Cowboys & Aliens: This Is A Bit More Like It

"Who's Daniel Craig wearing these days?"

"I think he's in C&A. Ahahahahaha"

"I don't get it"

"Well C&A is the name of a defunct chain of clothes shops, as well as being an acronym for Cowboys & Aliens"

"Oh I see. That's not very funny"

"Your Mum's not very funny"

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Time For A New Format

Blu-Ray is now available in Oxfam.

Still thirteen quid though. What kind of charity shop is that?

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Toy Story 3

It comes as absolutely no surprise that Toy Story 3 is great. Every film Pixar have made is great, except the one of which we do not speak at The Incredible Suit. In fact Toy Story 3 is almost boringly great; predictably amazing; tediously terrific. It was always going to be good and it comfortably meets expectations.

Which isn't to say that it's perfect: it's probably the least brilliant of the series, opening with a shameless rip off of its own predecessor's prologue and meandering wildly in its middle act while it tries to find the well-worn groove of the Rescue Mission Movie the prequels so successfully reinvented. Fortunately by the time it settles down to a structurally flawless finale that had me laughing and crying snot all over the woman in front of me, its minor faults are easily forgiven.

And while Big Baby and the cymbal-banging monkey would have scared the Lincoln Logs out of me as a kid and Mr Potato Head's new look was the funniest thing I've seen at the cinema since Toy Story 2, there was one criminally underused star of Toy Story 3:

What I don't need now, though, is any more sequels from Pixar. All their films are so carefully designed to take their characters in a perfect arc that it feels like a waste to go back to them, even though Toy Story 2 and 3 were so good. So while I look forward to 2012's Brave, I can't get excited about next year's sequel to the Pixar film of which we do not speak, or the following year's Monsters, Inc 2. A Mr Pricklepants movie, on the other hand...

I had to watch Toy Story 3 in 3D because I won the tickets in a competition at London's Barbican. Like every film in existence, there was no need whatsoever for it to be in 3D. Which meant that I sat there wearing what felt like a giant pair of swimming goggles which didn't fit over my glasses properly and cut out half the light from the screen so I could barely see anything in the gloomier scenes FOR NO REASON. In fact Mrs The Incredible Suit got so fed up she took them off altogether and watched it in perfectly bright fuzzyvision.

We thought we were being clever by taking along the 3D specs we were forced to buy at the Odeon the other week but guess what? They weren't compatible with the Barbican's projection system. Which makes Odeon's trumpeting of their green credentials by celebrating the fact that you can re-use their glasses pretty hollow when every other chain is cranking out more tons of plastic for their own systems.

I really, REALLY hate 3D.

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Tamara Drewe Poster: Absolutely Positively Definitely Shot On Location

"Hello, is that the timber yard? Oh hi, I'm just doing a genuine photo shoot for the Tamara Drewe poster. I'm in a real field with some real people who are all really actually here behind a real actual fence, and I just need two bits of timber to hide their feet for no obvious reason.

You have? Cool. OK I need two completely identical bits of wood that are exactly the same shape and size and have precisely the same markings on them, but can you make them slightly different shades of brown so they don't look exactly the same? Otherwise people might think I've just done a sloppy photoshop job, hahaha.

You can? Wickedcoolsweetniceonemate. Laters."

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The A-Team

When the cast of The A-Team was announced, most people were uncertain whether or not the actors could do justice to the iconic roles that made the original TV series such a beloved favourite of so many. Well, let The Incredible Suit assure you: the cast is the least of this film's problems.

 

Hannibal, Face, BA and Murdoch might have been sent to a military prison for a crime they didn't commit, but the movie should be firmly incarcerated in celluloid Sing Sing for any of the following felonies:

• Being TWO HOURS long
• Beginning with an unnecessary origin story which depends on insane coincidence and requires a titanic suspension of disbelief, not to mention the fact that it takes about half an hour to do what the TV series opening did in TWENTY-TWO SECONDS
• Throwing in a rubbish visual gag nicked from Raiders Of The Lost Ark
• Using a woefully unfunny catchphrase ("Alpha Mike Foxtrot") twice in the first reel and then never again
• Naming a minor character "Carnahan" (The film was directed by Joe Carnahan. DO YOU SEE?)
• Having the team still working for the military when they're supposed to be a bunch of freelancers
• Pitting four separate groups of people against each other, thereby making the whole exercise more complicated than necessary
• Throwing in a twist you can see coming from the hot dog stand
• Plunging a bling-free BA into an existential crisis for most of the second act
• Giving Hannibal only one disguise, which involves dyeing his hair
• Not using the original series' theme nearly enough
• Finishing with a painfully awkward post-credits sequence which will mean nothing to anyone under 30

I had to stop there because I was depressing myself. Even the staff of the Empire Leicester Square couldn't be bothered:

In conclusion:

If you want to see a cheesy, fun TV series made into a cheesy, fun film, watch Charlie's Angels.

If you want to see a cheesy, fun TV series made into a brilliant, fun film, watch Star Trek.

If you want to see a cheesy, fun TV series made into a shouty, incomprehensible mess that removes all the fun things you remember from the original and replaces them with bewildering plotting and slapdash direction, watch The A-Team. And then question your own sanity.

The Incredible Suit does not love it when a blockbuster adaptation of an old TV favourite fails to come together.

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Some Trailers

A lot of trailers are being released at the moment. You might not know what to make of them, so The Incredible Suit is here to tell you what to think and how to feel.

Buried continues to display some balls-out marketing madness. The new trailer doesn't even show any bits from the film, probably because it's almost entirely set in a six foot-long box and that doesn't really lend itself to hyperactive editing and pauses in the music for crap jokes. It does deliver some serious Saul Bassiness though, not unlike its second amazing poster.



I'm going for Buried as this year's unexpected smash that nobody saw coming apart from all the people who did. It had better not let me down.

Red is based on a comic book series you've never heard of because there were only ever three issues. The title is an acronym for Retired, Extremely Dangerous, and it's about a bunch of ex-CIA pensioners who are called into action when the life of the love interest of one of their number is in danger. Like Last Of The Summer Wine, but with Mary-Louise Parker as Nora Batty.



Ignoring the ropey FX on that stepping-out-of-the-moving-car gag, this could well be the action comedy that Knight And Day should have been. Although to be fair I haven't seen Knight And Day, it could be amazing for all I know.

Also any film that stars Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Richard Dreyfuss, Karl Urban, Brian Cox and, after what feels like a twenty-year absence, the Bruce Willis Smirk, can't be all bad. And no, your eyes didn't deceive you. THAT WAS ERNEST BORGNINE.

Tron Legacy is the sequel to one of those 1980s films that you either love blindly because you grew up with it or you think is a bit bobbins because you watched it for the first time as a grown man and came to the conclusion that your life is no worse off having not seen it in all that time.



At the risk of repeating myself, I'd still rather see this.

Finally, here's the latest trailer for David Fincher's Facebook movie, The Social Network. As a warning to younger viewers I should point out that this trailer contains several shots of Jesse Eisenberg's face.



Oh yeah there's a spectacularly-delivered f-bomb in there too.

I can't get excited about this, no matter how hard I try. Fincher has got so much making up to do to me after his last few films that he should screen this personally, at my house, while pouring me glasses of ice-cold panda blood and serving dodo goujons in order to win me round. Although as it's clearly going to be about three hours long he probably shouldn't bother.

Now as it happens I've got an idea for a film about a game-changing website set up by an unrecognised and misunderstood genius. Any takers?

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A Silly Question

"If you could live forever, what car would you drive?", asks this billboard for Eclipse, knowing full well it isn't going to get the answer it wants to hear.

If I could live forever, I wouldn't limit myself to one car. That would be crackers. I'd drive a series of increasingly outrageous motors to reflect the mounting insanity brought on by watching everyone around me die.

I'd start with something amazing like a Ferrari 288 GTO, move on to every Aston Martin James Bond ever drove from the DB5 to the DBS, use a time-travelling DeLorean just to pop to the shops, get the General Lee from The Dukes Of Hazzard and KITT from Knight Rider (the original, obv) to leap over rivers, probably get one of those hideous Lamborghini Countach things just to annoy the neighbours and then I'd drive every movie Batmobile up and down the M1, using the Tumbler from Batman Begins to cross the central reservation and crush oncoming vehicles. At weekends I would drive the Condormobile from Condorman very slowly around the estate trying to pick up chicks.

What I would never drive, even in an eternity of everlasting life, is a Volvo XC60, which, according to Wikipedia, boasts such tedious safety features as:

"a whiplash protection system, side impact protection system, roll stability control, dynamic stability and traction control, inflatable curtain airbags, hill descent control, collision warning with brake support, active bi-xenon lights, blah blah yawn yawn zeds."

Why would I want any of that? I'M IMMORTAL!! I could ride naked on a Harley Davidson at 200mph through a fine mesh of razor wire and it wouldn't make a scratch, you 24-hour-headlight-shining idiots!

Any vampire caught at the wheels of one of those is clearly a pasty-faced, pointy-toothed, blood-guzzling loser who's been forced into the most incongruous piece of product placement since Daniel Craig squeezed his gigantic pecs into a Ford Mondeo in Casino Royale.

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HERP DERP

Last week I wrote a post about rubbishy shitspasm Predators, in which I briefly mentioned a scene from the trailer that was heavily altered (and in fact made much less interesting) for the finished film, and in which I implied that I might sue the director and producer for providing such a shabby, sub-standard product that I could have paid £13 for if it hadn't been Orange Wednesday.

It seems redundant to say it but I wasn't actually planning on suing anyone.

Anyway, I linked to the post on the IMDb forums here and received an avalanche of helpful comments from several members of the "online community" who hinted that pursuing a legal case against a movie studio might not be a sensible course of action.

Here are just a few choice nuggets:

Hmm. You're suggesting this case might be a waste of time?

By this point I'm seriously considering not suing a multinational conglomerate for £6.50 if people think it might be 'frivolous'.

There's no denying it: that would definitely show me how dumb I am.

I had to severely edit the next one because this guy went on for pages. In his defence he did summarise his concerns at the end.

I don't know what "HERP DERP" means but those are now my absolute favourite two words ever.

Back atcha.

That would appear to be the general consensus.

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*UPDATE!*

I annoyed people so much on the IMDb forums that somebody went crying to an administrator and most of my posts have now been deleted. Sorry if you went there looking for an enlightening discourse on the nature of cinema as an art form; freedom of speech is no longer tolerated at the IMDb.

Marvel Releases Pointless Drawings To Drum Up Enthusiasm For Three Upcoming Disasters

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Dear Play.com

I have been waiting over a week for this.

UNACCEPTABLE.

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James Bond Will Return, But Not In Any Worthwhile Or Meaningful Sense

I remember the olden days when people used to make video games based on movies. For the most part, they were awful.

Then people started making movies based on video games. For the most part, they were awful.

Now people are so confused they can't tell the difference between a video game and a movie, and games are promoted with trailers and have actors, stunt co-ordinators and writers from movieland, and title sequences with theme songs by screeching harpies. I haven't played a video game since Bubble Bobble in 1991 so I have no idea whether or not this will be awful:

What I do know, though, is that with this, the Quantum Of Solace game and the new GoldenEye game, Daniel Craig will have played James Bond more times in games than in films.

And that makes me cry.

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Thank You Google

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The Best Man

I was the Best Man at a wedding last weekend. I gave a speech which immediately broke all accepted wedding speech protocol by shamelessly plugging my own website, comparing the writing of a future-award winning movie blog to the writing of a speech as a transparent excuse to market it to a captive audience.

It didn't work; the groom shouted at me and minutes later one of my oldest schoolfriends had already forgotten the name of the blog. However, if there was ever any doubt about how much The Incredible Suit has taken over my actual, real self, here's one of the gifts the happy couple gave me for being so amazing:

Here's the other:

Those two images more or less encapsulate everything my life is about.

Thanks and Congratulations Stu & Jo!

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Shrek Forever After

Despite The Incredible Suit's indisputable position as a world-class reviewer of movies, for some bizarre reason I still often find myself having to queue and pay to see films. It's quite unacceptable for someone of my calibre to have to be in such close proximity to normal people when I could be rubbing shoulders with Christopher Tookey and Alan Frank but it's a cross I evidently have to bear.

Unfortunately this means that when I wanted to see Shrek Forever After I had to join a line of people, the length of which should not be permitted in this day and age:

Fortunately most of these idiots were there to see that vampire thing so once inside the cinema I didn't have to look at them any longer.

I was dismayed to discover that my showing of Shrek Forever After was in 3D, a format I am actively trying to have eliminated by ignoring it very hard and grumbling under my breath about it at dinner parties. It still feels like a breach of my human rights to be forced to pay extra to see a film in 3D even though I have no alternative in that cinema. Don't even get me started on the additional charge for 3D glasses; it's like ordering soup and being told there's an additional charge if you want a bowl.

Anyway, Shrek Forever After is exactly the same as all the other Shrek films, which is to say that it's reasonably enjoyable, although the LOLs are limited to occasional polite titters rather than the dignity-reducing guffaws of franchise high point Shrek 2.

FYI:

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Predators

There's a lot of (quite justified) interwebfussery at the moment about the big difference between the Predators trailer and the actual film, which can pretty much be described like this:

I'm reasonably sure this is a contravention of the Trade Descriptions Act 1968 which, according to Wikipedia, "prevents manufacturers, retailers or service industry providers from misleading consumers as to what they are spending their money on", although as we all know the Trade Descriptions Act was heavily amended as a result of the Consumer Protection From Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.

What's probably more appropriate in this instance might be the Sale Of Goods Act 1979, which states that "the goods sold must be of satisfactory quality, taking into account the price, description and any other relevant factors".

So when you could feasibly shell out £13 to watch Predators (described by Fox as "a bold new chapter in the Predator universe"), and what you get is a piffly puddle of piddle which takes the central premise of the original film but removes all the wit, originality, fun and what little motivation there was for the story to take place, surely I can expect to see director and surefire dirty anagram Nimród Antal, as well as producer and most overrated person in movies Robert Rodriguez in the small claims court on as soon a date as is convenient to all parties?

The Lesson I Never Learn:

DON'T BOTHER WATCHING THE FILM.
JUST STICK WITH THE TRAILER.

Final thought: Running around the jungle evading slobbery-mandibled mentaliens can be disorientating. To avoid misplacing essential items such as TV remotes, simply glue them to your gun to prevent future disappointment and frustration.

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"You Ain't Seen Bad Boys 2?"

My Ritzy Cinema / Edgar Wright double bill ticket giveaway attracted a record number of entries for a The Incredible Suit competition, which may be down to the fact that the prize was actually worth something this time. FYI, the massive cardboard Prince Of Persia poster I tried to get shot of here was never collected and is still knocking about at work. People keep asking me when I'm going to either take it home or burn it because it's in the way and they don't like having to look at Jake Gyllenhaal thrusting his tits out every day.

To be in with a chance of winning two tickets to Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz on August 8th (tickets still available!) all you had to do was guess which of those two films is The Incredible Suit's favourite. Here's a mathematically accurate visual representation of the entries:

A lot of people will therefore be disappointed to find that I actually prefer Hot Fuzz to Shaun Of The Dead, and I realise I'm in a minority there but you know what that's how I feel and I'm not about to change my mind just to agree with you lot. Maybe if you're lucky I'll explain how I reached that conclusion after I've seen them again, back to back, on Sunday August 8th at Brixton's Ritzy Cinema, I'm not sure if I mentioned those details enough times yet.

Anyway as promised, the correct entrants gained access to The Incredible Suit's Arena Of Destiny, and in an epic battle to the death, a champion emerged victorious. Turn your speakers up:



So well done to the lucky winner, hard luck to the losers, shame on you to the cheaters and for God's sake give me some credit to the people who thought it was a trick question.

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GoldenEye: The Music Of The Video Game Of The Motion Picture

Sticking out of my James Bond soundtrack collection like a scabby todger protruding from a crisp clean pair of boxfresh Calvins is Eric Serra's baffling score for GoldenEye:

Eric Serra - The GoldenEye Overture

I literally don't know what the Broccolis were thinking when they hired Serra to provide the tunage for the revamped, revitalised franchise in 1995, but with Cubby Broccoli on his deathbed and his daughter Barbara taking the reins of EON Productions, it must have gone something like this:

And so it was that Monsieur Serra delivered a score so bizarre that, for the scene in which Bond reduces St Petersburg to crumble topping with the aid of a tank, composer John Altman was brought in to hastily concoct something that sounded like he might have actually seen a Bond film at some time in his life.

John Altman - Tank Drive Around St Petersburg

When Serra was quietly taken out the back and shot, he was replaced with the phenomenal legend that is David Arnold, who has scored every Bond film since 1997's slightly stinky Tomorrow Never Dies, and has done so brilliantly.

I went to see Arnold chatting away at the BFI last year, and I was desperate to ask him if he'd ever considered doing his own score for GoldenEye, even if it was just for his own personal amusement. I thrust my hand in the air for so long that I had to hold my arm up with my other hand like a primary school child, but to no avail. Instead a madman a few rows behind asked stupid questions about whether David Arnold was related to Matthew Arnold, as if anybody gives a shit. Who the hell is Matthew Arnold anyway? I'm still cross about that idiot to this day.

So it was with a mild stirring of the loinular region that I read that David Arnold is writing a score for GoldenEye, but sadly not a re-release of the movie. Instead it's some kind of "video-game" for the Commodore 64 or whatever the kids are playing with these days. Which is weird, because I've never looked forward to a computer game's music before, but that's the position in which I find myself. I'd appreciate it if the soundtrack could be released on CD though so I don't have to fork out for an Atari 2600 and the game cartridge just to listen to the tunes.

That must be the longest preamble to the most pointless denouement in the history of bloggery. I should have just said "David Arnold to score GoldenEye game" and saved us all a lot of pain and misery.

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Inception

I could tell you what I thought about Inception, but I don't think you want me to spoil anything before you go and see it for yourself. Which, obviously, you would be absolutely Crackers Patel not to do. So instead, here are some thoughts about a piece of promotional material I was given when I went to see it:

It looks absolutely beautiful; it's expensively glossy and the colour palette is gorgeous.

But it's not just about looks. It's also substantial and weighty, thanks to the way it folds in on itself. As you delve into its inner layers, it expands perfectly to reveal goggle-boggling images, a plot which reads like Dreamscape plus The Matrix but infinitely better than both of those films, and a bunch of people in some absolutely Incredible Suits.

Inside are some amazing actors. Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't look like he's holding in a window-shattering fart for once, Joseph Gordon-Levitt looks dashing but a bit silly with a massive shooter and there are too few shots of Tom Hardy and Michael Caine.

If you press your ear to it very hard you can hear Hans Zimmer having the time of his life inside a terrifying nightmare.

I can't describe the final page to you. It's the perfect way to finish but you need to see it for yourself to truly appreciate it.

It's not flawless; there are some parts of it that I need to look at again to work out whether or not they make any sense. Also from end to end it's about 62cm long, and if I'm being honest it could do with being about thirteen percent shorter.

Having said that, as promotional material goes, it is without doubt THE BEST I'VE SEEN THIS YEAR. Especially in comparison to certain others.

You can read what you like into any of the above.

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Ultra Culture Cinema #03: Mother

Deadly bitter rival movie blogger Charlie Lyne from Ultra Culture this week invited us all round to his place (I'm assuming he lives at the ICA, it's the only place I've ever seen him) for the third in an increasingly numerically sequential series of film screenings and pre-show entertainment. This month the film was Joon-ho Bong's murder-mystery Mother, which stalkers of The Incredible Suit will remember I saw at the London Film Festival last year.

My worthless opinion of the film hasn't changed - it's still too long and drags in parts - except that I neglected to mention a quite brilliant sequence involving a close-up of some fingertips and a puddle of water. If any of the Hitchcock comparisons Mother has attracted are deserved, that bit is the most Hitchy by far. I also failed to notice how good the score is the first time round, which makes me a pretty shoddy film reviewer even by my own low standards.

But Ultra Culture Cinema is as much about the experience as the movies. The random gift-giving continues - those of us who have loyally attended every screening were rewarded with a KitKat each (only two fingers, the tight bastard) - and the charmingly ill-prepared games are entertainingly baffling. When you can win a director's entire back catalogue by dropping a golf ball onto a piece of paper from a distance of about four inches you know you're not on University Challenge.

We were also entertained by magician Chris Cox, who got plenty of LOL-mileage from his surname and awkwardly failed to magic the clothes off an attractive lady, although he did convince her to remove her scarf.

The hopefully-now-mandatory introductory video, though, was the highlight, and these short films are fast becoming surreal mini masterpieces to be held in the same esteem as Pixar's pre-feature shorts. This one featured Some Guy from Some Indie Band and I'm pretty sure it hides a deeper allegorical meaning but I'll leave you to work out what it is.



Finally, anyone who doesn't bother reading the pass notes given out at each screening is a massive nob.

Next month's film is a secret that only The Incredible Suit and several hundred other people know, but trust me when I say that if you've got a family funeral, hot date or job interview to attend on the evening of Wednesday 25th August you should cancel it now.

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