An Exclusive Interview With Joe Cornish!!!!!!!1

Attentive viewers will recall The Incredible Suit's groundbreaking 2011 preview, and in particular my mounting excitement about Attack The Block, the directorial debut (if you don't count the odd TV show and music video) of Joe Cornish, the taller, less hairy half of Adam & Joe, officially the funniest living organisms on Earth.

Furthermore, those of you who have been unfortunate enough to read more than a handful of my posts will be aware of my love for Joe's theme song for Quantum Of Solace, which came about as a result of Song Wars, a feature on Adam & Joe's 6 Music radio show.

Given this embarrassing amount of fawning obsequiousness, and the fact that Mr Cornish is busy working on Attack The Block, The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn and Marvel's forthcoming Ant-Man (the latter two as writer), nobody was more surprised than The Incredible Suit when he a) agreed to answer some preposterously inane questions I posed him, and b) didn't have me arrested and put under a restraining order. Although there's still time for that.

Hello Joe. I’m a little starstruck and don’t quite know what to ask. What do you think would be a good first question? Any question but that one. That just instantly flips all the work onto me, and the interview’s only just begun. How dare you. Jesus, this interview has got off to a really awkward and embarrassing start. Oh dear. Um... OK, I've got one. You’re that bloke off the telly and the radio. What are you playing at directing a big budget movie like Attack The Block? Every British citizen is allowed to direct one film each during their lifetime. It’s like Jury service. You get notified by post. What stage is the production at? Is it too late to give a small role to a witty and handsome film blogger? I’m talking about me. It’s not a stage production, it’s a film. And I couldn’t hear the second part of the question. A plane went over. Really? I didn't hear it. When can we expect Attack The Block to arrive in cinemas? I’m a bit bored of waiting tbh. Listen Mister Incredible Suit, I didn’t tell you to camp out in a sleeping bag in Leicester Square until the film comes out. You made that choice yourself. So don’t blame me if you’re bored waiting. Edgar Wright keeps banging on about how tired he is making Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Are you getting enough sleep? I’m worried about you. Unfortunately Edgar’s being stalked by Freddy Krueger in his dreams (the original one, not the one from the remake), so he can’t go to sleep for personal safety reasons. Dennis Quaid is currently using my dreams to get to the bottom of some kind of global dream-warfare conspiracy, so it’s important that I sleep for as long as possible every night. That’s just how the cookie happens to crumble. You're appealing to my love of The Quaid there so I don't ask you any difficult questions. Good tactic. Presumably you’ll be recording a theme song for Attack The Block in the ‘Song Wars’ style, yes? It may yet come to that. You’ve been working with Steven Spielberg on The Adventures Of Tintin. I hope you had a word with him about Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. Sorry. There’s another plane going over. Really loud. Must be one of those new double decker ones. Sorry. Hmm. Can you tell me anything about Attack The Block, Tintin or Ant-Man that nobody else knows? Some kind of exclusive would be great for my rep. Christ, it’s circling. So sorry. Oh for heaven's sake. OK, here's an easier one. You and Adam are back on 6 Music this weekend at Glastonbury, which is the best news, like, ever. When do you expect to be back for good? My train journeys are filled with gloom and despondency now that I don’t have the podcast. We’ll be back on 6 Music as soon as we can, if they’ll have us. I have to finish the film first, then I might take a bit of a holiday. Would that be okay? Where do you think I should go? But I reckon we’ll be back in one way or another before the end of the year. Thank you for caring. You're welcome. Try Rhyl. What’s your favourite colour? Blue Peter. Good choice. Finally, could you just say something concise, witty and complimentary about The Incredible Suit which I can quote as if it was an off-the-cuff comment you made down the pub one day? “I love the way The Incredible Suit is a blog about movies by a man.” That'll do I suppose. You may go now. Thanks a million! Thank YOU The Incredible Suit, it’s been a great honour. I enjoy your blog a lot. It’s funny. Bye!

So there you go. To briefly summarise the amazing scoops in there that you won't find ANYWHERE ELSE:

• Joe Cornish has a nocturnal mental hotline to The Quaid
• Joe Cornish can almost certainly be found at Rhyl Sun Centre later this year
• Joe Cornish spends a lot of time under a suspiciously busy flight path

The Incredible Suit can also exclusively reveal that Joe Cornish is much taller than he sounds on the radio.

And now, because I never miss an opportunity...



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Last Week In "Terrible Movie News" Shocker

If you thought last week's 2011 preview was a bit, well, previous, then let me just give you a glimpse of the world we currently live in, and hopefully you'll understand why The Incredible Suit felt the need to be uncharacteristically upbeat about the future.

In the last seven days alone, I was faced with the following news stories:

Remember Tom Cruise as a fat, hairy, sweary film producer in Tropic Thunder? Not very funny was it? Nevertheless, Paramount are planning to make an entire film about him. Nobody asked for this. NOBODY.

Sequels and reboots that are about as welcome as a turd in your porridge are not only being announced almost daily, but are apparently being given titles by people with the creative skills of a full nappy. Apparently Die Hard 24/7 was originally to be a Die Hard / 24 crossover. Thankfully that idea has been flushed away, but the title remains like a lingering stench that requires a window to be opened, sharpish.

Undaunted by the catastrophic Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, plans are afoot for a fifth geriatric shuffle for the once-great hero. The Bermuda Triangle angle has since been denied, but the only way I'll see this is if they call it Indiana Jones And The Incredible Suit. Which is unlikely.

I can't even be bothered to waste my fingers typing anything about a Fantastic Four reboot.

I haven't seen any of Joe Carnahan's films; for all I know he's the next Alfred Hitchcock. That's not the point. Preacher is an amazing comic that will never be done justice as a film. It's like doing 2001: A Space Odyssey as a half-hour sitcom. STOP THIS MADNESS NOW.

Having absorbed this cackstorm of awfulness, I was about to impale myself on a sharpened toilet roll holder when news came through of a new Toy Story 3 viral clip and a preview clip of the new series of Futurama. That'll cheer me up, I thought. This is what I got:

That's just racism.

And then, just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, I found out that Jackie Chan has grown a ridiculous moustache.

Who do you turn to?

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Super 8 Trailer Reveals Dreadful Secret

So here's that Super 8 trailer I babbled incoherently about on Monday:



Hmm.

I think I'm going to take the decisive step of burying my head in the sand and maintaining that this will still be the greatest thing since sliced E.T., despite the unavoidable fact that the last time Steven Spielberg had anything to do with Area 51, this happened:

Oh god, it's all coming flooding back. It's going to be awful isn't it.

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An Incomprehensible Robot And A Massive Hairdo

Now I’m not one of those people who says, “If I had a time machine I’d go back and do blah blah blah”. Having said that, if I had a time machine I’d go back and nail Shia LaBeouf’s doors and windows shut on the day he was meant to audition for Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, but that’s neither here nor there.

The thing about time travel is it’s a goldmine for telling great stories, as proven by the fact that even a load of slushy old chickery flickery like The Time Traveller’s Wife is surprisingly unterrible because Eric Bana’s lurches through time give it a cerebellum-exercising twist. In fact the films that focus on the effects and possibilities arising from time travel, rather than an FX-heavy display of how it happens, tend to be the better stories.

For, as they say, example: The Time Machine isn’t about time travel, it’s about where we’re going as a species. Back To The Future isn’t really about time travel, it’s about the unbridled horror of meeting your Mum as a teenager and having her drool all over you like a rabid mastiff. And The Terminator just uses time travel to kick start a relentless game of cat and mouse between an incomprehensible robot and a massive hairdo with a small woman underneath.

What’s great about these films is their inherent re-watchability. You simply have to see them more than once because the knowledge of how it all fits together only enhances an already mind-squootling experience. Now there are loads of cracking time travel movies that not enough people have seen, and it’s my duty and my honour to make you aware of a couple of them.

Primer

Just about the lowest-budget time travel movie ever (it cost $7,000), but it doesn’t matter because all the genius is in the story. Two mates build a time machine, try and use it to make a fast buck, but double-reverse-counter-cross each other all over the place until nobody knows where they live or what their name is. The mechanics of their time travelling are so labyrinthine that to explain it would be like turning your brain into spaghetti and noodles and then trying to work out which is which.

Los Cronocrimenes (Timecrimes)

Much less boggling than Primer; it will only turn your brain into spaghetti. One man has the most bonkers afternoon of his life when he spots a naked woman in the woods behind his house and - obviously - goes to investigate, a course of action which will leave him bloody, battered, and with various duplicates of himself mucking about in the space-time continuum causing all sorts of monkey business. One of The Incredible Suit’s best films of 2009.

And so, my duty done, I’m off to Hollywood in my DeLorean with a hammer, some nails and a map of the stars’ homes.

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Over-Smuggery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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