Who directs the Watchmen?

I don't know anything about the original Watchmen work, so I can look at the film with completely fresh eyes. After all the fuss in its development, going through decades, studios and directors, the end result is a Zack Snyder three-hour adaption that's trying its best to please everyone. But like I said, I don't care about that - I've only learnt the history after watching the film. The good news is that, despite going though flashbacks and exposition, it never seems convoluted. No film would be this concerned with the origin stories of its retired superheroes without owing a debt to source material, but it manages to stay interesting long past your legs have gone to sleep. And for all the angling at political depth, it's the twist on the genre that impressed me. Outside of a few recent examples, comic book films can be stuck in the conventions of Hollywood action. Fun but formulaic, with good and evil and a masterplan that'll definitely be foiled. Yes, Watchmen has an unfortunate accident in a physics-lab, but it does things differently. Some of the superheroes aren't heroic at all, there's no obvious villain for most of the film, and the conclusion probably confused half the people in Hollywood. It's easy to see why it almost never got made.

I wonder what all the other directors would have made of it. Terry Gilliam, Darren Aronofsky, Paul Greengrass. Looking at those names, I can't help but think they missed a huge opportunity, but as it is, with all the Zack Snyder powing and thwacking, it's pretty good.

If the children don't grow old

There's a lot of pressure on Arcade Fire. In 2004 they released their first album, Funeral, which turned out to be quite good. It sounded fresh and old at the same time, a bit epic and a bit comforting. Behind convoluted song titles like 'Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels)' and 'Rebellion (Lies)' are seemingly simple songs of positivity and energy that are unashamedly sincere. They work as pop songs but they never sound commercial, there's a rawness to the sound that stops them from being too easy to listen to. It was an album of highlights that mostly seemed to follow on from each other, the highlightiest highlight being 'Wake Up'. A song that, like most of the album, really is difficult to describe. It seems so obvious when you hear it but isn't easy to put into words. The problem with all this goodness is that, despite being called things like a 'modern classic', it was only their first album. Where does a band go from there? Well, they, um, release their second album. Neon Bible is a bit darker, and the highlights are there, but not as many and not as high. It's an impressive album, perhaps unfairly overshadowed by what came before.

Now they've released The Suburbs, which nicely goes back to the old theme of childhood memories. The difference here being that it sounds a lot more relaxed. There aren't any obvious highlights, it just goes from one pretty good song to the next pretty good song. What it lacks in 'epic' it makes up for in quiet confidence. It almost sounds like it's from a different time, like it should only be available as a record. It's more obviously influenced by classic American rock and isn't trying so hard to impress you. If I did have a complaint - which I, er, do - it's that some songs seem too focused on the lyrics. Which is a strange thing to say when they're as good as this - all nostalgic and suburban - but, to be honest, I'm not really interested. It's all about the music for me. Wasn't Funeral at its best when they were just singing sounds? The music was always above the words, and some heights can only be reached without them. Getting too attached to the words can leave a few songs featureless. That's just a little grumble though. On the whole, after listening to The Suburbs, you're just more likely to say 'that was nice' than be too out of breath to say anything.

How Simon Amstell hurt my head

Simon Amstell used to present the panel show Never Mind the Buzzcocks. He was entertainingly mean towards the music types that sat around him, who just seemed to come on the show to be mocked. Apparently he wasn't enjoying it though. In a new sitcom, Grandma's House, he plays himself, telling his family that he's going to leave his show. This is where it starts to confuse me. He's not acting a character, he's pretending to be himself. He uses the same sarcastic, embarrassed tone that became familiar on Buzzcocks, like he's just walked off one set and on to the next. It's reality presented as fiction, but it doesn't make the sitcom seem realistic, it makes his previous 'real' show seem fictional. Maybe it's self-indulgent, but he's still funny, and backed up by a nice script with a few actors from The Thick of It. It would be nice if I could watch it without wondering things like: is it possible to act as yourself? Why didn't he just do a documentary? Why is it so strange to watch a 'real' person surrounded by actors? It's like he's trapped in some strange Truman Show world, and it makes the whole thing a bit uncomfortable.

You could say that I was playing myself in how to be god, but that was just a character that sounded like me. I'm not an actor, so I just said the lines. Somebody else would have done it differently. I may have engineered some lines towards myself to make it easier to play, but I don't have an ambiguous illness, and I don't want to start a religion, and I'm not called Wash. Simon Amstell is playing Simon, who is him. But with a script. I've never seen Curb Your Enthusiasm, so this sort of thing is new to me. I hope it doesn't catch on. It's confusing.

The game, Mrs Hudson, is on

In many ways the BBC's Sherlock, another re-imagining of Sherlock Holmes, is a lot like Doctor Who. Apart from sharing writers (Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss) the relationship between Holmes and Watson feels the same as the Doctor and his assistant. The brilliant but strange adventurer and his slower but indispensable companion - it works. You could almost imagine the roles reversed - Matt Smith as Sherlock and Benedict Cumberbatch (you can go far in life with a name like that) playing the Doctor. Another similarity is that, like Doctor Who, this is very good television. The century-old characters now seem young and fresh, in episodes based loosely on the old stories. This new Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant, horrible, likeable sociopath. He doesn't understand people and keeps human heads in his fridge. Like a Time Lord without a time machine, he sits around bored until something happens. And when it does he plays a game called Extreme Deduction, the synapses firing off in his mind at the sight of a dead body or a pair of shoes. John Watson just tries to keep up (Martin Freeman almost escaping the role of 'that guy from The Office'). The three episodes were like little films, lasting a chunky ninety minutes and twisting around clever mysteries. The second episode was a bit of dip, adopting Conan Doyle's shady foreign criminals who were shady just because they're foreign, but outside that it's expertly crafted stuff.

Moriarty serves as the Big Bad for the series, stepping out of the shadows at the end with bombs plots and sniper rifles. It troubled me a bit though. Wasn't Moriarty just a device Conan Doyle invented to quickly kill off Holmes? There was no mention of him, and then suddenly he turns up in 'The Final Problem' as the 'Napoleon of crime'. Not really a great literary villain, more of a means to an end. I wonder if the whole thing has just taken on a mind of its own, like the characters exist outside of the original writing as endlessly repeated cultural figures. Anyway, Sherlock is the modern British take on the whole thing, and it's quite good.

High explosives work better without history

There's something admirable about the filmmaker who looks at the strange language the Nazis spoke in and thinks 'No, I can't be bothered'. After all, it doesn't really matter how they speak, just what they're saying. It's a shame that the makers of Valkyrie didn't take the historical inaccuracy a little further. While watching Tom Cruise and Bill Nighy plotting to assassinate Hitler, you get the feeling that they're not going to succeed. Which is a shame. It looks like it might work. It looks like they're going to win. But they don't. And that's not a spoiler. It's history. But this doesn't feel like a serious war drama - it feels like a thriller. Viewed like this the inevitable conclusion is disappointing. Would it be wrong to twist the past in order to make a 'better' film? Or would it be fun to see a different scenario play out? The whole thing is a construction. As soon as actors walk in and start saying lines it becomes fiction. It's all fake really. Not accurate at all. So does the plot really have a responsibility?

Probably shouldn't get philosophical about it though. It's a film. It's not bad. It moves along with a nice amount of tension and doesn't give too much thought to showing the grim reality. Bryan Singer, director of X-Men and Superman Returns, doesn't get bogged down in anything too horrible. Colonel Stauffenberg has a few poignant moments with his family, but he doesn't overdo it. He's got a job to do. The focus is on the conspiracy, the execution, and the aftermath. Two hours. No crying. Done.