simon dunn: scriptwriter & comedian

I don’t care what anyone else thinks, ever since I first saw it, I’ve thought The Phantom Menace is an excellent film in the Star Wars canon. And I’m amazed that it’s already ten years old.

I watched it again this evening for the first time in a long time, and it’s still just as good. The first thing that struck me was how well the CGI has aged. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that it’s still better than almost all of the non-ILM output in contemporary blockbusters. The convincing GI lighting solutions they have used are fantastic.

And Jar Jar Binks, a decade on, is still one of the better examples of CG character animation, and the detail of his skin knocks a lot of Golem’s close ups out of the water. Plus the organic movement of the battle scenes with the Gungans versus the battle droids is more realistic than the hoards in Lord Of The Rings.

What’s more, Jar Jar is a good character, and I like him, so there.

Not as much as R2-D2 though, who I think remains one of my favourite movie characters of all time. He’s a cheeky little shit.

I remembered Jake Lloyd as Anakin being a bit annoying, but he turns in a very polished performance which is very watchable and charming. Even Ewan MacGregor is less wooden than I recalled; I once held the belief that he was bored for most of the trilogy until his final scenes where his cinematic presence actually put a lump in my throat – like Alec Guinness did when I finally saw him on a massive screen.

Plot-wise the script does an awful lot of work under the surface, acting as a good primer for the next two episodes, and operatically foreshadowing (or should that be backshadowing in this unique case?) the events of A New Hope. In fact, it introduces an awful lot of stuff in a very elegant manner.

But most importantly of all, it made me bounce in my seat and remember how I felt as a kid watching the original trilogy. Hearing the horns blast out the Star Wars theme as a much less familiar text scrolls up the screen still makes me giddy. As did the moment when Darth Maul extends the other end of his light sabre. That made me chuckle as much as when Yoda reveals his light sabre for the first time in episode two.

Plus that whole fight sequence to the strains of Duel of Fates is a tour de force. As is the Podrace sequence, which looks photo realistic throughout, and rushes by at an extraordinary pace. But back to the duel, the moment when Darth Maul is pacing menacingly as Qui Gon kneels is spine tinglingly good, as is Obi-Wan’s violent reaction to his death and frenzied fighting.

So, I don’t care what anyone else thinks, The Phantom Menace is brilliant. It’s just as much fun as a Star Wars film should be.

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I wasn’t going to write anything about Derren Brown’s lottery shenanigans, but there are a few thoughts I want to vomit from my brain.

I know it doesn’t need to be said, but at no point did the Bearded Satan predict the lottery numbers. What he did do though was make them appear in plain sight AFTER the draw had been made. And to be honest, that’s still a pretty impressive trick.

I’m sure I could speculate all day as to how he did this using split screens and motion controlled camera wobbles and still be no closer to the actual method; but what is certain is that he did NOT rig the machine, nor did he use the wisdom of crowds.

Mentalists usually use one of two techniques; forcing you the say what they have predicted, or finding a way to write down their prediction after you have revealed the answer. Think pencil lead under the fingernail. Obviously he used the second technique for the draw, and the fun is in figuring out how he got the correct numbered balls in to the rack.

And in fact, he DID reveal how he did it with his final sentence of the show: It Was A Trick.

It’s disappointing that he didn’t say how he actually pulled it off, but then why should he? And the more I thought about it afterwards, the more kudos I gave him for giving us all the Vs and blowing a raspberry. I now consider the whole show to have been an hour long set up for that four word punch line. It. Was. A. Trick.

With all that said, I did come away from the whole thing feeling slightly disappointed, and not because he didn’t reveal his method. What I’ve always liked about the Chin-quiffed Beelzebub is that there are some mind blowing effects in each and every episode. But this one didn’t really have anything that made me feel amazed. I knew straight away that the guy stamping would instinctively avoid cup number 13 for instance.

But the more it’s festered in my craw, the more I realise he performed a pretty brilliant trick right under our noses.

In order for his narrative to work, he needed to show a progression in the success rate of his 24 volunteers. I don’t believe a magician would leave this to chance, and so it’s fun to try and figure out how he got them to *think* they had guessed four correct numbers.

This was an important step in order to get their reaction to the final six ball “prediction” on camera, which was actually pretty good telly.

It’s possible that the correct guessing of one ball was legitimate, and perhaps possible that the next three ball prediction was too, though I suspect not. Thus, the hairy-faced demon managed to con a room full of people in to thinking they had predicted four of the six balls.

It’s interesting that at no point was it said they were watching these earlier draws live, so here the force technique could have been used. Could you honestly look at a list of 24 different numbers and know what their average would be? But you would trust a calculator to tell you. Why would a calculator lie? And it’s interesting that for the four ball correct guess, one single person was using an iPhone to do the adding up. Plus he was interpreting the squiggles as numbers, so the group could not get together and say for sure what he had typed into the phone.

But this narrative progression readied the group to think that it was possible to guess all six numbers correctly, and Derren outright explained that at no point did they see their own “prediction” for the final live draw.

When all’s said and done, it’s worth considering this show an excellent promotional tool for the rest of the series, bringing in a new audience for Derren, and I hope that the next few episodes are going to be a return to his normal brilliance.

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Who is The Cube? What is The Body? Where is Phillip Schofield so damn likeable? Three simple questions that prove anything easy can be munched up by seven shades of man moron. And to be honest, this is the best Saturday night show I’ve seen in a decade.

The Cube is just so damn nice. It’s not knowingly naff, or needlessly spiteful, it doesn’t rely on a public vote fuelled by drunken rage, it’s just a simple, brilliant idea, very well executed.

The only other time I’ve been emotionally invested in little red balls getting slopped into a tube was playing a game as a child. And yes, I eschewed the cynical double-entendre deliberately so as not to sully such a lovely piece of tellyboxing.

Essentially, you step in to The Cube and attempt to complete seemingly simple task to win money. At no point have the producers tried to turn the contestants into objects of derision or feather spitting, they let the idea speak for itself. It’s the perfect antidote to that brothel full of bum gravy The X-Factor.

It’s on the ITV Net Player here:

http://www.itv.com/ITVPlayer/Video/default.html?ViewType=5&Filter=46934

I liked it a lot.

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