Clever Words About Films And That

It’s been a while since I did something as uninspiring and pointless as put up a new trailer you can find anywhere, so here’s an uninspiring and pointless new trailer you can find anywhere:



However I couldn’t give a barrel of monkeys about Toy Story 3; obviously I’ll go and see it, duh, but I’m no more excited about it than I am about Avatar, which, on a scale of 1 to 10, is 'not very'.

What’s far more intriguing is this cheeky little tinker:



I don’t know much about Exam at all, except that it got some good press after showing at the Edinburgh Film Festival in June this year, and that it’s small, cheap and looks devilishly entertaining, like Fidgit from Time Bandits on a bungee rope.

There’s no point in me giving you a synopsis because it’s all in the trailer, but what I can and will give you is a solid gold guarantee that The Incredible Suit will be seeing Exam when it comes out on January 8th and sharing its thoughts with you, the viewers. I might even do something original and witty like give it a grade, you know, like ‘A’ or ‘C minus’ or something, what with it being called Exam and all.

The Incredible Suit: at the cutting edge of dead clever words about films and that.

To comment on this post, click here

Robocop Unicorn

At something of a loose end, I recently typed “Robocop unicorn” into a Google Image search. The results suggest that there’s an alternate universe encroaching on ours in which it’s seen as not just perfectly normal, but actually important and worthwhile, to spend your time creating stuff like this:

If anyone can explain this to me I’ll be lying down in a dark room while King Noffin of the Fens mops my brow with a damp rat.

To comment on this post, click here

By Obi-Wan's Beard

There are many, many things I should probably be ashamed of, my treatment of Fidgit from Time Bandits being just one. I don’t even pay him minimum wage yet I get him to perform all sorts of demeaning tasks to ensure the smooth running of The Incredible Suit.

One thing I’m not ashamed of, though, despite constantly being made to feel so, is that I really, really enjoyed last year’s animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars film. There, I’ve said it. It’s out there. Do your worst.

Of course it’s not ‘proper’ Star Wars, nothing is except the first three films. Of course the battle droids are almost as annoying as Jar Jar Binks. Of course it’s irritating that Ahsoka Tano keeps calling R2-D2 ‘Artooie’. And of course it’s odd that each character looks like it’s being played by Kryten from Red Dwarf.

But watch it big and loud and, by Obi-Wan’s beard, it’s breathtaking. The opening battle, which goes on for about half an hour, is astonishing. The direction of the animation puts you right in the middle of it all and doesn’t stop till the last wisecracking battle droid has had its wise well and truly cracked. The sound effects are incredible, the music – rearrangements of John Williams’ perfect score – is energetic and exciting, and the action is stunning. And then, just when you’ve caught your breath, there’s another massive battle that takes place vertically, up the side of a cliff.

I mention all this now because I just bought the first series of the Clone Wars TV show, and it’s just as good. Not only that but it comes on four discs in one normal-sized DVD case, which is more welcome than a last-minute rescue by a roguish Corellian, and comes with a beautiful booklet of production designs and illustrations. AND it features absolutely no trailers before the main menu, which - if you can remember as far back as yesterday's post - puts it in the Top 10 Greatest Things Ever.

If you too are ashamed to show your Clone Wars love in public then feel free to do it here, under The Incredible Suit’s umbrella of tolerance. All are welcome, unless you’re a battle droid. You lot can boil in the fires of Mustafar for all I care.

Being an adult means I can't own one of these.

I hate being an adult.

To comment on this post, click here

Promogasms & Adspasms

Remember when DVDs were introduced? Great days. Here’s a disc, stick it in, there’s a menu, press play and Bob’s your uncle, you’re off and watching something disgusting and a bit phallic plop out of John Hurt’s guts in nauseatingly gross detail and super-squidgy-sloppy-squealy 5.1 digital surround sound. All well and good.

But at some point some Hollywood marketing drone realised there was a small oasis in our lives that wasn’t crammed to bursting with adverts, and as a direct result most DVDs now feature about six days of trailers before you even get to the main menu, and this makes The Incredible Suit very very cross. I have a suspicion that Blu-Ray was introduced because standard DVDs no longer have the capacity for all the promogasms distributors want to force into our faceholes every time we watch a film.

Take the following examples of a few DVDs released in the last twelve months:

The Dark Knight – Four ads before the main menu, one of which is for Warner Brothers’ Blu-Ray range, a pointless exercise if ever there was one. Not only can you not see how much sharper the picture is or spangly the sound is because you’re watching it in standard definition, but the standard definition pictures look chuffing magniferous anyway, so why bother? The Dark Knight also features a trailer for Get Smart, in which Steve Carell is extremely unfunny, only this time in a phone box.

Quantum Of Solace – Three trailers, two studio stings and that bloody anti-piracy thing, which – thanks to hairy genius Adam Buxton – now has lyrics and is finally bearable:



Star Trek – Thankfully only two ads, but both for awful films, GI Joe: Rise Of The Cobra and Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen (known to normal human beings as GI Joe and Transformers 2), the latter of which features Shia LaBeouf uttering the open goal: “Megatron wants what’s in my mind!”

The worst offender, however, is WALL•E, which relentlessly beats you – and, crucially, your children - around the head with so many adspasms it’s a wonder any of you can stand up. Before you can even get close to the menu there’s a generic Disney promo; a short and very rubbish teaser for Up; another futile Blu-Ray con; a trailer for Pinocchio, and last but by all means least, an ad for the unspeakably awful-looking and badly dubbed The Secret Of The Magic Gourd. Yes, really. And no, I’ve no idea what a gourd is, but on the evidence presented in this trailer it’s a walking, talking turd.



Now you might like to counter my argument by suggesting that you can skip all this shizzle and just go straight to the main menu, and you’d be right. But that’s not the point. I don’t know what the point is, but that’s not it. If anyone knows what the point is, please send it to me along with several commercials for other points I may be interested in.

To comment on this post, click here

Darth Hattersley

The other day I was watching BBC2's informative, educational, entertaining and extremely well-shot lunchtime programme "The Daily Politics", when up popped former deputy leader of the Labour party, Roy Hattersley. Now I don't know what your immediate thoughts might be upon laying your eyes on Mr Hattersley, but if you're anything like me they probably look something like this:

Uncanny.

To comment on this post, click here

Hairy Faced Lunatic

Books. Hate ‘em. Too many words.

Thank Alfred, then, for The James Bond Omnibus, a collection of comic strips that ran in the Daily Express between 1958 and 1962. This book, which is made of 100% recycled groovy, is the perfect thing for a dangerously obsessive Bond freak who’s watched the films and read the novels so many times that he introduces himself with his surname first, then his first name and surname together, even if he has a name that doesn’t sound remotely cool when spoken like that. Fortunately I don’t know anyone quite that obsessive, and I certainly wouldn’t be caught doing that myself, oh no.

Anyway. Ian Fleming’s original books were serialised in the Express in the days before it became the Daily Diana Conspiracy Theory, and if you’d been around then you would have been alternately entertained by the zippy plots and fantastic artwork (by John McLusky in this book; other artists such as the peerless Yaroslav Horak - surely a Bond villain name if ever there was one - would take over later), and frustrated by the fact that it took about four seconds to read and then you had to wait till tomorrow for the next four seconds. But the majesty of this book is that that frustration has been banished – banished, I say! – by squidging them all together into one continuous story.

One thing I love about Fleming’s novels is that Bond can often be found spouting the most ridiculous put-downs to the villains which even Roger Moore would have trouble saying out loud, and I’m pleased to see they’re carried through to the comic strips. Here’s my current favourite, from 'Moonraker':

Furthermore, when they ran out of original stories, writer Jim Lawrence came up with a bucketload more, which I haven’t read but am very excited about, despite them having Harry Potteresque titles like ‘The League Of Vampires’, ‘When The Wizard Awakes’ and ‘The Xanadu Connection’. And I shudder to think what ‘Doomcrack’ is all about, but I look forward to finding out.

So well done to Titan Books for parping out this beauty, keep ‘em coming and have a free plug on The Incredible Suit for your troubles.

To comment on this post, click here

Darth Vader’s Coal Scuttle

Sometimes I can tell by the way that you’re gazing blankly at your screen that you’re not interested in a single word I have to say. That’s quite understandable; most of it is complete and utter codsbobble. In fact, a lot of the time I think that it would be better for everyone if I just shut up for a moment and stick some faintly chucklesome clips up for you to watch in your lunch break.

So, in a public service to all of us, here’s some stuff that doesn’t require any effort from anyone:

Speed 3 Currently Filming In Russia:



Shia LaBeouf is asked if he thinks a) if his contribution to the arts is worthwhile, b) if he should make any more films, and c) if he is any good:



And finally, something for Pixar fans whose hearts are blacker than Darth Vader’s coal scuttle:



Happy weekend, and don't forget - if you're terribly down with the kids, you can become a Facebook fan of The Incredible Suit! Yes, really! I know!

***STOP PRESS FOR EXCITING BUT

SELF-CONGRATULATORY MESSAGE***

Hello if you've been sent here from the weekly Popbitch email, and thanks a bazillion to Popbitch for increasing The Incredible Suit's readership by approximately a gajillion times. I had to put 'Gonna Fly Now (Theme From Rocky)' on at very high volume and run up my stairs while Fidgit from Time Bandits circled me with a camcorder, the footage of which you will never, ever see.

To comment on this post, click here