Marvel Rename The Avengers To Distract Attention From The Insanely Random Proportions Of The Cast On New Poster

I know The Hulk's meant to be big, but what's Captain America's excuse? He could fit Scarlett Johansson in his jock strap.

Hmm.

Excuse me while I just go and imagine having a tiny Scarlett Johansson in my underpants.

BAFTAgate: An Update

If there's one movie award ceremony we're all talking about at the moment, it's the BAFTAs, right? Well thank God I've got my finger on the pulse, because here's a thing.

Following my rambling and barely coherent tantrum the other week about the repeated non-liveness of the BAFTA awards ceremony, one of The Incredible Suit's readers - who is himself a BAFTA member - took it upon himself to copy the entire text of the post in an email to BAFTA Chairman Tim Corrie. I wish I'd known he was going to do this because I would have removed the word "fucking" and replaced it with "jolly" or "rather" or something that made me look less uncouth, but there you go.

Anyway, despite the potty-mouthedness of my tirade, Mr Corrie replied, and it's kind of good news. Here's his reply in full:

Thank you for your email.

We are exploring the possibility of moving to a live show with the BBC in 2013 and are keen to make this happen. We will share your feedback with the BBC when we meet with them.

This year’s show was 2 hours 40 minutes which is longer than ever before. We place great importance on the technical categories and the craft of film making but unfortunately some tough editing decisions had to be made to fit into the 2 hour slot on BBC One.

The categories that were not broadcast are available to view on www.bafta.org alongside a number of craft-based webcasts from leading film practitioners.

I have also passed your email to our Head of Film, Alex Cook.

Best wishes,
Tim

So there you have it: incontrovertible proof that this blog alone has helped to usher in a new dawn in broadcasting. Now if someone reading this knows BBC Director General Mark Thompson, perhaps you could point him in the direction of The Incredible Suit and we could seal this deal. Just make sure you take out the swears first please.

The Oscars 2012

I've been up all night looking at this, leave me alone.

EXCLUSIVE! SkyFall Theme Song Revealed!

Obviously the theme song for SkyFall hasn't been chosen yet, so I should apologise if that post title's a bit misleading. I should, but I won't.

However, I can confidently state that the search for a song to accompany the title sequence of the 23rd James Bond film can now be called off. Plenty of unknown acts have submitted their songs via YouTube, but I've found the clear winner. It's by the enigmatically-named jchaaaaapz and it may be the most amazing thing ever to elbow me in the ears.

jchaaaaapz ambitiously suggests that "Radiohead, Muse or Michael Ball I reckon could do this justice", and maybe he's right. On the other hand, maybe he's completely and utterly whacked off his gourd.



FYI, I've reported to YouTube that no matter how many times I click the "Change quality" icon, this still seems to sound like the protracted, painful moaning of a man being depressed to death by watching an eternal loop of the most miserable events that have ever occurred in the history of human suffering. In 3D.

Sam Mendes Says Some Things

Determined to get started on his BlogalongaBond entry for SkyFall early, director Sam Mendes has recorded this videblogothing, which he posted on his little-known site 007.com this morning:



Predictably, Mendes gives away very little we don't already know, especially as most of what he says in the videblogothing was released to the press yesterday and written up in staggeringly apathetic articles like this one at The Telegraph, which claims "tension is hardly mounting" over the film's release. Come to my house, The Telegraph, and I'll show you what tension hardly mounting looks like. It looks like a grown man crossing the days off a specially-designed calendar and doing a little dance in his pants every day. (FYI: 247 underpant boogies to go)

Mendes does let slip one curious remark:

"Like everyone else, I have my own personal relationship with Bond which began when I was I suppose about nine or ten years old."

Now that's not a declaration of artistic intent, that's a witness statement. Fortunately Mendes seems to be getting his own back on Bond - watch his videblogothing from 0'55" to 0'59" and you can just make out Daniel Craig on the other side of the camera walking with a discernible limp. Looks like Sam's given the dirty old man a good hard knee in the happy sacks for his past indiscretions.

Of course, Bond's limp could be a result of something else:

I can't wait to see how he keeps that hidden in his tiny trunks this time.

Made Up Reviews 5: A Good Day To Make Up

As I find myself once more in the wilderness of a week of new releases of which I have seen a grand total of zero, it's time to fall back on the ultimate all-filler, no-killer feature that they're all calling "Huh?"

That's right laydeez and gemmun, it's time to dismiss years of artistic work with fatuous cockwaffle, as I review five films I've never seen, and probably will never see. Hooray for bloggers!

Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls stars Brett and Jemaine from Flight Of The Conchords as two down-on-their-luck New Zealand musicians who undergo sex changes in order to become more popular. Unbeknownst to them, a pair of lesbian kiwis (people from New Zealand, not the flightless birds from the genus Apteryx) go through the same process at the same time. The two couples eventually meet and fall in love, but nobody is quite sure where anything goes any more.

Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance in 3D is the sequel to Ghost, and stars Nicolas Cage in 3D as the character formerly played by Patrick Swayze in 2D. When Cage/Swayze (catchphrase: "Don't call me Cwayze!") accidentally sets his head on fire in an unfortunate high speed electric toothbrush accident, he returns to Earth on a motorbike to ask Demi Moore to put the flames out. Unfortunately she's busy having it off with Ashton Kutcher, so Cwayze pisses fire on the pair of them in a scene deemed "too silly" by the BBFC for anything above a U certificate.

The Woman In The Fifth stars Kristin Scott Thomas as an Englishwoman with a remarkably convincing French accent, who lives in France and eats lots of cheese and drinks lots of wine and never shaves her armpits. One day she meets Ethan Hawke, and expresses surprise because she thought he had retired or died. They sit around watching The Fifth Element, which they love so much they abbreviate its title to simply The Fifth, and discuss the merits of Milla Jovovich's performance. That's it really.

Hadewijch is one of those foreign arty films that people pretend to like when really they don't understand a single word of it. Ironically this one is very straightforward: it's about a man called Dave Hadewijch who just wants people to pronounce his name properly. He spends his entire life on this futile quest to find a soulmate who'll call him by his correct moniker, but only on his death bed does his nurse finally get it right. As he finally hears her say his name, he lets out a single tear, wonders aloud what was so difficult about the word "Dave" and dies a lonely old man.

Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close is acutely, almightily, awfully, drastically, exceedingly, exceptionally, excessively, exorbitantly, extraordinarily, greatly, highly, hugely, immensely, immoderately, incontrovertibly, indubitably, inordinately long and intensely, markedly, notably, overly, plentifully, powerfully, prohibitively, radically, remarkably, severely, strikingly, surpassingly, terribly, terrifically, totally, unbelievably, uncommonly, unduly, unusually, utterly shit.

BlogalongaBond / A View To A Kill: Occasionally Starring Roger Moore

Well thank Christ that's over. It's not that the last seven Bond films haven't been fun - not one of them was as bad as watery snoozathon Thunderball - but let's be honest: Roger Mortis has finally set in. This incarnation of cinema's favourite secret agent is no more. This is an ex-Bond.

It's not even Rodge's fault (he graciously noted that he was "only about four hundred years too old for the part") - the poor bastard had been trying to escape since 1979, but Cubby Broccoli never had the balls to choose another Bond. As a result of that cowardice, and combined with the fact that Moore is nearly three years older than Sean Connery, James Bond went from a prowling, 32-year-old sex puma in 1962 to a shuffling, 57-year-old sex tortoise in 1985 without ever making reference to his own advancing years or behaving accordingly. I'm all for equal opportunities for the elderly, but not if it means watching a man old enough to be my dad making saucytime with a girl ten years younger than me. Sorry Dad, but that's just wrong.

I wouldn't have minded so much if Bond had got it on with anyone of a similar age to his own, but Broccoli and his various writers and directors simply refused to acknowledge that the character ever aged. Look at this graph, in which the red bars represent Roger Moore's age throughout his tenure, while the green bars represent the ages of the actresses with whom he was required to simulate carnal intimacy:

I mean that's just embarrassing for all of us. By A View To A Kill, Moore was so ancient that the amount of work put in by the hair, make up and lighting departments deserved awards for flattery, as these stills demonstrate:

But enough of this blatant ageism. Roger Moore's seniority is far from the only problem with A View To A Kill: Tanya Roberts is far and away the worst Bond girl ever; there's a Frenchman called Mr Aubergine; we're expected to believe that Bond recorded himself snoring for hours as a cover for sneaking out of his room at night; Grace Jones tries a Russian accent for her first line then doesn't bother again; there's the series' most nonsensical mention of the film's title in casual dialogue; comedy incompetent cops are back, from whom Bond attempts to escape by melting into the crowds in a massive, unwieldy fire truck with its siren blaring, and we're forced to watch the least sexy sex scene in Bond history.

You're not the only one rolling your eyes, mate

I haven't even mentioned the worst thing ever to happen in a Bond film ever, because I can barely bring myself to, but suffice to say it's difficult to listen to The Beach Boys these days without wincing in pain.

The thing that stands out the most about A View To A Kill, though, is the frequent attempts to make us believe that a near-pensioner is executing the film's typically amazing stunts. It's almost as if director John Glen knew he'd never fool us so he just didn't bother trying, allowing so many obvious shots of stuntmen to slip through the edit that it's a wonder they weren't all credited as James Bond in the end crawl. Let's take six completely random shots of Bond in action in the film and see how many of them actually feature Roger Moore:

Nope.

Hmmm.

Seriously?

Fairly certain that's Vladimir Putin.

Not even close.

I think this guy fixed my boiler last winter.

Extrapolate these findings and the shocking truth becomes clear: Roger Moore never actually appeared in A View To A Kill at all. Yet it still made pots of cash at the box office, and for that we must be grateful, because it convinced Cubby Broccoli that he could make a successful Bond film without Rodge. Taking this to its logical conclusion, he decided to hire an actual actor for the next film - but would this brave new dawn actually just mean more cock jokes and teen-shagging pensioners, or would it kick the living daylights out of the series, resulting in the greatest Bond film to date?

Take a wild guess.

Duran Duran's theme song

Simon Le Bon's lyrics might sound like the ramblings of a madman and the baffling video is a perfect example of why pop stars shouldn't attempt acting, but the song itself is a fabulous burst of fluoro-pop made doubly welcome by the fact that it's the first Bond theme in over a decade that isn't a soppy ballad. John Taylor's nimble basslines and Nick Rhodes' excitable synthesisers are at complete odds with the clunking codgertoss that follows, but for three minutes and ten seconds A View To A Kill is back-combed mullet-raising entertainment.
Bonus LOL: Whoever chose the image for the 7" single label gave us a cock joke worthy of Rodge himself, though it only became apparent when you placed the record on your turntable:

Patrick Macnee

Casting Britain's other Greatest Secret Agent alongside Roger Moore was a stroke of genius. Macnee had been winking at Bond throughout The Avengers, and finally he got his chance to join in the fun. In a perfect world there would be a spin-off series of films starring Moore and Macnee as Bond and John Steed in their 80s, fighting crime, attempting to nob 20-year-old girls and forgetting where they parked the car. Although to be honest, A View To A Kill isn't far from that already.

Uh... the length of Roger Moore's

and Grace Jones' legs in this poster?

I've run out of amazing things to say about A View To A Kill. Those legs are very long though.

BlogalongaBond will return with The Living Daylights

What the hell is BlogalongaBond? I'll tell you.

Further BlogalongaBondareading here

Casablanca: The Re-release That's Even Better Than The Phantom Menace

It's literally impossible to add anything useful to the four hundred and seventeen trillion words already written about Casablanca. Anything I say will have already been written, even if I were to include a bizarre collection of random letters, numbers and symbols like like "h8£!$95h%fkls($&".

Nevertheless, it would be remiss of me not to direct you to the nearest cinematorium displaying the re-release of the 70-year-old masterpiece, because it truly deserves the rarely-used title of "one of The Incredible Suit's fifteen or so greatest films ever made", and if you haven't seen it yet then what place do you have in this world? None.

So stop reading immediately and go and wallow in the astonishing screen presence of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman at their most romantically delicious; sigh with actual, tangible heartbreak that you'll never go anywhere as fantastic as Rick's Café Americain or have as noble, heroic a boss as Rick; marvel at the effortless plot setups and payoffs and the intricate tangle of relationships that fuel the timeless story; allow your eyes to bathe in some of the most perfect compositions to ever grace a cinema screen and wail like a big French baby at the La Marseillaise scene. Then enjoy the depressing sensation that accompanies the realisation that almost nothing else made in the history of the movies is as good.

h8£!$95h%fkls($&.

Today's Pointless YouTube Experiment

Stop Getting The BAFTAs Wrong

So that was this year’s BAFTA film awards: massively predictable, largely pointless but occasionally fun (The Jacko And Rusty Show MUST HAPPEN), and – as usual – an absolute nightmare for anyone who’s actually interested, thanks to the annual insanity that is the decision to only broadcast edited highlights two hours after the event.

I’ve no idea if it’s the decision of BAFTA or the BBC not to carry the awards live (I’m not an investigative journalist, leave me alone), but I do know that in 2012 it’s pretty fucking embarrassing that our national broadcaster doesn’t broadcast to the nation, as it happens, our own attempt to celebrate the year in film.

Nowhere is the frustration more apparent than on Twitter. People bravely avoiding their smartphones so as not to have the winners revealed to them before they watch the highlights show are routinely sent round the bend as the results are splashed all over the place by media outlets and people in the know, while those at home are still negotiating Stephen Fry’s linguistically labyrinthine introduction.

But there’s a bigger problem with the edited highlights show. Because so few people are interested in the so-called “technical” awards, they’re patronisingly squeezed into a couple of minutes at the end when everyone’s already switched off, as if they’re an inconvenient annoyance that Auntie is contractually obliged to mention. I mean, costume design isn’t really that important, is it? Music? Cinematography? Sound? Foreign language films? Who cares, right?

I’m not suggesting that BBC 1 gives up acres of its schedule to a minority interest event – after all, it’s hardly as prestigious as the hours of synchronised swimming that’ll be available to watch this summer – but it does seem to me that, in an age of multi-platform media, digital channels and red buttons, there must be room somewhere in a corner of the Beeb to squeeze the whole ceremony in. How about, oh, I don’t know, BBC 4? You know, the BBC’s dedicated arts and culture channel? Why not carry the whole shebang live over there and leave the highlights on BBC 1 as they are? The audience might be small, but is it smaller than that for Treasures Of Heaven, the show that explores the ancient Christian practice of preserving holy relics, which was on BBC 4 while Meryl Streep was losing her shoes? No idea, but as fans of the channel rightly point out, it’s not about the ratings.

David Cameron wants a British film industry that produces nothing but financially successful blockbusters, and he’s clearly clueless for saying so. But if he’s trying to encourage a successful industry (a not entirely unworthy aim), wouldn’t it be good if we could give over more than a few seconds each year to celebrating the technicians – many of whom are British – the likes of which were rewarded on Sunday night for their contributions to that industry? Giving them full coverage on a minority channel is surely better than jamming them into the dying frames of the highlights show like embarrassing relatives.

I’m no fan of awards and I’m not a massive patriot, but I am a fan of celebrating what’s great about film and I’m all for showing the world that this country can produce quality like Tyrannosaur, Attack The Block and Submarine. But when we can’t even be bothered to treat our own annual back-slapping ceremony with a fraction of the respect afforded to the Oscars, then why should Britain’s movie-going, telly-watching public ever care about the BAFTAs?

Sorry about that. Normal, Roger Moore-photoshopping service will be resumed shortly.

BlogalongaMuppets #7:Beaker Reviews The Muppets

Well here we fucking are then. The first new Muppets film to be spunked into cinemas in twelve years and the last of my award-winning monthly appearances on this pathetic excuse for a blog. An entire planet full of twats has been looking forward to The Muppets since it was announced, and it gives me an erection as big as my head to tell you that...

Now don't get your knickers in a twist, Muppet-lovers. If you're so fucking obsessed with us that you actually liked, say, The Muppets Take Manhattan, then maybe you'll enjoy this. But if, on the other hand, you're a normal human being who isn't in love with a bunch of expensive cushion covers, then there is no fucking way on this piss-soaked shithole of a planet that this film will win you over.

Yeah, Muppets are great. Yeah, we're cute, and sometimes funny. And by sometimes, I mean twice in this film. But that does not give us the right to shit out a film so staggeringly simplistically plotted that Camilla the fucking chicken could have written it. And no, it is NOT OK that we try to get away with it with fucking interminable references to how it's just a movie, and not a very good one at that. That may have worked in, say, The Muppet Christmas Carol because we were being clever and that film was actually good, but now we just look like arrogant pricks. With hands up our arseholes.

Lube up love, you're next.

And what's with the songs? BRET FUCKING MCKENZIE off of FLIGHT OF THE FUCKING CONCHORDS wrote the songs, so they should be the greatest fucking songs of all time, right? WRONG. I can't remember a single one except "Man Or Muppet", and that's only because it sounds EXACTLY like the Conchord's "I'm Not Crying", only much, much, much less gooder.





Amirite?

Don't even get me started on the cameos. It is a fucking pathetic sight indeed to see how many has-beens queue up to be in a single frame of a Muppet film regardless of quality, OH HELLO ZACH GALLIFREYNACKERS. And will someone please tell me WHO THE TITTY-SHITTING CHRISTBALLS IS SELENA GOMEZ? Surely the whole fucking point of a cameo is to make the audience go "Ooh, look!" rather than "Who, the fuck?"

Anyway. I at least enjoyed it when the Muppet Show theme song came on, and on reflection I can heartily agree with the central message that we should value our friendships, keep in touch with each other more, think about how our actions affect others and keep chasing our dreams, because HOLY FUCK I JUST REMEMBERED THE BIT WHERE JACK BLACK GETS A FACE FULL OF MISS PIGGY'S FANNY. Man, just the thought of it terrifies me. I tell you, he was wiping that shit off his chin for hours.

So that the fuck is that then. I've enjoyed coming on here and wanking in your eyes every month, but let's face it, these films have all been a bit crap haven't they? Apart from Christmas Carol. And Treasure Island I suppose. In fact if I absolutely had to rank them in in descending order of least-shitness, I'd say: Christmas, Treasure, Caper, Muppets, Movie, Space (I imagine), Manhattan. Oh God, Manhattan really was bollocks, wasn't it? Yes. Yes it fucking well was.

I'm sure there'll be a The Muppets 2 soon enough, in which case I'll come back and wipe my arse all over this blog again. In the meantime, fuck off.

Beaker out. x

PS More BlogalongaMuppetry at The Movie Evangelist, the man with his hand up all our holes.

Happy 80th Birthday John Willie

Today seems as good a day as any to point you towards Saturday Playlists #1, #8, #13, #28 and #30, i.e. all the ones with great John Williams music in them. Add all those numbers together and see if you don't fall out of your chair.

The Incredible Suit's Great The Woman In Black Premiere Adventure

Thanks to a disastrous administrative cock-up at Momentum Pictures HQ, I was inadvertently invited to the world premiere of The Woman In Black a couple of weeks ago, which took place at London's glamorous Royal Festival Hall, which is not glamorous. It is in London though.

The Royal Festival Hall circa 1951, yesterday

This was my first ever proper premiere (this one doesn't count, there were no celebs or free booze), so I feel it my duty to share the evening's excitement with you in blogular format whether you like it or not.

The first thing to do at a film premiere is walk the red carpet, preferably without falling over. I was looking forward to this bit because I expected to get my photo taken by thousands of screaming girls and a bunch of paps, but of course that didn't happen. Screaming girls and paps know the difference between a bona fide celebrity and a chancer, and I was clearly not the former. The red carpet is nevertheless a terrifying experience because for that pre-realisation split-second, hundreds of people are looking at you, and that's the most likely time to fall over.

I successfully remained upright as I was ushered along the carpet by a series of burly minders, and I barely had chance to take a few photos before I'd reached the end. Here are just some of the sights I saw on my way down:

Amusingly I managed to wander into the back of this video, which I include for the benefit of anyone who knows what I look like. For everyone else, I'm the really really ridiculously good-looking one.



I took my seat inside and claimed my FREE bottle of still water and spent the next half an hour waiting for the bloody film to start while the likes of Big Mo off of EastEnders wandered past. I could have been sitting next to someone from Made In Chelsea but I wouldn't know what they looked like if they jumped up and gave me a haircut. Just before the film started, though, none other than COREY FUCKING FELDMAN stumbled in looking confused and accompanied by a semi-naked lady with unconvincing breasts. I resisted the urge to shout "I LOVED you in License [sic] To Drive!" and left him to find his seat as the lights went down.

***THE BIT WHERE I REVIEW THE WOMAN IN BLACK***

The film itself is perfectly fine but unspectacular. It's a good old-fashioned British ghost story, D-Rads is surprisingly good, Jack Boswell from Bread is in it and there are a couple of genuinely scary bits. There is, however, an awful lot of wandering about an old house opening doors, quite a few jumps caused by loud noises, which is lazy, and the final act falls apart once D-Rads inexplicably realises how to solve all this ghostly kerfuffle. Still it's good to see Hammer (the film studio, not the bible-bashing rapper) back making this sort of thing, and hopefully we'll see more of it in the near future. A bit of MR James wouldn't go amiss, or something written by Mark Gatiss. Can we arrange that?

***THE END OF THE BIT WHERE I REVIEW THE WOMAN IN BLACK***

After the film I tucked myself into a corner of the bar downstairs and played celebrity bingo. I got Louis Theroux, Graham Linehan, David Baddiel, someone off Blue Peter and Adam Deacon, which is a fairly unspectacular haul, so I made my way to the Momentum party and chatted to some lovely people and drank lots of their champagne which was a silly thing to do on a school night.

Thanks to Momentum for having me though: I look forward to soiling your red carpet again very soon, and so does Corey Feldman.

I've Said It Before And I'll Say It Again

There is literally no way he can get all that hair into that mask.

BlogalongaMuppets #6: Beaker's Made Up Review Of Muppets From Space

Fucking hell it's cold. Obviously I'm a non-sentient collection of cloth and stitches so I don't feel the cold as such, but if some inconsiderate bastard shoved his hand up your arsehole without warming it up first, you would fucking well feel it as much as I do.

The biggest downside of the current cold spell is that the whole of Lovefilm appears to have frozen solid. This is the only reason I can think of why I haven't received my Muppets From Space DVD, unless of course everyone who works there is a useless workshy fop and can't be arsed to send me the films I requested EVEN WHEN I MADE THEM HIGH FUCKING PRIORITY. Jesus, it's a good job we're not at war.

What this obviously means for you is that you're denied my sharp insight into the last Muppets film, and for that I am truly ambivalent. If you're that fucking desperate, I'll make something up. Hang on, let me check IMDb. Amuse yourself for a minute.

Muppets film in "Beaker-free poster" shocker

OK, I'm back. In all honesty I didn't get any further than Hulk Hogan's name in the cast, at which point I decided to create my own synopsis. Here goes:

When Hulk Hogan tries to take over space, Beaker defeats him by tearing his stupid fucking hair out at the roots, breaking every single bone in his body (including the tiny ones in his ears) and turning him into a giant Muppet by disembowelling him and shoving Frank Oz's arm so far up his rectum that it's hard to tell which hairs belong to Oz's armpit and which belong to Hogan's arse.

Here are some stills from the film:

I don't know about you but I think it looks fucking amazing.

Beaker out. x

Want more BlogalongaMuppetry? Talk to master Muppeteer The Movie Evangelist.

Chronicle

It's found-footage o'clock again, and today's attempt to kick the genre up the arse features no city-destroying Godzilla-types or giant trolls being hunted through the forests of Norway, but telekinetic teenagers being annoying, anti-social and murderously violent, just like normal teenagers. Ugh, teenagers.

Look at them, happy-slapping pensioners and knife-criming each other.
What we need's a good war, etc.

What Chronicle does well is take the angry, confused teen movie to the next logical step, assuming the next logical step is giving them mysterious super-powers and using them to go postal on everyone and everything. It's the anti-Spider-Man: instead of immediately going out being all goody-goody and catching crooks and men dressed as goblins, Andrew Detmer - Chronicle's version of Peter Parker - uses his powers to be even more of a twat to everyone than they are to him, and who wouldn't? That teacher's pet Peter Parker, that's who. I bet he wouldn't do to spiders what Andrew does either.

What it also does well is convincingly show the characters learning to use their powers gradually throughout the film, before a balls-out final act that showcases the extent of their abilities and uses them to combine themes of friendship, revenge and the traumas of adolescence with explosions, collapsing buildings and flying buses.

A flying bus, yesterday

What Chronicle doesn't do so well at is being a found-footage film. The footage has improbably been stitched together from hundreds of different sources, crappy video cameras have suspiciously high-quality pictures and sound (if you can take a VHS camcorder into a rave and make out what people ten feet away are saying then you should sell that technology for ten zillion dollars), and a whole character is hauled into the plot with no other purpose but to be an extra camera operator. The aforementioned insane finale practically ditches the format completely, and it's only because the action's so good that you tend not to notice. The film doesn't really gain anything from the found-footage aspect, and if anything it pulls you out of the story when it breaks the rules, which is surely the exact opposite of its raison d'être, if I may be so twatty.

Anyway, the cast of largely-unknowns and the structure of the script are good enough to paper over most of the nonsense, and Chronicle is a tight, zippy blast of pubescent super-anti-heroism which you should definitely go and see this weekend to cheer you up after the disturbing but equally good unsettlathon that is Martha Marcy May Marlene.

LucasFilm's Plan To Alienate Star Wars Fans Reaches Depths Hitherto Believed Unattainable

Daniel Craig's Arse Not Up To Scratch

It seems like only eighteen days since we got our first unexciting glimpse (or "sneak peak" in modern parlance) of what to expect from Skyfall, and apparently what we could expect from Skyfall was Daniel Craig sitting about with his arse hanging out like a disgusting but undeniably buff builder.

But in a twist almost as unexpected as that time Sean Bean turned out to be the bad guy, it appears that that first official image WASN'T the first official image, despite its high resolution and global circulation. It's almost as if the first first official image wasn't quite good enough, so now there's a new and improved first official image or something, because this morning the second first official image was released, and there isn't a bum cleavage in sight:

What there is is a man who looks a bit like Chuck Norris mooching about in Shanghai waving a gun around like secret agents do when they want to remain incognito. Now I've been to Shanghai and I don't recognise this bit, so I can deduce from that that it's actually a set at Pinewood. I can also deduce that this is a shot from scene V64BA, shot on November 25th last year. How can I possibly know so much? Because I look at the internet a lot.

You might also notice, if you're as annoyingly anal as me, that wherever Bond is, it's somewhere that begins with "Qu" and "Inte". Quantum International immediately springs to mind, although Sam Mendes has already poo-pooed the continuation of the previous two films' story featuring the mysterious and slightly useless organisation. So... "Queen's Intelligence?" "Quality Intercourse"? "Quacking... uh... Interruption"?

Nope. It's obvious. It's "Quite Interesting". Yep, Bond has stumbled onto the set of QI and is about to blow Alan Davies' brains all over Stephen Fry's shirt. This film is going to be amazing.