New Rules Needed, Worst to First, Proof in the Crisis

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2012 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of November 26, 2012



My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

New Rules Needed                                                                                                                

The BBC has asked its employees not to do it, at least for the time being.  A Kansas state appeals attorney was fired and faces ethics charges because she did it during a session of the state Supreme Court.  And two weeks ago I sat in a meeting where it was a major topic of discussion.

What’s causing all this fuss?  Using the micro-messaging service Twitter otherwise known as tweeting.  And the reality is we are facing a serious change in our culture that needs to be addressed.

At the BBC several senior staff members have been tweeting about the upset following two major scandals that resulted in the head of the broadcasting giant resigning.  The BBC has asked folks to allow these issues to be worked out inside the company.  In Kansas the attorney tweeted a rude comment about the defendant in the middle of a court session!  She was suspended and then fired.

I was attending a series of committee meeting connected with my work that drew people from all over the country.  At the beginning of our meeting we discussed our expectations of one another while we met.  And that’s when the tweeting issue arose.  It splits largely along generational lines.  The younger group sees tweeting as a normal part of their lives.  The older generation sees it as rude and disruptive when done during meeting time.  A realistic look at the issue says that the older generation is going to lose this argument in the long run.

At the same time not every moment of our lives is appropriate to be tweeted about or during.  Out of our conversation at the meeting were a couple of concepts that I’d like to share.  We need to understand that this issue is essentially one of mutual respect.  That we respect the time, the place and the people where we find ourselves.  That we realize that some issues need to be held in private and that everyone needs to make clear what they think should be private.  Finally there needs to be a commitment to presence.  Not just being in the room but being involved in what’s happening there.  When your digital communication interferes with that then you’ve stepped outside the lines.

We need to acknowledge the times are changing and find ways to bridge between the generations.

Worst to First                                                                                                          

This is almost too funny.  It was just a couple years ago, heck barely that, that we all but wrote the obituary for the National Broadcasting Company better known simply as NBC.  The Peacock network has struggled to the point that at one time it appeared that it was going to slide out of the top three among networks for the first time in living memory.

It really wasn’t clear that NBC would ever be able to recover.  The saying is that to everything there is a time and a season and you had to wonder if maybe NBC had just run out its string.  With the media landscape changing as quickly and broadly as it has the question started to look like whether broadcast networks had simply become dinosaurs headed toward extinction.

Then we hit the first week of the fall season this year.  Much to my delight I was able to report here that NBC had actually won a night!  Shortly thereafter they won a week in the ratings as well.  It was all very surprising and encouraging to see the one time champ come back slugging.

Well the latest news is almost impossible to believe.  According to reporting in the Financial Times NBC has pulled off that legendary move called worst to first.  The network has not only climbed out of the hole it has become the highest rated network for the fall broadcast season.  It’s a story that has everyone in the industry scratching their heads.  Turns out that may not be the most amazing part of the story.

The most amazing part of the story is that at the moment NBC is the only network that isn’t seeing significant ratings drops overall.  Think about that.  EVERY other network is facing what the Financial Times report refers to as a “...precipitous drop in television ratings so far this season”.  Which may mean that the other networks may be facing similar kinds of problems some time soon.

So against all odds it looks like NBC had plenty to be thankful about last week.

Proof in the Crisis

Sometimes the most powerful positive moment in a person’s or a company’s life is the moment of crisis.  Normally we think of a crisis as being something to be avoided but think about a crisis as any moment of great stress.  A time when all of your resources will be called upon, a time when you are going to have show just how much you are truly capable of doing and being.  A crisis is never really a fun time but it can be the time when you can find out just who you really are.

Two web companies found themselves in those kind of crisis, high stress moments recently.  And both of them have to be happy with what they discovered about themselves.

The early stress moment was election night and the service in question was Twitter.  The problem that Twitter has consistently suffered from is the appearance of the Fail Whale.  If you’re not into Twitter culture then you may not know that beast.  When the service became overwhelmed by usage you would get a graphic of a whale saying Twitter was down.  But on election night, a night that saw a peak usage of 327,452 messages a minute, the fail whale didn’t make an appearance.  This is huge step forward as Twitter becomes more mainstream.  To survive an event that big without going down was a big victory.

The second moment of crisis was related to Superstorm Sandy.  The storm surge flooded a great many internet server sites in the storm zone.  A lot of online companies suddenly found themselves completely unable to do business.  But the digital world prides itself on it’s flexibility and its ability to react quickly.  So the question became how do we get back online?  And the answer came from a surprising source - the online service Tumblr.  Tumblr is what is called a micro-blogging site.  It’s dedicated to shorter, more image oriented communication.  What happened was when the folks at Gawker and Huffington Post among others got knocked off the internet they turned to Tumblr to help them get up and running.  And the reality is that partnership worked so well some folks think that Tumblr might just be the future of online publishing sites.  Tumblr isn’t sure it’s ready to make the move but let’s face it, it never hurts to have people want you.

A crisis can be a time that can break you.  But if you’re good at what you do it just might be the event that makes you as well.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

John Carter of Meh

John Carter (2012) What a mess.  I read the books as a teenager.  Oh, those Frank Frazetta covers.  They're a wonderful piece of adventure from that time (Edgar Rice Burroughs published the first book "A Princess of Mars" in 1917.  The last book in the series was published posthumously in 1964).  The problem is that the movie version never quite decides how it wants to play the rather campy style of that day.

The movie has a long and twisted history.  Folks have wanted to make it dating back as far as the 1930's when animator Bob Clampett (Looney Tunes at Warner Brothers and Beany and Cecil for TV) talked with the author about an animated version.  In 2009 there was a direct to DVD version starring Antonio Sabato Jr and Tracy Lords (!) as Carter and Dejah Thoris.  A handful of directors have been connected with this big screen version over the years and both Paramount and Disney held the rights.  Mario Kassar, Robert Rodriguez and Jon Favreau all signed on for the project then left.  In the end Disney turned to Andrew Stanton.  His claim to fame was directing both "Finding Nemo" and "Wall-E" for Pixar.  While I enjoyed both of those movie immensely both he and the writers (Stanton, Michael Chabon and Mark Andrews) show that they have no idea where to go with the story.  They can't seem to decide if this is a serious science fiction move, an Indiana Jones type serial homage or a kids science fiction film.  Instead we get the usual bloated CGI dump to try and make up for it.  No time is given to establishing the world in which the story takes place, making any sense of the story line or much in the way character relationships.  When you add in a rather undistinguished cast (who does nothing to change their status as such) you end up with a mess.

There are a few good moments, a couple neat visuals.  But way too few.

Muddled.  Slow.  Confused.  Lacking in any engaging characters.  The hope was this would launch a new franchise and there would be two sequels.  Therein may lay the problem.  If they'd spent more time making THIS one a good movie maybe they'd have a chance to make a couple more.  Instead they spent an enormous amount of money that they have virtually no chance of ever making back.  Which means that those wonderful stories of Barsoom may never come to the screen.

Reason enough to dislike this movie.

Rating - ** Not Impressed

Facebook Creeper, Google Books, Turning Out the Lights

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2012 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of November 19, 2012



My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

Turning Out the Lights                                                                                                                 

There’s an old saying that what goes around comes around.  Also that there’s nothing new under the sun.  A lot of folks in the digital media world want to believe otherwise.  And yet reality just keeps jumping up and biting them in the butt.  For all the nearly religious chanting that it’s a whole new world with new rules blah, blah blah in the end some things never change.  For example in the end if you want to play in the big leagues of the media there’s a simple gold standard for success.  You either make money or you don’t.  If you’re not competing in that arena then you’re a really talented amateur.  Now really talented amateurs can do a lot of really cool things.  But you’re not playing in the big leagues.

Of course the down side of playing with the big boys is that they’re relatively unforgiving.  They don’t try to be nice, they don’t cut you any slack and they’re not going to give you a break.  A year ago YouTube decided it wanted to play with the big boys.  They knew they needed to move away from just being the host of endless Gangnam Style and laughing baby videos.  The big leagues required original high quality content so they created “channels”.  These were folks that received at least some financial support from YouTube to create that kind of must see video content.  A year later and YouTube has taken a long look at those channels.

Well that makes one of us.

As it turns out most of us have paid zero attention to the majority of the channels.  So in the very near future most of those channels will face some cold hard reality.  YouTube will be pulling the plug on 60% of the channels.  The reason is simple economics.  YouTube dropped as much as five million dollars per channel and over half of them didn’t turn enough of a profit.  The channels that showed some potential will continue to have the support of the video media giant.  The others will be left to their own devices AND expected to continue to work on paying back the original investment.

It’s a brave new world out there on the digital frontier.  Some people have managed to forget just how tough the frontier has always been.

Google Books                                                                                                          

You may not have noticed but the folks at Google have been working on digitizing the world.  All forms of data, all forms of information and everything in print.  This includes books.  And that has created a little bit of problem.  You see there are folks out there who actually kind of own the publishing rights to some of those books.  Turns out they’re not really happy with having their property offered up for free by Google.  So in that great American tradition they’re settling it in court.

The good news is that it seems like they have actually come to an agreement.  At the center of the disagreement is Google’s Library Project, which they describe as “An enhanced card catalog of the world’s books”.  What they were doing was scanning books from public libraries, making the books searchable and offering snippets of them online.  That resulted in groups representing both the publishers and the authors bringing suit.  This settlement covers the publishers only.  Google maintains this is all covered under the concept of “Fair Use”.  The courts have yet to rule on that issue.

Now the deal would seem to be a win-win-win for Google, the publishers and readers like you and me.  Google is one step closer to moving forward with the project.  The publishers get the right to exclude a title from the project if they so choose.  And the rest of us get a better way of finding books online.  Financial terms, if any, have not been disclosed.

I will note that the publishers did get one thing they may not want.  They get a free digital copy of every book in their list.  I’ve looked at a fair number of those Google scanned books and a lot of them are a mess.  Seems like maybe some of the scans put more emphasis on quantity rather than quality.
Given that these legal shenanigans date back to 2005 getting some kind of settlement done is a good thing.  Even the publishers acknowledge that there will be a growing influence of e-books in the years to come and having a digital card catalog works to their advantage.

Getting it done right is just as important.

Facebook Creeper

I have to admit I was a little cranky when I heard about this next item.  A little cranky and a little creeped out.  You see I just discovered that someone has created a page about my relationship with the Lady in My Life.  For those of you new to the world of the Phlipside that’s my long standing nickname for my wife.  We’ve been together for over 30 years.  That doesn’t mean I wasn’t upset to discover that someone has been collecting photos of the two of us, scanning our personal social media postings and amassing them all on a web page.  A web page I knew nothing about and for which they did hot have the permission of me or my wife.  That’s pretty creepy.

Now the bad news.  You probably have one too.  If you’re on Facebook and are listed as being in a relationship then Facebook has probably created a page about you and your significant other.  Did a chill just run up and down your spine?  Check it out at www dot facebook dot com front slash us.

The pages are called Friendship Pages and they’re actually not new.  The social media giant introduced them two years ago with a certain amount of fanfare but they promptly slipped off of most people’s radar pretty quickly.  Let’s face it Facebook is constantly changing things, adding features and generally running amok.

What I find creepy, that is creepy beyond the fact that Facebook is doing this at all, is that it happens without my permission or knowledge and the fact that there’s basically nothing I can do about it.  You can not make the page go away.  You can not opt out.  The best you can do is crank up your privacy levels nice and high to limit what the creeper page can post about you.  That, of course, is the best defense against any online creeper out there.
My question is simple.  Why do I need to protect myself against Facebook?  In what possible alternate universe did the brain trust at Facebook decide that turning itself into the world’s biggest creeper was a good idea?  Unfortunately this is symptomatic of the overall attitude within the Kingdom of Zuckerberg.  An attitude that they know better than we do how to run our lives online and control our information.

Now they’ve decided they know what I want said about the most significant relationship in my life.  And that makes Facebook a creeper.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

400th post - A Classic Movie

The Best Years of Our Lives - (1946) This is one of those legendary movies that you hear about long before you see them.  As classics so often are it is not only a movie of its time but of all time as well.  The issues it touches on are every bit as topical now as then.

Three veterans return to the small town where they live at the end of World War II. One a banker, one a former soda jerk and one a sailor who has lost both his hands in the war.  Each of them face problems trying to return to civilian life after years away in war zones.  Al (Frederic March) returns to a family that has grown up and learned to adapt to a different way of life than he left behind.  His wife Milly (Myrna Loy) and daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright) are smart competent women but they aren't the woman and little girl he left behind.  Al's return to his job at the local bank presents problems as well because his understanding of what's important have changed.  Meanwhile Fred (Dana Andrews) knows he wants no part of his old job as a soda jerk.  The problem is that he has no experience and no education.  His wife married him after they met at his training base and isn't happy that her officer husband is now her unemployed husband.  Finally there's Homer, the sailor who lost his hands.  In their place are two sets of hooks.  Homer is used to them but his family and his girl struggle with the change in him.

The actor who played Homer, Harold Russell, is worth an essay all on his own.  Born in Canada Russell had moved to the States as a child.  When the war broke out he enlisted and while working on an Army training film (of all things) an explosive damaged his hands so badly they had to be amputated.  The hooks you see in the movie are his in real life.  Russell brings an honest, natural style to his role.  Director William Wyler wanted that untrained naturalness and was furious when producer Samuel Goldwyn sent Russell off for acting lessons prior to the start of filming.  Russell is the only actor to win two Academy Awards for the same role. The Academy was sure that a virtual amateur couldn't win in the Best Supporting category.  They gave Russell a special Oscar for his inspiration to returning veterans and then he promptly turned around and won the other award as well (He beat out Charles Coburn, William DeMarest, Claude Rains and Clifton Webb).

The movie touches on such contemporary issues as Post Traumatic Shock Disorder, re-entry issues, the economy after a major economic change and more.  The performances are excellent walking the line between some very serious subjects while never descending into something too dark.  Wyler is a great director whose name isn't as well known today as it once was.  The movie picked up a handful of Oscars (Best Picture, Director, Lead Actor, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Dramatic Score and Film Editing) and was a huge critical and box office hit.  Great story, great cast, great director.

I'm glad I've finally gotten the chance to see this movie.  It more than lived up to its reputation.

Rating - **** Recommended

Snark, Please Don't, Just Lie

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2012 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of November 12, 2012



My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

 Just Lie                                                                                                                  

I’ve talked before about the whole question of safety online for our essential information.  The entire digital business model is really based on getting as much of that information and either using it directly or selling it.  The problem is trying to control access to that information while still enjoying the joys of the World Wide Web.  Folks over in England may have come up with the simplest way to achieve that.

Lie.

No seriously, an Internet security officer for the British government advised people at a major conference over there to only give your actual information to highly trusted sites like those from the government.  To everyone else?  Lie like a rug.  

Andy Smith, listed as an Internet security chief for the Cabinet office, advised everyone to tell social networking sites lies about themselves.  The rationale is that while a limited number of sites absolutely need your correct information everybody else is a potential danger and should be treated as such.

The push back was almost immediate.  It came from all of the business folk who make their living on the web.  If all our social networking info is fake their ability to use that information for advertising purposes.  While I understand their concern let’s say it’s not first on my list of thoughts.

In a world where online predators can be a very serious problem this really seems like a simple solution.  As with any simple solution it turns out there are a few bumps along the road.  I’m a little leery of actually advocating that people start creating fake identities on the web because that comes with its own set of problems.  It also means that those “trusted” sites to whom we do entrust our real details will need to be hyper secure.  Right now a thief has lots of places to try and grab your info.  If they know that all your info is confined to just a handful of sites you can assume that the assault on those sites will go up exponentially.  Which means I need to trust the government to do a really good job with their Internet security.  Let’s just say that I’m a little doubtful on that subject.

For the moment I think I’ll keep my security to myself and my lying to a necessary minimum.

Please Don't                                                                                                          

It used to be that you never saw the names of products or even businesses in the movies.  The movie makers would create fake names for pretty much everything.  There were always exceptions, like when Macy’s appeared in the movie “The Miracle on 34th Street” but more often than not it was some version of Wile E. Coyote’s ACME Corporation.  Then came the days of the paid product placement.  Companies would pay the movie makers to actually have their logo or company name to appear clearly and openly on the screen.  And in those early days there was not even an attempt to disguise it.  You would get a long slow pan over the Pacific Bell logo on a phone booth or have a Pepsi can placed prominently in the scene.  Over the years the product placements have gotten a little subtler.

So I was interested in the product placement issue that has arisen around the Denzel Washington movie “Flight”.  Washington’s character is a high functioning alcoholic airline pilot.  His plane gets into a mid-air catastrophe from which he miraculously saves it and all the folks on board.  The problem is that in the post crash physical the level of alcohol in his blood becomes an issue.  And that’s the real issue in the dispute.

The character is seen regularly drinking Budweiser and Stolichnaya vodka among other drinks.  The manufacturers of the two alcoholic beverages have asked Paramount Pictures to remove or obscure the logos of their products in all future versions of the movie.   The reason is simple.  Both companies have spent a lot of time and money supporting responsible drinking campaigns.  What’s shown in the movie is exactly what they DON’T want connected with the images of their products.  From their point of view this is negative product placement.
The real problem is that Paramount doesn’t really have to do it.  The Trademark laws don’t give this kind of protection.  The products are available world wide and are being used in the manner intended even if over used in this case.  It’ll be interesting to see what Paramount’s final decision will be.

And of course on the other hand Heineken paid millions of dollars to have their beer featured prominently in the new James Bond movie.  To each their own I guess.

Snark

Last week someone on Facebook accused me of being snarky.  Moi?   OK I’ll be honest and say it’s not the first time.  In fact I’m not the only one out there.  I’ve heard people refer to this as the “Age of Snark”.  It’s a word that I toss around with fair abandon.  But it dawned on me this time that I’d never really looked into the word itself.  Since our snark is expressed primarily over digital media I thought I’d take the time right now to do just that.

First we look it up in some online dictionaries.  And it’s right there.  Most of them seem to agree that the word comes from the combination of the words “snide” and “remark” which gives us snark.  The definition of the word itself talks about remarks involving sarcasm or malice.  I’m going to come back to that.  Now the history of the word  (its etymology) is a little unclear it appears that the word has been used in the contemporary understanding going back to at least 1906.  But of course that’s not the earliest usage. That probably goes to The Rev. Charles Dodgeson, better known to most of us as Lewis Carroll, the author of “Alice in Wonderland”.  Among his other works was “The Hunting of the Snark” a nonsense poem about a fictional beast with a made up name.  Curiously the name snark has been used a lot since then.  There have been missiles, planes, ships, alien races all named snark.  There’s even a Corporal Snark in Joseph Heller’s novel “Catch-22”.

But the kind of snark we’re interested in today is the kind involving sarcasm or malice.  And I think that provides the dividing line on snark itself.  There’s good snark and bad snark.  The bad snark is the kind grounded in malice.  It’s meant just to be mean and hurtful.  That kind of snark is all too common out on the web.  And it’s what gives snark a bad reputation.
The other kind of snark, based in sarcasm, has some value I think.  If you went back to the days of the Algonquin Round Table, a gathering of wise cracking intellectuals in New York City in the early 20th Century, I think you’d find snark in its finest form.  Dorothy Parker would feel right at home cranking out beautifully turned snark all day long.  While sarcasm can cut and be quite painful let’s say that it’s a surgical cut where malice based snark is just a blunt instrument.

None of which is going to make me less snarky.  But it may push me to raise the quality of my snark.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

8 Bits of Fun - Movie Review

Wreck It Ralph - 2012- Let me be honest, I went to see this movie because my daughter wanted to see it (and she was paying).  I'm not a gamer, wasn't even much of an arcade game player back in the day.  But what the heck?

What I got was a fabulous surprise.  This movie is a lot of fun.  Even better it's a great movie for the whole family.  Lots of silly fun stuff for the youngest kids and great subtle stuff for the adults too.

The movie is based on a whole range of classic video games.  At the center is a game called "Fix It Felix" and the game's villain Wreck It Ralph.  Ralph wrecks things and then Felix fixes them.  Yes, video games used to be that simple once upon a time.  After 30 years of being shunned by the rest of the cast of his game Ralph wants something different.  So he leaves the game to explore the action in other places.  Along the way he will run into nearly 200 characters from actual video games and just have a rollicking good time.  There some good messages in the movie as well particularly with finding happiness in who you are and what you do well rather than trying to be something else.

The movie is funny and touching and really, really wonderful.  Looking for some fun?  Drop a token for "Wreck It Ralph"

A Classic Thriller - movie review

The Day of the Jackal - (1973) Sometimes classics aren't big hits.  At least not at first. When director Fred Zinneman ("High Noon", "From Here to Eternity", "A Man For All Seasons") began casting the movie he decided he didn't want a big name star.  He wanted the story to be the star.  So the relatively unknown Edward Fox was cast as the Jackal, an assassin brought in to kill French President Charles DeGaulle.  The lack of star power is thought to be part of why the movie was not a big hit when first released.  The critics knew a classic when they saw it however.

The story is based on history.  In the early 1960's, after fighting a long and bitter war in Algeria, the French government decided enough was enough and granted the Algerians independence.  A small group in the French military was outraged and formed what would today be called a domestic terrorist group, the OAS.  In 1962 they made an attempt on the life of the French president.  The attempt failed, the conspirators were caught and their leader was executed.  The movie then takes the action one step further.  What if remaining members of the organization paid an assassin to try again?

What you end up with is a classic thriller.  The assassin making his way towards his moment.  The French police trying to put together the pieces to figure out what is going on.  The action is tense and moves quickly. At the same time Zinneman gives the action all the room it needs to build the tension.  In the end the director gets exactly what he wanted.  The story is the star and the story is a beauty.

Rating - **** Recommended Movie

Five People You Meet in Heaven review

The Five People You Meet in Heaven - (2004) Based on the book by Mitch Albom the movie is the story of an 80 year old Army vet who dies trying to save a little girl's life at the amusement park where he has worked since he was a kid himself.  When he arrives in the next world he's met by five people from his own life who are there to help him understand all that he has been through.

I really enjoyed Albom's first best selling mainstream book "Tuesdays With Morrie" which was the primary reason I put this movie into my queue. (I've never seen the movie of "Tuesdays" and I've never read the book of "Five People".  That seems weird to me but there it is).  So I had no idea of what was coming.

My first impression was not good.  The movie starts off slowly and feels like a made for TV movie (which it was) rather than a major motion picture.  It just felt awkward, clunky and a little cheesy.  The good news is that eventually the movie finds itself and gets much better.  The movie isn't perfect and it's still the kind of feel good, heart warming ending that you'd expect but at least it's a well done one.

Rating - *** Worth a Look