Blood And Thunder

The regular viewer of The Incredible Suit (Mrs Incredible Suit) will by now be painfully aware of my increasingly frightening obsession with James Bond, and in particular my illogical and virtually insane assumption that ruminating on who might perform the theme song (Muse), who might play the villain (Vincent Cassel) and so on will have even the most imperceptible effect on the actual finished product.

And so it is with those viewers - sorry, that viewer - in mind that I present today’s post. I’ve had a good long cogitate, and yes I enjoyed it very much thank you, and I can now reveal the title of the 23rd James Bond film, if it was made in a world in which The Incredible Suit had even the slightest influence on anything.

I’m calling it Blood And Thunder, which is a fricking magnificent title if you ask me, and you have because you entered into a contract to do so by opening this web page. More fool you. But seriously, imagine Muse belting that out at a bajillion decibels. Astonishing.

Blood And Thunder is the title of a chapter from Ian Fleming’s novel “You Only Live Twice”, and I think it’s appropriate to keep to something Fleming created, even if it’s only the title, because it’s respectful to do so. Also it sounds like all bloody hell might break loose which can only result in ten sacks of awesome. As a brief and incongruous cultural aside, you may also be interested to know that Lord Byron used the phrase in his poem Don Juan, the obvious parallel being that Mr Juan, like Mr Bond, is a dirty old womaniser*.

There is, however, potential for Blood And Thunder (the movie) to stink like a barrel of rotten armpits because so many “people” (it would be rude to call them idiot holes) think the last two Bond films were “too serious” that there’s every danger we’ll see Daniel Craig farting about in space dressed as a clown, in which case I can easily see the title being changed to “Thud And Blunder” by hilarious Daily Mail film critics. So be warned, Bond filmmakers, if that happens there will be blood. And thunder.

Some Bond fans have already created their own fictional posters for the next Bond film using Fleming titles and shoved them onto the interwebs:

However The Incredible Suit, rather than bashing something embarrassingly amateur out while waiting for the kettle to boil, can exclusively reveal the official Blood And Thunder poster here! Now! I know!

*I am blissfully ignorant about, and in fact actively detest, poetry. I almost certainly found this trivia on Wikipedia.

To comment on this post, click here

POMDEFCON 1

Just so you all know I’m not a complete movie philistine only concerned with Daniel Craig’s moustache, science fiction meat and an irrational vendetta against Shia LaBeouf, I’d like to point out that The Incredible Suit will be attending an eclectic range of cinematic arty-fartery at this year’s London Film Festival.

I can’t believe anyone’s that interested, but on the offchance that you are, and that you yourself might be mooching about on London’s South Bank with a leather satchel and an unkempt beard bemoaning the lack of interest in Italian Neorealism in today’s youth, I’ll be at screenings of the following films (foreign titles included for added pretentiousnessness):

Amintiri Din Epoca De Aur (Tales From The Golden Age)
Double Take
Madeo (Mother)
Underground
Un Prophète (A Prophet)
Ajami
Starsuckers

If you’re going to see any of those puppies, why not identify yourself as a fan of The Incredible Suit by wearing an incredible suit, or better still, standing up in the auditorium just before the film starts and shouting “All hail The Incredible Suit!” at high volume? Actually don’t do that, you’ll make everyone else cross and they won’t enjoy the film because they’ll be worrying that you’ll make another unintelligible outburst at any moment.

Anyway. I’m most looking forward to Double Take, Mother and A Prophet so I’ll let you know what I thought about them because I can tell you’re desperate to know. Who knows, The Incredible Suit might even make it onto a poster with a snappy quote. “This film is alright but goes on a bit”, something like that.

Just in case you weren’t sure how pretentious the London Film Festival can be, check out the BFI’s trailer for it. It firmly sets the pompous defence readiness condition at POMDEFCON 1, which as we all know represents the expectation of actual imminent attack from ageing, ponytailed, brandy-drinking film lecturers wielding sandals and battered copies of Cahiers Du Cinéma.

To comment on this post, click here

Marathon Hitchcockathon

You've got to treat yourself every now and again. The Incredible Suit is currently in the midst of a lengthy self-treating session which entails watching about 25 of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest films. I started with The Lodger about three months ago and, in all honesty, have not got very far. This is destined to be a marathon Hitchcockathon.

The other day I watched Young And Innocent, which is not, as its title suggests, something I found scouring the scuzzier recesses of YouTube, but rather an excellent Hitchcock film from 1937. It was also known in the USA as The Girl Was Young, which is a technically correct but nonsense title only likely to get you into more trouble asking for it at the library.

Hitch’s early British films are criminally overlooked in your bog-standard pub debate about the best of The Master’s work (Alfred Hitchcock I mean, not the evil renegade Time Lord), so here I am to bring you enlightenment with my unsolicited, unwanted and largely uninformed opinions.

Young And Innocent was the fifth in a run of six tremendous films from Hitchcock in the 1930s. It’s not the best – that would be a scrap between The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes – but second rate Hitchcock films are still oodles better than most films being made at that time, or indeed since. It’s the story of a man wrongly accused of murder and on the run from the police with an icy blonde for company, as 97% of Hitch’s films were, although this one is but a child’s crayon doodling compared to the da Vinci-like majesty of North By Northwest.

Anyway I’m not going to bang on about it all day, you’ve got work to do, meetings to attend, lunch to eat and so on, but I am going to share with you a short clip that’s not just the greatest shot in Young And Innocent but one of the greatest shots in Hitchcock’s work ever, which automatically qualifies it as one of the greatest things in the world full stop, like weekends, wine or white chocolate (Green & Black’s, not that Milky Bar rubbish).

I was going to set the scene but somebody else better qualified does it for me in this sniplet from Paul Merton’s reasonable (but entry-level) Hitchcock documentary “Paul Merton Looks At Alfred Hitchcock”. And don’t panic, you only have to watch the first two minutes. Goodness me, if you’re that busy why are you surfing the interwebs at all? Back to work!

To comment on this post, click here

Twitted

Warning: A rudimentary knowledge of Twitter and its distinctive linguistic and syntactic idiosyncracies may be an advantage in understanding this post. If you’re having difficulty, why not ask a small child to translate?

7,055 Twitter users would have seen this last Friday:

Which is pretty much the second most awesome thing on the internet. Just to reiterate, that's THE BBC calling this an EXCELLENT MOVIE BLOG, which means I can now sit back and churn out a load of third rate bellyfluff, as opposed to the second rate bellyfluff I've been churning out thus far, knowing that I've finally made it. The Incredible Suit looks forward to similar tweets in the future:




I’ve honestly no idea what they’re on about.

In further Twitter news, The Incredible Suit has gone all multi-platform, or something. If I can’t be bothered to review a film at tedious length on the blog, I’ll bung a bite-sized reviewette on Twitter that’ll take about four seconds to read because I know how busy we all are these days. It’s just an experiment, probably one doomed to hideous failure like that of poor old Henry Frankenstein, except I’m hoping my tweets won’t chuck little girls in the lake or try to kill me. Still, stranger things have happened.

Click here to be Twitted, and if you’re on Twitter, why not follow me? After all why should Stephen Fry get all the attention?

To comment on this post, click here

Misguided Sausage

Adverts in the cinema, like income tax, fat on bacon and dark winter nights that start at 3.30pm, appear to be a necessary evil. Because I’m so insufferably anal that I turn up to the cinema about two hours before a film is due to start, I have to endure all those pretentious car ads and unfathomably incomprehensible marketing campaigns for perfume every single time I go. Most of the time I shut my eyes and try to meditate but it’s like trying to survive a shower of molten lava from a volcanic eruption by sheltering under a cocktail umbrella.

Eventually the trailers start, I get all excited about films that are a year away and destined to be nowhere near as good as I’d been led to believe, then the trailers finish and I mentally prepare myself for that glorious moment: the beginning of what could potentially be the Greatest Motion Picture Ever Made.

And what happens? An Orange commercial with Mr Dresden and his “hilarious” sidekick Elliot happens, and I die a little inside. If it’s a new one I haven’t seen before that’s not so bad, but when you’ve seen that fat bloke shout “The chatty hunter!” at Patrick Swayze as many times as I have your soul eventually shrivels up like a raisin.

I tried to think how many there have been and came up with about five, then I did some actual research and was horrified. Patrick Swayze, Sean Astin, Roy Scheider, Val Kilmer, Darth Vader, Steven Seagal, Snoop Dogg, Rob Lowe, Carrie Fisher, Juliette Lewis, John Cleese, Emilio Estevez, Dennis Hopper, Macaulay Culkin, Angelica Huston, Michael Madsen, Spike Lee, Verne Troyer, Mena Suvari, Alan Cumming, Ewan McGregor and Daryl Hannah have all done one, and I’m sure there are more. I think Orange are working their way through every actor that ever lived, although hopefully they’ll stop before they get to Shia LaBeouf.

Of course if you’re a balanced human being and you don’t go to the flicks every ten minutes you may have only seen each one a couple of times, or not at all, in which case you might think they’re quite good, you poor misguided sausage. But which is your favourite? Here are my top five*: watch them over the weekend, contemplate your position on the evolutionary ladder then vote over there on the right. If I’ve left off your favourite leave a comment and tell me. See what happens.






*Actually chosen at random. Top Five my arse.

To comment on this post, click here

Cheesehunk

Nobody puts Swayze in the corner, apparently, although if the corner is where you go when you hang up your mullet for the last time, well, that’s where he is.

But he’ll be pleased to know that readers of The Incredible Suit have voted his turn as hip-swinging, stage-diving, teenage-girl-lifting cheesehunk Johnny Castle in Dirty Dancing The Greatest Swizzle Performance, Like, Ever! So that’s nice.

To comment on this post, click here

Undead Checkout Operators

Robert Zemeckis is parping out another of his motion-capture films this Christmas. A Christmas Carol doesn’t star Jim Carrey, it stars Jim Carrey’s performance and voice. Here’s a trailer to clarify my ramblings:

I really don’t get all this motion capture stuff. It’s too close to looking photo-real to be animation but it’s not close enough to actually look real. As a result “mo-capped” (ugh) people just look like dead-eyed dolls moving in a manner unnervingly similar to humans, in much the same way as Shia LaBeouf approaches acting.

In films like The Polar Express and Beowulf, mo-cap (eurgh) has been used to capture the movements and facial features of actors like Tom Hanks, Angelina Jolie and Ray Winstone, in order to create an animated character that looks a bit like Tom Hanks, Angelina Jolie or Ray Winstone and stick them in an animated world. Am I missing something here? Why not just film these guys against a green screen and make the effort to put a realistic-looking world around them? That’s what happened in the Lord Of The Rings and Star Wars prequel trilogies, and their actors didn’t look like undead checkout operators at the end of a 10-hour shift. Well, except maybe Hayden Christensen.

As it happens Peter Jackson did use mo-cap (bleurgh) to create Gollum and King Kong from the performances of the inhumanly awesome Andy Serkis, so I suppose it does have its place, and its place is creating non-human characters, not vague approximations of humans just peculiar enough to give you nightmares. Of course Jackson has now blown his winnings by teaming up with Steven Spielberg to waste years of quality movie-making time on the Tintin films, to be filmed entirely in, yes, motion capture.

So sorry, I love Robert Zemeckis for giving us the Back To The Future trilogy, but I wish he’d stop mucking about with mo-cap (hrrreeuurrrrgghh) and get back to making proper films. You know, ones that use actual film? If he’s unsure, here’s a handy cut-out and keep guide to the difference between success and failure:

To comment on this post, click here