Bonkers Malfunctioning-Eyeball Thriller

This is a couple of years old, sorry about that. If I could go back in time to the point where it was actually news I would, but I can’t so I won’t and maybe I wouldn’t anyway, I mean if you can travel through time there are better things to do than retroactively post on a blog that doesn’t even exist yet, surely?

But I digress, and not for the first time. A couple of years ago Martin Scorsese parped out the second best film he ever made. It was ten minutes long, hardly anyone saw it and it was a commercial. But it’s chuffing marvellous and I came across it again the other day and thought, “If I can give one gift to the viewers of The Incredible Suit to reward their love and affection, this is it. Although another picture of a pork chop would probably be equally appropriate.”

So it’s an advert for some poncy wine, but, like Shia LaBeouf, that’s irrelevant. What is relevant is that it’s a spoof, in which Scorsese claims to have discovered an abandoned script written by God himself, Alfred Hitchcock, but which was never filmed. So Marty takes it upon himself to film it in the style of the Master. Not the Master from Doctor Who, you understand. That would be unimaginably bizarre.

So here it is; if you’ve got ten minutes to spare and you love Hitchcock, Scorsese or beautiful filmmaking, treat yourself:

Freixenet - The Key To Reserva
by tvspot

There’s so much about this I love: the dissolve from the title card to the violin strings; the massive pull-out from that close up all the way back through the hall and across the corridor, the 1950s Technicolor look, the clothes, the sets, the fall from the balcony… it’s a perfect replica of how Hitch made some of his greatest films.

What I want now is for Scorsese to take on a serious Hitchcock project. Now I know he’s a religious viewer of The Incredible Suit, so listen up Marty: remake one of Hitch’s lesser pictures (I’m thinking Suspicion, The Wrong Man or Topaz), or follow through on one of his many unfinished projects  – The 39 Steps sequel Greenmantle, bonkers malfunctioning-eyeball thriller The Blind Man or the Bondesque The Short Night would all be magniferous in your hands. Just do it as well as you did that plonk ad and I’ll be Bagpipes Happychap.

Just for Alfred's sake don’t cast Leonardo DiCaprio in it.

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Wax On, Wax Off

Three reasons why the forthcoming Karate Kid remake wouldn't beat the original if they were to face off at the All Valley Championship:

1. It won’t star Elisabeth Shue, who looked beautiful even while gurning:

2. Daniel-san's moves were easier to do in the playground:

3. You won’t hear this song:



Bonus reason: They're calling it The Kung Fu Kid.

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Star Trek

I watched JJ Abrams’ reboot (swiftly becoming this decade’s most annoying word) of Star Trek again recently. By gum it’s good. Some things I love about it:

• Jim Kirk’s Dad, in the opening scenes, is heroic to the point where I caught a light sniffle and got something in my eye, but I soon manned up and got over it.
• Apparently The Beastie Boys’ Sabotage is still required listening in the 23rd century. This is excellent news.
• The whole idea of rebooting (sorry) the series by changing the course of time, and thereby creating an alternate reality for the Enterprise crew, is so genius you could give it a bristly moustache and a Doc Brown hairdo and call it Albert.
• I'm listening to the soundtrack as I type these words, and it's making the whole experience terribly multi-sensual. I think I can even smell Scotty's tribble.
• In a time where every rebooted franchise has to be so dark you need night-vision goggles to see it, Star Trek is bright, colourful and silly, and returns to the cinema a sense of fun not seen since Spielberg’s 1980s run of chucklesome blockbusters (which I hereby trademark as 'Chucklebusters'). In fact I daresay Abrams is well on the way to becoming this generation’s Spielberg. Yes, I actually said that. You read it here first.* 

I’ve never been a Treknologist; in fact I've never been even slightly Treknotronic. I might even go as far as to describe myself as a Treknophobe. But this film made me go back and watch all the old movies again. They’re actually quite good, except for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, which is very very awful, and the 'Next Generation' films have a dangerously high Fidgit Factor. Furthermore, I don’t know any hardcore Trekoraks, so I don’t know if they found the new movie to be a joyous celebration of sci-fi wonderment or a poo on William Shatner’s grave. Not that he’s dead, obviously. But I think The Onion said it best, and not for the first time:

 *Unless you read it on my Twitter page a few days ago

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I'm Such An Idiot

Actor, comedian, writer and composer Peter Serafinowicz once had a TV series called, not entirely unexpectedly, The Peter Serafinowicz Show. I watched a bit and thought it was rubbish, which meant that I missed this:



I’m such an idiot.

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Steve Buscemi’s Bizarrely Arranged Face

Remember the good old days before Shia LaBeouf took to ‘acting’, Robert Zemeckis made real films with real people in them and the Coen brothers effortlessly and with almost tedious regularity squirted out top-notch qualitertainment like Fargo and The Big Lebowski? Well, wake up, ask someone to slap you in the face as hard as they can, and accept the cold, hard reality of the present day, in which TheBeef is the star of the third-highest grossing film this year, Zemeckis can’t even remember what a real person looks like, and the Coen Brothers are making films like A Serious Man.

I can only really describe how terrible events are by bringing out The Incredible Suit’s Coen Brothers Qualitometer:

If ever there was a film in which a bunch of people said a bunch of stuff to some other people, then A Serious Man is it. No bikers from Hell, no hula-hoops, no bowling and no Dapper Dan. Just people. Talking.

Empire: 5 Stars
IMDb: 8.2/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 87%
The Incredible Suit: One solitary tear on Steve Buscemi’s bizarrely arranged face.

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An Open Letter To Michael Bay

Dear Mr Bay,

You will be pleased to know that you are now free to retire. If District 9 wasn’t enough to convince you that a great science fiction film can be made for the cost of one of your haircuts, please take note of the following short film. It was made by Uraguayan Fede Alvarez and is due to be picked up by Sam Raimi, who will probably spend about half of what you spend on megaphone straps making it into a feature length movie.



Please also note the absence of Shia LaBeouf, who has been replaced by a small Uraguayan boy with better acting skills.

Now do go away.

Yours insincerely,
The Incredible Suit
x

PS The phrase "Robots gigantes invaden Montevideo!", which is how Mr Alvarez summarises the plot of his film, is more exciting than both Transformers movies.

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An Album Of Clannad B-Sides

As the world continues to barrel inexorably towards the December release of Avatar, it’s full steam ahead for interweb types who need to write something – anything – about it more often than they need to do that breathing in and out thing.

This week my eyes have been assaulted with previews of James Horner’s soundtrack to the film, which seems to me to be taking things a bit too far. I mean, what next? An in-depth analysis of the end credits? “Those names just keep on rolling up the screen in a relentless vertical direction, reminding us all that what we have just witnessed is a bunch of people who worked on a film for a bit… breathtaking. Stupendous. James Cameron is a genius and should be cloned so he can make all films ever from now on until the end of time.”

Unsurprisingly, the soundtrack is apparently so unspeakably amazing that entire planets have stopped rotating in order to have a good listen. Well, The Incredible Suit has had a bit of a listen here, and can confirm that it sounds a lot like an album of Clannad B-sides. I tried to avoid reading the track titles because I’ve heard they’re a bit spoilerific, but I do know that one track is called ‘Becoming One Of “The People” Becoming One With Neytiri’. So not only is Cameron changing cinema as we know it but he’s also taking an axe to sentence construction and sensible use of the English language.

Furthermore, following in the turgid, ear-insulting footsteps of Celine Dion, Leona Lewis is singing the song for the end credits, the 30 seconds of which I could bear to withstand were some of the absolute worst noises my ear drums have ever tried to stop from reaching my brain.

Anyway, I don’t want to diss Avatar or its soundtrack too much* in case it all does turn out to be orgasmically astonishing, so I’ll halt there in order to point out some much more exciting soundtrack news: Alan Silvestri’s full score for Back To The Future has finally got a proper release, courtesy of Intrada. This is fantabulous news because a) it’s completely ace, b) it was only previously available in snippets on other soundtrack albums and c) it comes with a second CD of a score that Silvestri recorded before dumping in favour of the one we all know and love.

Have a listen to a few clips here and tell me that’s not better than Enya’s cast-offs.

*Too late

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