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I just watched Summer Rental, the John Candy film where his character takes his family away for a summer by the beach and they end up competing in the annual regatta. Its a pretty old film now (1985!) but I still love it. It’s a silly film – the kind of thing you can sit and watch on a damp Saturday afternoon. Much like today really.

Being an older film, there’s subtle differences you tend to notice, comparing it to contemporary films. The one I picked up on mainly was the fact that a lot of older films liked to throw in sound effects in very odd places, and quite often over do them. The one that gets me the most is the notion that dogs seem to bark almost constantly. Just having the dog in frame isn’t enough – it has to bark randomly, usually as the main characters are expressing some emotion, almost as if the dog was speaking with them. It’s a nice idea, but damn annoying. There’s a few shots in Summer Rental where you can see the dog walking toward the camera supposedly barking, but the dog is obviously not.

Similarly, there’s so many films featuring computers that bleep and boop their way through EVERY operation. Most computers I know don’t make that much noise. A good sound editor will sneak these things in, to just bolster the action, or underline something. If you notice it, they’ve obviously done something wrong in my mind.

Still, it’s a good film all the same.

I went to see Stephen Spielberg’s remake of HG Welles War Of The Worlds. I was a little apprehensive, mainly as I’d seen the original film, and heard Jeff Wayne’s version, and this being a ‘major’ Hollywood film, I half expected it to be riddled with special effects and no substance. Luckily, I was proven wrong. It didn’t have that typical feel of all remakes where you sit wondering what’s going to be cut out, or added in. It had the typical annoying kid in it who you actually WANT to die, just to shut up, but all the same, it’s still a solid film.

When I got home we dug out our copy of Jeff Waynes WOTW and the original book by HG Welles. I’m hopefully going to read that sometime, mainly to contrast it with the film. From what I understand, the original was really Welles indictment of the way the British were acting in Asia in the 19th century. I suppose this could be Welles’ “Animal Farm”.

As the original was published in 1898, the text is now off-copyright, so its on the Wikisource site here

I just watched the film Spellbound. It was on Channel 4 last night and it looked vaguely intriguing, so I thought I’d have a look at it. Spelling Bees are something of an unknown here in the UK. Its an odd concept – a national competition in spelling words, most of them so wierd and convoluted you’re probably never going to need them. Yet its a really big event in the USA. This film is a documentary about the 1999 final, and follows eight children as they move up to the finals. All of the kids were from quite different backgrounds, so it was obvious race, religion and money had nothing to do with it. These kids were genuinely intelligent, and for the most part, surprisingly quite modest about it.

All of the kids seemed to be there because they wanted to be, but they were all happy that if they didn’t win, it wasn’t a big issue to them. They were happy to be there, and take part. Usually in these situations you find over-bearing parents pushing the kids incredibly hard, but that also didn’t seem to be the case. The parents were supportive, and very encouraging, but none seemed to be pushing the kids to do something they didn’t want to do. The motivation seemed to come from the kids, not their parents.

Overall, it was a nice documentary, and I’m glad I watched it. You certainly felt you were as good as there, under the spotlights, trying to work out how to spell a word you’d never heard of before. Good stuff!