Rango

As the first full-length animated feature made by Industrial Light & Magic, arguably the greatest special effects company that ever existed, Rango is an unbelievably stunning film to look at. Every frame is so packed with painstaking detail that even the four years it took to make the film seems like a tight schedule. There are moments of such aching beauty that, if someone were to pick random frames at, say, 30-minute intervals (though why anyone would do that is beyond me), each one would be worthy of hanging over the fireplace.

The voice cast do a terrific job too, with Ned Beatty and Bill Nighy in particular bringing as much nuance to their performances as the animation deserves.

It's a shame, then, that Rango is such a load of incoherent, boring drivel. It's a long time since I've wanted to walk out of a film (Hello and goodbye, Johnny English), but when the final act rolled round and it was painfully obvious exactly what was going to happen and that it was going to take about half an hour to do it, I couldn't help but think that my time would be better spent at home watching Take Me Out. And that's not something I generally think.

It's hard to believe that such an uncomplicated plot could get so lost finding its way through a film. Overlong scenes of aimless tramping through deserts or laborious fireside waffle provide handy metaphors for the film as a whole, while central characters go about their business with little to no motivation. Rango is literally thrown into his own story and sets about rescuing a town from its corrupt mayor for no apparent reason except that he's a frustrated actor, which makes even less sense than it sounds.

There are moments of set-piece genius that set the film apart from the usual CGI animation fare - a shot involving a chameleon, a hawk and a bottle is breathtaking - but when they're smothered by such a rambling, shambolic script it's hard to care. And when the jokes have punchlines you can see coming from the cinema car park, it's not even funny enough to bother with just for a LOL or two, because there are none.

It's a fantastic argument against 3D - Rango leaps out of the screen even in two dimensions, with more texture and depth than anything I've seen through uncomfortable goggles recently - but it also puts me in the unexpected position of looking forward to martial arts-practising, farting pandas and anthropomorphic cars saving the world. And I'm reasonably sure that wasn't its intention.

Ultra Culture Cinema #06: Submarine

I failed to say anything about December's Ultra Culture Cinema screening of Catfish because I was so ill that it was all I could do to make it through the film without voiding myself of every last drop of bodily fluids, so I didn't really pay much attention to the trademark "high jinks" and "shenanigans" that accompany these events. I'd apologise for this but I'm reasonably sure you don't care.

Anyway, last Friday night I was in full control of all my personal exits, so I took myself to London's ICA for the sixth in Sky Movies' Blog Of The Year (ouch) Ultra Culture's now almost mythical screenings of very good films: Submarine.

I was going to write 4,000 words about the evening, but we all know that a picture speaks a thousand words, so instead here are four pictures that more or less (less) convey general high jinkery and shenaniganness. Hopefully they also show what it's like to sit behind an eleven-foot-tall News Of The World film critic in a cinema.

Host Charlie Lyne wearing some kind of jumper thing.

The two people in the middle observing the "high jinks" with confusion and fear are the stars of Submarine, Yasmin Paige and Craig Roberts. They obviously need to go to more Ultra Culture Cinema nights.

This man was made to wear a lot of feather boas in order to woo a complete stranger as part of the "shenanigans".

A film is starting somewhere on the other side of Robbie Collin.

Apart from all this there was the customary introductory video in which innocent tourists are made to display a staggering lack of knowledge about something peculiarly British (this episode's topic: Wales), lots of free pop, sweets and biscuits and a "zine" (like a magazine but not maga) with interviews, pictures, important phone numbers and a highly meta introduction from Submarine's protagonist Oliver Tate:

It makes more sense when you've seen the film.

More on Submarine nearer its official release date of March 18th (spoiler: It's brilliant).

Saturday Playlist #21: Oscar's Greatest Songs

The Oscar for Music (Original Song) this year went to Randy Newman for Toy Story 3's 'We Belong Together'. Anyone remember how that goes? Thought not.

But despite having rewarded some totally forgettable songs in the past, not to mention some proper ear-rape (if there was any justice in the world James Horner, Will Jennings and Celine Dion would currently be doing multiple life sentences for 'My Heart Will Go On'), there have also been some songs so good that not only have they taken the little gold-plated fella away but they've also entered the public consciousness to the point where we often forget they were written specifically for films.

So sit back, strap on the leg-warmers for the Fame / Flashdance double bill and bust a cap in someone's ass or whatever it is Eminem does, as you...

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO

SATURDAY PLAYLIST #21:

OSCAR'S GREATEST SONGS

An Open Letter To Icon Home Entertainment

Dear Sir / Madam,

The other day I sat down to watch my recently-purchased DVD of one of my favourite films from last year, Buried. It really is very good, I recommend you watch it. I'm assuming you haven't yet because that's the only explanation I can think of for you releasing it IN THE WRONG ASPECT RATIO.

FYI, Buried was shot in 2.35:1 by award-winning director of photography Eduard Grau, who also shot A Single Man ("Every frame is an aesthete's fine-grained high-polish dream" - Film4.com). I imagine he knows what he's doing, don't you? When Buried's director Rodrigo Cortés asked Grau to shoot his film set entirely inside a horizontal coffin, I can't imagine it was a matter of much debate whether to shoot it in what could fairly be described as the coffinesque 2.35:1 or the, shall we say, less coffinesque TV-friendly 1.77:1 in which the DVD version is presented. He probably didn't even need to consult this section of the Cinematographer's Handbook:

I'm also curious as to why there is no Dolby Digital 5.1 surround soundtrack on the DVD. Initially I cursed my decoder for its inability to process DTS but then I remembered that pretty much EVERY SINGLE DVD EVER RELEASED has a Dolby Digital track, especially one with such complex sound design as Buried.

Can I recommend a couple of things? First, in future, if you're unable to release a DVD in the correct aspect ratio, don't release it at all until you can. I know you think most people don't care, and you might be right, but it's an insult to those that do and to the artists who created the film to spunk out a panned and scanned travesty of the original vision.

Second, I trust that when a proper video transfer and a Dolby Digital soundtrack are available and you re-release Buried, anyone who wants to can swap their inferior, infuriatingly cropped version for the new release free of charge.

In the meantime, despite having told everyone who reads my award-nominated-but-not-quite-winning blog how amazing Buried is, I'll be advising them not to buy it on DVD or Blu-ray until there's a version out there that does justice to the film, because this isn't it.

Please feel free to respond at this email address.

Many thanks,
The Incredible Suit

Iron Man Prequel Out Tomorrow!

Oh come on, it was either that or Ronclad, and I've officially retired the Ron Weasley gag.

Late Review: Inside Job

Inside Job has been out for over a week and was probably about to disappear from cinemas forever until it was proclaimed as the Greatest Documentary Of All Time Well Of The Last Twelve Months Anyway on Sunday night by Team Oscar. It must be counting its blessings (and its takings), being as it is a documentary about the global economic crisis and therefore unlikely to have caused the kind of queues we saw when E.T. was released.

In order to attract a wider audience, it's narrated by Matt Damon. It's almost as if a line-up of near-identical men in suits talking about Credit Default Swaps and Collateralised Debt Obligations isn't exciting enough for modern audiences.

Sadly at no point does Matt Damon beat a Wall Street banker into a bloody pulp with a lollipop stick before leaping out of a 78-storey high window onto a moving train which he then commandeers, drives straight into the Federal Reserve Bank and causes to explode before banging his head on the corner of a desk and forgetting everything that just happened. It's really not that kind of film.

However, if you're interested in how the "current climate" that people keep using as an excuse not to have dessert in restaurants came about, who's largely responsible for it and why it's not about to get any better, then Inside Job has all that and more.

Sadly, as with most documentaries trying to prove a point, it's edited in such a way that anyone who's suffered as a result of the crisis gets their point put across clearly and succinctly, whereas anyone deemed to be A Bad Guy gets all their ums, ers, awkward twitches and shifty glances left in so we can watch them squirm. That's not to say they don't deserve such treatment but it makes it difficult to believe you're watching a balanced depiction of events, which is a shame because producer / director Charles Ferguson is clearly an intelligent man who knows what he's on about.

Still, its 120 minutes go by in what feels like about 109, and if you can tell when you're being manipulated by a filmmaker and can keep up with what you're being told and not get distracted by the man two rows behind heartily snoring, then Inside Job is probably worth a watch.

Neil Brand: Going Underground

It seems like only sixteen months ago that I was at the 2009 London Film Festival watching Underground, Anthony Asquith's quite brilliant 1928 silent film about a doomed love quadrangle set in and around some of London's most recognisable landmarks. The screening was accompanied by The Incredible Suit hero and interviewee Neil Brand and his five man band, The Prima Vista Social Club, and if you need further proof of how great the evening was you can find it in this post.

Branders, as he probably doesn't like to be called, gave me and nearly two thousand other lucky punks another memorable evening when Alfred Hitchcock's silent version of Blackmail was screened at London's Barbican last October, with a full and tear duct-troubling score performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Further gushing can be found in the aforementioned interview if you like that kind of thing.

Like you, I've often lain awake at night wondering what would happen if those two events were to meet, fall in love, get married and have a baby; what heavenly form would that baby possibly take? Well, the answer has presented itself in the form of what I believe I may be entitled to call An Exclusive, which is a first for The Incredible Suit and no mistake.

So get your diaries out and write all this down underneath where it says Wednesday October 5th:

Only try not to spill over to the next day.

That's right, The Brandinator has been commissioned by The Barbican and the BBC SO to write a new, full orchestral score for Underground, to be conducted and orchestrated by shit-hot baton-waggler Timothy Brock. And as if that wasn't enough, it's due to show up on BFI DVD soon after, and possibly have a little cinema run all of its own.

I just thought you might like to know. See you there.