Unlimited May

May

Number	Name of Film	Rating	Date Watched	Directed by;	Price
1	Ironman 2	12A	5/5/2010	Jan Favreau	£4.30
2	A Nightmare on Elm Street	18	16/5/2010	Samuel Bayer	£4.30
3	Furry Vengeance	PG	17/5/2010	Roger Kumble	£4.30
4	A Nightmare on Elm Street	18	24/5/2010	Samuel Bayer	£4.30

Why yes, I did see Nightmare on Elm Street twice. I had my reasons.

Unlimited March

March

Number	Name of Film	Rating	Date Watched	Directed by;	Price
1	Valentines Day	12A	1/3/2010	Garry Marshall	£4.30
2	Alice in Wonderland	PG	9/3/2010	Tim Burton	£4.90
3	I Love You Phillip Morris	15	30/3/2010	Glenn Ficarra and John Requa	£4.30

That's £13.50. Exactamundo, in other words.

Unlimited February

February

Number	Name of Film	Rating	Date Watched	Directed by;	Price
1	Precious - Based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire	15	4/2/2010	Lee Daniels	£4.30
2	The Princess and the Frog	U	5/2/2010	Ron Clements and Jon Musker	£4.30
3	Ponyo	U	16/2/2010	Hayao Miyazaki	£4.30

That's £12.90 in total, so I'm actually down by 60p. Slow month.

You might have noticed I haven't been updating very often recently. I just seem to be in a bit of a slump at the moment.

Good Times Are Here Again

I have another Unlimited Card. The price has gone up a bit - it's now £13.50 a month, with an extra £1.30 charge for 3D films - but, getting back into my old habits should mean that, once again, they'll be losing out on this deal.

When you get an Unlimited card, you're contracted to keep it for a year. You can choose to pay monthly (£13.50, as I said), or annually (£162). To save you doing the maths yourself, I'll just point out that 162/12 = 13.5. There's no difference in price, however you pay.

This may not be the best time to get a card - I'm just catching the tale end of the Christmas releases, and summer isn't for a while - but it's now that I feel like watching films. Two or three a month and it will easily pay for itself, and I love the freedom of just popping in on my way past, and seeing if there's anything on.

You can apply for an Unlimited card here, if I've caught your interest.

Because I like statistics, I'm going to keep track of what I use it for in the table below. I may put each month in a separate post, I may not. We'll see.

'Number' is just to keep track of how many I see, 'Name' is the name of the film, 'rating' is the (BBFC) classification, 'date watched' and 'directed by' speaks for itself (one would hope), and 'price' is the price I would have paid without the card.

January

Number	Name of Film	Rating	Date Watched	Directed by;	Price
1	Sherlock Holmes	12A	13/1/2010	Guy Ritchie	£6.10
2	Alvin and the Chipmunks: the Squeakquel	U	21/1/2010	Betty Thomas	£4.30
3	Up in the Air	15	27/1/2010	Jason Reitman	£4.30
4	Edge of Darkness	15	31/10/2010	Martin Campbell	£6.50

..so, I'm £7.70 up. Score.

Of Cinema Tickets, Downloading and DVDs

I watch a lot of movies. That may or may not be obvious.

Mostly, I watch films at the cinema. I have an Unlimited card, which is actually a pretty good deal. £11.99 a month, and I can see as many movies as I like for free. Considering that, some weeks, I watch three or four, and the prices range from £4 to £7.80 (3D movie, Saturday evening), they're definitely making a loss on this deal.

I really like going to the cinema. It doesn't have the strange feeling of a special event any more, but it's a nice place, and I know my local cinema as intimately as one can who doesn't work there. It's nice. I like the smell of popcorn (although I never buy any), I like the trailers (although I avoid the first ten minutes of adverts as often as possible), and I like the fact that it's on my way home from work, or ten minutes away from here by bus.

That 'on the way home from work' thing isn't as helpful as you might think. I work odd hours, which mean that I cannot see films, on days when I'm working, which start after 11:30am or before 10pm. This limits my options somewhat. Fortunately, sometimes I have three or four days off in a row, which allows me to get my fix of movies (although I am fully capable of watching three in one day).

I don't just watch new films; I also rent films and, more often, TV series. I have an account with LoveFilm if anyone's wondering. Might not be the best deal out there, but I like them, and they tend to be punctual and helpful. Only problem with their site is the fact that it can be a little tricky to move movies from one list to another when you have as many on there as I do (341 at last count). You have to dig right through the list to find it - if you use the search function, it will tell you that it's on your list, but won't allow you to move it to another one. But, to be fair, the list feature in general is excellent.

My collection of DVDs is relatively small, which may be surprising. I have a long list of DVDs that I want to own, but I rarely get around to buying them (Waterstones is right next to HMV, and it always distracts me on the way there). I have a few unusual things that I really love, like the first season of the Twilight Zone and the two animated series' of Discworld, and a few foreign films, which are difficult to find to rent, but I would say that I don't own more than twenty or so DVDs. I rarely download movies either - the last one would be Flower Drum Song, which I can't find to rent or buy anywhere (except as a region 1 disc, which wouldn't play on my PS2). I also download the odd foreign film which has no plans for a European release. Generally speaking, though, I prefer to rent, buy, or watch films at the cinema. I just think they seem more special that way.

I am sorely tempted to break this personal guideline in certain other cases, though. Like for A Muppet Christmas Carol. Although the VHS version, which I owned as a child, has the full movie, all DVD releases have a key scene missing. I refuse to buy a dvd with part of the film missing, but my VCR is long gone, and I have a tradition of watching the movie every Christmas.

Bartelmy

Scar 3D

It would be fair to say that I am not, typically, a horror fan.

It would, in fact, be true to say that I cry like a little girl at gory films.

So, when I watched Scar 3D yesterday, I didn't watch it, as such, since most of it was viewed from between my fingers. Or simply enjoyed audibly instead of visually (that is to say, with my eyes closed).

Scar 3D is about the survivor of a serial killer. After Joan managed to escape from Bishop, she left town and began a new life elsewhere. This was probably for the best, considering that, the instant she returns, the killings begin again, with a new generation. Joan believes it's Bishop - despite having killed him with her own hands.

As I said, I'm not a horror fan, but I was able to make fairly accurate predictions about how the movie would unfold. The storyline doesn't really break new ground, and, gory as the gore scenes are, they're not terribly innovative either (or so I hear). In fact, I'd say that the most creative thing in the entire movie is the method by which one character is killed - with a plastic glove superglued over her nose and mouth. How someone came up with this, and why they are not being carefully watched is a mystery that will plague me.

In an interview (with Cineworld's Unlimited magazine), the director stated that in previews, the flashback scenes and the last thirty minutes seemed to be the most disturbing. Considering that those are the scenes with the torture, that would seem to be expected.

Despite, as I've said, watching the film from between trembling fingers, it didn't seem to haunt me once I'd left the cinema. Unlike The Orphanage (El Orfanato), The Ring, or even The Eye (that scene in the elevator), the film didn't make me leave all the lights on all night, and nor was I terribly nervous about being left alone (I did stay up till 3am, but that was for a different reason, to be quite honest). To be fair though, I have been slightly twitchy today, continually thinking that I see a figure in the dark, or, at one point, a hand in a vat of boiling oil (it was five chips, floating together). Still, I don't think I'll be losing much sleep.

The main difference between Scar 3D and the other films mentioned is, I think, that Scar focused on a kind of physical horror, which I didn't fully partake in (difficult to, with ones eyes closed). El Orfanato especially focuses more on a kind of mental horror, and seems far more plausible. Scar's attempt to scare with physical horror didn't seem to apply to me - it seems far more likely that I might lose a child than that I might be abducted and tortured.

The main reason I saw the film is because it was in 3D. For the past few years, 3D has been more of a gimmick than a legitimate method of film-making. I can count on one hand the number of 3D films I've heard of and/or seen - and at least two of those were only converted into 3D afterwards. The technique has been sadly neglected.

Using 3D imaging in a horror film is a good start. I'm sure there must be things that one can do in 3D that wouldn't work, or at least, wouldn't be so effective, in 2D. Admittedly, I can't think of any, but I'm sure there must be some (apart from simple tricks like the torch in Journey to the Centre of the Earth).

Scar 3D wasn't the best horror film ever made, but I hope that other film-makers think about using 3D imaging for other films.

Bartelmy