So apparently the server that this blogsite functions out of is about 7 hours behind me, putting it somewhere in Arizona, probably. At least that's what my limited skills of deduction have led me to. So therefore if I want my blog post to appear dated on the correct day that I want it too (see again, my massive retentiveness), I have to wait for 7am, which is kind of midnight. Well, it is in Arizona at least.
But apparently I'm no longer satisfied with this blog. Not that I'm going to stop doing it or anything, but I think I'm actually finally arrogant enough to think my that blog deserves a spin-off. So today I shall be launching (or kicking out the door, at least) my second blog on this site, entitled 'Televisual'. It shall be discussing my views on my most favourite of mediums, that of Television. Have a look. If you want.
In other news, I'm spending copius amounts of time in Newbury pretty soon, I feel like something of a yo-yo. I'm still having trouble with my sleeping patterns, but that's nothing new. Am still tempted to record them. Perhaps that could be its own blog as well, eh? No, don't get carried away now!
Now I know I said that I was going to talk about Winter's Bone, but the thing is that I thought that it was going to count as one of my five films for March, but then at the last minute I got given the chance to see Biutiful, after I'd already fulfilled my quota, so I'm gonna go with that instead, seeing as how Biutiful was cinema and Winter's Bone was DVD, and this review largely deals with movies I see in the cinema (and the occasional live TV filming).
I'm sure I'll find some time to talk about Winter's Bone at some point, but for now, I keep to the schedule.
IRONCLAD.
Without a doubt, the MANLIEST film I've seen in quite some time, it's probably even MANLIER than 300, a film so MANLY that women went to see it and spontaineously grew testicles. Of course, the MANLIEST thing about this movie is none other than VLADIMIER 'Lo there do I see my father...' KULICH, whos is now the MANLIEST MAN to ever MAN. Not that James Purefoy, Brian Cox, Paul Giamatti, Jason Flemyng, Mackenzie Crook, Charles Dance, Derek Jacobi, Jamie Foreman, Daniel O'Meara, Guy Siner and Steffan Rhodri are anything less than overly MANLY, but they aren't quite at the heights of Vlad. I mean, who could be?
The story revolves around a disgraced Knight Templar (Purefoy) teaming up with an uppity Baron (Cox), as they defy the army of Danish mercenaries (led by Kulich) hired by the tyrnanical King John (Giamatti), in the broken down and crumbling Rochester Castle, which is strategically vital for John to control if he wants his own country back. So they gather a group of ragtag scum, villains, hard-arses and nutcases and take control of the castle before John gets there. Then John's army arrives and the siege commences. And my God, does that siege commence. There is commencing all over that siege.
The only real downside of this film is the way the battle scenes are filmed, the completely over-the-top shaky-cam does a pretty good job of depicting the chaos of battle, but it makes the actual fighting (the thing we came to see this movie for) pretty damn difficult to follow and not all that enjoyable. Fortunately, that effect tones down towards the end of the movie, but it makes the opening fighting sequences quite jarring. I can definately see why they did it, but they probably shouldn't have.
That's the only flaw in this film.
Oh, the story may be a little basic (No Surrender!) and the characters may be a little shallow (Are you sorry for what you've done? Bollocks!), but there's nothing about thie film that doesn't achieve what it set out to do. There's awesome violence, there's amazing bravery, there's pumping emotion and there's acting that's so over the top it entirely suits this movie. The most depressing part of it is just how little screen-time it'll get throughout the UK, and just how few people will see it.
It's the biggest independant film made in the UK in years and it's got the cast of an A-list Hollywood blockbuster. It's got the story, it's got the action, it's got EVERYTHING.
Even mother-fuckin' VLADIMIER KULICH.
Next time: Something not as MANLY.
Thursday, 17 March 2011
Thursday, 10 March 2011
The Void
Void is an excellent word, I love its sheer depth of meaning and lack of emotion, I love how four letters can convey that sense of deep emptiness. It's one of those words that resonates with me, so that I don't like to use it too often, just in case I wear it out or something like that.
At the moment, large parts of my life feel like something of a void. I don't have a job, the hours in university are something of a joke, I get more writing done than anyone else but I tend to do it so quickly that I'm done before I've even realised I've started. So, what to I fill my time with?
DVDs, mostly. I don't like to watch movies on DVD, to be honest. I don't think I've actually watched a film on disc for months. TV series are where its at for me. Lost, Prison Break, Supernatural, Bones, How I Met Your Mother, Battlestar Galactica and the most important Stargate SG1 and Stargate Atlantis consume vast amounts of my time, but sitting there and vegetating in front of a screen isn't always the best use of my time.
Marsh recommended that I need to find a hobby that isn't very creative, sinec I use my creative juices in pretty much every other hobby I have, and I seem to have several. I have a roleplay group, I write this blog and review movies on it, I spend a couple hours a day writing things that aren't even assignments, I used to paint many, many gaming miniatures, there are a few others. He suggested some kind of sport, so I didn't take him seriously.
Me? And sport? Yeah, right.
But still, without a job, without something to fill my empty weekends, I do tend to feel like there's a void hanging over me and there's not much I can do to break it. I'm kind of in a rut, because I don't really want to commit to anything big, since I'm moving away in July/August time. So what am I to do? Review films.
THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU.
I was skeptical about this movie when I first saw the trailers for it. I don't like the idea of stories that try and mess with Fate, for two main reasons. These are:
1) If Fate/Destiny did in fact exist, it would by its very nature have to be so complicated, so complex and intricate, that nobody would ever know it existed. Every decision we have made, we were fated to make, every movement, every breath, it's all been pre-planned. Many people don't like this idea because they say it crushes Free Will. At the same time, what they kind of don't understand is that the theology of the arguement is utterly, utterly pointless. If Fate/Destiny does exist in this fashion, then there's no way we'll ever know and therefore there's no rational reason to even think about it.
2) Nobody can write stories about Fate as well as I can. Sorry to sound arrogant, but I think I've got it down to a T in my work, so back off, major film companies, you can't mess with this.
So, the film.
Basically, it's a love story spread out over four years. That there is a pretty thinly spread story, I didn't really feel any chemistry between our characters, nor did I notice a great deal of acting. Coates once again pointed out the 'Al does not know this emotion, called Love' card, for I do dislike grand ideas like Fate and Destiny to be muddied with petty human emotions.
Secondly, I found the Bureau itself to be overly wishy-washy, the whole idea of the layers of plans and notebooks and special hats looks appealing at first, but gets kinda vague and unsatisfying as the film goes on. I found the whole film to be wishy-washy, vague and unsatisfying, especially when Terance Stamp (yes, he's good but not as good as he could have been) was denied a powerful line.
It's nowhere near the 'next Matrix or Inception' that we were touted and it's just a bit... well... Meh.
Next week: Winter's Bone
At the moment, large parts of my life feel like something of a void. I don't have a job, the hours in university are something of a joke, I get more writing done than anyone else but I tend to do it so quickly that I'm done before I've even realised I've started. So, what to I fill my time with?
DVDs, mostly. I don't like to watch movies on DVD, to be honest. I don't think I've actually watched a film on disc for months. TV series are where its at for me. Lost, Prison Break, Supernatural, Bones, How I Met Your Mother, Battlestar Galactica and the most important Stargate SG1 and Stargate Atlantis consume vast amounts of my time, but sitting there and vegetating in front of a screen isn't always the best use of my time.
Marsh recommended that I need to find a hobby that isn't very creative, sinec I use my creative juices in pretty much every other hobby I have, and I seem to have several. I have a roleplay group, I write this blog and review movies on it, I spend a couple hours a day writing things that aren't even assignments, I used to paint many, many gaming miniatures, there are a few others. He suggested some kind of sport, so I didn't take him seriously.
Me? And sport? Yeah, right.
But still, without a job, without something to fill my empty weekends, I do tend to feel like there's a void hanging over me and there's not much I can do to break it. I'm kind of in a rut, because I don't really want to commit to anything big, since I'm moving away in July/August time. So what am I to do? Review films.
THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU.
I was skeptical about this movie when I first saw the trailers for it. I don't like the idea of stories that try and mess with Fate, for two main reasons. These are:
1) If Fate/Destiny did in fact exist, it would by its very nature have to be so complicated, so complex and intricate, that nobody would ever know it existed. Every decision we have made, we were fated to make, every movement, every breath, it's all been pre-planned. Many people don't like this idea because they say it crushes Free Will. At the same time, what they kind of don't understand is that the theology of the arguement is utterly, utterly pointless. If Fate/Destiny does exist in this fashion, then there's no way we'll ever know and therefore there's no rational reason to even think about it.
2) Nobody can write stories about Fate as well as I can. Sorry to sound arrogant, but I think I've got it down to a T in my work, so back off, major film companies, you can't mess with this.
So, the film.
Basically, it's a love story spread out over four years. That there is a pretty thinly spread story, I didn't really feel any chemistry between our characters, nor did I notice a great deal of acting. Coates once again pointed out the 'Al does not know this emotion, called Love' card, for I do dislike grand ideas like Fate and Destiny to be muddied with petty human emotions.
Secondly, I found the Bureau itself to be overly wishy-washy, the whole idea of the layers of plans and notebooks and special hats looks appealing at first, but gets kinda vague and unsatisfying as the film goes on. I found the whole film to be wishy-washy, vague and unsatisfying, especially when Terance Stamp (yes, he's good but not as good as he could have been) was denied a powerful line.
It's nowhere near the 'next Matrix or Inception' that we were touted and it's just a bit... well... Meh.
Next week: Winter's Bone
Thursday, 3 March 2011
Trains and Taxis
So last week I had a particularly unpleasent experience concerning the state of public transport in the United Kingdom, particularly Wiltshire. I went up to Bath to see my brother and his theatre society's new play, Pygmalion. Now I should point out that I don't particularly like Pygmalion or My Fair Lady, but that this actual performance (with my brother in the role of Colonel Pickering, one that he didn't want but I think he nailed to a T) held my interest and was truly enjoyable.
So the following day, my brother and I go to the cinema to go and see Paul. It's kind of a tradition that we go to the cinema together whenever we're in the same town. We saw Paul, and the review for that is up already. We'd judged the timing of this particular event quite well, I'd thought, because my train was at 15:36 and the film finished at around 15:12. So we hop over to the train station, I see my mother for about 30 seconds and then I head up to the platform and wait for my train.
It arrives. It's full.
Myself and about twenty other passangers are actually told that we can't get on the train because there are too many people on it already. Now this is the Portsmouth Harbour to Cardiff Central line, it runs every hour or so and it's only ever got 3 carridges on it. But I've paid for my ticket and I should be able to use that train. Now, I get that train every time I go to Bath, which is about once every six weeks or so, and I've never been able to sit down on it. It's always sardines in there.
Now this seriously pisses me off, because First Great Western should bloody know by now just how popular that line is. So I can't get on the train (I should note, I had to start work in Newbury at 5pm). The stopper service that would get me to Westbury is due in a few minutes. Westbury's good, that's where I'd have to change to get to Newbury anyway. My plan was to get a new ticket there in order to go Westbury to Newbury. But of course I get there too late, I've missed the connecting train.
Know what time the next train is?
19:10. Two hours *after* I was due to start work. It wouldn't even get to Newbury until 19:45, which was when Alan Carr's show actually started.
Then my phone battery died. There were no staff at the platforms, there was a payphone but I didn't have any change. I was one of the only people there.
So what did I do? What could I do?
I got a taxi. And it cost me £80.
I got to work for about 18:30, fortunately I'd essentially been swapped with Vicky, so that she started at 17:00 and I started at 19:00, but another member of staff hadn't turned up at all, so I got to start straight away. I must have told the story of how I'd got there about twelve times, just so that people would think that I was dedicated to my job, which I am. I love that job, it makes me feel appreciated. It just means that I'm working at a loss for the next few weeks.
It wasn't a particularly brilliant weekend all round, with my brother's play being great and then everything kind of sucking after that, until my parents swooped in on the sunday and offered to take me back to southampton. I think I got about 9 hours sleep the whole weekend. I don't want to sound self-pitying, but it was just mad and I think I'm too old for all this crap. We didn't even get a chance to do November's Children, which annoyed me, because I was looking forward to that session.
Ah, sod it.
RANGO.
"De Leezard? Hee's going to die."
I'll probably be quoting that line for quite some time to come. This was a truly, truly enjoyable movie. In terms of story and plot, this film doesn't really have anything original going for it, as Coates put it, it's pretty much Chinatown with Lizards. It's got the story of pretty much every western you've ever seen, but it's intelligent enough to know that and to compensate by celebrating the genre rather than simply hammering it out.
And the thing that really sells this movie is that it's truly, truly gorgeous. I mean, it's on a par if not better than most Pixar films, it's just so sumptuous and intricate that to think it's for kids is almost a little insulting, because they don't quite deserve this level or artistic attention. Fortunately, we all well know that this kind of film isn't really for kids, it's a film that adults can take their kids too and enjoy themselves.
I can't say too much more about it, because it isn't all that deep and it's gorgeousness speaks for itself. Go watch it because it's very entertaining. And Bill Nighy is amazing.
Next up: The Adjustment Bureau.
So the following day, my brother and I go to the cinema to go and see Paul. It's kind of a tradition that we go to the cinema together whenever we're in the same town. We saw Paul, and the review for that is up already. We'd judged the timing of this particular event quite well, I'd thought, because my train was at 15:36 and the film finished at around 15:12. So we hop over to the train station, I see my mother for about 30 seconds and then I head up to the platform and wait for my train.
It arrives. It's full.
Myself and about twenty other passangers are actually told that we can't get on the train because there are too many people on it already. Now this is the Portsmouth Harbour to Cardiff Central line, it runs every hour or so and it's only ever got 3 carridges on it. But I've paid for my ticket and I should be able to use that train. Now, I get that train every time I go to Bath, which is about once every six weeks or so, and I've never been able to sit down on it. It's always sardines in there.
Now this seriously pisses me off, because First Great Western should bloody know by now just how popular that line is. So I can't get on the train (I should note, I had to start work in Newbury at 5pm). The stopper service that would get me to Westbury is due in a few minutes. Westbury's good, that's where I'd have to change to get to Newbury anyway. My plan was to get a new ticket there in order to go Westbury to Newbury. But of course I get there too late, I've missed the connecting train.
Know what time the next train is?
19:10. Two hours *after* I was due to start work. It wouldn't even get to Newbury until 19:45, which was when Alan Carr's show actually started.
Then my phone battery died. There were no staff at the platforms, there was a payphone but I didn't have any change. I was one of the only people there.
So what did I do? What could I do?
I got a taxi. And it cost me £80.
I got to work for about 18:30, fortunately I'd essentially been swapped with Vicky, so that she started at 17:00 and I started at 19:00, but another member of staff hadn't turned up at all, so I got to start straight away. I must have told the story of how I'd got there about twelve times, just so that people would think that I was dedicated to my job, which I am. I love that job, it makes me feel appreciated. It just means that I'm working at a loss for the next few weeks.
It wasn't a particularly brilliant weekend all round, with my brother's play being great and then everything kind of sucking after that, until my parents swooped in on the sunday and offered to take me back to southampton. I think I got about 9 hours sleep the whole weekend. I don't want to sound self-pitying, but it was just mad and I think I'm too old for all this crap. We didn't even get a chance to do November's Children, which annoyed me, because I was looking forward to that session.
Ah, sod it.
RANGO.
"De Leezard? Hee's going to die."
I'll probably be quoting that line for quite some time to come. This was a truly, truly enjoyable movie. In terms of story and plot, this film doesn't really have anything original going for it, as Coates put it, it's pretty much Chinatown with Lizards. It's got the story of pretty much every western you've ever seen, but it's intelligent enough to know that and to compensate by celebrating the genre rather than simply hammering it out.
And the thing that really sells this movie is that it's truly, truly gorgeous. I mean, it's on a par if not better than most Pixar films, it's just so sumptuous and intricate that to think it's for kids is almost a little insulting, because they don't quite deserve this level or artistic attention. Fortunately, we all well know that this kind of film isn't really for kids, it's a film that adults can take their kids too and enjoy themselves.
I can't say too much more about it, because it isn't all that deep and it's gorgeousness speaks for itself. Go watch it because it's very entertaining. And Bill Nighy is amazing.
Next up: The Adjustment Bureau.
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
4 as opposed to 5
Okay, so I may have said how I was supposed to do 5 posts in February, then I got round to the end of February and realised that I'd sodding forgot one, so I'll bump up March to 6. I mean, it doesn't really mean anyhting to anyone but me, but it annoys me that I messed up my own schedule by a few hours. Because that's just how cool I am.
I think I want to talk just a little about my friends and their blogs for just a moment. 'In Pursuit of Expression' and 'So, I Have A Question' are two of my classmates and they shamelessly copied my awesome blog idea in order to make themselves look as cool as me. Except they don't review movies. And they don't talk as much bollocks as I do.
I like to think that we all have our own styles and subjects to talk about, but it comes down to it, I think I'm not as original as I sometimes think I am. Even just looking at the blogs of my friends I realise that the same thoughts occur to them as do to me, and they often manage to get it down onto wordpad without sounding as up themselves as I often do.
There are times I like to think of myself as one of the best writers in our class, because of my sheer output compared to everyone else, but there are times when I'm humbled by the creative genius, the simple yet brilliant ideas, the fantastic wording and dogged determination shown by my fellow writing students. To Dave and Martin especially, actually.
Although NORTHEN FIST does kinda take the prize.
DRIVE ANGRY.
Man this film sucked. Our lecturer was saying how Nick Cage might have been one of these people who lost everything in the banking crash, so he's doing every single crappy movie he can in order to make back some of his former fortune. I'm not entirely convinced by that, I've always found Cage's career to be as varied as an acid trip through a kalidescope, so I'm not really surprised by anything that he does.
Even this horsecrap. So Milton is on a quest to kill an overly stereotypical cult leader who wants to sacrifice his grand-daughter, encountering a large amount of classic cars, a fiesty large-busted sidekick, a supernatural prison warden and enough bullets to fill an oil tanker along the way. That all sounds fine on paper, but there's just one thing about this movie that can't quite be denied about it when it's watched.
There is nothing original about it. Now that's quite surprising considering that it's actually an original film, it's not adapted from anything, no comic books or trashy novles lurking in the back ground waiting to claim responsibility. No, it's original. But it's not original in any way. There's nothing in this movie that Supernatural, Prison Break, Shoot 'em Up and even sodding Ghost Rider didn't do better.
The only real redeeming feature of this film was to give William Fichtner some more work, but he's playing an agent of the underworld sent to bring Milton back. To a place he refers to as a prison. I thought Chris Redfield in Resident Evil was bad enough, but this takes the biscut. What's next, Robert Knepper plays a hillbilly? Amury Nolasco plays a Mexican? What will they force the cast of Prison Break to relive next?
Next up: Rango!
I think I want to talk just a little about my friends and their blogs for just a moment. 'In Pursuit of Expression' and 'So, I Have A Question' are two of my classmates and they shamelessly copied my awesome blog idea in order to make themselves look as cool as me. Except they don't review movies. And they don't talk as much bollocks as I do.
I like to think that we all have our own styles and subjects to talk about, but it comes down to it, I think I'm not as original as I sometimes think I am. Even just looking at the blogs of my friends I realise that the same thoughts occur to them as do to me, and they often manage to get it down onto wordpad without sounding as up themselves as I often do.
There are times I like to think of myself as one of the best writers in our class, because of my sheer output compared to everyone else, but there are times when I'm humbled by the creative genius, the simple yet brilliant ideas, the fantastic wording and dogged determination shown by my fellow writing students. To Dave and Martin especially, actually.
Although NORTHEN FIST does kinda take the prize.
DRIVE ANGRY.
Man this film sucked. Our lecturer was saying how Nick Cage might have been one of these people who lost everything in the banking crash, so he's doing every single crappy movie he can in order to make back some of his former fortune. I'm not entirely convinced by that, I've always found Cage's career to be as varied as an acid trip through a kalidescope, so I'm not really surprised by anything that he does.
Even this horsecrap. So Milton is on a quest to kill an overly stereotypical cult leader who wants to sacrifice his grand-daughter, encountering a large amount of classic cars, a fiesty large-busted sidekick, a supernatural prison warden and enough bullets to fill an oil tanker along the way. That all sounds fine on paper, but there's just one thing about this movie that can't quite be denied about it when it's watched.
There is nothing original about it. Now that's quite surprising considering that it's actually an original film, it's not adapted from anything, no comic books or trashy novles lurking in the back ground waiting to claim responsibility. No, it's original. But it's not original in any way. There's nothing in this movie that Supernatural, Prison Break, Shoot 'em Up and even sodding Ghost Rider didn't do better.
The only real redeeming feature of this film was to give William Fichtner some more work, but he's playing an agent of the underworld sent to bring Milton back. To a place he refers to as a prison. I thought Chris Redfield in Resident Evil was bad enough, but this takes the biscut. What's next, Robert Knepper plays a hillbilly? Amury Nolasco plays a Mexican? What will they force the cast of Prison Break to relive next?
Next up: Rango!
Friday, 25 February 2011
5 as opposed to 2
I live my life according to lists, schedules, charts, spreadsheets and statistics. Don't know why, it just seems to work for me. I have a writing schedule that means I don't have to wait around for 'the muse to strike', it's there waiting for me when I press play on the pre-designed writing playlist. I have a financial record that I use to chart how much money I spend according to day, week, month and 12-week periods. I have a dinner schedule, for what I have on each day. And I have a blog posting schedule.
This year, I want to post 54 blog entries. That's because I only really did 42 last year, and therefore doing 6 more than 48 will mean that I do an average of 48 a year, which is 4 a month, which is roughly 1 a week. Because I'm still kinda new to blogging (only a year and a bit), it's still a bit shaky. I'm sure next year I'll have set down on which days I want to have them done by and actually do them on time, instead of starting them at one point and then doing them weeks later.
54 posts means 10 months of 5 and 2 months of 2. I had thought that February was gonna be a month of 2 (since it's the shortest) but it turns out that it's a month of 5 and now I have to cram in three extra blog entries when I hadn't really planned on it.
How do I know which month is which? I'll tell you, it's how many films I saw that month. Now, I saw 5 in Jan easily, and I thought I was only gonna see 2 in Feb (if we're counting Pointless), but then my brother got me to go see Paul with him, so there we go. Now I have to see 2 other movies (or things I can review).
And neither of them will be the Sodding Fighter!!!
So yeah, I should probably try to establish a spreadsheet or record for my sleeping patterns and times, maybe that would enforce some kind of regularity upon them. Maybe if my sleeping habits knew they were being watched... ah, who am I kidding. I'm sitting writing this at 04:11am, my sleep pattern is screwed beyond belief. I just hope I can get some decent hours in during the first two weeks of March, because after that things are gonna get more stressful again. I just know it. Maybe I can find some way to quantify stress and put that on a spreadsheet as well...
RABBIT HOLE
So since I was suddenly thrust into seeing 5 movies this month, I saw Paul on the 25th, this on the 26th and Drive Angry on the 27th, which meant that all three seem to have blurred a little together for me, which is very, very weird, because they are all highly different movies.
This film, based on a play by the same writer, deals with the loss of a child by a married couple and how they deal with the grief of that devastating event. The performances are excellent, the mood is set just right and the whole film is just on the right edge of painful to watch.
The thing that really surprised me about it was that it was a film by John Cameron Mitchell. Now, I'm a fan of Mr. Mitchell ever since we were forced to watch his masterpiece HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH for class. He wrote, directed, produced and starred in Hedwig, which convinced me that this guy is a sheer genius. But seeing as how that was about a German Transexual Rockstar and his next film (SHORTBUS) was about a repressed woman experimenting in an orgy club... this film kind of seems like his cop-out in order to go mainstream and get more recognition.
But is that a bad thing? I mean, this was a great movie, it did everything just right and it landed Nicole Kidman and Aron Eckhart. Eckhart is probably one of the best working actors in Hollywood today, he always gives a great show, and Kidman hasn't really let us down since Batman Forever (but we don't like to talk about that one, do we).
The one thing that this movie really, really does well is that it doesn't make us feel sorry for them. This grieving couple, who have lost their little boy... we don't have to feel sorry for them, the film doesn't demand that. It simply show us what they had to do to feel better. I respect that, it doesn't force its messege down our throats.
All in all, it's definately worth a watch, but it is a bit depressing.
Next up: DRIVE ANGRY.
This year, I want to post 54 blog entries. That's because I only really did 42 last year, and therefore doing 6 more than 48 will mean that I do an average of 48 a year, which is 4 a month, which is roughly 1 a week. Because I'm still kinda new to blogging (only a year and a bit), it's still a bit shaky. I'm sure next year I'll have set down on which days I want to have them done by and actually do them on time, instead of starting them at one point and then doing them weeks later.
54 posts means 10 months of 5 and 2 months of 2. I had thought that February was gonna be a month of 2 (since it's the shortest) but it turns out that it's a month of 5 and now I have to cram in three extra blog entries when I hadn't really planned on it.
How do I know which month is which? I'll tell you, it's how many films I saw that month. Now, I saw 5 in Jan easily, and I thought I was only gonna see 2 in Feb (if we're counting Pointless), but then my brother got me to go see Paul with him, so there we go. Now I have to see 2 other movies (or things I can review).
And neither of them will be the Sodding Fighter!!!
So yeah, I should probably try to establish a spreadsheet or record for my sleeping patterns and times, maybe that would enforce some kind of regularity upon them. Maybe if my sleeping habits knew they were being watched... ah, who am I kidding. I'm sitting writing this at 04:11am, my sleep pattern is screwed beyond belief. I just hope I can get some decent hours in during the first two weeks of March, because after that things are gonna get more stressful again. I just know it. Maybe I can find some way to quantify stress and put that on a spreadsheet as well...
RABBIT HOLE
So since I was suddenly thrust into seeing 5 movies this month, I saw Paul on the 25th, this on the 26th and Drive Angry on the 27th, which meant that all three seem to have blurred a little together for me, which is very, very weird, because they are all highly different movies.
This film, based on a play by the same writer, deals with the loss of a child by a married couple and how they deal with the grief of that devastating event. The performances are excellent, the mood is set just right and the whole film is just on the right edge of painful to watch.
The thing that really surprised me about it was that it was a film by John Cameron Mitchell. Now, I'm a fan of Mr. Mitchell ever since we were forced to watch his masterpiece HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH for class. He wrote, directed, produced and starred in Hedwig, which convinced me that this guy is a sheer genius. But seeing as how that was about a German Transexual Rockstar and his next film (SHORTBUS) was about a repressed woman experimenting in an orgy club... this film kind of seems like his cop-out in order to go mainstream and get more recognition.
But is that a bad thing? I mean, this was a great movie, it did everything just right and it landed Nicole Kidman and Aron Eckhart. Eckhart is probably one of the best working actors in Hollywood today, he always gives a great show, and Kidman hasn't really let us down since Batman Forever (but we don't like to talk about that one, do we).
The one thing that this movie really, really does well is that it doesn't make us feel sorry for them. This grieving couple, who have lost their little boy... we don't have to feel sorry for them, the film doesn't demand that. It simply show us what they had to do to feel better. I respect that, it doesn't force its messege down our throats.
All in all, it's definately worth a watch, but it is a bit depressing.
Next up: DRIVE ANGRY.
Monday, 14 February 2011
Single's Day
So today is Valentines Day, the day that everyone spends with their loved one and scoffs chocolate. Naturally, society being the way it is, this means that it's basically a one-way Christmas, where women expect men to fawn over them.
As I'm sure you can gather, I'm not a massive fan of this day in the year. I've spent the vast, vast, vast majority of my life single (apart from a few slip-ups), I tend not to associate too heavily with the other gender.
I'm kinda 'anti-relationship', which means I find it difficult to hang out with some of my friends when they are in relationships, which for some can be a great deal of the time. I've never really seen the upsides to them, but then that's mainly because I've never actually been with anyone I really, really, really liked. Or ever actually met anyone that I really, really, really liked. Maybe. I think.
Take two of my married friends, for example. They've got a new place, they've got a kid, they've got jobs. And they bitch at each other. And not just at each other, at people around them, people who don't want to be caught in the middle of it all, people who think that maybe it's not worth being their friends anymore because they don't really like seeing what this marriage is doing to them. They don't.
But that's just me. (Cue Dalek voice) *What is this emotion that you call laaarrrvve?* (End Dalek voice).
PAUL
So I initially saw the trailers for this movie and thought 'Is this a Pegg and Frost too far?' Should they simply get on with the third Cornetto movie and then be done with it? Because that's what we're all waiting for, so why don't they? But then I looked back at the various things that Pegg and Frost (as well as Wright and Hyne) have given us over the years.
Spaced.
Shaun of the Dead.
Hot Fuzz.
Yeah, they've earned my ticket to this movie (which incidently my brother paid for and I completely blanked paying him back, must do that). It may not be quite what I was after in terms of the next Pegg and Frost, but they've got my attention and they're not going to lose it anytime soon, unless this film turned out to be really, really bad.
And it wasn't. This film is a pretty solid 7 out of 10, as Joe described it. It's not quite as hilariously cutting as their previous movies have been, but it's got the whole ET-loving thing down, it manages to be just as respectful yet mocking as Shaun and Fuzz were to their respective genres (Zombies and Cop Movies respectively).
I think the one real downside was the voice of Seth Rogen. I mean, don't get me wrong, Seth's had a great career over the last few years, there's barely been a movie out that he hasn't been in, but I honestly didn't think we needed him for this one. His voice isn't his best feature and I don't think he really added anything to this movie that someone else couldn't have done just as easily, if not a bit better. That's pretty much my only complaint other than the happy-clappy ending, but I was expecting that anyway.
Best voice cameo in a while, though.
Next Up: RABBIT HOLE
(Because I've given up on seeing the frickin' Fighter)
As I'm sure you can gather, I'm not a massive fan of this day in the year. I've spent the vast, vast, vast majority of my life single (apart from a few slip-ups), I tend not to associate too heavily with the other gender.
I'm kinda 'anti-relationship', which means I find it difficult to hang out with some of my friends when they are in relationships, which for some can be a great deal of the time. I've never really seen the upsides to them, but then that's mainly because I've never actually been with anyone I really, really, really liked. Or ever actually met anyone that I really, really, really liked. Maybe. I think.
Take two of my married friends, for example. They've got a new place, they've got a kid, they've got jobs. And they bitch at each other. And not just at each other, at people around them, people who don't want to be caught in the middle of it all, people who think that maybe it's not worth being their friends anymore because they don't really like seeing what this marriage is doing to them. They don't.
But that's just me. (Cue Dalek voice) *What is this emotion that you call laaarrrvve?* (End Dalek voice).
PAUL
So I initially saw the trailers for this movie and thought 'Is this a Pegg and Frost too far?' Should they simply get on with the third Cornetto movie and then be done with it? Because that's what we're all waiting for, so why don't they? But then I looked back at the various things that Pegg and Frost (as well as Wright and Hyne) have given us over the years.
Spaced.
Shaun of the Dead.
Hot Fuzz.
Yeah, they've earned my ticket to this movie (which incidently my brother paid for and I completely blanked paying him back, must do that). It may not be quite what I was after in terms of the next Pegg and Frost, but they've got my attention and they're not going to lose it anytime soon, unless this film turned out to be really, really bad.
And it wasn't. This film is a pretty solid 7 out of 10, as Joe described it. It's not quite as hilariously cutting as their previous movies have been, but it's got the whole ET-loving thing down, it manages to be just as respectful yet mocking as Shaun and Fuzz were to their respective genres (Zombies and Cop Movies respectively).
I think the one real downside was the voice of Seth Rogen. I mean, don't get me wrong, Seth's had a great career over the last few years, there's barely been a movie out that he hasn't been in, but I honestly didn't think we needed him for this one. His voice isn't his best feature and I don't think he really added anything to this movie that someone else couldn't have done just as easily, if not a bit better. That's pretty much my only complaint other than the happy-clappy ending, but I was expecting that anyway.
Best voice cameo in a while, though.
Next Up: RABBIT HOLE
(Because I've given up on seeing the frickin' Fighter)
Friday, 11 February 2011
Funny how that works
The eagle-eyed of you will have noticed that I just posted four entries at the same time, but they were all dated on the day they were actually written. That's a bit weird, right? I mean, why does this particular website work like that?
Don't know, but it means that in a few weeks, when everyone (who am I kidding, nobody reads this thing) has forgotten, it'll look like I didn't leave the blog for a month without posting an update, no matter how many I was tapping away at in the mean time.
Do I have anything else to discuss in the mean time? I don't know, everything seems to be going okay, I'm good on the writing front and I haven't recieved any post demanding money in the last few days. Heard from my brother, have been watching copius dvd's. I may have missed my class on wednesday, but then apparently I didn't actually miss much.
Yeah, everything seems okay, so you might as well just look on out for the film review. Oh wait, I haven't actually *seen* The Fighter yet. So I'm gonna talk about something that isn't a film. Ooooh, breaking the mould!
POINTLESS (filmed on 13/02/11)
So a while back, Coates says that we can get tickets to go see QI being filmed if we go see Pointless being filmed, since it's not as popular a show, I'm guessing. So we took a trip up to London, walked around South Bank for a bit, shot through the tube system, got lost in a MASSive White City Mall, then stood outside BBC Television Centre for an hour and a half until we got inside. Then we got to sit in the FRONT ROW. I was actually within licking distance of Alexander Armstrong.
And I loves me some Alexander Armstrong. I should have brought the script for Fantasy Incorporated with me, I could have thrust it on him with instructions to give it to Ben Miller. Or would that have been taking the piss?
Basically, I've never been to a filming before, I'd never seen a show being shot. Yeah, there's a lot of technical stuff going on all around you, yeah there's stopping and starting, yeah there's a compare who's trying to keep you interested. But all in all, the time flew by, the progress of the game was fascinating, it was actually really funny (especially when it turns out that nobody there likes Kevin Spacey!) and it was, all in all, a thoroughly pleasent way to spend an evening. We even got back to southampton for about 11pm.
It was interesting to see, and I'm going to have to check up all the episodes of Pointless on the iplayer for the next few days, since I think they'd actually got some footage of me, Coates and Macina in the front row cheering and whooping. I might actually be on TV. That's a scary thought for all you TV license payers, eh? So yeah, this makes a change from a film review, doesn't it? I think I'll do a few more of these every now and again. I'll definately do the QI one when we go see that!
Next up: The Fighter.
(He says for the 2nd time)
Don't know, but it means that in a few weeks, when everyone (who am I kidding, nobody reads this thing) has forgotten, it'll look like I didn't leave the blog for a month without posting an update, no matter how many I was tapping away at in the mean time.
Do I have anything else to discuss in the mean time? I don't know, everything seems to be going okay, I'm good on the writing front and I haven't recieved any post demanding money in the last few days. Heard from my brother, have been watching copius dvd's. I may have missed my class on wednesday, but then apparently I didn't actually miss much.
Yeah, everything seems okay, so you might as well just look on out for the film review. Oh wait, I haven't actually *seen* The Fighter yet. So I'm gonna talk about something that isn't a film. Ooooh, breaking the mould!
POINTLESS (filmed on 13/02/11)
So a while back, Coates says that we can get tickets to go see QI being filmed if we go see Pointless being filmed, since it's not as popular a show, I'm guessing. So we took a trip up to London, walked around South Bank for a bit, shot through the tube system, got lost in a MASSive White City Mall, then stood outside BBC Television Centre for an hour and a half until we got inside. Then we got to sit in the FRONT ROW. I was actually within licking distance of Alexander Armstrong.
And I loves me some Alexander Armstrong. I should have brought the script for Fantasy Incorporated with me, I could have thrust it on him with instructions to give it to Ben Miller. Or would that have been taking the piss?
Basically, I've never been to a filming before, I'd never seen a show being shot. Yeah, there's a lot of technical stuff going on all around you, yeah there's stopping and starting, yeah there's a compare who's trying to keep you interested. But all in all, the time flew by, the progress of the game was fascinating, it was actually really funny (especially when it turns out that nobody there likes Kevin Spacey!) and it was, all in all, a thoroughly pleasent way to spend an evening. We even got back to southampton for about 11pm.
It was interesting to see, and I'm going to have to check up all the episodes of Pointless on the iplayer for the next few days, since I think they'd actually got some footage of me, Coates and Macina in the front row cheering and whooping. I might actually be on TV. That's a scary thought for all you TV license payers, eh? So yeah, this makes a change from a film review, doesn't it? I think I'll do a few more of these every now and again. I'll definately do the QI one when we go see that!
Next up: The Fighter.
(He says for the 2nd time)
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