Win A Ridonkulous Amount Of Charlie Chaplin Films!

THIRTY-FOUR Charlie Chaplin films, to be precise, although most of them are shorts but there's nothing in the rules against that.

Yes, now that you've spent the weekend salivating over the BFI's Chaplin At Keystone four-disc set I almost soiled myself over on Friday, I'm orgasmically excited to be giving away two copies, courtesy of the increasingly delicious folks at the British Film Institute, God bless it and all who sit in its slightly uncomfortable reclining seats.

All you have to do is rearrange the following silent comedians into descending order of greatness (i.e. most bestest first, least bestest third) according to The Incredible Suit:

When you've done that, email your answer to me here. If there are more than two correct entries, contestants will enter The Arena Of Destiny to see who emerges victorious. You've got until midnight on Monday 13th December to enter. GO!

30 Years Old Today

And it hasn't aged a bit!

Right?

Saturday Playlist #14: David Arnold

You should by now have a pretty good idea of what David Arnold has done and how I feel about it. If not, may I recommend you start reading The Incredible Suit from Day 1 and do not leave your computer until you arrive back at this post. If that sounds like your idea of a slow and painful death, I suppose you could just read this non-award-winning interview I did with him in October.

Arnold is severely under-represented on Spotify, especially in the Bond department, so it falls to YouTube to provide some of his best work. Consider these Bonus Tracks, or incentives to download Spotify and get with the programme if you haven't already you pathetic specimen.

"Backseat Driver" from Tomorrow Never Dies


"Hovercraft Chase" from Die Another Day


"Time To Get Out" from Quantum Of Solace


So now that you've scrolled straight past those without playing them (yeah, I'm watching you), it's time to...

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO

SATURDAY PLAYLIST #14:

DAVID ARNOLD

Chaplin At Keystone: Buy It You Mugs

As if I needed the BFI to give me another reason to love them like they were a benevolent uncle (the kind who keeps his hands to himself), up they pop and kick me up the bum in a slapstick fashion with no less than 34 reasons spread lusciously over four DVDs, plus extras, in Chaplin At Keystone.

The product of an eight-year restoration programme between the BFI, Cineteca Bologna and Lobster Films, Chaplin At Keystone showcases the very first films the clumsy genius ever made - for Keystone Studios in 1914 - and does it with the kind of love and dedication that's such a cockle-warmingly common facet of the BFI's restorations of early cinema. It's no exaggeration to say that without intervention many of these films would eventually simply have decomposed.

The significance of some of these shorts cannot be underestimated.  There's the first film Chaplin ever made (Making A Living), the first one in which he played his signature tramp character (Mabel's Strange Predicament), the first that he wrote and directed (Caught In The Rain) and the first American feature-length comedy, Tillie's Punctured Romance (it's no Airplane! but it does feature a fat lady being kicked up the arse and a lot of policemen falling over). What you're essentially witnessing as you watch a pissed-up hobo repeatedly having his backside punished is the birth and evolution of modern film comedy, and it's a fantastic experience.

Although some of this stuff is undeniably crude - Making A Living is basically an awful lot of people doing an awful lot of falling over - there are plenty of ChapLOLs to be had in the carefully choreographed pratfall routines that mark the high points of this collection. And while something like Kid Auto Races at Venice, Cal. is part slapstick bimbling, it's also part social commentary on the exciting new moving picture craze and part fascinating document of a bemused crowd's genuine reaction to an insane vagabond dicking about in front of a camera.

All the films have new music composed by tip topples accompanists (including The Incredible Suit hero Neil Brand) and there's a ludicrously informative 58-page booklet included which is full of potential pub quiz trivia. I had no idea, for example, that Caught In A Cabaret was restored using a nitrate dupe negative, a nitrate positive print, a 16mm dupe negative and a 16mm triacetate dupe negative. Did you?

Chaplin At Keystone is released on Monday 13th December, but if you were to pop back to this very blog this coming Monday you may well find yourself in a position to WIN ONE OF TWO COPIES!! Oh yes. We've come a long way since I failed to give away a Prince Of Persia poster.

Chaplin junkies in need of more of this stuff should already have bookmarked the BFI Chaplin microsite. It's amazing.

Hastily Thrown Together Crap Visual Gag Of The Day

You do not want to see the sex scene in this film.

It's The Ultimate Girls' Night In!

For girls who hate apostrophes, presumably. And films. And themselves.

Monsters

Raaarr! Look at me, I'm a Monster! Grrr! I'm all terrifying and threatening and nasty and what have you, so much so that they named a whole movie after my kind! RRAAARRR!!! I can't wait to see it, after all, a film called Monsters sounds amazing, it'll have loads of, well, monsters in it, being all monstery and stuff, right? I mean, look at that poster! That's bound to have more monster action than the similarly-marketed District 9, surely? And from the trailer it also looks a bit like Cloverfield, which had a MASSIVE monster in it! I tell you what, if this film doesn't turn out to be anything like either of those films, then there must have been a supreme balls-up in the marketing department and no mistake! GRRAAARR!!

What's that? You're kidding. It's not really about monsters? It's about two people who trek across Mexico avoiding monsters? Grrr! Surely there's a set-piece in the middle with a terrifically tense monster attack? What do you mean, "there is but it's not very tense and only lasts a couple of minutes"? What about the big finale? There must be some huge monster-on-human action at the end, the marketing virtually promises it! There is a big monster scene at the end you say? Oh good. I was beginning to worry. Hang on, they do what? Eh? You're havin' a giraffe. That sounds ridiculous! Grrrrr!!

I feel like I've been lied to now! This is almost as bad as when they told me World's Greatest Dad was going to be a crappy, lowest-common-denominator comedy when in fact it was a really good, smart black comedy! Why, it's almost as if the people responsible for selling these films to the public haven't got a clue what they're doing! I mean, if they'd sold it as a bit of a love story slash road trip that looks lovely, is well-acted by the two leads and all those other people in it who the director just grabbed off the street, and doesn't actually include much in the way of monstery apart from as a vague metaphor about something or other then I wouldn't mind, but this makes me so cross I could destroy a city! GGRRRAAAAAARRRRR!!!