London Film Festival: Blue Valentine

As ideal first date movies go, Blue Valentine is absolutely not the one to take your potential spouse to, unless you both get off on the misery, destruction and downright horribleness of a failed relationship. Although frankly if that's the case you're probably the kind of person who would rather spend a first date at an abattoir rather than a cinema, which means you're reading the wrong blog.

That's not to say Blue Valentine is a wrist-slashing bleakfest; it's actually witty and charming but also brutally honest. Cutting between the cockle-warming start and heartbreaking collapse of a four-year relationship, it sets Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling the challenge of playing characters at both ends of the hopeful / hopeless spectrum, and they're both incredible.

The script contains more comedy than you would expect from such a potentially depressing story, not to mention the second-most un-PC child molestor joke I've ever heard (not that there's an abundance of PC child molestor jokes) and it's intelligently directed by first-timer and amateur Ryan Gosling lookalike Derek Cianfrance.

Not only that but at as a bonus you get to see Ryan Gosling in one of the great movie jumpers of our time, and you discover what the inside of a robot's vagina looks like. If either of those things crop up in any other films at this year's LFF I'll be very surprised.

In other news, having praised Ryan Rodney Reynolds for his amazing turn in Buried, it would be remiss of me not to point this out:

Blue Valentine is showing at 6pm on Friday 15th October at Vue Leicester Square and at 1.30pm on Sunday 17th October at the NFT on the South Bank.

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The London Film Festival Starts Today!

The Opening Night Gala screening of Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go "kicks off" the 54th BFI London Film Festival at 7.00 tonight. Unless you've already got tickets you won't be getting in. Even I won't be getting in and I'm The Incredible Suit.

Nevertheless I have already seen a bundle of stuff from this year's festival, and I'll be barfing my opinions all over your internets over the next couple of weeks so you can decide what to go and see, either between now and October 28th or when each film gets its own release, if indeed it does and doesn't sit on a shelf in a lonely cupboard somewhere gathering dust until the inevitable apocalypse.

I'm aware that many of you are weirdos and have no intention whatsoever of attending the London Film Festival, so I'm happy for you to enjoy it vicariously through this blog. Make my eyes and ears your own, but keep my hands to myself.

Let's Festivalise!

Look At This Beautiful Thing

This is a box. Isn't it pretty? As boxes go, it's up there with the best of them. What makes it special is that it's called The Danny Elfman & Tim Burton 25th Anniversary Music Box, and here are some of the things in it:

That right there is sixteen CDs, including expanded and remastered versions of the thirteen scores Danny Elfman has done for Tim Burton films, as well as music Elfman's done for TV, demos, rarities, obscurities and Christ knows what else. The covers were designed by Tim Burton; have a look at these beauties:

Also included in the box is a DVD of Elfman and Burton having a nice chat, a 250 page hardback book chronicling their partnership and a USB flash drive with the entire contents of the box on it in mp3 format. The only thing missing from the box is your very own Helena Bonham Carter.

I mention all this not as free advertising, although it obviously is, but because I don't think I've ever lusted after a piece of film merchandise as much as I am doing right now over this. It's just beautiful. Tim Burton's films might be hit and miss but Danny Elfman's music is amazagoggling, even if most of it sounds exactly the same. And this box would take about a year of my life away as I pored over every note, every word, every frame, every picture.

Which is where the bad news happens. There are only 1,000 of these babies and each one is a sphincter-tightening 500 dollars plus shipping and handling, which is another fart-incarcerating 42 dollars. That's $542, or about £340. And I don't think I'm going to have much luck requesting a "review" copy, so you're just going to have to buy it for me. I calculate that if every reader of The Incredible Suit chips in it'll only cost £170 each, which seems reasonable to me.

While I wait for it to be delivered I'm just going to drool over the website for a bit longer. Feel free to join me, just mind where your own drool lands.



Er, wait a minute... they've put extraneous apostrophes in 'CDs' and 'MP3s' in that video? Forget it then, I'm not interested. Amateurs.

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LOTR:ROTK@RAH

A couple of weeks ago I saw The Lord Of The Rings Colon The Return Of The King at the Royal Albert Hall, where Howard Shore's phenomenal score was performed live by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. I've said it before but I'm old so I can get away with repeating myself: there really is nothing like listening to a bastard massive orchestra banging out a brilliant film score in a venue as awesome as the Albert Hall. And I never use the word "awesome" unless I actually mean it.

Unfortunately it's very difficult to concentrate on watching an orchestra when a solid 9 out of 10 film is playing behind them. Even if you've seen it a dozen times you can't help but get sucked in to the world Peter Jackson created (yes, I'm aware that Tolkien literally created it, but Jackson made it visually astonishing), and with the music complementing the pictures so perfectly it's easy to forget the orchestra are there.

So you start to watch the orchestra, boggling at the skill that goes into playing the harp, watching the violinists' bows dancing back and forth in almost inhuman synchronisation and wishing you could have a go at whacking that massive drum, and before you know it you've missed the entire battle of Osgiliath, and you can't rewind the DVD because the orchestra would lose their place and the rest of the audience would grumble under their breath at you.

All of which makes the entire evening a bit frustrating. I felt like I'd gone to see two separate events at the same time in the same place and I didn't know which one I should be paying more attention to. Not only that, but because the music was so loud, the film played with subtitles, which was quite distracting. I don't know if it's just me but if there are subtitles I can't help but read them. It's like I might be missing something important so I have to take them all in, which inevitably means missing something important further up the screen.

Still, mustn't grumble. It was a fun evening and if they do it again you should go and tell me how wrong I am.

Incidentally, this is happening soon, also at the Albert Hall:

I saw this very event at Leeds Castle a few years ago and I can heartily recommend that you stay as far away from it as possible unless you have no idea about or love for the music of the Bond films. Basically, a man and a woman take it in turns to sing the theme songs as if they're performing Rigoletto at the Royal Opera House, completely failing to understand what it is that makes a pop song great, and towards the end the bloke actually pulls a fake gun from a shoulder holster and waves it about while murdering The Living Daylights or something. You would be far better off staying at home and listening to, say, this. Or this.

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Charlie Chaplin: Pay Day

It might lose its way towards the end but there's some classic Chappers in here. The bit with the bricks is worth the price of admission alone, and when the price of admission is nowt you can't lose.

Happy Sunday!

Saturday Playlist #8: Star Wars Episodes IV-VI

I'd like to think that everybody reading The Incredible Suit already has copies of these soundtracks at home and on regular rotation, but I suspect the world isn't really that perfect. So here's a playlist for those of you poor unfortunates yet to discover the unparallelled power and beauty of some of John Williams' finest work.

Each film is represented on the albums by so many orgasmic minutes of musical ear-fondling that it was a painful experience choosing which tracks to include in the playlist and which to leave out. A bit like choosing which of your children to feed to the others in the event of an apocalypse, only much more traumatising.

So I hope you enjoy it, and I would earnestly and passionately urge anyone who doesn't think they're 'into' soundtracks to get hold of the Star Wars score and play it as loudly as possible because it's absolutely, breathtakingly smashing.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO

SATURDAY PLAYLIST #8:

STAR WARS EPISODES IV-VI

Incidentally, all of The Incredible Suit's Saturday Playlists can now be found in one handy place, on this page right here. For the terminally thick, you can also get there by clicking "Saturday Playlists" at the top of any page on the blog. I know that sounds obvious but you have to remember there are people almost as old as me reading.

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How To Shift More DVDs: Attach A Stupid Sticker

Apparently, people who buy DVDs know absolutely nothing about the film they're paying for. They just blindly stumble into shops, desperate to spend their cash on something, anything, armed with no information about the myriad films on offer. They need all the help they can get deciding what to buy, and this is why DVDs have little stickers attached to them to provide that extra nugget of incentive to pick one product over another in a competitive market.

I say, this "The Terminator" looks good - oh hang on, it's from the director of Avatar. The last thing I need is another twelve-hour festival of crap starring the Blue Man Group. Back on the shelf it goes. Ooh look, Hot Shots!

I don't know what this sticker's trying to tell me. "For Die Hard Fans Only"? Die hard fans of what? Cop Out? Bruce Willis? Tracy Morgan, whoever she is? Or do they mean "For fans of the film Die Hard only", in which case do I have to prove my love of Die Hard at the till along with my age? Oh hang on, it's £10.97. Back on the shelf it goes.

You know what, after the most awful week at work, all the terrible tragedies I've suffered lately and that traumatic experience with the ventriloquist's doll, I could really do with a good laugh. This looks ideal!

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