Conclusion: 104 minutes is the perfect length for a film.
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The movie blog that really wants you to buy HITCHOLOGY
Thursday, 8 July 2010
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
The Incredible Suit's Hitchcockathon: Foreign Correspondent
Watching an Alfred Hitchcock film in the middle of the worst year for films, like, ever is like sleeping in your own bed after spending the last six months trying to catch forty winks on top of Nelson's Column while pigeons poo in your ears.
I started a Hitchcockathon about a year ago and have so far managed a pathetic seven films. It's good in a way because even though I've seen them all so many times, it's so long between viewings that I can never remember what happens.
This week I re-watched the criminally underrated work of genius that is Foreign Correspondent. Sweet zombie Jesus it's good. Every Hitchcock film has at least one standout moment, and in this film it's a perfectly constructed sixteen-minute real-time sequence that goes from a shocking assassination to a daring escape via every emotion you could hope for in a thriller. I'd throw in a clip here but you need to see it in context to truly appreciate it, so instead here are some shots which will mean even less but will hopefully persuade you to dig a copy out and watch it instead of wasting your time enjoying the sunshine or communicating with other human beings.
I started a Hitchcockathon about a year ago and have so far managed a pathetic seven films. It's good in a way because even though I've seen them all so many times, it's so long between viewings that I can never remember what happens.
Bang! Dutch diplomat Van Meer is shot right in the fizzog. Immediately we're confused, shocked and generally boggled.
Who shot him? Why? Surely some kind of chase is in order?
And sure enough, here it is. An innocent cyclist gets a
stray bullet, there's some fancy footwork amongst the trams
and then it's off on a terrific car chase. I'm so excited!
There's always time for LOLs; while chasing the assassin at high speed, upper class twit Scott ffolliott (the incomparable George Sanders) explains the history of his ridiculous surname to our hero Johnny Jones (the decidedly comparable Joel McCrea).
Johnny stumbles upon the bad guys' hideout after
noticing the windmill's sails turning in the wrong direction.
Good detective work, Jonesy!
Sneaking about inside the beautifully lit windmill,
Johnny keeps our fingernails to a bare minimum as we cack
ourselves waiting for the baddies to spot him.
What's this? Some crucial plot exposition delivered by the guy who had his chops blown off ten minutes ago! THIS IS AMAZING!
Johnny risks discovery and mangling of the limbs as his mac gets caught in the windmill's cogs, then executes a daring escape along the outside. The audience books a collective blood pressure check.
At this point there's still over an hour left, and you're not quite sure if your heart can take it. As it happens it doesn't get that good again until a tremendous plane crash at the end, but there's more suspense in those sixteen minutes than in almost any other film, like, ever.
Sir Alfred Hitchcock, not for the first (or last) time, The Incredible Suit salutes you.
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Tuesday, 6 July 2010
Win Tickets To An Edgar Wright Double Bill In England's Exciting Capital City, Kind Of!
Do you like cops?
Do you like the work of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright?
Do you like Brixton's very sexiful Ritzy Cinema?
Do you like Brixton's very sexiful Ritzy Cinema?
Do you like Sunday August 8th, 2010?
Do you like 6.00pm?
If you answered "HELLZ YEAH!!!1" to all or most of the above questions, you should seriously consider opening Google Maps, entering the postcode SW2 1JG, ascertaining directions thereto from wherever you are and hauling your shapely beautocks to the double bill of Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz which takes place at the aforementioned picture house on the aforementioned date at the aforementioned time.
If you answered "No" to some or all of the above questions you should still go because you seriously need to sort yourself out.
You can buy tickets online here for a measly £9.00 each (plus booking fee). That's two slices of fried gold for the price of a Spaced box set, but if you're too tight to do that, guess what?
That's right! Thanks to the Ritzy, The Incredible Suit has not four, not three, but TWO tickets for this evening of rom-zom-cop-com to give away to the lucky winner of what is quite literally a competition with a prize.
To be in with a chance to win (© Stock Competition Phrases Ltd), simply email me here with the answer to this easy peasy lemon squeezy question:
Which is The Incredible Suit's favourite film
out of Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz?
Correct entrants will gain access to The Incredible Suit's patented Arena Of Destiny (see this previous battle), from which only one can emerge victorious.
You have until 10.48pm on Sunday 11th July to get your entries in, so get a wriggle on. The winner will be announced next week on a day when there's nothing worth blogging about.
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Monday, 5 July 2010
New Spider-Man Casting Is Perfect
Those of you who spent the weekend with your head in a bucket of strawberries and Pimm's will be thrilled to hear that the lead role in the ill-advised Spider-Man reboot has been given to British actor Andrew Garfield.
This is a massive relief for the interwebs because, after months of speculation about who might play the friendly neighbourhood web-slinger, we finally know what the new Spidey looks like. And he looks like this:
Garfield really looks the part, don'tcha think? I mean, if we look at all the other candidates for the role, I'm not sure any of them could really have done it justice:
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This is a massive relief for the interwebs because, after months of speculation about who might play the friendly neighbourhood web-slinger, we finally know what the new Spidey looks like. And he looks like this:
Garfield really looks the part, don'tcha think? I mean, if we look at all the other candidates for the role, I'm not sure any of them could really have done it justice:
Friday, 2 July 2010
Lymelife
It was made about two years ago and, like The Brothers Bloom, it's been hanging around since then like a group of kids outside Spar, waiting for someone to come along and release it into the wild.
Lymelife is notable for starring two sixths of the Culkin acting dynasty, one of whom looks like Tobey Maguire, the other of whom doesn't. I can only assume Macaulay is still nursing his bee stings from My Girl, otherwise they would have found a pointless role in this film for him too like they did for Tobey Maguire Culkin.
It's not an appalling film by any standards but if you can't predict what's going to happen several scenes in advance then you need to lock yourself in a room with the entire IMDb Top 250 movies of all time and don't come out until you've watched them all. Even Sleuth.
Lymelife offers nothing new or surprising to make it stand out from the morass of identidramas about dysfunctional families and, with the exception of Timothy Hutton, it wastes a good cast who look like it's too much effort to do any hard acting. In fact to waste Alec Baldwin like this should be punishable by being made to watch a rest-of-the-Baldwins marathon.
It also suffers from a truly awful title, which refers to the tick-borne Lyme disease suffered by one of the characters, and which I assume is some kind of clever metaphor for things that get under your skin and eat away at you from the inside, but in fact just makes you think of disease-ridden ticks.
Watchable, then, but ultimately forgettable. That's even if you get chance to watch it: Lymelife opens in about nine cinemas around the country this weekend then disappears from the face of the Earth, never to be heard of again.
Oh and one more thing: Don't try to sell me your movie by sticking this on one of the posters:
Because a) there's nothing remotely Scorsesish about Lymelife, 2) at least make the effort to spell his name right, and iv) the whole world knows that 'Executive Producer' is a pointless title used when someone agrees to stick their name on the poster in the hope of suckering in a few idiots. Shame on you Marty. I may have to rethink my offer of an interview.
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Thursday, 1 July 2010
Losing My Virginity With Jason Solomons
Last week I received my first invitation to a press screening of a film. I don't know why it's taken a year but it's probably because The Incredible Suit is a bit ramshackle and clearly written by an idiot.
Despite the massive administrative cock-up which must have led to me being invited, when I RSVPd nobody suddenly realised their mistake and withdrew the offer, which was a pleasant surprise. I think they must have been pretty desperate because a) they asked me, and b) it was a film I'd never heard of, Lymelife, starring pudgy mental abuser of his own offspring Alec Baldwin and the two Culkins who aren't Macaulay.
By the time I arrived at the screening I'd worked myself into a frenzy of panic. What’s the etiquette in situations like this? Do film critics speak to each other? Do they all know each other? What if I'm clearly the odd one out because I haven't got a pen with a built-in torch? Is there free booze? What if I take a beer without paying and get caught and humiliated in front of Barry Norman? In the end I decided to just man up, not drink anything and avoid all eye contact.
As it turns out film critics look a lot like normal people, only paler, and they all have laptop bags surgically attached to their shoulders. They don't have illuminating biros and there was no alcohol, free or otherwise.
Only about 30 people could fit in the screening room, so when the hipster on the door asked where I was from I had to whisper "The Incredible Suit" very quietly in case Mark Kermode overheard and outed me as a fraud. With hindsight I could have just said "freelance" but I was too well-dressed to be convincing.
We were offered water because it was hot in there, but that meant the film starting a few minutes late, which caused a massive schism to open up between the impatient and the parched. I thought there was going to be a scrap but instead there was just an exaggerated Kevin The Teenager-esque harumph from a man who didn't care if anyone died of dehydration as long as he got away in good time. Film critics are a bit tetchy as it turns out.
When the film finished and everybody filed out politely, grumbling about how bad it was, I realised that neither Barry Norman nor Mark Kermode were there. In fact the only one I vaguely recognised was The Guardian's Jason Solomons, and I wasn't even sure it was him so I took a sneaky photo:
So I'll parp out a Lymelife review tomorrow; in the meantime, if any other distributors would like to invite The Incredible Suit to future screenings, email me here! Who else are you going to ask, Claudia Winkleman?
To critically review this post, click here
Despite the massive administrative cock-up which must have led to me being invited, when I RSVPd nobody suddenly realised their mistake and withdrew the offer, which was a pleasant surprise. I think they must have been pretty desperate because a) they asked me, and b) it was a film I'd never heard of, Lymelife, starring pudgy mental abuser of his own offspring Alec Baldwin and the two Culkins who aren't Macaulay.
By the time I arrived at the screening I'd worked myself into a frenzy of panic. What’s the etiquette in situations like this? Do film critics speak to each other? Do they all know each other? What if I'm clearly the odd one out because I haven't got a pen with a built-in torch? Is there free booze? What if I take a beer without paying and get caught and humiliated in front of Barry Norman? In the end I decided to just man up, not drink anything and avoid all eye contact.
As it turns out film critics look a lot like normal people, only paler, and they all have laptop bags surgically attached to their shoulders. They don't have illuminating biros and there was no alcohol, free or otherwise.
Only about 30 people could fit in the screening room, so when the hipster on the door asked where I was from I had to whisper "The Incredible Suit" very quietly in case Mark Kermode overheard and outed me as a fraud. With hindsight I could have just said "freelance" but I was too well-dressed to be convincing.
When the film finished and everybody filed out politely, grumbling about how bad it was, I realised that neither Barry Norman nor Mark Kermode were there. In fact the only one I vaguely recognised was The Guardian's Jason Solomons, and I wasn't even sure it was him so I took a sneaky photo:
So I'll parp out a Lymelife review tomorrow; in the meantime, if any other distributors would like to invite The Incredible Suit to future screenings, email me here! Who else are you going to ask, Claudia Winkleman?
To critically review this post, click here
Wednesday, 30 June 2010
The Best Year For Movies, Like, Ever
Celebrating its sixth birthday this year, it's...
Just thought I'd be positive for a change.
Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.
To pointlessly argue your case for a different year, click here
Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.
To pointlessly argue your case for a different year, click here
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