the a-team movie is being directed by joss whedon

i watch a lot of telly at work. daytime telly. telly in the day.

most of it is shit.

out of my blue, a complete shocker of a surprise occurred yesterday when i found it was even more shit than normal. while watching a daytime telly film starring steven baldwin called cutaways with my colleagues, we were caught right aback when we heard the word 'shit' broadcast at about 2pm. in the afternoon. day time. 'shit!'

we thought we were mistaken for a moment, but there it was in the compulsory subtitles we have at work - 'shit.'

now i'm not one of those who thinks swearing is one of the biggest sins. a well placed fuck can be immensely funny. but during the daytime? on daytime telly? in the day?

naughty.

anyway, i thought it'd be a rare thing but i was watching bargain hunt today and... well... yep. there it was. seriously. in bargain hunt!.

when joss whedon made firefly he came up with a new common space language based on chinese and english. within that he used fake cuss words that sounded rude enough, while keeping the show more broadcastable: "i'm gonna punch you in the rutting mouth", "get out of my gorram way" etc.

in the new a-team film they should go the route of british daytime ITV instead of american sci-fi about marauding space pirates. we're far more hardcore, it seems. they should go totally obscene, and compete with the likes of scarface and south park: bigger, longer & uncut.

Murdock: I wish I could just jump in the water and live like a fish.
B.A. Baracus: Shut up fucka, you ain't no fish!

B.A. Baracus: I pity the shit-head who goes out tryin' a' take over da world, then runs home cryin' to his momma!

Narrator: In 1972 a shit-hot commando unit was sent to a fucking prison by a military cunt for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly fucked-off from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by arseholes, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire THE MOTHERFUCKING A-TEAM, MOTHERFUCKEEERRRRRRSSSSS!!!!!.

i love it when a plan cums together.

weather with you

i well love BBC news 24. i watch about 18 hours every day. i get a good feeling when the same stories are repeated indefininitelelly-ly, broken up by the odd weather report.

my favourite weather reporter is laura tobin. she makes things happen. however, i very much enjoy this chap:

i like him because he's a cheeky chappy and he gives me informative news about upcoming weather fronts. his warm front is not as enjoyable as laura tobin's, but then laura tobin doesn't have the following extra string to his bow.

liam dutton is also ernie, from sesame street.

ghengis khan (1965)

i don't get it, why are all the mongolians played by upper class englishmen?

no accolade for this inaccurate act of racism. about the only thing they got right was the name temujin, and the fact that he probably had a moustache.

no, chingiss didn't have a right hand man who looked like richie cunningham from happy days.
no, his girlfriend was not a blonde woman from austria.
no, they didn't dress like the knights of the templar.
no, the mongolians didn't do battles in surrey.

still, at least it isn't filled with pointless CGI.

hang on. you're probably saying by now "it was made in the 60's! they probably hadn't even thought of using actual mongolian actors. in fact, back in the 60's mongolia was still a closed off country living in the shadow of soviet bitchiness, you wouldn't have even been able to get in there to talk to a mongolian, let alone ask one to act in your big budget biopic.

"in fact, no one had really even heard of the great yasa of chingiss khan at that point, without access to that level of knowledge about the fundamental foundations of his character this was not meant to be a hair-by-hair-accurate account of his life. this was as fitting a tribute to the great leader as could possibly be within the political environment it was made.

"why can't you cut them a little slack? the film they made was masterful in a world without modern day technologies! almost on a par with something like ben hur or braveheart!"

...

and i would say to you, "SHUT UUUUUUUUPPPPPP, you div."

5/10

when i'm cleaning windows (plus a competition!)

i buyed a ukulele (or ukelele to use the british spelling) yesterday. it looks like this:

cool people call it a 'uke' but i'm not cool so i'll continue using the full name. yook-uh-lay-lee.... boo-yah!

i have two things to say, and the second one is a competition you can enter, so keep reading.
firstly: obviously the ukulele is an incredibly sexy instrument, so try to contain yourself, ladies. if you are in any doubt watch this:

mmmm... yeah. hot.

today i successfully got through about 5 songs with the skill you could expect from a chap who's played for 3 hours. these included a fleetwood mac number, an erasure hit single and a song about onanism by one of britain's foremost stand-up comics.
i am pleased with my work.
next door's dog seemed to love it too.
my fingers hurt like a set of fingers that've never spent 3 hours playing a stringed instrument before, but i am double excited about learning something new. i am also secretly very impressed by how splendid i look whilst holding a tiny guitarry thing-a-majog.

secondly: as with many of my inanimate objects, i want to name my new instrument of joy. and this is where you come in.

i am trusting you, yes you... to name my frigging ukulele. all you have to do is send an email to cantplayguitar@funkhouse.me.uk with your suggestion.

for an idea of where to start, other inanimate objects in my possession are:

• stevie the TV - my tellybox.
• the duke of that - my ipod.
• micro-funk - my penis.
• and my car is called Larry Pascal Two-Balls, The Sex Panther.

have fun, kids! i will pick my favourite when i get back from barcelona, where i am going next week because i am awesome.

terms & conditions: competition cannot be entered if you work for a bank, because you suck. or if you're a politician, because i hate your face and you smell bad. the winner will be picked out when i decide it's my favourite. all others will be read but ignored. no cash alternative is available. watch The West Wing, it's the best show ever. i can't believe you read to the end of this.

xxy

brrrriiinnnggggg!!!!

"hi, is that inés efron?"

"sí."

"we've decided to cast you as alex in our new film about a teenager who has both girl and boy parts."

"oh that's great, thanks! what made you choose me?"

"it was easy. it's because you look a bit like a boy even though you're a girl."

"that's true. what's the script like?"

"oh... it's quite boring. we should really just make a movie of the wasp factory by iain banks instead. it has much more interesting characters."

"yeah, i read that book once. it's really good."

"yeah, you're right. way better than this film's gonna be."

click.

4/10

the a-team movie is being directed by edgar wright

you know all those sweeter-than-saccharin moments in american sit-coms?

like, that time where character A has spent their whole day preparing for a date with character B, only for character B to get a phone call from work saying that someone has gone sick, and they're needed, and it's their big chance to prove themselves and make a huge success of their career.. and all they have to to do it up-sticks and go into work now.
and character A turns to character B and with the sweetest, most loving smile, desperately holding back tears of disappointment and sadness says,
... ... "go... this is your moment." ....

edgar wright would never put any of that cheesey shit in any of his films. edgar wright is ace. which is why he gets to play with philip seymour hoffman. c'mon.... he made shaun of the dead so he deserves a century of sexy touching if you ask me.

the pursuit of happyness

it's a man's duty to look after the people he loves. it's the thing that drives fathers, husbands, boyfriends. and no man worth his salt could fail to be touched and inspired by this true story about a man who would stop at nothing to give his son the life he wanted. this film is about love. it is about swallowing your pride and putting everything aside for the person your soul lives for. and the pay-off is worth the agony, tenfold.

will smith is excellent in this. mainly because he is totally convincing throughout. you feel his pain, you share his tears and the relationship with his son reminds you of your own unconditionally loved ones. this film is inspirational and really quite unpredictably special, and despite seeing will smith's journey beginning as the fresh prince of bel air, i must say that he is truly one of the most underrated actors around.

right, i'm off to go and stroke his bottom.

9/10

i don't like cricket

did anyone else use to see this advert and worry about the rapey undertones?

i mean, watch it again, but imagine three men going into a tiny confined space, calling a female maintenance engineer and watching her intently as she tries to do her job. suddenly becomes pretty sinister doesn't it?

right, i'm off to watch loose women.
and if you have any difficulty understanding them in the linked clip, take a live chicken who'll be able to translate.

what am i talking about?

taxidermy: stuff the world

i saw this documentary a long time ago and loved it so much i spent about 3 years trying to track down the DVD. in the end i wrote to the production company and asked if i could have a copy. they sent me one as long as i signed a contract to say i wouldn't use it for commercial gain. which i haven't yet.

what i loved about it was that it never once made any judgements about the people it subjected, despite some of them desperately needing some serious judgement. the film-makers hardly ever got involved at all actually, just pointed the camera at the oddballs and let their characters do the talking.

we meet some weird and wonderful people in this far-too-short doco. my favourite is indisputably Matthias (pictured), a guy so bizarre that if christopher guest had played him as a character in any of his mockumentaries, you would slate him for being too unrealistic. watch him absent-mindedly kill a fish and your life will never be the same again.

my least favourite is ron, who is a dick.

8/10

the a-team movie is being directed by tim burton

tim burton's films look so good they make you forget that T-mobile are offering free texts on some of their new mobile phone tariffs. and that's hard to do, because the fucking advert comes on TV about every 23 fucking minutes.
still, that'll teach me for tuning into E4 - no good will come of it why have i not learnt that yet?

and why have i not learned when is the appropriate time to use "learned" as opposed to "learnt" .. ?

grammar asided, at any point during a viewing of any tim burton film you could press the pause button; and any resulting frame would tell 1000 stories (such is my belief in his eye-for-the-visual abilities). and as such, he deserves a forking amazing cast in his forthcoming entirely fictional adaptation of the a-team. which is what he has got, here in my entirely fictional casting of the film (which won't ever exist).

i wish it was going to exist. it would make me mess my pants right up.

who's line is it anyway?

or: a funny thing happened on the way to my impro class.

i bought a new book today. i'm really looking forward to reading it. i bought it because i had fuck loads of time between finishing work and getting to south lahn'dn: and to fill the time i wanted a bloody book, alright?

i wanted something by dave eggers because i think his words smell of strawberry delicious and they take me back to a time that never existed even though i wish they did.

the shop did not have any dave eggers. there was a big greasy gap where dave eggers books should have been.

i got a book by someone else instead. despite standing in the philosophy aisle for about 20 minutes, reading excerpts from nietzche and john~paul sartre, my dumbfounded intellect grabbed me silkily by the hand and led me to the "recommended" section (where i didn't have to think for myself). there, i found a book about transcience, detachment and the culture of middle america. winner.

during the inevitable currency transaction that followed i was struck up with conversation from the Waterstone clerk. thus:

grimlock*: i've got that book. it got given to me as a gift.

me: oh.

grimlock: it's a new publisher based in england.

me: okay.

grimlock: do you have a publisher?

(pause)

me: ummm.. not... yet. maybe if i ever finished writing anything...

grimlock: oh, i'm sorry. i'm not sure why i asked that. that'll be 7.99 please.

*i know not his real name

(i'm aware i come off as a big grump in the atmospheric opening lines of that script. this is quite innocent and largely because i have a pretty low opinion of everyone that isn't me.)

so i don't know why he asked that, but i left the shoppe confused - like someone who thought they'd pulled a bottle of orange juice from the fridge, but on drinking it discovered that it's actually amniotic fluid.
in the confused tedium that subsequently followed afterwards i resolved to things.
1. this was a sign.
2. i should finish writing something one day.

later that moment i was wandrring around balham, wondrring what it would be like to live there with a man called "steve"... hum... and i realised that Point 1 is stupid. the people who find 'signs' in unrelated experiences are follish pinheads, who think derren brown is more than just a common garden illusionist peddling the same tricks as david copperfield and/or joe pasquale. mis-direction is the same, my friends, whichever way you look past it.

but Point 2 stands firm, 'firm as the rock of gibralter' (if you can spot that film reference you are as powerful as an astronaut and i will give you a prize). i'm going to finish writing something. something. something i've started but neglected because i am a fat duck.

all the things i've started have thundered with the roar of waves and the wind at my seat; but soon fizzled out because the thing i wanted to say stopped/disappeared/left me/got interrupted.

but something will come out of this (probably not, duck-boy) and i'll get to the end of one of them. maybe i'll finish this blog entry one day and we can all get back to our lives. which would be a relief wouldn't it?

also, i'm going to buy a ukulele.

words

look at all the cute americans and their funny little signs.

my favourite is the one that says "keep america wroking"

i quite agree.

the 39 steps (2008)

do you know what? i really enjoyed this actually, so shut up. there's nowt wrong with the occasional ITV adaptation. i mean, i haven't read the book or even seen the original film so i've no idea how closely this kept to the source material but i don't think that matters. yes, there were some very silly bits. yes, your ability to suspend belief is downright thrashed all the way through. but who cares? it was entertaining for 90 minutes, and if someone can suggest something else that's fun and lasts 90 minutes i'd be well up for giving it a go.

this little filmy-wilmy is a bit like watching an older brother be indiana jones. in the norfolk broads. in the rain.

7/10

the world's fastest indian

when i've got my lego out, or my little scale model cars, and i've gone the whole hog and dressed up in my leathers to play with them on the kitchen floor (getting under the feet of my house-mates who are trying to cook oriental duck salad or something...) the way i calm the heated situation between my merry self and my angry roomies is by adopting the character of burt munro as played by anthony hopkins in this film, because he is charming beyond measure and you can't help but love him and root for him throughout his entire journey.

the film is basically sir anthony hopkins being lovable. but there are some really nice touches too, for example some beautifully done shots of old speedway cars belting along the salt flats of utah. you completely forgive the shots that they obviously had difficulty with - for example they couldn't actually propel a 70-year-old knighted of the realm along at 200mph, so some of the close up shots of hopkins on the bike are obvious that he was only going about 20. whatever, the film is so adorable it skips along well above that kind of nit-picking. seeing a smaller independent production company get round technically impossible feats is one of the joys in film-watching as far as i'm concerned. and if you disagree i'll kiss your mum.

8/10

the a-team movie is being directed by the coen brothers

you could argue that the coen brothers are the finest film makers out there. out where? - i would ask. after that i would agree with you in a certain fashion whilst rubbing a blu-ray version of oh brother, where art thou? in my lap, and then licking a copy of the hudsucker proxy that i'd previously sellotaped to the wall.

then i would slap you upside the brain and place a dvd of intolerable cruelty under your tongue, as a warning against making such sweeping generalist statements (all people who make sweeping generalist statements are homeless orphans).

the whole proceedings would make me very out of breath and i might have to go downstairs and throw up into a bowl of cereal. but it'll all be worth it, because how awesome would an a-team film directed by the coen brothers be?!

frekkin' awesome. that's how much. on a scale of clean-shaven => full beard, i'd have to put it on a par with a goatee/curly handlebar 'stache combo. add mr. t's haricut and not only do you have a brilliant film, but you also have a non-sequitur.

funny honey

i've met some thoroughly decent people over the last few weeks. many of them possess a high power of wit. if you measured their comic ability on a scale of children's bbc quality, they would be about blue peter.
and that show had richard bacon.

one of these new people made this:

... which means i need to do the following:

1: up my game and be funny again.
2: write better to impress the best ones.

in that regard, here is a poem:

i'm currently watching the weakest link.
it makes you think,
"i'm cleverer than i look"

bridge over the river kwai

this is a classic. iconic y'might say. yes it's incredibly dated, and yes the "good old british stiff upper lip" does actually get pretty annoying, but... yeah. tis good.

7/10

the foot fist way

you know that guy out of pineapple express? the redneck dude in a vest? well, if you gave him a dojo and asked him to teach a load of weird people how to do tai-kwon-do, this film would be the result.

i found it funny. and endearing. and very silly. even though it didn't try that hard at any point. it's basically enter the dragon set on a caravan park filled with characters you'd expect to find in an adam sandler movie.

so that's nice.

7/10

the a-team movie is being directed by michael bay

admittedly i'm not michael bay's biggest fan. he's alright, just a bit silly. hence three a-team vans.

face wouldn't need a van, as she would spend the entire film writhing around on some bright red silk sheets.

zombie strippers!

it's either morbidly excruciatingly terrible, or a piece of genius like no man has ever seen.

... pretty sure we can all make an accurate enough guess and go for the former. although because i'm in an average mood i'm going to be double generous and say there were a few moments of greatness.

maybe a bit less than a few.

at least it doesn't pretend to be something more than it is. which is a low-budget zombie flick with as many boobies as possible.

admittedly there is a little bit of trying to be too clever for it's boots - e.g. an 'artistic' choice to name all the characters after classic figures from surrealist theatre (the name of strip club owner is "Ian Esco" .. oh dear). and that sort of thing seems a bit wasteful anyway as i can imagine the only lasting fan-base is going to be made up of socially deffective teenaged boys, and the sort of adult male that gets together with its mates to talk about fisting and play soggy biscuit.

speaking of soggy biscuit ... the marketing is predominantly jenna jameson: the obvious selling ploy of the whole thing. apparently she's the biggest adult-film 'actress' in pornographic history.
being more of a fan of german lolita-teen crush gonzo, i've missed most of her work, but - bless her - it's probably hard to find jobs when you're an aging pornstar with seams on your breasts and a face like a bored catfish. at least she was good at pretending like she was enjoying herself while doing something demeaning. i guess that's why she's the success she is.

is it me, or does excessive plastic surgery actually make you look older? jameson has obviously had a fair old facelift, so she's starting to look like that cat-man guy. maybe i'm on my own, but whenever i see a facelift i automatically over-compensate. so to me the old porn-haddock looks to be in her mid-forties..

(pause for a quick bit of research)

Fountain of Knowledge Wikipedia says:

Jenna Jameson (born Jenna Marie Massoli; April 9, 1974) is an American entrepreneur and former pornographic actress ..

so, mathematicians, she's 35. oops.

anyway, this wasn't meant to be about cosmetic surgery, this was supposedly a film review about a crappy movie.

don't watch it unless you're a 15 year old boy... or you love rotting fish.

4/10

requiem for a dream

such an uncomfortable film that attempts to put you directly into the mindset of people who resort to dependency to try and get through life.

drugs, sex, TV; a group of disconnected people fall into oblivion along completely different routes; out of boredom, loss, vanity, apathy...
the result is painful, worrying and leaves you wondering what possible reasoning an intelligent human would have for starting down that route. how do you finally get to that fulcrum of desperation? what is the point when your preference becomes for the losing of time, losing control and memory, dignity? when do you swap hope & belief for The Void?... all in the context of the destruction of society around us, today.

yeuch.

5/10

i could never be your woman

almost everything you want from a rom-com. pfeiffer and rudd make for a sweet couple, and paul rudd fully acts his socks off. it's quirky, it has a cast list of some really great people (and graham norton), there are some truly great ideas all the way through.... unfortunately, every good thing about this film is absolutely and completely overshadowed by a constant stream of terrible mistakes, that i can only attribute to the writer/director amy heckerling.

heckerling did give us clueless, but it seems all her good decisions were used up and she swaps them for the stupid tracey ullman character in this movie. even more terrible was the over emphasised agenda that heckerling obviously thinks she was being so clever about. she has a statement, a complaint about artificial hollywood society, and she constantly ladles huge portions of it all over this, spoiling what would otherwise have been a pretty good film.

3/10

the a-team movie is being directed by guy ritchie

deja vu

if you try really really hard you can get past the completely ridiculous premise behind this film. if you manage that, you might find quite an enjoyable couple of hours.
admittedly the whole thing only loosely works because denzel washington is almost completely made of charisma, but hey, take nothing away from him there. go on, have a look; it's very silly, but name a jerry bruckheimer film that isn't.

7/10

franklyn

you're probably a bit like me. you probably saw very limited marketing for this, but expected some sort of jean-pierre jeunet/dark city/v for vendetta/steampunk type action thriller. and was a bit looking forward to it.

please stop being excited.

yes, you do get some of that. about half an hour actually. unfortunately, due to some senseless storytelling device; the rest of the film is a made up of the central story, a quite dull 'lost soul search' set in present day london. mostly featuring a very irritating eva green as a pretentious, talentless film student who can't make a decent film.

it seems like someone had a great idea for a sci-fi film, but due to budget constraints tried to make it work by filling up the 90 minutes with random scenes from an unconnected BBCtv drama. i know, it doesn't make sense to me either.

there is some relief in the final revelation, but frankly(n) i was hoping for something entirely different. a bit of a lesson for the marketing team there too, about managing expectations.

it's a shame because whoever did the production design for the steampunk sections did a really good job.

the rest is pretty poor. and a waste.

4/10

the a-team movie is being directed by judd apatow

yeah, i know; having a white guy playing B.A. was a tough consultation with my own head. but c'mon, how awesome would john goodman be? seriously. the guy is amazing. did you see him in the flintstones?

i did toy with the idea of having michael cera play faceman but thought that was probably going a bit too far in the direction of irony.

at this point i have done quite a few of these (coming every 3 days from now on) and one of the main considerations when choosing Hannibal is how good they'd look with a cigar in their mouth, saying "i love it when a plan comes together." the seth rogan decision was very much how i envisage his delivery. and also the handlebar moustache from superbad. brilliant.

the A(patow)-team certainly has merit. i pretty much love every pie judd's stuck his finger in. i want something a bit darker though.

like, "batman dark."

yeah - like christian bale's dark knight was to adam west's bruce wayne, so shall my perfect a-team be to the original series.

..
next one fights it's way out to you on tuesday. oh you lucky souls.
send me suggestions if you pity the fool (me).

southland tales

what.

the.

hell.

where do you start with this film? perhaps if i tell you to try and imagine that luc besson, joss whedon and david lynch got together one evening and took some drugs, and in the haze that followed they managed to write and shoot a film. the film that resulted would probably not be that dissimilar to the last 2-and-a-half hours what i just did watch on my telly.

it's kind of a tough call as to whether i just watched a work of genius, or a piece so obscure that it could be considered the most pretentious of modern art. either way i'd recommend you watch it at some point, even just for educative purposes. i won't promise you'll enjoy yourself. or learn anything. or ever watch it again. but... uh... i dunno, maybe i just don't want to be alone in this misery.

or joy.

or whatever.

some highlights:
- jon lovitz being weird.
- janeane garofalo in the smallest cameo ever.
- sarah michelle geller singing "teen horniness is not a crime"
- drinking a lot of red wine while you watch it.
- mandy moore.
- ...... um..... wha?

7/10

platoon

a very fine film. slightly disguised as an action film, but this is much more an investigation into the psyche of soldiers in extreme combat situations. platoon is pretty soul-wrenching, but really compelling.

all the cast is pretty good, and while charlie sheen normally has that Leslie Neilson curse where you expect him to do something funny at any moment, he plays the lost soldier incredibly well.

it's one of those classics that are actually worth watching.

7/10

the a-team movie is being directed by quentin tarantino

i just heard today that they've cast this guy as B.A. Baracus in the forthcoming and much anticipated (by me) film of The A-Team. his name is Quinton Rampage Jackson, and as you can see from the photo he wouldn't put 'actor' on his CV as his main occupation. this incensed me for a while. i was really hoping that they weren't going to go all silly on us like starsky & hutch, and make a decent film. casting a show fighter (UFC in this case) is akin to saying "i'm not that bothered about making a credible movie."

"but hang on," thought i on further reflection, the original B.A. Baracus was a wrestler.

duh.

...so after a bit of re-thinking i'm okay with it. actually i think it's brilliant. especially on finding out that the movie is also to star liam neeson as hannibal, and bradley cooper (wedding crashers, the hangover) as face-man.

liam neeson!

out of all the fantasy adaptations in my head, the one i have most thought about casting is the a-team. many many times. i used to have friends who did it with the lord of the rings books, but i'd never read them as i'd spent too much time looking at some magazines i found under my dad's side of the bed. anyway, with the vast array of internet speculation about who is to complete the cast of the new film (to be released in 2010), i think it's unnecessary to push my tuppence in.

instead, i'm going to be doing this: casting The A-Team as i would if i were a highly regarded auteur.
today quentin tarantino:

ha!
lots more to come. and please... enjoy them.

district 9

i'm being treated rather well by the world of sci-fi this year; what with watching sunshine and moon and now this amazing amazing thing.

there are no prizes for spotting the similarities and commentaries between this film and the apartheid situation in south africa, and around the world actually. this is a film about racism. and a really brilliant and strangely informative way of looking at it. especially when it starts looking at the integration of different cultures. there is a very subtle discussion about people of mixed race in there too, in a particularly gruesome way.

unhidden subtexts aside, i was completely entranced and knocked apart by this. every second of it. i actually had a moment about halfway through where i realised my mouth had dropped open and i hadn't shut it in about half an hour. it was all dry and stuff.

i loved how it was filmed, that it was set in johannesburg, how many conventions it disobeyed, the special effects. i loved the ambiguity of the alien race: why they are there & what caused them to be stranded? i loved that they gave the aliens such obscure and unexplainable habits, and a mysterious culture that you never get into. all of it contributes to the whole racism commentary.

the journey of the central character wickus was particularly well done and well acted. you really dislike him to begin with. well you would, he was a racist bastard. but through one of the strangest character journeys i remember seeing, he becomes a noble hero.

i won't go any more into it, i really wouldn't want to ruin it for anyone. this film is brilliant.

9/10

i fall apart

i'm going to go into advertising. it seems they let any old emotionally-dead stumper do it:

this advert actually makes me suicidal. i've had people tearing lawnmowers out of my hands and away from my own jugular, just after this adverts been on the telly-box. it takes over my logic circuits. in fact the first time it came on i blacked out completely and when i woke up i discovered i was running full-pelt towards the knife rack with my head down.

bloody knife rack.

vicky cristina barcelona

i get the impression woody allen has written this at a time in his life when he's looking back on a list of failed marriages and relationships and decided that he doesn't like them. marriages or relationships. this film is a bit of an exploration on how rubbish it can be to be in love, and how it will probably destroy you from the inside out in some way.

allen does heap a certain amount of guilt and blame upon himself though, i think he sees himself as the javier bardem character; at first impressions a gifted romantic with oceanic depth, but as you study him you find a manipulative ass who will happily cause long-term emotional damage to the women around him for a few nights of kinky passion. which is a shame.

it is also a shame that allen seems to have truly lost the control of his inimitable style, and it manifests itself in vicky cristina barcelona as a difficulty in giving the characters their own voice, instead making them all speak like a woody allen stand-up routine.

and as a little added bitterness to the pill, i just found the whole thing a little bit boring. certainly wasn't expecting that from a film that had scarlett johansson and penelope cruz snogging.

5/10

sunshine after the rain

from the same website as the billion dollar gram i posted yesterday, i found this; a map of how much land we would need to cover with solar panels to provide the whole planet with power until 2030.

i actually can't believe we're not doing it. it's one of those 'no-brainers' that if the general public had any choice over how the world is run, would be instigated next week. oh well, i guess it's another thing that gets looked through by governments and corporations, much in the same way as trying to focus on the invisible man,

"what? i can't see you, are you there? am i looking in the right direction? oh. maybe you're not there"

"i am here. and i'm wearing a hat."

"i guess you're not there"

"i am here. and i'm talking to you and waving an enormous neon sign above my head that says 'invisible man here.' neither the sign, nor the sound of my voice is invisible."

"he must've left the room. oh well, i'm going to make my own invisible man out of petrol."

...that was a weird metaphor.

the hangover

bit of fun. nowt wrong wi' it. some classy film references, laugh-alouds and well done comedy performances. if a film were ever to be regarded as 'intelligent gross-out' ... this is it.

8/10

the curious case of benjamin button

feel free to marvel at the remarkably good special effects and cgi. that'll entrance you for the first 45 minutes or so.
then make sure you've got a good book to read for the next couple of hours while you wait for it all to come to a stop.

not really sure what happened. i'm aware there was a submarine at some point, and cate blanchett's face was reasonably well pasted onto that of a talented ballet dancer. apart from that i was thinking about vice versa starring judge reinhold.

7/10

big spender

this is pretty fascinating. and unnervingly pleasing to look at. in a world where the news tells us every day about monetary figures far too abstract to comprehend, an artist has attempted to put it all in some sort of graspable context. the result evokes some odd feelings. it's simple, not unlike a mondrian painting, but oddly subdued by a choice of half-hearted pastel colours.

maybe that's a choice to try and take away the horror of some of the statistics you'll find by taking a closer look. it's a brilliant way of comparison. for example: if we didn't have the beijing olympics, computer games, gift cards or yoga... we could feed every child in the world and save the amazon rainforests. that's worth a thought or two.

and the money spent on the Big Tobacco settlement could have paid off all african debt to the western world.

and the annual amount OPEC spend on climate change is less than what americans spend on viagra.

the big purple bit is pretty scary; how much money has been spent on blowing up iraq. what's even scarier (you'll see if you go and have a look) is a big yellow box at the bottom that was far too big to put on this blog.

the big yellow box is how much the banks are going to cost the economy by the time this financial crisis is over.

genocide: not as bad as bankers.

drag me to hell

sam raimi back on form! (let's just forget about spiderman 2-3 shall we?) drag me to hell is great fun with a hefty but well-balanced mixture of terror and hilarity.

this had a genuine sense of dread through many of the scenes, particularly the first time christine is 'visited' and your buttocks clench in the knowledge that the next 60 minutes are going to be absolutely incessant.

in true raimi form it has some brilliant moments of recoil, where you don't quite know whether to laugh your eyes out or vomit. a favourite was when allison lohman gets punched in the mouth, and i mean in the mouth.
that and - what i shall call - "the kiss" between lohman and a toothless old lady in a car.

it's all a bit of fun and there's a decent level of eye-candy for ladies and gents. and gross stuff. i mean seriously gross.

8/10

(500) days of summer

this

is

me

tristram shandy: a cock and bull story

god, why haven't i yet learnt not to expect too much from my heroes? or not to trust the promises of a well edited trailer?

i can't help but address this film in a really patronising way:
"aw guys, i can see what you tried to do. really well done, you tried so hard and i bet you learned a lot for when you make your first real movie."

i hate myself. i should be praising them for making the film they wanted to make. i genuinely admired the sentiment, the upsetting of a genre, the collaborators... it just felt a bit too self-indulgent. damn it.

4/10

i love you, man

paul rudd is awesome. paul rudd is funny. paul rudd is a brilliant comedy actor. i am paul rudd. you are paul rudd. this film is paul rudd. paul rudd paul rudd paul rudd.
also it's great. very touching and sweet, whilst keeping all the stupidity you'd want from a laugh out loud gross-out with a bag of intelligence. i really liked the rashida jones character, too. so often in these sorts of films you'll get a one-dimensional bitch for a girlfriend. instead, rashida is allowed to be funny, sweet and kind-hearted... and also very girl-next-door jumpable.
in fact, the whole cast is very strong; all of them getting to play decent characters, particularly jaime pressley and jon favreau.

it's a genuine feel-good movie, with a tonne of giggles. paul rudd especially brings a familiar realism to his ridiculous nerdiness that only trebles the jollity.

paul rudd.

7/10