Dumbing Down

I’ve noticed a startling new trend in recent months which has reached new heights with the advert for the latest FIFA installment, FIFA 11. The days of well spoken narrators seem to be ending, and this worries me.
Television is perpetually dumbing down and it’s beginning to get quite condescending. Take BBC3’s documentary, 12 and Pregnant or whatever it’s called. As this show is typically about idiots or dare I say working class people, and most likely aimed at an audience of like minded people, they have a typically working class narrator in Eastender Natalie Cassidy. It’s as if they are suggesting that if you watch shit like this you are probably an idiot and won’t be able to understand anything with more than three syllables. It’s even suggesting that Natalie Cassidy is an idiot which even I think is harsh.
Supermarkets have taken this approach in their adverts. Waitrose and M&S have typically upper class narrators, Sainsbury’s have a middle class wanker in Jamie Oliver, and Tesco and Asda have gone the Cassidy route. I half expect government officials to start instructing you on which supermarket to shop at based on your elocution. If at any point you say “Is it?” when you’re not actually asking a question you’re not allowed to buy any food and you’re banished to a field to die. That’s what the Tories want.
If the narrator mirrors the intended audience, then the FIFA 11 advert suggests that its demographic is made up of cunts. In terms of marketing this must have an additional purpose other than communication. Imagine yourself to be one these cunts who would play FIFA 11 (easy for me, I own FIFA 10), you are watching TV and you see the FIFA advert, the narrator talks like you do, wow, he’s just like me, if he says to buy the game then I will buy the game for we are one. Wayne Rooney features in the advert and is on the cover, I wonder if there is a new mode this year where you can fuck a prostitute.
This kind of profiling is unfair because not everyone who watches 12 and Pregnant or plays FIFA is an absolute moron. If you go to Tesco it is not some kind of dystopian nightmare, not all the time anyway. I wasn’t aware that there was a problem of understanding well spoken narrators anyway. If I was any kind of paranoid I’d think this Epsilon narration is just a precursor to a greater class divide to the point where we end up with two separate species, the Morlocks and the Eloi. Thanks BBC3.

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

It’s been a quiet month. Well, I haven’t had anything to write about all month, and I don’t have the credentials to write about politics or current affairs so it has been a pretty boring September. Of course I could have picked up the new Halo game and written about that, but I’ve been frugal and besides I bet I would sum it up as “not as good as the fanboys say it is”. There’s always the X-Factor show thing but it’s been the exact same thing since its inception only with slightly different faces.

"Bodacious"

I did read today though a rumour that Keanu Reeves would be interested in a third Bill & Ted movie, finally a tiny vague subject matter I can write about. Before I get excited or even horrified at the thought of another movie, this probably will never happen. Bill & Ted were two teenage “slackers”, and Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are now in their mid-forties and it would take a genius to make this film work.
While this is only a rumour it would be no surprise if this went into production because we are currently in an age of reboots and remakes and anything can happen. We’ve already seen a new Karate Kid, Freddy Krueger, Perseus and Predator(s) this year, and despite none of these really being that successful, it seems there are hundreds of reboots in production trying to capture the same success as Nolan’s Batman or Abrams’ Star Trek.
The problem with reboots is that they aren’t particularly necessary. There is no point in remaking an already great film (or even a good one) because it won’t be better than the original. Every year or so I hear a rumour about a Back to the Future remake, the last one I heard was that Justin Bieber would play Marty McFly. We probably never have to worry about such a tragedy because I like to believe that not even Justin Bieber would think it’s a good idea.
It seems that reboots are for those films that had potential, but were never actually that good. We've seen this year though that the reboots are still not actually that good. Clash of the Fucking Titans! If you were judging a film by its title that would win hands down. If you have a name like that you have to make sure that you have Titans clashing in your movie. Sure Liam Neeson was very shiny, but was it an improvement on the original? Still, they’re making a sequel.

Because of this, I don’t like the idea of making an average film into a better one because it seems like it can’t be done. The only reboots that have worked have been for existing franchises that were already good, where there were still more stories to be told, the characters still had room to develop, and new technology had created the potential to show something the original films couldn’t. Who did this perfectly? That pesky J.J. Abrams that’s who. The latest Star Trek film should be the template for all other reboots (not that a template should be used). Star Trek’s greatest achievement was to get people who thought Star Trek was shit (like me) to actually like it, a colossal feat.
The majority of announced reboots are unsurprisingly comic book movies and it appears that this will never end. When The Avengers movie finally comes out, which has been hyped so much it’s surely the comic book movie to end all comic book movies, what happens? They just reboot every attached franchise and we have to start all over again, but with less chance of something original being made.
If you take a look at the upcoming or rumoured reboots/remakes you will probably grimace your face off. Conan, Red Sonja, Highlander, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Police Academy, Buffy (The Movie (!?!?!?)), Tomb Raider, the list goes on. It’s like taking all those films you watched as a child, a lot of them you didn’t like, and then making you watch them again, no wait, it’s exactly that. Why can’t we just watch the good ones?
It’s not all bad because Ghostbusters 3 might eventually be made, and it might, it just might, not be shit…but probably will be. Karl Urban has been announced as the new Judge Dredd, and Alex Garland will be writing the script so that might, just might not be shit…but probably will be. James Franco will be in the new Planet of the Apes film, which might not be shit but probably will be. That’s the best we can hope for with reboots, for them not to be shit. If a Bill and Ted reboot is announced, I will be praying it’s not shit.

“The only soul I have is on the bottom of my feet“

I saw this the other day. We have Scary Movie to blame for this. What began as a simple lampooning of horror movies mutated into a torturous franchise of badly written, directed, and acted shitfests referencing whatever successful films were about at the time. We’ve had Date Movie, Epic Movie, Movie Movie (probably), and now that even the retarded of retards have fathomed that anything with “movie” as a suffix is shit, they have had such titles as Meet the Spartans, Stan Helsing, and now, Vampires Suck.
Of course vampires do suck, they suck blood, and they suck as in they are shit. Making a truly dreadful vampire film (I don’t need to see it to know) about how bad vampire films are is kind of like raping people to show them how bad rape is.
Twilight is bad, but Vampires Suck will be worse. Do the writers, actors, and studio not know this? Of course they don’t, that’s why they made it. These films have no soul (much like a vampire), they are essentially a 90 minute tasteless joke, told by some obnoxious prick who thinks he’s the funniest thing since sliced bread (has me in stitches), and he isn’t, he’s that guy at a party you stay away from.
Scary Movie worked in a sense that it made fun of clichés, it just did it badly. What the latest efforts (if you can call them that) do is make fun of other films, it doesn‘t matter if the jokes don‘t work. A vampire spoof film should make fun of the clichés of vampire films, and there’s plenty of them. Vampires Suck appears to have just made fun of Twilight and Alice in Wonderland, just in case you wanted to see Vampires Suck but hadn’t seen Twilight and needed a joke you’d understand. There have already been vampire spoofs, Dracula: Dead and Loving it, and the Horne and Corden craptacular, Lesbian Vampire Killers, do we really need another? We didn’t need those two.
Vampires have changed a lot in recent years. The classic gothic movement of vampires has gone, and yes the whole damn thing is so pathetic it has eras. Fuck off Dracula, we want moody dickheads dressed in black leather. As much as I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I was darn obsessed with it, it does nothing but bring me misery these days. Those people who loved it more than I did, thought to themselves that they could totally write their own vampire TV series or novels. One of those people was Stephanie Meyer.
The first three seasons of Buffy featured a love story between Buffy and Angel, a moody vampire in leather. Twilight is a love story about a moody whining bitch (based on Meyer I assume) who is inexplicably attracted to a moody and incredibly dull vampire with a misshapen face. They would be identical would it not be for the eternal blabbering of Meyer’s protagonist. Yeah, I’ve read some of the Twilight series, and it’s fucking awful. Team Twilight or whatever they call themselves (Team Cunts?) would say that I’m just trying to be cool by criticising it, but it really is bad, perhaps the worst piece of fiction I have ever read. Fair enough I don’t care for the content, but judging purely on writing style, I can’t think of anything worse, and this has sold millions of copies, shame on you world.
What I read of Twilight was just an angsty teenage girl whinging about nothing for pages and pages, it only stopped when I threw the book away. Before you say “why did you buy the book then?” I didn’t buy it, I read someone else’s copy, and you know who you are!
I even saw half of the first film on a plane. As a vampire film it doesn’t work. As a love story it doesn’t work. As a teen drama it doesn’t work. As a werewolf film it doesn’t work. Nothing has ever been so bad on so many levels. Yet it has made millions and millions of dollars and Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner have all become award winning A-list stars despite not being able to act very well.
The whole Team Jacob, Team Edward thing has become so big it’s not even synonymous with the franchise anymore. Of course, R-Patz is just a tortured prisoner of his own fame, and really really just wants to be left alone. FUCK OFF. This faux misery he puts on might be more believable if he could hide the constant smirk from his face that says “I fucking love being me”. It may have been extremely shallow to make the previously unremarkable Taylor whatshisname into chiselled hunk Taylor Lautner! But at least he’s grateful for it. No one cared about him in the first movie, he does a few sit ups and OMFG!
It’s not just Twilight that irks me, it’s vampires in general, I don’t get them. I liked Buffy, but that was because I liked Buffy. The appearance of vampires has changed, but the character still remains the same, and this is what I hate. A dark, mysterious cavalier man with dreadful dialogue (“The only soul I have is on the bottom of my feet“ - probably an actual quote), seduces and murders every woman he meets. In other words, an arrogant womanising twat, or Calum Best. The bad boys are always catching women’s eyes apparently, and perhaps that is the attraction to vampires. True Blood after all is essentially just vampire porn for the masses.
Franchise after franchise is a little too much, and a “movie” movie pointing this out only adds to my pain. Maybe, and I’m just brainstorming, instead of making all these franchises, desperate men can start dressing in black and be moody and womanising, and the women who find this attractive can fuck them and write about it in their diaries and no one else has to know. Just a thought.

Scott Pilgrim: Round 2!

How do you follow from seeing Scott Pilgrim vs. The World? You see it again, that’s how. I could have seen Salt or Grown Ups, but I would have sat through either of them thinking “I could be watching Scott Pilgrim again“, and that would pretty much ruin my week, let alone seeing a film with David Spade in it.
It also appears that I have to follow a post about Scott Pilgrim with another post about Scott Pilgrim. While I could write endlessly about the books and film, there are in fact two mediums I haven’t yet written about. I intended to write about Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game in the last post, and would have had it not been for a fear of writing a post the length of War and Peace (hey I know classic literature exists!) and winning the title of Scott Pilgrim fan boy 2010. Since then I’ve procured a copy of the soundtrack, and am probably only a fancy dress costume away from being Scott Pilgrim fan boy 2010.
I was quite surprised when I heard they were making a Scott Pilgrim game, despite the series being heavily influenced by video games and featuring action, I always saw it more as a love story, and love stories don’t make great games (or could they?). I was kind of relieved when it was announced it would be a download only game, because if it was a full release, I would no doubt have spent £40 on it and been dismally disappointed. That sort of disappointment when you watch a beloved childhood TV show when you grow up and it turns out it was shit all along.
Fortunately, the game is not shit, it’s just not very good, but it has enough style and charm to get by. Developed by Ubisoft, SPVTW:TG (it’s even long abbreviating it) is a beat em’ up. You don’t see many beat em’ ups these days, mainly because they don’t really work anymore. Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, and Golden Axe were part of the golden age of beat em’ ups way back when, but since then interest in this genre has dwindled, mainly because they only really work in 2D, and we’ve pretty much been over 2D since the mid nineties.
It’s a shame because Nintendo have shown that there is still life left in 2D platformers, so maybe the beat em’ up can be resurrected. SPVTW:TG is a start at least, and like the latest 2D Mario games have done, has incorporated newer elements to create a much more immersive gaming experience than the 8-bit era gave.
SPVTW:TG looks and sounds the part, in fact it’s the best thing about the game, and remains reasonably faithful to the source material while bringing its own style. The artwork is well done, if a little repetitive, but the cutesy playable characters will surely please most fans. Most homage’s and references are to the Mario series, but it’s still a nice touch. The game’s soundtrack has rightly received universal praise, and chiptune band Anamanaguchi have created something really special that is nostalgic of my early childhood. I didn’t know there was such a thing as chiptune a week ago. See, the things you learn.
The gameplay really lets the whole thing down by not being very good. It is pretty much unplayable until you unlock the counter move, and even then it’s still pretty hard to play. There is a slight RPG element that gives a little more purpose to the proceedings. The extra moves make it more exciting, but after a few level ups it becomes much easier. Perhaps it’s just a beat em’ up thing, but the game is either too easy or too hard, it never seems to be a fair or fun challenge.
The levels are quite inconsistent, with the bosses sometimes being underwhelming and easier than the rest of the level, and this can be quite frustrating. The bosses should be more significant to the plot of the game as they are in the books, but instead feel irrelevant. I know they are going for a retro feel and most people who will play the game know the plot anyway, but a little exposition would have made SPVT:TG much better. Monkey Island was notorious for its funny dialogue, it really feels like a waste that no dialogue was put in this game, it’s not like they are short of it.
Maybe time and money stunted this game, but it’s such a wasted opportunity, and it’s highly unlikely that another will be released. At a glance it looks a perfect companion to the film and books, but hardcore fans will be disappointed once they get past the style and sound. It would have been cooler to have more unlockable content, especially in terms of characters, or even have them appear in the game. Wallace Wells could have been like Toad, offering extra lives, they’re both gay so it would have worked. It’s a little sad that this is the only Scott Pilgrim game we will get, but hey, at least the soundtrack rocks.
Speaking of soundtracks…onto the film’s original soundtrack. So yeah, this rocks too. Music is integral to Scott Pilgrim (Bryan Lee O’Malley even published his own playlists in the back of the books), so it is natural that a lot of work was put into making the film sound right.
To their credit, the film sounds like I imagined the books would have. I know Sex Bob-Omb are supposed to be terrible, but I really like their songs, especially Garbage Truck and it’s a shame that they’re not a real band. In fact even Crash and the Boys and Clash at Demonhead are pretty good, Metric’s Black Sheep (performed by Brie Larson as Envy Adams in the film) being the standout track on the album.
Other contemporary bands like Broken Social Scene, Blood Red Shoes, and Black Lips appear, but there are a lot of older artists like The Rolling Stones and T-Rex as well, creating a good mix that never feels out of place. Just a minor criticism though, removing the fictional bands, this does just sound like any other indie soundtrack for an indie film. Garden State, 500 Days of Summer, and Juno all have these unique indie soundtracks, but as a collective they are starting to get repetitive. It’s only a minor criticism though, and the fictional bands haven’t been removed and thus the soundtrack is a joy to the ears.
I don’t write about music much and now I know why, it’s not that interesting to write about. No wonder the writers at NME are bitter angry pricks. There is still the score of the film to buy, which I will eventually, but I won’t write about it, we can just assume I like it, maybe two blogs ago we could have just assumed I like Scott Pilgrim and everything about it and saved everyone the hassle. Next week, Scott Pilgrim: The T-Shirt reviewed!

Scott Pilgrim vs. My Precious Little Life

A couple of years ago I was looking for some comics to purchase. I think I went for a Batman one in the end (jumping on the bandwagon) but I remember reading about Scott Pilgrim. Scott Pilgrim is in a band called Sex Bob-Omb, and to date this girl he has to defeat her seven evil exes. It sounded great, but I was in a frugal mood and completely forgot about it until I heard that it was Edgar Wright’s next project. About a second later I had ordered volume one. Friday night, I finally saw the film. It kind of feels like the end of a long, very geeky, journey (I will avoid saying pilgrimage).
Scott Pilgrim is probably my favourite comic. It’s not written that well, the drawing isn’t brilliant, but in a strange sort of way this gives it a charm that’s hard not to fall in love with, and you could kind of define Scott Pilgrim the character like this. He hasn’t got much going for him, he hasn’t got a job and he cheats on his girlfriend. If this was a real person you’d hate him, but you love him. He is a clueless idiot who just has too much love to give. He is relentlessly optimistic, he shares a bed with his gay best friend, he gets excited about almost holding a girl’s hand, and he’s incredibly insecure about his hair, how can you hate someone like that?
The imperfect styling of the books goes perfectly with the imperfect Pilgrim, and I don’t know if Bryan Lee O’Malley intended this, but it really works. Take away all the fights and the subspace highways, and you still have a great love story at heart, with some fun and engaging characters to boot. O’Malley has spent as much time on Ramona as he has on Scott and this makes the romance more believable, even if it does take a while to figure out why anyone would like Scott.
Other characters like Wallace Wells, Kim Pine, Knives Chau, and Envy Adams all create a diverse universe that never gets old or boring, it’s just sad to see the series end so quickly. It would have been cool to see more background stories as to how Scott and Wallace met, or how Sex Bob-Omb formed, or even how Ramona met all of her seven exes. Volume 6 was a bit of a disappointment as it felt more like a rushed tie up than a complete ending, it would have certainly been interesting to delve into Gideon’s past a little deeper, but hey, that’s just my opinion.
It’s not often that I find a piece of fiction this cool though, and any criticism has ten plaudits in return. It never takes itself seriously, and because of this I don’t think anyone should break it down in too much detail, it was a very cool experience and my only gripe with it is that I wanted more. It may seem like the end of a long journey for O’Malley as well, but this is the start of a very promising career for him, and there will be a lot of people (including me) anticipating his next project. Unfortunately this means there is a lot of pressure for him to deliver the goods.
So that’s the books done, they will stay on my bookshelf and I will read them again every year or so…now on to the film. This doesn’t happen often, but every time I see a film where I have read the book beforehand, I just sit there and compare the two, like a massive nerd pointing out how the hat he is wearing looks exactly like it does in the book, or how that line at the beginning of the film was actually in volume five. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is now the first film I have ever seen twice at the cinema, and with the book - film comparisons done with on the first viewing, I could really sit and enjoy it the second time round.
I am wary to use the term “massive Edgar Wright fan boy” because after all, this is only his third film, and I see a lot of people, including Empire Magazine and that other blog The Incredible Suit, getting very carried away with the Edgar Wright fangasm. Try as I might to touch down on Earth, Wright does make it very hard to maintain any nonchalance when speaking about him. I love Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz to the point I watch them every few months or so, and no doubt will do with Pilgrim when it‘s released on DVD, but I think it’s somewhat premature to give him this god like status. Don’t get me wrong I love Wright, but I don’t want to be part of this group idolising him and praising everything he does, I’m trying to be that cool guy in the corner who doesn’t give a shit (but clearly is the biggest doting dork in the room).
Unfortunately for my coolness, Wright has made another great film. Despite the great source material it could have been very easy to ruin it and make a terrible film. Everything from the screenplay, to the casting, to the soundtrack, to the special effects, to the sound effects, to the fight choreography, just about everything is near perfect.
When the screenplay was written, O’Malley had not finished the series, so Michael Bacall and Edgar Wright had to write their own ending. The first half of the film is very similar to the books, with some scenes almost identical. Bacall and Wright are faithful to the source material, but to see the books copied frame for frame would be boring, so it works that they go their own way in the second half.
Where the books sometimes lose focus, the film never strays, maintaining a bursting energy right to the end. Wright has put his own ideas into the film which gives existing fans a new experience, and nothing ever feels out of place to what O’Malley has already created.
Music and fight scenes were featured heavily in the books, but were obviously hard to convey on paper, so it would have been a wasted opportunity if the film did not focus on bringing these to life. Wright said in an interview that he wanted it to be impossible to distinguish if Sex Bob-Omb were brilliant or terrible, and it really is impossible to tell. A lot of work has been put into creating an authentic soundtrack, and it adds a dimension that you didn’t have when reading the books. As for the fights, they are brilliant, but they never seem actually violent due to the video game tone of the film.
This may be the first great video game movie without actually being adapted from a video game. Save for a few Zelda sound effects and theme, there aren’t any references exclusive to the hardcore gamer, but even if you don’t play games, it won’t take anything away from the experience, it’s just a nice little touch for geeks.
For hardcore Pilgrim fans, Cera’s take on the title character may take a while to get used to, but you do get used to it, but Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Ellen Wong steal the show with their portrayals of Ramona Flowers and Knives Chau. Winstead is as cool as Ramona is in the books and exactly how I pictured her, and Wong’s endlessly energetic Knives is a lesson to every woman trying to play a kooky chick with bundles of energy. The evil exes bring a whole spectrum of colour, and we have another reason why Chris Evans is on course to take over Hollywood, and why Brandon Routh should still be Superman.
If any criticism should be made it’s that a lot of source material was left out, and the film does seem a little rushed. There is still a lot of content, and it’s not often you get to see a film under two hours these days though, so it’s not all bad, in fact it really is very hard to fault this film. It baffles me though that both times I have seen the film, a Friday and Sunday night, that the screens have been pretty much empty. Why is no one watching this film?
I talked about this in my previous post, and it saddens me that this film will probably be branded a flop despite that fact it’s the best film I’ve seen all year, yeah, I said it, the best film I’ve seen all year. Perhaps it’s too ahead of its time, or the casual movie goer has no idea who any of the cast are, but Superman is in it! That skinny kid from Superbad! That girl from Die Hard 4! The Human Torch! It even has a fucking Culkin in it! So these aren’t massive names, but they will be, and if people only watch films with Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie in them then they are missing the whole point of film. Films are about telling good stories in an exciting way, it’s not all about Brangefuckinglina, and their films aren’t that good anyway.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World can’t go down as a failure, it’s too good for that, but like many other great films that have flopped, this will no doubt spawn a massive cult following and will gain notoriety in due time. I would like to think that Edgar Wright’s reputation won’t be tarnished by the box office takings (or anyone else’s involved for that matters) and that he will be given the freedom to continue making films like this. As much as I enjoy them, I hope Michael Cera stars in a film in which he doesn’t play an awkward teenager/young adult who gets the girl. I’d like to see Brandon Routh in the next Superman film. I’d like to see Chris Evans in a Captain America film that’s actually good. I’d like to think I have a chance with Mary Elizabeth Winstead should our paths ever meet. I’d also like to think I’m not deluded. Other people just want to see Avatar again…Morons.

"You're gonna see some serious shit"

Imagine the excitement of a fully grown boy after learning that Back to the Future is coming to UK cinemas in October. I don’t want to lower the tone and use the term “jizzed in my pants” because the film doesn’t deserve that, I love it too much. Instead I jumped for joy, not literally, but you get the picture, I’m quite excited and not in a perverse way.
I am in a perpetual state of ambivalence when trying to choose my favourite film. Back to the Future or Die Hard. It’s too difficult, it’s like choosing a favourite nipple, if you could ever have a favourite nipple that is. Either way, I love Back to the Future as much as I love Die Hard. Who doesn’t? I don’t want to lie and say that something hip like Amélie is my favourite. It doesn’t make me any cooler, and I haven’t even seen it. No, I’m just like everyone else, and why not? A great film should have universal appeal.
Look back on the last decade and try to remember a handful of truly great films. Somewhere within the hundred franchises there must be something good, it’s just hard to remember any. I was born in 87, the 90’s should be the decade I think of most fondly, but the music was shit, and most films made then look really dated now, where 80’s movies have somehow aged really well. Maybe in 10 years time Jurassic Park will be as fun as Ghostbusters is now.
It’s costing more and more money to see a film at the cinema, add the extra cost of 3D and it’s more likely only seven people actually saw Avatar. You could probably make a film for the cost of taking a family to see Look Who’s Talking in 3D. The success of a film is dependant on its profit, not its quality, and it doesn’t matter that I liked Superman Returns, it didn’t make enough money for Warner Bros. and thus was labelled a failure (it still made $391m). All three Pirates of the Caribbean films were deemed successful however, despite not being very good. For all this extra money, films should be better now than they used to be, so why aren’t they?
Film has become a business over art, and it may take re-releasing a film like Back to the Future to make everyone remember the point of it all. There’s more heart and soul in Back to the Future than there has been in all of the highest grossing movies of the last decade. Who watches all three Bourne movies back to back and then feels good about life at the end? No one. I once watched the Matrix trilogy back to back and proceeded to take every colour pill I could find, I couldn’t take life after that horrible experience. I feel good about myself when I watch Back to the Future, and this is what’s missing in cinema today.
Slumdog Millionaire was pitched as a feel good movie because we’ve forgotten what one is. A young boy has his eyes gouged out in it, how is that feel good? “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads”, that’s feel good! As intense and spectacular as Inception may have been, it didn’t exactly have me bursting with vigour at the end. I’m not saying every film should be all about ribbons and unicorns, but modern films lack an energy that films in the 80’s had.
The few films I’ve seen this year with that kind of energy haven’t taken the world by storm. Youth In Revolt, Kick-Ass, and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (more to come on that) are all great films in my mind, but no one has seen them. It’s not as if they are complex concepts, people understood Inception anyway, so what’s the deal? Has the world dumbed down so much that we can’t even understand the plot of these films? Or perhaps we can’t suspend disbelief, but the highest grossing films of last year were Avatar, Harry Potter 6, and Ice Age 3. Tall blue aliens, wizards, and talking animals, we can suspend disbelief for these, but when it comes to a boy in a green wet suit, that’s just stupid, oh no, I’m not seeing that, it looks shit. Fuck off world, you’re an idiot.
It makes me wonder if they will change bits of Back to the Future when it’s re-released so people get it, and Spielberg produced it so anything could happen. I can just picture George Lucas whispering into his ear about how it shouldn’t be Libyan terrorists chasing Doc Brown, it should be the American government because, you know, that’s relevant. When Doc says “You’re gonna see some serious shit”, it will now be “You’re gonna see some serious bananas”, and Hayden Christensen’s face will be super imposed over every other character’s face. So Mr Spielberg, stop hanging out with this total prick, he’s giving you a bad name, just leave the fucking movie as it is!
I will love seeing Back to the Future at the cinema but I don’t want to see a trend of re-releasing old movies, but that just may well happen. As old songs are being re-released in the charts and selling more records, it will probably work for films, and as good as getting to experience the 80’s at the cinema would be, they won’t do that. Avatar Special Edition is out at the cinemas soon. It hasn’t even been a year and they are re-releasing it! We really are that stupid then I guess.

Dickumentary

Amongst the murky pool of geekdom I bathe in, I sometimes, on occasion, just a little bit, like to immersive myself in something intellectual. Since starting this blog I have written about nothing but films, TV shows, and video games. I’m an idiot so this is unlikely to change, but for one night only I am going to write about something different…the documentary.

So yeah, we’re still on TV shows, but at least it isn’t about Lost or Fringe, or Babylon 5 or whatever the kids are watching these days. I rarely watch documentaries partly because they are generally an hour long and require you to pay attention, I’m not a square (I am definitely a square) so I struggle to stay focused for more than twenty minutes. They could definitely jazz the documentary up a bit.

It’d be foolish to say that documentaries and intellect go hand in hand, because anyone who has seen ITV or BBC3 (or god help you ITV3) will know the true extent of stupidity on TV. Take any documentary with Fearne Cotton (someone so vacuous the only way to describe her is “as vacuous as Fearne Cotton“) in it. I have written in the past about the state of comedies on BBC3, but it’s their factual programmes that should warrant a refund for your TV licence. Actually I take that back, nothing is as bad as their comedies, but you get what I mean, their documentaries are awful. Awful in a way that a lot of people like though, mostly about naughty kids having kids of their own, and how they are spoilt, and how YOU should hate them because it’s YOUR money they’re spending on going out, and YOU definitely wouldn’t stoop so low on the hierarchy of decency because YOU’RE not an absolute wanker. Go on, judge these poor bastards! They deserve it! 

These programmes (Jeremy Kyle without the studio audience) want you to hate the people in them, and that’s easy because you want to hate them. It’s our equivalent to the two minute hate in Nineteen Eighty Four, only narrated by our pal Fearne. The tiniest of things can rile me up, the last thing I need is to actively seek irritation, I’d have a stroke before I could shout “you‘re a fucking idiot!”

Still, this is marginally better than those body shock style documentaries. What started as fascinating insights to people with shocking disabilities has turned into a sort of freak show where we can all point and laugh, and be glad that our balls are smaller than our heads unlike the poor sod on screen. You could argue that these shows are a step towards tolerance, but by proclaiming these bodies to be shocking, it clearly states that they are hideous, and worthy of a whole hour to gawp and grimace in amazement at them. You wouldn’t see Gok Wan make John Merrick strip naked in a shopping centre telling him “it’s all about the confidence”. It’s not about them, it’s about us feeling better about ourselves. 

There’s always the factual channels on Sky I hear you say, but there’s only so many facts about Nazis, endangered species, and massive engines you can keep in your head without it exploding. These channels are pretty pointless because Sky isn’t for watching specific programmes, it’s for browsing when you have nothing better to do, and are too bored to pay attention to anything longer than two minutes. The constant accident lawyers, cash for gold, and cash for phones adverts ensure you don’t become too enthralled in anything but your own depravity, making it very difficult to maintain a pulse, let alone watch a documentary about the end of the world.

I mainly look towards the BBC for knowledge, who generally have a knack for combining interesting facts with amazing presentation, (usually) any wildlife doc, or the absolutely brilliant Wonders of the Solar System for example. I bought Planet Earth on DVD not so long ago, but struggled to get through the first episode due to the sheer heartbreaking story of a baby elephant walking into certain death. I got over it eventually (I didn’t).

Wonders of the Solar System however did not tell any tragic stories and as a result, I loved it. Aside from spectacular visuals, and an interesting subject matter, what made this show so accessible was its presenter, Professor Brian Cox. Most presenters are quite frankly dull and boring, but Brian Cox is able to make whatever he talks about infinitely interesting. It is hard not to find his enthusiasm for science infectious, and he is able to describe concepts simply without being patronising. I’d like to see more presenters like Cox because I’d tune in whatever the subject in question, and would inevitably learn more. Sadly, it seems that only old men in tweed want to teach us stuff, and I find that boring. Why not give David Mitchell a history series? I’d love it, he’d love it, seriously, why not?

What prompted this post was Norman month on the BBC, or at least it is Norman month in my mind because there are a hell of a lot of programmes about the Normans. I’m trying to get in the spirit of it all, but if I’m going to start learning about history, I want to learn from the very beginning. This leads to the obvious conflict of Evolution and Creationism ending in Richard Dawkins beating up anyone who mutters the word God (he might be right, but there’s no need to be a cunt about it). I’m willing to live with any creationists being offended though, and would love to see a comprehensive history of everything, even if it would take years to film. No doubt Fearne Cotton would present it. Shit.

BANG! And the dirt is gone

Don’t you miss the days of 80’s action movies? I was born in 87 but still spent my childhood watching films like Commando and loved them, why wouldn’t a young boy love explosions and shit? Of course they were bad, but they were entertaining. Nowadays most action movies are just bad, and people just aren’t interested in them either. We like super heroes now, and Jason Bourne, not big muscles and big guns, that’s gay!
It’s not until you see The Expendables that you realise how much action movies have changed over the years. Sylvester Stallone has mashed together typical 80’s action with typical 00’s action, and surprisingly the result is a pretty damn good film. Yes, it’s still shit in a way, but it’s so entertaining you won’t care.
There are still all the clichés you know and love from the 80’s, and also a few of the relatively newer clichés from the past few years. We have the tough guy mercenary, in fact we have several. We have the drug baron general with a whole army (this one looks like a Mexican Jon Favreau), though this time he’s working for a naughty American. We have the now obligatory “this is my big gun, she fires a thousand bullets in a second, if she were a woman, I‘d fuck her” scene, and the total disregard for other people’s property.
It’s these clichés that make the film so endearing, it’s nostalgic, even for a boy of 23 years. The much hyped scene of Stallone, Willis, and Schwarzenegger is hardly anything to “whoah!” about, but it defines this film perfectly, it’s everything you love about the action genre in one package, and the scene is a sign of good things to come. The action is quite simply ridiculous, but in a “holy shit!” kind of way that will keep your eyes glued to the screen. It’s bloody violent as well, it’s strange that it’s only rated a 15 presumably because there’s no sex or swearing in it(at least I can’t remember any). It’s fine shooting and stabbing everything in sight, but the second someone says fuck or actually does fuck you have to be 18 to handle it.
Thankfully the screen never seems over crowded given the large cast, and while Stallone and Statham share a good chemistry, the complete ensemble lacks a certain camaraderie you would expect, with Randy Couture and Terry Crews rarely featuring until the climax. None of the characters have any depth, but it’s not the kind of film you’d expect to have a wealth of depth or an emotional journey. If you’re after this, The Expendables probably isn’t for you.
Critics will most likely give a negative review and I understand that to an extent, but come on, this is the most fun you can have at a cinema without taking your clothes off, and has so much charm you’ll forget about all the massacred soldiers, and their now orphan children. Stallone is 64, and while he looks like his face his falling apart, somehow he is still able to make and star in a decent action film. He’s probably only got one more film in him, and with a fifth Rambo film scrapped, here’s hoping we can look forward to The Expendables 2.

Bite my shiny metal airs

It’s hard to maintain a blog about all things geek without mentioning 3D all the bloody time. For something that annoys me anyway, it’s even more annoying to write about it all the time, but it’s inescapable, so here is another diatribe on the art of 3D.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is coming in a face near you very soon, and it promises not only air bending in 3D, but fire bending, and water bending, and even gender bending (probably). They’ve now got rid of the Avatar bit of the title because there was another film with that name apparently. I haven’t got a problem with the actual film as such, it’s probably shit, but it’s the marketing that is really getting to me.
The trailer currently on TV doesn’t state anything about the story or plot, but simply tells you that you can see in amazing 3D, not only air bending, but fire and water bending…and that’s it. And if you don’t know what element bending is, which you don’t, then they show you, with a greatly exaggerated example of what looks like a cinema audience being horribly burned.
Now I’m not an idiot (I thunk), and as a result I won’t be enticed into seeing this film just because of the 3D effects, even if they are AMAZING! (I have no idea if they actually are). People are stupid though, and will think “holy fuck, how have I gone through life without seeing air bending in 3 fucking D all this time? I’m there!” No one knows what air bending is though, but perhaps it will become as popular as 3D and you won’t be able to see a film without there being air bending in it. They’ll remake classics, so you can actually be Gone with the Wind, frankly my dear, I don’t give a breeze!
This is all a ploy though to distract you from the fact that M.Night “What a twist” Shyamalan has directed the film. Desperately seeking redemption for a handful of shite films, this could be his last chance to win back the reputation he gained with The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, the latter being the only film of his I have truly enjoyed. I might have enjoyed The Sixth Sense had it not been for what I can only describe as a cunt at school ruining the twist.
With the lack of a recognisable cast with the exception of Dev Patel (what‘s he doing in this anyway?), there aren’t many other reasons to reel in an audience, so the film’s hopes rest purely on it’s 3D prowess, but this isn’t how films should work, they should be about the story, the script, the acting, the directing, not how many different types of benders there are. Special effects don’t make a good film, and for The Last Airbender’s budget, you could make over 5000 Clerks.
If you hate 3D though but love bending, you can see the film in 2D, in fact the trailer states this right at the end, albeit in a very negative tone, as if saying “you can see this in 2D, but we’ll all think you’re a prick”. As the 3D phase is becoming more prominent, films are actually becoming more two dimensional, and it will only get worse. Thankfully Sex and the City 3D will be the end of the fad, but a three dimensional Sarah Jessica Parker will be the end of the world as we know it.

In the Closet

Not so long ago I scrawled a rant about the new subgenre of film, the buddy cop action romance. Films like The Bounty Hunter, Killers, and the upcoming Knight and Day that combine the brilliant buddy cop formula, with the somewhat trite rom-com formula. Since then, the frequency of promotional material for Knight and Day has increased tenfold…or infinitefold if there is such a thing. Yes, there is apparently no limit to the amount of times I can see the trailer for this film. I have seen it more than Avatar, and even Alice in Wonderland (I saw three trailers for the DVD release in one trip to the cinema).
I used to like the whole blockbuster thing, if a film has a massive budget, and everyone sees it, it must be good, oh the naivety. The current state of film is kind of like Tetsuo at the end of Akira, endlessly expanding with the ever increasing threat of an apocalypse. It seems that every week a blockbuster type film is released. We feel compelled to watch them, and we leave the cinema with empty hearts and empty pockets. These films have become so stale that we are genuinely shocked when one of them turns out to be not that bad really, so much so that they are nominated for an Oscar. Just fuck off Avatar.
So Knight and Day is coming in your face very soon. It’s been almost like walking around with someone pointing a gun in the back of my head ever since I first saw the trailer. I know it could all end at any moment, but it’s the waiting that gets me. And it doesn’t get any better. I’m going to overhear the general public talking about how good it is. How can I judge a film without even seeing it? Quite simply, because it looks fucking awful, and history tells me that it is. Besides, I haven’t seen the last two and a half Twilight films but I can tell you they are a sleight against absolutely everything. I wrote a letter to Amnesty.
What is truly bad about Knight and Day, is that it’s a vehicle for Tom Cruise to make the leap from action to comedy. I predicted this in the previous post, and only a week later it was announced that a Les Grossman film would be coming in our faces next year. Les Grossman was the character Tom Cruise played in Tropic Thunder, he said fuck a lot and did a little dance at the end, the whole world found it just hilarious (it wasn’t), told Tom Cruise, and now he thinks he’s just hilarious. Making a film from a small cameo from a very average film, it’s pioneering at the very least.
I’m not sure how they can make anything other than a small MTV Movie Awards skit from this character, and it is sure to be a 90 minute fuck fest of just hilarious dancing. Someone needs to tell Tom Cruise that he’s not funny before this gets out of hand. Comedy is all about the subtleties of a character, Larry David in Curb your Enthusiasm isn’t a balls out hilarious guy, it’s the little things about him that make him so funny, the same goes for David Brent and Alan Partridge. Tom Cruise has always acted too much, he gives too much of a performance and this won’t work in comedy.
Cruise is an easy target for the media, he acts like a dick all the time, without even meaning to be one. The whole Scientology thing, the embarrassing Oprah thing, it goes on and on. I like the majority of his films though, I’m just worried that any future comedic films will tarnish his whole reputation. If he has to make a comedy film it should be a parody of Tom Cruise, that’s the only way it will work, or they can put a laughter track on Rain Man.