Staggeringly-Bequiffed Legend

In 1973, Stanley Kubrick’s crackers, overlong work of ultraviolent mentalism, A Clockwork Orange, was banned by its own director because its ultraviolence proved to be a bit too ultra. It’s now Number 51 on the Internet Movie Database’s Top 250 films.

In 1986 The Exorcist was banned under the wacky and misguided Video Recordings Act. It’s now widely regarded as one of the most important horror films ever made, and staggeringly-bequiffed legend Mark Kermode believes it to be The Greatest Film, Like, Ever.

And now, in 2009, word reaches me of another distinguished work of art banned by an ultra-conservative society too afraid to face the harsh reality of a ruthless world. Yes, one of The Incredible Suit’s loyal viewers (hello Stu) informs me that the blog is no longer available to read by employees of Halfords Group PLC in their totalitarian state, oops, I mean, place of work. Presumably this is the price I must pay for my reputation as a vociferous opponent of affordable wing mirrors and Homer Simpson air fresheners. It may also be because all blogs are banned under Halfords’ oppressive internet censorship regime, but the former reason is more sensational so that’s what I’ll be going with when Amnesty International get in touch.

Well it’s their loss, because they’ll never know that The Incredible Suit viewers have warmed the deepest, darkest recesses of my dank, clammy gizzards by agreeing with me and voting Timothy Dalton The Greatest James Bond, Like, Ever in my weekly poll. Good for you, and especially those of you who made the journey from Debra Best’s Timothy Dalton Chat Group to vote. How you found out about this humble blog will remain a mystery to me until the day I finally log off. It certainly can’t have been anything to do with the shameless recruitment of Timothy Dalton fan site operators I undertook in a desperate attempt at vote nobbling.

This week’s poll will, I hope, remain as untainted and impartial as the Eurovision Song Contest. While the world remains blissfully unaware of the impending asteroid of Avatar-hype about to shatter it into its component atoms (see this post), The Incredible Suit asks: What’s The Greatest James Cameron Film, Like, Ever? I’m not including Piranha II: The Spawning for obvious reasons:



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Mr Hammer Is Supper Nice

About 90% of my DVDs are currently cheesed off, sitting on the shelf gathering dust and complaining that they’re not getting the airing they deserve. It’s the 90% that was made after about 1923 and I think they’re planning a revolution against the old folks.

The thing is, I’ve suddenly got no desire to watch anything longer than about half an hour and that doesn’t feature Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd falling over, getting kicked up the arse or failing to impress a lady. And as The Incredible Suit is a public service I’m sharing the joy of silent comedy with you guys, by which I mean I’m going to relentlessly force it down your throat till my blog has fewer readers than Vanilla Ice’s. Although having said that, it is almost certainly already the case.

Incidentally, Vanilla Ice’s blog is every shade of amazing. Here are some highlights from his recent meeting with former rapper and proponent of the Hammerpants, MC Hammer:

“Hammer and I had a nice talk backstage. He was supper nice and cool and I now have new respect for him.” Good to know that Mr Hammer is supper nice, which I think means ‘as nice as a late evening snack of biscuits and Ovaltine’.

“We did talk about doing a WORLD TOUR, and he said he was all in 100%. I think the world need's it. There has been nothing hit on the impact level of what we did 18 years ago.” Damn right, Iceman. I can literally think of NOTHING AT ALL from the last 18 years as important as Ice Ice Baby, U Can’t Touch This and all those hundreds of other epoch-defining records you guys made. The world need’s a WORLD TOUR more than it need’s lesson’s in how apostrophe’s should be use’d.

Almost as hilarious as Vanilla Ice’s blog is A Dog’s Life, one of Charlie Chaplin’s 1918 shorts which I watched again the other day. Chaplin got a bit mawkish in later films but he kept his shorts (films, not trousers) light, zippy and crammed with gags till the seams popped, especially in those he made between 1916 and 1923 when he was under unimaginable pressure to succeed - at this time he was probably the most famous person in the world; kind of like a Vanilla Ice for the 1920s.

You can watch A Dog’s Life on YouTube (in four parts), but if you haven’t got half an hour to spare then a) you work too hard, and b) here’s a 2½ minute master class in comedy timing to take away the acrid taste of all that Metal Molten Hip Hop, as Vanilla describes his parpings.


I’ll be lobbing more silent comedy grenades your way in the future, so get yourself a sturdy chuckle helmet, dig a giggle trench and pile the guffaw sandbags high.

Apologies for stretching that metaphor out to Partridgesque lengths.

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Grand Poobah Of The Cosmos

Self-proclaimed King Of The World and crackpot genius James Cameron has announced that he's going to give us the chance to watch 15 minutes of his new film, Avatar, for free. Make no mistake, Avatar will be the most hyped movie of the year. Forget Bruno, forget Harry Potter, forget Satanic Sluts III: Scandalised; Avatar will be the film of 2009, because it's Cameron's first film for a decade, it'll have groundbreaking effects that'll make your eyes dribble out of your face and it'll cost 700 bajillion dollars and make a wazillion times that much back.

However, it's not out till December, and Cameron wants us to be eating, breathing and farting Avatar constantly until then. So he's taken this unprecedented step of, rather than a boring old trailer, granting us a free 15 minute fix of eye-heroin to tide us over until he can provide a full-on, heart-attack-inducing geeksplosion for Christmas. What's more, he's going to do it in IMAX and 3D cinemas just to be sure our brains totally liquify and trickle out of our bottoms.

I suppose it makes sense; Avatar's a massive science fiction extravagasm set on a planet populated entirely by bonkersness, so the last thing he wants is people watching clips on their phone in an office in Grimsby. If you ask me though, this exercise is fraught with danger. What if we don't like what we see? A three-minute trailer is rarely bad enough to put us off something we're probably going to see anyway, but a 15 minute taster could convince us that actually, this all looks a bit silly, I don't think I'll bother thanks. Cameron had better be sure what he's showing us is worth leaving the house for or he might be waving ta-ra to all that moolah come December.

What's more worrying is that I fear a new dawn in movie trailerage. Currently we have to endure 30 minutes of adverts and trailers before a film; if this idea takes off we'll be there for hours, and by the time the movie starts we'll have forgotten what we came to see. People will have to book two days' holiday and pack a change of underwear just to go to the pictures.

I'm looking forward to Avatar but I can't see myself watching 15 minutes of it four months in advance; that's like eating a roast potato for breakfast then having a full Sunday roast at teatime. Pointless. Also, Cameron has a long way to go to impress me. Aliens is fantastic, but T2 and True Lies sag in the middle like a badly cooked souffle, and Titanic, no matter how much cash it hoovered up, is just an enormous pant-pudding.

But what do I know? Avatar will probably be the greatest thing since sliced bacon and the 15 minute experiment will win Cameron a Nobel Peace Prize. As long as he doesn't proclaim himself to be Grand Poobah of the Cosmos when he collects it I don't care.

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Surplus Kiddy Beans

Poll results time, everyone! Now look. I like diversity. I like that everyone has different views on stuff. It’s what makes the world go round. However it does make for a clumsy graphic when equal numbers of you vote a) for The Prisoner Of Azkaban as the greatest Harry Potter Film, Like, Ever, and b) that all Harry Potter films are bobbins. So if you could all be a bit more homogenous in your views in future polls, that would make my life a lot easier. Thanks!

I saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince the other day. It was exactly like all the other Harry Potter films, which is to say that it was 24% rubbish but 76% enjoyable. It had some funny bits (Harry on drugs), some bits which made me glad I’m not a teenager any more (all that unrequited lust) and some bits that made me wish I was Harry Potter (Harry and Ginny playing Hide-The-Potions-Book).

It was also, like a 30 minute episode of Big Brother, about 40 minutes too long. I’m amazed kids today can sit still for three hours including trailers, I had trouble making it through a Tom and Jerry cartoon without belting off up and down the street to burn off some surplus kiddy beans when I was that age.

Also, you’d be forgiven for thinking this film might be about the Half-Blood Prince, what with it featuring rather prominently in the title and all. It’s not. The Half-Blood Prince sub-sub-subplot takes up about 0.07% of the total running time. It may as well have been called Harry Potter and the Irrelevant Quidditch Scene, or Harry Potter and the Dead Headmaster (er… spoiler warning), or – even better:
This week’s poll arrives with the inevitability of an unwanted season, and is based on Wednesday’s post: Who’s The Greatest James Bond, Like, Ever? Obviously the answer is Timothy Dalton but I suppose I should give you, the viewers a chance to tell me what you think if only so I can tell you you’re wrong and brandish the stats in your face to prove it. I might even shout “take stat!” while I’m brandishing.

To help you decide who your favourite Bond is (it’s Timothy Dalton), here's a handy reminder. Daniel Craig isn't included but you probably remember him. He's the fugly one.

Thanks to Andy for the video!

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Judi Dench Drops An F-Bomb

I recently undertook a massive project to discover who my favourite James Bond is. Or rather, to confirm to myself what I keep telling people about who my favourite James Bond is, so that I could back up my argument with empirical evidence.

What this involved – and this is the kind of selfless act I carry out for the viewers of The Incredible Suit – was watching every Bond film and rating them out of 10, then adding all the scores together for each actor, then dividing the totals by the number of Bond films each actor made in order to give a mean average score. Yes, I really did all those things. It just took me two and a half years.

For the sake of keeping the results pure and untainted, I didn’t include Never Say Never Again because a) it’s not an official Bond film, and b) it would put Sean Connery into minus figures.

So here are the results, and you can treat these as official figures from the National Office of Officially Accurate Statistical Figures And Stuff:

1. Timothy Dalton 9
2. Daniel Craig 8.5
3. Pierce Brosnan 7.5
4. Sean Connery 7.2
5. George Lazenby 7
6. Roger Moore 6.7

Many people get their nethers in a tangle when I tell them Timothy Dalton is the Best Bond, Like, Ever, because they think Sean Connery should be the best because he was the first. Tommywaddle. He was great in the first three, maybe four, but after that, come on. Fat, slow and bored of himself. Go and watch Diamonds Are Forever, you’ll see what I’m on about.

Having said that, I thought I preferred Connery to Brosnan, but looking at the official figures, apparently not. You can’t argue with the stats.

Here are some of the reasons why I love Timothy Dalton as Bond:

He can act (remember, he was preceded by 12 years of Roger Moore’s eyebrow).
He looks like Bond should look.
His Bond hates his job but takes it seriously.
His Bond smokes. Cigarettes, not ludicrously massive cigars.
His Bond has no time for incompetent assistants.
His Bond looks really, really pissed off when his friends get hurt.
His Bond bleeds and his suit gets ruined when he’s been in a fight.
His Bond swears. If you can count “horse’s arse”, “piss off” and “bastard” as swear words these days.

Speaking of effing and jeffing, have you noticed what a potty-mouth M has become lately? It’s all “bugger” this and “bastard” that, I don’t know what the world’s coming to. I bet Judi Dench drops an f-bomb in the next film.


Thanks to Cameron Arrigoni for the video!

Malodorous Bowel Movement

Tragic, wretched news reached me last week. I struggled to put a brave face on it but in the end I had to climb into an open sewer and bury myself under the toilet-business of the people of Great Britain for the weekend to get away from the horribility. Even this didn’t help so I set fire to my shoes to distract me from the awfulness. Still no relief, and now my feet hurt. Well, a problem shared is a problem doubled, and as only about one person reads this I can double the problem with you, the viewer.

There’s going to be another Bridget Jones film.

The following headlines from various websites reveal the true misery of the situation, but I noticed that if you shuffle them into a certain order they become an uncannily accurate metaphor. I’ve helpfully decoded what I think the headline writers were trying to say in that clever, journalisty, double-entendre kind of way they have.

From Dark Horizons (appropriately):
“A Third ‘Bridget Jones’ In Development”
i.e. developing in someone’s bowels into a massive, film-shaped poo

From Ananova:
“Third Bridget Jones movie imminent”
In much the same way as a turtle’s head indicates something is imminent

From Tribute:
“Renee Zellweger to do third Bridget Jones movie”
In much the same way as someone might do a third malodorous bowel movement

From UPI:
“Third 'Bridget Jones' movie on its way”
On its way to that toilet in Trainspotting where it belongs

From BBC News:
“Third Bridget Jones in pipeline”
Presumably, the pipeline that runs from that toilet in Trainspotting into the sewage works

From Variety:
“Third 'Bridget Jones' in works”
Yeah, the sewage works I just mentioned

So, miserable news for about 6.5 billion people, but at least the press are getting the right message across.

In other, considerably less negative news, I watched Moon the other day. Here’s what I expect the DVD cover to look like when it’s released:

Hopefully that won't hurt DVD sales too much. It really is very good indeed.

Dumber'n A Bag O' Spanners

Yes viewers, it's that time of the week again when I announce the winner of this week's poll, although the result has been sitting there on the right of the page for a good few hours now so it's not so much an announcement as a protracted, verbose statement of the obvious designed to make an utterly inconsequential survey seem like an altruistic exercise in democracy. Also you've already seen my expertly treated graphic representation above so if you've read this far without working it out you're dumber'n a bag o' spanners.

The winner is, duh, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Well done, you mind-boggling, groundbreaking, absolutely astonishing and quite perfect work of art you.

What's more exciting is that we saw a 60% increase in voter turnout on last week, which makes me very happy. If this continues week on week I calculate that by the beginning of next year there will be over a million people voting. Trust me, I actually worked this out.

So let's try and get at least 25.6 votes next week with this poll, in honour of the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: What's The Greatest Harry Potter Film, Like, Ever? And don't go clicking on the titles below to vote, you need to click the little buttons in the poll over there on the right, capisce?

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
(the one with the dude with a face on the back of his head)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
(the one with the massive snake at the end)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
(the one with Gary Oldman and the Dementors (good name for a band))
Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire
(the one with the interminable and pointless tri-wizard tournament)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
(the other one with Gary Oldman where he falls into a mystical open lift shaft at the end)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
(the new one. You probably haven't seen it yet but it's here for the sake of completeness)

I've also added the option "All Harry Potter films are bobbins" for those of you who complained because they didn't want to vote for musicals or alien movies in previous polls. HAPPY NOW?!

The poll closes at 5pm on Thursday, so get voting! This stuff matters, you know! A lot!

By the way, if anyone's interested in what the Bruno DVD cover will look like when they ask me for a quote, here it is:

However it is better than Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, which I watched the next day. Seriously, if anyone can explain to me what that dude at the end who was pretending to be God was all about, get in touch. It made about as much sense as William Shatner's syntax.

Fatuous Shizzle

In a recent post about the forthcoming Green Lantern movie, I wantonly displayed my staggering ignorance of the DC Comics character and no doubt lost the confidence of thousands of loyal viewers who might have otherwise come to me for information, education and entertainment about such matters. For this I can only apologise.

Fortunately, and as a direct result of my post (I expect), Empire Online has kindly posted a handy guide to Mr Lantern. You know, I’m quite enjoying the level of power this blog is bringing me. I feel like when I don The Incredible Suit I become a superhero myself, capable of commanding the puny humans of Earth to do my bidding with just a few taps on a keyboard and a pile of fatuous shizzle.

Here’s a picture of Lanto so you know what we’re dealing with:

According to Empire, much of Green Lantern’s powers come from his ring (fnerk). These include “regeneration, size manipulation, firing plasma bolts, telepathy, flight (up to the speed of light)… the ability to walk through walls… lasers, fireworks, time travel, and so on.”

Sadly the ring’s power does not seem to extend to providing a basic beam of light which would prevent its wearer from having to lug a bloody great lantern about with him everywhere he goes. I mean, you can get tiny little torches to put on your keyring these days, surely it can’t be too tricky for a piece of jewellery with the power of light speed and time travel to throw a few lumens out so Greeny can find the keyhole on his front door when he gets in? Lasers and fireworks are all very well but the neighbours aren’t going to appreciate that at all hours of the night.

Of course, I’m being facetious. Reading further down the Empire article I discover that that massive lamp is in fact a charger for the ring. I have to say, that seems equally ludicrous; with the amount of beans required to fire a plasma bolt he’ll be having to plug that thing in every half hour, and you can bet it takes longer to charge than it does to use all its juice.

Anyway these are just idle musings. With the power of my Incredible Suit I will already have prompted the makers of the movie to paper over these plot problems. What’s more troubling, and what isn’t confirmed by Empire, is the most pressing question: Is it ‘Green Lantern’ or ‘The Green Lantern’? They use both in the article and it’s left me confubulated. I suspect it’s ‘The’, as in ‘The Incredible Suit’. If it’s not it soon will be. That’s the power I wield. Oh yes.

Three-Minute Clipgasm

I’ve recently become aware of a truly wonderful, but little-known corner of the crazy world of movies, and I wanted to share it with you in the hope that you don’t know about it already and I don’t look like the last person in the world to discover it and everybody says, “Oh dear, he’s lost it you know, his blog was much better in the early days when he told us how great Chicago is only seven years after it came out”.

By way of a meandering introduction though, here’s a fact: A great trailer is in no way a clear indication of the quality of a film. Now this is clearly as obvious a statement as announcing that Shia LaBeouf single-handedly renders any film he’s in ghastly, and deep down I’ve always known it. However in my innocence I have for a long time allowed my excitement about a forthcoming film to be entirely dependent on a three-minute clipgasm edited together by an 8-year old with ADHD high on Sunny D and desperate to finish before he wets himself.

Because these little works of art do such a fantastic job of making even the turdiest movies look like the greatest thing since cinnamon flavour Jelly Belly, somebody (who deserves a Nobel prize for being ace) came up with the Golden Trailer Awards, a celebration of all that’s short, flashy and exhilarating, not to mention misleading and ultimately dream-smashing. Held annually, the GTAs celebrate the best of trailers from the world over. There’s even a category for Best Voice Over, recently renamed the Don LaFontaine Award for Best Voice Over after the legend that is this man:


I was very pleased to see that the spectaculous trailer for woeful cackfest Vantage Point won an award last year, because it did a bang-up job of convincing me the film was going to be the next Die Hard, when in fact it was the next Die Hard 4.0. In fact there are so many films that I would rather just re-watch the trailers for than the actual flick that I think film studios should stop all this feature length movie nonsense and just keep making cool trailers, then release compilation DVDs every six months, calling them something like Now That’s What I Call Short, Flashy And Exhilarating But Misleading And Ultimately Dream-Smashing. I mean who wants to sit through 3 hours and 6 minutes of a director’s cut of Watchmen anyway when the trailers are incredible and still leave time for a nice walk in the park or a leisurely browse of a pioneering, soul-enriching blog? Nobody, that’s who.

So hooray for the Golden Trailer Awards. Long may they celebrate all that is brief and erratically edited, and by the way did I mention that District 9 looks absolutely amazing from the trailers?

Dead Poo, More Like

Another day, another super-hero film on the way. Today it’s Green Lantern, and the news that’s just parped out is that Ryan Reynolds is to be cast in the title role.

Reynolds does not feature in my book of Bad Actors, but he does appear in my much smaller book of Actors Who’ve Played Characters With Atypical Names. Ryan’s entry in this book includes such gems as Jay ‘Boom’ DeBoom, Bobby Rupp, Paul Nodel, Henry Lipschitz, Captain Excellent, and Kevin. Could it be that Ryan’s choice of characters is based on the fact that his middle name is Rodney? Ryan, I know you’re reading this, let me know.

But I digress. This post is not about Ryan Rodney Reynolds’ daft character monikers, nor is it about the Green Lantern movie, although it’s worth looking forward to because it’s a DC Comics property and it’s directed by Martin Campbell (GoldenEye, Casino Royale). I know precious little about Green Lantern as a character so I’ll leave all that business to sites run by those who know their mustard and are already getting their grundies in a twizzle over the casting of Triple R.

No, this post is about my hope that, because of Reynolds’ new job, the mooted Deadpool movie he was due to star in will be unceremoniously shunted to the arse end of the list of movies to be made in the next century.

For those in the dark, Deadpool was a character in the crapmungous X-Men spin-off X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and was due his own spin-off for no obvious reason, least of all that anybody actually wants to see a Deadpool movie. So this spin-off of a spin-off has hopefully spun off into the spin-dryer of bad ideas, never to spin anywhere again.

I mean really, why bother in the first place? Let’s take a cursory glance at a random selection of all-time classic films featuring characters from other, almost universally better, movies. For the sake of impartiality I’ll include each film’s rating out of 10 according to readers of the Internet Movie Database, my personal bible.

Alien (and Predator) gave us Alien vs. Predator (5.4). Return Of The Jedi gave us Caravan Of Courage: An Ewok Adventure (5.2). Daredevil (which was rubbish enough itself) gave us Elektra (4.9). Batman Returns gave us Catwoman (3.2. Yes, THREE POINT TWO). Furthermore, none of these cinematic turds made nearly as much money as the movie bottoms from whence they came, which is what seems to count far more than mere public opinion.

So, having studied these figures carefully, the powers that be decided that what the world really needs is a spin-off of a spin-off, which brings us back to Deadpool. Let’s hope that it remains unmade because the only benefit to mankind I can envisage would be my capsule review, which would be: “Dead Poo, more like”.

A Big, Cheesed Off Fish-Man

Good news, everyone! Not only has this week’s poll seen a record-breaking TEN votes, but the winner is a film of which The Incredible Suit heartily approves!

Yes, you, The People, have voted in numbers to rival viewers of The X Factor, and by crikey it was close. The search for The Greatest Remake / Reboot / Re-imagining, Like, Ever has seen Moulin Rouge!, Casino Royale and Something Else I Hadn’t Thought Of come an excruciatingly close joint second place to Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan’s unspeakably good update of the Batman franchise which was left twitching in a puddle of its own liquid faeces by master job-botcher Joel Schumacher in 1997’s Batman And Robin.

This was a difficult vote because, as Satine pointed out in her comment, I failed to specify whether you should be voting for your favourite film from the list or the film which most successfully updated the original / previous version, and in the end I just left you to it. You’re big boys and girls after all.

And while I believe that Moulin Rouge! is a better film overall than Batman Begins, I do think that Nolan’s film performed a near miracle in resurrecting a franchise so devastatingly rogered into oblivion that nobody expected to take it seriously until some time in the 2030s.

So well done Bats, and on a personal note I should like to open myself up (not literally you understand, that would be horrible) and tell the world that the scene in which a young Bruce Wayne tells Alfred that it’s his own fault his parents died, my vision goes a bit misty and I feel a sudden urge to breathe in sharply through my nose. Make of that what you will.

With my recent witterings about aliens in the movies fresh in your minds, this week’s poll is: What’s the greatest movie about aliens, like, ever? The Incredible Suit’s Top 5 (and therefore the only five that matter) are:

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Alien
3. Aliens
4. E.T.
5. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind

I would have put Cloverfield in there but there’s some debate over whether or not the monster is of alien origin or just, you know, a big, cheesed off fish-man.

Happy voting!

Aliens = Full Awesomosity

In what can only really be seen as a direct result of yesterday’s post about District 9, a bigger, louder, more alieny trailer has been released onto the interwebs, presumably specifically so I can direct the viewers of The Incredible Suit towards it.

While it’s very kind of the filmmakers to do this just for me, I have mixed reactions about this trailer and may have to tone down the unrestrained confidence I paraded around yesterday like those boys at school who were first to show off their underarm hair, the smug morons. Who’s laughing now, eh? WHERE’S YOUR GROUNDBREAKING BLOG, YOU HAIRY KNUCKLE-DRAGGERS?!

Er… anyway, there are things I like about this trailer. The spaceship hanging in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t, to quote Douglas Adams, and the guy who gets accidentally sprayed in the face in what seems like a comedy moment but looks like it might have horrific consequences are particularly unsettling.

But then it all goes a bit Transformersy and there’s some kind of robot bashing things about willy nilly. Given the choice I generally prefer aliens to robots (Aliens = full awesomosity, Transformers = full crapulousness), so unless District 9’s robot is just an alien in a robot suit then my confidenceometer is veering tentatively away from ‘unreservedly convinced’ to ‘mildly concerned’.

So I think I might back off from bleating about District 9 for a bit. That way, if it’s rubbish I can say “well, I did express reservations in this post ”, and if it’s tremendous I can say “well, I did predict it would be in this post ”, and in either circumstance I can turn up the smuggery. That’s the beauty of blogging, you can express every wildly disparate facet of an argument and later on you can selectively point people to whatever post turned out to be the least nonsense.

Anyway here’s the new trailer. Make your own mind up, let me know what you think and make sure you tell everyone I was right when it comes out in September.

Over-Smuggery

In early 2008 my primary contribution to the enhancement of the lives of mankind was a film review slot I had on a local radio station in Hayes, Middlesex. My first feature of the year was an excitable prediction that 2008 was going to be the best year at the movies since the halcyon days of 1989 (Batman, Licence To Kill, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade… I get a tear in my eye and a stirring in my nethers just thinking about it).

Because I am such an unbearable smartarse I called this feature ‘Two Thousand and Great’, and was so pleased with myself that I pulled several muscles in my face due to over-smuggery. However twelve months later my smug muscles had gone into atrophy and my reputation as a grand soothsayer of the future of movies lay in tatters. Of the ten films I confidently predicted to be truly gobsmackular, only one turned out to be so, and that was Cloverfield. The rest were mildly disappointing (The Dark Knight, Quantum Of Solace), heartbreakingly bad (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) or suicide-promptingly abysmal (Jumper, Vantage Point… I won’t even mention 10,000 BC. Oops).

As a result I am no longer welcome within two miles of the Middlesex boundaries and have had to assume a new identity in order to continue peddling movie twaddle without being arrested by the Serious Fraud Office.

So having well and truly learned my lesson and promised never to make such ludicrous and unreliable forecasts ever again, I thought ‘bugger it’ and can now confidently predict that there is a film that will certainly, definitely, undoubtedly be the best of 2009. I bet my remaining Star Wars figures on it and will eat my appendix if I’m wrong.

District 9 is a documentary-style sci-fi drama about aliens living in South Africa and being treated like slaves and third-class citizens by the people, the government and the multi-national corporation using the aliens’ technology for their own nefarious purposes, mwahaha. It’s basically an allegory about human rights and discrimination, but with massive spaceships.

My confidence in this film is based largely on the fact that it looks a bit like Cloverfield, which is surely a better basis than the ‘evidence’ that prompts other fortune tellers to predict the future. I mean, stars, tea leaves, lines on your palm and so on, as if that’s more scientific than a vague rumbling in my guts that indicates a solid gold classic movie on the horizon (or it could indicate something else distinctly less solid on the horizon, but let’s not go there).

So come back in September (and every day in between, obviously) for my no-doubt-glowing review of this awesome filmic event, and I shall look forward to keeping a firm hold on my reputation, my R2-D2 (with retractable sensorscope) and my beloved, but biologically pointless appendix.

Sweet Zombie Jesus

According to this article on the BBC News website, legendary minger Johnny Depp is so uninterested in watching himself in his movies that he “does not even check his on-screen appearance during the shooting of a film”. Now understandably he’s a busy chap, what with all those pesky movies interfering with his other activities like washing up, playing Facebook Scrabble with Orlando Bloom and making endless cups of tea for his demanding missus Vanessa Paradis, but it strikes me that he might be missing something here.

You see, he probably trusts his hair and make-up team to do their job properly, and as a result he thinks he looks like this in all his movies:
But somewhere along the line somebody’s been playing a cruel practical joke on the Deppster, and in some of these films he’s gone out looking, well, a little bit odd. A touch silly, you might even say. Occasionally, to be honest, he looks almost as ridiculous as when Ian Beale grew that moustache in EastEnders.

I felt it my duty to point out to Johnny what he looked like in some of his flicks, and I can tell you he was quite cross indeed. Here are some of the shots I showed him, along with his responses:

Sweeney Todd

“Oh dear me”

Pirates Of The Caribbean

“Oh crap, would you look at that”

Before Night Falls

“What in the name of Britney Spears?!?!”

Edward Scissorhands

“SWEET ZOMBIE JESUS AND A BUSLOAD OF BURNING NUNS ON A FLAMING CRUCIFIX, WHAT IN SATAN’S BOXERS IS THAT?!?!”

Alice In Wonderland

At this point Johnny threw up out of his eye sockets, which wasn’t a pretty sight I can tell you, so I thought it prudent to leave it at that.

With that valuable service selflessly carried out, I left Vanessa to clean up the mess and made a swift exit before she set their pet Tim Burton on me.

Piddly Witterings

Legendary James Bond actor and cantankerous old giffer Sean Connery this week apparently “blasted” the BBC for their lack of coverage of the Edinburgh International Film Festival. I love it when journalists say that somebody “blasted” somebody else. It makes it sound like there was a gargantuan conflict in outer space between The Legions Of Connery and the Benevolent Broadcasters of Compassion, and when the BBC willfully and callously ignored Dark Lord Connery’s demands to cover the EIFF he set his ultimate weapon of devastation to maximum killingness and BLASTED the beeb into tiny, impartial, London-centric crumbs.

The main reason Connery upped his cantankerosity was because, he claimed, there were 300 technicians covering the Glastonbury Festival and none at Edinburgh to record his rare appearance outside his tax haven, oops, I mean, idyllic home in the Bahamas.

Now don’t get me wrong, I do kind of love Sean Connery, not least for being the joint-second best James Bond ever, but also because he’s such a curmudgeonly goat these days. The only times he pops up any more is to moan about something, which of course is his right as he’s 78 years old and if you’re not moaning when you’re 78 then you’ve lost your marbles and think you’re a bus conductor on the Isle of Sheppey.

But Sean also winds me up because he seems utterly dismissive of the role of Bond that made him a legend, but hasn’t proved himself to be any better than that since Goldfinger in 1964. The closest he’s come since then was as Indiana Jones’ Dad, and that was 20 years ago. What’s more, the sheer arrogance of playing Greeks, Irishmen, Spaniards and Russians, all with the same Scottish accent, is almost up there with Bono’s self-belief that he can save a doomed Spider-Man musical with his magic golden Bono-dust.

So, sorry Sean, I know you’re hacked off because you think the world hates Scotland, but you know what? While 300 BBC employees were getting sorted for Es and whizz on the Glasto gravy train, none of them – NONE OF THEM – covered the launch of the most beautiful movie blog in the room, The Incredible Suit. What’s worse is that I know a few people who work at the BBC and at least one of them could easily have pointed the viewers of their daily TV politics show or the listeners of their Five Live radio show towards the centre of the blogosphere, but no. I remain scorned by a corporation more interested in a massively popular, hugely successful, genre-crossing music festival than a collection of piddly witterings. At least I’m not bleating about it in some kind of public forum. Er…

So viewers, keep your eyes peeled for tomorrow’s headlines: “The Incredible Suit yesterday METAPHORICALLY BLASTED Sean Connery for being a whiny old codger, then FIGURATIVELY BLEW THE BBC TO SMITHEREENS for not even noticing it existed. Then it had a nice cup of tea to calm down.”

Daniel Craig Needs Tighter Speedos

You can’t open the virtual pages of the interwebs these days without reading about another evil soldier of Beelzebub planning to remake a perfectly good film that needs remaking about as much as Daniel Craig needs tighter Speedos.

It used to make me quite cross but now when I read these stories I just sigh and throw a half-hearted punch at the nearest person to alleviate my mounting apathy. The irony of remaking movies is that they rouse the ire of bloglodytes and forum-dwellers the world over, forcing them to spew out their own remakes of posts they’ve written several times already, except with more exclamation marks and ‘O’s than in the original “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!”

This week alone my sensibilities have been offended by forthcoming remakes / reboots / re-imaginings / re-configurations / revisits / rehashes / retardations of classic ‘80s horror-comedy (I’m trying to coin the term ‘horredy’ but nobody’s having any of it) An American Werewolf In London, and Swedish kiddy-vampire flick Let The Right One In. Which, I hasten to add, was released about ten minutes ago.

Now I might be going out on a controversial limb here, but it seems a trifle hasty to be remaking a film that hasn’t even finished its cinema run yet, wouldn’t you say? It’s really only a matter of time before these remakes start turning up before their original counterparts. They could be called ‘retro-makes’, and people could get all their anger and bile out of the way before they’re then ‘originalised’, and everybody will be happy that the retro-director’s vision has been unsullied and the spirit of the first film yanked harshly out of a stinky cesspit to be polished off as a shiny, new, original work of art.

So just to be obstreperous (one of many things my old history teacher used to call me), and with everyone crying vinegar from their blub-holes about how there are no good remakes, The Incredible Suit takes Hollywood’s side and pulls from its incredible sleeves the Top 5 Greatest Re-Whatevers, Like, Ever:

1. Moulin Rouge! (1952 < 2001)
2. Casino Royale (1967 < 2006)
3. Batman Begins (1997 < 2005)
4. Star Trek (2002 < 2009)
5. King Kong (1933 > 2005)

Actually King Kong doesn’t count because it’s not as good as the original. Which, in effect, means there are only four decent re-somethings in the entire movieverse. The bloglodytes and forum-dwellers were right all along! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

Ambassador Of Bloggery

As if the excitement of yesterday’s revelation that Singin’ In The Rain was voted The Greatest Musical, Like, Ever by almost five readers of The Incredible Suit wasn’t enough, I can now bring you more earth-shattering news of a poll result! I know!! So sit down and have a stiff drink handy because you might not be able to withstand the exhilaration of the next paragraph.

With the total number of votes running a close second to the previous poll’s tally (this time over five of you put mouse to mousepad), Buster Keaton’s masterpiece The General scored 50% to become readers of The Incredible Suit’s Greatest Film From The 1920s. Hooray! I’m particularly ecstatic because that was my favourite, and this result vindicates my choice and proves that I have my blogging finger on the entertainment pulse of the nation – nay, the world.

Because of this I now await the inevitable government invitation to become Minister of Movies, or perhaps Mrs Queen herself will ask me to be some kind of ambassador of bloggery for this great nation. Fear not though viewers, if this happens I shall endeavour to continue blogging as much as my schedule allows, for I know that your hopes and dreams rest on the well padded shoulders of this, The Incredible Suit.

Hairy, Barking Beast

Well viewers, the results of The Incredible Suit’s inaugural poll are in! Try to contain yourselves, because this is, for some, more important than the Oscars, the BAFTAs and Crufts all rolled into one hideously gushing, terribly modest, hairy, barking beast.

Yes, following this post, which literally millions* of people read, I asked you to pick your favourite musical from the only five musicals that matter, i.e. my favourite musicals. It’s my blog, remember? Good.

And so I can announce that, in a staggering refusal to agree with me, you, the voting public, have chosen Singin’ In The Rain as The Greatest Musical, Like, Ever!

Upon receipt of the award, Singin’ In The Rain thanked all four of you who made up the record-breaking 57% winning vote, then it gave us a spectacular 20-minute dance routine that had nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of its speech.**

Come back soon for the results of The Incredible Suit’s poll to find The Greatest Film From The 1920s. So far The General is, quite rightly, in the lead, but literally anything* could happen between now and when the polls close. So get voting!

*not literally
**this sentence is approximately 86% more relevant to those familiar with the film. Everyone else should go and watch it now to get full value from this blog. Off you pop!

Pitchfork-Wielding Troglodytes

The new Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, is out soon, and in preparation I’ve been enjoying a Harry Potterthon at my local cinema, the Joeyplex. I love the Harry Potter films, despite the fact that they’re all a bit rubbish. This is a problem for me because I don’t like admitting that I like rubbish things. I know I should stand my ground and fart in the faces of those who ridicule me, but that’s just too difficult, both mentally and anatomically.

The series has many faults, but there’s only room for me to whine about the two biggest ones before you wander off somewhere less negative. Firstly, it’s quite clear that nobody in the Harry Potter films can act, least of all Daniel Radcliffe (Harry) and Emma Watson (Hermione) – in fact she’s probably the worst actor I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen Spiceworld: The Movie.

Secondly, like Roger Moore’s kisses in a Bond film, they’re waaaaaaay too long (but less capable of inducing a messy breakfast-reappearance). Goblet of Fire, the one with the tri-wizard tournament, is like a two-and-a-half hour edition of The Generation Game; the bits of it that matter could have been condensed into a five-minute pre-title sequence in the next film.

Having said that, the positives outweigh the negatives like Hagrid outweighs Dobby the house-elf. Harry Potter films are all about friendship, standing up for – and by – your mates, sticking two fingers up to the man once in a while, learning to listen to your elders occasionally and negotiating the treacherous terrain of teenage life, all of which resound deep in the lining of The Incredible Suit.

For these reasons I’m prepared to forgive the atrocious acting and long-winded storytelling because the Harry Potter films make me feel all warm and gooey inside, like somebody’s filled me up with cute sleepy puppies and crocheted blankets.

There’s some controversy these days over whether it’s socially acceptable to say that Emma Watson is actually quite fanciable (as long as she doesn’t speak), because if you say that out loud somebody will point out that she’s only eleven years old and before you know it you’re on the front page of the Daily Mail and your house has been burned down by pitchfork-wielding troglodytes. So it seems the answer is no, despite the fact that she is in fact 19 years old. I know because I visit her Wikipedia page quite often.

Anyway that chick who plays Ginny Weasley is much nicer.

See?