Saturday 24 September 2011

Trailer Trash 2

Earlier in June I wrote about how I saw some of those trailers people like to watch and how I didn’t like them. It turns out that they’ve made more of them and naturally I watched them and didn’t like them.

The Three Musketeers



If 1993’s adaptation of The Three Musketeers told us anything it was that Americans don’t make good Musketeers, which is perhaps why they are all British in 2011’s adaptation. All except for D’Artagnan who is a stupid pissy whiny American. It’s bad that a film set in France is largely made up of British accents, but the fact that the main protagonist not only has an American accent, but an irritating one, is unforgivable. I could get over Leonardo DiCaprio’s “French” accent in The Man in the Iron Mask, I’m not that much of a pedant to let an accent ruin a film for me, but this one is just ridiculous.

Even if the stupid pissy whiny accent didn’t irritate me it looks like the rest of the film would. It’s as if Pirates of the Caribbean crash landed in 17th century Paris, even Orlando shitting Bloom is in it, presumably playing a camp pirate, as is everyone else apparently. Everything looks textbook Pirates from the mild peril to the woeful dialogue to the wooden acting.

Even if the stupid pissy whiny accents, mild peril, woeful dialogue and wooden acting didn’t irritate me the historical inaccuracies would. It’s the 17th fucking century! Why are there airships? That didn’t happen did it? I’d remember reading something like fucking airships. Its Wikipedia page claims it’s a steam punk influenced reinterpretation of the novel. No! If you want to make a steam punk film make a fucking steam punk film, don’t mash it up with a classic novel. And why do the Musketeers only ever use swords? Oh wait, it’s in 3D? I’m on board!

Abduction



“Sometimes I feel different” says Taylor Lautner, riding into school on a motorbike, with sunglasses on and no helmet. Seriously, we’re supposed to relate to this guy? He has every Apple product ever made for fucks sake! What’s this fancy facey program? It’s bullshit! Where is he getting all this expensive shit? Oh, here’s where I keep my spare BMW and this is where I keep my endless supply of leather jackets. And why is there a kiss scene? People are trying to kill him! There’s no time for kissing, the train is about to blow up!

Of course it looks awful but it’s still going to be successful as Twilight fans will kill to see one of the men they‘re in love with. And that’s all what Twilight and Abduction is about, lusting over a man. Lautner could sit in a box for 90 minutes and they’d still pay to see it. This tweenage lust for Lautner has propelled him further than his talent deserves and he’s suddenly found himself as the lead in Jason Bourne Junior. Abduction looks as if it should be a comedy akin to Mr and Mrs Smith, but what’s laughable is that Taylor Lautner is probably the new go to action guy for Hollywood, no doubt along with that D’Artagnan prick.

Battleship



I decided to include this before the trailer even started. Never judge a book by its cover. Never judge a film by its premise, unless that premise is based on the game Battleship. Having now seen the trailer to Battleship, Abduction is looking pretty good right now. I remember playing Battleship as a kid and my favourite thing about it was the bit where you wanted to marry a whore but her dad was Liam Neeson who was also your boss and you had to gain his respect by sinking ships. And Rihanna was there for some reason you couldn’t fathom.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows



Cumberbatch and Freeman shit all over Downey Jr. and Law.

Jack And Jill



A lot of people LOVE Adam Sandler, they think he’s just swell. While I would distance myself from these people I do own a few of his films on DVD. Adam Sandler isn’t unfunny, it’s just that he pretty much plays the same character in every film, a loud obnoxious guy. Going the Eddie Murphy route, Sandler has gone for playing two loud obnoxious guys. It doesn’t so much look as Adam Sandler playing brother and sister, but Adam Sandler playing Adam Sandler and Adam Sandler in a wig. It all seems a little too much like Meet the Parents, they’ve even got an old famous actor! Oh wait, it’s Al Pacino, never mind.



Ok, that’s all I can handle for one day.

Friday 23 September 2011

Fresh Meat

Hollyoaks, Skins, Misfits, The Inbetweeners*. Channel 4 loves a bit of the old young guys having fun shit, it’s probably the only thing they’re really appreciated for that doesn’t feature horribly disfigured human beings. So why stop with these programmes when they can make more? If they don’t, BBC Three will have a go and no one wants that to happen.

The Inbetweeners will likely be confined to cinemas for its remaining lifetime, and the next series of Misfits will likely be shit after the departure of Robert “the only good thing about Misfits” Sheehan, so Channel 4 need a new “young hip person” kind of show, because we’re never going to survive on Hollyoaks and fucking Skins are we? So what have Channel 4 given us? Fresh Meat, a new comedy about university students.

Hmm, a comedy about university students? That’s new. Well you’re wrong. BBC Three had their own university sitcom a while back called Off The Hook, which was exactly that, if “off the hook” meant fucking awful. In a blog way back last summer I called it the worst thing I’ve ever seen, and it probably still is. Hopefully the writers of Fresh Meat (Peep Show’s Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain) watched this crock of shit and made a meticulous list of notes of how not to write a university based sitcom.

Having watched the first episode of Fresh Meat, they probably didn’t. While avoiding Off The Hook is not only understandable but advised, Fresh Meat suffers from many of the same problems. The biggest being that it doesn’t feel like an actual university experience. Both shows depict a small group of “losers” living in a horrid squat far away from a campus and any other students. Are we supposed to believe that a university only has five or six students? Where are the all other dickheads? Where is the university? How did these esoteric creatures get an offer in the first place?

The answer to all these questions might be “we didn’t have the budget”, but if you don’t have the budget, don’t bother, make it something else, make it a comedy about some young twenty something flatmates, it’s not vital that they’re students unless the comedy is going to derive from that fact. When you’re at university you’re always surrounded by hundreds of people, not four. When you go out, you don’t go to a quiet pub populated by old people and Jack Whitehall. It’s about university students, but without seeing a university, how are we supposed believe this? Oh they have to write a personal statement, they’ve only just moved in (without any bags), they haven’t even started yet, but they have an assignment to complete. That’s baloney! (I’m trying it out).

The validity of the setting shouldn’t be such a concern but when the show is primarily about university students there should be at least some sense that they are students and that a university actually exists. The comedy should be about the troubles of being a student, and it’s hard to do this with only four or five characters living under one roof. Drying poultry with a hairdryer might be fine in The Mighty Boosh, but not in this. Fresh Meat seems like it’s accidentally surreal; Do girls sleep with someone they don’t really like on their first night because they just want sex? Why are they drinking a bottle of vodka in a pub toilet? It’s the little things that an OCD freak like me obsesses over. I’ve written three fucking paragraphs about it.

With the realism aside, it’s not actually terrible, but it’s not something that you should watch. The Inbetweeners’ Joe Thomas makes up part of the ensemble, playing another awkward teen as if he’s becoming Britain’s answer to Michael Cera, yet apart from being slightly awkward and slightly perverted, there’s not really much else to his character. This is the same for most of the characters, they’re all slightly something, slightly uptight or slightly hipster, but there’s nothing substantial to any character.

And yes, I mentioned Jack Whitehall earlier. That comedian who isn’t funny, acting? If he’s a bad comedian he must be a terrible actor. Which is why he’s playing himself, a posh coke head. Whitehall already has a posh accent yet exaggerates it so much it sounds hideously fake. It makes you wonder how he’s become so successful despite having so little talent. The only actual comedy comes from Greg McHugh (from Gary: Tank Commander) but there’s a sense that he’d be funny in anything and perhaps Armstrong and Bain (or Bain and Armstrong?) would have been better suited to writing a sitcom specifically for McHugh.

It’s slightly disappointing that the writers of Peep Show and Four Lions have given us Fresh Meat, they may be talented writers but this isn’t their magnum opus. I’d like to think that they weren’t involved in every aspect of the programme, that the producers specifically wanted this, and requested Jack Whitehall to be in it. Perhaps it’ll get better, but I don’t really want to find out. The fresh meat is already rotting.

*I forgot about Beaver Falls, but perhaps for a good reason.

Friday 16 September 2011

Biebergeddon

That perfume smells fucking horrible. Let’s put a famous name on it and the masses will buy it! This is the general trail of thought of fragrance companies before they release the toxic gases that are celebrity fragrances into our atmosphere. It’s one thing having Charlize Theron or James Franco promoting a fragrance but would you really want their “scent” bottled for your home use? Well maybe, but would you want to smell like Jordan, Coleen Rooney, or Robert Mugabe? What about Justin Bieber?

Yes, Justin Bieber has brought out a fragrance, and why not? Surely every man would give his right arm to smell like Justin Bieber, a boy who is infamous for his masculine scent. Celebrity fragrances are for those people who idolise celebrities, they’re obviously not buying for the scent but for the name, as if owning that bottle with a name on it would bring them closer to their god. Not many men see Justin Bieber as a god, most men feel a surge of hatred run through their veins just hearing his name, they would die of shame before they’d smell like him.

It’s for this reason that Justin Bieber hasn’t brought out an aftershave, but a perfume. A boy so un-man like that it cannot possibly be conceived that he smells like anything but a girl, and a flowery girl at that, one who has a “fruity gourmand scent with top notes of mandarin, pear, and wildberries, heart notes of jasmine and creamy florals, and base notes including vanilla and soft musk”. I’m aware they’re not actually bottling his natural scent, but by affiliating himself with creamy florals, he is voiding himself of any masculinity (not that he should have top notes of blood and shit).

Who needs machismo though when you can have money? After all this (like all celebrity fragrances) is just a cynical cash cow, much like his range of nail polishes, music, film, and face. Bieber doesn’t care if a cunt with a keyboard and too much free time on his hands thinks he’s a disgrace to the male gender, he’s rich. And it’s not stopping him from getting any game, he’s Justin fucking Bieber, if he tweeted “I want sex” he could ejaculate within seconds, it’d be like fucking fish in a barrel, that’s the power he has over girls.

Why is he so popular? What makes Justin Bieber so appealing to girls? I can understand the likes of Justin Timberlake or…Matt Cardle, but this gaunt specimen? I’m inclined to call his music shit but I’m twenty four, of course I think it’s shit, but it’s not like he’s an amazing singer and dancer. It’s not like he has anything interesting to say, yet he causes riots everywhere he goes.

He has close to 13 million followers on Twitter, I have 32. I deserve 32 followers, but is Justin Bieber worthy of 13 million? Barack Obama has just over 10 million followers, this must mean that Justin Bieber is more influential than the President of the United States. This is worrying. If God was on Twitter, he’d have less followers. Merely knowing of Justin Bieber’s existence is like watching The Wicker Man, you just know there’s going to be a sacrifice at the end of it. The monster has started a cult, his “Beliebers” cause riots in his name, does anyone else find this odd? Or downright terrifying? If he asked his Beliebers to bring him the blood of every non-Belieber they would, and we’d all be dead unless we convert to Belieberologyism. “Kill the infidels” tweets Bieber as we lock our doors and pray for a military intervention.

This perfume is just another example of the power Bieber has over his cult fans. Just look at this advert for his perfume “Someday”.




It’s not just a perfume, it’s a freaky conduit into his soul. Spray the magical scent and Justin will float into your bedroom like something out of Salem’s Lot or The Lost Boys, and then he’ll smell your neck, and probably do a lot more. He comes across as a creepy sexual predator, which is somewhat disturbing considering the average age of his fan base. Never let go is the tagline…never let go of your extremist devotion to this God like monstrosity, or he will smite thee down.

Sunday 11 September 2011

Bazinga

A few years back I saw a crappy looking American sitcom on my television. It looked like something you’d see before Frasier at six in the morning on Channel 4; it looked shit. Before I could reach for the remote control I laughed, and then again, and before I knew it, I loved The Big Bang Theory.

TBBT shouldn’t be funny. It’s largely set in one apartment, it has a laughter track, its characters are poorly constructed stereotypes including a token ethnic minority, it has a gimmick, it has everything most other sitcoms have, and therefore shouldn’t be funny. Initially I was confused, I was laughing at a show which I believed wasn’t funny, so was I just losing my sense of humour? I had to ask people if they had seen it and if they found it funny as well. I wasn’t crazy.

Despite having all the hallmarks of a shitcom, TBBT was different from anything else because its gimmick (science) has been so rarely used in comedy. Prior to TBBT Ross Gellar was the pinnacle of scientific comedy, the joke being that because he likes science, he’s a nerd and that’s funny. TBBT took that concept and made a whole show out of it, one scientist is funny, so four scientists would be four times the funny! It could have been terrible but the writers (initially) used the gimmick very well, making references to scientific concepts and theories proved to be funny as well as slightly educational, at least compared to the usual dumbed down cavalcade of American sitcoms.

Assuming that being a scientist means you’re smart, and that being smart makes you a nerd, and being a nerd means you like comics and Star Trek, and liking Star Trek makes you socially awkward, our four scientist protagonists are also four nerdy, socially awkward, scientist protagonists. While being stereotypical, it sort of makes sense, and the nerdiness of the show has added to the funnys. After all, there are only so many scientist jokes they can make, they need something else to fall back on.

Sadly, four seasons in, they’ve run out of both science and nerd related jokes, and directions for all five of the main cast. The majority of episodes are Sheldon-centric escapades; Whatever will this socially retarded genius do next? In the fourth season you would have expected some kind of progression for his character, instead we’ve had to go through the same “kooky mishaps” week in week out, listening to the ever present catchphrase “bazinga”, like an obligatory Scrubs pratfall, getting more annoying with each repetition.

The introduction of a potential girlfriend for Sheldon should have been much funnier than it actually was, pairing him with a female carbon copy was like introducing the exact same character. It would have been far more interesting/entertaining/funny to pair Sheldon with a “normal” woman, seeing him out of his comfort zone and interacting with society. What we got was two “Sheldons” sharing the same punch lines.

Girlfriends have been something of a theme for this season, and in a sense cavorting has replaced science as the show’s main gimmick. After it became quickly apparent that the Sheldon-Sheldon relationship was going nowhere we’re left with the irritating Howard-Bernadette and Leonard-token Indian girl relationships. Putting these characters in relationships has ruined the whole dynamic of the show. It’s just like Yoko and the Beatles. Leonard plays the part of a straight man, facilitating Sheldon’s comedy, while also providing a compulsory Ross-Rachel thing with Penny. Meanwhile Howard provides the “humorous” latent homosexual bromance with Raj. Putting Leonard and Howard in relationships not only made their characters boring and redundant, but also Raj’s and Penny’s, leaving the comedy of the show dependant on Sheldon, who we established isn’t that funny anymore.

The other consequence of this is that we’ve been introduced to three new characters, who are all irritating. Leonard’s girlfriend Priya may have been written intentionally irritating in order to contrast her with Penny in a later episode, but she’s really irritating. I don’t want to be annoyed for several episodes just so they can do what they did with Ross, Rachel and that Chinese woman in Friends. These are supposed to be socially awkward scientists/nerds, they’re lucky to get one girlfriend, let alone a fucking pick of them.

This season just hasn’t jumped the shark, it’s fucked the shark. From Raj’s Bollywood dance dream sequence to his hook up with Penny, it’s been an absolute catastrophe. Oh what was that? Yes, Raj fucked Penny, in Leonard’s bed! The writers mustn’t have know what to do with them, so they just got them to fuck, that’ll spice things up. What are they thinking? Let’s throw all rationality out of the window! Let’s introduce an alien in the next season, that’ll be funny, Sheldon and an alien, and the alien is more human than Sheldon, HA HA FUCKING HA. The alien is smarter than Sheldon and Sheldon doesn’t like that, HA HA FUCKING HA. It’ll happen, they’ll do it, those crazy writers, they’ll put an alien in, and it’ll hook up with Penny, and that will be more rational and plausible than Raj fucking her! This season has been a text book example of how to ruin a good show. If this was the intention of the writers then they have succeed with aplomb. I will pretend that there were only ever three seasons of The Big Bang Theory, and that they were funny.