Ultra Culture Cinema #01: The Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call - New Orleans

Attentive viewers will recall the time last month when The Incredible Suit conducted some kind of interview with fellow movie blog Ultra Culture about their forthcoming screening of The Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call - New Orleans. Well, the screening came and, inevitably, went and a smashing time was had by all, although the house white wine at the ICA leaves a lot to be desired.

The event itself was not just a film screening but an extended kids' birthday party, with colouring-in, free pop and gifts showered onto the audience by Ultra Culture's Charlie Lyne, the Galadriel of movie bloggers, dishing out DVDs and posters rather than rubbish leaf brooches and bits of old hair.

Next month's screening is antonym of normality Trash Humpers, the quality of which The Incredible Suit cannot confirm, but you'd still be advised to pop along if you can because it's what all the cool kids will be Tweeting about the next day. Deets here.



The Bad Lieutenant, sadly, excited me less than the possibility of a gratis fizzy drink. Nicolas Cage is hard work at the best of times (although Raising Arizona is megs), and although he didn't drive me completely Crackers Patel this time, his manic loon schtick failed to convince me that he was anything other than a weird actor behaving weirdly.

Director and renowned barmlord Werner Herzog seems undecided whether to make a 'normal' film or something typically barking, and ends up with neither, veering dangerously close to a Guy Ritchie-esque crime caper with 100% less Jason Statham and 100% more iguanas. That said, The Bad Lieutenant's refusal to sit comfortably in any given genre is admirable, and the scene in which Cage interrogates a crusty old biddy and her carer is top-notch maddery.

Of course the question on everone's lips is "Is this the film that finally reunites that bad guy and the janitor from Die Hard 2?", and I can happily reveal that the answer is a resounding "Yippee-ki-yay, muddy funsters":

Worth the price of admission just to see these two legends together again.

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Mark Kermode: It's Only A Movie

I just finished reading Mark Kermode's book, 'It's Only A Movie: Reel Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive'. It's supposed to be some kind of an autobiography but don't people usually wait until they're nearly dead before they reduce their entire lives to a few scraps of paper and a massive cash advance? Perhaps Mr Kermode thinks his quiff has reached its maximum density and the next drop of Dax could be the one to cause his head to finally cave in and leave him looking like Adam Buxton in Hot Fuzz.

It used to be the case that I couldn't bear Mark Kermode. I don't know why but I think it might have been his face. Now I'm no Zooey Deschanel but this guy looks like Hellboy with a pompadour. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the 'do was grown and designed specifically to disguise two sawn-off horns.

These days though, I've grown to like him. He is mildly amusing and he does know his onions and he did shake my hand in the street and let me bleat about The Incredible Suit which he then singularly failed to mention in any of his media outlets, but I won't hold that against him. He did, after all, deliver this fine rantsplosion about Pirates Of The Caribbean 3, in which he literally doesn't draw breath for ten minutes:



So I was prepared to give his book a go. It's very readable - if it was a film it would have a nice low Fidgit Factor - but it's sadly not very interesting. He tells a lot of stories but only a couple of them are particularly out of the ordinary, and the rest are along the lines of how he thought he'd done something very badly but actually he'd done it very well.

He also devotes a lot of time to his working relationship with Simon Mayo as if they're the greatest double act since Laurel & Hardy, when in fact they have little to no chemistry at all. In fact I look forward to the day when he parts ways with Mayo to concentrate on presenting the BBC's Film programme. In my list of preferred presenters of that show I would happily place him below Barry Norman but above the double-glazing salesman.

If you fancy reading 'It's Only A Movie' yourself but can't be bothered, here's The Incredible Suit's abridged version:

"Hi, I'm Mark Kermode, film critic. I once had a bad experience in a car in Russia, and another time I was interviewing Werner Herzog when he got shot."

There you go, I've saved you £11.99 (RRP). If you like you can just send me a cheque to The Incredible Suit, c/o The Internets.



Also, The Exorcist: Not all that.

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