Dur dur dur-dur, dur dur dur-dur, diddle-dee...

Mission Impossible 3 over the weekend and a pleasant surprise - a competently executed summer blockbuster. Admittedly expectations were rock bottom, but it seems that J.J. Abrams knew what he was doing with the plot while Tom Cruise was having one of his better days when it came to the performance. It's certainly a hell of a lot better than John Woo's effort, though I still rate Brian de Palma's Mission: Impossible as a decent enough film in its own right. What's important is that Abrams understands the material - specifically that the original TV series was about ludicrously contrived capers executed by a team - the film features no less than three of such set-pieces, in addition to another couple of action sequences. Indeed, little time is wasted and at two-hours the end result is a fairly tight piece of cinema (despite at least one example of gratuitous exposition).

Meanwhile the massacre continues on Battlefield 2. I've slaughtered my way to Corporal but it's quite depressing how conservative online gamers are - there's little variation beyond two very popular multiplayer maps and tactics used on those maps. Creativity is not really a factor in most people's gameplay and I'd question how much enjoyment there was in such an approach. Though that may just be because I keep getting "pwned" on Backstab. I hate snipers.