The Incredible Suit

BlogalongaMuppets #5: Beaker Reviews Muppet Treasure Island

2012-01-30T08:40:00.000Z

Sup bee-hatches, Beaker in your face again to give you the most scientifically accurate opinion of Muppet Treasure Island, also known as "the one with Tim Curry and the boy that sings like a girl".

Remember now, you simple-minded imbeciles? Good.

Following what can only be described as The Fucking Ace Muppet Christmas Carol (I'm campaigning to get it renamed in time for the Blu-ray), someone with at least three quarters of a working brain cell calculated that it might be a good idea to adapt another cock-on work of literature, and fuck me if it didn't turn out to be quite fucking good. Not as good as The Fucking Ace Muppet Christmas Carol, but good enough for another re-branding exercise. The Quite Fucking Good Muppet Treasure Island Blu-ray should be on every kid's Christmas list this year.

When Tim Curry's parents fucked him into existence they must have been watching the Muppets on TV, because he was born for this kind of pantomime bollocks, I swear. Nobody looks more comfortable in a film full of talking cushions than Cuzza. I think he may have actually believed he was a Muppet, the poor deluded bastard. Sadly the same cannot be said for the boy that sings like a girl. Let's be honest, he's fucking shite. He can't act, he looks like a young Pat fucking Sharp and he sings like a girl. And as for his range of facial expressions, well, if you thought Miss Piggy's were limited:

Fuck Ing Hell.

Fortunately I pointed out to the director that we appeared to have hired a walking braindead mullet, and as a direct result not only did Curry get more screen time, but yours truly got the chance to do a bit more than just get humiliated by that fucker Bunsen again. Christ knows what that boy's up to now, assuming he survived being wedgied till his colon bled every day at school after this film came out. Probably ended up in the Casualty / The Bill revolving door of actors, the poor bastard.

The rest of the songs that aren't sung by the boy that sings like a girl are pretty fucking great, and you can thank Hans Zimmer for that, the crazy potato-faced German. His music is about as piratey as it gets, and you can thank this film for his great music on the otherwise shit-munchingly awful Pirates Of The Caribbean films.

There's other good stuff in The Quite Fucking Good Muppet Treasure Island but I really can't be arsed to sit here and spoon-feed it to you so why don't you just take my word for it? I've literally got a million better things to do than talk about fucking Muppets all day. Like watch Muppets From Space, which as far as I can tell is not adapted from a great work of literature and will therefore almost certainly be a massive mug of camel wank.

Beaker out. x

PS More Muppet movie mithering to be found at BlogalongaMuppets HQ, if you like that sort of thing.

BlogalongaBond / Octopussy:Time For A Field Trip

2012-01-26T06:00:00.002Z

1983 was the year there were two James Bonds, which would have been handy if, as her name suggested, Octopussy had turned out to be some kind of mutant super-villainess with eight vaginas (the script would have written itself - Connery: "I'll have sex with these three, you roger more"). Sadly the cold, harsh reality is that rogue Bond flick Never Say Never Again turned out to be one of the worst films ever made, and Octopussy - though more entertaining than its predecessor - prolongs the agony of having to watch a walking, bewigged corpse bumble through various exotic locations, casually racially and sexually insulting everyone he comes by. Or in.

Nobody is safe from the script's cringing xenophobia and rampant chauvinism: Indians are simple curry-munchers, Russians are mad as eggs and Germans are fat, beer-drinking, sausage-eating, pork pie hat-wearing VW Beetle drivers, while women who do diligent work for Her Majesty's secret service are required to do nothing but smile politely when a senior colleague broadcasts video of their tits around the office. And if you don't like it when a dirty old man forces himself on you, by all means say no, but then it's best if you just change your mind completely and let him get on with it. With any luck he'll die of old age before he gets it up.

Just look how turned on these chicks are.

Having already created one of literature's most odious arseholes in 'Flashman', Octopussy's screenwriter George MacDonald Fraser has a go at turning James Bond into an equally abhorrent shit. Not that that would require much effort, but Fraser also makes Bond look like a complete tool by having him do Tarzan impressions and wear full clown makeup. It's a wonder the character survived to spy another day, but by this point Roger Moore could have bitten the head off a kitten while making a crack about eating pussy and '80s audiences would have LOLled their fluorescent socks off.

To Octopussy's credit, it at least tries out a more complex plot than usual, with enough twists and turns to bamboozle anyone who didn't stop paying attention when General Orlov nonsensically smashes a half-million pound work of art into expensive pieces of eggshell, and the action is, as always, stunning. Despite all the non-PC hilarity at which we 21st century snobs now turn up our noses, it's still stupidly good fun, carried along by another great John Barry score - even if it does shamelessly rip off Laurie Johnson's theme from The Avengers, an obvious influence on Moore's tenure.

7 randomly selected seconds of Laurie Johnson's music for The Avengers

7 randomly selected seconds of John Barry's music for Octopussy

As is usually the case with Roger Moore's Bond films, what's far nicer to look at than Roger Moore are the locations, and Octopussy is no exception. Almost half the film takes place in an unnamed town in India (actually Udaipur), and director John Glen milks it for all it's worth. But how realistic is the film's depiction of India? Because of my selfless devotion to BlogalongaBond, I recently visited Udaipur just so I could sound like I knew what I was on about when I brought you...

Or, if you like, The Incredible Suit's Holiday Snaps.

Udaipur is located in the northern state of Rajasthan, absolutely nowhere near the Taj Mahal (1). So when Bond's helicopter flies past the famous monument before dropping him off to meet tennis-playing snake-charmer Vijay, we are being LIED TO by nearly 400 MILES.

On his arrival Bond checks into, and later plays backgammon against Kamal Khan at, the Shiv Niwas Palace Hotel (2), an unspeakably fancy gaff attached to the 400+ years old City Palace. I visited the palace but people like me don't get to go inside the hotel without selling several kidneys. Still, it looks nice from a distance:

After beating Khan at backgammon and racially abusing his own Indian colleagues, Bond is chased at high speed through the streets (3) in a tuk-tuk without running over a single cow. This is fairly unlikely given that you can't walk more than a few feet through any Indian town without coming across obstacles like this:

Still, manage it he does, before he's forced to abandon his vehicle and take an 11,000 mile detour through the 007 stage at Pinewood (4), where a crowd of extras is gathered to provide clichés for the film to perpetuate. Here's what Bond sees in the middle of Udaipur:

And here's what I saw:

It's my own fault for not going on Dubious Racial Stereotypes Day.

After a pleasant evening spent nobbing a lady 23 years his junior, Bond is quite rightly bashed over the head and imprisoned in Kamal Khan's Monsoon Palace (5). The Palace has been derelict for many years and is inconveniently located on a mountaintop on the outskirts of Udaipur, making it both a pain in the arse to visit and very difficult to see in photos.

Naturally Bond eventually escapes from this inescapable fortress, and after ploughing his way through a safari full of atrocious jokes and Tarzan impressions, makes his way to Octopussy's floating house of hotties. It's actually the exclusive Lake Palace Hotel on Jagniwas Island (6), and there was about as much chance of me visiting it as there was of me finding a convenient hollowed-out crocodile in which to get there. I got within pointing distance though, but sadly was unable to spot any ladies emerging naked from the pool. More's the pity.

And that's the end of ~~my holiday photo album~~ the BlogalongaBond Guide To Udaipur. Suffice to say the real Udaipur bears little resemblance to that of Octopussy, but many of the locations are still visible from the outside and it's a nice place to visit if you're passing. While you're there, why not stop at one of Udaipur's many cafés and see if there's a film on?

LOL, "Octopussay".

The auction scene

Proving that Bond isn't necessarily at his best when blowing shit up, jumping off shit or having sex with shit, Octopussy's simple and witty auction scene is classic Fleming, adapted as it is from a similar scene in his short story 'The Property Of A Lady'. With Roger Moore by now much more convincing sitting in a chair than doing anything else, he manages to successfully advance the plot while being smooth, daring and a little bit reckless, and he doesn't even need a stunt double to hold his eggs (not a euphemism).

Steven Berkoff

Bonkers as a box of burning badgers at the best of times, Howlin' Mad Berkoff goes maximental for his role as power-crazy Soviet General Orlov. Whether bawling about the decadence of the west, sulking like a baby in a meeting of top USSR military bods or ordering a minion to "follow that car" (along a railway, obviously), Berkoff cranks the crackers up to eleven and the film is all the better for it.

Bonus fact: "The Orlov" is the name of a 190-carat diamond which is part of the Kremlin's actual haul of gems (featured in the film), and is known for its domed, forward-facing top, just like the Berkoff bonce. They don't just throw this stuff together, you know.

The train sequence

While Rodge was doing his best Bonding in a nice comfy seat at Sotheby's, stuntman Martin Grace was risking his life and shattering his limbs hanging off the side of a train near Peterborough. The filming of this scene, in which Grace runs across the top and dangles off the side of a speeding train, resulted in a) a terrific action set-piece and b) a pulverised pelvis for Grace after he smashed into a concrete stanchion at high speed. The bit of the behind-the-scenes doc on the DVD (called Inside Octopussy, which coincidentally is where Bond ends the film) that shows his first post-accident visit to the set, and the cast and crew's outpouring of affection for him, made me get something in my eye possibly.

BlogalongaBond will return with A View To A Kill

What the hell is BlogalongaBond? I'll tell you.

Further BlogalongaBondareading here

I'm So Desperate To Be The First To Tell You The Oscar Nominations I'm Not Even Going To Check My Spelling

2012-01-24T13:50:00.002Z

BEST FLIM

THE QARTIST

THE DESCENDANRTS

WAR HORSE

THE TREE OF LIOFE

MIDNIGHT ION PARIS

THE HELP

MONEYBALL

HUGO

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE

BEST DIRECTPOR

MICHELL HAZANAVICIPUS

ALEXANDER PAYNE

MARTIN SCORSESE

WOODY ALLENM

TERENCE MALICK

BETS ACTOR

DAMIEN SOMEONE

GEORGE CLOONEY

JEAN DUJAZRDINM

HGARY O;LDMAN

BRAD PITRT

BEST ACTRES

GLENN CLOSE

ROONEYU MATRA

MERYL STREEP

MICHELLE WIL;LIAMS

SOMEBODY DAVIS

BEST SUPORTINGF ACTOR

KENNETGH BRANAGH

JONAHHILL

NICKNOLYTE

MAX VONM SYDOW

CHRISTOPHERT P[LU,M,MER

BEST DUPPORTING ACTRESS

BERENICE BEJO

JEWSSIKVCA VCHASTAION

MELISSA MCCARYTHY

OCTavoIA SPENCER

SOMEONE ELSE

BESAT ORIGINAL SCREENPLWAY

THE BARTIST

BRIDEWMAIDS

MARGFINM CALL

MIDNIGHT ION PARIS

AY SEPERATIONM

BESTADFAPTED SCREENPLEAY

THE DESC3ENDANTS

HUGO

IDEWS OF MARCH

MONEYBALL

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SAPY

Was I first? WAS I?!?!

Ten Boring Things Made SlightlyMore Interesting By The InclusionOf George Clooney

2012-01-23T08:36:00.000Z

Salad

Hull

DIY SOS

Double Geography

Football

The Piccadilly Line

Facebook

Goldfish

Coldplay

The Descendants

Saturday Playlist #32: Some Of The Best Of 2011

2012-01-21T06:00:00.006Z

Remember 2011? The year of all that stuff that happened and those things that were great and those other things that were a bit disappointing and that time we did that thing? Me neither. That's why I've cobbled together this playlist of some of last year's best movie music to remind us all of a simpler time. So why not wallow in the 2011 nostalgia by pretending a new Bond film has yet to be announced, incessantly banging on about Ryan Gosling and using the word "amazeballs" as you...

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO

SATURDAY PLAYLIST #32:

SOME OF THE BEST OF 2011

Great Movie Jobs #1 (In A Series Of 1): Grease 2

2012-01-20T06:27:00.000Z

Haywire

2012-01-18T06:00:00.002Z

What's happened to Steven Soderbergh? The man who made Out Of Sight, The Limey and Traffic seems to have been kidnapped and replaced with a Soderbot programmed to shoot potentially explosive movies with all the verve and elan of an Open University programme about the history of ironing.

Last year's Contagion was just about fine despite stepping in the odd cliché-cowpat that '90s Soderbergh would have dodged in some effortlessly stylish way, but Haywire takes a thrilling premise and drains it of anything that might raise your pulse above a steady beat. I'm not saying it's dull, but I had to imagine a shark into each shot to stop myself nodding off.

Haywire is at least notable for the talents of former mixed martial artist Gina Carano who, as an actor, is an excellent former mixed martial artist; her skill at kicking a man into small pieces is matched only by her inability to elicit any interest from the audience. Still, the kicking men bits are undeniably impressive: the kind of fights a Bond film would shamelessly rip off, but cut mostly without a score (which is good) and dispassionately shot as if they were polite disagreements in a Yorkshire tea room (which is not).

The point of shooting a fight in this way is obviously a) so we can get a good look at Carano flinging her legs around like a windmill in a hurricane and b) to demonstrate the everyday nature of a government-hired assassin killing people with her thighs, but in successfully conveying the mundanity of femur-based assassination it just comes across as, well, mundane, and there's little else in the film to fall back on.

Perhaps aware that Carano might not be able to carry the film by herself, the Soderbot surrounds her with a dream supporting cast, some of which get to share a tumble with her, but most of which he insists on enforcing the banality of the job by having them either stand around and not do much, or sit around and not do much. Antonio Banderas sits around and strokes his magnificent beard, the mighty Bill Paxton bimbles about a house experimenting with both sitting around and standing around, while Michael Douglas is just looking for some breasts to point at.

If you can get past all that and Ewan McGregor's appalling haircut maybe you'll enjoy Haywire, but don't hold your breath for the Soderbot's next film, Magic Mike, which stars Channing "Po" Tatum and Alex Pettyfer as strippers. At least Matthew McConaughey's in it to add authenticity.

BlogalongaMuppets #4: Beaker Reviews The Muppet Christmas Carol

2012-01-16T09:08:00.000Z

Sup bitches? Beaker here with another hilariously late BlogalongaMuppets. What can I say, I'm a popular muppet, and there are a lot of lonely ladymuppets out there who're grateful for the company of someone with a comedy phallus for a head at Christmas.

Anyway, I'm supposed to be talking about The Muppet Christmas Carol, by far the best reason yet for this fucking depressing monthly realisation that we muppets aren't the world's greatest filmmakers. Until now I was going to suggest we should all be mothballed or turned into dusters for all the joy we've inflicted on cinema audiences, but fortunately we saved our pathetic furry assholes with not just the best muppet film yet, but one of the best Christmas movies ever, and if anyone disagrees with that you can kick 'em in the baubles with compliments from me.

Me with that unbearable twat Bunsen. I had the cameraman

fired for incorrectly focusing this shot on Johnny No-Eyes.

A tiny percentage of the credit should probably go to Charles Dickens for writing a structurally flawless story in the first place, and it doesn't hurt that for once the songs aren't utter shitballs. Even Gonzo doesn't fuck it up this time - his totes meta narrating gig might disappear up his own Gonzhole but at least it's bloody funny. However it's clear who the stars of the show are: me, obviously, and my old pal Sir Michael Fucking Caine.

Nice hat. If you like looking like a cock with

a rolled-up johnny perched on the end.

Mike rules this film like a boss, and between him, Dickens and me, we created movie gold. It was my idea to hand him my scarf at the end - he wasn't sure, but I said "Listen up, shitbrick. This is the emotional core of the whole fucking film. You might not have a clue what you're doing but I know my shit, so take the fucking scarf and try not to hang yourself with it." In the end he saw that I was right and repaid me by sending a few of his female fans my way. They were knocking on a bit but you learn a lot from the older birds.

So, yeah. Very good. Well done us. Now fuck off will you, I'm trying to watch Muppet Treasure Island.

Beaker out x

Shame

2012-01-13T09:02:00.001Z

Let's not dick about: Shame is very good. It's brilliantly acted, Sean Bobbit's cinematography is immaculate, the score is beautiful, the editing is innovative and it's stunningly directed by Steve McQueen. *insert obligatory "not that Steve McQueen" gag*

Technically it's spot on, but not in a clinical way - McQueen is more than just a master of all the tools and talent at his disposal, and, having arrived in the movie world three years ago with the equally stark Hunger, cements his position as a member of an elite group of fearless and original filmmakers.

Michael Fassbender's troubled sex addict Brandon is a perfectly realised character, the likes of which you rarely see in cinema these days, and the film is admirably unafraid to tackle the issues presented by a man who simply can't stop himself fucking things. It's been hailed as provocative, and hopefully it's an an openness and willingness to discuss stuff like sex addiction that's provoked, rather than spurts of outrage from middle-England Daily Mail readers. It's a film that needs to be seen, if only to open our eyes to a side of life most of us are either unaware of or unwilling to even contemplate.

All of which makes it massively annoying that Shame left me absolutely flaccid. I didn't feel anything while I watched it. Not a sausage. With one eye on the screen and one on my watch, I found myself incapable of arousing any empathy or sympathy for Brandon, and the film didn't occupy my thoughts from the moment I withdrew from the cinema until the time I came to write this.

It's hard to put my finger on why I failed to connect with Shame bearing in mind I admire so much about it; maybe I need empathetic characters, maybe I need backstory, maybe I'm just not a fan of character studies. But for me the film feels simultaneously too long and too short: I felt like it could have done what it did in a fraction of the time, but with an extended length could have taken us deeper and more satisfyingly into Brandon's fractured psyche.

But these are minor quibbles. Shame and I just weren't meant to get it on, it's that simple. It's still better than most of the junk out there though, so fuck it, go and see it.

Michael Caine, Riding A Giant Bee, Being Chased By Huge Multi-Coloured Bird-Monsters

2012-01-12T10:01:00.000Z

It's as if The Swarm never happened.

George Who?

2012-01-11T09:10:00.002Z

MGM yesterday announced the wallet-troubling, marriage-threatening release of the complete James Bond film collection on Blu-ray, timed perfectly to miss all but the final instalment of BlogalongaBond. It's just ninety quid at Amazon and you would be certifiably insane not to buy it.

At a rough count, and ignoring those slightly awkward shots of them walking through the gunbarrel at the begining, that trailer features 20 shots of Daniel Craig, 12 of Pierce Brosnan, nine of Sean Connery, five of Roger Moore, three of Timothy Dalton and NONE of George Lazenby. Not even a single frame from his only Bond film. FOR SHAME.

Kim Novak Rapes Everyone's Memories Of Vertigo

2012-01-10T01:00:00.020Z

As reported yesterday by Deadline, Kim Novak - who I sincerely hope you are aware starred in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo - took surprising measures yesterday to air her views about The Artist. It turns out she was unimpressed by the film's use of a few minutes of Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo score, and when I say "unimpressed" I mean "violently sexually assaulted".

In a press release and Hollywood trade ad, Novak begins her perfectly reasonable point by stating, perhaps a little melodramatically:

"I want to report a rape."

Holy shitballs Kim, the horror of sexual violence being perpetrated on a septuagenarian is unthinkable! How did this distressing event unfold and why are you casually advertising it to movie insiders rather than informing the authorities?

"My body of work has been violated by The Artist,"

she continues. Ah. I see. So, nobody's actually been raped here, but somebody's used some music from a film you were in once for a new film? I can kind of see how the two might be comparable.

In fairness to the crackers old hag, I myself was surprised and a little annoyed when I first watched The Artist last year and immediately recognised Herrmann's music. It stuck out like a sore thumb in amongst the rest of Ludovic Bource's excellent original score, and I was pulled so far out of the film that it was all I could think about when talking to anyone else who'd seen it. Surprisingly though, most of them - and I'm talking about people who talk about films for a living - hadn't noticed it.

On a second viewing, though, knowing full well it was coming, the Vertigo music seemed to blend in effortlessly. I let it float over me in waves of romance, which is essentially what it sounds like, and concentrated on what was going on onscreen, and by the end I had decided that The Artist was my favourite film of the past twelve months.

When Deadline reported the story of Kim Novak's insane exclamation, they effectively told her to shut the fuck up by asking:

"How many will recognize [sic] music from a film released in 1958?"

This in itself is almost as bizarre as Novak's demented ramblings, because Vertigo isn't "a film released in 1958". The Cry Baby Killer is "a film released in 1958". The Black Orchid is "a film released in 1958". Vertigo is arguably the greatest work of art ever committed to film. Some people will recognise it, some people won't like it, and some people will have already decided they don't like The Artist for much more obvious reasons.

Novak's point is a fair one but it's immediately undone by the utterly indefensible way in which she makes it, and the naivety with which she seems to believe that all cinema - including Vertigo and its score - is 100% original. Does she go around crying rape whenever a film uses a song which wasn't written specifically for that movie, or just when it offers her a chance to remind the world she isn't dead yet? She even has the balls to say:

"Alfred Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart can’t speak for themselves, but I can,"

shortly followed by:

"It is morally wrong of people in our industry to use and abuse famous pieces of work to gain attention and applause for other than what the original work was intended."

It's fine, however, to speak on behalf of dead people to gain attention and applause, her implication being that Hitchcock and Stewart would be just as outraged as she is about having their bodies of work raped. Seems to me like she's forcing her words into their dead mouths like, well, a penis being forced into an unwilling vagina. Hitchcock would have found the irony delicious.

The Artist would probably have got away scott free if it had borrowed something more obscure, but its director Michel Hazanavicius made a conscious choice to use that piece of music because it's his way of paying his respects to the art that inspired him. Maybe his decision isn't to everyone's taste, and if you don't like it, well, by all means say so. But Kim Novak's ill-advised rape comparison doesn't seem to have made anyone like The Artist any less, it's just made them hate her a lot more. Evidently she prefers being thought of as a senile old cow to being presumed dead.

War Horse

2012-01-09T09:02:00.000Z

For the second time in his career, Steven Spielberg has knocked out an entertaining family favourite and a weepy, Oscar-baiting war epic in the same year. But while The Secret Adventures Of Tintin The Unicorn came close to Jurassic Park in terms of cock-waggling fun, War Horse is no Schindler's List. Unless Schindler's list read: "Horse, war, boy, massive amounts of cheese, comedy goose". Which is fairly unlikely.

The biggest difference is that War Horse is based on a children's book, so there are none of the horrors of war that defined Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan. In their place is a simplistic and calculated exercise in heartstring-pulling that requires the cynicism-free heart of a child to sit through, lest you bring up your dinner on the person in front when forced to swallow some of the most contrived John Williams-flavoured cheesecake since Hayden Christensen tried to nob Natalie Portman in a Naboo field. All of which would be fine if there was more to entertain the under-12s, but short of the aforementioned and underused comedy goose, the melodrama to funballs ratio is tediously high.

There are, of course, a couple of the requisite Spielberg moments you'd expect, and Janusz Kaminski's cinematography renders the whole thing undeniably gorgeous in a ridiculously false, permanently-backlit way, but everything else is just so obvious, to the point where, when a heartless soldier is required to pull a gun on our hero's lovely horse, it's none other than cinema's favourite rentabastard Eddie Marsan who's asked to pull the trigger. Still, at least he's not expected to affect the go-to English countryside-dweller's accent favoured by half the cast:

Still, it's fun to play cream-of-British-acting-talent-desperate-to-be-in-a-Spielberg-film-even-if-it's-just-for-a-couple-of-scenes bingo, and the presence of Peter Mullan provides exciting tension as we wait to see if he decapitates or kicks to death any horses. I'd just rather the horse had been a supporting player and the film's true star could have taken centre stage, but for now it looks like War Goose is still some way off.

The Nine Biggest Guaranteed Disappointments Of 2012

2012-01-06T06:00:00.001Z

Jesus Craps, 2012 is upon us already. And like politicians in an election campaign, it promises a great deal. Also like politicians in an election campaign, however, it cannot be trusted further than it can be punted off the doorstep with a hob-nailed boot.

So in the spirit of cold, harsh realism, here are nine films (I was aiming for ten but lost the will to live) coming in the next twelve months that you would be best advised not to get excited about, for history teaches us that they shall be naught but shit on the brand new trainers of your hopes. Enjoy!

The Dark Knight Rises

The potential So much fanboy urine has been excreted in the name of this film that the internet now smells like an old people's home, which means that TDKR will comfortably become the biggest grossing film of all time even if it's three hours of Michael Caine dusting Wayne Manor in his pants.
What could possibly go wrong? With The Dark Knight being (whisper it) not as good as Batman Begins, and previews of the new film featuring a villain mumbling incomprehensibly in a funny (i.e. British) accent, alarm bells are ringing. Not that you can hear them over *BRRRAAAAAHHHHHMMMMMMMM* Yes, thank you Hans.

The Amazing Spider-Man

The potential The hasty reboot of Sam Raimi's still-warm franchise could well solve its predecessors' biggest problems: a CG hero that moved like Miner Willy (google it, kidz), and cinema's least sympathetic love interest ever in Kirsten Dunst's self-obsessed whingecake Mary-Jane Watson.
What could possibly go wrong? There won't be enough action. There'll be too much action. Not enough web-swinging. Too much web-swinging. Andrew Garfield's too old. Emma Stone's not sexy enough. The whole film looks like a video game. Something something mechanical web shooters. Take your pick: something about this film is bound to suck the mechanical tentacles off a human/octopus hybrid.

Dredd

The potential It's that rare thing: a reboot actually worth rebooting, hopefully taking a giant can of air freshener to the stench left in cinemas after Stallone shat Judge Dredd onto an unsuspecting audience in 1995. This version stars Karl Urban, because Josh Holloway wasn't famous enough when they cast it.
What could possibly go wrong? Critics are dusting off their 17-year-old "Dreddful" reviews in preparation after seeing the first stills from the film, in which Dredd's helmet looks several sizes too big for his noggin and Urban seems a little too weedy to fill out the futuristic rozzer's suit. Apparently the rest of the cast will be populated by midgets and children in order to give Dredd a slightly more fear-inducing presence than a newborn kitten.

Brave

The potential It's a new Pixar film! Everyone loves Pixar! It can't fail!
What could possibly go wrong? Cars.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The potential Peter Jackson's new film about the offspring of a hobo and a rabbit might just be worth keeping him from cracking on with the eagerly awaited Tintin sequel.
What could possibly go wrong? The Hobbit's success hinges on two things: people accepting Martin Freeman as a hobbit rather than Tim From The Office with curly hair (admittedly unlikely to be a problem outside the UK), and Peter Jackson not turning in a Kong-esque three-hour vanity project. I hope he's back on the burgers, because don't forget: fat PJ made The Lord Of The Rings but it was skinny PJ who brought us The Lovely Bones.

Prometheus

The potential A new Alien film these days usually means Paul WS Anderson, incomprehensible nonsense and large piles of Shrek. But with Ridley Scott, Damon Lindelof and Michael Fassbender involved, it 's finally time to take the franchise seriously again.
What could possibly go wrong? A much-loved series. Years gone by since the last good entry. A prequel from the director of the original film. A director who hasn't made anything as good as the original since. You know what this is? It's Alien Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

The Avengers

The potential The world's biggest collection of biceps gathers for at least two and a half hours of winking, eyebrow-raising and staring at Scarlett Johansson's ass. It's like a party at Roger Moore's house.
What could possibly go wrong? Let's be honest, none of the feature-length trailers for The Avengers have set the world on fire, have they? Only Thor managed to pull off two full hours of watchability, and there's no way Robert Downey Jr's going to let some hammer-wielding hippie steal the show. Still, Scarlett Johansson's ass.

Skyfall

The potential Bond is back, in case you hadn't noticed, and he's making all sorts of promises about how amazing Episode XXIII will be. And with "proper director" Sam Mendes directing, surely it's guaranteed smashmageddon?

What could possibly go wrong? NOTHING. Right?

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 3D

The potential Uh...

What could possibly go wrong? *record scratch*

Official Dreamworks Announcement

2012-01-05T09:37:00.000Z

Years of public opinion have finally swayed Dreamworks to admit that the word "Shrek" is now wholly interchangeable with the word "shit". Look forward to more direct-to-DVD spin-offs such as Christmas special Holy Shrek, "adult" version Fiona Takes It Up The Shrekker and perennial fave Shrek The Bed, This Is One Shrekky Piece Of Shrek.

BlogalongaBond / For Your Eyes Only: Brutally Brutal

2012-01-03T06:00:00.002Z

By this point, almost everyone involved in BlogalongaBond has had enough of Roger Moore as James Bond. But in 1980, after Moonraker had stretched the character's credibility to gossamer-thin levels, someone else felt pretty much the same way: Roger Moore himself. Not by coincidence did he pick this moment to thoroughly extract every last drop of piss from his secret agent persona by playing a Roger Moore-obsessed crackpot in The Cannonball Run. And to think people said he wasn't taking Bond seriously.

With Moore's contractual obligation for four Bond films fulfilled and the script for the new one heading in a deliberately anti-Moonraker (i.e. vaguely believable) direction, the time was perfect for a new 007. The hiring of a previous Bond editor as director, a focus on a more human Bond and an igloo-full of snow-based set pieces suggested that the only thing left to make For Your Eyes Only another On Her Majesty's Secret Service was to give RoMo the heave-ho and bring in someone slightly more capable of crossing the road without assistance.

Sadly Cubby Broccoli and director John Glen chickened out, figuring it would make life easier not to have to introduce a new James Bond, and so Moore signed on for a wallet-bursting fee, thereby undoing all the hard work aimed at bringing a more realistic Bond kicking and punching into the eighties. The result is a series of impressively brutal scenes and amazing action sequences carried out by an unconvincing 54-year-old so crinkly that he gets the soft-focus treatment from cinematographer Alan Hume's camera more often than his leading lady.

Actual, non-photoshopped still from film

While it's easy (and fun) to blame Rodge for For Your Eyes Only's faults, the script is equally culpable. Its insistence on stripping Bond back to his self-sufficient, gadget-free roots is commendable, and it's great to see some callous violence replacing double-taking pigeons, but in the process writers Michael G Wilson and Richard Maibaum also hollowed out most of the excitement and fun from the story's core, instead deciding to bookend it with two painfully comic scenes that should have both been dumped down an industrial chimney before they made it to the filming stage.

Fortunately those elements of the script that remind us that Bond is, at heart, a vicious bastard and not a cuddly senior citizen are good enough to hold the interest, and much has been made of the ruthlessness on display in the film. But just how brutal are For Your Eyes Only's hardest-hitting scenes? It's time to unveil...

Scene 1: Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet)'s parents are murdered before her eyes, causing her to dress as a giant bat and become a lone vigilante mooching about on rooftops. No hang on, I'm thinking of something else.
How brutal? When Mr & Mrs H are gunned down in a hail of bullets in the film's opening minutes, it's an immediate announcement that the bad guys really are bad. It's a more graphic scene than we're used to in Bond at this point (Melina's dad's shirt becomes the biggest victim of the increased fake blood budget), and it's made more chilling by the hit man's weird pre-hit grimace. Sadly Bouquet's been told to remain improbably impassive, preventing the audience from getting as upset as they probably should.

Brutalometer:

Scene 2: No sooner has Bond removed his penis from the improbably named Countess Lisl von Schlaf than she's rammed again, only this time by a baddie in a beach buggy.
How brutal? As sick as it sounds, Lisl's uncharacteristically vicious death is excellent cinema. She's hit by the buggy with considerable force and the sound effect of her head smashing against the windscreen is wince-inducing. It's alarmingly realistic and John Glen doesn't cut away from the impact: he wants you to feel this. Rodge's resulting Angry Face is the scene's crowning glory.
Brutalometer:

Scene 3: Having forced a villain's car onto the edge of a clifftop, Bond finally gets the chance to be bad, helping him over the edge with a hefty kick.
How brutal? Despite all the talk about For Your Eyes Only bringing us a more merciless Bond, this is the only scene in which he's the one being the bastard. It's a great one though: he didn't even need to kick the car - it was already on its way over the edge - making the kick more of an expression of anger than a necessary action, and the bad guy's body flopping out of the window on the way down must have been a happy accident for the filmmakers.
Brutalometer:

Scene 4: In the film's most brutally painful scene, Bond is congratulated on the success of his mission by none other than Margaret Thatcher.
How brutal? Nothing in For Your Eyes Only is as shocking or difficult to watch as this comedy epilogue. Being forced to accept that the Prime Minister and assorted Whitehall bigwigs might mistake a squawking parrot for their top agent is the most unpleasant thing we've been subjected to since pigeongate, and it cements the film's reputation as a challenging watch for even the strongest of stomachs.
Brutalometer:

Tracy's grave

For Your Eyes Only declares its intention to return to the 007 of On Her Majesty's Secret Service in its very first shot, with Bond visiting his wife's grave. It's a brave way to open a James Bond film and a touching and heartfelt scene that gives the character some welcome depth. It's a shame, then, that the following scene - in which he finally bumps off the man responsible for her death - is treated so lightly. Still, HELICOPTERS NNNEEEEEOOOWWW!!!

Topol

The astonishingly-coiffured, mono-monikered actor gives Bond's Greek ally Milos Columbo such ebullience and sly suavity that he's probably the most fun of 007's right-hand-men since From Russia With Love's Kerim Bey. Not just handy in a fight, he's also so polite that when Bond raises a glass to him and says "yasu", Columbo doesn't even say "Yasu means hello, you ignorant twerp. I think you mean yamas".

The winter sports

Where the Bond films had previously capitalised on popular fads like blaxploitation, kung fu and science fiction, this time it was the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics - in which US athletes did well enough to massively increase interest in winter sports in the States - which convinced Broccoli to return to the slopes. A terrific eight-minute skiing sequence conceived and shot largely by Willy Bogner (who filmed much of the action skiing backwards with a camera between his legs) includes motorbikes, a ski jump, a toboggan run, a tremendous score by Bill Conti, Charles Dance looking really ginger and Roger Moore in a silly woolly hat. What more could you ask for?

And finally: Sheena Easton's insipid theme song is bad enough, but she even has the temerity to appear throughout the titles as if she's proud of what she's done. Imagine how much better life would be if Broccoli had accepted Blondie's submission and an almost-dressed Debbie Harry had writhed around in that giant cocktail glass instead...

Blondie - "For Your Eyes Only"

BlogalongaBond will return with Octopussy

What the hell is BlogalongaBond? I'll tell you.

Further BlogalongaBondareading here

A Scientifically Accurate List Of The Ten Best Films Of 2011

2011-12-30T08:09:00.003Z

In a wildly original move, which I'm fairly sure nobody else has thought of, I've decided to present a list of ten films made in 2011 that were better than all the rest. If you see anyone else displaying similar lists please report them for copyright theft because I THOUGHT OF IT FIRST.

UPDATE: When I wrote this, Animal Kingdom was far and away my favourite film of the year. However, a second viewing of the virtually flawless The Artist in early January 2012 has forced a minor reshuffle of my top two: apologies if for some bizarre reason you actually care.

"You'd be surprised how quickly they adapt."

Love it or hate it (love it), you've got to admire The Incredible Suit's Cumbersomely Titled Tenth Favourite Film Of 2011 Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, if only because it's a film about talking monkeys that isn't a Dreamworks animation. Its flaws are cavernous but to be so crowd-pleasingly entertaining despite them is remarkable enough; to be the best of the summer's FX-heavy blockbusters is nothing short of miraculous. Although to be fair I never saw The Smurfs. Review

"You don't know what it's like out there, you haven't a clue."

Tyrannosaur might have *'80s POP CULTURE REFERENCE ALERT* Barbara Woodhouse barking in her grave, but it's memorable for so much more than the canine cruelty on offer: a terrific directorial debut from Paddy Considine; a touching, terrifying script perfectly balancing furious rage and fingertip tenderness, and three astonishing central performances by some of Britain's most talented actors, including one from Olivia Colman that appears to come from nowhere and punch you firmly in the knackers. As devastating as that sounds, and much harder to recover from. Review

"There is no point. That's the point."

Ranking only slightly higher on the 2011 Devastatometer than Tyrannosaur, We Need To Talk About Kevin is also possibly the most effective method of contraception on the market. If you still want kids after seeing this then you should probably consider some kind of therapy. Tilda Swinton predictably knocks it out of the park, but the three youngsters who play Kevin (even improbably-named toddler Rock Duer) give the film its spine-chilling spine. Warning: unsuitable for ereuthrophobics. Review

"Actions have consequences, you know?"

Everybody expected the debut film of that funny bloke off of the radio to be good, but nobody thought it would be quite this good. Joe Cornish the comedian transformed - apparently overnight - into Joe Cornish the director with his brave, original take on the alien invasion genre, and gave the world a few young faces to remember at the same time. Satisfyingly old-school yet absolutely of its time, Attack The Block justifiably takes its place among the great British debuts of all time. Review

"How's your thirst for adventure, Captain?"

The Bergatron's thirst for adventure finally reappears after a lengthy spell of, uh, unthirstiness, and the result is The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn, the world's first watchable performance-capture film. An unbridled joy for everyone except The Guardian and Robert Zemeckis, Tintin might just be the film Super 8 tried and failed to be: an homage to Spielberg's glory days that kids will still be talking about thirty years from now. Review

"I don't quite know what I am yet."

Submarine, Richard Ayoade's wildly original tale of two duffel coats, is the finest coming-of-age tale for years: his fat-free script, based on Joe Dunthorne's novel, is full of ridiculous but perfect zingers and gives every member of his flawless cast a fully-realised character to sink their teeth into. And sink they do, taking us under with them to a horrendous place we all remember being nowhere near this enjoyable. Review

"You gotta be careful that the person that
you fall in love with is worth it to you."

Heartbreakingly tender and unforgivably brutal, Derek Cianfrance's story of a doomed relationship is one of the most simultaneously beautiful and painful love stories ever committed to the screen. Anchored by two phenomenal performances each by Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling, Blue Valentine tells it like it is, and while the subject matter isn't always pretty, every frame is a work of art. Review

"You put this kid behind the wheel, there's nothing he can't do."

The Year Of The Gosling peaked with genre-defying retro-neo-noir Drive, in which The World's Greatest Human Being Alive Right Now does very little apart from pootle about in a car and beat a few people up, but does it in such inimitable style and backed by such an achingly hip soundtrack that it's impossible to take your eyes off him. A genuinely iconic actor creating a genuinely iconic character isn't something that happens every day; be thankful you were alive to see it happen this time. Review

"You've gotta decide. You've gotta work out where you fit."

The year's second finest film comes from a land down under, both literally and metaphorically, and is another unbelievably great debut that gives boundless hope to the future of cinema. Animal Kingdom's writer / director David Michôd treats his audience with absolute respect in his intelligent and shattering drama about loyalty, conscience and finding your place in the world. Yet another astonishing cast pull us deep into a life we knew nothing about, and once inside proves impossible to forget. Review

" "

Joyously exuberant from start to finish, The Artist is probably the film that stopped Kim Jong-il's cold black heart with its boundless charm and relentlessly magical chemistry, and should be prescribed as a cure for all forms of grumpiness, depression and suicidal tendencies. Director Michel Hazanavicius demonstrates an unerring mastery of the craft of pure cinema, taking his cue from some of its earliest and finest exponents, and proves that while they don't make 'em like they used to, they damn well should.

Now please feel free to make a fool of yourself in the comments box by disagreeing with me.

The Girl With The Dragon Tat, Two

2011-12-29T06:00:00.003Z

Opening with a balls-out brilliantly bonkers Bondesque title sequence that's surely the year's best, David Fincher's possibly-redundant version of every commuter's must-have accessory immediately announces its intention to take 2010's Swedish interpretation back to the Ikea returns desk and swap it for a new, slicker, upgraded model that'll convince us all that Hollywood remakes of foreign films are the only possible way forward for an industry almost bereft of new ideas.

What we get, disappointingly, isn't the reinvention of the wheel but a new wheel that does much the same as the old wheel, only without whatever the wheel equivalent of subtitles is. I should probably have thought that analogy through a bit more before I started but I've been on holiday and haven't quite remembered how to do clever metaphors yet. Hey ho.

Fincher's direction is typically classy and, predictably, he gets the goods from Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, the former of whom spends a distracting amount of time with his glasses dangling under his chin like some kind of spectacle-beard. Still, it could have been worse:

And while it's a serviceable whodunnit for anyone unfamiliar with the book or previous film, it still can't justify either the hype created by its source material's omnipresence or the need for a new version in the first place. There are no shocking twists and no groundbreaking additions to the genre, and when all the answers are revealed it's hard to care a great deal thanks to a baffling assortment of suspects spread over three generations, many of whom it's often tricky to remember which are meant to be alive or dead.

A lengthy, tacked-on epilogue we didn't really need ties a couple of things up in a way that suggests Fincher and co aren't too fussed about finishing the trilogy, which is a shame because although The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo fails to sufficiently surpass its equally good forebear, any potential sequels would effortlessly erase the memory of the disappointingly abysmal Swedish parts two and three.

Still, never mind. We'll always have this.

Guess Where I Am?

2011-12-14T06:00:00.001Z

I'm on holiday is where I am. See you after Christmas. x

Mission Impossible: Tusk Mustard

2011-12-13T06:00:00.001Z

Really sorry but I didn't have time to write a full review of Tom Cruise Climbs A Tall Building IV because I've been too busy packing to go on holiday. You'll have to make do with this tweet:

Also if you can imagine a

wittily photoshopped still

here that would be great.

Dreams Of A Life

2011-12-12T06:00:00.001Z

I fully intended to catch Dreams Of A Life, Carol Morley's true story about the long-unnoticed death of 40-year-old Joyce Vincent in a North London bedsit, at the London Film Festival this year. I never made it to the screening for reasons lost in the mists of time (I may as well blame the Victoria Line), so in my stead I sent Mrs The Incredible Suit with specific instructions not to come back without a review.

Amazingly, she did exactly as she was told, so in a shock departure for The Incredible Suit, here's a review written by someone who isn't The Incredible Suit. You can tell because she writes in Arial and I use Trebuchet.

Dreams Of A Life had me holding back tears from the start, and not just because it’s the sad story of a woman who died alone in one of the busiest cities in the world and was found in her flat three years later with the television still on, but also because it’s a telling reflection on our disconnected communities. The film is told through the positive testimony of people who knew Joyce, intermingled with dramatised reconstruction, and it's immediately one of those tales that catches your attention because you’re afraid it could happen to you.

Although it wasn’t always clear who the people in the film were, through their stories we learn that Joyce was like most other people. She had demons from the past that meant she found it hard to trust people (she told a doctor her next of kin was her bank manager) and she couldn’t settle, never made long term plans and regularly moved flats and jobs when things went wrong. With friends, she was the life and soul of a party, but with hindsight they now think she'd become a chameleon and adapted to their way of life rather than live her own.

Director Carol Morley takes on the role of private detective to try and find out why Joyce was seemingly forgotten, apparently doing a better job than the detective hired by Joyce’s family but still not getting to the bottom of it all. The family chose not to take part in the film, but told Morley they had tried to stay in touch with Joyce throughout her life but they too had been unable to find out why she had effectively disappeared.

We never did get to find out why the electric had remained on for three years either (energy providers are usually quick to cut off people who don’t pay their bills), but the shots of Joyce in her final moments watching snippets of the film we’re watching on her TV was a nice touch. It may seem that Joyce had been forgotten, but this wasn't the case. She was often in the minds of her friends, especially Martin, one of the stars of the show, and the reason I finally succumbed to a few tears.

I like films with a reason, and the subtle messages throughout Dreams Of A Life about friendship and society made it so without shoving them down my throat. Our personality is often defined by others’ views about us, but do we really know people? Should we all make more of an effort to make time for people? Should we reach out and ask for more help? This film could be a reason to start.

FEET. WILL. LOOSEN.

2011-12-08T06:00:00.000Z

Tonight's the night the whole of East London shakes to the sound of Kenny Loggins urging us to kick off our Sunday shoes and lose our blues, as the mighty Kevin Bacon BASICALLY TAKES ON GOD in order to get the kids of Bomont, Middle America, dancing their asses off to mark The Incredible Suit's Cumbersomely Titled Very Good Film And Quiz Night.

You can witness this spectacle by paying £6.50 to the nice people at the Stratford East Picturehouse box office, and if you turn up before 7pm (let's say 6.30 to be on the safe side) you can join in with the free film quiz in the bar before the film. Maximum team size is six peeps and if anyone's coming alone I'll find a friendly team for you to latch on to if you want.

So remember:

7.00pm PROMPT

Film quiz in the bar

8.00pm PROMPTISH

Footloose in the cinema

9.45pm OR THEREABOUTS

Answers and winners announced

10.00pm OR WHENEVER

Back to the bar to celebrate, commiserate or just go home

Be there or be an absolute arsepipe.

Forty Amazing Things About The New 2-Disc Die Hard Soundtrack Album

2011-12-07T06:00:00.000Z

#1 - #39: The tracks

Note (click the picture to embigulate) the inclusion of RUN-DMC's Christmas In Hollis, the greatest Christmas song ever recorded.

#40: The booklet

Twenty-four pages comprising an exhaustive essay on the making and impact of Die Hard by film historian Eric Lichtenfeld and an insanely detailed track-by-track analysis by soundtrack geek Jeff Bond. Sample text:

"A pulsating rhythm and some shrill piccolo and reed lines alternate with pizzicato and synthesiser textures: a light metallic percussion line heard about 1:16 into the cue will later form the driving snare rhythm for 'The Battle/Freeing The Hostages'."

What he means is "that bit that goes dum-dum-dum-dum-DER-DUM is the fucking shit".

The booklet also contains this truly great still which I can't believe I've never seen before:

Michael Kamen's Die Hard score was released by La La Land Records last week in a limited run of 3,500 copies and sold out within six femtoseconds. If you didn't get one, don't worry, they'll be on eBay soon. Best have a chat with your bank manager first.

Titanic thanks to Simon Underwood for alerting me to the album's imminent release. I have promised him my first-born child as a reward.

Thirty Minutes Of The Three Colours Trilogy Non-Live Blogged

2011-12-06T06:00:00.001Z

Having recently decided to haul my philistinic ass into the 21st century by buying a Blu-ray player, I decided that something I could do with is actual Blu-ray discs to play on it. Otherwise it would just be an expensive footrest, and not even a very good one. A pathetic plea on Twitter to anyone who fancied sending me some for free yielded surprising results (i.e. nobody told me to piss off), and thanks to Organic Marketing I am now the owner of Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colours Trilogy on Blu-ray, which I have shamefully never seen.

The gift was made with the perfectly reasonable proviso that I say something about the trilogy's impending release on The Incredible Suit, and I promised faithfully to do so before sticking the discs in a drawer and forgetting all about them for several weeks.

Some time later later someone at Organic (hi Will) gently pointed out that the release date for the trilogy had been and gone without so much as a whisper from me (obviously nobody's going to buy it without my recommendation), and so I resolved to do something about it immediately. The thing is, who's got time to watch three films in a row these days? Nobody, that's who. So I decided to make my life easier by watching the first ten minutes of Three Colours: Blue, the middle ten minutes of Three Colours: White and the final ten minutes of Three Colours: Red in order to save all that boring actual watching of entire films.

Yep, The Guardian may have liveblogged the whole trilogy over three nights in November (here, here and here), but The Incredible Suit is going one step further by reducing a recognised genius' magnum opus to half an hour of ill-informed and embarrassingly late wittering. Here are my findings.

Three Colours: Blue

The trilogy opens with a camera bolted to the underside of a moving car and blurred streetlights flashing across a blue-hued frame before the car drives into a tree and ~~an obvious metaphor~~ a colourful beach ball bounces away, suggesting some kind of end of childhood or innocence or something. Every shot is gorgeous - a close-up reflection in an eye is astonishing - and before the first ten minutes are up I'm already blubbing as the car crash's only survivor, hospitalised, watches her family's funeral on a tiny monitor and strokes the screen where her daughter's coffin is. I immediately want to abandon my experiment and watch the rest but RULES IS RULES.

Three Colours: White

Plunging myself into the middle of the middle film of the trilogy, I find myself listening to some men talking in Polish about a building development on virgin countryside. I'm flummoxed but struck by the enormous amount of whiteness on screen - a character's vest, the sky, a map, all whiter than a party at John Wayne's house. I suspect that this may be deliberate and am busy admiring Kieślowski for his artistic synergy when someone suddenly produces a gun. In the film I mean, not in my front room. Shit just got real and I immediately want to abandon my experiment again and watch the rest but RULES IS STILL RULES.

Three Colours: Red

I boot up the final ten minutes of the trilogy and am immediately smacked in the chops by the largest amount of obvious redness in production design since I saw We Need To Talk About Kevin. Before I've had a chance to bang on about Kieślowski's artistic synergy again I'm faced with a woman of such staggering beauty that I immediately want to abandon my experiment for a third time and watch the rest but RULES IS STILL BEING RULES, DAMMIT. The woman gets on a ferry, there's a staggering shot of the boat's ramp raising and then something happens which a) appears to tie all the films together and b) makes me wish I'd watched the films in their entirety before ruining the ending for myself.

In conclusion

I'm none the wiser about what the Three Colours trilogy is about but I can tell you that it's unutterably beautiful to look at, remarkably gripping surprisingly quickly and very blue, white and red. I'll be watching the whole thing in full as soon as possible but for now, Organic Marketing, I think my work here is done. Any chance you could send me Kill List?

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Score: Even The Waveforms Are Terrifying

2011-12-03T06:00:00.001Z

In crafting a suitably unsettling score for David Fincher's version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have not only dragged their music from the filthiest, most depraved recesses of a shit-flinging, brain-eating serial killer's mind, but they've also made music that even looks terrifying. Here's the waveform for People Lie All The Time:

I'm reasonably sure Lisbeth Salander uses a dildo that looks exactly like this track to exact revenge on somebody at some point. My eyes are watering just thinking about it.

Here's a selection of tracks from the score that were "leaked" last week: just the thing to send your kids to sleep with on Christmas Eve, especially if they won't shut the fuck up about the Fireman Sam Pontypandy Rescue Set or the Monster High Lagoona's Hydration Station.

BlogalongaMuppets #3: Beaker Reviews The Muppets Take Manhattan

2011-12-02T06:00:00.002Z

Yeah, I'm late again. What are you gonna do about it? SUCK IT UP BITCHES, THAT'S WHAT. I didn't even want to review this film, but apparently I have to. Frankly I'd rather jam my stupid long head up Professor Bunsen's arsehole because not only is The Muppets Take Manhattan not very good, it's also ALMOST ENTIRELY DEVOID OF BEAKER ACTION. What the FUCK is that all about?

"Together again", they all warble like retarded cloth animals. Well, not quite together, are we? Yeah, the frog and the pig are all over each other like some kind of interspecies porno while the bear and the chicken and whatever Gonzo is watch, but where's Beaker? NOWHERE, that's where. It's a fucking liberty I tell you.

Seriously, this film is fine if you just want to look at Muppets, but - to quote some bastard rat that was deemed more crucial to the plot than me - where's the beef? A few rubbish songs, a handful of lacklustre cameos (does anyone REALLY remember Gregory Hines?) and stupid plot turns that make no sense - uh, yeah, let's all split up for no other reason than to get back together again - do not a classic make.

Whatfuckingever.

I'd like to say it all perks up for the THREE FUCKING SECONDS I'm in it at the end, but it doesn't, because that's the bit where they shoved all the songs that didn't fit anywhere else so they crammed them into a dumb story within a story, the lemons. I wish they hadn't put me in it at all. The fucker's on my IMDb page for the rest of my life now.

Next month - or this month if I get my shit together - it's some cocking Christmas story we're all supposed to get excited about. Well I fucking hate Christmas so whoopee-shitting-doo, I can't wait. Here's a picture of Miss Piggy as a baby to keep you going until then. I think she looks kinda hot. Sue me.

BEAKER OUT.

Another Amazing Headline / Photo Combo Brought To You By SlashFilm

2011-12-01T13:19:00.000Z

ONE WEEK TO GO

2011-12-01T06:00:00.002Z

CLICK ME

Massive big ups to Richard and Ginette at City Screen.

Ten Randomly Generated Subtitles For A Mission: Impossible Film Less Nonsensical Than Ghost Protocol

2011-11-30T06:00:00.001Z

Try it, it's fun.

My 'I's, Burning

2011-11-29T09:18:00.001Z

Ten Reasons To Come And Watch Footloose With Me Next Week

2011-11-28T06:00:00.000Z

It's just eleven short days until Thursday December 8th, when The Incredible Suit's Cumbersomely Titled Very Good Film And Quiz Night presents the original Footloose at the Stratford Picturehouse in East London, and oddly there are still tickets available here.

Research indicates that many of you haven't yet seen Footloose and can see no obvious reason to do so, so I'm here to give you ten very good reasons. Eleven, if you count "I'll cut myself if nobody turns up".

It's totally, utterly, 100% eighties

Officially cinema's most 1980s feet

If, like me, you yearn for a time before iPhones, The X Factor, movie spoilers, everything being too loud, "celebrities", health and safety, more than four TV channels, call centres in India, Nick Knowles and movie blogs written by unqualified nobodies, then a) you should GET OVER IT GRANDAD, and b) Footloose is for you. It's packed with mullets, leg warmers and synthesised pop and has a ludicrous premise, unlikely dance sequences and Kevin Bacon in a vest.

I can't believe you'd need nine more reasons, but I'm going to carry on regardless.

Chris Tookey's synopsis

As if being forbidden to dsance isn't bad enough, dancing has also been banned. Not sure why Tookey didn't mention that.

Peepers peeled: it's '80s Movie Mom!

She's no Mary Ellen Trainor, but Frances Lee McCain - who plays Kevin Bacon's mum - has one of Hollywood's most celebrated wombs of the 1980s. The characters she played also spawned Gremlins' Billy Peltzer, Stand By Me's Gordie Lachance, and Back To The Future's Lorraine Baines. Rumour has it she wore deelyboppers on her ovaries.

The Angry Dance

You've seen it in Billy Elliot, Hot Rod and Flight Of The Conchords, but Kevin Bacon's Angry Dance is the original and still the best. Massive incidental kudos to findaproperty.com for this ad placement on the YouTube clip of Angry Dance '84:

The homoerotic dance montage

Gotta have a montage, and Footloose's - in which Kevin Bacon teaches new BFF Chris Penn to dance, albeit like Pinocchio on elastic - is a corker. If you're planning a thesis on gay subtext in mainstream Hollywood cinema then you could do a lot worse than make this scene your first port of call. Your second should probably be the men's shower room scene.

This

The motivational speech

You can keep your "They'll never take our freedom", your "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers" and your "What we do in life echoes in eternity": the sight of Kevin Bacon declaring "There is a time to dance... this is our time" would be enough to convince a horde of angry, hairy Scotsmen to start bodypopping there and then.

John Lithgow in "character over cliché" shocker

Pitching your young protagonists against a stuffy old Christian is a recipe for pantomime villainy, especially when the antagonistic God-botherer in question is John Lithgow, an actor prone to fits of raging scene-chewing and over-the-toppery. But Lithgow, assisted by writer Dean Pitchford and director Herbert Ross, is led not into temptation and delivers a sympathetic performance as a flawed man trying to understand a changing world.

Sadly that means there's not much of this kind of thing:

The soundtrack

Kenny Loggins - "Footloose"

Bonnie Tyler - "Holding Out For A Hero"

Moving Pictures - "Never"

"If you don't give your heart wings you'll never, never, never ever never, never, never ever fly". The very words I live by.

THERE'S A FREE QUIZ!

Turn up nice and early (let's say 6.30) and I'll be hosting a free quiz for anyone who knows stuff about films and that. There'll be actual prizes "up for grabs", and I'm reasonably confident that some of them won't be shit.

The quiz starts promptly at 7pm in the Stratford Picturehouse bar and is free to anyone who's come to watch Footloose. There's a maximum team size of six people, and it'll be worth attending just to see if there's another mighty face-off between Team Shiznit and Cheval, scourges of film quiz teams across London.

So there you have it. If you still don't want to come then you're either mad or dead, and either way I want nothing further to do with you. And if any of that's convinced you, there are more infodeets here. Jump back!

Because You'd Think Less Of Me If I Didn't Do It

2011-11-24T06:00:00.001Z

My Week With Marilyn

2011-11-23T06:00:00.000Z

My Week With Marilyn tries very hard indeed to make you hate it as quickly as possible. It begins with a plummy voiceover from an upper-class twit, who parks his glaringly obvious period car - it may as well have a hooter that shouts "LOOK AT ME! I'M AN AUTHENTIC 1950s PROP!" - right in the foreground of every shot, while Michelle Williams hovers about looking almost-but-not-quite like Marilyn Monroe, as if trying to prove that the Uncanny Valley theory doesn't just apply to performance capture animation.

But then something weird happens, and suddenly you're completely sucked into director Simon Curtis' world, in which Johnny Posh Features (Eddie Redmayne, playing Colin Clark, upon whose diaries the film is based) is actually quite charming and Michelle Williams is actually and unquestionably Marilyn Monroe. It's a cunning trick by writer Adrian Hodges, whereby he avoids many of the traps that true stories so often fall into by crafting a delightful story that has a beginning, a middle and an end without appearing contrived for the sake of drama.

The film's biggest joy, without which it would quite probably be nothing, is Kenneth Branagh's unexpectedly funny turn as Laurence Olivier, a role he demanded to play the moment he emerged from his mother's vagina. In fact the Monromance bubbling up between Marilyn and Colin soon feels like a subplot we're forced to sit through while we wait for another hilarious scene of Larry losing his shit over Mazza's incompetence as an actress. Seriously, if Ken wanted to make a two-hour spin-off of this film starring only himself as Olivier, I'd watch it in a heartbeat. I've even got a title ready.

Sadly it appears that the awkward-nobody-almost-has-affair-with-massive-movie-star storyline is the one we're supposed to be interested in, and while it's pleasantly diverting it never really grabs you by the genitals (which all love stories should), despite excellent performances all round. You're left wondering why you had to go to the cinema to see a Sunday night ITV drama, what the real-film-within-the-film The Prince And The Showgirl is like (good news! It's on BBC2 on Saturday) and whether or not Marilyn really was as useless as this film makes her out to be.

All in all then, nice enough, but no Me And Orson Welles. I imagine. I haven't actually seen it.

Quiet Round Here, Isn't It?

2011-11-22T06:00:00.002Z

Sorry about that. I had to return some videotapes.

Thanks

Headhunters Completes Unofficial "Dangerous Drinks Cartons" Trilogy

2011-11-15T08:33:00.000Z

Lethal Weapon (1987)

Terminator 2 (1991)

Headhunters (2011)

Snowtown

2011-11-14T06:00:00.001Z

With its based-on-truth premise of a teenage boy from a broken family somewhere in the Australian underclass becoming involved with an enigmatic but vicious criminal, Snowtown immediately invites comparisons to Animal Kingdom, especially among people who've only seen two Australian movies this year (i.e. me). That would be reductive though: Snowtown is entirely its own film, and within minutes of it starting you'll have forgotten all about Guy Pearce's amazing moustache.

The enigmatic criminal this time is none other than Australia's most prolific serial killer, John "inappropriately jolly surname" Bunting, played here with terrifying serenity by Daniel Henshall, and Snowtown portrays him through the eyes of Jamie Vlassakis (newcomer Lucas Pittaway). Bunting's relationship with Vlassakis' mother initially seems like the answer to all the troubled teen's problems, but before long things take a turn for the eye-wateringly, stomach-churningly, toenail-removingly disturbing.

Brutal, bleak and raw, and shocking in the mundanity of its horrific events, Snowtown demands your attention and rewards you with an uncompromising look at the tragedy of a doomed, neglected community: there isn't a single shot of a police officer; neighbourhood watch consists of gathering round a kitchen table and being encouraged to dream up violent retribution towards gays and paedophiles, and a mother remains ambivalent to the effect that a clearly unstable man might be having on her children.

Meanwhile, the film's clouded sense of time and refusal to give an explanation for Bunting's crimes beyond his apparent hatred of child molestors and homosexuals (he was also after their welfare payments, but the film doesn't touch on that) make for an unpleasantly woozy viewing experience; a blurry, waking nightmare that stays with you long after the credits.

It's not a film to like or enjoy, but it is a film worth enduring. LOLs are non-existent and dog lovers will have almost as hard a time as they did with Tyrannosaur, but Snowtown does raise a lot of questions, and they're even harder to answer than the film is to watch.

It's not as good as Animal Kingdom though.

In other news: The production notes make for the world's worst flip book:

Jonathan Lipnicki's Six-Year-Old Head Photoshopped Onto Jonathan Lipnicki's 21-Year-Old Body

2011-11-11T06:00:00.001Z

Just because.

The Incredible Suit's Cumbersomely Titled Very Good Film And Quiz Night Presents: FOOTLOOSE!

2011-11-10T06:00:00.002Z

Hold on to your tits, people:

I'M SHOWING A FILM AND YOU'RE INVITED!

And when I say "invited", I mean "invited to buy a ticket". But they are cheap as chips, so it's practically like being invited.

Yeppers, I'll be screening a 35mm print of underrated eighties cheesegasm Footloose, starring THE MIGHTY BACON, on:

THURSDAY DECEMBER 8th

at London's glorious

Stratford Picturehouse

I asked a selection of people to give me their thoughts on Footloose in the hope of them saying something that might convince you to come along, and here's a selection of some of the most enthusiastic:

"I'm not sure I've ever seen the whole movie" - Edgar Wright
"Not having seen it, I have little to say about it" - Ali Gray, The Shiznit
"I haven't ever seen it" - David Sztypuljak, HeyUGuys
"Has not seen" - Charlie Lyne, Ultra Culture

What this clearly proves is that if there's one thing the world needs right now, it's a screening of Footloose, if only to broaden your horizons, as well as those of several film bloggers and a certain celebrated director.

And if there are two things the world needs right now, the other one is:

A FREE FLIPPING QUIZ!

That's right, get your asses to the Stratford Picturehouse early because before the film I'll be hosting a special movie quiz in the bar, with prizes and everything! But mainly prizes.

Here's that all-important information in its own Important Information Box:

IMPORTANT INFORMATION BOX

The Incredible Suit's Cumbersomely Titled
Very Good Film And Quiz Night
presents the original

at Stratford Picturehouse,
London E15 1BX
on Thursday December 8th 2011

Quiz starts 7pm
Film starts 8pm
Quiz answers and winners announced 10pm

Tickets are a piffling £6.50 (even cheaper if you're a Picturehouse Member; why not join now?) from the Stratford Picturehouse website and are on sale NOW. Go buy!

Literally and metaphorically, the music is on his side.

BlogalongaBond / The M To R Of Awful Things In Moonraker

2011-11-09T08:53:00.001Z

Of all the terrible things in the world for which Star Wars was responsible - George Lucas' constant tinkering, Jar Jar Binks, grown men dressing up as Jedi Knights - by far the most heinous was the blasting of James Bond into outer space. It wasn't entirely Star Wars' fault, obviously: it's mostly Cubby Broccoli's for listening to the cacophonous mooing that passes for public opinion. Space-based escapism was all the rage in the late 1970s, so what better way to ~~cash in on the craze~~ move the Bond franchise forwards than to wrap 007 in tin foil and fire him at the stars?

The trouble is, the general public have absolutely no idea what makes a good Bond film. They didn't even like On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the drooling cretins. And so Broccoli commissioned a script that was little more than Bond On Demand: a virtual remake of The Spy Who Loved Me (itself a virtual remake of You Only Live Twice) only in space instead of underwater, with incongruous references to other films for no apparent reason (The Magnificent Seven? Really?) and the transformation of a cold-blooded killer into a soft-hearted love machine because under-eights demanded it.

Promoting Moonraker, Broccoli wittered: "This isn't science fiction, this is science fact." Well, sorry Cubby, but this isn't science fact, this is science fucked. A man who falls out of a plane and lands on a circus is unlikely to survive without a scratch. The time between a space station being discovered by NASA and a platoon of fully trained Space Rangers arriving there to blow it up is unlikely to be six minutes. And a spy attempting to follow someone without being spotted is unlikely to succeed by hiding behind a glass vase. He's just going to appear slightly further away.

While Moonraker still isn't the worst Bond film so far (Lewis Gilbert's breezy direction keeps it from being as tediously leaden as Thunderball), it does have the dubious honour of having many of the worst things ever to appear in the franchise. To prove it, I was going to do the A to Z of awful things in Moonraker, but that would take so long it would be quicker to just watch the film again, so here instead is the, uh, M to R. That works, right?

M is for My God, what's Bond wearing?
While Roger Moore looks fairly sharp throughout most of Moonraker, he bookends the film with two of Bond's most alarming outfits: a blue blazer over a roll-neck sweater, the neck of which resembles a large, rolled-back foreskin - thereby making his head look like a massive, bewigged bell-end - and a yellow jumpsuit, the less said about which the better. What next, a clown outfit?

O is for Oh for God's sake

Presumably this is so Bond can identify his miniature spy camera amongst all the others cluttering up Drax's chateau.

O is for Onanism scene that explains plot hole
At the beginning of the film Bond is issued with a wrist-mounted dart-gun thingy, which saves his life early on and is probably one of Q's most useful inventions. Why he doesn't bother using it in any other life-threatening situation except to kill Drax right at the end, then, is a mystery. Perhaps he took it off so he could have a wank without firing an armour-piercing dart into his scrotum and forgot to put it back on again. There's a tragically missed opportunity for a "one off the wrist" gag somewhere there.

N is for Nicola Roberts from Girls Aloud

Not awful as such, just worth pointing out.

R is for Rubbish secret agent
In keeping with his professional desire to remain incognito at all times, Bond blends in with Venice tourists by driving through St Mark's Square on a massive hovering gondola with red and white stripes on it. This scene made my DVD player cry.

A is for Apparently this belongs in a James Bond film

In actual fact it doesn't.

K is for Kill me now

The romance evoked by the slow motion run and the pile of fresh corpses littering the surrounding area is almost palpable.

E is for Er, why is that guy hiding in a coffin?
Why shoot 007 from a safe distance with a sniper's rifle when you can customise a coffin with an arsenal of knives, float down a canal, take out a gondolier first then wait a moment before having a go at Bond, thus giving him the chance to do you in first? Henchman fail #372.

R is for Really? REALLY?

The thing is, Moonraker isn't a bad film, it's just a bad Bond film. Take 007 out of it and you've got a perfectly serviceable, fun seventies romp. Maybe I'm being too po-faced - God knows the franchise shouldn't take itself too seriously - but double-taking pigeons don't belong in a film series that includes Sean Connery shooting a dead man in the back just to be sure.

Fortunately, and as is usually the case, it's not a complete disaster...

The death of Corinne Dufour

Having agreed to a little Dufour-play with 007, Corinne's only future career path as a Bond girl lies in certain death on the orders of her boss, Sir Hugo Drax. In the middle of a film full of crass double entendres and risible sight gags, the scene in which she's chased through the forest by Drax's dogs is weirdly stylish and poignant. Jean Tournier's long-lens photography is stunning, with dappled sunlight and dreamy slow motion offsetting the violence with unexpected class, while John Barry's urgent, menacing cue is one of his career best.

The stuntmen

Despite being jarringly intercut with blatant rear-projection shots of Roger Moore pretending to be in trouble, two of Moonraker's stunt scenes remain breathtaking. The pre-title skyfall was not only done for real by aerial mentalists BJ Worth and Jake Lombard, but done 88 times over five weeks to get all the required footage, while Richard Graydon actually dangled over the edge of that cable car in Rio without any kind of safety attachment, which is both heart-stoppingly terrifying and certifiably insane.

The bit where Roger Moore acts

Coincidentally, I pulled the exact same face throughout most of Moonraker

Having worn himself out developing a bit of character for Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me, Rodge reverted to his usual, eyebrow-waggling self in Moonraker. In a careless lapse, however, Moore accidentally acted a little bit during the scene where he goes for a spin in Drax's centrifuge trainer. The faces he pulls while being subjected to thirteen Gs are amazing enough, but when he emerges from the machine, sweaty and barely alive, it's the most physically unsettled we've seen Bond for a long time. His refusal to let Holly help him gives us another all-too-brief glimpse through a hairline crack in his steely veneer.

And finally: No cock joke this month, sorry, unless you count this poster:

In zero gravity, everyone can see your erection.

BlogalongaBond will return with For Your Eyes Only

What the hell is BlogalongaBond? I'll tell you.

Further BlogalongaBondareading here

This Is Actually Happening

2011-11-07T09:55:00.000Z

I think this is the scene where Bond washes his hands. ACTIONGASM!!!!

James Bond 23, Skyfall And Other Google Search-Friendly Keywords

2011-11-04T00:10:00.002Z

Despite some of the most shamefully unseemly begging emails I've ever written, I failed to get myself invited to yesterday's press conference to launch the new James Bond film. Why the inventor of the world's greatest Bond-related blogging project should be passed over like this is not just a mystery but technically a felony, and I look forward to Sony's personal apology, hand-delivered by Daniel Craig, any day now.

But enough about me and the cruel, hurtful snub I was forced to endure. What about Bond? Well, first things first: the brand was finally granted access to the 21st century this week when the official James Bond Twitter and Facebook accounts were opened. The MySpace page is surely just a few short years away.

The official James Bond Twitter page was particularly useful for reading news from the press conference shortly after everyone else who was there had already tweeted it, and the Facebook page has already become a repository for some of the most incisive commentary the internet has to offer:

Foreigners, eh? Cuh!

Back at the press conference, where Dame Judi Dench was heard to enquire forlornly of my whereabouts, the title of the 23rd Bond film was officially announced - in a move that surprised everyone who's my mum - as:

Or, as the press kit would have it:

I probably prefer black on white, but in all honesty the first one looks better on this dirty beige background.

What do we know about the title? Well, not much. In fact what we really don't know is how to type it in mixed case. Notice the slightly larger S and F? And the way the S is vertically centrally justified whereas the F is top justified so that its tail hangs below the rest of the title? No, of course you didn't, because you're not a massive loser. Here's some detail with added red lines to illustrate my pointless point:

All I'm saying is that I'd like to know whether to type Skyfall as in Thunderball, or SkyFall as in GoldenEye, because we've got twelve months of me banging on about this film ahead of us and my public demands continuity.

Whatever, Skyfall (we'll go with that for now) isn't as good a title as my frequently repeated and ignored suggestion Blood And Thunder (anyone would think Barbara Broccoli doesn't read The Incredible Suit), but nor is it total cock. It's nice and short, because everyone likes a short Bond title, and it's as far removed as possible from Quantum Of Solace, which was so mind-thumpingly obscure to non-Fleming fans that it threatened to drown web forums in a tsunami of WTFery when that title was announced in 2008.

It does bother me that it sounds a bit like a Coldplay album, but I suppose it's the kind of thing Ian Fleming would probably have resorted to if he'd written two dozen books. [Vaguely relevant self-promotional link to an article I wrote for a well-known website] Several commentators have also pointed out that Sony won't be able to insert the 007 logo into it diagonally on the posters, as they did by using the 'O's of Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace. This is clearly a good thing, because the day a Bond film is only allowed a title with two or more 'O's in it is the day we end up with a Bond film called Boobies Boogaloo. Although... *mind wanders for several hours*

Back in the room, director Sam Mendes introduced his cast, and once again anyone who's been following the internet rumour mill remained unamazed. Javier Bardem was finally confirmed, as were Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw (is he Q? Is he? EH?) and Albert Finney, who I sincerely hope becomes the new M by the end of the film, thereby terminating the reboot-crossover nonsense that DJD's presence has perpetuated for two films.

Naomie Harris won't be Moneypenny, which is a bit disappointing - instead she'll play Eve, a field agent who's definitely not Gemma Arterton, and the foreign-totty-with-minimal-command-of-the-English-language quota is filled by Bérénice Marlohe, whose character will almost certainly be dead before the halfway mark. Incidentally, when asked how she felt about working on a Bond film, Naomie Harris claimed she was "rearing to go". I can only assume this means we might finally see some Reverse Cowgirl action in a Bond film. That's almost certainly what Daniel Craig was thinking at this exact moment:

Skyfall? Eyeful, more like

In other news, it's hardly original to suggest that one Bond film's plot might be slightly similar to another's, but the brief synopsis afforded by today's events does little to quell the naysayers:

"In SKYFALL, Bond's loyalty to M is tested [a bit like Licence To Kill] as her past comes back to haunt her [a bit like The World Is Not Enough]. As MI6 comes under attack [also a bit like The World Is Not Enough], 007 must track down and destroy the threat [a bit like every other Bond film], no matter how personal the cost [a bit like Casino Royale]."

Still, at least they're all at the better-quality end of 007 reference points: if you're going to make a Bond cocktail, you may as well use the best ingredients.

Little more was divulged about the plot, although Mendes did say that "[Skyfall is] its own story. It doesn't connect with the last two films." And that pisses me off a bit. They teased us with Mr White in Casino Royale, gave us a little more by revealing the SPECTRE-esque Quantum organisation in Quantum Of Solace - surely it would make sense to bring that to some kind of conclusion? Apparently not. And that's what it's like being a Bond fan: frequently brought to near-climax and simultaneously frustrated by every little announcement.

I'll be honest, though: it's worth it.

Skyfall is released in 357 days and has already begun filming. Let's hope a certain international sex symbol gets a good night's sleep before he's required on set.

Stand By

2011-11-03T13:35:00.001Z

You might have noticed that there's been a bit of a to do about a new Bond film today. I've definitely got something to say about it and will do so as soon as I can.

In the meantime, here's a picture.

Weird IMDb Thing Of The Day

2011-11-03T09:17:00.000Z

BlogalongaMuppets #2: Beaker Reviews The Great Muppet Caper

2011-11-01T06:00:00.001Z

Sup bitches? Beaker here with another BlogalongafuckingMuppets. I'm a bit late with this - it was supposed to be done in October but I was hanging out at the London Fucking Film Festival watching boring European arthouse shit and boring fucking bollocks about Shakespeare, so tough shit.

Our second film, The Great Muppet Caper, is shitloads better than the first, whatever that was called, The Muppets Sing The World's Shittest Songs or something, I don't know. It's got Charles Grodin in it for a start, the slick motherfucker. He had to pretend to want to stick his cock in a felt pig, and if that's not acting I don't know what is. Also, HELLO, DAME DIANA FUCKING RIGG. That bitch was HAWT. I went to her trailer once and tried to point out the similarity between my head and a nice fat cock, but she was too much of a lady to take the point.

Posh pussy aside, Caper has at least got some decent fucking songs for a change and is actually funny, even though nobody swears. Which is all very well, but there is a big fat fucker of a problem. See if you can guess what it is from these three stills chosen completely at random:

Yep, that's right, guess who's Johnny-Edge-Of-Fucking-Frame-Or-Obscured-By-Bald-Bastard again? That's right, yours twatting truly. I've got a degree in science or some shit, but apparently that's not as good as being a singing fucking frog or a bear whose catchphrase is "wacka wacka". I fucking ask you. Oh don't worry, I get my big scene all right - here I am getting my bollocks electrocuted for the sake of a gag:

Note the heartfelt fucking concern about my wellbeing pouring out from all my great friends there. Oh no, hang on, THEY'RE ALL PISSING THEMSELVES. I swear if Professor Bunsen had eyes I would scoop them out with a trowel.

Right, so that's two down, five to go. I hope you're as thrilled about the next one as I am.

BEAKER OUT.
x

Terrifying Movies To Watch This Halloween: Poltergeist

2011-10-31T06:00:00.001Z

BlogalongaBond / The Spy Who Loved Me: Moore Starts Getting Bond Right

2011-10-28T06:00:00.001+01:00

After the relative failure of The Man With The Golden Gun and the departure of co-producer Harry Saltzman from Cubby Brocoli's side, it was time to go back to the last boffo Bond for inspiration. With Ian Fleming only allowing the use of The Spy Who Loved Me's title (and not the story, which you should definitely read), Broccoli simply hired director Lewis Gilbert to virtually remake his previous Bond film, You Only Live Twice, but with Blofeld's name changed to Stromberg, and underwater instead of in space.

Despite all the shameless ripping off of himself, Gilbert delivers a Bond film which, for the most part, exceeds all expectations. It's Bond by numbers, but it's packed to the sprockets with spectacle and cracking action, and by this point we're so used to Bondian ludicrosity that we accept a villain with an underwater base and an indestructible idiot henchman with metal teeth named after a recent hit movie as if we pass them on the way to the shops every weekend.

The plot is, of course, ridiculous and convoluted (Bond must make contact with Sheikh Hosein in order to make contact with Aziz Fekkesh in order to make contact with Max Kalba in order to secure the MacGuffin) and the film's attempts to address the series' by-now-embarrassing misogyny are admirable but doomed to failure when Bond's female Russian "equal", Anya, is played by a plank of wood with tits and is required to completely reverse her stance on passion-driven revenge when Rodge raises one of those magnificent eyebrows.

Still, there is one thing that nobody expected to be as good as it was in The Spy Who Loved Me, and which is still overlooked today, and that's the occasionally surprisingly excellent performance of Roger George Moore. Don't get me wrong, he's still the worst James Bond, but once or twice a ray of brilliance shines through the clouds of crapulousness, and it's those that I'd like to celebrate here.

Where it took Sean Connery three films to find his sweet spot, Moore was comfortable in Bond's horsebit moccasins from the moment he unzipped that Italian chick's dress with his magnetic watch in Live And Let Die. It wasn't until The Spy Who Loved Me, though, that the combination of experience and a few choice nuggets of scripting gave him the chance to show that he was more than just two majestic arches of hair above a pair of twinkling, lecherous eyes. Take his fight with Oddjob-a-like Sandor on a Cairo rooftop: as Sandor holds onto Bond's tie for dear life, you can see Moore calculating how much tie is left before the teetering henchman falls, and the urgency of his questioning and callous dismissal of the bad guy with a brief hand movement are pure Fleming.

Probably Moore's single best moment as Bond comes as Anya reminds him - and us, for the first time since OHMSS - of his dead wife. Bond has clearly locked away all emotion for Tracy somewhere where it can fester in the pit of his soul, and Anya's mention of her causes a chilling reaction. Moore sits back slightly, backing away from a painful memory, then deploys a devastating eyebrow before fixing her with an ice cold stare and cutting her off mid-sentence. He touchingly admits sensitivity about the subject of his widowerhood and then, in an instant, defaults to jovial mode having buried his feelings even further down than before. The exchange lasts just ten seconds but within it Moore gives Bond more depth than in his previous four and a half hours in the role.

The scene also works to signpost a later one, in which Anya and Bond simultaneously realise that it was he who killed her lover in the pre-credits sequence. It's one of the best-written scenes in Bond history, and Moore again rises to the occasion. Bond knows what it's like to lose a loved one, and the weight of his loss and his empathy with Anya is visible even as he turns his back on her. His confession is unapologetic without being insensitive, and when she calmly informs him that she'll be killing him as soon as their mission is over, he gives a barely perceptible resigned nod, as if to say, "yes, I expect you will, and frankly I don't blame you". It's a shame Barbara Bach is so useless because with a better actress to trade off, this could have been one of the series' greatest moments.

Of course Rodge goes on to bugger it up several times during The Spy Who Loved Me, which is all the more frustrating when we know how good he can be, but for a few brief scenes he shows the world that anything Connery's nostrils can do, his eyebrows can do almost as well. But not quite.

The ski jump

Having just pulled off the greatest Bond stunt yet with a car that spins 360 degrees while jumping a river in The Man With The Golden Gun, Cubby Broccoli thinks nothing of immediately topping it with this outrageous piece of amazing nonsense. Directed by second unit chief John Glen, who would later direct five of his own Bond films, the stunt is the equivalent of the franchise pulling its trousers down and waving the world's most enormous cock and balls (with a Union Flag tattooed on the scrotum, natch) in the face of the moviegoing public, who gobbled it up. The parachute gag may be spectacularly dumb, offering any remaining villains a nice, bright target to aim at, but it was exactly what was required of Her Majesty's loyal terrier in Silver Jubilee year.

The music

With the Inland Revenue finding a few unpaid tax bills down the back of John Barry's sofa, it was left to Marvin Hamlisch to drag Bond strutting and pointing into the disco era with some astonishing funksplosions incongruously teamed up with a bit of Bach and Mozart, not to mention Maurice Jarre's Lawrence Of Arabia theme. And when I say "not to mention", I mean "let's not mention it". The score works though, Hamlisch's Cairo club music especially effective, and Carly Simon's title song is a thing of effortless beauty that revels in Bond's genital-waving superiority: baby, he's the best.

Ken Adam's sets

Having had a six-year break from Bond, the man who BUILT A FUCKING VOLCANO is back with his second-greatest ever set: the inside of a mind-bogglingly massive supertanker. You might think that you had a big idea once, but until a major film studio builds the world's largest stage in which to house it and gets Stanley Kubrick in to light it, your idea measures less than one ångström from end to end compared to this one. Go away and don't come back until you're Ken Adam.

Derek Meddings' models

If there's any indication of the breadth of skill involved in the making of The Spy Who Loved Me, it's the juxtaposition of Ken Adam's colossal sets with the models created by Derek Meddings. Meddings, having earned his stripes working on various Gerry Anderson TV series, created scale models of the Liparus (a 60-foot long 'miniature') and the submarines it swallowed, which blended seamlessly with Adam's monstrosities. He even mastered the art of realistic miniature water, which was still frustratingly tricky to get right in ye olde seventies. Combine all that genius (look at the wash behind the Liparus) with an expert knowledge of which lenses to shoot his models with for the most realistic result, and you begin to understand why Derek Meddings was given the Special Achievement Award for special effects at the 1979 Oscars.

And finally: Only a knob gag this terrible could make it into Alan Partridge's greatest ever Bond moment:

While entertaining 'Log Cabin Girl' with his penis, Bond receives an urgent message from M via his Dymotape-spurting watch. Bond dresses and makes to leave.

LOG CABIN GIRL
What happened? Where are you going?

BOND
Sorry darling, something came up.

I'll leave Alan's best friend Michael to sum this one up:

BlogalongaBond will return with Moonraker, God help us

What the hell is BlogalongaBond? I'll tell you.

Further BlogalongaBondareading here

The Ides Of March

2011-10-27T06:00:00.001+01:00

Everything and everyone in The Ides Of March reeks of so much class that it's a shame the story isn't more interesting. It promises much and delivers most of it, but if it weren't for The Cloonz' solid direction, Gosling's unmatchable amazingness and a supporting cast to die for, there's no way this film would be enjoying its own gala screening at the London Film Festival. And the fact that that's all I can think of to say about it is definitely a reflection on the film and not in any way an indication of my own inadequacies.

LFF 2011 Reviewdump #5:A Dangerous Method / Anonymous / This Must Be The Place

2011-10-26T06:00:00.006+01:00

Here it is then: the final dump. It's been a mostly pleasurable experience but it's time to wipe, flush and put the seat down on this year's London Film Festival. Some kind of retrospective of the event might be forthcoming in the next few days, but in the meantime enjoy these final reviews if at all possible, and leave a window open on your way out.

A Dangerous Method

The third film in David Cronenberg's Mortensen Trilogy sees Lord Viggo playing Sigmund Freud, who goes round telling everyone that all their neuroses stem from their unconscious sexual desires while he spends every single shot sucking on a long, fat cigar. Do you see? DO YOU?

Sometimes, though, a cigar is just a cigar, and A Dangerous Method sadly offers little else beyond Michael Fassbender looking perplexed and Keira Knightley playing a mental patient in a way that makes Brad Pitt's interpretation in Twelve Monkeys look like a masterclass in restraint. Cronenberg's trademark visceral violence is here limited to a superficial nick with a letter-opener, with the director opting instead for a dialogue-heavy examination of famed psychologist Carl Jung's Freud-feud and his attempt to repress his natural urges to bend Knightley over the sofa and spank her till her freaky nipples pop out.

While it's always a pleasure to watch Fass, Morty and Vincent Cassel throw their acting shapes all over the screen, and Keira Knightley gives another critic-silencing performance (her chin-thrusting mad act is uncomfortable to watch, but only as uncomfortable as it would be to watch someone in that condition), I can't find much more to recommend this to any non-psychoanalysis fans in the house. I'm not sure what that says about me but I expect it's got something to do with my mother. Thu 27

Anonymous

Did Rhys Ifans write everything that's credited to William Shakespeare? Possibly. Was it all part of a cunning plan to influence the lineage of the British monarchy? Maybe. Was Queen Elizabeth as hot as Joely Richardson in her youth? Apparently. Much more than that I can't tell you, because when everyone's wearing identical ruffs and haircuts and the year 1600 looks uncannily similar to the year 1560 and everyone's called by at least two different names and Ifans and Jamie Campbell Bower look nothing like each other despite playing the same character then it's easy to get baffled right out of the story. Never mind Roland Emmerich, I'm sure there's still a popular tourist destination you haven't blown the shit out of. How about Stratford-upon-Avon? Wed 26, Thu 27
[Alternative one-word review]

This Must Be The Place

If there's another film at this year's LFF that looks as good as this one, I'd like to see it. In fact I'd like to hang it on my wall and stare at it for the rest of my mortal days, because This Must Be The Place, directed by Paolo Sorrentino and shot by punchline-to-a-saucy-Italian-seaside-postcard Luca Bigazzi, is the most stunning-looking thing at the festival that isn't encasing Sandra Hebron's calves.

While it would be unfair to call it a case of style over substance, there is a danger that the cinematography might be the most memorable thing about the film. It depends how low your irritation threshold is where characters who appear to be the love manchild of Forrest Gump and Tim Burton are concerned, because Sean Penn, though excellent, trod dangerously close to the limits for me. And even though it's much funnier than expected, it does try a bit too hard to be wacky at times, coming off more wilfully obtuse just because it can. Still, it's a coming-of-age tale with a difference and contains the greatest filmed performance of the titular Talking Heads song I've ever seen. And I've seen two of them. Wed 26, Thu 27

LFF 2011 Reviewdump #4:Junkhearts / The Awakening / Wild Bill

2011-10-24T07:52:00.000+01:00

The London Film Festival's still trucking, and I'm still dumping. This is turning out to be one of the longest dumps I've ever had.

Junkhearts

Good old-fashioned British misery porn is back with a vengeance in this heart-freezing tale of an ex-soldier (Eddie Marsan going bat-shit crazy, for once) who semi-befriends a homeless junkie (excellent newcomer Candese Reid), only for things to descend into the kind of unpleasantness that the occupants of every inner city council flat must at some point suffer according to the British film industry.

Even at ninety minutes Junkhearts goes on a bit - there always seems to be time to cram in another woozy, out-of-focus drug-taking sequence - and an ostensibly unconnected subplot feels redundant when it finally ties in to the rest of the film. Having said that, the performances are all great, and there's a grimly realistic cloud of despair hanging over everything, which means when the sun breaks through for the brief and infrequent fun bits, there's a heightened sense of hope.

I'm still not sure what The Observer film critic Jason Solomons thinks he's doing playing a barman in an early scene though; what next, Robbie Collin as a pimp? Alan Frank as a crack dealer? Chris Tookey as an East End mob boss? This madness must end now.

The Awakening

Despite all the amusing photoshopping opportunities afforded by the above still, the awakening of the title does not refer to the arousal from a flaccid state of Dominic West's penis by Rebecca Hall via manual stimulation. More's the pity, because The Awakening could have done with a good wanking scene as light hand relief from some of the overwrought melodrama that seems mandatory in British period films, even when they're about wonky-faced ghost children lurking about in a boys' boarding school.

Hall is pretty good as a 1920s ghostbuster - the opening scenes catch her character mid-mission, like the pre-title sequence of some eerie interbellum Bond film, suggesting a possible franchise for her character: Florence Cathcart: The Spook Spook. Sadly what we get is a fairly bog-standard mystery with a couple of mild scares (the wonky-faced child is really quite disturbing) and a TV-movie conclusion that reveals where Take Shelter got all its ending's ambiguity from - nothing in The Awakening is left unexplained, which stops it just short of being a classy chiller. Harmless fun though, and good to see Imelda Staunton making good post-Potter use of her Dolores Umbridge face. Tue 25, Wed 26

Wild Bill

Dexter Fletcher's East End western, complete with the tower blocks of Newham in place of Monument Valley, a last-act showdown in a saloon and the Playbill typeface plastered all over the titles, is surprisingly good fun considering it deals with many of the issues featured in Junkhearts, but without the all-consuming, crushing sense of despondency that made that film such a LOL riot.

Wild Bill also sensibly stays away from the Guy Ritchie school of filmmaking to which Fletcher, with his useless drug dealers and Jason Flemying cameo, could easily have succumbed. In fact as directing debuts go, Press Gang's Spike Thompson is now destined for the "Ones To Watch" lists alongside the likes of Ayoade and Cornish, despite delivering a much more down-to-Earth film. The Attack The Block comparisons won't end there though: Sammy Williams (ATB's pre-teen terror Probs) is the standout cast member here, and the iconic tracking shot beneath the tower block makes a guest appearance, only this time in daylight.

Wild Bill's underworld crims may not be entirely convincing (I don't know, I've never met any) and Andy Serkis' mob boss is a bit of a cliché, but these are minor gripes that - while undermining the Gritty Social Realism (© Ken Loach & Andrea Arnold plc) - do help to make the film an enjoyable experience rather than the glumfest it could have been. Well done Spike! *pats head patronisingly* Thu 27

LFF 2011 Reviewdump #3:Terri / Martha Marcy May Marlene /The Artist / Bernie / Curling King

2011-10-22T06:00:00.003+01:00

Social misfits and repressive cults are order of the day today, with a little bit of ABSOLUTELY AMAZING SILENT GENIUS thrown in for good measure. Prepare to be Reviewdumped on!

Terri

This borderline-delightful indie comedy about an overweight, resigned-to-loserdom school kid finding unlikely friends gets by on successfully non-irritating quirk, John C Reilly having hella fun again and genuine chuckles throughout. That is, until its vastly misjudged booze 'n' pills-based final act, which undoes everything that came before it and makes you wonder if the writers hadn't been at the same stuff while they were sloppily throwing the end of their film together. Sat 22

Martha Marcy May Marlene

With any luck twats like me will soon stop feeling unable to refer to Elizabeth Olsen without mentioning her appalling sisters The Olsen Twins™, because she really deserves to be accepted on her own terms as a terrific actress - especially after Martha Marcy May Marlene, a disturbing but compelling study of what it means to live by other people's rules.

Cutting between Martha's life inside an abusive cult and her attempt to adjust to living with her sister after escaping, the film edges a little too close to Obvious Juxtaposition territory on occasion but always manages to reign itself in without hitting you in the face with another "Look, life outside a cult is a bit like life inside a cult!"

Filling every washed out frame with simmering tension and sinister unease, Martha Marcy May Marlene has an insidious quality that doesn't let go till the audience-dividing final shot, and even then it maintains a pretty firm grip. Could do with a more reviewer-friendly title though, Jesus.
Sat 22, Mon 24

The Artist

You must be sick to the tits of people banging on about this by now, but the annoying thing is that they're all right. It's not perfect (a peculiar soundtrack choice towards the end will pull anyone half-way familiar with great movie scores right out of the story and into the car park), but it is an utterly charming, wonderful piece of cinema in its purest form. I can't claim to have seen everything at this year's LFF - well, actually I could, but nobody would believe me - but if this isn't the best thing showing then I'll eat my hat, your hat and Jude Law's hat from Contagion. I'm that srs. Sat 22

Bernie

Richard Linklater's gently comedic true story, starring Jack Black as the titular assistant funeral director who becomes peculiarly close to a small town's resident cantankerous old bat, totally belies its director/star pedigree: School Of Rock 2 this is not.

While the real Bernie's story is quirkily fascinating, it doesn't work in this format. Linklater's style and the (mis)casting of Black make it easy to forget it's based on fact, and as a result you spend a long time waiting for something to happen that never does. It's pitched awkwardly between comedy and drama without featuring enough of either, and its chorus of talking heads made up of a combination of real people and actors doesn't help.

Bernie isn't bad, it just never gets out of first gear: it's structured as two halves, and when it threatens to really get going at the half way mark, it instead settles back into a drawn-out fifty minutes as languid as the first fifty. And to waste Shirley Maclaine like this must surely be punishable by thumbscrews or something. Sat 22, Sun 23

Curling King

As good as a Norwegian version of Dodgeball sounds, i.e. not at all. Sat 22, Sun 23

Contagion

2011-10-21T06:00:00.000+01:00

Starring:

It's all very well making a film about an epidemic that wipes out thousands of people, and it's all very well making it more about the infectious spread of fear, panic and greed than the virus, and it's all very well avoiding scenes of people dying all over the place in favour of a handful of personal, interconnected stories, but when you've got Jude Law wearing a flat cap and saying "Crikey" in what may or may not be an Australian accent FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER, you may as well just watch Outbreak. At least the monkey could act.

That said...

Best post-screening freebie, like, ever.

We Need To Talk About Kevin

2011-10-20T08:59:00.000+01:00

Naturally predisposed as I am to not reading any book that the entire population of any given tube carriage is also reading at the same time (see also The Da Vinci Code, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, One Day), I was blissfully unaware of the contents of Lionel Shriver's novel We Need To Talk About Kevin before seeing the film. I don't want to get into a long and boring debate about whether or not this is a preferable course of action when viewing literary adaptations, but in this instance I was so overwhelmed with disbelief and horror at one of the film's final-act events that I thanked my lucky stars I hadn't gone anywhere near the book.

We Need To Talk About Kevin (the film) unfolds in an initially irritating fashion: it hops between four different timelines like a malfunctioning DeLorean, and although it does well to clearly let you know where (and when) you are, sometimes you just wish it would decide on one timeline and stick with it for more than a minute or two. But when the aforementioned event rolls around, tying up neatly with the film's very first shot, the effect is devastating and the method in the madness becomes clear.

That's just one of the positive aspects of Lynne Ramsay's direction, and I mention it first because I don't want this review to seem too negative, hence my burial of the next bit in the fourth paragraph, which the tl;dr generation probably doesn't even realise exists.

If you are still paying attention, then you're probably the kind of person who will find Ramsay's constant in-your-face symbolism as annoying as I did, i.e. quite. Tilda Swinton spends most of the film trying to clean red paint off her fingers: could it be that she feels like she has someone's blood on her hands? YES. A snapshot of a happier time in her life takes place in front of a massive UPS truck: could it be that this was one of the "ups" of her life? YES. The soundtrack is riddled with songs about mothers or sons: could it be that this film is about mothers and sons? YES, WE GET IT. If the film was any more heavy-handed it would need anti-gravity gloves.

And the red! There's SO MUCH RED in this film. I'm not thick, I know why it's there, but at times Ramsay's insistence on cramming as much blindingly obvious red stuff into her frame is in danger of becoming distracting:

Fortunately the rest of the film, particularly the performances of Swinton and Ezra Miller as the titular sociopath, is balls-out brilliant enough to forgive it its faults. If the 'nature vs nurture' debate isn't really explored in satisfying depth, then at least the almost unbearable tension of waiting to find out how Kevin's sister lost an eye is excruciating enough to make the film an unforgettable experience.

Ramsay has, by and large, done an amazing job here, and We Need To Talk About Kevin will easily be the film on everyone's lips, rather than the book in everyone's hands, come awards time. Whether or not the whole world talking about it makes you want to see it is a different matter, but you can take it from me that you really should.

UPDATE: I wrote this review after several glasses of wine, and reading it back the next day I note that it dwells perhaps a little too intensively on the negatives. Frankly though, I can't be arsed to rewrite it and I'm quite pleased with the anti-gravity gloves bit so you'll have to put up with it. Just to clarify, the film is brilliant. Sorry.

LFF 2011 Reviewdump #2:Carnage / Strawberry Fields / Headhunters / Take Shelter

2011-10-19T06:00:00.001+01:00

If you've still got your fingers crossed from yesterday, you can uncross them now: LFF 2011 is getting better already.

Carnage

Based on a French play, Roman Polanski's bite-sized film adaptation makes no attempt to hide its theatrical origins. On a single set over just 79 minutes, four actors exaggeratedly gurn and yell like they're projecting to the cheap seats in a real-time story of the anger, misery, bitterness and disappointment that lurk beneath the surface of middle-class politeness. It's immensely watchable, surprisingly funny (it's got one of the year's best vomit scenes) and doesn't even come close to outstaying its welcome.

A 75% excellent cast make it worthwhile: only Kate Winslet's embarrassing drunk act lets the side down, but watching Jodie Foster screwing her face into a ball of rage in close up (the most obvious benefit of a film version) makes up for it. Unfortunately we never find out much about the characters we don't already know after the first five minutes: their collective arcs just seem to involve going from sober and restrained to drunk and shouty. It's hard to complain about something with such a zippy running time though, and if you can make peace with the stagey feel then Carnage is classy but throwaway entertainment. Wed 19, Sat 22

Strawberry Fields

Sadly not the spin-off about Gemma Arterton's character from Quantum Of Solace (hilarious Bond in-joke) but rather a tedious bit of whiffle about an annoying girl, her annoying sister and the annoying man they fight over while picking annoying strawberries. Recommended for people who like to be annoyed. Wed 19, Fri 21

Headhunters

When you take a step back from a film for a second and look at what you're watching out of context, a shot of a man covered head to toe in human shit escaping from a killer in a tractor with a skewered dog swinging off the front of it is fairly high on the bonkersometer. And while Headhunters doesn't maintain that level of crazy for its entire running time (that would be exhausting), it does repeatedly come up with crowd-pleasingly hellish situations through which to put its hapless protagonist, and it's this that raises it above the standard of most Euro-thrillers.

While the plot isn't watertight and the dull, flat cinematography lets the side down a bit, Headhunters' tale of a semi-professional art thief in over his head (at one point literally, hence the faeces overcoat) barely stops for breath while delivering gruesome thrills and blackly comic LOLzaplenty. I was going to make a joke here about expecting a US remake to have been announced by the time you read this, but in between me writing and you reading it's already happened. Wed 19, Sat 22

Take Shelter

Shit-hot boggle-eyed character actor Michael Shannon gets another chance to headline a film after Werner Herzog's limply-received My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, and he's immensely watchable. When he pops up as General Zod in 2013's Man Of Steel, he'll "steel" that film from under the nose of everyone else in it. STEEL! Ah, dearie me. *wipes eye*

Take Shelter is as weirdly gripping as Shannon's fizzog, despite not much actually going on. His character's apocalyptic visions of an approaching cataclysm are fairly terrifying, and his apparent mounting insanity, which leads him to build a giant metaphor in his back garden, is convincingly portrayed. But while it's definitely About Something, Take Shelter is more interested in building atmosphere and tension than delivering anything as straightforward as an explanation of what's going on. Not that it has to - I'm all for ambiguity, me - but it is likely to cause a lot of head-scratching when it hits multiplexes next month. Fri 21, Sun 23

LFF 2011 Reviewdump #1:The Machine That Kills Bad People / Oslo, August 31st / Nobody Else But You / Let The Bullets Fly

2011-10-18T06:00:00.001+01:00

Right then, here we go. I'll be figuratively squatting on your internet and metaphorically curling out a series of "reviews" of films from this year's London Film Festival over the next week and a bit, so that you can then respond with one or more of the following:

"Great! I'll buy a ticket now!"
"Great! Now I know not to buy a ticket!"
"Great! I've already bought a ticket and am now super excited!"
"Balls! I've bought a ticket and now I want my money back!"
"I don't care about the London Film Festival! Leave me alone!"

So without further ado, here are two to consider, one to avoid and one you've already missed. Enjoy! Or don't, I don't care.

The Machine That Kills Bad People

As good as it was when I saw it earlier this year in Bologna, not that it matters because the last screening was on Sunday. Sorry.

Oslo, August 31st

A complex and meditative (i.e. catatonically slow) portrayal of a drug addict trying to find his place in the world, reconnect with family and friends and deal with crippling self-loathing, Oslo, August 31st is fairly gruelling stuff. Still, this is the London Film Festival and therefore European orgies of bleakness are the order of the day. This one makes for a fairly interesting character study but I'm hard-pressed to remember much about it a week after viewing, except that there's a man in it who looks a lot like Noel Edmonds. I bet they don't mention that in Sight & Sound. Wed 19, Thu 20

Nobody Else But You

This French comedy drama, about an author investigating the death of a girl who believed she was the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe, looks lovely but doesn't get nearly interesting enough for anyone to care who did her in, or indeed why anyone in the story should care either. In fact the only thing it really made me want to do was watch Some Like It Hot again.

Destined to be labelled "Coenesque" (it's got some weird characters and some scenes in the snow) and, God help us, "Lynchian" (someone's trying to find out who killed a pretty young girl), Nobody Else But You is definitely influenced by both but ultimately nowhere near as satisfying as either. It's occasionally funny, well-acted all round and has a great soundtrack, but the pedestrian execution of its unoriginal and uninvolving plot means it finds a home in that sadly overcrowded box of film festival films marked "three stars". Thu 20

Let The Bullets Fly

The opening train hijack sequence - in which bandits flip a locomotive in the air head-over-heels (not that trains have heads or heels but you get the idea) - is inspired, but is an all-too-obvious metaphor for the train wreck that follows. Supposedly a battle of wits between a bandit and a mobster (a tragically wasted Chow Yun-Fat) in 1920s China, Let The Bullets Fly becomes more a battle between confusing plotting, messy direction and the audience's patience. The audience loses. Wed 19, Thu 20

Join me again soon for Reviewdump #2! And cross your fingers that it gets better.

The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn

2011-10-17T08:40:00.000+01:00

Under normal circumstances, the thought of watching a motion-capture film makes me want to puke shit from my cock. Those creepy characters floating through space occupying a horrific netherworld between the cartoonish and the photorealistic just leave me cold and uneasy, their dead-eyed lifelessness coming across like bad taxidermy but without the LOLs.

Finally though, someone has not only found the perfect subject for mo-cap ["actually I think you'll find we call it performance capture these days in order to distance ourselves from Beowulf" - Peter Jackson], but has done it better than anyone else, and has made it serve the story and the action rather than stick it in your face and hope you don't notice the yawning lack of substance it's trying to hide.

And thank sweet zombie Jeebus that that person is Steven Spielberg, finally atoning for the heartbreaking Indiana Jones And The Crystal Skull with The Adventures Of Tintin, a film that finally sees him relaxing and having fun like we haven't seen him do since Jurassic Park.

It's no coincidence that Tintin contains several nods to Old Beardy Features' greatest hits: Jurassic Park, Jaws and - most obviously - Indy are all referenced in such a way that it's like he wants us to know that he's rediscovered his mojo, and while this film doesn't hit the heights of those masterpieces, it's still a welcome return to vintage 'bergery. A lengthy chase through the streets of a Moroccan port done in a single shot, with the camera flying through impossible spaces, is easily a contender for action set-piece of the year.

From the ingenious Catch Me If You Can-ish titles through to John Williams' cockle-warming end credits music, The Adventures Of Tintin is classic rollercoaster filmmaking. The mix of breakneck action and considered sleuthing is spot-on, and with the running time a breezy 107 minutes, Peter Jackson's sequel is a mouthwatering proposition. There's room for improvement next time, though: Tintin himself is a little bland in this film, with all the backstory and character depth going to Captain Haddock's whisky-soaked sea-dog, and bumbling fattards Thomson and Thompson feel like they've been shoehorned in to please hardcore Hergé fans rather than to add much to the story.

Still, with a pleasing amount of gunplay and a surprising amount of alcoholism, The Adventures of Tintin at least feels like it's been made for kids and adults without resorting to tiresome winks at the older audience, and there's so much detail packed into the frame that repeat viewings are destined to prove rewarding.

The cast do an excellent job too: they've been chosen for their talent rather than their recognisable voices, so The Clooney Effect is avoided and at no point does the image of Daniel Craig leaping about in an all-in-one lycra suit leap to mind. Unless of course you want it to, and so what if ~~I do~~ you do?

A pleasant surprise, then, for someone who a) usually can't bear mo/perf/whatever-cap, b) didn't give a parp about Tintin beforehand and c) had all but given up on Steven Spielberg. In fact The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn is almost good enough to persuade me not to mention how pointless the 3D is. Only almost, mind.

Semi-Naked Old Man Birthday Nipples Of The Week #2

2011-10-14T13:30:00.001+01:00

84 today and still he hasn't played (or indeed been made) the Prime Minister. What kind of a world do we live in?

Made Up Reviews 4.0: Live Free Or Make Up

2011-10-14T08:37:00.000+01:00

As another week trundles by with a bunch of releases I haven't seen, it's time to fall back on the old ideas again and make up a load of balls that's of no use to anyone, anywhere. I think this feature might be single-handedly responsible for Rotten Tomatoes' stubborn refusal to let me on their list of so-called "Top Critics".

First Night stars long-faced ham Richard E Grant and ageing warbler Sarah Brightman as Adam and Eve, and is an explicit, X-rated account of the events that occurred on their first night in the Garden of Eden. With thought-provoking scenes of temptation, desire and eye-watering fisting, First Night goes where few biblical epics fear to tread. The BBFC have cut sixteen minutes from the ejaculation scene for "extreme slapstick violence". Nicolas Cage plays the snake.

Dolphin Tale stars Morgan Freeman as Dolphin "Dolph" Lundgren in this daring biopic about the marine mammal who famously became human after swallowing a magic turtle or something. The movie focuses on Dolphin's journey to becoming an action star with the body of an adonis and the brain of a cetacean, and reveals fascinating hitherto unknown facts. For example, I had no idea he was paid in mackerel for playing He-Man in Masters Of The Universe, or that he once broke Sylvester Stallone's nose after Sly stuck a banana in his blowhole.

Albatross is a documentary about the crazy life of movie star Jessica Alba's world-famous bottom which, for the sake of this feature, she has always referred to as her tross. Features previously unseen footage of the Alba tross from its early days being sat on for a living, through its difficult teenage years when it started to develop its undeniable talent but hid from a public unable to legally admire it, right up to the fateful day where it met its soulmate in Alba's Fantastic Four lycra outfit. Nice to look at but essentially full of shit.

Footloose is a remake of the classic '80s film about Ren, a man born with Jellyankles, a rare medical condition which renders the feet permanently loose and uncontrollable. When Ren's girlfriend Louise pulls him off of his knees his troubles deepen, and it becomes a race against time for his best mate Jack to get back before all his leg joints fail and he literally cracks. This version stars a bunch of nobodies and THE QUAID, who staunchly refuses to remove his Sunday shoes in a cavalier fashion.

Real Steel stars Hugh Jackman as a debt-ridden steelworker who, in an act of mad desperation, makes off with all the steel from his factory and replaces it with papier-mâché painted to look like steel. He gets away with it until a skyscraper built with the fake steel collapses, killing thousands, and now the police and probably the mob and maybe also some aliens are after him and the real steel. In an astonishing twist it turns out he's actually a robot made of steel and could have paid off all his debts by selling his hi-tech detachable penis to a time-travelling Japanese inventor.

Dominic West's Penis Inspires Ridiculous Competition

2011-10-13T08:50:00.000+01:00

Those of you who breathlessly follow my every tweet will have already seen this still from forthcoming ~~extended episode of Jonathan Creek~~ British ghost story The Awakening, which I posted on Twitter the other day and which appears to have been created with the sole purpose of giving people something upon which to superimpose a cock:

I tweeted it because I wanted to see what the twisted hive mind of Twitter might do with it given the opportunity and a few spare minutes with Photoshop (other picture-modifying software is available). I was flooded with responses, by which I mean I had one response, from HeyUGuys Big Cheese Jon Lyus, who took the whole "photoshopping a cock onto a movie still" brief and rammed it up its own arse:

While Jon's image is more terrifying than anything that happens in The Awakening, I still can't help but feel that there are many of you out there hiding your light under Garry Bushell.

So I've decided to offer a loft-clutteringly huge prize to the creator of the most fabulously bastardised version of the original still that gets dumped into my inbox. There are no rules, your entry doesn't have to be penisy, just let your creative juices spurt freely. Here's what you could win (dining room table not included):

I realise that may look suspiciously like a bunch of random tat I found lying about the house, but it is in fact:

A pair of Harry Potter 3D glasses
DVDs of Charlie Chaplin's Monsier Verdoux, A Woman In Paris and A King In New York
DVDs of Kill Speed (starring the Backstreet Boys' Nick Carter) and Kung Fu Panda
A blue silk Rolling Stones scarf
Issues 1-3 of The Crazies, whatever that is
Issue 1 of CLiNT magazine, which might be worth something one day but probably not
A never-been-worn The Amazing Spider-Man t-shirt (size small, but would fit a medium I reckon)
A couple of random postcards
A Nicolas Cage face mask, ideal for wearing while watching Face/Off

Now if that's not a prize worth fighting for I don't know what is. Email your efforts to me here before, I don't know, next Thursday or something and I'll announce a winner soon after and post it on this very blog right here for all the world to marvel at. OK? Go!

How To Promote A Film Via Sartorial Sloppiness

2011-10-12T13:30:00.001+01:00

The 55th BFI London Film Festival Starts Today! Or, More Realistically, Tomorrow

2011-10-12T06:00:00.002+01:00

It's October 12th, and according to the BFI that means it must be the first day of the London Film Festival. Of course what it actually means is that it's only the first day of the London Film Festival if you're going to the Opening Gala screening of 360 tonight, because that's the only thing showing today, and chances are you're not. I'm not either so don't be sad.

Tomorrow at 11am though, French pregnancyfest 17 Girls will become the first of over 300 films to screen for normal people at this year's event, and for the next two weeks London's Southbank and Leicester Square will be full of pasty cinema-dwellers snarfing the BFI Benugo bar's famous pints of sausage rolls and clogging up the tourist routes with beards and notebooks.

This year's press screenings have been in full swing for a couple of weeks now and so far I've managed to catch considerably fewer than the 55 I recommended, but enough to know that recommending 55 films I haven't seen isn't necessarily a great idea.

Let The Bullets Fly

Nevertheless, I'll be reporting my findings in a haphazard and rambling fashion throughout the festival until I run out of words or readers, whichever comes first.

In the meantime, take my advice for once and camp out overnight for standby tickets for The Artist. You'll be glad you did, unless you don't get tickets or get hypothermia or get mugged. But that won't be my fault.

This Is What Happens When You Don't Read The Incredible Suit

2011-10-11T08:28:00.000+01:00

The Problem

Source: The Hollywood Reporter, October 8 2011

The Solution

Source: The Incredible Suit, September 19 2011

If you care at all about the people you love, please tell them to read The Incredible Suit. Now proven to save time, money, disappointment and expensive legal proceedings.

Tiny Birthday Nipples

2011-10-10T08:57:00.000+01:00

Charles Dance is 65 today. He was in that James Bond film and also that one with the aliens and the bald lady. For more amazing Charles Dancing, why not have a look at Mary's Charles Dance Homepage, which features possibly the greatest ever quote by an actor to a fan:

"I'm honoured that you should have established a web site on me"

- Charles Dance, 1998

Not only that but you can also play a virtual version of that game where you slide tiles around to unscramble a picture. I don't know what they're called.

Happy Birthday Chuck!

This Is Actually A Thing

2011-10-07T08:51:00.000+01:00

I'm just popping into the shed. Please come and fetch me when all this has gone away.

Drew Struzan: Oeuvre

2011-10-05T08:41:00.000+01:00

Just over a year ago, Titan Books published The Art Of Drew Struzan, a beautiful book full of posters by the man who made every movie for which he designed a poster at least 119% better.

As it turns out The Art Of Drew Struzan was merely the underwear section of the Kays catalogue compared to the full-on hardcore poster porn that is Oeuvre, 300 pages of wipe-clean beauty with minimal but relevant text (written by Struzan's wife, Dylan) and over 250 single, double and triple page spreads of his greatest works. Yes, some of them are also in the previous book, but if you bought that you'll still want to own Oeuvre. Here are five reasons why:

All Struzan's greatest movie posters are in here, and some of them fold out, like this Back To The Future spread that literally made my pants explode.

Ouevre also features plenty of Struzan's more obscure film work, such as these posters for 1983 jockey biopic (they hadn't yet coined the now-familiar contraction 'bijockip') Champions and Ed Harris-starring WWII caper Code Name: Emerald (me neither).

Struzan's Star Wars work extends into the Expanded Universe, and much of that is in here too. This one is for The Courtship Of Princess Leia, the synopsis of which I've just read on Wikipedia and have yet to stop laughing.

I don't know about you but I had no idea Drew Struzan had designed two Princess Diana collectors' plates. The one on the left is called "Princess Of Hope" and the one on the right is called "Princess Who Just Audibly Broke Wind In Public". I made one of those up.

At the back of the book is a collection of Struzan's personal artwork, which largely consists of nudes and children. Be advised, therefore, that reading this section on the bus may get you arrested.

Flippant piffle aside, Oeuvre is an astonishing collection and I can't recommend it highly enough. It's published by Titan Books on October 14th at the ludicrously good value RRP of £29.99, but you can get it for less than nineteen quid at Amazon, meaning it would actually cost you not to buy it.

The Muppets Poster Is Etymologically Confusing

2011-10-04T06:00:00.001+01:00

I don't know if The Muppets is trying to force the Americans to spell properly or the English to adopt Thanksgiving as a national holiday, but I suspect that it will fail at both.

Tyrannosaur

2011-10-03T06:00:00.000+01:00

With its story of a man and a woman brought together by fate and destined to help each other out under difficult circumstances, Tyrannosaur could easily have had a completely different title in a parallel universe.

Fortunately for this reality, what we actually get is a film that's unflinchingly brutal, tectonically moving, really quite brilliant and which at no point features Peter Mullan dancing to Kriss Kross.

Paddy Considine becomes the latest name on a long, delicious list of British directors who've crafted debuts in the last couple of years that belie their experience, and it's his steady hand that keeps this compact tale of demons and angels from tipping too far one way into Eastenders: The Serious Episodes territory and too far the other into a gruesome, OTT shoutyfest.

It helps that Considine's hired Peter Mullan and his astonishing voice, which originates somewhere in the bowels of Hell before rumbling out of his mouth like a malevolent Harley Davidson. Mullan's walking anger-management case study is a formidable presence, managing somehow to evoke sympathy and antipathy in equal measure, and it's hard to take your eyes off him, no matter how reprehensible his actions.

But even Mullan is overshadowed by Olivia Colman, who couldn't be further from her more familiar silly-faced roles in TV comedy. Colman's portrayal of a woman about to lose faith in everyone and everything is a revelation, and her scenes with Eddie Marsan, who edges closer to typecasting hell as another utter shit, are among the most intense in modern cinema, despite mostly taking place in a detached suburban house on a dull but ostensibly pleasant estate.

Tyrannosaur is without doubt An Actors' Film, but it's an important story too, convincingly written and directed in Loachian style by yet another British filmmaker to get excited about. Mostly dark and cold but not entirely lacking in humour and warmth, if it doesn't pick up a handful of awards then something, somewhere, has gone very wrong.

Probably not one for dog lovers though.

It's Hot Out There

2011-10-01T13:15:00.000+01:00

For Christ's sake get off the internet and go and mix a mojito or something.

BlogalongaBond / The Man With The Golden Gun: The Girl With The Forgotten Story

2011-09-30T08:31:00.001+01:00

Following Live And Let Die, Roger Moore barely had time to withdraw from Jane Seymour before he was required to begin filming on The Man With The Golden Gun. The rush to shoot and release the new Bond film resulted in a hectic schedule and a slapdash screenplay that's JW Peppered with nonsense, but it also gave us a film that moves so quickly it's impossible to get bored. If you can put aside the uselessness of Mary Goodnight, the clanging cultural ignorance and the nonsensical plot turns required to shoehorn in another set piece, The Man With The Golden Gun is actually the most entertaining Bond film since On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

It's easy to point out the film's faults, for they are legion, and many BlogalongaBonders have done so with some enthusiasm. However it's not without its merits: it's probably Roger Moore's ~~best~~ least worst turn as 007, the action sequences are leagues above the previous two films, there's a refreshing lack of stoopid gadgets and the way Bond and Scaramanga are brought together is surprisingly well thought out.

Perhaps the film's biggest crime, though, is the under-exploration of the surprisingly complex character of Scaramanga's girlfriend / sex object Andrea Anders, played with subtlety and dignity by Maud Adams. It's Andrea who kicks off the whole plot by tricking Bond into thinking that Scaramanga wants him dead in order to get 007 to kill her abusive lover first, and although she only appears in a handful of scenes, she hints at a plot thread far more interesting than any that ended up in the film.

From the very first scene it's clear that Andrea's trapped in a mink-lined prison: she looks bored relaxing on a private beach in Thailand and betrays a hint of repulsion at Scaramanga's deformed body. It's not hard to fill in a likely backstory for her: young girl, easily impressed by charming millionaire, agrees to visit his island for a weekend and ends up staying for years. It's only later we discover the extent of her slavery: Scaramanga uses her for sex, but only before each kill, and unsurprisingly she's had enough.

When Andrea becomes a stop on Bond's hunt for Scaramanga, our noble hero doesn't help matters by whacking her in the chops in order to extract information. Why she doesn't freely give it up is a mystery, especially as she wants Bond to kill Scaramanga, and the obvious answer is that the script is rubbish. But as another depressing chapter in her life story, her violent encounter with Bond could have been a fascinating development in the plot that never happened.

Appearing later in Bond's hotel room, Andrea finally reveals her hatred for Scaramanga and that it was she who set him up, and offers her body to Bond as payment for Scaramanga's assassination. It's here that her desperate situation and pathetic lack of self-worth are most touchingly conveyed by Adams - she hasn't fallen for Bond, she just thinks that's how men work, and sadly the filmmakers agree with her, using it as an excuse for 007 to get his oats rather than a chance for some character development. It's at this point that Bond should probably have stopped thinking with his cock and realised that the manly thing to do would be to put her somewhere safe and get on with sorting out her less-than-sweet sugar daddy.

Inevitably, Andrea pays the ultimate price for crossing paths with Scaramanga and Bond, and that's when 007's mission should have become one of revenge for her miserable life and death as well as a futile attempt to ease his own conscience after getting her killed. Sadly nobody involved with The Man With The Golden Gun had the balls to pull it off, and instead we get midgets, flying cars and comedy racist sheriffs.

Still, it's not all bad...

The locations

The Man With The Golden Gun is one of those Bond films where the story was written around the locations, which is reflected in the weakness of the former and the strength of the latter. With filming taking place in, among other places, an actual Macau casino, an actual floating market in Thailand and an actual Muay Thai boxing arena, it's a veritable travelogue of South East Asia, and every inch of the region is squeezed for lovingly-shot detail by the second unit.

The lining of this jacket

Rodge wears six or seven different suits during the course of this film, and considering it's 1974 it's a minor miracle that, by and large, they're not all hideously dated. However it's the lining on this number that, thanks to an unpredictable Bangkok breeze, gets an ill-advised airing. No wonder his reputation precedes him everywhere he goes, he's the only man in the world wearing his grandparents' wallpaper on the inside of his schmutter.

The bridge jump

Without a doubt one of the greatest movie stunts of all time, and certainly the greatest Bond stunt so far, the "astro spiral jump", as it was ridiculously known, was performed in one take by a stunt driver who'd never done it before. It's utterly ludicrous, of course, but that doesn't detract from its genius. What does detract from its genius is John Barry playing a comedy whistle over it as if Bond's trousers have fallen down. BAD BARRY.

BlogalongaBond will return with The Spy Who Loved Me

What the hell is BlogalongaBond? I'll tell you.

Further BlogalongaBondareading here

Melancholia

2011-09-29T06:00:00.001+01:00

I haven't seen it.

Watching Films Outside Is The New Black

2011-09-28T08:39:00.000+01:00

Last Friday evening I hauled my ass all the way to London's delightful Fulham Palace to see an outdoor screening of Some Like It Hot.

I don't know about the rest of the country but you can't walk ten paces in London during the summer without tripping over an outdoor screening of something or other. They're everywhere. I've managed to get to a pathetically embarrassing four this year - the Die Hard / Attack The Block double bill at Somerset House, The General at Canary Wharf, Rocky on the roof of the Queen Of Hoxton pub and Some Like It Hot.

Given the right conditions - an absence of rain, at least a bottle of wine per person and a good crowd - these screenings can turn a good film into a great experience. Discovering The General at The Scoop a few years ago, and watching open-air singalongs like Moulin Rouge!, Singin' In The Rain (in the rain) and even Mamma Mia! have been some of the best nights out I've ever had in the capital. In fact I was saddened to discover recently that watching Mamma Mia! at home with less than a bottle of wine inside you is the movie equivalent of going to bed drunk with Amanda Seyfried and waking up in the morning to find you've actually slept with Stellan Skarsgård.

Conditions were almost perfect at Fulham Palace (the audience could have been a bit more enthusiastic: by and large they looked like they were a bit scared to have left the comfort of Waitrose) and The Nomad, who put the screening on, did a fine job with the extracurricular entertainment even though none of it was of any use to me. There was a live jazz band (I hate jazz), a man shining shoes for free (I am rarely seen without trainers) and a small photo studio where you could dress up like a 1920s flapper and have your picture taken (I'm not a transvestite).

Picture and sound quality were tip-top - not an easy thing to get right outdoors - and there was plenty of room to spread out; in fact the only thing missing was my own personal toilet, as it's impossible to duck out of Some Like It Hot without missing a few pages of some of the greatest dialogue ever written for the screen.

But it was Billy Wilder's masterpiece that made the evening such a joy. It's at least twenty years since I last saw Some Like It Hot, and its brilliance went straight over my stupid spotty-faced head then. This time I boggled at the perfection of Wilder's compositions, literally almost wet myself at every zinger that flew out of the script, fell in love with Marilyn Monroe, delighted in the company of Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis and probably actually pissed myself at Curtis' Cary Grant impression ("Who talks like that?").

I'd like to think that Some Like It Hot stands up to repeat viewings better than Mamma Mia!, but if not I'll be only too happy to find it at another outdoor screening next year and enjoy another bladder-threatening evening of ridiculous fun.

BlogalongaMuppets #1: Beaker Reviews The Muppet Movie

2011-09-27T08:33:00.002+01:00

Sup bitches? I'm Beaker, the greatest fucking Muppet of them all, and this is BlogalongaMuppets. It's like BlogalongaBond but shitloads better because it's got me in it and not some walking pair of eyebrows poncing about pretending to be hard and calling everyone "darling". Wanker.

Anyway, I'm here to tell you all about my first film, The Muppet Movie, so at least have the common decency to shut the fuck up and listen.

It's all right I suppose. There are some good bits, like that little green prick Kermit riding a bike and a giant version of crack-addicted mentalist Animal emerging from the top of a building and that, but by and large it's a bit flat. There isn't a right lot going on to justify even 95 minutes of running time, and some of the songs are a bit insipid. "Why are there so many songs about rainbows?" I don't fucking know, but you're not helping by wailing another one out are you, you great green turd? Jesus. And when you've seen one cameo from a late '70s American comedian, well, you've seen them all. And in this film I think you actually do see them all. Most of them aren't even funny, they're just desperate to jump on the Muppet bandwagon, the pathetic bastards.

Worst of all, I'm only in The Muppet Movie for a few minutes, meeping about with that slapheaded twat Bunsen as usual. He drives me round the fucking bend. After that scene I get shoved to the back of the crowd as usual while the frog, bear and pig hog all the action. They make me sick.

Anyway, never mind. There are five more of these films, plus a brand new one next year so I'm hoping I get a bit more of a look in further down the line. If not I might just shove a whole jar of Bunsen's insta-grow tablets up his arse just to see if he pops, the short-sighted tit.

Cheers!

B x

The Arena Of Destiny: The Face/Off Edition

2011-09-26T08:04:00.000+01:00

Last week's competition to win two tickets to this Thursday's screening of Face/Off at the Stratford Picturehouse and a limited edition poster for the event designed by Sam Gilbey drew, ooh, multiple entries, some of which even came from different people. Quick hint: if you're going to enter a competition several times using different names, at least try to make sure every single entry doesn't say "Sent from [your name]'s iPhone" at the bottom. OK, Hafsa Osman?

As is tediously necessary in these situations, all correct answerers (that's a word, right?) entered the Arena Of Destiny so that a winner could be chosen. And who better to pick the victor this time than Mr John Travolta, wearing Nicolas Cage's face while relaxing at home? Nobody, that's who.

Congratulations, lucky winner! I'll be in touch.

By the way, the answer was a) Faces, and not b) Faeces. Sorry Tony Cox and James Whitfield; better luck next time.

Still Great: Jurassic Park

2011-09-23T08:08:00.001+01:00

Steven Spielberg's masterclass in action cinema set-pieces is re-released for a limited time in cinemas in a trouser-burstingly spectacular new digital print today.

Ignore the clunky exposition and plot nonsense (John Hammond was present at the birth of every single dinosaur in the park? How long has he been there? Does this multi-billionaire businessman really intend to introduce each tour of the park alongside his pre-recorded self? Did none of the scientists know anything about spontaneous sex-changing frog DNA?) and go for the flawless combination of Stan Winston's animatronics and Dennis Muren's CG dinosaurs, Gary Rydstrom's astonishing sound design, Dean Cundey's stunning, hyper-real cinematography and Spielberg's uncanny eye for an amazing shot.

And try not to think about how it's eighteen years since the bearded genius last delivered a truly amazing action adventure film.

For more excitable dinowaffle than a paleontologists' convention, go and see what's been happening at The Shiznit's Jurassic Park Week. Some of it's quite good.