With X-Men: First Class still bringing home the box office Bacon, it seems like as good a time as any to squirt some X-music into your E-holes.
Each X-Men film has featured a different composer, and the lack of a unifying theme for the series has been something of a disappointment. Where's its Superman march, its Bond theme, its Star Wars fanfare? Nowhere, that's where.
Michael Kamen scored X-Men, tragically being credited as Michael K-Men DO YOU SEE?! on the soundtrack CD, and frankly he did a bit of a shit job: the album is the musical equivalent of a mutant whose power is to make the process of paint drying even duller.
Fortunately John Ottman took over for X2, bringing some serious BAAA, BAAA, BAAAA!! to proceedings, and managed to avoid being credited as 'John Ott-Men'. For X-Men: The Last Stand, John Powell took over, and Harry Gregson-Williams had a go on X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
It fell to Hans Zimmer prodigy Henry (not Hugh) Jackman (not Jack-Men) to score X-Men: First Class, and guess what? He did a FIRST CLASS JOB, ahahaha. Hopefully he'll carry on with any X-prequel-sequels, and, based on this piece of aural loveliness, may even prove a worthy successor to David Arnold should he be unavailable for future Bondery.
Anyway, enough waffle. Time to "X-perience" some "X-citing" "X-amples" of X-Music! I don't know where genius writing like that comes from, honest. I'm just born with it.
Here's hammer-wielding god of thunder "John" Thor in a poster for his film:
He's trying, bless him, but he hasn't quite mastered the art of falling from a height and landing like a bit of a tit, one of Hollywood's favourite go-to stances for action types. But how does he compare to some of the previous exponents of this peculiar trend? Let's take a half-hearted look!
Toad, X-Men
Toad hasn't quite got the correct angle of elevation on the extended left arm that would become a signature element of falling from a height and landing like a bit of a tit, but he makes up for it with an unconvincing CGI tongue. 6/10.
Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2
Spidey's rocking an impressive stance here: just look
how straight that left arm is. Although with his legs
spread like that I bet that's not the only rip in his suit.
7/10.
Matthew Patel, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
Oh, I say. That's textbook. Though I'll have to
deduct a point for the lack of eye contact.
9/10.
Baby Doll, Sucker Punch
An interesting attempt to triplicate the stance here: sadly the other two aren't trying hard enough. Also it's by far the worst film of the lot.
3/10.
I'm sure there must be more of these, but you try Googling "film characters landing from a height with left leg bent, right leg out at 90 degrees, right hand on the floor and left arm outstretched like a ponce" and see what you get. Chances are you'll get this blog post.
Another day, another super-hero film on the way. Today it’s Green Lantern, and the news that’s just parped out is that Ryan Reynolds is to be cast in the title role.
Reynolds does not feature in my book of Bad Actors, but he does appear in my much smaller book of Actors Who’ve Played Characters With Atypical Names. Ryan’s entry in this book includes such gems as Jay ‘Boom’ DeBoom, Bobby Rupp, Paul Nodel, Henry Lipschitz, Captain Excellent, and Kevin. Could it be that Ryan’s choice of characters is based on the fact that his middle name is Rodney? Ryan, I know you’re reading this, let me know.
But I digress. This post is not about Ryan Rodney Reynolds’ daft character monikers, nor is it about the Green Lantern movie, although it’s worth looking forward to because it’s a DC Comics property and it’s directed by Martin Campbell (GoldenEye, Casino Royale). I know precious little about Green Lantern as a character so I’ll leave all that business to sites run by those who know their mustard and are already getting their grundies in a twizzle over the casting of Triple R.
No, this post is about my hope that, because of Reynolds’ new job, the mooted Deadpoolmovie he was due to star in will be unceremoniously shunted to the arse end of the list of movies to be made in the next century.
For those in the dark, Deadpool was a character in the crapmungous X-Menspin-off X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and was due his own spin-off for no obvious reason, least of all that anybody actually wants to see a Deadpool movie. So this spin-off of a spin-off has hopefully spun off into the spin-dryer of bad ideas, never to spin anywhere again.
I mean really, why bother in the first place? Let’s take a cursory glance at a random selection of all-time classic films featuring characters from other, almost universally better, movies. For the sake of impartiality I’ll include each film’s rating out of 10 according to readers of the Internet Movie Database, my personal bible.
So, having studied these figures carefully, the powers that be decided that what the world really needs is a spin-off of a spin-off, which brings us back to Deadpool. Let’s hope that it remains unmade because the only benefit to mankind I can envisage would be my capsule review, which would be: “Dead Poo, more like”.
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!”
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.