That's Rogertainment! Rogisode 3: Fire, Ice And Dynamite

The Winter Olympics may be a distant, homophobic memory, but they were the catalyst for my viewing of this 1990 German film starring Sir Roger Moore as the instigator of an extreme alpine sports competition for reasons too stupid to go into (although fear not; I will). Having vigorously enjoyed watching various women's curling teams in action in Sochi, I assumed I might be in for similar entertainment with this stunts-in-the-snow flick; I could not have been more wrong if I had asked John Travolta to introduce Georgian footballer Rati Tsinamdzghvrishvili to Madagascan president Hery Martial Rakotoarimanana Rajaonarimampianina.

Rodge plays wealthy businessman Sir George Windsor, the board of whose company are diametrically opposed to his policies of not slaughtering rhinos or burning rainforests down. Rather than firing these imbeciles who he has mysteriously appointed despite their obvious lack of suitability for their role, Sir George opts for the clearly more sensible choice: to fake his own suicide. Via a supposedly pre-death video, he then arranges the Megathon, a series of winter sports open to all, with the winner receiving his entire fortune. If you haven't died of disbelief yet, his blind hope grand plan is that his three illegitimate children - none of whom he knows from Adam - will enter and win, keeping the money in the family. As great plots go, this isn't one.

What it is, in fact, is the world's shittest excuse for over an hour of stunts arranged by director Willy Bogner, who did such sterling work on the skiing sequences in various James Bond films. The stunts, which consist primarily of people on skis falling over, aren't a patch on anything from Bond, and have the added burden of being linked by some of the worst characters ever committed to film. It's worth taking a moment to examine some of them:

• Alexander, one of Sir George's offspring, is as camp as Christmas, yet is seen entwined with a lady at one point because while being squealingly camp is obviously hilarious, being gay is clearly out of the question.
• Another son, Dudley, is played by Roger Moore's own son Geoffrey. He does literally nothing of any note whatsoever.
• One of the teams consists of a bald brother and sister, comedy villains who are as incompetent as they are irritating.
• One competitor is funny because he really likes bananas.

SUPERMASSIVE MEGALOL

Lowlights of the film include the competition's opening ceremony, which namechecks a lengthy list of disparate sponsors who presumably contributed to the film's budget, and which also shoehorns in several baffling, one-shot cameos: why Isaac Hayes, Nikki Lauda, Buzz Aldrin and Jennifer Rush would ever be found in the same place is a colossal mystery which the film chooses not to address. There's also a scrotum-tighteningly awful scene in which Sir George's daughter Lucy revitalises her flagging team by performing the kind of appalling rock song Germans really went for in their immediately post-Berlin Wall days.

If there is anything noteworthy about Fire, Ice And Dynamite, it is that one sequence takes place at Switzerland's Verzasca Dam, and features a stuntman bungee-jumping from the top of it. If that sounds familiar, it's because the stunt would be repeated five years later (far more impressively) at the exact same location for GoldenEye. It's interesting that in all of that Bond film's promotional material, nobody makes reference to the Roger Moore stinker which predated it.

The whole sorry affair is like The Cannonball Run in woolly mittens, but devoid of anything that made that film watchable, and it delights in frequently challenging you to avoid ejecting the DVD, smashing it into pieces and severing your optic nerves with a shard of the disc. But this is That's Rogertainment!, so what of the man himself? Surely his very presence elevates it from one-star catastrophe to two-star catastrophe with a bona fide legend in it?

Yeah, no. Presumably out of loyalty to Willy Bogner for making him look so good in For Your Eyes Only, Rodge suffers indignities like having to deliver the line "Saving these rainforests may one day save this planet", before popping up sporadically during the rest of the film disguised as his own Scottish butler, complete with an accent which fools nobody but his idiotic offspring.

"Hoots! Ah'm mah oon Scortesh butla ye noo. Wood ye layk sum haggess? Etc."

Rodge even refuses to go into any detail about the film in his autobiography, except to say that his son was quite good in it, which is nice of him. It's more than anyone involved in this icy bollocks deserves.

Rogerating:

I'm beginning to wonder if this whole project was a good idea.

The Wes Anderson Movie Episode 8:The Grand Budapest Hotel

I've come to the conclusion that reviewing any of the individual episodes of The Wes Anderson Movie, which is now in its eighteenth year of production, is an exercise in staggering futility. If you enjoy the other parts then you'll enjoy Episode 8: The Grand Budapest Hotel, probably immensely. If you don't like the others, you probably won't like this one. And if, like me, you have no strong feelings either way, then guess what?

If you've never seen any episodes of The Wes Anderson Movie, then this is as good a one to watch as any: it's the apotheosis of his uniquely genius / gratingly irritating (delete as applicable) style, with symmetrical, borderline-OCD compositions, 90-degree pans, meticulous production design, wacky characters, a tremendous soundtrack and Owen Wilson all popping up as ordained by the Prophecy which I believe Bill Murray delivered on the day Anderson first picked up a camera. In its favour, this episode does have a panoply of splendid facial hair, a glorious variety of aspect ratios (most of it is shot in 1.33:1) and a more tremendous soundtrack than most, but otherwise it's business as usual. I look forward to copying and pasting most of this post in a couple of years for Episode 9.

Indie band biopic of the week: The Killers

Droning Vegas rockers The Killers will be happy this week: the biopic of their early days as impeccably dressed hitmen is released on Blu-ray, and bloody great it is too. The Killers stars Lee Marvin as Brandon Flowers and the improbably-named Clu Gulager as guitarist Dave Keuning, and shows the pair during their time in the early 1960s scraping a living as sharp-suited guns for hire.

Smile like you mean it.

Focusing on one of their most intriguing jobs, The Killers tells the story of Johnny North, the racing driver Flowers and Keuning are paid to bump off, and their ill-advised involvement in his affair with a femme fatale. It's a gorgeous, colourful post-noir gem with some truly delicious costume design and a cracking soundtrack which bizarrely, but mercifully, features none of the band's hits.

Notable for co-starring Ronald Reagan in his final film role as Flowers' nemesis Sam Endicott from The Bravery, The Killers is both a terrific sixties crime caper and a document of a little-known period of the band's formative years. Far more entertaining than the 2010 remake starring Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher, and with a gorgeous HD presentation by Arrow Films, The Killers is highly recommended to all fans of classic cinema and wearisome noughties indie.

Steve McQueen to release one Solomon Northup film a year for the next ten years

Arthouse director Steve McQueen yesterday announced that he intends to make one film a year for the next decade based on the adventures of Solomon Northup, the plucky hero who overcame adversity to tear slavery a new asshole in Oscar fave Twelve Years A Slave. Hot on the heels of similar announcements from Disney and Marvel regarding their intentions to release one Star Wars and Spider-Man film - or spin-offs thereof - every year for the foreseeable future, McQueen says that he believes Northup could also become a screen legend for the next generation of cinemagoers.

Work has already begun on Solomon Northup: Shadow Recruit, which will once again see Chiwetel Ejiofor don the rags and tatters of his beleaguered character in a yarn which sees Northup return to Washington to hunt down his captors, only to inadvertently invent the CIA. Further instalments are also in the pipeline, with Northup expected to go into space for Solomon Northup III: Mission To Mars, in which he helps to free the indigenous Martian slaves using the skills he acquired in his origin story.

Thereafter McQueen says he is unsure where Solomon will go next, but he hasn't ruled out the chances of spin-off movies for other franchise characters such as Master Ford: The Good Slaver starring Benedict Cumberbatch; Bass: A True American Hero (From Canada), starring Brad Pitt; nor an Edwin Epps prequel in which Michael Fassbender's drunken, confused racist travels back in time and gives his younger self his first taste of liquor.

Italian distributors have alredy begun work on their poster
art for Bass: A True American Hero (From Canada)

It is also understood that Disney have expressed interest in buying the rights to Solomon Northup, which would allow McQueen to achieve his long-held dream of a crossover movie with the Pixar franchise. "I'd love Solomon to team up with The Incredibles at some point," the director commented. "His special power would be to generate hope where there is none, and that could prove invaluable when Bob Parr and his family go up against The Underminer."

Harold Ramis1944-2014

"Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and
every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light."

- Dr Egon Spengler, Ph.D., Ghostbusters

Anchorman 2 to be re-released with jokes

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA COATS

News has reached The Incredible Suit that Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues is due to receive a re-release in cinemas this weekend, this time with jokes. The film was originally released in December, but in a bold move for a comedy, writers Will Ferrell and Adam McKay chose not to put anything funny in it, instead relying on shouting and colossal idiocy to evoke laughter from an audience so in love with the original that they would watch literally anything with Ferrell sporting a bushy moustache, even a series of equally joke-free car commercials.

Asked whether the new version's jokes would be carefully crafted by skilled comedians, as is usually the case in comedic movies, one of the film's creators told us: "Unlikely. We just tend to yell as many non-sequiturs as we can think of at each other until the crew goes home, then we pick one at random and stick it in the film. In theory we could make about eighty versions, each with a different script, each as hilarious as each other." The re-release has garnered an 'R' rating in the US, indicating that the comedy goldmine that is swearing has been plundered for its guaranteed hilarity value.

Rumours that the new version of Anchorman 2 will also excise the entirely unnecessary and laughless act in which Ron Burgundy goes temporarily blind, consequently alienating and reconnecting with his friends for approximately the fourth time in the franchise, are currently unfounded. It is understood, however, that the "news team fight" sequence has been extended even further, now running at a full hour and including cameos from whichever actors happened to be passing the studio, because there is nothing not funny about taking the first film's best gag and flogging it until it bleeds.

That's Rogertainment! Rogisode 2:Bed & Breakfast

In my quest to watch every Roger Moore film ever except SpiceWorld, my "research" brought me to this unheard-of curio: a 1992 romdramcom starring Colleen Dewhurst, Talia Shire and Nina "Casey Siemaszko from Back To The Future's sister" Siemaszko as three generations of a family living in a dilapidated B&B in the sleepy seaside town of Peelers Point, Maine. Siemaszko's Cassie is a sixteen-year-old wannabe musician (specialising in the electric violin, natch) with a randy boyfriend who's clearly been watching a lot of Jason Priestley in Beverly Hills 90210, but her mother Claire (Shire) and grandmother Ruth (Dewhurst) are both single, lonely and in need of a good roger. Turns out it's their lucky day.

Washed up (no pun intended) on their beach is a mysterious Englishman who claims to have no memory of who he is or how he got there. Naturally, rather than inform the police, they take him into their home, call him Adam and make him their handyman - much to the annoyance of Amos and Randolf, two local men who were hoping to put their own tools to use with Ruth and Claire respectively. Adam turns around the fortunes of the B&B using a winning mixture of charm and bullshit, and simultaneously fixes the emotional issues of three women incapable of sorting their own lives out without the help of a smooth-talking fanny magnet. I haven't checked but I don't think this film is a mainstay of feminist film theory.

What Ruth, Claire and Cassie don't know is that Adam is a con artist, whose arrival on the beach resulted from being beaten up and lobbed off a yacht during the night by a troupe of achingly early '90s bad guys, all wide suits, slicked back hair and t'ai chi. Their pursuit of him throughout the film is half-hearted and comedically sinister, as if they've inadvertently wandered in from a terrible Jean Claude Van Damme film (The Quest, perhaps). Despite all that Bed & Breakfast isn't painfully unwatchable: as an inoffensive family drama it's fine; it's just nowhere near as crude and chucklesome as this amazingly-taglined poster suggests:

Baffling in so many ways.

Prompted by the translation of the film's bizarre German title Agenten Leben Einsam (Agents Live Alone), I discovered that Bed & Breakfast is automatically improved if you imagine that "Adam" is in fact a British spy called, I dunno, James Bond or something, left for dead and either genuinely suffering from amnesia (as in the novel of You Only Live Twice) or going deep undercover to avoid detection. The only problem with this interpretation is that Adam only explicitly nobs the middle-aged mother (it's implied he might have had a go on the grandmother, who's actually the same age as Rodge), whereas if he were Bond he would have no doubt balled the daughter as well just to complete the set.

In terms of Rogertainment, Bed & Breakfast begins well with the aforementioned scrap on a yacht, which features a surprising amount of Roger Moore doing his own fighting. Given that just a few years previously he practically cameoed in his last Bond film, this is somewhat disconcerting, but happily it's not long before there's a shot in which a stuntman who bears absolutely no resemblance to Rodge is required to take his place:

Pretty sure that's actually Timothy Dalton

He gets a couple of chances to deploy a raised eyebrow and a double entendre: the best is probably when Claire mentions that Randolf could quite easily clear out the septic tank, and Adam asks "When did he last give you a thorough flushing?", which is funny until you realise the innuendo requires you to compare Talia Shire's vagina with a large container of sewage. Still, this is a film littered with odd lines: Cassie says her dream of playing the electric violin on a tightrope "would be the ultimate post-nuclear statement", while Ruth berates her frigid daughter by growling "The only person around here that can't deal with the fact that there's a penis in the house... is YOU", a line which has mystifyingly and sadly never cropped up in a movie quotes quiz to my knowledge.

On the negative side, Rodge at one point decides to go all Goodness Gracious Me by putting on an excruciating Indian accent while talking about how he once made a curry, and for large parts of the film sits around in a chair being waited on. There is a splendid montage of him fixing up the house though, which includes this excellent reaction to the timeless whoops-a-daisy-I've-hammered-my-own-thumb-intead-of-the-nail gag:

Perhaps the ultimate test of the lasting impact of any of Roger's films is to see how fondly he recalls them in his excellent autobiography, My Word Is My Bond (if you look really closely, you can see what he did there). Sure enough, on page 327, there it is:

"I was lured in as an executive producer [...] I should have held out for a better fee and given up the credit."

One for the ages, I think we can all agree.

Rogerating:

The point of all this, such as it is, is explained here.