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Saturday Playlist #23: The Greatest '80s Movie Songs, Like, Ever... 2

You know when someone very carefully selects the cream of a given music genre in order to make a playlist, then sits back and feels very pleased with themselves, then a few weeks later wants to make another playlist in the same genre but knows in their heart of hearts that it's essentially going to be made up of the songs that weren't quite good enough to go on the first playlist, but does it anyway because one person's idea of the cream is another person's idea of the milk, or some other nonsensical metaphor?

Well, that.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO

SATURDAY PLAYLIST #23:
THE GREATEST '80s MOVIE

SONGS, LIKE, EVER... 2

Lolcat & Lolmouse

Since treating myself to that Tom & Jerry DVD at hmv the other week, I've become dangerously obsessed with the hilarious antics of the cat and mouse duo. I've even bought a cat and a mouse and encouraged them to have slapstick chases and fights through the house, but to no avail. I may have to resort to inviting a large black lady to come round and yell "THOMAS!!!" at regular intervals, although she must ensure that I only ever see her from the waist down.

Anyway, I thought it was only fair to share the love, so here's the very first cartoon to feature Tom & Jerry: Puss Gets The Boot.



Released in 1940 by MGM and directed by animation titans William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, Puss Gets The Boot is interesting for several reasons:

• The cat and mouse aren't called Tom and Jerry, they're called Jasper and Jinx (although the mouse isn't referred to by name in the cartoon). If you win a pub quiz with that bit of trivia you can send me part of the prize.
• Rudolf Ising is credited as producer, although he had very little to do with it. More hands-on was the uncredited Fred Quimby, whose name children the world over would come to recognise as being synonymous with quality T&J action, as opposed to the later shorts directed and produced by Gene Deitch or Chuck Jones.
• Puss Gets The Boot was the only intended outing for Jasper and Jinx. MGM couldn't see the appeal of a cat chasing a mouse any further than one nine-minute short, although an Oscar nomination for Short Subject (Cartoons) and an overwhelmingly positive reaction soon changed their stupid, tiny minds.

Between 1940 and 1967, 160 more Tom & Jerry shorts were made. I thought it would be nice if I posted one a week until some time in 2014. Then I thought, fuck that. Buy the DVDs you tight bastards.

Rubber

Rubber has received considerably more attention than most straight-to-DVD films, possibly because it's one of the rare ones that doesn't star Brian Dennehy, but most likely because of its sky-high concept:

You're unlikely to have seen a film like this before. The tale of a sentient tyre with psychokinetic powers and murderous tendencies, as watched by a cinema audience within the film who eventually become part of the story, Rubber doesn't just break the fourth wall, it smashes it to smithereens with a wrecking ball before having a ruddy good go at the fifth and sixth walls too.

Still, if you're Quentin Dupieux, the French crackpot who made albums with titles like 'Analog Worms Attack' and 'Moustache (Half A Scissor)', you've got a reputation to live up to so you may as well direct a film with the kind of plot that came to you during a cheese-and-absinthe-fuelled dream you had one night.

Yes, Rubber is weird, and yes, it's all right, but it deliberately goes out of its way to be a meaningless exercise in things happening for no reason. It's so successful in this aim that a couple of days after watching, all you'll remember is that it was about a psychotic wheel and there were lots of exploding heads. It's fun while it lasts, but as a loose collection of ideas thrown together without any connective tissue, Rubber relies too heavily on its daft premise to provide enduring entertainment.

Still, it does star an actor called Wings Hauser. So that's good.

LOCAL COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENT FOR

BENEFIT OF TINY FRACTION OF READERSHIP

Just before Rubber "hits the shelves" on Monday, its only remaining cinema screening is at Brixton's Ritzy, where it's on this Friday night as part of their Midnight Movies / Culture Shock strand. There's a party beforehand and everything, which has the troubling dress code "Rubber wear or tourist attire". Personally I have doubts about the wisdom of wandering round Brixton on a Friday night dressed in rubber or as a tourist so I'll probs give it a miss.

David Arnold, Psycho

Last Saturday saw me head into London with a spring in my step and a song in my heart to see legendary film score composer, The Incredible Suit interviewee and rocker of fine facial hair David Arnold talking about Bernard Herrmann's astonishing score for Psycho at the ICA as part of BAFTA's 'Behind The Mask' series of talks.

By the time Arnold took the stage there were only about 25 people in the audience, which I found surprising and infuriating. This is one of the world's greatest score composers talking about one of cinema's greatest scores in the middle of London, and there was probably a higher attendance at the "Government Cuts Are Brilliant, Stop Complaining" march round the corner in the St James's Park public toilets.

Anyway, Arnold spoke knowledgeably and passionately about the strings-only score, its monochrome sound matching Hitchcock's stark imagery; how the orchestra played with their strings muted for the whole score except for the shower scene to truly stab home the violence of Marion's murder; how Hitchcock originally asked Herrmann for a jazz score with silence during the shower scene, and - with specific reference to the driving scenes - how he believed it was "a score without any hope whatsoever".

Bernard Herrmann: Psycho (Suite)


After about ten minutes he introduced the film, the lights went down and Psycho began. Now, I wasn't expecting this. I was expecting some chat, some clips, some debate, but not an actual screening of the film. Looking at the ICA website, it's no wonder: the page I saw doesn't mention the film being shown at all. Maybe this is why there was hardly anyone there: advertise a rare screening of Psycho and people might stay and listen to the Q&A; advertise a Q&A with someone nobody's heard of and watch the takings spiral down the plughole.

Despite being mentally unprepared to watch Psycho - I actually contemplated leaving and coming back for the Q&A 109 minutes later - within five minutes I was totally engrossed in the film and still discovered new stuff even though I've seen it eight zillion times.

When Arnold returned he talked, amongst other things, about his belief that 'temp tracks' - temporary scores laid down during a film's production to help sell it to the financiers and distributors - stifle creativity because the composer is then asked to mimic the temp track rather than come up with something groundbreaking (like Herrmann's Psycho score), and how his own music for Changing Lanes ended up being licenced for Man On Fire because of its use as a temp track in the making of the latter film, much to the annoyance of Man On Fire composer Harry Gregson-Williams.

Obviously I asked Arnold (again) if he would be scoring Bond 23, and if SlashFilm had been there you'd have seen this headline on their site yesterday:

So that was my Saturday. How was yours?

2011: Year Of The Helmet

If there's one thing we can expect from this year's blockbuster season, it's an impressive display of helmets. Big helmets, small helmets, shiny helmets, funny-looking helmets... 2011 has them all. So come with me as I take a long, hard look at some of the year's loveliest helmets.

X-Men: First Class (Magneto)

One day Magneto will grow up to sport a large, shiny, purple helmet, but in this year's X-Men prequel his helmet is a bit cheesy. It looks like he may have bashed his helmet quite hard at some point because the centre appears slightly deformed. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the cause of his turn to evil was the humiliation that resulted from all the girls laughing at his embarrassingly misshapen cheesy helmet.

X-Men: First Class (Professor X)

I don't know what's going on with Professor X's helmet. He's shoved goodness knows what into it and there's stuff coming out of it all over the place. No wonder he ends up in a wheelchair.

Captain America

Captain America's helmet - seen here with just one eye - is interesting in that it seems to have some kind of leather apparatus attached to it. I'd probably recommend that Cap loosens the strap on his one-eyed helmet, as it appears to have gone blue, and I'm not sure that's normal.

Thor (Thor)

Here we see Chris Hemsworth and his Thor helmet. It looks like his Thor helmet is making him slightly uncomfortable: that grimace is the universally recognisable sign of a man with a Thor helmet. Still, he's the god of thunder so maybe he'll be able to shoot bolts of lightning from his helmet at some point. Wouldn't that be an impressive sight? 

Thor (Loki)

Loki is the god of mischief, and it's clear from this image that he's planning to get someone in trouble with his helmet, the little tinker. Probably his brother, Thor. Although I can imagine Thor will put up quite a fight - in fact if his own Thor helmet is still causing him discomfort I wouldn't be surprised to see him take Loki's helmet in order to relieve himself.

Immortals (Aries)

Oof! I don't know about you but I wouldn't fancy being on the receiving end of this helmet. Frankly it seems a little impractical to me, I mean, I can't imagine what Aries does with his helmet when he goes to bed. You wouldn't want to be poked by that in the middle of the night, would you?

Immortals (Athena)

Here's something we don't see very often: a lady with a helmet. Although she doesn't seem to mind having this particular helmet coming part-way down her face, there are strands of something dangling off the helmet and down her chest area, which I must say I would find quite annoying if I were her. Still, she's got a firm grasp on the shaft of a big sword there so I'm sure she can take anything.

Harry Potter And The Deathly

Hallows: Part 2 (Voldemort)

Obviously Voldemort hasn't actually got a helmet, the poor fella, but if you take a closer look, the hilarious irony becomes apparent...

His head looks like a cock!