Abandoned idea #216

I'm sure I had a point to make when I started this, but by the time I'd finished I had no idea what it was. Sorry.

Temporarily Named Saturday Playlist #3: Batman

Despite the continuing lack of a snappy name and a says-it-all logo, the temporarily-titled Saturday Playlist rumbles on in a persistent attempt to do things to your earholes that other blogs can only dream of.

This week's theme looks like this:

...and features the work of Neal Hefti (little-known composer of the TV series theme), Danny Elfman, Shirley Walker, Elliot Goldenthal, Christopher Drake, Robert J Kral, Kevin Manthei, Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, each of whom bring a different but entirely appropriate bat-sound to their respective incarnations of the pointy-eared grumpychops.

So pull on a pair of black tights, growl like a laryngitic lion and hang around with a skimpily-dressed boy half your age while these fine tunesmiths take you to Gotham City and back in an improbably ostentatious car. Pow!

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO

TEMPORARILY-NAMED

SATURDAY PLAYLIST #3:

BATMAN

To comment on this post, click here

Cackapoopants

It would appear there’s going to be a new Pirates Of The Caribbean film, subtitled “On Stranger Tides”, walking the plank and shivering me timbers in the summer of 2011. Just so you know I’m not making this up:

Seriously, I couldn’t be less interested in this if it was a six-hour documentary about Shia LaBeouf’s first experience on a potty. Ignoring the fact that the previous Pirates Of The Caribbean films were all cackapoopants, there’s a massive clue as to why On Stranger Tides is destined for nothing more than a 2-star review in Empire and a sound ignoring from The Incredible Suit: it’s the fourth movie in the franchise.

You’d think those dimwits in Hollywood would have worked it out by now. It doesn’t matter how successful, critically or financially, your film series is, if you make a fourth picture it will not be foursome. It will be fourful. Geddit? See what I did there? Oh fourget it.

OK, I know the head honchos at Warner, Fox, Universal and what have you are regular readers of The Incredible Suit, so let me spell it out. Here’s a list of some films that were the fourth to be made in a popular series. First, some of those that were so bad they actually tainted the memory of the first three:

Die Hard 4
Terminator: Salvation
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Star Wars: Episode I (Actually I like it but I’m in a minority. Of one)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Regular viewers will be only too aware who’s to blame for that)
Thunderball (If you think it’s actually good, go back and watch it again. It’s not)
Alien Resurrection
Superman IV
Batman And Robin
Lethal Weapon 4
Fantastic Four (Not strictly a fourquel but bad enough to be included)

Now, those that were not only good, but actually better than the first three:












So there you have it. Point made. Case rested. QED. Now who’s looking forward to The Hobbit?

To comment on this post, click here

A Big, Cheesed Off Fish-Man

Good news, everyone! Not only has this week’s poll seen a record-breaking TEN votes, but the winner is a film of which The Incredible Suit heartily approves!

Yes, you, The People, have voted in numbers to rival viewers of The X Factor, and by crikey it was close. The search for The Greatest Remake / Reboot / Re-imagining, Like, Ever has seen Moulin Rouge!, Casino Royale and Something Else I Hadn’t Thought Of come an excruciatingly close joint second place to Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan’s unspeakably good update of the Batman franchise which was left twitching in a puddle of its own liquid faeces by master job-botcher Joel Schumacher in 1997’s Batman And Robin.

This was a difficult vote because, as Satine pointed out in her comment, I failed to specify whether you should be voting for your favourite film from the list or the film which most successfully updated the original / previous version, and in the end I just left you to it. You’re big boys and girls after all.

And while I believe that Moulin Rouge! is a better film overall than Batman Begins, I do think that Nolan’s film performed a near miracle in resurrecting a franchise so devastatingly rogered into oblivion that nobody expected to take it seriously until some time in the 2030s.

So well done Bats, and on a personal note I should like to open myself up (not literally you understand, that would be horrible) and tell the world that the scene in which a young Bruce Wayne tells Alfred that it’s his own fault his parents died, my vision goes a bit misty and I feel a sudden urge to breathe in sharply through my nose. Make of that what you will.

With my recent witterings about aliens in the movies fresh in your minds, this week’s poll is: What’s the greatest movie about aliens, like, ever? The Incredible Suit’s Top 5 (and therefore the only five that matter) are:

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Alien
3. Aliens
4. E.T.
5. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind

I would have put Cloverfield in there but there’s some debate over whether or not the monster is of alien origin or just, you know, a big, cheesed off fish-man.

Happy voting!

Daniel Craig Needs Tighter Speedos

You can’t open the virtual pages of the interwebs these days without reading about another evil soldier of Beelzebub planning to remake a perfectly good film that needs remaking about as much as Daniel Craig needs tighter Speedos.

It used to make me quite cross but now when I read these stories I just sigh and throw a half-hearted punch at the nearest person to alleviate my mounting apathy. The irony of remaking movies is that they rouse the ire of bloglodytes and forum-dwellers the world over, forcing them to spew out their own remakes of posts they’ve written several times already, except with more exclamation marks and ‘O’s than in the original “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!”

This week alone my sensibilities have been offended by forthcoming remakes / reboots / re-imaginings / re-configurations / revisits / rehashes / retardations of classic ‘80s horror-comedy (I’m trying to coin the term ‘horredy’ but nobody’s having any of it) An American Werewolf In London, and Swedish kiddy-vampire flick Let The Right One In. Which, I hasten to add, was released about ten minutes ago.

Now I might be going out on a controversial limb here, but it seems a trifle hasty to be remaking a film that hasn’t even finished its cinema run yet, wouldn’t you say? It’s really only a matter of time before these remakes start turning up before their original counterparts. They could be called ‘retro-makes’, and people could get all their anger and bile out of the way before they’re then ‘originalised’, and everybody will be happy that the retro-director’s vision has been unsullied and the spirit of the first film yanked harshly out of a stinky cesspit to be polished off as a shiny, new, original work of art.

So just to be obstreperous (one of many things my old history teacher used to call me), and with everyone crying vinegar from their blub-holes about how there are no good remakes, The Incredible Suit takes Hollywood’s side and pulls from its incredible sleeves the Top 5 Greatest Re-Whatevers, Like, Ever:

1. Moulin Rouge! (1952 < 2001)
2. Casino Royale (1967 < 2006)
3. Batman Begins (1997 < 2005)
4. Star Trek (2002 < 2009)
5. King Kong (1933 > 2005)

Actually King Kong doesn’t count because it’s not as good as the original. Which, in effect, means there are only four decent re-somethings in the entire movieverse. The bloglodytes and forum-dwellers were right all along! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

A Bolt Of Lightning Up Your Bottom

When a gentleman has a close lady friend – possibly one who’s married to him or at least has agreed to spend large swathes of their life with him – he finds himself at some point watching several films that feature Reese Witherspoon or Alicia Silverstone.

Such films are usually “chick flicks”, aimed predominantly at a female audience who can turn off important parts of their brains at will, thereby allowing them to experience surprise and enjoyment when the heroine leaves their selfish, morally bankrupt city-slicker boyfriend for the rough-and-tumble guy next door who has never worn a suit in his life but knows how to deliver a baby cow.

While watching chick flicks is an important stage in any relationship – along with many other sacrifices couples make for each other, like giving up half of a perfectly good bed or agreeing to deposit toenail clippings into an appropriate receptacle rather than onto the dining table – it’s one that continually leaves me confuddled because I can’t for the life of me tell the difference between Reese and Alicia.

If you showed me a picture of one of them and asked me who it was, I’d say “well, that’s Reese Witherspoon, or the other one... er…” and then spend valuable minutes trying to remember which one was in Batman And Robin, which one was in Clueless, which one was in Legally Blonde and then attempting to put a name to the face in my brain, which looks like this:
This mental image is fundamentally useless because it’s a morphed picture of both of them, a gestalt entity my brain calls Areesia Silverspoon. Yeah, thanks a lot, brain. That really helps.

Why do we need them both? Is it because Hollywood churns out so much chickery flickery that there’s simply too much work for one unbearably kooky starlet? Do they get together and cheekily (but kookily) swap scripts to see if baffled directors notice they’ve got the other one? Or are they in fact the same person? I trawled the internet for a picture of them being kooky together, but guess what? No such picture exists!

I can only, therefore, draw one conclusion. Alicia Silverstone is the super-hero alter-ego of Reese Witherspoon. When producers need a pretty, kooky, initially vulnerable but eventually independent and forthright character they hire Reese, but if the script’s a bit lacking or the male co-star is a bit too famous, they get on the Silver-phone and call for Alicia to provide that advanced level of extra-prettiness, super-kookiness, mega-vulnerability, ultra-independence and hyper-forthrightitude. I believe they’re that way round because ‘Witherspoon’ is a silly, dull name, like Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne, while ‘Silverstone’ sounds like one of the X-Men women.

And another thing: why are the X-Men women also called X-Men? Don’t they get cheesed off being called men all the time?

“Oh, hello Storm from the X-Men”
“Actually I’m a woman, and to help you remember here’s a bolt of lightning up your bottom”
“Ooyah!”