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Harry Brown, directed by Daniel Barber from a screenplay by Gary Young, stars elder British statesman Michael Caine as a pensioner who takes the death of his closest friend at the hands of local hooligans very personally. Emily Mortimer, in a somewhat-quiet role in which she still manages to exude no small amount of strength, plays the detective investigations his friend’s death and the subsequent murders of those who attacked him. With two actors of that caliber on opposite ends of a screenplay, it’s easy to ignore the frequent wallowing in stereotype the script happily engages in, particularly when it comes to The Youth of England. It’s through the two leads’ abilities and Barber’’s visceral direction and methodical pacing (with no small help from Martin Ruhe’s camerawork) that Harry Brown becomes something engaging and smart. Particularly strong is the final act that lifts rest of the film’s mass up significantly by dint of having at least one actual surprise in it.It’s a movie that’s easy to overpraise because when it works, it sings, but there’s still significant problems in how it enforces storytelling cliché and laziness on the part of movies that attempt social relevance, even if it is highly entertaining to watch Michael Caine wreak Old Testament havoc on his inferiors one more time.

When we discussed the iPad and whether it was worth giving in to the peer pressure and pre-ordering it, a commenter decided to remind us of his reason for resisting: No flash. And yes, it can make things look sad. More »

As part of a graduate show at the Kyoto University of Art and Design, students built miniature cities out of common household objects—including this power strip. They're just missing mini-people. [Spoon Tamago via Crib Candy via Boing Boing] More »

 
Each week, the ISB endeavors to enlighten our readers by offering the unedited words of the Warrior Scholars of the squared circle, for who among us cannot benefit from the wisdom of Macho Madness, Hulkamania, or the American Dream? The instruction we offer should be considered carefully, meditated on, and applied to one’s own life for the enrichment of the self and others.

What if computers could be turned into a worldwide earthquake detecting network? With the Quake Catcher software and your laptop's built-in accelerometer, that might just be possible. More »

This afternoon I spoke to Clash of the Titans writers Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi about the upcoming monsterfest featuring Sam Worthington, swords, and a really giant kraken. They gave me hope that this adventure tale won't take itself too seriously. More »

It's been a long week and we could use a laugh. We've already started worrying about taxes and pre-ordering iPads, among other stresses. To sum it all up, here are some illustrations from a cartoon maestro called Lunchbreath. More »

Whenever you see a Slutty Girl and a Redneck having sex in the woods where a Scary Monster is lurking, you know something bad is about to happen. Add a Naughty Santa's Helper outfit, and you've got Maximum Wrongness. NSFW? More »

We've all heard about the PlayStation Move by now, but a lot of other neat stuff happened this week in video games, including God of War III's release, Civ 5 details and...a Battlestar Galactica MMO?? More »

We've been waiting years for the comic book that tells the backstory of Firefly's Shepherd Book, called The Shepherd's Tale. And now it's finally coming out, written by Zack Whedon from a detailed scene-by-scene outline by his brother Joss. More »

In this week's bipolar app roundup: Foursquare, squared! Slow ISPs, tattled on! Videos, easily streamed! Street Fighter fans' high standards, met! Twitter apps, set free! Your entire life, documented! Your every plan, shared! And more... More »

New research shows that the advantages of HDTV aren't lost on octopuses. A recent study on octopus behavior made the upgrade from CRT sets to HDTVs for the playback of octopus-related videos, like one of a tasty crab. More »