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Garfield: cheesy American cartoon strip. Garfield minus Garfield: surreal observations on the American mind. Cool ideally, brilliantly effective.

Watched Collateral again this morning. Probably the sixth or seventh time I’ve watched the film right through. I begun to wonder why I find it so habit-forming – I’m certainly no major fan of either Cruise or Foxx, and the plot itself is hardly life-changing (in fact, Vincent’s attempts to intellectualise his killing is just annoying).

Then I realised: it’s the cinematography, Mann’s digitised vision of nightime LA. A little Googling unearthed what was so special about it:

The difference between film and HD, says Cameron, is that film’s sensitivity falls off sharply at the bottom of the curve, transforming subtle shadows into deep rich blacks. But what if, he asks, you went into those shadows? “How do I record what the eye sees at the toe of the curve?” Where everyone is trying to make black, Mann decided he would go into those shadows and pull out information to create intense emotions.

But I reckon there’s more to it than technology. The most memorable scenes are set in the most miserable locations; shit-cheap motels and nameless side-streets, usually with the skyscrapers of downtown LA as a distant backdrop. If you’ve ever strayed from the path inn any major American city, Collateral works on a whole new level.

Watched Road Wars on SkyOne last night. Ten minutes in, I had a brief, well… moment. I suddenly became aware that I was sat on a sofa somewhere in Surrey, watching images on a television screen.

Those images were depicting a society that has collapsed. Civillians showed no fear of the law; they were happily spitting at and punching the police, taking a smug pleasure in knowing that the punishment will be at least four sizes from fitting the crime.

I tried to imagine what I would have felt if I had been watching those images on a sofa in 1950s Britain. I can only imagine a mix of terror and disbelief; the people I see around me every day do not behave like this. No-one does.

Of course, Road Wars is both political and sensational. The police collaborate with Sky in its production, presumeably to make a broad point that the police are in control. I also suspect that high-ups within the Force quietly sanction the references to minimal sentences: most coppers I know feel that the lunatics have taken over the asylum.