Flipping through g2 in the Guardian quickly at lunch today I half caught the text on the picture above. Except not quite. I miss read it as "Est Aux Folies Bergerac". That was an image of John Nettles I didn’t need…

at least if their a tennant. The picture is of a leaflet sent out by Arena Housing and they have now apologised (see the BBC for more details). Last year another Liverpool landlord put notices on the house of tennants who they say hadn’t paid their rent. A growing number of tennants are being evicted or forced to move because while we have to go through credit checks and put down deposits a property owners word is their bond as far as estate agents are concerned. I got a letter a few weeks ago from the agency I rent through which started out with a threatening tone and carried on that way implying legal threats even though it was they who were at risk of breaking the law and their contractors who had failed to contact me using any of the three phone numbers, email or by sending a letter.

Don’t get me wrong I understand that there are bad tennants. Ones who don’t pay their rent or who wreck a property. I’ve seen a flat where there were footprints on the walls from floor to six feet off the ground. Not just a few but enough to leave you wondering. I’ve also been shown a house that was being let that the landlord couldn’t figure out why he couldn’t let even though one room had a ceiling covered solid in fungi. A friend of mine was charged by their landlord after moving for batteries for the smoke alarm – a smoke alarm they had fitted themselves saving the landlord from breaking the law.

Getting back to my original point – are there really many businesses where customers paying thousands of pounds each year are treated with such utter contempt?

Just back from seeing The International, a twisty euro thriller that jumps between Europe and New York weaving the tail of a bank which is tangled up in some very shady deals. Clive Owen gives a strong performance and is ably supported by an excellent cast. The pacing is deliberately uneven which avoids the danger of a predictable ABC action film where every twist is sign posted before it arrives. The down side is that the films biggest set piece is somewhat earlier than the lower key end.

Just back from watching the new Bond film Quantum of Solace at the new Odeon in Liverpool 1. I’ll talk about the cinema tomorrow for tonight I’ll foist my opinion of the film on the rest of the world.

The pre credit sequence opens up fast and hard in media res and is very effective at setting up the film. After that the action scenes and plot twists come fast for the next one hundred odd minutes. Like 2006′s Casino Royale this is a leaner paired back Bond with no vanishing cars or other silly gadgets. There were some funny lines delivered completely straight and there were a few nods to the earlier films. As a building engineering graduate I’d like a word with the designer of the fuel cells in the hotel. I can’t think of a good reason for placing them throughout the building other than as an excuse for a lot of explosions.

The locations are great and the use of a London flat is a nice contrast to the more exotic. As with Casino Roayle there’s no repeat of the bad CGI of Die Another Day. The supporting cast are excellent, the sound track effective and the film is technically well put together.

This is a harder, colder, tougher Bond than Casino Royale.
Where Casino Royale gave us a chance to see inside Bond this film gave us fewer windows into his state of mind. That’s a shame because part of what made Casino Royale so effective for me was that it humanised Bond which in turn made him more believable and more vulnerable. Bond being vulnerable makes the action more interesting because (even though we know he won’t die) it feels more like he might. While I wouldn’t expect them to try and incorporate the short story the title comes from into the film including a little more reflection would have been as nice a homage as the sniper sequence is in The Living Daylights.

Overall a good Bond movie and a good film.

Vue doesn’t have a parallel light source that creates a fixed width beam so making search lights and other lights with parallel edges requires a little work. Here is one way I’ve used, it may not work for all situations but it works for some. All the values I give here are those I used to make the example picture (above).

We need to allow a light placed under the ground to shine through it. Select the ground in your scene. Select the material applied to the ground. In the Advanced Material Editor in Effects uncheck “Cast Shadows”. You’ll need to do this for any objects that might block the beam of light your going to create, so in my simple example above I had to uncheck it on the red material on the Cylinder too.

If you need these objects to have shadows in your picture you’ll have to create two renders (one with the light beam but without shadows and one without the light beam and with shadows) and then composite the two images.

We’re going to use a little geometry to make the beam look like it has parallel edges even though it doesn’t. Now create a spot light in Vue. Place it under the ground shining upwards at a Z position of -500m. Now set the spot lights spread to 0.25 degrees and its power to 500.

In the light editor enable volumetric lighting and increase the Intensity to 10 by typing it into the box.

Now when you render the picture you should get a beam of light shining from the ground with fairly parallel edges.

That will do for a lot of scenes but what if you need the light to appear to start from an object that can be seen under – like the crude example below?

The trick here is to use Variable colour in the light editor. Select the spot light and go into the light editor and select the Lighting tab. Now right click the color map and select “Edit Color Map”. Create a New keycolor at -1 and set it to black. Create another at -0.8 and set it to black. Create a third at around -0.6 and set it to white then drag the keycolor to the left so it is right up against the one at -0.8. Set the Key color at 1 to white too. Set the cut off distance to 5km. Now by tweaking the lights Z position move it till it appears to shine out of the object but not appear under it. In my example I put it at -480m.

You can also use these tricks to make headlights that shine from a car’s headlights that don’t start as unrealistic points or for street lamps.

I’ve posted a 200K Zip file with the two scenes in to get you started: vuesearchlight.zip

And just in case the banner isn’t big enought – tonights post may include spoilers about Doctor Who: The Stolen Earth if you have yet to see it.

On a basic level I enjoyed it. It had good elements: lots of returning characters, a dramatic plot, several dramatic cliffhangers, a couple or three interesting guest stars, the return of a classic villain
and revelations about story elements going back over the last four years worth of stories.

On another level I found it a bit unsatisfying. It was a bit like a very sweet triffle with lots of really great, expensive ingredients but which somehow doesn’t work.

Sure having all those characters in an episode gives some fans a whole fanboy / fangirl moment. However when you’re bringing back a character who was supposedly trapped in another dimension shouldn’t that give you something to work with? Instead we ended up with the story’s focus all over the place in a way that reminded me of the end of the film Street Fighter. Pretty much anyone who saw Street Fighter can tell you thats not a good thing. Too not include all those characters in such dramatic events as someone nicking a planet wouldn’t make sense but maybe less focus on the peripheral groups could have given the story more focus.

My second gripe is the return of the special effects of dubious quality. I’m becoming more convinced that a regimented cloud of flying CG Dalek’s is less scary than a couple of real Daleks. Worse though was the sub-thingamyjig-communication-technobable-wave-watsit. I just can’t figure out why it needed a special effect. A bit of old fashioned dramatic acting would have done the job a lot better and avoided a dubious effect.

Returning to the Daleks: I know the Daleks are popular, great for mechandise sales and bringing back a couple of character Daleks is fun but can we have maybe a season without them? They’ll be a lot more exciting if we don’t expect them.

As to the cliff hangers – one was of the traditional character in jepardy variety and then there was the other one. Either next week we get a new actor in the main role or we get a new twist on the mythology. I’m not sure the later is really great for the series though as it moves the Doctor into being more of a Captain Scarlet character who can never die and never be threatened which is pretty much already a given with his name as the show’s title but at least in the past there was a chance of a regeneration and a supposed limit on the number of regenerations…

I think my biggest concern though is the constant escalation of the threat. Its almost as though their trapped in a cycle of needing a bigger threat each episode. One week a city is threatened, the next a country and then a planet. Doctor Who’s been seeing the Earth put in danger for years. Steeling planets is impressive and shows a level of power but at some point it wanders into Lensman territory and where can you go from there? Will we see black holes smashed together as weapons of war in a few series time? I hope not because I doubt they’ll have the effects budget to pull it off.

Despite all that – the sad fanboy part of me is still looking forward to next weeks end of series episode: Journey’s End.

Finally got to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I’m not going to over analyse the plot because its the same basic follow the MacGuffin of the previous three films. Its fun, its action packed and I got to play the game of trying to spot where they used Vue and where the live action footage began. Basicly a fun switch your brain off film in the style of the old serials with a nod to the passage of time.

I just hope the hints dropped about Mutt Williams’ character are not an attempt to give the series a way to go on as a zimmer frame Harrison Ford would look silly doing a sequel twenty years from now. I’m not trying to be a kill joy but there is a point at which things like satalite photogtaphy, mobile phones and a thousand other modern tools make the suspension of disbelief for this style of action adventure a lot harder.

So based on Partners in Crime this years must have Dr Who christmas gifts will include:

1. a sonic fountain pen
2. a cuddly, stress relief, lard coloured, cube with eyes, arms and legs
3. a telescope

Miss January 2008: Skenan Ann Bones – She wants to be a famous model at all the best shows.

Miss February: Finnea Bone – She’s got a great sense of humour

Miss March: Di Bones – She Welsh and she mixes a great martini

Miss April: Bona Fide – An Italian lady who cannot tell a lie so please don’t ask her age

Miss May: Bon Voyage – Wants to see the world

Miss June: Boneshaker – She loves to dance

Miss July: Boneanza – She just adores Lorne Greene

Miss August: "Hip" Bone – She’s just one cool chick

Miss September: Bonhomie – A little ostentatious but benevolent too

Miss October: Bon Marche – She’s French and she likes discount shopping

Miss November: Bonehead – Not the brightest skeleton in the pack

Miss December: Talulah Bonny – A good looking lass with great ankles

Bonus Girl: Shelly “Bob” – Favourite TV Show: Blackadder

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!