Sunday, 7 November 2010

Cast Your Pods To The Wind

Well over a week ago, I recorded another podcast with the Paul and Barry Chuckle of movie piffle, Sam Clements and Simon Renshaw, at the Ritzy in Brixton. Shortly after recording, the podcastotron on which our voices were so carefully laid down exploded and had to be sent to a gleaming white room so it could be nursed back to health by worried looking men with tufts of white hair over their ears and spectacles perched precariously on the ends of their noses.

Following a week of convalescence, the podcast has now been released to an indifferent public who are no longer interested in the London Film Festival, Indiana Jones in 3D or the title of the next Batman film.

Still, as a museum piece it's of minor interest, so why not pour a glass of milk and see if you can make it come out of your nose when Sam bangs his head on the back of the seat?

Picturehouse Podcast 16: Raiders of the Lost Audio File by Picturehouses

The word I am desperately scrabbling in vain for at 18'15" is "Luddite". Yes, I'm referring to myself.

Incidentally, if you're a card-carrying masochist you can subscribe to Sam and Simon's pods on iTunes. Fortunately they don't all feature The Incredible Suit - you may also be entertained by such knowledgeable and delicious babble merchants as Limara from Your Turn Heather, Charlie from Ultra Culture, Catherine from Film 4 and Robbie Collin Not Collins from some newspaper or other and also this blog.

Edgar Wright did one too once but nobody's ever heard of him.

Saturday, 6 November 2010

Saturday Playlist #11: Pixar

Those Pixar films are good, aren't they? Have you seen that Toy Story? It's brillz.
While Pixar primarily cater for the eyes with their spanky computer-generated images of cute toy aliens and big furry monsters with forty billion hairs individually hand-drawn by Californian dudes in loud Hawaiian shirts, they also thoughtfully provide nice music to accompany their films.

All the Pixar scores have been provided by just three composers: Randy Newman, known round these parts as Randy Nude Man (because it's a bit childish round these parts) his cousin Thomas Newman and Michael Giacchino, who as we all know is a bit of a god. Now, thanks to the combined miracles of Spotify and The Incredible Suit, some of the "choicest" "cuts" from their scores are available to be piped directly into your listening sacs, and it won't cost you a single pee.

But before you do the clicky thing, ponder the thoughts of modern philosophers Jedward, who recently Tweeted the following thought-provoking nugget:
Woah.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO
SATURDAY PLAYLIST #11:
PIXAR

Friday, 5 November 2010

Clash Of The Titans In "Not As Good As I Thought It Was" Shocker

Earlier in the year I saw Clash Of The Titans and quite enjoyed it, despite it clearly being, you know, a bit shit. As a result I was lashed by the kind of torrential abuse from the entire population of the universe that would test even the resilience of professionally unpopular people like footballers, politicians or Shia LaBeouf, so I decided to give the film another whirl to see if it was really all that bad.

I have concluded that it is, in fact, shitter than I thought it was. And I think I know whose fault it is:
Surely somebody, somewhere should have spotted this when he was hired? I mean, how can someone with a ridiculous name like that just slip through the net?

"Claude" indeed.

Monday, 1 November 2010

That Was The London Film Festival

As recycling bins around the land groan under the weight of discarded LFF brochures and film bloggers lie awake wondering what in the name of sweet Mary Poppins they're going to write about for the next eleven months, The Incredible Suit takes a look back at what made the 54th BFI London Film Festival the only Film Festival to be seen at in London between the 13th and the 28th of October 2010.

It was a good year for...

Some Films
Not all films were good. In fact some were shit. Some that weren't shit included The Peddler, Blue Valentine, The Tillman Story, Never Let Me Go, Let Me In, Womb, Black Swan, Catfish, The Pipe, 127 Hours and Kaboom. The Incredible Suit's prize for the least shit film goes to the funny and touching The Kids Are All Right. Congratulations lesbians!
Sandra Hebron
Maybe it's just my imagination but the BFI's Artistic Director seemed to enjoy a much higher profile than usual this year. Perhaps it's because she featured in 99.9% of Ultra Culture's Twitter feed over the last month. Perhaps it's because she was interviewed live on Film 2010. Or perhaps it's because her name is an anagram of "Bear's Hard Onn".

Wanking
Not that I mind, but at least a quarter of the films I saw contained scenes in which people took matters into their own hands, which seems like a high proportion to me. Still I suppose that's art. Of those that didn't feature any self-service, Violante Placido in The American probably prompted a couple and Upside Down: The Creation Records Story was just full of wankers.

Sausage Rolls
The sausage and leek rolls at the BFI's Benugo bar are amazing. It's like there's a party in your mouth and everyone's invited, but the coolest people at the party are the sausage rolls and they're only interested in you and want to go upstairs and make sweet love to you underneath the coats on the spare bed. Oh yeah and they come in a pint glass.

The Incredible Suit
Thanks to the Wonka's Golden Ticket that is the LFF Press Pass, I was able to see lots of films for free, meaning I saved almost enough money to buy a portion of sausage and leek rolls at the BFI's Benugo bar.

But it was a bad year for...

Some Other Films
Out of 200 or so films you would expect some to be a bit rubbs. Fortunately most of what I saw wasn't, but the turds among the sausages this year included The American, It's Kind Of A Funny Story, Heartbeats, Upside Down, Route Irish and Edge. The Incredible Suit's award for the biggest load of old Shia goes to the painfully boring Living On Love Alone.

The Surprise Film
Every year there's a surprise film that people willingly pay to see before they know what it is, in the hope that it'll be a sure-fire future classic or a hotly-anticipated new film by an established director. This year it was Brighton Rock, which went down like ejaculate in a bowl of tomato soup. I didn't see it so I can't confirm whether or not it tastes of jizz.

NFT2
Most press screenings took place in NFT2, which isn't a terrible place to watch a film, but it is a terrible place to watch several films in a row, especially if you value your spine. It's also a terrible place to hold a screening like The American which attracts about four times as many people as there are seats. AND there's no mobile reception or WiFi. Speaking of which...

WiFi
Trying to connect to the internet at the BFI is like trying to catch a fish with a hula hoop, which is infuriating if you're trying to write a blog, check the screening schedule or tweet about sausage rolls. When you do manage to connect you're allowed approximately four minutes before the exclamation mark of doom appears and you fling your laptop into the Thames.

The Incredible Suit
Specifically, my amazing LFF preview. I only managed three films from the ten I recommended and two of them were crapples. Most annoyingly I failed to see Submarine, which is by all accounts Tick VG, and The Great White Silence, which looked like it could have been bum-blowingly great. Damn you, "day job"!

So that's the London Film Festival: the only time it's OK to sit in in a dark room with 200 strangers, stuffing yourself with sausage rolls and watching people masturbate. I can't wait to do it all again.

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