Stomach-Churning Pole Dance

You know who you are. I know who you are.

Listen: True Lies was directed by James Cameron and stars Arnold Schwarzenegger in his least believable role as a husband and father leading an unlikely double life as a secret agent. It famously features Jamie Lee Curtis doing a stomach-churning pole dance in her smalls which immediately negates all the good work Cameron did for ladyfolk with Aliens and the Terminator movies.

True Romance was directed by Tony Scott and was the first script written by Quentin Tarantino in his inimitable, already-tiresome style. It stars Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette as two crazy kids trying to flog a shedload of questionably-sourced cocaine to a Hollywood bigshot while being mithered by the ghost of Elvis.

While it’s probably fair to say True Romance is better than True Lies, that doesn’t mean it should win a poll in which it wasn’t even nominated. That’s just silly.

This week’s poll is: What’s the greatest John Hughes film, like, ever? Now, please don’t confuse The Breakfast Club with Breakfast At Tiffany’s. Sixteen Candles does not feature Bruce Willis dragging Mos Def through New York, that’s 16 Blocks. And Uncle Buck is not about a 20th Century astronaut frozen for 500 years only to discover that everybody is dressed like they’re at a 1970s swingers’ party.

Honestly, you guys. Must try harder!

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Trapped In A Dustbin

It’s about this time of the week that the world waits with baited breath for the results of The Incredible Suit’s weekly poll, and I satisfy that demand with a meticulously crafted graphic representation and poetic prose hewn from the mightiest oaks of wit and arranged on the screen with the care of the world’s most careful carer of things.

Unfortunately some berk has set the end of the poll for 24 hours later than usual, so you’re going to have to come back after 5pm on Friday to discover what the readers of The Incredible Suit deemed The Greatest James Cameron Film, Like, Ever! Except you won’t, because I know for a fact that at least half the people who voted for True Lies, which is currently in the lead, thought they were voting for True Romance, which wasn’t directed by James Cameron and has nothing in common with True Lies apart from the fact that there are some people in it, talking. So a fat lot of good that poll is.

It doesn’t matter anyway because I watched Aliens again recently and can confirm that it’s far and away Cameron’s best work. It’s a 10 out of 10 perfect action thriller that feels like spending two and a half hours trapped in a dustbin while the most terrifying nightmares your mind could generate try to get in and eat bits of you that you’d really rather keep hold of. And I should know, I’ve stayed in the Formule 1 Hotel in Liverpool.

So with no poll result to announce and no new poll to kick off because I haven’t thought of anything yet, I’ll have to pull something else from the sleeves of The Incredible Suit. Hello, what’s this? Why, it’s something incredible! It’s a cheeky song written by Joe Cornish for BBC 6 Music’s Adam & Joe Show! If you’re living in a state of blissful ignorance of the Adam & Joe show (if you can call that ‘living’), it’s a weekly work of such sublime genius you could fatten it up, put a suit on it and call it Alfred Hitchcock.

It’s off air for the summer so don’t pop a sprocket trying to find it. But when it’s back, at the very least download the weekly podcast and listen to it on the way to work, especially if you’re the kind of person who likes to freak out fellow commuters by spontaneously snotting yourself with laughter for no apparent reason.

Anyway Joe wrote this song for the show’s Song Wars slot, which I haven’t got the arsedness to explain right now, but it’s basically a theme song for the latest Bond film, Quantum Of Solace. Yes, they did it about nine months ago but they’ve just put it on their website to download for nought pee, so I recommend you do so. Adam wrote one too but sadly it was like Moonraker to Joe’s Goldfinger. Sorry Adam, I know you’re reading this.

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Grand Poobah Of The Cosmos

Self-proclaimed King Of The World and crackpot genius James Cameron has announced that he's going to give us the chance to watch 15 minutes of his new film, Avatar, for free. Make no mistake, Avatar will be the most hyped movie of the year. Forget Bruno, forget Harry Potter, forget Satanic Sluts III: Scandalised; Avatar will be the film of 2009, because it's Cameron's first film for a decade, it'll have groundbreaking effects that'll make your eyes dribble out of your face and it'll cost 700 bajillion dollars and make a wazillion times that much back.

However, it's not out till December, and Cameron wants us to be eating, breathing and farting Avatar constantly until then. So he's taken this unprecedented step of, rather than a boring old trailer, granting us a free 15 minute fix of eye-heroin to tide us over until he can provide a full-on, heart-attack-inducing geeksplosion for Christmas. What's more, he's going to do it in IMAX and 3D cinemas just to be sure our brains totally liquify and trickle out of our bottoms.

I suppose it makes sense; Avatar's a massive science fiction extravagasm set on a planet populated entirely by bonkersness, so the last thing he wants is people watching clips on their phone in an office in Grimsby. If you ask me though, this exercise is fraught with danger. What if we don't like what we see? A three-minute trailer is rarely bad enough to put us off something we're probably going to see anyway, but a 15 minute taster could convince us that actually, this all looks a bit silly, I don't think I'll bother thanks. Cameron had better be sure what he's showing us is worth leaving the house for or he might be waving ta-ra to all that moolah come December.

What's more worrying is that I fear a new dawn in movie trailerage. Currently we have to endure 30 minutes of adverts and trailers before a film; if this idea takes off we'll be there for hours, and by the time the movie starts we'll have forgotten what we came to see. People will have to book two days' holiday and pack a change of underwear just to go to the pictures.

I'm looking forward to Avatar but I can't see myself watching 15 minutes of it four months in advance; that's like eating a roast potato for breakfast then having a full Sunday roast at teatime. Pointless. Also, Cameron has a long way to go to impress me. Aliens is fantastic, but T2 and True Lies sag in the middle like a badly cooked souffle, and Titanic, no matter how much cash it hoovered up, is just an enormous pant-pudding.

But what do I know? Avatar will probably be the greatest thing since sliced bacon and the 15 minute experiment will win Cameron a Nobel Peace Prize. As long as he doesn't proclaim himself to be Grand Poobah of the Cosmos when he collects it I don't care.

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