Let’s be clear here; I’m all for a certain degree of disclosure if it’s relevant, but I don’t see why a multinational corporation that started out as the underdog would want to maintain my search habits for anywhere between 18 months and six years in the first place, and I certainly don’t think they have any business selling such details to the highest bidder in terms of disclosing age, location, sex, preference or even, as mentioned before, search habits.

This is why I started determining what the best options for me are. I refuse to get caught up in the Apple cult, and am especially sceptical of the seemingly philanthropic intentions of Linux distributions – I fully acknowledge that Linux has application in various fields such as servers, but the problem is that when something is so open source as Linux, it means that the people who contribute to such operating systems know them very, very well, and not all of those people have your best interests at heart. This is why, for all their ills, I place my trust in Microsoft – True accountability. If something goes wrong with your operating system, or a server running on Windows server 2008 gets hacked because of a flaw, you have Microsoft, a company that makes billions a year to look to for answers and place blame, rather than the faceless voices of literally millions of contributors, to operating systems that barely guarantee complete compatibility in the first place.

The fact is, accountability is good, and this is where organisations such as Linux and Google fall down; they’re faceless voices, that really don’t have to answer to anyone, because for want of a better term, they’re a movement that’s lost the point of their own message. So how do i go about assuring my own privacy? Well. The matter is simple. For a start, I take advantage of the fact that 64 bit operating systems employ 64 bit browsing; Internet Explorer doesn’t use Flash, because Adobe hasn’t created a 64 bit compatible plugin yet; this means that I’m free from worries of any flash exploits that may pop up when using, say, Firefox. In addition to this, when using sites that requires any input of card or personal details, I use a key scrambler, which encrypts my keystrokes on this end, so that any potential trojans that report login details back are essentially, complete gibberish. This means that i can use ebay, online banking and payment systems and even some forums with a relative degree of privacy without being snooped upon.

In addition, I always make sure my firewall has my specified exceptions. It’s always important to specify which ports you want to use, and close the rest; exploits thrive on open ports. In addition to this, if you’re on Windows 7, Vista or XP, it’s doubly important to disable remote desktop  this is the number one exploit in a hacker’s handbook today, and will often be the first place they’ll try in order to gain access to your system.

Finally, this is a step I recommend to anyone, regardless of whether they’re connected to the internet or not – make two accounts. Madness? Possibly not. The trick is to make one an admin account that you only use for installing and maintenance of your PC – through this account, you can administrate updates, and keep your PC clean; the second should be a simple user level account, with no power user rights whatsoever. The reason for this, simply put, is that always being on your admin account is bad; it leaves you vulnerable to hacks, as any number of programmes can be executed via your browser. Simply using an account that doesn’t allow you to execute anything that re-writes registry entries or to the programme files offers an extra level of security against people in the world that might not have your best interests in mind.

AOL site cinematic, poses the question: “what films should be released in 3D next? Disney has already reissued Toy Story in 3D, and plans to do the same with Toy Story 2 before the third instalment comes along, which will also be in 3D; but I remain unconvinced entirely that every film needs the treatment, as the cinema purist in me feels that it takes away some of the essence and intent of the original film – much like I feel George Lucas took much of the purity and innocence that I attach to the Star Wars trilogy before he reissued them as a special edition and made the prequel trilogy. It’s my assertion that films, such as the vast library of disney classics, and modern releases of Beowulf and even the Dark Knight don’t need the 3D treatment, as they were never the way they were intended to be seen…I think in many ways, it would be a hollow effort,, indicative of cynical Hollywood marketing execs attempting to squeeze every ounce of revenue from a film for the sake of it.

Would you want to see Casablanca, or Gone with the wind, or Citizen Kane in 3D? Of course you wouldn’t, because in my view, such films are perfect in their own intimate, unique way. I’m wary of 3D becoming just another gimmick, especially as companies such as panasonic and sony are pushing sets with the technology built in – it really kind of was that “laserdisc” feel to me.

While we’re on the score of films, I’d like to say that I’m one of the people firmly in the camp of believing that Sony did the right thing in canning the Spider-man franchise. I would HOPE it means they have a gameplan in mind for the continuing series, without the participation of Macguire or Raimi, but I know one thing to be true. Two actually. One is that I never saw Tobey Macguire as Peter Parker anyway, and the other being that the last outing of Spider-man was truly, truly awful. I’m not a big fan of Spider-man as a whole anyway, so I didn’t care for the character as deeply as I would for the X-men (as an example) – bt I still take a fair amount of interest in comic books, because that’s just how geeky I am.

On the downside, Spider-man: The musical is back on it seems. Topless Robot seems utterly convinced that words were spoken, and hands were shaken on the part of studio execs and Mephisto – I might be inclined to agree here. In fact considering the kind of work U2 has been putting out lately, I think it’s a good possibility that bono is Mephisto.

And with that, I leave you with a closing though: Some friends would insist that I need to wake up – to which my response is: At least I’m not one of these people

As a side distraction to all of this, I’ve had the complete 7 series of Star Trek: TNG fall into my lap. This is a good and a bad thing, as it means, at least in my head that I now have licence to complete the set by buying DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, The Films and the original (and animated series), and then bite my way through stargate. I was debating the subject of downloading (legal and not so legally) with a friend a week or so ago, and we both agreed that having the physical property sitting on your bookshelf is unequalled in feeling – I agree with that view completely, and am resolving to cut my downloading habits out over the next year, to the point that I can say that the cases on my shelf are the real thing, and not a print out after buying a film or series from iTunes, printing out the cover and burning them off.

Finally, I would like to offer some advice – never upgrade things when your head is full of cold. It makes things five times more complex than it actually needs to be. Also, ignore the summer glau picture – there’s no reason for her to be there other than that I find her extremely sexy, and I wanted some space filler.

Onto more webby things – is anyone else having consistent memory leak issues with firefox regardless of the version they use? I’ve upgraded twice now, and no matter what I do, the resources it takes gets way out of control, and I have no option but to shut the whole web browser down and restart, after I’ve gone into the task manager and closed it manaually. Because apparently it seems the only way to really shut it down these days, because if you try to merely exit the programme, it crashes and stops responding. I’d look at moving to another browser, but I haven’t found a method of transferring bookmarks AND passwords to safari or chrome.

The answer of course, is that mozilla and adobe collectively should get off their behinds and develop x64 packages of flash and firefox, but that doesn’t look like it’s happening any time soon.

The internet is growing, alarmingly so – to the point that most of us in the world have access to internet speeds that vary from 2mb per second, to 1g/bit per second; we’re deluged with choice for every conceivable lifestyle choice, and yet at the same time, we’re spoiled by that choice and limited in our choices at the same time – our ISPs here in the UK offer us “superfast internet speeds – up to 50m/bit”, but then act in a surprised manner when representative companies such as the BPI, MPAA and RIAA knock on their door and point out that piracy is rife – it becomes a matter of audacity to ask why, when people have so much choice, do people download illegally? When given a choice, it’s little surprise that people will opt to download something for free, when the corporations of the world, be it a bank or a multimedia giant choose to use the recent (and most dire) recession in current memory to profiteer, instead of remember the taxpayers and consumers who are their lifeblood and encourage them to buy more products simply by making things cheaper, and more affordable. Mnay economists are predicting that over the next 50 years, global economics, politics and boundaries will change beyond recognition of what we see today; the lines are already shifting, as Canada, Mexico and America unify under a single economic support structure; the same can be said for the European Union as it grows and adopts new members, and as countries, formerly regarded as “developing countries” such as India, are welcomed as wealthy nations with their own bargaining power, and their own diplomatic credentials. The truth is that the UK has been sleeping like a dragon hoarding its gold for a good many years now, and has awoken to a world where we are no longer leading, but finding ourselves increasingly playing catch up.

In this brave new world, a hand shake is no longer accepted as good enough to trust, a man’s word is no longer his bond – instead, biometrics are becoming the only valid form of handshake, and instead of an utterance of promising to uphold one’s word, the matter can simply be resolved by entering your pin. Language, soul, reduced to a 1 or a 0. In the 21st century, humans are statistics, customers and targets, instead of a valued community that we used to be; the family butcher replaced by the supermarket mass produced, vitamin fortified, battery grown fodder – fresh food replaced by an aluminium can that won’t break down for a good few hundred years.

Is this the future, the values we want to leave our children, and our grandchildren to remember? Are any of us stopping to ask what the cost of this is to the human soul, and ultimately what the cost will be from unplugging from the world around us, and uploading ourselves, our data, and our avatars to an internet that I doubt many people in the early 90’s saw coming, or would be happy with?

The world, I’ve concluded is a backwards place, and shows no sign of recovering any real semblance of sanity any time soon. As we enter a new decade, we become more dependent upon technology, forsaking the fresh air, and the simple pleasure of taking a brisk walk in the morning for the option of using our debit card to order fresh milk and our daily paper from Asda on next day delivery. I truly believe that it’s entirely possible these days to live your life without ever leaving the confines of your living space. I know it’s possible, because I’ve done it while I spent the longest time getting my head together enough to the degree that my eyes are now open, and I want to unplug from the cyberspace just a little bit more.

It’s the primary reason why I’ve decided that aside from writing, I’ll be making a more active effort to be away from the internet and spending it out in the open, while things aren’t covered by a canopy, and while we have an atmosphere that isn’t totally toxic to breathe. I’ve unplugged myself from sites such as Facebook, because I’ve concluded that there’s much more value to be gleamed from simply spending time with friends and making life count. That will be my gift to myself, and my new year’s resolution – to live more, instead of existing on the internet. Like everything else around us, it’s all about balance and quality.

Happy New Year.

Now, I’m going to shoot from the hip and explain from the outset that this was the first film that I’ve ever seen in 3D; I’d had the chance previously to watch Toy Story and even A Christmas Carol in the format, but passed as Jim Carrey doesn’t especially interest me these days, and I didn’t think Toy Story could offer anything more in 3D that it already had in its original format – in fact, the fact that there’s been this recent movement of transferring films such as those mentioned made it all nothing more than a fad. I was wrong. Kind of. I still maintain re-editing a film for the sake of making it 3D is a cynical piece of Hollywood marketing to say the least, and can only provide you with half the entertainment that an original production can, at best.

This is where Avatar excels; James Cameron created the story with the 3D technique in mind. OK, granted, the story wasn’t extremely original, and could hardly be ranked up there with Tolstoy or Shakespeare, but it is, nonetheless cinematic history in the making. I personally felt, and I realise that my view may be curried by the fact that this was my first 3D film, that what I was seeing was the future of Cinema; not just from the point of view of having a pair of glasses on to watch a film (that would very probably literally give you a headache without), but from the techniques that have come out of James Cameron alone. Up until now, it’s always bothered me that even with the very best motion capture framing, the lips were ever so slightly out of synch of what was being said by the animatronic; WETA is a prime example of this in terms of their work with Gollum – if you look closely, very closely to the way Gollum speaks, he doesn’t quite parry up with the lip movements that would be delivered from Andy Serkis.

This is a new Ball-Game though. The techniques used in the film to synch the way Sigourney Weaver, Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana speak as their Avatar forms is, for want of another word…Epic. Quite simply beautiful and leagues, literally evolutionary steps above anything that’s coming from either Peter Jackson or Robert Zemeckis right now;

Avatar takes place on a moon that Orbits a gas giant, much like Jupiter called Polythemus; Pandora (the moon) has been occupied by humans for the sake of a rare mineral that we as a species have now become extremely dependent upon called Unobtanium, that’s replaced the fossil fuels on our world as a primary expendable fuel source. Humans would be able to mine this without any kind of incidence, if it weren’t for the most intelligent indigenous species called the Na’vi reacting with a not completely unjustified amount of hostility towards their homeland being mined for a planet far, far away.

This is where the protagonist of our tale comes in. Jake Sully, it turns out is a twin of a scientist who was due to be deployed to Pandora. Why would a scientist go to Pandora? Well…Sigourney Weaver heads a research team, that endeavours to find a peaceful, diplomatic solution with the Na’Vi for mining rights on the moon, but has thus far been met with a good amount of distrust; unfortunately, Jake’s brother dies before he can make it to Pandora, and so, because each of the Avatars that are genetically created for the scientists to “drive” cost $20 million apiece – they enlist Jake to act as a security guard for excursions into the world. It’s during that one of these excursions that Jake becomes separated from that party, and rescued by Neytiri; and this is where the adventure, and the understanding of a beautifully symbiotic relationship with everything on the planet begins.

I’ve heard the film be described as Pocahontas in space, and I suppose, as a short synopsis goes, it’s fairly accurate; But Cameron has created a world here that’s so rich, and imaginative, and Bioluminescent that it should not, under any circumstances be trivialised by the merits of the tale alone; it should be judged by the merits as a whole, not just one part of the jigsaw puzzle.

It’s honestly hard to describe how enamoured I am with this film; I left the cinema 3 hours later feeling thoroughly satisfied, awestruck, and unable to say anything but ‘wow!’ on the whole trip home with my father, brother, brother in law and sister (who continued to spend the next 3 or 4 days mocking how excited I was getting during the movie, or the times I spent reaching out for dust particles and flower petals in front of me). I’ve mentioned repeatedly that I haven’t felt that inspired, that thrilled by a film since I saw ET, or even Return of the Jedi on the large screen (26 and change years ago, for those paying attention) – I really hope Hollywood doesn’t shy away from taking risks in the future; the fact that people are still out there that are willing to innovate and push boundaries does nothing more than demand that Hollywood, and the Cinema going public in general support such endeavour.

In all honesty, I was one of those people that initially mocked the idea of Cat people in space, with a look and story that many in the sci fi blogging circle noted as having been done before (to put it nicely), but I don’t think I’ve ever been so delighted to actually have been proven wrong. The only downside to this is that after having a chat with a couple of friends, I’m wary of seeing the film again in 3D; indeed, I’m wary of seeing it at all, because as one friend stated: “I’d like to preserve the innocence.” And that makes sense. Like me, he has a habit of picking films apart, understanding technique, or working out how something is animated, and in all honesty with a lot of good films, it takes the joy out of it. I don’t mind so much with something as god awful as the pirates of the Caribbean films, but this, for me is up there with Vanilla Sky – for example. The beauty of this film is not only that it’s a beautifully produced film, but that it’s one of the only action films this year that can claim to be the kind that positively doesn’t require you to check your brain at the door as you put your ray-ban esque 3D glasses on.

It was in that spirit that I paid to see every Star Trek film from the day I was old enough to do so, watch every series no matter how dire it got, dutifully lapping up every tale Brannon Braga, Ron Moore and Jeri Taylor could come up with.

It was this same love, this same yearning for a decent story that kept me in the theatre during the abject failure that was Star Trek: Nemesis, because I loved Star Trek; I loved the universe in which it resided, even more so than Star Wars or even Flash Gordon or Superman, and I kept hoping for the spark of Brilliance that I had seen so many years ago with Gene Roddenberry, and continued through Deep Space Nine and The Next Generation; the thing is, it never happened. The franchise faltered and got old as it was tirelessly squeezed for every penny it was worth, until even I was finally forced to ask if it was worth prolonging the life of the show – was it better to be left with all the fond memories I have thanks to Star Trek?

Paramount, or more pointedly Viacom, I assumed weren’t all that interested in breathing new life into the franchise, in doing something drastic to a 40 year old drama science fiction show – regardless of how much cash flow it generated. I am happy…No, overjoyed to report that I have never been more wrong in my life, and will gladly do so.

Chris Pine – James T. Kirk
Zachary Quinto - Spock
Leonard Nimoy – Spock Prime
Eric Bana – Nero
Bruce Greenwood – Captain Christopher Pike
Karl Urban – Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy
Zoe Saldana – Uhura (as Zoë Saldana)
Simon Pegg – Scotty
John Cho – Sulu
Anton Yelchin – Chekov
Ben Cross – Sarek
Winona Ryder – Amanda Grayson
Chris Hemsworth – George Kirk
Jennifer Morrison – Winona Kirk

Review

The Film

The key to the new Star Trek is that they’ve done pretty much the same thing as they’ve done with Doctor Who; they’ve updated it for the MTV generation, made it cleaner, given it a soundtrack that, while extremely modern is every bit as passionate and brilliantly orchestral as the late and much missed Jerry Goldsmith; they’ve kept the basic look, but consulted apple on the consoles of tomorrow, and Microsoft for the operating system – They’ve kept the look of the old costume, but asked someone who went to design school how they’d update it – and it all works. And when I say it works, I mean it works uncompromisingly well.

What’s even more interesting, is when you come to realise from the extras on the disk just how much of the production was good old fashioned practical photography and physical effects – old school techniques using forced perspective, mirrors to cheat us into thinking that Kirk is skydiving through Vulcan’s orbit…Even the enterprise itself isn’t a set, it’s a Budweiser production factory, and again, amazingly, with a little bit of dress it all works. The thing that always bothered me about the original Star Trek was the assumption of how clean everything would be by the 22nd century, but Abrams lovingly brings us back down to earth, and reminds us that as humans, and especially for those engineers out there, you’ll never be able to purge the grease monkey, and that the engine room will always be a gritty place where you get dirty, grimy and sweaty.

Even the location sets fit; Star fleet academy is no longer an imaginary stage set, but an actual university – a Budweiser plant doubles for an engine room and a building site for the Enterprise herself, and Vulcan is the same set they’ve been using to fight everything from the Gorn in the original series, to mysterious aliens in the somewhat popular television series Roswell. I simply can’t stop gushing about how simple, but how brilliant this film is; how much I love the fact that someone from a new breed of Hollywood directors has opted for good old fashioned, hands on cinematography with anamorphic lenses, as opposed to doing everything with the way overused green screen. This film in my opinion should be offered up in classes as an example of how you make a film that seamlessly blends practical and digital photography with maximum effect.

Going beyond the expectations of being your average popcorn film, this becomes something quite beautiful when you sit down and really, really notice the warmth and grain captured on the film. Ironically, I think you appreciate it even more on Blu-ray, but is still one of those rare films where your enjoyment isn’t diminished by what kind of DVD player you have.

The Plot

To clarify, the film has a comic that presents some back story to the events in the film, which make for interesting reading; it’s the 24th century, and Romulus is in peril; a star in the Romulan system is about to go supernova and threatens to destroy the planet, and in desperation Spock turns to the science council on Vulcan for help in the matter, as they have something that can help – red matter, in fact. It turns out that a small drop of this red matter can cause a black hole that can absorb the energy from the star, and thus save Romulus. The problem comes in, however, when the science council refuses to aid their Romulan cousins until its far too late to achieve anything.

As a result of this energy blast, Nero, a Miner that had previously befriended Spock, and Spock Prime himself are sent back in time through the energy blast which propels the Romulan mining ship back in time to the period just before Kirk is born. Almost immediately Nero sets about changing the future to benefit Romulus by destroying a federation ship that happens to contain George Kirk, his wife and unborn child – Jim.

The whole story is propelled by loss, from the tragic villain of the story, Nero; driven mad by the death of his own wife and child, to that of Kirk himself never knowing or really being influenced by his father – in fact I would say that one of the ways Abrams has changed the storyline from the original, is that Pike is now a mentor and father figure to a young Kirk, as opposed to merely being the first commander and friend in the original 60’s TV series.

The Cast

All you can really say to the cast is that they work; some, I never would have thought of in a million years, but they work. From Zoe Saldana as Uhura, to Anton Yelchin as Chekov – Abrams has gone for a kind of “compromise universe” where not everything looks the same, and the cast is one notable area. The real gem of the film in my opinion is that of Karl Urban, who gets pretty close to the sail as far as an impression of DeForest Kelley goes. Zachary Quinto is a pretty awesome choice for the role of Spock but honestly seems a bit bored or even tired sometimes…Even the choice of Chris Pike as Kirk fits, and I was absolutely chuffed to see him pinning down more than a couple of Will Shatner’s mannerisms to accompany his performance – as with the rest of the production, the overall idea of the film is not to change, but to update and refine, and for the most part, it works.

The only casting decision I didn’t think made sense was that of John Cho as Hikaru Sulu, but given that his involvement in this instalment was very minimal, it’s easy to overlook because he hasn’t really had a chance to shine; I’m hoping a second installation of the franchise reboot will remedy this, as well as give us more screen time for the irreverent, ever brilliant Simon Pegg.

The Verdict

Overall, it’s a DVD worth having in your collection. More so than say, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It’s been interesting this year, as there have been a lot of popcorn films, where you can check your brain at the door and enjoy the film to compete with, but it manages – as a film it’s far more entertaining than Transformers 2 was for me, and while it had a decent plotline, it wasn’t pretentious enough to try and make it sound as intellectual as Bay tried to. The only criticism I have about the film really is the box it comes in.

The DVD

The DVD comes in a range of 3 – 1 disk, 2 disk and Blu-ray edition, and all of them frankly have the same cover; this is where it lets it’s side down, because all it is essentially is a white box with Star Trek” Emblazoned on it. Saying that, play.com have a nice line in an exclusive steelbox edition – one including a 4gb memory stick, and one standard 2 boxed set in a 3 disk steel case (bluray) that I think, if you’re going to go with the whole white thing, looks far more aesthetically pleasing than its plastic case counterparts is well worth the investment. It punches in at a fairly hefty £35.99 compared to the usual fare of £17.99 though, so if you’re going to buy it, be really sure you like your star trek.

The DVD itself is actually really nice; the disks are nicely printed, and the menus for, at least the DVD version which I prefer are very slick and well designed; easy to navigate, with a few sound effects that might get annoying for someone else if you happen to decide to walk away and make yourself some popcorn. However, the features are where it comes into its own. Admittedly sparse in terms of what’s there on the standard edition, they are nonetheless entertaining, and really give you an appreciation for the film and the director, as they run through the decisions made about location, shooting, the usual saying absolutely nothing but nice things about the director – but in this case, I think I might actually believe them; the cast all seemed to be genuinely happy to be working there.

If you’re of a certain age, let’s say 32, you’re around the right age to appreciate and even remember three movies that defined the late nineties and emerging 21^st century – Memento, Se7en…And Fight Club. While Christopher Nolan has certainly done well off the back of a film that by any standards a work of genius and artistic vision, Memento is barely considered to be on a par with Fight Club in any way, shape or form; sure, memento is a film that fucks with your head in a way that only a cult leader could, but Fight Club is a film that fucks with your head in a different way; like its elder brother, Fight Club worms its way into the psyche, makes you think about the context of the story. And then combines it with photography and lighting that few men with relatively little experience could master. Very few people could take a story like Chuck Palahniuk’s and visualise it in such a way that would be gratifying to the base instinct of the unthinking, casual film viewer who just digs the violence, and then equally allow the deeper thinking viewer to be immersed in a world that attempts to communicate the banality and futility of modern living. Fight Club is an expression of nihilism on film in its purest form, an expression of anger on the part of the author towards consumerism and established laws that seek to supress and subjugate as opposed to grant the freedom and liberty that people, at least in theory, would and should enjoy – if only they didn’t think about their meagre existence quite so much. Fight Club is, quite simply, David Fincher and Chuck Palahniuk’s lesson to the masses that ignorance is bliss, and an expression of contempt that we as a people are so accepting of our roles and our fates.

More so, they do such a thing with a sadistic smile on their face and a soundtrack that’s quite simply designed to fuck to. I have rarely, in all my years of enjoying film, heard a soundtrack that was more perfectly keyed to what was happening on the screen.

In case you haven’t watched the film, ( and if this is the case, I urge you to wake the hell up and watch the damned film) or you just need a refresher, Fight Club follows the life of someone simply referred to as The Narrator, performed by Ed Norton. The Narrator is a risk assessor, bored, and granted respite from a meaningless life by temporary spurts of mail order purchases at Ikea, and eventually group therapy sessions to offer him some kind of release from massive bouts of insomnia. That is, until a character by the name of Tyler Durden walks (or rather, sits) into his life on a particularly long ride home from another case. Thinking that this is the end of his “single serving buddy” relationship, the narrator makes his way home to find his Ikea swamped home on fire, leaving him literally homeless and with nowhere to go – which leaves him calling upon the services of Tyler Durden.

This is where the fun starts. Tyler takes our view into this world, the Narrator into a journey of destruction and self-discovery; of violence to alleviate boredom, and of chaos in a world of control. As the film progresses, fight club progresses from an underground network where men come together to fight the shit out of each other for mutual entertainment, into the greater realm of a movement whereby the members become initiates into an almost cult-like collective whereby all the members forgo their possessions in favour of a school of thought that seeks to disrupt the status quo from their norms and essentially wake up the populous.

This is the beauty and simplicity of Fight Club; it mocks the unthinking brute who simply loves meaningless violence, while providing them from entertainment. It mocks consumerism, which again is an irony as the film’s commercial success has been long-lived for a while now. This film is a paradox in the sense that the production is not only distributed by fox, but is a film that isn’t a product of the sterile, Hollywood formula thinking – in essence, a rare blessing and moment of calm in the eye of the storm.

The film itself shows a certain flair and style of film that has been evident in Fincher’s work from the very start; Fincher has an almost innate, spiritual knack to be able to do everything right in his films, like choosing the right scene to edit into the final cut, framing his scenes in a way that makes it look like a combination of professionally amateur photography, which I think in a way unsettles me as a person, because I immediately make the mistake of thinking that the dark, gritty feel of the film forsakes the professionalism that Fincher has in spades for a cheap, shoestring budget production. I’ve always felt that David Fincher has the very grail that many directors in Hollywood today, including Tarantino and Rodriguez wish they possessed. To boot, the relationship that had obviously been built up between Pitt and Fincher in their previous collaboration, se7en permeates the entire production, relaying a mutual respect between actor and director that allows an eerie commitment to the character and the scene. This, combined with the intensity and immense talent of Ed Norton (who’d literally previously worked on American History X) completes the central cast, making even the most lowly actors, such as Helena Bonham Carter tolerable in a way that I could never have anticipated. Even Meat Loaf is a surprise in this film, and is actually the only member of the cast that I think has the honour of being even distinctly connectable.

I think then, that is the key to this film; the hyper reality combined with glossy production values and a rage that isn’t even close to being matched by any Tarantino film; indeed, whereas Tarantino produces masturbation violence, single service snippets of blood and guts that offer no meaning and no real reason, Fincher is masterful in communicating the reason for such violence, while reiterating the fact that there is no possible way we could relate to or understand the psyche of either the Narrator or Tyler without a possible psychotic break – beyond the periphery of understanding the disdain this film shows for conformity and consumerism.