Nice Shorts

Apologies if, like me, you spend vast tracts of your life hoovering up every filmic titbit that squeaks onto the interwebs, because you'll probably already be familiar with the contents of today's post. If, however, you're my Mum, this will be an introduction to some very cool things that you haven't seen yet because you were too busy making my Dad's dinner.

Originally this post was going to be all about Parallel Lines, a project sponsored by Philips in order to shift a load of their new super-wide widescreen tellies, but which more interestingly showcases five short films by different directors given the same lines of dialogue but free reign to make whatever kind of film they liked.

The results weren't as exciting as I'd hoped; three of the films were so-so and one was an interesting experiment, but the other was so good it fully deserves inclusion on The Incredible Suit. You can see them all at the official website, but here's the tiptopular The Gift, directed by Carl Rinsch. Try and ignore the irritating TV-display gimmick, the only way Philips could shoehorn their product in:



I was all ready to bang on about how I predict this would be snapped up by a major studio and extended into a full feature in the style of District 9, but it turns out that's already happened. Rinsch's Small is intended as a direct follow-on from The Gift and might just be the best thing since sliced Christopher Johnson. Keep your peepers peeled.

The reason this post isn't all about the Parallel Lines project is because a few days after we were presented with The Gift, another, unrelated short hit the internets which was even better. It's called Pixels, it's directed by Patrick Jean and it's brilliant. Treat yourselves to some brightly-coloured, obscenely fruity eye-crack:


PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
Uploaded by onemoreprod. - Arts and animation videos.

And don't say I never give you anything you haven't already seen (except you Mum).

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Minima: Music To Lose Your Marbles To

In the mood for a slice of classically mad German Expressionism the other night, I crept in an exaggeratedly menacing manner to the Gate Cinema in Notting Hill to watch The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari, having not seen it since I was forced to at university by a sadistic Film Studies lecturer who had no concept of what something like that might do to a hungover student.

The film itself, I don't really need to tell you, was great in its own Crackers Patel kind of way, apart from the confusing ending which, shamefully, I had to clear up with the help of Wikipedia.

What elevated it from a mildly pretentious night at the flicks to a near-religious experience was the live score by genius four-piece band Minima, who specialise in performing music alongside 1920s silents from Germany, the Soviet Union and the UK.



With an ethereal electric guitar, a silky cello, a driving rhythm section of drums and electric bass and a stack of effects pedals, these guys offer up an otherworldly and completely original sound that's the stuff of the Cocteau Twins' nightmares, transporting you into a surreal universe as weird and angular as anything happening on screen. I saw them playing along to Nosferatu last year, which was good enough, but the Caligari score is a masterpiece. If it were available on CD it would be just the kind of thing to listen to while going insane and plotting foul deeds.

From the cacophony of Alan's murder to the melancholy of his funeral via various should-be-classic themes for the main characters, Minima rock The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari like nobody else. I think they might have missed a trick by not punctuating the revelation of the identity of the asylum director, but the mounting menace they created as his murderous plans are discovered was spine-tinglingly hair-raising.

Minima are touring The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari around the south of England throughout April and May and The Incredible Suit urges you to check them out. They're also performing at a screening of Hitchcock's The Lodger at the East End Film Festival on April 24th, which you would have to be certifiably bonkers or dead to miss. See you there.



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John Rambo And The Inconsistently Named Sequels

I filled a Stallone-sized gap in my film knowledge the other day by watching Rambo. Well actually it wasn't Rambo, it was First Blood, the first film to feature John Rambo, although in countries like Austria, France and Italy it is called Rambo. Not to be confused with Rambo, the fourth film to feature Rambo (also called John Rambo), or Rambo: First Blood Part II, the second First Blood film to feature John Rambo (called Rambo 2 in some territories). Rambo III obviously comes before Rambo (unless you're in Austria, France or Italy, where it comes after Rambo but before John Rambo). Where Son Of Rambow fits in is beyond me.

Even the guys who made the DVD box set were so confused they didn't know what to put on the spine, so they just left it blank, irritating carefully-arranged DVD shelf lovers everywhere:

Anyway, First Blood, for both of you who haven't seen it, is daft. A man is arrested for smelling bad, escapes police headquarters and hides in a small cluster of trees. The cops over-react by trying to kill him, so he over-reacts back by punching some rats in the face and blowing up an entire town. Then he has a cry and is arrested again.

Even the poster tagline is daft. "This time he's fighting for his life" implies that we've seen him fighting before, which we haven't, and for something other than his life. Maybe for control of the telly remote or something. Perhaps it's a reference to his time in Vietnam, although I strongly suspect his life was at least in the top two things he was fighting for there.

It's the highest-rated of all the Rambo / First Blood / Over-Reacting Rat-Punching Cry-Baby films on IMDb, so I look forward to seeing the rest over the next few weeks courtesy of ITV4, which is so called because it is four times better than ITV1.

Now if that doesn't get me a job reviewing films for a bestselling newspaper or magazine then I don't know what will.

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The Expendables & The A-Team: No Sissies Allowed

The Expendables

Global testosterone levels were reported to be dangerously depleted over the weekend when it was discovered that almost every last sweaty drop of the stuff had been crammed into the new trailer for The Expendables, Sylvester Stallone's latest attempt to convince the world that he's not some kind of sissy.



In case you couldn't quite make out what Stallone was saying in that trailer, here's a few snippets of his soon-to-be-classic dialogue:

"Rurrrnurrrr Muurrrrrrnnuurr."
"Nnnnmm. Rrrr. Rrrnnnmm."
"Rrrrrrmmmrrrrnnn."
"MMNNRRNNNRRRR!!!"

You'll note the trailer advertises its stars using only their surnames, because that's the manliest way you can possibly do it. After all, Jet, Mickey, Dolph, Steve, Bruce, Randy, Jason, Arnold and Sylvester just sounds like some kind of gay porn cabaret.

The A-Team

And then, summoning the very last reserves of macho juice and piddling them into another two-and-a-half minute clipgasm, came these guys:



"This court is rendering guilty verdicts for this Alpha unit... OR A-TEAM"
"I'm BA... you gonna B unconscious"
"Good morning!"
"It's payback time"

Anyone else think this might work better as a silent film?

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Clash Of The Titans: Titans Will, In All Likelihood, Clash

Clash Of The Titans is a new film about Perseus, a hard-as-nails fisherman in a skirt whose job is to save Argos from destruction by the mighty Kraken.

The Incredible Suit is pleased to report that it isn't nearly as bad as it could have been, or even as bad as director Louis Leterrier's reputation suggested it would be. It is in fact a quite smashing load of noisy nonsense which leaps from one action-packed set piece to another with minimal fuss, pausing only to wedge in some failed attempts at a few Lord Of The Rings-style swooping helicopter shots of people trudging across some barren terrain.

All the bits you remember from the dire 1981 original, which is only watchable thanks to the genius of Ray Harryhausen, are in the new version, with varied results. The scorpions, now referred to as 'scorpioks' due to a script typo (possibly), are bigger and better, although if you can keep track of exactly what's going on in that sequence you're probably doing as much speed as the editor was.

Medusa is a massive CGI failure, not nearly as creepy as Harryhausen's creation - although at the beginning of the sequence I guessed who would come out of it alive and I was very, very wrong, so I suppose I should pat it on the back for not being too predictable.

And when Liam Neeson finally shouts "Release the Kraken!" - which is fast becoming my favourite metaphor for doing a poo - he does indeed release a massive Kraken, right outside the door of your favourite high street catalogue store, and it's quite an impressive one but sadly doesn't hang around in the bowl for very long before Perseus flushes it away.

'An enjoyable romp', then, as I might say if I couldn't think of anything more original, which I can't.

Oh and fans of Bubo, the original Clash Of The Titans' irritating attempt to provide R2-D2esque comic relief should prepare to be disappointed. He's in there, but he's treated with no more respect than he deserves. Say no more.

Clash Of The Titans stars:

The guy from Avatar as Perseus

Qui-Gon Jinn as Zeus

Lord Voldemort as Hades

Agent Fields from Quantum Of Solace as Io

Le Chiffre from Casino Royale as Draco

The kid from About A Boy and Skins as Eusebios

and

Mr Kobayashi as Spyros

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Happy Easter From The Incredible Suit!

Hope you find something delightful inside your eggs.

See you next Tuesday, as potty-mouth Hit Girl might say!

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Kick-Ass: Quite F***ing Good

The first thing to say about Kick-Ass is that, even if you are f***ing British and a southern f***ing softie, you MUST pronounce it "Kick-Ass" and NOT "Kick-Arse". If you choose the latter pronunciation you just look like a f***ing arse.

That settled, I can tell you that Kick-Ass is a f***ing rare thing: a f***ing good movie released in 2010, officially the worst f***ing year for films, like, for f***ing ever.

It's fun, it's funny, it's f***ing violent and it's got an 11-year-old potty-mouthed girl kicking the f***ing bejesus out of every motherf***er she comes by, and - to add f***ing insult to injury - calling them really f***ing rude names. I think as well as a stunt double she must have had a f***ing swear double to drop all those f***ing f-bombs for her.

In fact Chloe Moretz, as Hit Girl, is the best f***ing thing about Kick-Ass. The rest of the cast are fine - even Nicolas f***ing Cage is watchable, and the McLovin guy sensibly doesn't just do the f***ing McLovin thing all over again - but Moretz is f***ing ace. I did come over a bit Daily f***ing Mail when she was flinging a butterfly knife around, because I'm not entirely sure if it's OK to glamourise knives like that, but maybe I'm just being an old f***er.

Anyway despite some f***ing uncomfortable lurches from comic-book laffs to f***ing brutal beatings and stabbings, and a f***ing terribly directed rescue scene featuring an epilepsy-inducing strobe light, Kick-Ass is the most entertaining f***ing thing I've seen at the cinema this year. Although when its competition for that title is the likes of The F***ing Wolfman and Up In The F***ing Air, that's not much to f***ing shout about.

What Cineworld Enfield Did To Annoy Me This Time
Nothing, because I went to Vue North Finchley, who won bonus points for having no f***ing adverts before the trailers. I did, however, have to listen to a woman behind me say, after watching the f***ing brilliant Scott Pilgrim vs. The World trailer: "I ain't watchin' that shit".

What a c***.

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