I recently bought a 3D camera second hand from ffutures. Here are a first few shots:

Interesting to see what works and what doesn’t. There seems to be a greater sense of 3D if there’s something distinctive in the foreground, which is why I actually chose pictures with cars in shot when I had examples without. Things further away tend to flatten out a bit, even if there’s something in the foreground to emphasise the difference – but even in the middle distance, a significant difference in depth can make things stand out. I didn’t notice the pedestrian crossing the West Port in the second photograph when I took it, but she becomes an interesting feature when viewed in 3D. As usual, click through for full size – it’s probably worth it for that second one at least, as the figure is a bit lost in the smaller version.

As the final date on her acoustic UK University Coffee House Sessions Tour, Florrie is playing the Rector’s Café at St Andrews University on Friday 17th at 5:30pm. You don't have to be a student, and entry is free.

She's been releasing EPs since 2010, but now apparently an album is in the offing. I think it'll be worth checking out. I like most of what she's released so far (and kudos to anyone who can release a song called "Experimenting with Rugs").

I went to see this today, because Walking With Dinosaurs. It is both good and awful.

The awful comes first, because it really is important that you know about it before considering watching this movie (I did and took my chances).

Like many wildlife films, Walking With Dinosaurs sets up some of the animals as characters to follow through the movie. The awful bit is, it gives them voices. Actually no, the really awful bit is that the script for those voices is straight out of a bad Saturday morning cartoon. There are two American kid brothers growing up (pachyrhinosaurs). One is stronger but a bit less bright than the other – the underdog’s the hero of course – and there’s a girl pachyrhinosaurus who becomes a love interest. Then there’s a wise-cracking Mexican bird (John Leguizamo – perhaps he’s fed up with being a sloth). There’s no attempt to lip-synch the dialogue – although actually this might be a good point, as I’ll explain below – so there’s a further alienating disconnect between what you’re seeing on screen and what you’re hearing.

Maybe all this will draw in a big junior audience; but I wouldn’t bet on it. I’ve been to some fairly sparsely attended cinema showings, but I don’t think I’ve ever had Cinema 1 at the NPH to myself before (at least the circle – I can’t swear to the stalls being empty but it was awfully quiet). On a Saturday evening just before Christmas. Maybe it clashed with a lot of Christmas parties?

So what are the good bits? The visuals, as you would expect from the Walking With Dinosaurs brand, are really good. Without the physical models that distinguished the earliest Walking With Dinosaurs output, you’re often aware you’re watching CGI, but it’s still pretty good. There are a few places where it’s played for laughs visually, but these are generally not too intrusive. The most gratuitous example is our hero suffering a terrible indignity under the tail of a much larger adult. Other examples are along the lines of dinosaurs slipping on ice and aren’t too overstated. I rather suspect the facial expressions are a bit anthropomorphised, but again it doesn’t seem too heavy-handed.

Given what I said above about the awful script for this movie, it may come as a surprise that I think it actually tells a powerful and effective story. Visually, considering they’re clearly targeting a young audience and have complete control over what happens, few punches are pulled. While it’s not totally nature red in tooth and claw, animals die in this movie when they’re attacked by carnivores, including some we care about. The terrible dialogue detracts from the impact of the scenes, which is perhaps to some extent what it’s supposed to do.

This could actually be a good and quite moving movie, if it had a completely different soundtrack. If you’re an adult, wait until it’s available cheap on DVD, and play it on mute. The lack of lip-synch will help here, as it's not obvious the animals are talking. It would be great if someone could create an alternative score to accompany it.

In the category of “noteworthy, but why?” bits:

1. The story’s book-ended by scenes with some kids and a palaeontologist played by Karl Urban (Éomer in LOTR, Judge Dredd, and Dr. McCoy in the rebooted Star Trek). He’s totally wasted in this role and I don’t know why they spent money on getting a decent actor for a few insignificant scenes when they don’t even use him in any way to promote the film.
2. A herd of migrating Edmontosaurus are accompanied by Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk. Er? OK, it’s a nice track and I guess it’s for the rhythm, but the first thing it made me think was, ah, these must be Iguanodon (because of the thumb spike).
3. New dinosaurs were introduced by a brief freeze and text labelling as to what they were. Perfectly fine in a documentary, weird in a film. Given it probably did have to be there, I think I would rather have had more information.
4. The 3D is nice but not compelling most of the time; they succumb to gimmickry at one particular point that was effective enough to make me jump, but it’s not part of the main body of the movie. I feel as though I should be a bit offended by that, but ho-hum. Other stuff offended me more – see above!

The Royal Company of Archers, the Queen’s Bodyguard for Scotland marched through St. Andrews today. I have no idea why. It wasn’t the best weather for being an archer in.

Some time later, they marched in the opposite direction and some of them dropped in to the Whey Pat for a swift refreshment.

While I wasn’t rude enough to take any pictures in the pub, I was intrigued by the chance for a closer look at their kit. The bow is a traditional wooden self longbow, probably of yew. Each archer carries three arrows, and while they were also wooden, they were more obviously modern, with a plain brass pile, a transparent red plastic nock. Although the arrows being carried had plainly never been used, each archer’s set seemed to have distinct fletching. Whether this was intention or coincidence, I don’t know. Each also carries a short sword, which so obviously resembled a gladius that I was actually relieved to find it described in Wikipedia as “a short gilt-headed Roman sword”.

Behaviour was interesting too; on entering the bar, arrows went straight on the bar. I guess this was a practical thing, as when worn they’re slung at the right side, protruding downwards in front of the body and upwards to the rear. You can see how this might be awkward in a bar situation. I was slightly surprised when they left to hear “Who’s not got a bow?”. Clearly the Royal Company of Archers don’t buy into a more archaic version of the Rifleman’s Creed! It would be interesting to know to what extent Archers kit themselves out, and to what extent they’re issued with their gear. It seems clear that some order their own bows, as they’re quoted as being patrons of Richard Head Longbows, but “Who’s not got a bow?” suggests that, for some, bow ownership is less of a concern.

After all that, here’s a link for anyone experiencing a sudden inexplicable urge to listen to Barwick Green.

The Bell Pettigrew Museum of Natural History, which I visited and reviewed a few years ago, will be open on Saturday and is well worth a visit. Forward notice courtesy of Event: St Andrews, which is collated on a voluntary basis by flybynightpress (and which has an RSS feed).

Last night was qidane's annual fireworks party, actually taking place on the 5th this year.

Last year’s pictures

Hottest place in the UK today, apparently.

Watching this movie reminded me a bit of my reaction to Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow, five years ago. I’ve just seen a movie that is OK, rather than great, but I hope and expect that I’ve seen the future of genre movie making.

What should you not go for? Well, despite the fact that it runs for closer to three hours than two, don’t go for the plot. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s pretty straightforward. Despite the fact the film-makers apparently put a lot of effort into concocting a language for them, don’t go for a daringly-imagined alien culture. The Na’vi are quite human-like, both visually and behaviourally. Perhaps this is inevitable, since we have to sympathise with them, but I still felt a little disappointed. Don’t go for an incisive allegorical critique of modern culture; it’s eco-friendly and there are a few sledge-hammer references to the war on terror that might have been better left implicit. Don’t go for challenging sci-fi concepts – this is short-story-stuff, not door-step novel. And don’t go expecting real science or hard sci-fi at all.

That may sound quite negative, but it’s not really meant to. Although the time and money spent might reasonably raise expectations in any of these areas, none of them is completely indispensable in an enjoyable movie.

So what should you go for? It’s a decent action movie; but the main thing that makes it worth seeing is simply the spectacle. Go to see this if you like dramatic sci-fi or fantasy art and want to see it come alive, in a way that isn’t cartoony. The alien setting is both believable and gorgeous, and it’s on screen for most of the movie. In 3D, it’s more immersive; not quite “as though you were really there”, but enough to make a difference.

The wildlife is intriguing, though clearly earth derived. The most obvious are the “horses”, but there are also “dogs”, “rhinos” and some sort of “big cat”. Don’t take those descriptions too literally. The beasts are well imagined and tend to have six legs rather than four (I wonder what proportion of the audience thinks “Barsoom” on noticing that?), but the parallels are not hard to spot. Also watch out for the pterodactyls.

The vegetation is very much part of the spectacle, though perhaps pushed a little far in one particular area: the hometree is a bit excessive. The floating mountains, though pretty, also strain credibility a little; and some of the rock arches seem a little too geometrically perfect. One minor – or maybe not so minor – triumph is the inclusion, almost as a background detail, of believable mech-armour from early in the movie. There’s a lot of good, detailed naturalistic CGI work all round. I hope the film makes its money, because it’s obvious this is where it went, and I would like to see more.

Speaking of which, assuming the film does turn out to be profitable, there are fairly definite plans for a sequel and a more tentative idea for a third. These would presumably be a bit cheaper, as a lot of the data for the world has now already been created. I hope they spend a bit more time on plotting for those ones, as spectacle alone won’t get us through another two. It's not necessarily more of this setting I want see, just more of this sort of visual imagination (or more!).

On a note not solely related to the film, this is the first movie I’ve seen entirely in 3D, the recent Harry Potter movies being only partially in 3D, and it was pleasing that I was able to do so in the NPH. I don’t know a huge amount about the rival 3D technologies, but for those who may be interested, according to the labelling on the  glasses the NPH is using RealD. It was pretty effective, but I managed to figure out one of the things that bothers me a little about 3D.

In a run-of-the-mill 2D movie, we accept without much question the director’s choice of what will be in or out of focus. Perhaps it’s a sign of how successful the 3D effect really is that when something isn’t in focus in a 3D movie, it bothers me that I can’t bring it into focus myself…

One of this year’s Christmas stamps is based on a church window in St. Andrews.

Photos from qidane's annual fireworks party yesterday evening; and congratulations to Paddy on Flock's BAFTA Scotland nomination. Fingers crossed!