Author: TVPaulD

On Final Cut Pro X: What Pro Video Editors Won’t Tell You

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And the Pro Editors are hopping mad about it. You’ve probably seen the brouhaha all over the tech corner of the web, with Pro Video Editors fuming at Apple’s slick new upgrade for Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Pro X which EOL’d Final Cut Express and the Final Cut Studio Package, unifying Pro and Express and splitting the Studio Suite into three core Apps all available on the new Mac App Store. What’s got the Pro Editors hot and bothered? They’ll tell anyone who asks (And anyone who doesn’t) that it’s simply the fact that Apple has abandoned them, Apple doesn’t care about Pro any more because this App is “unsuitable” for professional video editing – it’s not Final Cut Pro, it’s iMovie Pro! (Note the irony here: the iMovie Pro name is supposed to demonstrate that Final Cut Pro X is not a tool for Pros. One would wonder then why it has Pro in its name even in this derisive nickname?)

Here’s the truth. That’s all a load of FUD. And I’ll tell you why: the reality is, the world of video has grown and changed. Pro Video Editors? They have not. They’re dinosaurs, stuck in a world of TV (TV Networks in general can be considered at least partially responsible for the dinosauric attitudes of the Editors owing to their cheapness and general unwillingness to upgrade technology – many still require masters on tape) and film in an era where video has shifted.

Simple question for you: where would you say you saw the most video content in the past 24 hours? For most of you I’d wager the answer is not “Traditional TV broadcast” and certainly not “in a movie theatre”. Nor is it likely to have been film or TV on DVD/Blu-Ray. For most of you, the answer is probably “the web”, or some variation of it – such as on-demand on a TV.

Apple’s aim with Final Cut Pro X was to produce a Pro Editing App for the modern era. Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere and even Sony Vegas are all built from he perspective of the past. And it’s one the Pro Editors love. It’s conservative, it’s heavily keyboard-driven, it’s bathed in dependence on timecode and syncing and preposterously complicated formats and drivers and encoders and decoders and tapes and format wars and piles of jargon-heavy windows with unusual and complicated interfaces. It’s built on a foundation of “you’re going to do x by doing y or else z is going to break unless you a b and reverse the c of n”. In short, it’s complex, hard to learn – harder to master – and inaccessible.

Existing Pro Video Editing Apps are built with the wrongheaded belief that you should be made to learn the App to edit the video. It’s My Way or the Highway with Avid and Adobe. Even FCP 7 was guilty of this to a certain extent.

And that was weird, because it’s not Apple’s way. Nor is it a credible way to design a video editing app. A lot of Avid Editors will scoff at the idea of someone using the new Smart Tools Avid added in the latest version of Media Composer. Know why? They use the mouse. Editors don’t like the mouse, they like the keyboard. Know why? Cos anyone can use a mouse, and video editors are special. But that’s their own hang up. If they want to prove you need to be a Pro to be great at editing, then the tools shouldn’t matter. A Pro should always be able to edit better than a consumer, regardless of the App, otherwise their training in editing theory was an expensive nothing.

The real reason the Pro Editors all hate FCP X so much is simple and twofold: it makes editing too easy and it’s not optimised from a conservative worldview.

Final Cut Pro X is optimised for an all file-based workflow. Do you know who uses all file-based workflows?

People like me. People like the folks over at Channel Awesome.

Oh sure, some independent web producers use tape or DVD in their workflow right now (I believe Cinemassacre do, or at least did until recently) but it’s more about that kind of work than any specific producer. I myself do use a tapeless workflow. And FCP X cures literally all the bottlenecks and hangups in my workflow. Better yet, it operates in such a way that editing is easy, the App gets out the way and lets you arrange the video and audio and export for the web with ease.

Independents like me and the other examples do need Pro grade tools – I couldn’t use iMovie for what I do – but that doesn’t mean we need Avid Media Composer. I’ve been professionally instructed in Avid and I still hate using it because it constantly gets in my way. Likewise Premiere Pro which I found to be mess of complications and incompatibilities – as well as being hideously ugly and suffering the worst UX of the big three (FCP, Avid and Adobe Premiere). The App being simple o use is very important in the era of democratised video:

Sometimes the editor is the talent. And the producer. And the cameraman. And the writer. And the director. Certainly that’s the case with me. In this era, we need pro tools which do not require speciality training in order to use.

Pro Editors hate all this because it means change which offends their conservative nature and it also means they might not be able to command such high salaries or face tougher competition. Unfortunately for them, that’s just the way it is.

About ten years ago, Apple heralded the birth of a new era when they claimed that home video production was about to be the next Desktop Publishing. Like the way desktop publishing took longer to evolve than assumed and wound up a very different beast (The World Wide Web supplanted the original vision of people printing their own newsletters, but had an all the more devastating impact on the traditional print industry because of its inherent advantages, including cost) Apple is being proved sort of right, much later than they probably planned.

The big growth in video is small operations – less than ten people on the whole production, often as few as one person or two people doing to the majority of the work – producing for the web. Final Cut Pro X was designed with that in mind. The response thus far has suggested it’s the answer to a question no one asked at best and at worst, the wrong answer to the question the pro editors asked.

The truth is, the Pro Editors were asking the wrong question. FCP X is the Right Answer to the Question the Modern World Asked.

Reputable with Paul Douglas

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A Talk Show about Portsmouth Facts produced by VIDITS Group D of the 2010/2011 Television and Broadcasting BSc (Hons) Degree Programme at the University of Portsmouth. Credits to Paul Douglas, Richard White, Lucas Holzhauer, Laura Fell, Jodie Redwood, Sophie Hunt, Matthew Eldridge, Darren Johnson, Natalie Simpson, Charlie Amber and Liam Smith. This is the show which brought the members of Professionally Stupid together for the first time.

Drinks to Beverages: Ubuntu Cola

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Things have gone horribly, horribly wrong in the latest Drinks to Beverages…Paul Douglas has been replaced by some kind of American Hipster-Hippie Variant of himself known only as “Expand-Your-Horizons-Paul”. A man who is trying a little TOO hard to stress his opposition to Pot, if you catch our drift…What is this weirdo up to? Reviewing Ubuntu. No, not the Operating System, the Fairtrade Cola. What does this clearly deranged and potentially dangerous freak make of it? Watch to find out.

Thoughts on Avatar

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What follows is the stream of consciousness I wrote down on my recent watch of Avatar. I hadn’t seen the movie at all for around a year after it came out, primarily because I knew it wasn’t to my tastes and I refused to pay money to see a film I knew I wasn’t really going to enjoy. However, it became free for me to watch it, so I opted to see if I could at least figure out what all the fuss was about. I sat down, with TextEdit opened, and wrote down my reactions in real-time. Yes, I knew I wasn’t going to like it, but I was unprepared for just how much this movie annoyed and infuriated me. Read on to see my slow descent into madness.

But, do bear in mind, since this was written in real-time through the movie, I only had time to correct some of the more glaring typos and such, so a bunch may have slipped through. Try to ignore them.

It Begins:

Two and a half hours? This movie is two and a half hours?!? Fuck me.

Okay….Pretentious opening narration. Wonderful. I’m already regretting this. Okay….Joke about alcohol or something, I guess it’s supposed to be relatable? Just came across as forced, but whatever.

What the fuck is with the lighting? Everything looks like it’s the wrong colour. Is this supposed to be other wordily or some shit? It just looks weird. You’d think with all the money Cameron wasted on this thing he could have paid someone to colour correct it.

“Since your genome is identical to his”…You fail biology forever, movie.

Pandora so far looks like a cross between a quarry and a level from Halo 1.

In fact, now that I think about it, everything I’ve seen of this movie gives me a vaguely “Halo Ripoff” video game feeling…Microsoft, you might have grounds to sue. Just saying. It’s made quite a lot of money (for…some reason) so, you know…Might be worth thinking about.

Lemme get this straight, not only does the military not pay to repair its soldier’s wrecked spine even though such a thing is apparently possible, the human race has also apparently failed to improve on wheelchairs in any way. Indeed, they haven’t even given this pleb a motorised wheelchair. Why? What part of this makes sense?

Oh hey, cliched “grizzled military guy”. Wow James, you’re such an innovator in this industry.

…Wait…

Stop saying Pandora you hack, we know where we are. Lazy exposition is lazy. Oh hey, here’s Norm, (AUDIBLE COMMA) Spellman with more lazy exposition. I’m gonna call Norm AUDIBLE COMMA Spellman “Expo” from now on.

Why is nobody horrified or appalled at this? THis whole Avatar programme sounds at least as evil and insidious as openly attacking the Na’vi.

“Looks like you”. No, it doesn’t. It looks like a giant Cat-Smurf.

Wow, the far future and yet this prick is unfamiliar with a Video Log. Am I to understand it that whilst in the future we have failed to iterate on the wheelchair, we have so fundamentally changed human expression (WITHOUT losing the ability to speak English) that a video log is an alien concept to this retard?

Okay, font used for these subtitles wins the Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Elvish Subtitles Award for Jarringly Out of Place Subtitles font.

Oh and here’s Sigourney “I’ll do anything James Cameron Says Because I Seem To Have Forgotten He’s Not The Only Reason I’m a Success” Weaver.

TWIN BROTHERS DO NOT HAVE THE SAME GENOME YOU FRIGGING MORONS. Lady, you’re a scientist, POINT THAT OUT TO THIS PLEB AND YOUR PROBLEM IS SOLVED.

Unobtabium. I knew he was gonna say it, but somehow I had always fooled myself into believing people were playing a massive joke on me. James, I know that’s supposed to be an inside joke, but dude…That’s the laziest, stupidest inside joke I have ever heard. You know the “suspension of disbelief”? The thing that made me believe that Liquid Alloy dude in Terminator 2, the last good movie you ever made? Yeah, you just ruined mine for this movie’s entire premise.

Unobtanium. UNBELIEVABLE. It’s like he went to TVTropes.Org and decided he just wanted to piss off everyone who ever loved that website.

Wow, this guy who is I guess the hero…He has made literally no impression on me. Arnie this prick is not.

Also, he’s doing a very bad job hiding his accent. It’s not so much that I can hear that he’s an Oz, as it is I can tell his dialogue is stilted and inexplicably gruff. Either that, or he’s a shit actor. I could go either way on this.

Well that “Hey guys” sounded both badly acted AND Australian…So I think it’s both.

This guy is not endearing, he’s a precocious asshole.

And he’s hideous! HOLY JUMPING CRAP! THESE THINGS ARE DISGUSTING! I thought someone said they designed these things specifically so that they were aesthetically pleasing? I recall hearing JC didn’t okay the design till every castmember said they’d tap a Na’vi? Are these castmembers the people with the worst taste in the universe or something? Every one of these Na’vi is horrendous to look at.

“Don’t play with that, you’ll go blind”? Okay, so there’s one good joke.

Incidentally, Sigourney Weaver as a giant Cat-Smurf is just wrong.

Oh hey, generic “tough-girl military type”. “Hi, I’m James Cameron and I am not a sexist. Just ignore, you know, the entire plot of my appalling Oscar-bait flick ‘Titanic'”.

I find the scars on this Space Marine Cliche guy incredibly stupid, distracting and unnecessary.

LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT. They have GIANT MECHS. They have HALF-ALIEN SEMI-CLONES WE CAN CONTROL BY REMOTE. But they DO NOT have a way for this dipshit to WALK, or at least a more efficient way for him to move around than manually pushing two wheels?

Congratulations movie, you are officially a broken universe.

I’m sorry, really, BLUE people? This is stupid. Teddy bears can be blue. Birds can be blue. Tiny little freaks who live in toadstools can be blue, but giant freaking cat people? THEY SHOULD NOT BE BLUE.

Eye Candy of a Space Jungle I guess? See, maybe it’s because I happen to be one of the apparently few people who actually thinks earth is pretty great, but I don’t find this that impressive.

Oh hey, look, E-Ink. Colour E-Ink. We already have that technology you know folks, it’s just taking an inexplicably long time to come to market…They should really get on with it, they’d make a fortune off of idiots by making phoney Avatar technology.

HAHAHAHAHAAHAHHHHAHAAAAAA! Are you kidding me?! A Hammerhead Shark crossed with a rhino?! You’re serious!? The only thing more ridiculous than that is this – is his name Jake? The crippled guy. Him. His mid-nineties trash-talking is at least twice as ridiculous both in and out of context. I’ve heard more convincing smack-talk and use of the word “bitch” from 12 year olds on Xbox LIVE.

Man we are way deep in uncanny valley here. There’s something about this CGI world which is just slightly less than photorealistic and it’s making me slightly uncomfortable. Everything has a falsely textured appearance, and the edges are just slightly too soft.

Oh for crissakes, there’s two more hours of this crap.

Oh hello obvious love interest….You’re…Um…Hideous. And having seen the actress that plays you, they must have gone to some considerable effort to make the Na’vi ugly, because apparently they’re supposed to look like the people who play them and Zoe Saldana is anything but ugly.

Okay, I know this is an alien atmosphere, but I have seen more convincing fire in video games. And quite frankly, I’m giving a “You Fail Physics Forever” badge to those flames because they just don’t behave believably, or consistently.

“I’m TOUGH. You can tell be cause I said ‘God-Damned’. Did you know you can’t say that on TV? It’s true. But this is a movie. So I can say it. And I did, because I’m badass Space Marine. Yeahhhhhhh”.

I find this Na’v language annoying and off-putting. And no, I do not buy into the idea that me thinking that is xenophobic, these are fictional monsters with a a culture cynically stolen from real ethnic groups. If anyone was being racist, it was the filmmakers in exploiting cultures like that. And for what? to make an appallingly heavy-handed message which nobody who saw this movie actually needed to hear and a few billion dollars.

Assholes.

This sequence with Jake and whatsername played by Zoe Saldana is a good indication of why this lost out on the Best Picture Oscar. For one, it’s awkwardly written. For another, it’s a cartoon. A jumped up cartoon with ideas well above its station, but a cartoon nonetheless. personally, it being a cartoon doesn’t bother me, I love Disney Cartoons, and Disney Pixar cartoons. It does bug me that they pretend it ISN’T a cartoon, because it clearly is. However, my point was that the Academy never gives the best Picture to a cartoon, even if they should (Wall-E says ‘hi’). Speaking of, if Toy Sotry 3 doesn’t get it, the Academy can go to hell.

Why are these subtitles in Yellow? It’s really annoying.

ARGH! This guy is the most hideous Na’vi yet! And he’s all shiny, like an unfinished effect or something. He looks out of place amidst the just-slightly-too-soft-focused-and-textured rest of the movie.

Well info individual Na’vi are ugly, a crowd of them just looks preposterous. I can’t look at this crowd without sniggering.

“Me Big Chief Na’vi. Zoe Saldana go-em fetch’s firewood”.

Yes, I’m suggesting that the design of the Na’vi Chief is incredibly racist against Native Americans, an yes I’m aware it’s not a new opinion and no I don’t care. It’s jarring and annoying.

I don’t get it though, are the Na’vi supposed to be African, Aborigine or Native American? Did the filmmakers just rip off all three of those cultures and combine them? I can’y decide if that’s better or worse. I feel like it’s worse.

Why is this moron continuing to speak english to every Na’vi he meets when to our knowledge, only a few seem to speak it? Which in and of itself is a minor miracle, very few creatures possess the vocal chords etc. necessary to reproduce human speech. That’s why Chewbacca in Star Wars may be able to understand Basic, but doesn’t even bother trying to speak it – and vice versa for Han Solo with the Wookie language.

Oh please stop saying Unobtanium.

You know, I’m going to be controversial here and say the Na’vi are at least as much to blame for the shit that goes down later in this movie. All the humans want is to get at the…Let’s call it the Oil. Thats what it’s clearly supposed to be. SYMBOLISM!!!!!111!!!!11!OMG!!WTF!!1BBQ!!1one!! Anyway, if the Na’vi would just stop being so stubborn about the superiority of their culture (Which is, itself, xenophobic. In fact, the Na’vi are at least ten times as xenophobic as the humans, who are going out of their way to be gracious, when it’s been made clear they could wipe the Na’vi out of they felt like it) and let the humans grab the oil and go, there’d be no problem.

The humans have no interest in staying, they’d have to either become Avatars (Expensive) or wear masks (Inconvenient).

Uh-huh. She’s teaching him their ways, the others dismiss him as being incapable of learning. Xenophobia. Like I said.

You know, I liked Expo much better in Dodgeball (Yeah, I just figured out that’s where I recognised him from). Anyway, I see he’s, once again, expositing. Lazy writing is lazy.

You know, I still don’t fully understand what happens to the Avatars when they’re not being controlled…I mean they just seem to be able to dump them anywhere, asleep. Isn’t that dangerous? Even if they pick a “safe” place to sleep, it’s an inhospitable jungle. Anything could happen!

The Na’vi doesn’t choose the weird pterodactyl thing, the weird pterodactyl thing chooses the wizard…Wait, this is bleeding into the various other fantasy universes James is ripping off.

Hah. She calls him moron. Accurate.

Horses with extra legs. I’d like to speak to a biologist about the feasibility of that.

Okay, come on, I have to be missing something. I’m an hour into this, and I still have no idea what people find so captivating about this crap. Is my capacity to be impressed simply by “the shiny!” really that much lower than the general populous’s? I find that hard to believe, I’m a Mac and iPhone user.

Tribal tattoo on his arm? This guy is such a douchebag.

Training montages without kickass music suck.

Mystical energy which flows through all living things? You’re ripping off Star Wars. You’re ripping off a series which itself consists almost entirely of borrowed ideas. You sir, are a hack, James Cameron.

Okay, I find the whole “clean kill” thing, and the mystic crap and all this BS and the way he’s started buying into it incredibly annoying and it’s one of the many thing which makes me fundamentally dislike the Na’vi. They’re bigots. They despise anyone who doesn’t buy into their religion. And what really annoys me about this is the fact the movie expects me to side with them, to the point of even implying that their religion is technically truth. FUCK THIS MOVIE. Stop talking down to me, I’m NOT a racist, I’m a supporter of Hope not Hate. Quit cramming “primitive cultures are really superior” white liberal guilt down my throat.

Hmmm…Weird pterodactyl’s who choose the wizard…Is this the part with the flesh USB Port…Yes. That’s ind of gross. There’s a presumably unintentional sexual undertone and it’s freakishly unsettling.

This entire culture is stupid and pointlessly dangerous and complex. In what way is this superior? They were openly cheering on the idea that he might die completing this entirely pointless task to prove his worth. What a fucking awful message to send kids James. “Unless your proving yourself through incredibly dangerous unnecessary risks, you’re mot a real man, and any worthy culture knows that”. FUCK YOU.

THIS IS JUST SHOWY. This whole pterodactyl sequence is 3D Eye Candy. And I ain’t watching this crap in 3D unless I can do so on the 3DS. So this is entirely pointless to me right now. I hate pointlessness in any movie, let alone a movie which is OVER TWO AND A HALF FREAKING HOURS IN LENGTH.

Oh hey very brief scene consisting entirely of exposit….Oh, it’s gone. Back to the showy cartoon nonsense.

Bored now.

Not even halfway.

…

Sigh.

This movie’s pacing is really inconsistent. It was racing along for the first forty-five minutes or so and now it’s dragging along like a broken down train.

Oh goodie, a mercy mission. How exciting. I’m convinced they actually made this movie with the idea that we sit and watch this mercy mission be successfully completed, because this totally is an independent arthouse flick, and not glossy, shiny, mainstream, populist schlock.

Waitaminute…This is Avatar. Sorry, I was fantasising I was watching a different movie. Replace that description with its opposites.

Sorry James, it’s gonna take more than glowy tentacle porn to win me over on this movie.

Blech. These Cat-Smurfs have totally the wrong bone structure in their faces to pull off human emotions like amusement and desire.

AND HOLY FREAKING GOD CAT-SMURF SEX SCENE. EWWW. EWWWWWW. This is wrong, wrong on so many levels. Gross. Dude is a fucking xenophile. Sick dude. Don’t fuck creatures of another species, inexplicable half-alien clone which you inhabit by remote or no. It’s still YOU in the re being aroused you sick creep.

Oh look, the exact thing I said about this whole leave them sleeping where ever they drop malarky has come to pass.

Yeah…Ummm..I find it hard to believe that they wouldn’t know where the Avatars were at all times, or at least be able to identify them immediately, in case they themselves destroyed the damn things in exactly this way.

Oh hey, his Ozzie accent came back. I get it, he can’t emote and maintain his gruff American Marine voice at the same time. Ergo, poor casting.

I’m curious, what DOES happen if you interrupt a link in progress? Does the Avatar die, or the human or…What? I’m unclear here. Cos from what I understand of this movie’s plot going in, Jake goes back into his Avatar and goes native…So that means both he and it survive…So…Like…What’s the danger?

Electro-chemical communication between the trees? It’s a global network? Pseudo environmental crap! Hooray, I feel like I’m watching Fern Gully!

Wait, that’s a bad thing…

A deal can’t be made because the Na’vi refuse to move. It’s “move or die” and they’re not moving. Where is the problem exactly? They were given a freaking choice. I mean, I’m not saying the humans aren’t wrong to kill them, or aren’t incredibly greedy, I’m just saying the damn Na’vi are being pigheaded and doing little to nothing to help their own cause. If the humans are irredeemably evil, which seems to be the movie’s message, then the real message about the Na’vi is that they are idiots. Total fucking stupid savages. I think the message they WANT to send is that the Na’vi are noble and proud or some shit, but that’s real not what comes across at all. They’re just stupid.

Take Love interest’s angry reaction to Jake telling them:

A) You have to move on
B) I was sent here by them to learn your ways and convince you to move.

She, and the rest of the Cat-Smurfs are surprised and outraged by this news. WHICH WAS ENTIRELY OBVIOUS TO ANYONE WITH HALF A BRAIN. What the hell did they THINK he was doing there, sight-seeing?! Besides, he’s now CLEARLY trying to help. WHY ARE YOU SHOOTING HTE MESSENGER YOU SAVAGE FUCKING MORONS?!

These things are assholes, stupid fucking assholes. WHY should I sympathise with a people who SO CLEARLY want to die, or are otherwise too racist to accept help to prevent it.

They’re racists, they’re idiots or they’re both. Sure, the humans are racists and for the most part irredeemably evil (Incidentally, this many irredeemably evil characters? Bad writing James), but the Na’vi are hardly blameless.

Oh look, a token “I didn’t sign up for this shit” AWOL move.

Lazy writing.

You know, call me crazy, but these graphics really aren’t all THAT impressive. Sure they look great, possibly the best CGI to date in film, but they’re not SO MUCH better than other films recently. For the most part, excellent, but they’re incredibly uneven. Frequently I’m finding that the foreground looks almost real, but the background looks almost painted, or vice versa. It kinda breaks the suspension of disbelief.

Na’vi crying does not prompt sympathy from me. It’s just an incredibly annoying noise. And Love Interest anger is petty, and again, sounds annoying.

Turning don the colour on this sequence didn’t make it more dramatic James, it just made it look pretentious – and the shamelessly self-aggrandising dialogue did nothing to alter that perception.

Fifty Minutes left. How is it possible that the climax of this movie takes fifty minutes? Is James that and at directing?

Man, you’d think they’d have some kind of remote shut down for these Pelicans…Wait, this isn’t Halo…Sure looks like it…Anyway, you’d think they’d have remote shutdowns to prevent the expensive flying machines from being stolen like this…That kind of technology exists TODAY for crissakes, they have it in CARS.

“I don’t believe in fairy tales”. You’re in one, lady.

Now Jake just sounds British. This dialogue is dubbed, how can this possibly be the best take?

Hmm…WHile we’ve got time. I want to ponder why Sci-Fi universes always perceive other worlds as being mono-climactic and mono-cultural, when the only planet we know of with sentient life, earth, is the exact opposite.

In this context: why are all the Na’vi racist, xenophobic religious fundamentalists with an inexplicable technophobia?

Here comes the white man! The white man will save us!

For a movie dripping in white liberal guilt, this thing’s incredibly racist…The Na’vi can’t save themselves, and Jake makes a better Na’vi than the Na’vi.

Also, fuck the apostrophe in Na’vi. What the fuck is it for? What does it represent?

Spiritual crap. How incredibly offensive to those of use who are happily secular humanist.

SHE WAS SHOT. WE CAN HEAL BULLET WOUNDS NOW. They do not need to magic of some jumped up force knockoff to heal her. What a load of fucking bullshit.

…Haha, it didn’t even work. Awesome. I’m really loving this. Stupid Na’vi-loving prick. If you’d spent more time using medical science and less hauling her to a fucking prayer tree maybe you’d have been more successful at saving here you dick.

JAKE. You are NOT a Na’vi. I’m sorry, doesn’t anyone else find this sick? He has appropriated the cultural heritage of another race, indeed another species, as his own. It’s theft, horrible disgraceful theft. And not only that, it’s a terrible, awful betrayal of mankind. This guy is no hero, he’s an asshole. He has literally no redeeming qualities.

Good CGI on that water there though. Kinda pretty. That being said…WE HAVE WATER. ON EARTH. LOTS of it.

Wow, this movie seems to be implying that the soldiers sent into foreign territories collectively, uniformly, unquestionably support the thinking behind a given conflict. That is outrageously offensive to the military, who may do their duty, but that doesn’t mean they like it. Not every soldier sent to Iraq was in favour of Bush and Blair’s Oil-loving Islamophobic bullshit you know James.

STOP CALLING THEM SKY PEOPLE JAKE. They’re HUMANS. AND SO THE FUCK ARE YOU, ASSHOLE. You’re a fucking racist – against your own fucking people. There is nothing about you which is not evil and contemptible you detestable little shit.

Yeah…This movie sucks. Up to a point, I was of the opinion that it was merely “not good”, and that it was worthy of being hated purely based on the fact that a movie this expensive and successful ought to at least be good, and arguably ought to be mind-blowingly awesome. But at this stage, it has dramatically exceeded my expectations for sulkiness, and I knew going in it was unlikely I’d enjoy it. But I find myself hating every insipid, moronic, awful, offensive moment of it. This movie is an abomination. This movie sucks on a scale I haven’t experienced since Hulk. The Room may be incompetently made, but at least that movie just sucks. This movie sucks OFFENSIVELY. And unlike The Room, this was a vastly over-budgeted event film from a name director which went on to huge success.

The Room was an independent turd crapped out by some idiot which went on to obscurity outside of that little pocket of the internet that delights in watching crap.

Yeah, that’s sensible. Send your Commanding Officer right into the heart of combat.

This combat sequence is pretty, but I find myself distracted by the fact that the Na’vi are predictably going to win, because they’re the designated good guys…Despite the fact there is no credible way that a few thousand giant blue targets with bows & arrows, spears and the odd sword or gun could possibly beat an army packing rockets, machine guns and heavily armoured flying machines.

Stupid bitch, your hopelessly outnumbered and impossibly outgunned, Do as he says.

Oh look, hammerheaded deus ex machina. I hate lazy writing, so very, very much. Alas, it seems I cannot escape it.

Okay, now here, I’m pissed, the way they’ve made the Na’vi victory credible is to make all that mystical crap work. Now, fair enough you get to define the rules of your own universe James, but the Na’vi are a parallel for real peoples, here on earth, and they’re not even SUBTLE parallels for them. So that the solution to their inevitable destruction is “their pseudo-religion is right and hates the evil sky people”, is fundamentally the same as declaring western culture flawed, incorrect and basically unreservedly evil.

You’re basically saying “Fuck you” to the entire audience you asshole.

Oh hey you know, this Mech thing is like straight out of Killzone 2! Well at least James is being multiplatform with the games he’s ripping off. I’m sure there’s even something in here they knocked off from Nintendo.

Why does a mech that size have a knife.

Yeah, I know that should be a question mark. But I’m not gonna use one. Know why? BECAUSE THERE’S NO ANSWER.

There is no credible answer for what that Mech has a knife in its “hand”. If it needs to clear undergrowth or some shit, strap a chainsaw to its arm. This is bullshit, plain and simple.

About time someone asked him that General Asshole. I’m not saying you’re not as much of a prick as he is, you’re both evil pricks, but it’s about time Jake got a “What the hell, hero?” from someone. Though, quite frankly, I think it would have been better coming from someone who wasn’t so unrelentingly and obviously a villain.

Yeah, see, Arrow in you. That’s why you shouldn’t have opened the canopy, even if you couldn’t see.

Oh, yay! I think jake is dead! Well at least both the unrelentingly evil leaders in this movie have died. That shows some awarene…SON OF A BITCH. She saved him. Well, shit.

Oh god, seeing him with her as a human only serves to drive home how disgusting and wrong everything about Jake is.

And here he is, calling humans “aliens”. That’s not okay Jake. YOU ARE A FUCKING HUMAN.

EWWWWWW. GIANT CAT-SMURF IS KISSING ACTUAL HUMAN. THAT IS FUCKING GROSS.

Oh wow. It’s over. Good lord. That is one of the worst, most offensively appalling movies I have ever seen. I mean, jeez, I knew I wasn’t going to like it, but fucking hell…I mean damn, I knew I wasn’t gonna like Twilight either, and I came away from that with my opinion entirely unchanged. It sucks. Here, I went in expecting a movie which in no way justified its cost and popularity, with some plot holes and some lazy writing. What I saw was so much worse. It’s more offensive, and more…Simply BAD than I ever imagined, in its every facet and moment. There was literally five minutes total of this that I didn’t find either bad, offensive, stupid or some combination of those. It’s about ten minutes of spectacular imagery wrapped in two and a half hours of broken universe, plotholes, broken aesops, racism and a heavy-handed message its own makers seem not to have actually taken to heart.

I hated this movie. hated hated hated this movie. Hated every insipid, audience-offending minute of it. This movie is awful. This is everything which is wrong with modern filmmaking, and James Cameron can go to hell.

I am not open to opposing arguments on this. This is one case where I am invoking “Your opinion is objectively wrong” on anyone who tries to convince me this is a good movie. You can tell me you like it, you can even tell me it’s your favourite thing ever, and give me reasons why. But I will not hear any argument against the fundamental message of this Blog: this movie sucks. It sucks OUT LOUD.

Christmas Letter 2010

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Dear family; friends; casual acquaintances; people who I don’t know reading this online and Google Spiderbots,

It’s that time of the year again. You know? The most wonderful one. That one. Christmastime. Yeah? You probably noticed what with all the pretty lights and tinsel and goodwill to all men and sudden inexplicable rise in quality of television. Which also means it’s time for me to write my Christmas Letter, a tradition which – despite the protestations of many –  shows no signs of ending. You know? Like mince pies.

Now for some of you this is your first time receiving one of these letters, and some of you who have received one before have preposterously short atten…Oh hey look, a bunny rabbit!

Where was I? Oh right, explaining the letter.

Every year, I sit down and ask myself a simple question: “What kind of year has it been?”.

Then, in the letter, I ramble on and on, at times quite tediously, in answer. And because I’m a wacky goofball, I usually litter it with jokes. Mostly the stuff I didn’t have time to say in the year that was. Why? Because why the hell not, that’s why.

So anyway, let’s set about answering that question. What kind of year has it been? Well…A damned long one! I don’t know about you, but January 2010 feels like so long ago I can barely remember it. Maybe it’s the quite preposterous number of things which happened this year, or the way everything seems to have changed, or maybe it’s the fact I’m a Student and therefore have consumed what is surely a dangerous amount of alcohol.

No, just kidding folks. The only DANGEROUS amount of alcohol is none.

Just think, this time last year, me and many of my peers were waiting around for the sadistic system known as “UCAS” to let us know our fate. I was in College and almost all my friends were 17, which means there was no nightlife to speak of.

How times have changed.

And look at all the other stuff. This year, amongst the achievements to my name are, sleep (Drunk) in a Disneyland Paris Hotel bathroom; move to University; spend an hour on a stage telling my fellow College leavers how awesome we are; go to Prom with a date AND pass Year 13 whilst basically sleeping through most of the Exam period – thank YOU inexplicably high marks in January Exams*!

*Seriously, I have no idea why they were so high. I thought I’d failed them.

Yes, it’s been one hell of a year. A year in which I, repeatedly, discarded almost all of my hair and started reviewing drinks on the internet for…Some reason. You know now that I write that down, it seems even weirder…Still…Go watch those reviews…

Still, by far the most exciting part of the year was moving to Portsmouth where, to paraphrase a song, I’ve got some friends that I may hardly know, but we’ve had some times I wouldn’t trade for the world.

Man, I hate it when people pretend to be deep by using the lyrics of a song, don’t you? Doesn’t that just make you want to punch them in the face? Well please don’t do that, I’m still typing. It’s hard to type with broken glasses and a black eye you know. I speak from experience.

Also, some stuff happened in the wider world, but it’s mostly very depressing. But…Uh…Hey, Toy Story 3 came out. So it’s not all bad. Oh and they brought Golden Grahams back. Some of you have no idea why that’s amazing, but I assure you, it’s like the best thing that ever happened in the world of cereal.

You know, speaking of Toy Story 3, I saw a lot of good movies this year…So there you go, there’s some good news from the wider world. It was a good year for cinema.

Still reading? Good…A lot of people duck out after the second or third paragraph after they realise I’m just as annoying in writing as I am out loud. In return for your persistence, I have some happy news: IT”S SNOWING! I literally glanced at the window as I was writing this paragraph and it’s started snowing again! on Christmas Eve ! That’s in-freaking-credible!

Yeah, as you may be aware, I never grew up.

I’m still a kid at heart.

Anyway, I think I’ve taken up enough of your time now. Plus I want to get this sent at about Midday. So then…Have a Merry Christmas; Happy Holidays; Happy Hannukah; Kwazy Kwanza; Solemn, Dignified Ramadan and a Happy New Year.

Yours,
Paul Douglas

PS: Okay, NOW you can hit me.

PPS: OW! Hey, it wasn’t mandatory! Jeez.


Drinks to Beverages: Mixxed Up

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Drinks to Beverages is back with the penultimate episode taped at the old Yaxley studio. Which is to say, the penultimate episode filmed before Paul Douglas moved into University Halls. Anyway, Paul’s made a visit to Lidl (for…Some reason) and picked up another awful-seeming ripoff drink. After the “adventure” of Freeway Iron Brew, what fresh hell awaits Paul in his can of Mixxed Up Stimulation Drink? Watch to find out.

New Generation not New Labour

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I’m not gonna lie to you, I am incredibly happy about Ed Miliband’s recent election as the new Leader of the Labour Party. If you follow me on Twitter (@TVPaulD), you’ve probably seen me Tweeting in support over the past months as the Leadership Election has unfolded. And Ed’s speech on the result being announced touched strongly on the reason I feel I connected so readily with his campaign.

In David Miliband, and Ed Balls, I saw two (Very, very good) politicians. But they were just that, politicians. And what’s more, politicians of an era which I feel has had its time. When the Conservative Party was ejected in 1997, they spent the next 8 years or so pushing essentially the same old Tory orthodoxy.

Then they elected David Cameron, and much as I dislike his politics and generally disagree with him, you can’t argue that he was not a transformative figure for the Conservatives. He remade them into a modern Conservative Party that was much more in tune with what (certain sectors of) the population were feeling. Labour had done the same thing with Tony Blair – much later than they should have.

The risk with putting David Miliband or Ed Balls in as leader was that they would be seen as continuing the old New Labour era (Clumsy a phrase as that is) past its sell-by date. Tony Blair has been bleating that we should not move past New Labour. He’s very attached to it, it’s his legacy.

But Tony is as wrong now as he was when he began to mistake what New Labour stood for to most people around the time of the Iraq War. Ed Miliband characterises it as becoming the establishment, and that’s true. New Labour ceased, partway into Tony’s second term, to be radical or reformative.

This stagnation continued under Gordon Brown, but let’s be clear: the rot started on Tony’s watch. And we lost more voters on his watch than we did on Gordon’s. Gordon is a great man, and he was a great, but (like Tony) flawed Prime Minister.

Ed Miliband is younger than the other Leadership contenders. He’s younger than the Coalition Leaders. It may only be about half a decade, but it’s enough. Enough to signal a sea change. Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson and to a less overt extent David Miliband (Their heir apparent) wanted to continue the New Labour project because they feared going back to the old Labour orthodoxies.

In taking this stance, they forgot the fundamental reason the Labour Party turned to the New Labour project: staying the same is not Labour, will not get you elected and is, in fact, the very definition of conservatism.

Ed Miliband has built a credible case for a new generation. I hate to evoke the Obama cliché, but it applies somewhat here. Under Ed’s new generation of the Labour Party, Labour can be a transformative entity again, we can regain radicalism, we can return to progressivism. Making real changes, bit-by-bit, for the betterment of all Britons, as a collective.

It’s a younger, more vibrant Labour Party, a Labour Party which has turned a page, and shorn itself of the stagnation which got us ejected from power.

It’s what the people wanted, Labour back as the champions of The March of Progress.

And at the head of this New Generation of the Labour movement, we have Ed Miliband. An MP, the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, yes. But, crucially, a man who is clearly a human being. The mantra of “Ed talks Human” rings true. Just as Obama captured my personal imagination because he is a stunning orator, Ed captures people’s imaginations and affections (including my own) because he comes across as someone who not only fundamentally gets it, but gets us.

The Conservatives are underestimating the importance of Ed’s human quality, and of the transformation of Labour, over night, into a generationally different movement. They are, wrongly, elated.

My advice to you Mr. Cameron, is this:

Run and hide. Run. And hide.

Some Cliched Jokes And Why They’re Supposed To Be Funny (Or Never Were)

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COMEDY! Now that I’ve got your attention, we’re gonna talk about…Well…Comedy…Um. Yeah. Anyway, as you may know, I am (Technically) a comedian. Note, I did not saysuccessful comedian. Technically, I am an internet comedian, otherwise referred to as “the lowest known form of life”. Nevertheless, I am taking it upon myself to take you through ten jokes which are totally played out and explain why they’re funny, why they’re supposed to befunny or, most likely, why they really aren’t.

“…And what’s the deal with airline food?”

Ah the airline food joke. The stereotypical last refuge of the hack standup comedian. You’ve probably seen this joke used more frequently for ironic purposes than as an actual joke itself. You all know the bit, there’s a comedian on the stage and the characters on some sitcom are watching him tell unfunny jokes, then he pulls out “And what’s the deal with airline food?”. It’s the quintessential cliched observational humour joke, the kind of thing you expect Jay Leno to come out with.

In fact, this joke is so famous amongst the comedy circles for sucking out loud and basically summarising everything wrong with hack observational comedians, you’ll frequently see it used (Again, ironically) in response to an example of an unfunny joke or standup routine – particularly on the internet.

But honestly, have you ever wondered, what are the comedians who originally started making this joke even getting at? Well to start off with, let’s name the guilty. It was Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld. He made this joke famous. Now, admittedly, when he told it, it was pretty funny. But that’s just because he’s Jerry Seinfeld.

The reality is, it’s a pretty lame joke even if it hadn’t become such a cliche. “The deal with airline food” is that it sucks. That’s literally the entire premise of the joke. This is an example of failed observational humour. The idea behind observational humour is, really, to notice something absurd and/or something we can all relate to but might not think about. Airline food…Yes, it sucks. We know.

Now yes, I know, technically this is just the setup to the joke and you’re supposed to go on and recount a story about how much airline food sucks or something. But answer me this. Is there a single person who is going to hear this story that isn’t going to be able to guess the punchline before it even starts.

NO! Because the punchline always boils down to “Airline Food sucks”. There’s no payoff to this joke! Speaking of which…

“You ever noticed that a white guy does X and a black guy does Y?”

Oh god, now we’re into the dregs. This my friends is the quintessential racial joke. Almost every hack comedian with a racial theme to their comedy will make a joke using this exact formula – and it’s (For some reason I cannot possibly fathom at all, no way no how) especially common if the comedian in question is black.
An example of this joke being mocked which you’ve probably seen is when, on The Simpsons, Homer watches a black comedian on TV pantomime how white guys and black guys drive. The black guys drive like they’re in a movie, the white guys drive like dorks making “dee-de-dee” noises. Similarly, Homer himself tells a very poor example of this joke in the episode where Mr. Burns is trying to make himself popular:

“You see, white people have names like Lenny, and black people have names like Carl!”

The sad part is, that’s about as funny as these jokes get. The problem here is the joke is playing off a pretty well-known stereotype – black people are cool, white people are dweebs. And yes, there’s an element of truth in it.

But the fact is, it’s just not that rich a vein for comedy. I think at this stage, just about every contrasting stereotypical mannerism of white people and black people has been hauled onto a stage by some hack comedian standing in front of a faux-brick wall. Oh don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of great racial comedy still to be harvested, but this formula is just dull.

There’s plenty of ways to make fun of white people without resorting to this tired old joke. Look at Deon Cole, one of Conan O’Brien’s crack team of scribes, for an example of innovation in this field.

“Did you know Rap Music used to have a C at the beginning?”

Okay, now this joke is just straight up dumb. This is obviously just idiots trying to be clever and take the piss out of rap music, but it just comes across as idiotic. We get it, Rap Music is divisive. Could you honestly not come up with a funnier way to express that? I mean, seriously.

All you have to do is read out the lyrics to most rap songs in a deadpan voice, with no rhythm, and it’s automatically funnier than this.

Also, Empire State of Mind is one of the greatest songs ever recorded and 8 Mile is a fantastic music-themed motion picture. So FUCK YOU rap haters.

“How do you get Pikachu on a bus? Poke ‘im on!”

Oh haha, very funny. This is possibly the lamest pun in the history of the universe. Unfortunately, it’s spread like wildfire. It’s a corruption of the same humour found in the favourite joke of maths students the world over:

“Why is six afraid of seven? Because seven eight nine!”

Now that joke’s legitimately funny. And so is the Pikachu Joke…At first. But unlike the Seven Joke, the Pikachu Joke has no staying power. Once you’ve heard it, it stops being funny, and it becomes more unfunny the more you hear it. The problem? People tell it all the time. It’s a safe bet no comedian would ever bother pulling this out on stage, but unfortunately non-comedians use it at every opportunity.

The Seven Joke enjoys the same ubiquitous status, but is somehow timeless. Much like South Park’s “Funniest Joke In History” candidate:

“Would you like some fish sticks, sir? What? You would? What are you, some kind of gay fish?”

Get it? Fish sticks sounds like fish dicks!

…It’s funnier out loud.

“So a bear walks into a bar…”

There are a lot of jokes which start in a similar manner. The infamous “A priest, a rabbi and a Scot” (And variations thereof) have ascended to the heights of “most overused premise for a joke ever”. Everyone has made up a joke using this premise. And almost all of those jokes involve either a bar, a genie, or god. And the punchline is always the third guy coming out better than the other two.

But there’s another version of this joke, which usually goes a lot like this:

“A bear walks into a pub holding a newspaper. He saunters up to the bar and takes a seat whilst the other patrons, terrified at the sight of him, edge slowly towards the door. He lays his paper on the bar and orders a beer and a packet of crisps (Chips to you Yankee Doodle Dandies) and the terrified barman charges him £10. The bear sighs, lays down his money and begins reading his paper. Tentatively, the barman observes ‘we don’t get many bears in here…’ to which the bear sighs, laying down his paper, before replying ‘Well at these prices I’m not surprised!”

This version of the “people walking into a bar” joke is infinitely funny and has unlimited scope for re-purposing. Family Guy ably showed it being used as a joke on a sitcom. The great thing about this version of the joke is that the humour is one, seemingly innocuous, detail and not really the “elephant (Well, bear) in the room” which you expect it to be.

Another great version goes thusly:

“A man walks into a bar and sits down, ordering his drink. He sits there, drinking it, then he suddenly hears it…A small, squeaky voice telling him how good he looks and what a great guy he is. He looks around for the source of the voice and is surprised to discover it appears to be coming from the bowl of peanuts. Unnerved, he heads to the toilet to splash some water on his face. Once there, he hears a gruff voice hurling abuse at him. To his (Semi) amazement, the voice is coming from the hand dryer. He heads back to the bar and the barman asks him if he’s okay. He reports these oddities to the barman who responds, easily ‘Ah, yes, well…The hand dryer is out of order, but the peanuts are complimentary.’”

Technically, that’s just a cheap double pun. But the execution is what sells it. All that buildup really bulks up the payoff. So, next time you wanna make a “some guy walks into a” joke, use the premise for something a bit cleverer than “these two kinds of people are idiots and this other kind of person is smart”.

“Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side!”

It’s a crying shame that so few people get this joke. Because it’s actually really really funny. When I was first told it, it was framed as “the first joke ever told” and had an additional punchline tacked on – “I guess people used to be a lot easier to please”.

But this joke is actually exactly the kind of humour which is popular these days. The problem is, it became so ubiquitous so fast most people stopped thinking about why it might be funny and began fixating on the fact that it’s supposed to be un-funny.

So, would you like to know why this joke is so funny?

Because of course that’s why the chicken crossed the road. What other answer is there to that question? Millions, literally millions, of idiots have spent years trying to re-write this punchline to “make it funny again” (“to get away from the KFC”, “because he saw a black guy coming” – seriously, someone’s made that one, “because Oprah told it to”, “because the duck did it first and it wanted to fit in” ). It’s not necessary!

The joke is, the person asking is asking a stupid question and your inability to supply the simple answer makes you looks silly. Here’s the reason so few people got it: it’s on the listener! “Why did the chicken cross the road?” is one of the earliest and best examples of making the audience the butt of the joke in an entirely good natured way, as opposed to, say, this next gem.

“A moronsayswhat?”

Not being a moron, I couldn’t tell you, however, mumblemumblemumble.