Britain in a Day

I just watched Life in a Day, a 90-minute collation of hundreds of video clips from around the world featuring everyday life on 24 July 2010. It's an ambitious idea - there were 80,000 submissions totalling 4,500 hours of footage - but it is brilliantly executed. There is laughter in here, and regret, the sublime and the mundane, love and hate, poverty and wealth, dreams and fears. A glorious tapestry of small moments that builds up to far more than the sum of its parts.

Excitingly, there is an opportunity to contribute to a similar endeavour on a more local scale. You can film  your life on this coming Saturday 12 November 2011 and submit it to Britain in a Day. I want in!

(Meanwhile, if you liked this film, I recommend What About Me? and Koyaanisqatsi.)

X-Men: First Class

#234 at time of writing.

This film inspires in me such mediocre praise as "entertaining, but...", "bit of a cash-in", and "well, the trailers were fun". Even the posters are lacklustre.

The Noughties was great for superhero movies, but with cheesy action-over-substance sequels like this competing against half-baked efforts like Green Lantern, perhaps they've had their day for now.

This is the story of how the X-Men first came together; it hijacks the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis as a backdrop. I'm sure I would have enjoyed this origins story more if I knew more of the X-Men universe, but as a stand-alone film it doesn't compare to the epic genius of the rebooted Batman films or Watchmen, nor to the charismatic wit of Iron Man or Kick-Ass.

Fun, but I predict this will have fallen off the Top 250 before you can say "when's the next X-Men sequel?"

According to IMDb trivia, the filmmakers hired an X-Men specialist to help the cast understand their roles. Coolest job title ever?