Movie Review: Burlesque

Just to get the disclaimers out of the way, it's here I need to come out as a huge fan of Cher. Naturally, I was delighted she's made a new film and I saw its first showing in London's West End.

The story of Burlesque is very simple. A smalltown girl in a dead-end job jumps on the bus to LA to make it in show business. She happens on a burlesque club and befriends the barman. After some cocktail waitressing, a shaky start with Tess, the owner of the club, and attempted sabotage that forces her to show just how talented she really is, she becomes a big star and manages to help Tess save the club from certain foreclosure. And of course, she gets the barman too.

However, the film is fun and good-natured and so the lack of originality is forgiveable. Tess is played by Cher, who is pretty much playing herself anyway, but that's what people pay to see. Christina Aguilera, as the wide-eyed ingenue, is pretty good as an actress, although it's her dancing and vocal talents that are showcased here. Cam Gigandet, as the barman, has a particularly attractive set of arms, although his eyeliner leaves a lot to be desired. Stanley Tucci plays Tess's gay right-hand man who, unusually for a mainstream film, is depicted as having a sexual/romantic life, rather than being a movie gay whose only purposes are to spout one-liners and not be attracted to women.

A friend asked me what part Alan Cumming plays in the proceedings. Basically, he's reprising his role as the emceein Cabaret and isn't in the film much – he has a couple of short scenes and one musical number. I actually rather like him as a performer, and so I think he's a little bit wasted. I suspect he only took the role because, like a lot of guys who like guys, he's a big fan of Cher.

The film has a 12A certificate in the UK, and so a lot of the action is quite toned down. I'm sure real burlesque clubs have significantly more swearing, fornication and substance abuse. As some critics have mentioned, the film could certainly have been grittier. But, judged on its own terms, it's a campy romp with lots of rousing musical numbers, a happy ending and of course Cher bestriding the proceedings like a Colossus. If that's not worth £13.50 (the price of a ticket in London's West End), I don't know what is.

Film Review: I Love You, Phillip Morris

This film was quite different from what I was expecting. I thought it was going to be the story of the straight man who gets sent to prison and falls in love with another man for the first time. In fact, although our hero is married, he's gay and he knows it. After a car accident, he decides it's time for him to live a more authentic life as an out gay man. Learning that living the gay highlife is very expensive, he turns to insurance fraud to keep him and his boyfriend in the manner to which they've become accustomed. Eventually, he gets caught and sent to prison.

In prison, he meets and falls in love with the Phillip Morris of the title and concocts evermore elaborate schemes to get his lover out of prison so that they can be together.

Both Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor give great performances, as the conman and his beloved respectively. The film is a blend of thriller, comedy and love story and all through these elements are deftly woven together. But what really made this film for me, is that this is a film about gay men without being a film about gayness. None of the gay characters agonise over their gayness, it's just taken as a given, and the story is just about what happens to them. As has been noted by other commentators, most gay films, at least mainstream Hollywood ones, are films about gayness and its struggles. "I Love You, Phillip Morris" doesn't fit this mould and is all the better for it.

I found this film funny and touching and rate it a solid 4 stars out of 5.

I'm all for more reading....

..but what's with the seemingly sudden trend to read whilst walking along the street? Look where you're going, people!

Reading on a mobile phone – the end of dedicated ebook devices?

When Sony launched the PRS-500, I knew that sooner or later an ebook device would be mine. As someone who never listens to music on the move, an ebook device was going to be my iPod. I'm wary of importing products that aren't officially supported in the United Kingdom, so I held off until Sony officially launched the PRS-505. I got one, and it was everything I hoped it would be. The minor difficulties in getting content onto device were soon forgotten as I got used to having something to read with me all the time. When I ran out of anything to read, all I had to do was download something new.

This worked very well for a couple of years, but I started to notice that the cost of the books on the Waterstones website was getting increasingly silly. I wanted to read Malcolm Gladwell's What the Dog Saw only to find that while it was about £6 in paperback, the ePub version was £14. I understand that ebooks attract VAT, while dead tree books don't, but that doesn't justify that kind of price difference.

Then the Amazon Kindle officially launched in the United Kingdom, and I was mildly tempted, but I really couldn't justify buying a second ebook device. So instead, I downloaded the Android Kindle application for my trusty HTC Desire.

First impressions weren't good – the application simply didn't work. However, an updated version became available and before I knew it I was reading a sample chapter from What the Dog Saw on my phone. Having been very impressed by e-ink devices, I was surprised how readable the Desire's screen was. I set the background colour to sepia, choose a font size that suited my eyes and off I went. I expected that I would find the whole experience less than optimal, and I would be racing back to my trusty PRS-505 but so far, I haven't. In fact, it's now sitting in a drawer.

Now, to be fair, I only ever read on the Tube home, so that's about 20 minutes at a time. If I read for longer periods, say at home, perhaps the LCD display would be tiring in a way that e-ink isn't.

What's strange is that, moving to this new platform was only prompted by the cost of ebooks, which I think is the greatest barrier to further adoption of ebooks. After I finish the current book on my phone, I'm going to try again with my trusty Sony Reader and see what it's like to go back to e-ink after using a smaller LCD display.

The other barrier the Kindle system (by which I mean the Kindle store and any device which can access it) removes is finding content. The Waterstones website, at least when I last used it, is very fiddly and counterintuitive whereas the Amazon site makes it much easier to find the content you're looking for and get it onto your device.

Whatever ebook device I use, I'm completely committed to ebooks. I'm not one of those people who's nostalgic for the smell and feel of a physical book. It's just data, and I just want to download it.

Windows Phone 7 – first impressions

Just had a play with a couple of Windows Phone 7 phones. Overall, it's pretty impressive, and certainly much better than a lot of people predicted. However, there are a number of minor glitches I noticed which affect usability.

One problem is that the on-screen keyboard, while usable, requires you to press a key to switch to an alternate keyboard to enter most symbols such as apostrophes. This is much less friendly than the on-screen keyboard on the HTC Desire, where a long press enables you to enter special characters without switching to a different keyboard mode. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft allow users to download replacement keyboard apps to address this.

Also, the on-screen animations last little bit too long. While they are impressively smooth, the additional delay they cause using the phone is annoying. If there isn't an option to turn these off or increase their speed, there needs to be.

There are also some glitches relating to screen orientation, in a few cases. For example, selecting a Facebook status update to see comments that have been posted, causes the update and associated comments to be displayed, but in landscape orientation. Turning the phone to reorient the screen had no effect. Another niggle here was that Facebook statuses had a little speech bubble symbol to indicate there were related comments. You had to press on this icon to see the details; merely pressing on Facebook status update itself had no effect. This sort of niggle really spoils the user experience, and I'm surprised it was let out of the door.

On a more positive note, the hardware side of things is excellent. The HTC HD7 is a lovely piece of kit, as is the Samsung Omnia 7. Both phones have large displays and a neat angular minimalist design. The Omnia has the glorious OLED screen which is bright and vivid, although the unit is quite thick for a phone without a slide out keyboard. The HTC Mozart is also a nice piece of hardware, being basically an HTC Desire running Windows Phone 7.

There is clearly more work to be done on Windows Phone 7, but it's only a few tweaks and updates away from being a viable alternative to Android. It will be interesting to see how Google responds.

Don't just do something, sit there

I was at work today and as usual at lunchtime, I went to sit in my favourite coffee shop. Normally, I bring my smartphone with me and spend my break reading news headlines, updating my Facebook status and checking out Twitter. Today, I left my smartphone behind and so was left with nothing to do but just sit there and drink my coffee. What really surprised me was just sitting there and having nothing else to concentrate on but myself and the coffee was really difficult.

Nonetheless, just drinking my coffee without dividing my attention did me an awful lot of good. I spend so much time looking at a screen be at my computer, my phone, my Sony Reader or my television, that some time away from electronics can't be a bad thing.

Dell Venue Pro (Windows 7 Phone)

Here's a video preview from CNET.co.uk of the new Dell Windows Phone 7 phone, the Venue Pro. I really like the look of the hardware. The phone reminds me of the chunky phones that we sometimes see from Nokia such as the N95 and the N900.I even like the metallic strips down both sides, but I'm sure they won't be to everyone's taste.

The Dell Venue Pro looks immensely solidly made, although I'm surprised that Dell have decided to have a keyboard that slides out from the bottom rather than the side. I didn't like it when Palm did the same on the Palm Pre (the keyboard on that phone was ridiculously small – I couldn't use it at all because my fingers were too big).

From what I've seen of the new Windows phones, I'm not sure the new OS will lure me away from my beloved Android, but I'd certainly consider it for my next phone.

• Dell Venue Pro hands-on
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• CNET UK

What's with the name of this blog?

"Better than it has any right to be" is a phrase first coined by my good friend Tim, when he just been to see Alien vs Predator. It's a film that could easily have been terrible, but actually, I found it very entertaining and, indeed, it's one of very few films I have watched more than once.

I thought this was such a brilliant phrase, I wanted to record it somewhere, so that's why it's the name of my blog.