The End is the Beginning is The End

Bit of an odd week at the cinema for me.  Due to the four day presence of a twelve year old nephew, I have put off watching both Bridesmaids (I know, I’ve had enough time to see it, but finding a night when both me and my lady are up for a trip to my workplace is becoming increasingly difficult) and one I’m particularly looking forward to, Horrible Bosses.  Instead, I saw something less ‘horrible’ and more, ah, horrid.  Yes, Tuesday afternoon involved a trek down to the cinema in Tatooine levels of heat to watch Horrid Henry.  Here’s what I took from the experience: The kid who played the lead was, I thought, actually very watchable, there now seems no turning back for Richard E. Grant from the dignity-robbing family film crevice he’s been steadily carving out since Spiceworld, Noel Fielding’s got a little doughy round the face, and suspicions are confirmed about two male kids’ TV presenters whose names I simply cannot allow to appear in my blog.  Suffice to say, they are cunts.

Two days before that though, I reluctantly received my first injection of every child’s favourite young wizard.  In 3D.  Now, I realise that starting with not just the final Potter film, but the final part of the final Potter film may not have been the best strategy, but the boy’s twelve, of course he’s gonna want to watch Harry Potter over Captain America.  Despite my protests.

So yeah, last Potter film, first Potter film for me.  And I quite enjoyed it, y’know.  Obviously there were parts where some previous knowledge may have helped me make some sense of things, but I picked it up – Harry needs to take down that pale faced guy, the three leads have this sort of Dawson/Joey/Pacey history going on, we thought Alan Rickman had turned evil but it turns out he had to kill the old wizard, I get it.  I was helped by the incredibly efficient storytelling, in which every scrap of dialogue seems to serve a clear narrative purpose, presumably because all the characters have been firmly established in previous instalments.  I was surprised at the relentlessly ropey acting from both Radcliffe and uh, Hermione.  Or, well, maybe that’s a little unfair.  It could be more down to a reluctance to deviate from the script, with all of that mechanical, plot-furthering dialogue, but it comes across as just that: actors spewing out rehearsed lines.  And isn’t that the mark of a decent actor?  The ability to make practised dialogue appear spontaneous and in-the-moment?  Yeah, no it wasn’t unfair.  Hermione was terrible.  But man, did you see when the evil pale face man died?  Awesome.  And those floating wraith things?  Badass.  And the two shots where something lurched out towards you, obviously put in at the studio’s request to try to fool the fools into thinking that it was worth watching in 3D?  Ace.

The Franchise That Should Not Be: A Call To Arms.

OK, so I’m aware that my last post, Terminate all Thought, sort of descended into a rant about Transformers and Michael Bay, which was not the intention.  With this post however, it absolutely is.  I may as well tell you now. 

Terrifyingly close is the release of the third film in The Franchise That Really Shouldn’t Find An Audience Due To The Fact That Those Old Enough To Have A Fondness For The Toys Are All Now Knocking On Thirty Yet The Target Audience Is Clearly 12 Year Old Boys (as I feel the series should be  known, though Total Film may have to clear some space on the cover), and once again I fear the inevitable:  Intelligent, reasonable people with otherwise respectable taste in film sitting alongside dribbling little punks in now forever tainted cinema seats.

OK, I watched the first one, dubious but hopeful, and as you know, it was a piece of shit.  It’s not worth dissecting, it’s not worth criticising.  Some dismissed it as summer popcorn fare, others as a glorified toy advert.  While these are fair conclusions, they are missing the point:  It’s a piece of shit.  ‘But Kev, what about the top-notch CGI-‘  no, it’s just a piece of shit.  ‘Didn’t Megan Fox look-‘  it doesn’t matter.  Piece of shit.

 Now, OK, despite this, I was fooled into thinking the second one might just be insane enough to warrant a watch.  I know, I know, and I’ve reprimanded myself fittingly.  But you know what?  At least I didn’t pay money to see them.  In fact, being a projectionist means I actually got paid to watch them.  But even then, I’d rather have spent my morning cleaning grease out of the gears of the projector.

And so, consider this a call to arms.  I am here to urge you, even to beg you, not to pay money to see Transformers 3.  In fact, if you do, then fuck you, you are an enemy of cinema.  You are contributing to the dumbing down of cinema, and increasing the likelihood of Hollywood putting out more of this worthless, moronic, meaningless shite.  Even if you watch the films on TV, you are boosting ratings and helping to ensure enduring interest and repeated showings.  I’ve been doing my bit, small though it may be, by inserting the trailer into as few films as possible, hoping to make even a few impressionable kids unaware of the film’s release.  And you can do your bit too.  Do not watch this slag heap of a film.  It is time to halt the ongoing march of The Franchise That Really Shouldn’t Find An Audience Due To The Fact That Those Old Enough To Have A Fondness For The Toys Are All Now Knocking On Thirty Yet The Target Audience Is Clearly 12 Year Old Boys.  Michael Bay should not have a career, Shia LaBeouf should be serving burgers and fries and Megan Fox, well, OK fair play to her for getting out when she did.

Please, ignore the inevitable four stars those spineless types at Empire magazine will bless the film with, and go watch something else.  There’s some good shit coming out this summer.

Terminate All Thought.

“Leave your brain at the door”, people are fond of telling me.  “You have to switch your brain off, and you’ll enjoy it”.  These are things I hear so often, generally as needless justification for one’s guilty cinematic pleasures, or to excuse a lack of confidence in one’s own opinions.  Even film critics use these tired clichés when they feel they are overstepping the boundary of what they, as critics, are permitted to like.  It means they can slap another star on the rating for that Jason Statham film without embarrassment. 

Firstly, all art is of course subjective, and therefore nobody need be ashamed of their likes or dislikes.  Secondly, when did the world become a place where people want to stop thinking?  The last thing I want to do is put a freeze on my thoughts.  Escapism?  Fine.  Dumb action?  Lovely.  It’s just something I’ll never understand, this whole not wanting to think.  It is our constant thought processes which make us human, no?

It really niggles my nadgers when people tell me that I would have enjoyed a lousy piece of cinematic excrement like Transformers had I had the foresight to just “switch my brain off”.  Because guess what, bitches?  I DON’T WANT TO.  My mind was whirring like the sprockets on the projector while watching Transformers, thinking up new, novel ways to express such bottomless abhorrence, and wondering how viewers can be insulted and belittled for over two hours and still go home happy.  Is society to blame?  And this is not, as someone on every imdb message board would suggest (by way of defending their tastes), snobbery.  I enjoy a dumb modern action flick as much as anyone, so long as it delivers (see Die Hard 4, Con Air), it’s just that even the action scenes in Transformers were weak, juvenile and unexciting.  And the big joke is that Mr. Bay actually does consider his films to have some meaning and importance, while even his defenders wouldn’t claim such a thing.  I remember reading an interview with him around the time The Island came out, and he was wittering on about how he is now less interested in blowing stuff up, and his new money shot is to look into an actor’s eyes, into their soul!  Ha Haaaaa Michael Bay!  I laughed and laughed.

And so I implore you readers, watch what you want, and enjoy films on whatever level you wish, but always keep your brain switched on.  There is as much to consider while watching some swill by Roland Emmerich as there is watching Apocalypse Now.  Maybe give Transformers 3 a miss though.

I Thought I Thor a Nordic God.

I went to see Thor last night and, well, you know that Simpsons episode where Mr Burns remembers being a young boy, smashing his dodgem repeatedly into the legs of that Irish handyman, then spends days laughing at the memory?  Well that’s me, still pissing myself.  The opening half hour or so sees Anthony Hopkins deliver line after line of hilarious, preposterous dialogue, matched only in his absurd delivery by Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth.  On top of that, we are introduced to Thor’s three stooges, one of whom sports a ginger beard of ZZ Top proportions, and may as well have been played by Gimli.  Sorely disappointing was when he opened his mouth and didn’t have a Scottish accent.  Honestly, with the first act barely done, the film has already thrown up every conceivable cliché in the book, and sent me and my lady into fits of giggles.

It was fucking brilliant.

Preferable film times meant that we reluctantly went to see the 3D version, which really would not have been my first choice.  But I must say this is one film where that muddy, discolouring effect the 3D filters cause is outweighed by the spectacle that is created.  The long, epic sweeping shots of Asgard (Thor’s realm) are truly astounding, and threaten to bring on a little motion sickness.

So yes, I really, really enjoyed Thor, but man, what a geeky evening at the cinema it was.  Aside from us, the only people in the auditorium were a group of (and I don’t mean this in a derogatory manner) dorks.  Lovely, polite, silent-during-the-film dorks.  So as if watching Thor, in 3D, with these dudes wasn’t geeky enough, the trailers consisted of the following: Green Lantern, X-Men: First Class, Transformers 3 and the new Pirates of The Caribbean.  The first of only two peeps heard from the nerdy fellas behind us came when the auditorium was plunged into silence following the Green Lantern trailer, and the end of a sentence rang out: “...yellow.  That’s his weakness.”  The slightly agitated tone suggested an unheard but heated disagreement over some superhero or another.  The second peep was the group laughing en masse when a Xena reference was made in the film.  Tellingly, one of the few lines in Thor that didn’t tickle me.

So yeah, altogether a rather geeky evening out.  Also, one thing I did want to mention was how dubious I was a couple of months back when it was announced that Kenneth Branagh was to direct Thor, not being a fan of his haughty breed of film making.  But seriously, the decision to bring him in was a stroke of absolute genius.  Overblown, pompous and pretentious, his style has found it’s perfect bedfellow.  Let’s hope that, with the promising-looking Captain America on the horizon, Marvel is back on track after a somewhat rocky couple of years.

Machete watches The Devils: An uncut masterpiece and a mean hangover.

I awoke on Sunday in Brighton, with precious few hours sleep under my belt, an apocalyptic hangover and a handlebar moustache.  I should have known then that a well-planned day was not on the cards.

The previous night my lady and I had travelled down to Brighton for a friend’s Mexican themed party.  I had shaved me a handlebar and hacked the sleeves off a leather jacket, she had practised walking in heels and donned an eye patch in preparation for our transformations into Machete and Luz, characters from Machete (the third best film of last year, as I’m sure you know).

But the Sunday is where we find ourselves for this story.  You see, on Sunday night London’s Barbican Centre played host to the second ever official UK screening of the uncensored director’s cut of Ken Russell’s 1971 masterpiece The Devils.  Brutal, beautiful and utterly fearless, the film acts as a damning account of the hypocrisies and corruption which formed the backbone of the Catholic church in the 17^th century.  Although The Devils has fallen foul of censors since its release, and only appeared in various neutered forms, it is the film’s distributer, Warner Brothers, who have been mostly responsible for it barely seeing the light of day.  It seems they still feel the sight of numerous naked and catatonic nuns crawling over each other to rape an edifice of Christ is too likely to upset audiences, at least if released on DVD.  The Rape of Christ is one of several notorious scenes which have been restored back into the film for the first time, largely thanks to the hard work of one Mark Kermode.  Indeed, many scenes were thought lost forever until negatives were found in various vaults around the world. 

So anyway, there we were at Brighton station, me armed with two tickets, a handlebar and a hangover the size of Jim Cameron’s sense of self-worth, beginning our trip into London.  No doubt if we’d been feeling better we would have been excited.  There was also the worry of missing our last train back that night.  They’d better start that projector before nine.  We arrived at the Barbican tube station, and, pushed for time, were given directions by a helpful homeless chap, who I wish nothing but good fortune to.  We arrived, somehow feeling worse than we had all day, and took our seats.  In attendance were members of cast and crew, as well as Ken Russell himself, who barely seemed to know where, or indeed who, he was.  But while the pre-screening chit-chat was informative and entertaining, we could do nothing but watch the time and calculate how much of the film we would have to miss in order to get the tube back to Victoria for the last train.  At well past nine the film began, and around halfway through we realised that missing the end simply wasn’t an option, so decided a taxi might just get us back in time. 

The credits rolled, we applauded (while inching our way from the auditorium).  I flagged down a taxi, and we sat, tapping and twisting our fingers anxiously, as we got caught in red light after red light.  Our train was due to leave at 11:32.  We threw money at the driver and ran into Victoria Station, where we were greeted with the news that our train was at platform 19, the very furthest from us.  It was 11:32.  And let me tell you friends, there’s a truly odd feeling which goes with running desperately through a train station with the most haunting images of burning priests and masturbating nuns spiralling round your head.  Until now I had always thought there to be something somewhat romantic about a couple running through a train station for the last train.  Another of my starry-eyed notions smashed.  We sat down, sweating and wheezing, beside an old couple.  We had made it with seconds to spare.

Despite the hangover, and despite spending outlandish amounts of money on last minute late night transport, the whole fiasco was more than worth it.  The Devils is a haunting, harrowing masterpiece, featuring truly exquisite performances from Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave in the lead roles, and images that will stay with me for a long time.  Honestly, I cannot convey to you in words the tragic beauty of Redgrave’s unhinged performance as the haunted and troubled Sister Jeanne.  I feel genuinely privileged to be among the few who have had the chance to see the film in its intended state.  I really hope the event helps to jog Warner Brothers into seeing the market for an uncut DVD release, as, forty years after its release, surely it is time for The Devils to find its audience, and for them to find it.

Horror fans can be neglectful bastards.

Howdy folks, feels like it’s been a while.  I’ve been away, relaxing, seeing the family, and apart from watching a couple of films I’ve meant to see for ages (Hancock and The Invention of Lying, if you’re interested), keeping out of the loop and neglecting my duties as a film blogger.  Concentrating on other things (most recently, wondering at what point in the deterioration of a frying pan one should replace it).  But I’m back now, so no more complacency, time to get back in the saddle.  And what better way to do just that than by continuing in my Dario Argento odyssey, as promised in my post How one DVD label...

So that’s what I’m doing.  Last night I watched, for the first time, Two Evil Eyes.  Released in 1990, the film consists of two stories, each more or less an hour in length, based on Edgar Allan Poe tales.  The first, The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar, was directed by George A. Romero, and stars 80s screen icon Adrienne Barbeau.  Argento directs the second story, an adaptation of The Black Cat with Harvey Keitel in the lead role.  I’ve long been aware of the film, and it is discussed in the documentary Master of Horror, and I was surprised at how good it is.  Why surprised?  I guess I was expecting for there to be a reason for the film having been largely overlooked and neglected by genre fans.  And it has, despite the reliable source material, despite the starring names, despite it being the work of two of modern horror’s most respected heavyweights.  But goddamn, it’s a cool flick.  Romero’s section is a slow-burning creeper, an EC comic-style morality tale which would not have felt out of place in his 1982 film Creepshow.  Romero’s story (one of the best of many adaptations of The Black Cat) is wall-to-wall insanity, with nutbags dream sequences, all out carnage and Keitel chewing the shit out of the scenery.

Yet you’re not gonna see it on many horror fans’ top ten lists, and I don’t know why.  See, it’s not one of those little cult films that, though brilliant, just never got the exposure necessary to make people aware of its existence, there’s a million of them.  It’s a film that horror nuts are aware of, but not one that they get all giddy over.  Perhaps it’s simply because of the two-story format.  Not since the Amicus anthologies of the 60s and 70s have horror compendiums appealed to large audiences, and studios have long been suspicious of their potential.  The idea also means that Two Evil Eyes is neither entirely a Romero film nor an Argento one.  Maybe the time the film was made works against it.  Romero’s previous film Monkey Shines was neither a critical nor commercial success, and the same goes for Argento’s Terror at The Opera (though it is now considered one of his true classics).  Maybe there exists no singular reason for the ignoring of Two Evil Eyes, perhaps it’s simply a twist of fate which leaves certain films somewhat forgotten.  And there are others.  One that comes to mind is 1979’s When a Stranger Calls, which more or less invented the calls-coming-from-inside-the-house motif, and is up there with the very best stalked babysitter flicks.  Equally ignored is the surprisingly good 1993 sequel, When a Stranger Calls Back.  I suppose the 2006 remake could have exposed people to the original, had it not been geared towards younger popcorn audiences with no wider interest in the genre.  Remaking the film in the age of mobile phones?  Baaaaaaad idea, chum.  The Hitcher is another one.  Awesome film, neglected by horror fans.  Also suffered the remake treatment.  Hang on, is a pattern forming?  How about Fright Night?

Ah crap, some prick’s gonna try to remake Two Evil Eyes, aren’t they?

The Illegal Race Through America.

I had a beautiful 104 minutes the other day which I would like to tell you about, if you’ll spare me a moment.  A moment, you’ll be pleased to hear, briefer than the one required to read my last couple of posts.  Anyway, the five-score-and-four minutes in question were spent watching 1976 car chase caper The Gumball Rally, the movie of the race of the same name.  It’s a pretty cool film by the way, but the real beauty came, as it so often does, from the stirring up of childhood memories.

If you are able, now is the time to replicate the effect of travelling back into one’s memory banks.  Maybe squint a bit, maybe play a little harp.

When I was a particularly wee nipper, probably around 7 or 8, I watched a film with my older brother, and carried from it two vague but enduring memories.  One is of a car breaking cleanly in half as it crashes through roadworks, the other is my brother telling me the name of the film is ‘The Illegal Race Through America’.  Race?  America?  Illegal?  My young imagination was captured.  A few years ago, I decided to track the film down.

By the way I do realize you already know where this tale is headed, but I shall soldier on regardless, for I feel a need to get this out.  Sharing experiences y’know?  Planting seeds.

My long search for ‘The Illegal Race Through America’ took me on a pretty cool ride as, one by one, I ploughed through every American car chase film it could conceivably have been (I realized early on that my brother had been mistaken on the title).  Thus, I got to flavour the delights of Grand Theft Auto, Cannonball! and Gone in Sixty Seconds.  The flip side of the coin was of course The Cannonball Run which, while certainly no Smokey and The Bandit 3, is a pretty wretched sack of swill, oozing with slapstick characters, sped-up driving scenes and a severely past-his-best Burt Reynolds.  In short, it’s a homeless man’s Gumball Rally.  I watched each of these films and more, hoping beyond hope to see a car fall clean in two during a decidedly unlawful race across the Land of the Free, but ended up disappointed every time.  Particularly the time I watched The Cannonball Run. 

And then I tracked down The Gumball Rally.  And I watched it.  And I shuffled forward on my seat as a car approached some roadworks, and let me tell you friends, that car broke clean in two.  And this race was illegal, not to mention through America!  I sat and I smiled.  I had found the film.  Not to mention become somewhat of a connoisseur of American car chase films.