There Are Worse Things Out There Than Moonraker

I promise to give a complete set of James Bond Blu-rays to everyone who makes it all the way through this. And when I say "promise to", I mean "will not".

Charlie Chaplin: Twenty Minutes Of Love

Imagine this all lovely and sharp and clear with a much better score, multiply it by 34 and you've got some idea of the brilliance of the BFI's Chaplin At Keystone box set which is out tomorrow, and which you could still win by entering this competition. Go on, it's Sunday, what else are you going to do? Christmas shopping? Do me a lemon.

Saturday Playlist #15: Star Trek

I quite like the old Star Trek films. I don't love them by any stretch, but the ones with the original crew are fun and harmless, except for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, which is so bad it makes the Next Generation films look good. And let me tell you, they're not. Watching them is like being at a party with all the boring people from somebody else's office. You don't like them, you don't know what they're talking about and one of them keeps saying "Make it so". Ugh. Thank Christ for JJ Abrams and his balls-out brilliant reboot.

Of the eleven Star Trek films, six composers contributed scores - Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, Leonard Rosenman, Cliff Eidelman, Dennis McCarthy and of course the spankulous Michael Giacchino.

"All of that is very interesting", I hear you yawn, "but what about that version of Pulp's 'Common People' that William Shatner did? That was freakin' awesome!"

I don't know, you people.

William Shatner - 'Common People'

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO

SATURDAY PLAYLIST #15:

STAR TREK

Al Leong: A Life In Henching

Following his brief appearance as Bob Genghis Kahn in this post, I thought it was time to give ass-kicking deliverer and generic Asian henchman Al Leong his very own post to hang on his wall and show to his grandchildren.

Al was born a while ago somewhere or other, and immediately became the go-to-guy for lazy casting directors looking for shifty oriental types. However, his ability to forget more about dispensing pain than you and I will ever know soon earned him roles in all manner of '80s and '90s actiongasms at both ends of the quality spectrum. A glance at some of his character names gives you some idea of the kind of range he could play:

I'm not sure what happened with that last one. It was in a 1983 film called Off The Wall, which was headlined by the box office gold double-whammy of Paul Sorvino and Patrick Cassidy. I haven't seen it but I'm reasonably sure that Al Leong as a cheerleader is the best thing in it.

While Al henched his way through timeless classics like Lethal Weapon, Big Trouble In Little China and Action Jackson, the zenith of his career came in 1988 when he played Die Hard's shifty Asian henchman Uli, described with admiration on the IMDb as a "quiet but efficient terrorist". Like so many of Al's characters, Uli was brutally slain by a wisecracking cop, but not before he brought a touching new dimension of humanity to the oft-misunderstood role of the mindless killer-for-hire by filching a Nestlé Crunch Bar while waiting to kill more cops.

At 58 years old, Al is now a little wizened old shifty Asian henchman, but is still rocking the hair / moustache / beard combo that gave him his magical powers back in the day. He lives solely on a diet of Nestlé Crunch Bars, of which he received a lifetime's supply for his work in Die Hard, and is rumoured to be returning to our screens in 2012 in the no-doubt-Oscar-winning thriller Take Back, which will apparently see him team up with '80s ass-kicking, throat-ripping legends Dolph Lundgren, Mr T and Julie Andrews. And that is a film that cannot come soon enough.

This has been a completely random, poorly researched, occasionally incorrect biographical post from The Incredible Suit. Thank you for listening.

Happy Birthday Grumpy Chops

My Judi Dench Story

Once upon a time I was walking through London's West End when I passed a jeweller's. Inside was a woman who looked exactly like Judi Dench, buying expensive boutique jewellery. I didn't want to stop dead outside the shop and gawp through the window so I kept walking a few paces, turned round and passed the jeweller's again. Yes, it was definitely her. I was so excited and distracted that I walked straight into a substantial bollard that was exactly at testicle height.

I'd like to end the story by telling how Dame Judi came out to see if I was all right and tended delicately to my bruised marbles, but the truth is that she didn't notice and I just looked a bit silly so I went home.

If you have an equally anti-climactic and pointless Judi Dench story, why not learn from my mistake and keep it to yourself?

2010 Ten-Word Catch-Up

Back in 1910, Austrian home entertainment pioneer Professor Frank Lovefilm invented the DVD Rental Experience, and since then we've all been able to catch up on the flicks we missed at the cinema in the comfort of our own homes.

Here, then, to celebrate the centenary of Professor Lovefilm's invention, is a small selection of reviews of films from this year which I caught up on well after they were released, using an ingenious gimmick whereby each review is just ten words long. Because it's 2010. Yeah? Brutal.

Youth In Revolt

Enjoyable indie comedy with wickles supporting cast and exploding caravan.

Valhalla Rising

Insufferably tedious arty twaddle with nice shots of the sky.

Dogtooth

Surreal, disturbing and incestuous Greek artguff. In a good way.

The Disappearance Of Alice Creed

Effective, twisty, tense three-hander. Eddie Marsan's face is astonishing.

Exit Through The Gift Shop

Intriguing, enigmatic, multi-layered and

probably fake non-Banksy documentary.

How To Train Your Dragon

Dreamworks edges closer to Pixar. Solid fun but frustratingly slight.

Exam

Promising idea buggered by appalling script and Britain's worst actors.

Cyrus

Unexceptional but admirable; 2010's second-best Son From Hell movie.

The Ghost

Pretty but ponderous and preposterous

claptrap with unforgivably bad acting.

Precious

Excellent, staggeringly well-acted miseryfest featuring

surprisingly bearable Mariah Carey performance.

The Hole

Initially creepy, ultimately disappointing. At least Dick Miller's still alive.

For more mercifully short reviews, come back this time next year!

Tron Legacy

Over the last 28 years, many people have thought: "Tron had some good special effects didn't it? If that was made today, it'd be amazing!" Then, sensibly, they left the conversation there and carried on with their lives. Disney, however, decided it was a good idea, so spunked out over $200 million making Tron Legacy, with the help of two TV writers and a TV commercials director, none of whom had any feature film experience at all.

Surprisingly, it turned out to be an unmitigated, unqualified, undiluted, unadulterated, unreserved, unequivocal shitsplosion of the highest and most menacing order.

It might just be me, but when the central conceit of a film is something like having to take for granted the unexplained anthropomorphism of computer programs, then I've already stopped caring. Inexplicably, these 'programs' feel fear, anger, love, ambition and greed. They eat, drink, give motivational speeches, cheer at motivational speeches, go to parties and listen to Daft Punk. Really.

The computer world itself is also infuriatingly baffling. Why is there gravity? Why are there clouds? Why is there a sea? Why is it raining? Just what in the name of Sir Clive Sinclair is going on?

And then there's "the plot". Why has Old Jeff Bridges' son been beamed into PC world? Why is Old Jeff Bridges stuck in there? Why is Young Jeff Bridges trying to get out? What does he hope to achieve when he plops out into the real world only to find he's made of ones and zeroes? Hello, here's a lengthy exposition scene to answer all our questions: What's that, Old Jeff Bridges? Something about isomorphic algorithms? Right. A fat lot of help you are.

Eventually it all boils down to a race against time, which sounds far more exciting than it is, and an ending brought about by a hitherto unknown plot device that could have been effected not just much earlier in the story, but in fact before the story even began, which would have saved us all a lot of time, money and misery.

It doesn't help that Garrett Hedlund, playing the notional hero, is possibly the dullest actor on Earth. He's not bad, he's just boring. His dialogue consists either of clunking one-liners or crap descriptions of the sun: "Warm... radiant... beautiful." Yes, very good. You forgot "big", "round" and "yellow".

And then, in an attempt to liven up proceedings, Michael Sheen turns up and blows the film apart. Not in a good way, but in a cane-waving, bastard son of Aladdin Sane and Ruby Rhod, stupidly pointless way.

All of which wouldn't be so bad if the film was actually fun, but it's not. It's a confused, tedious cackspasm with no redeeming features whatsoever; an eye-wateringly expensive excuse to update Tron's light cycle scene padded out with two hours of monotonous cabbage that doesn't even look good in 3D.

So congratulations Disney! Your $200,000,000 has bought you probably the worst film of the year. And I've seen Devil.