilling finales to a superhero movie for a long time. In fact, the period, the tone and setting in the Cuban missile crisis gives this the feel of something akin to a Connery era bond movie, only with mutant superpowers and echoes of the Anakin/Vader plot from Star Wars.

As for the cast, the stand-out is Fassbender who makes a startingly good young Ian McKellen and brings some depth to the role. McAvoy struggles a bit more to live up to Patrick Stewart (hence repeated jokes about not wanting to lose his hair) but generally holds his own well enough. Of the others, Winter's Bone's Lawrence makes for a sympathetic Mystique, Nicholas Hoult brings pathos to the role of Beast and Mad Men's January Jones makes a great Femme Fatale as Emma Frost. It goes without saying that Kevin Bacon also makes  superb villain. Also watch out for brief cameos from Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Romjin from the first films.

Overall - 7.5/10 First Class superhero flick and franchise firmly back on track.

Edinburgh City Centre by-election

There's go to be a by-election in Edinburgh. The sitting SNP councillor for the City Centre ward is resigning to go to Harvard. Normally,  council by-election wouldn't be all that interesting, certainly not enough to warrant its own blog post. However, there are two things that make this interesting:

1. Should the SNP lose the seat and the Lib-Dems not gain it, then the ruling Lib-Nat coalition in Edinburgh will no longer have enough seats to control the council and will need to bring on board the Tories or the Greens, (unless the Libs decided to ditch the Nats and hook up with Labour - not likely at the moment!).

2. More interestingly, City Centre ward is perhaps the closest 5-way marginal seat in Scotland. The results in 2007 were:
SNP 20.3% (elected)
Con 20.1% (elected)
LD 19.7% (elected)
Lab 17.9%
Grn 16.8%
By the time the Green candidate was eliminated, he was only 18 votes behind the Labour candidate (who was a sitting councillor). Transfers from the Greens then took the LD candidate over the threshold for election. The surplus from the LD then saw the SNP candidate elected and kept the Tory far enough ahead of Labour to be elected.

Of course, a lot has changed since then. The Lib-Dem vote, in particular, can be expected to have dropped quite sharply as they experience the backlash of nationally being in coalition with the Tories. The Tory vote has also probably dropped (although their New Town vote in this ward is probably quite loyal). Labour's vote should have risen, but in Scotland generally they find themselves in a bit of shell-shock after their drubbing in May. The SNP generally seem to be on the rise, but might themselves suffer a wee bit for being in coalition locally with the Lib-Dems. The Greens were disappointed not to pick up more seats in May, but did increase their vote across Edinburgh and finished ahead of the Lib-Dems on the list in all Edinburgh constituencies except Western.

So putting all that together what is likely to happen. On first preferences, the SNP will probably finish first and a little bit further ahead. Then it could end up being very close between the Tories, Labour and the Greens, with the LDs probably dropping to 5th. After that supposition gets even more tentative. Currently transfers from the LDs are likely to break more in favour of the Greens, probably followed by the SNP and then Labour and the Tories. This might stretch the SNP lead. Then...
If the Greens are eliminated next, their transfers would probably also favour the SNP, then Labour and finally the Tories. Meaning the Tories would be next to go. Most of their votes probably wouldn't transfer but the ones that would, would break in the SNP's favour. Result SNP victory.
If the Tories were eliminated after the LDs, again most votes probably won't transfer. Those that do would heavily favour SNP, with probably the Greens marginally ahead of Labour. If the Greens went next, the SNP would clearly beat Labour, but if Labour went next, their transfers might break in the Greens' favour although probably not by enough to catch the SNP.
If Labour were eliminated after the LDs, their transfers would almost certainly ensure that the Greens were ahead of the Tories, although to stand any chance the Greens would need to be ahead of the SNP too at this stage, as Tory transfers will probably favour the SNP.

So, by far the most likely outcome is an SNP victory. Surprisingly, the party with the best chance of beating them is the Greens, but only if they can get ahead of Labour early on and even then their chances are slim. In reality, they will probably be content with a strong showing putting them in a good place for one of three seats that this ward will elect next May.

Of course, if the current thinking prevails and this election in the city Centre of Edinburgh is held in August in the middle of the festival then absolutely anything could happen!

Senna

I was in Zimbabwe when Ayrton Senna died in a crash at Imola in 1994 and even there it was big news. The film Senna from director Asif Kapadia is both powerfully enthralling and ultimately slightly frustrating. Kapadia takes the route of eschewing voice-over, instead relying on the accounts of those who actually knew him and archive footage to tell the story. The result is a fascinating story in two parts.

The first two thirds of the film covers Senna's quick rise to being one of the leading drivers in the world and his long-running duel with Alain Prost. The film paints an enigmatic picture of a man of devout faith, but who was also convinced the establishment was out to get him. Kapadia's tone is more reverential than objective and as such the fiery Senna is shown in a more positive light than the more calculating Prost. One effect with this foregrounding of the rivalry is that other key players (Piquet, Mansell, etc...) are more or less ignored, but this is Senna's story, so fair enough. However, the draw back of the reverential tone is the feeling that, despite the evident combination of faith and paranoia, the film never gets really gets under the surface and grapples with what really made Senna tick.

The final third of the film is taken up with Senna's last season and the events leading up to the fatal crash. This is where the film really packs some emotional wallop. Showing Senna's reactions to the earlier crashes of Rubens Barrichello and the fatal crash of Roland Ratzenberger. There is a kind of horrible inevitability building and when they cut to onboard cameras on Senna's car for the race itself, it becomes almost unbearable. One of the things that strikes you is just how unlucky he was - his crash looked by far the most innocuous of the three (if anything, Barrichello's looked the most horrific and he survived).

Overall 8/10 Often with a story this powerful in a documentary, it is very difficult to actually evaluate how good the film is, but this is fascinating and compelling, if not flawless, documentary making.

The Hangover Part II

The original The Hangover wasn't everybody's cup of tea (or indeed, bottle of beer), but what it did have was fresh creative energy in large amounts which showed itself in the innovative structure and the sheer unpredictability of some of the events. This was actually the source of much of the humour. So making a sequel, you have a choice of whether to find something new and equally inventive or to repeat the same gags, merely upping the gross out factor.

Unfortunately, here the filmakers decided to go with option B. The same tricks are repeated again, replacing the surprise factor of the original with more ugly extremes. So the film starts with a telephone conversation between the same two characters (who in this instance would have no real reason to be talking). The baby is replaced by a monkey, the prostitute by a ladyboy, the tiger by a mute monk and so on and so forth. The result is all very predictable, unengaging and unfunny. To be fair, there is one moment of genuine invention, where the flashback enters the mind of Alan (Zach Galifianakis) who sees them playing out the events of the previous evening as children. But this moment just highlights what lazy film-making the rest of it is. It goes from bad to worse at the end when the viewers eardrums are assaulted by the aural torture that is Mike Tyson trying to sing One Night in Bangkok.

Overall - 4/10 A comedy so unfunny that not even the presence of Paul Giamatti can lift it.