Review: In The Loop

  • Nov. 29th, 2009 at 1:04 AM
Paranoia at 11
I've recently grown to be obsessed with The Thick of It, Armando Iannucci's razor sharp political comedy, which can be, perhaps, best described for colonials as like The West Wing meets The Office. Armando Iannucci's been on the scene for a number of years, behind the brilliant news spoof The Day Today, I'm Alan Partridge, Knowing Me, Knowing You, producing The Mary Whitehouse Experience and more. In The Loop is ostensibly the big screen version of The Thick of It, with a few American characters thrown in, although, in actual fact, while the cast return for the big screen version, they play different characters, with the exception of Peter Capaldi, still in the same role as the monstrous spin doctor Malcolm Tucker.

However, a polish on the British cast aside, the trick is expanding the bumbling incompetence and ruthless back-stabbing of The Thick of It from Whitehall to include Washington and adding the over-arching plot of the lead-up to a proposed war. It's hardly a stretch to see where the writers got their inspiration - one of the standing jokes is that the group proposing war are officially known as the "Future Planning Committee".

The satire's savage, whether it's in the form of ineffectual ‘meat puppet’ British minister Simon Foster, (brilliantly played by Tom Hollander) triggering an international crisis with a poorly chosen choice of phrase and desperately trying to please both advocates for war and peace and coming off as a bungling incompetent whatever he does, or Malcolm Tucker struggling to come to terms with the fact that he might be top dog in London, but in Washington he's just another number in the meat grinder. The stand-off with James Gandolfini as a Pentagon General is one of the highlights of the movie.

Capaldi is, of course, the pulse of the film - an expletive and vitriol spitting, relentless monster - but Hollander provides as much of the comedy, clearly out of his depth throughout and ineptly assisted by his PA Toby (Chris Addison), while the US cast includes Mimi Kennedy and Anna Chlumsky in addition to Galdolfini and they make the most of the satire they're given, especially in their dealings with Enzo Cilenti, the ambitious, and youthful, aide.

So, if you like your satire subtle, razor sharp and aren't offended by cuss words, and plenty of them, this is the movie for you. In fact, let's not mince words here, this movie is probably the best political satire we're likely to see after Doctor Strangelove. Strong praise indeed.

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Mock Turtle
It's one of those BBC movies that pretty much went unnoticed after it was initially shown as part of the 50th Anniversary of the D-Day Landings. Despite direction from Charles Sturridge (Brideshead Revisited) and a stellar international cast (Alec Guinness, Leo McKern, Lauren Bacall, John Randolph, Jeanne Morreau, Edward Herrmann, Geraldine Chaplin) I had to ship my copy of the DVD in from Canada, where it was shown as part of Masterpiece Theatre, I believe.

It's a shame, because despite the unpretentious sentimentality of the work, the actors all deliver what have to be up there with their finest performances. And when you're talking about Alec Guinness, that's praise indeed. Guinness plays Amos, the brain-damaged innocent, delivering a performance that coveys a wealth of emotion with barely a word, while McKern and Randolph play equally irascible vets from either side of the pond, both seeming to re-discover the girl they lost their hearts to 50 years before. It's sentimental, but the impeccable performances ensure it never seems schmaltzy. And without fail I tear up every... single.. time I watch the film.

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One of us, one of us...

  • Aug. 20th, 2009 at 2:32 PM
Angel blood
I've now seen all the Harry Potter movies.

So, now, I suppose, I shall have to get around to reading the books.

On the movies - I found them entertaining enough, nicely performed on the whole (although Emma Watson was singled out as being strong in the first couple of movies, I found her wooden and painful, but then child actors generally are), with brilliant supporting casts.


I do have a few questions about Harry Potter as a whole as well as some observations about the movies under the cut. Bear in mind that I've only seen the movies, I haven't read the final book (books?) so I don't know what happens in the end.

Questions and reviews of all the movies under the cut. )

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A bunch of movie news from all over

  • Aug. 6th, 2009 at 9:52 AM
Juno - Kraken


Johnny Deep's apparently pulled out of Terry Gilliam's famously cursed version of Don Quixote. After ten years since the last attempt, a scheduling clash means that when (if) if starts shooting again, Depp's not available. Cue Terry Gilliam:
 

"I wanted to shoot Don Quixote next spring. He said he's not available and we have both agreed that I'm going to die soon, so it would be nice to get this film under my belt."

Curious juxtaposition of quotes about the new Sherlock Holmes movie from Guy Ritchie. Ritchie himself has stated he wanted to make a Sherlock Holmes movie for his kids to watch, whilst the News of the World, in typical subdued fashion (Queerstalker!") is reporting Downey Jr. playing up the homoerotic aspects of the characters, talking about sweaty wrestling and sharing a bed with Watson. So, a homoerotic, gay-friendly Holmes that's also good for the kids? Why not. The new Doctor Who team managed to create a kids show as bent as a nine bob note, so I don't see why Sherlock can't go the same way. I'm more turned off by the Sherlock Holmes: Action Hero route they seem to be going, personally.

However:

"But Michael Medved, a former Post movie critic, says Downey and Law must be joking. "There's not a seething, bubbling hunger to see straight stars impersonating homosexuals," Medved told us. "I think they're just trying to generate controversy . . . They know that making Holmes and Watson homosexual will take away two-thirds of their box office. Who is going to want to see Downey Jr. and Jude Law make out? I don't think it would be appealing to women."

Um... I think Michael Medved needs to get out more, personally.

Production started yesterday on Machete, the film that Robert Rodriguez is co-directing with his protege Ethan Maniquis. Variety's reporting that Danny Trejo is playing the title character and Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez, Steven Seagal, Cheech Marin, Don Johnson and Jeff Fahey play supporting roles. Oh, and Lindsay Lohan. What?

Whatever happened to Sin City II anyway?

Twilight meets Transformers fanfic. Weep.

Leonardo DiCaprio's production company are developing a gothic version of Little Red Riding Hood. "My, Grandma, what black nailpolish you have."

Then Movie Retriever has an article on Six Ways The GI Joe Movie Could Be Better Than Transformers 2. I'm not sure I agree with them because, well, it's going to be really really bad, but I did think this quote rung true:

This might sound ridiculous, but Michael Bay movies take themselves very, very seriously. That's right, Michael Bay movies. (And, yes, we're counting Bad Boys 2.) Even with their ridiculous premises, there is an arrogance, a pomp, a slick, pre-packaged, out-of-the-box desire to be EPIC to Bay's movies that can be entertaining, but also can occasionally suck all of the fun out of a movie theatre thanks to their painful efforts to be either cool or profound in every second of every frame. On the other side of the spectrum, there's Stephen Sommers, and let's be honest, there is NOTHING cool about Stephen Sommers. If Bay was the high school kid who spent all of his energy being cool, Sommers is the class clown, the class speed freak, the kid in your class who'd skateboard off the roof just to make his friends laugh. This doesn't mean that Sommers makes great movies - he doesn't. Deep Rising is a hysterical B-movie, The Mummy is a fairly solid popcorn flick, The Mummy Returns is bat-s*** insane, and Van Helsing is so over-the-top it's almost Kabuki. However, all four of those movies are never boring and were obviously made by a guy who was trying to make every second of every frame pure sugar-sweet FUN. 

And finally, Skottie Young Twitters about Smallville:

"Watching Superman movies as a kid I would pretend I could fly. I wonder if kids that watch Smallville pretend they can mope around & whine?"

 




A Serious Man Trailer

  • Jul. 30th, 2009 at 9:07 PM
Big Lebowski - Walter ...
Here's a curiosity. The trailer for the new Coen Brothers movie, entitled A Serious Man and starring... well, a bunch of people I never heard of. In fact, I don't recognise anyone in this at all, which may be a good sign. After a glut of movies with big Hollywood names, this appears to be a very small scale production and, oddly, is only getting a limited release in October. Now, you'd think a movie by a directing team that won Best Picture a couple of years back and have a few Oscars and other awards under their belts would warrant a wide release, over, say, Hotel for Dogs, but maybe that lack of star power went against them. Or maybe it's deliberate. Who knows?

Anyway, the synopsis goes:

"The story follows an ordinary mans search for clarity in a universe where Jefferson Airplane is on the radio and F-Troop is on TV. It is 1967, and Larry Gopnik, a physics professor at a quiet midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith that she is leaving him. She has fallen in love with one of his more pompous colleagues, Larry's unemployable brother Arthur is sleeping on the couch, his son Danny is a discipline problem and a shirker at Hebrew school, and his daughter Sarah is filching money from his wallet in order to save up for a nose job. An anonymous hostile letter-writer is trying to sabotage Larry’s chances for tenure at the university. Also, a graduate student seems to be trying to bribe him for a passing grade while at the same time threatening to sue him for defamation. Plus, the beautiful woman next door torments him by sunbathing nude. Struggling for equilibrium, Larry seeks advice from three different rabbis. Can anyone help him cope with his afflictions and become a righteous person; a mensch, a serious man?"

It all sounds a little... odd, but that's what the Coens excel at. I'm curious about this one. It'll be interesting to see if this can wash the taste of the brilliantly performed but unsatisfying duo of No Country For Old Men and Burn After Reading from my mouth. It'd be nice if they produced the new Fargo about now. The trailer, however, just makes the whole enterprise seem even more peculiar. But that's Coen Brothers movies for you. If you can tell what the hell is going on after reading a synopsis and watching a trailer for one of their movies, they're doing it wrong.

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Robert Downey Jr is Horny

  • Jul. 16th, 2009 at 10:17 PM
illyana - I'm horny
ComingSoon.net has some pics from the new Iron Man movie up and some brief blurb about the script.

Which has produced this gem:

Downey believes what differentiates the franchise from other superhero series can be summarized as follows: "We're horny. Not, like, can't-bring-your-kids horny, but just…horny."


So, what do we think? Is Scarlett Johannson horny? Or did she just drop her contact lens?



Anyway, here's the Entertainment Weekly cover in question. Sadly no Sam Rockwell in sight. I might not be able to resist seeing this one in the cinema since they're going to be chucking Sam Rockwell and Downey Jr verbiage at me.



So, are Scarlett Johannson and Mickey Rouke in competition for silliest hair or something?

It just occurs to me that in addition to Tony Stark and Peter Parker once ending up in bed together, in real life, Deadpool is currently boinking the Black Widow. Funny old world.

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Harry Potter and the Bloody Good Casting

  • Jul. 16th, 2009 at 12:11 AM
Albert Steptoe Garn
Apparently a new Harry Potter film is out today.

Those that know me well enough know that I used to harbor an almost pathological hatred of the mere mention of Harry Potter. I'm better now, but I'm still not a fan. I admit, it's simply down to so many people telling me I simply MUST read the books, that my immediate reaction is one of rage. I never like being forced to be enthusiastic. I'm more open minded to reading the bloody things now, when the time presents itself though.

Anyway, there's a poster outside our offices for the new movie with Emma Watson looking disturbingly fit and Jim Broadbent in the background looking all serious.

I lover Jim Broadbent. I really do.

And I keep thinking - man, has their ever been a series of movie that's managed to attract as cast as good as the Harry potter movies? Seriously, they have pretty much every single great British character actor in there.

Richard Harris, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane, Warwick Davis, Richard Griffiths, John Hurt, Julie Walters, Leslie Phillips, John Cleese, Alan Rickman, Zoë Wanamaker, Ian Hart, Kenneth Branagh, Miriam Margolyes, Timothy Spall, Eric Sykes, David Tennant, Robert Hardy, Roger Lloyd-Pack, Michael Gambon, Frances de la Tour, Brendan Gleeson, Miranda Richardson, Gary Oldman, Shirley Henderson, Ralph Fiennes, Pam Ferris, David Thewlis, Dawn French, Paul Whitehouse, Emma Thompson, Julie Christie, Freddie Davies, Jessica Stevenson, Imelda Staunton, Helena Bonham Carter, Jim Broadbent, Mark Williams and Bill Nighy and Rhys Ifans in the next movies.

Even bloody Lenny Henry.

I mean, if they can squeeze Dame Judi in there, surely that makes a complete set?

The conclusion I've had to come to is that the casting for the Harry Potter movies is stunning. They pretty much managed to get everyone in there that I would want to see in a movie, damn them. To the point where I might actually have to watch the damn things.

On the other hand, it's slightly depressing to note that there's a great number of people on that list that a large contingent of people (mostly bloody colonials) will know only as "that person from Harry Potter".

Now why can't they get casts like that on movies I really want to see?

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Movie reviews

  • Jul. 5th, 2009 at 11:15 PM
Shaun - That's just not cricket


Post-deadline and that's usually my cue to get the hell away from my computer for a couple of days, spend time with real human beings and just chill out in general. Watched a couple of movies I've had in the stack for some time over the weekend, so i figured I'd share my thoughts.

Firstly, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People is a bit of a strange beast. It clearly wants to be bitingly satirical. It also clearly wants to be a romantic comedy. What it does is fall clumsily between both stools. The romance is too abrupt and contrived, the satire limp and toothless. In fact, for what could have been a biting commentary on celebrity and a sort of testosterone fuelled Devil Wears Prada, it pretty much fails to ever hit a satirical note, instead relying on pratfalls and physical comedy for its humour.

Based on Toby Young's memoir of his inglorious time at Vanity Fair magazine, where he infamously managed to upset the rich and famous, including hiring a stripper on Bring Your Daughters To Work Day. In the movie, the names have been changed to protect the innocent and a few of the incidents from the book are kept, but tagged onto a light romantic comedy of errors where Simon Pegg plays the British journalist who makes it into the "first room" of celebrity journalism, then proceeds to scupper his career with bad judgment and outrageous gaffes. The character starts the movie as a charmless jerk and it's only later we discover he's not entirely hapless, but Pegg's performance is, as always, packed full of charm. And, frankly, the main thing that keeps the movie afloat.

Apart from him it's all limp, although not entirely without merit. Miriam Margoyles is always entertaining and the quiet moments with Bill Patterson as Pegg's father are nicely handled. There's a few subtle jokes, but all too often it's the dead dogs and comic slapstick that gets pushed to centre stage and it's hard to understand why magazine boss Jeff Bridges (underused) would hire such a dick head in the first place, even when the reasons are explained. The trouble I found is simply that it just tries to be a humorous romantic comedy with a tiny touch of bite instead of having any real teeth. For what it tries to be it, like Pegg's other US movie Run, Fatboy, Run it's entertaining enough. It's just disappointing when the set up and cast leads you to expect a little more.

Likewise, Be Kind Rewind fails to live up to expectations. The basic story, based on real life events, of some video store workers who start making their own versions of movies after the tapes get accidentally erased, has enough comic potential. It's just unfortunate that, a few moderately funny spoofs of existing movies aside, the movie tries so hard to be charming it just comes across as sickly sweet and too farcical where it should be plainly funny. The script deploys whimsy like a blunt instrument, something that's at odds with Jack Black's performance where, presumably he's supposed to be like Pegg, a jerk, but a likable one. In actual fact, Black simply comes across as a jerk, like his character in High Fidelity, but perhaps even more charmless. A sulky man-child in the company of an equally dense, but less offensive, man child in the shape of Mos Def. Two characters who make the cast of Dumb and Dumber seem like intellectuals. The stupidity is no doubt meant to be charming but comes across rather as grating,

We're meant to pull for the characters as their own brand videos start to take off and become lauded in their community and further, creating a real community spirit as everyone pitches in to sav... oh, stop. And more sweetness like that and my teeth will rot. As it is, I found the characters too irritating to pull for and found the popularity of their idea inexplicable - the idea of people queuing around the block to get the tapes, the whole community gathering to help them save the store for aging Danny Glover would probably have been rejected from It's A Wonderful Life for being too schmaltzy. I mean it's funny to start with. When they're doing Ghostbusters or Rush Hour 2, it's moderately amusing. But then they go on and on and on and gets tiresome as it reaches the climax, where they're involved in a big production, and I didn't believe any of it. I didn't believe anyone would want to watch their movies. I didn't believe street thugs would suddenly turn straight to help them out. I didn't believe anyone would find them charismatc enough to give a damn about. And that's the trouble.

A lot of people seem to find the movie charming, though. I'm a cynical bastard, though, so for me it was simply grating.

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Bad reviews are bad?

  • Jul. 2nd, 2009 at 4:55 PM
Seventh Seal - Got to laugh


Sometimes I'm an evil man. I mean, I know Transformers: ROTFL has had epically bad reviews, being described variously as "like being hit over the head repeatedly with a very expensive, very loud train set", "simply despicable", "repugnant", "tedious, crass and despicable", "The Worst Movie of the Decade", "a horrible experience of unbearable length", "a fundamentally shitty movie", "like watching paint dry while getting hit over the head with a frying pan", "a lumbering idiot of a movie", and "a dishwasher loudly shitting in your face for 2 hrs."

Then there's been the incredible video rants. Like this (so many good points there between the rage), this or this.

But it was this review in that last link which has me in stitches. If coarse language offends, I'd suggest you don't read on:

"This movie….

…..was a worthless, mindfucking, pathetic, absolutely unredeemable, assrapingly godawful waste of time film filled with NOTHING but scenes of dogs fucking each other, horribly offensive racist caricature that was mindbogglingly horrendous, padded with NOTHING but constant, rambling absurd, shoot-your-self embarrassing and nonsensical dick jokes, obnoxious, grating, boring, ridiculous garbage on an unmessurable scale, and a HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE excuse of a film.

This film…. was so fucking incoherent, so pathetic, so absolutely desperate, and such a miserable, half-assed, failed, fucking piss-poor excuse for anything that could even reasonably called a “movie”, that even calling it a “movie” is an insult to ALL movies.

Calling this a “film”, or a “movie” does nothing but cheapen the term itself, and makes the art of cinema as a combined whole seem inconceivably worse because of it.

There is absolutely not one single, solitary second or conceivable moment, anywhere to be found in this film that isn’t an embarassing, shitsucking, piece of absolute gutter trash that has EVER… and I mean EVER been so fantastically puked onto a theater screen before, and most probably, since.

You cannot MAKE a movie this bad. One simply cannot MAKE something on this order of useless tripe if one TRIED to do so.

Rather, there is not ANYONE that exists in the nearest or farthest corner of god’s green and fertile earth today who can make a movie as bad as Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen if they had actually made the SPECIFIC effort to make a film this atrocious.

Even by ACCIDENT, the idea that garbage like this could be assembled in such an impossibly asinine and utterly abysmal fashion is incredibly remote and almost goddamn impossible to conceive or imagine.

Even for the incredibly, utterly, low, rock bottom standard of what could presumed typical of a Michael Bay SHITFEST can be, it is almost infinitely difficult to imagine, as to how, why or in what galaxy or entire dimension of suck that something this indescribably awful on every conceivable level as Transformers 2 is, could ever remotely come into being.

This movie is honestly, and undeniably, a goddamn, mother fucking plague of dark ages proportions.

And do you know what? Saying what you’ve said, and me saying what I’ve said as well, is actually being POLITE towards this movie. Much more so than it deserves.

This movie cannot be rated on a scale determinable by any possible number that we know of to exist, including reaching into negative numbers or even extending back to an infinite horizon of negative numbers."


So, what do you reckon, did he like the movie or not?

Sometimes I just find the outpouring of vitriol in hilariously awful reviews therapeutic.

Of course, I didn't hate the movie, but I'm finding the sheer, unrepenting hatred in the majority of the reviews to be as entertaining as the movie itself. If not more.

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Terminator 3 deleted scene

  • Jun. 30th, 2009 at 5:57 PM
Rosencrantz Guildenstern Blood


Ever wondered why the T-800 looked and sounded like an Austrian body builder?

Wonder no more.


I'd never seen this before. I can see why it was cut. Way too funny for T3.

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Snatch Wars

  • Jun. 24th, 2009 at 2:07 PM
Rosencrantz Guildenstern Blood

If you're offended by strong language, best avoid this one.

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Mark Kermode Reviews Transformers: ROTFL

  • Jun. 23rd, 2009 at 10:02 PM
Rosencrantz Guildenstern Blood


Probably the greatest review of our time. And I thought his review of the first one was good.

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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

  • Jun. 21st, 2009 at 9:49 PM
Grimlock Badass




Sadly, I didn't make the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen UK premiere in the end. I'll do a full update on what I was up to instead tomorrow, but I did go up to London to see the movie at the IMAX with friends and so I'll write this review while it's still fresh in my mind.

So here goes:

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the first movie amplified. Everything is bigger. Everything is magnified. But sadly that also means the flaws as well as the strengths.

Simply put, if you loved the first movie, you will love the second - as a big dumb action movie (and boy, is it dumb) it delivers, with more robot-on-robot carnage, bigger explosions (including, supposedly, the biggest committed to celluloid), bigger characters, more gimmicks, more Transformer character moments, set piece after set piece.

Sadly it also suffers from sequelitis - like the Pirates sequels, they've attempted to simply cram too much into the movie and the flaws are also amplified - the humor's coarser and dumber, the plot's even slighter and even more fragmented and directionless, the Transformers feel even more like extras than the focus of the movie (this time it's the Autobots who barely get any screen-time other than to pop up to blow stuff up) and the Transformers are even more gimmicky and messy in their designs.

The movie's particular flaw is that it's simply 30-40 minutes too long. There's a lot of fat in the film that exists purely to serve Bay's particular tastes and it would have been served better by allowing a ruthless script editor to chop several sequences (the Egyptian chase scene, the Pretender, several other sequences that just drag way too long) and after building nicely for the first half hour, it suddenly flags.

There's things to be proud of, though. The action sequences suffer less from shakey cam this time around and, in particular, Optimus has some epic battles which get the adrenaline pumping, the Megatron/Starscream dynamic is pure G1 and some of the new characters are fun and fully realized (I was entertained way more than I should have been by the foul mouthed Wall-E parody and the cranky old Brit Jetfire, shaking his cane and shouting "bollocks!" every few minutes). Kevin Dunn and Julie White as Sam's parents are even funnier this time around in expanded roles and also show the real acting chops, while John Turturro reins in the excess in his characterisation in the first movie to deliver.

But sadly, Bay also brings on board characters that rival Jar Jar Binks for "comic" ethnic stereotyping, lowbrow sexual humour (did we really need humping dog sequences? Not just once, but pulling the same trick twice?) and occasionally falls into the trap that no action movie should, but the Pirates sequels particularly were equally guilty of - the film gets boring. As another reviewer has put it: "It feels a bit like watching someone else play a video game for two and a half hours." I'm sure Bay had fun blowing things up for the movie but when that's the sole trick, it soon gets tired.

But by turns Revenge Of The Fallen is spectacular, funny, incredibly cringe-worthy, exciting, tedious, incomprehensible, dumb and very occasionally smart and well performed sometimes all at the same time.

If you liked that experience first time around, you're almost guaranteed to like it the second. If you hated the first movie, I'd suggest that a three hour root canal might be the quieter and less painful option.

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It really ties the room together

  • Jun. 11th, 2009 at 5:09 PM
Rosencrantz Guildenstern Blood




Get your own Big Lebowski Last Supper painting here.

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GI JOE Director FIRED?

  • Jun. 11th, 2009 at 10:21 AM
Sabretooth - Canhascheezeburger



"Something smells fishy."


Now, I'm not usually in the habit of repeating Hollywood gossip, but occasionally I hear something that... interests me. And this one comes from a source that's proved to be pretty much entirely accurate in the past. No, not AICN. God forbid. Anyway, the story goes like this:

EndTimes Tells You What He Has Heard: GI JOE Director FIRED!


"So the story goes like this-

After a test screening wherein the film tested the lowest score ever from an audience in the history of Paramount, the executive who pushed for the movie Brad Weston had Stephen Sommers, the super hack director of the film fired. Removed. Locked out of the editing room.

Stuart Baird, a renowned "fixer" editor was brought it to try to see if it could be made releasable. Meanwhile producer Lorenzo whose turkey IMAGINE THAT explodes this weekend as the new bomb in theatres (also championed by Weston) was told his services were no longer needed on the film either.

Sommers was then forced by his William Morris agents to pretend that he was working on Tarzan over at Warner Brothers doing design work, even though that film doesn't even have a good script yet. When word of the firing started to be whispered about in Hollywood, Sommers was summoned back to the editing room- but only to save appearances, Baird is still editing the movie with studio input.

Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner, who turned down other offers from the property to go with the script that was rushed in 8 weeks by Stuart Beattie because of the writer's strike is frantic that this will destroy the brand and is distancing himself from the pending catastophe.

NONE of this needed to happen, except someone who did not know the mythology, Lorenzo was in charge of the film and never contradicted Sommers on anything. Lorenzo, so you know, was Chairman of Warners and had GI JOE under option there (not as a producer) for SEVEN years and he refused to greenlight the film, stating that because he gre up in Italy he had no knowledge of it. If you google enough, at one point you will see he wanted the film to be about an action hero named MANN (Action Man, get it) and he clearly had no clue what the GI Joe world really was.

And the hapless hack Sommers? Where did he come from? The confused Jon Fogelman at William Morris, who signed Hasbro away from CAA, had to find a director in a hurry for his new clients and gave him the only guy who he repped who would do it. A sad end to what COULD have been a great franchise. Acceleration suits indeed."


Now if all that's true... huh. Doesn't suggest that the GI Joe movie's going to be much cop. A shame for Ray Park, Chris Eccleston and Dennis Quaid, all of whom I have a lot of time for. I don't think people were expecting a masterpiece, but this sounds like a car crash. If this were the usual Hollywood gossip I'd disregard it, but this EndTimes chap who pops up mysteriously on the boards I post on does have a pretty good track record of speaking the truth and definitely has industry links of some kind.

Curiouser and curiouser.

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Norman Bates blood


Posting on the new Safari 4.0. Which is INSANELY slow and keeps hanging. I should know not to download software updates until at least a couple of weeks after they first appear.

Anyhoo...

Just been running through my "To Watch" list in my head. My conclusion? I have way too many DVDs. Prompted by the discussion of Astonishing X-men over on Scans_Daily and my current... dissatisfaction with Whedon, I was reminded I still have a boxed set of Firefly to watch. And absolutely no desire to watch it after Whedon's recent output's turned me off. BUT, I shall make the effort.



However, I realized that it's just one of many many DVDs and collections I have to watch. Just trying to compile a list in my head and these include:

Ken Burn's The West
The Complete Firefly & Serenity
House - Seasons 1-4
The Ultimate Westerns Collection Box Set
(Rio Bravo, Chisum, Pale Rider, Wild Bunch, The Searchers, Outlaw Josey Wales, Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, Unforgiven)
Western Classics Triple (The Magnificent Seven, The Big Country, The Long Riders)
Sherlock Holmes The Definitive Collection (All of the Basil Rathbone movies)
Primeval Series 2
Alias: Season 2
Life on Mars: Series 1
The Complete Muppet Show
Heroes Season 2
Michael Palin: Round the World in 80 Days
The Tudors: Season 1
Teachers: Series 4
Doc Martin: Complete Series 1 & 2
ER Season 1 & 2
(Rewatch, but I bought on DVD since I only had them on VHS)
Alfred Hitchcock Box Set (14 movies)
Tru Calling: The Complete Series (I've watched about 6 episodes of this)
Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Season 3 (Rewatch, again because I only had it on VHS)
The Osbournes - Series 2 (Apparently. I don't remember buying this but Play.com says I did)
The Complete Steptoe & Son
The Street
- Series 1

That doesn't even include individual movies I've picked up.

What does this tell me?

A) I have a tendency to slurge when I see a bargain
B) I REALLY NEED TO STOP BUYING STUFF.

Someone give me strength not to buy those Deadwood and Rome boxed sets that are calling out to me.





A bit of stuff from all over..

  • Jun. 8th, 2009 at 9:52 AM
Colonel Nicholson - Oh Bugger


In serious news, Labour have suffered an "historic defeat" in the European elections. Not sure if it's as historic as the last one or as historic as the next one's going to be, but hey, ho. The elections saw the rise of the right with the BNP actually getting a pair of Euro MPs and the UK Independence Party doing well in the popular vote, knocking Labour into third place. This is clearly a big crisis.


A lot of pundits are horrified and disgusted that people could even consider voting far right - me, I follow The Daily Mash's line: "Professor Tom Logan, of Reading University, said: "Prolonged recessions do have a tendency to expose our inner racist fucknut, but it subsides once you get a new credit card."" It's a swing to the far right that's been seen across Europe, so not so much damning of Britain as human beings in general.

I should probably be more horrified than I am, but seeing as Euro MP's sole power appears to be going on holiday to the Caribbean with our money, I'm more philosophical about it, frankly. I don't think it's much to do with the politics, mostly that the main parties have been demonstrated to be a bunch of thieving bastards and no bugger trusts them as far as they could spit them, let alone wants to vote for them. Health Secretary Andy Burnham apparently agrees, saying: "The BNP is like the ultimate protest vote. It is how to deliver the establishment a two-fingered salute. I think largely it is a comment on Westminster politics."

In other depressing news, a woman's body's been found in a wheelie bin in Surrey. In a macabre twist it's claimed that the body only remained undiscovered because of bin men refusing to move or empty the bin because it felt too heavy. It anything makes me despair for the state of this country, that does. We're ruled by petty jobsworths.

Well, before I get too political...

The latest Will Ferrell shitfestmovie, the remake of Land of the Lost, came out on Friday. Apparently industry polling put it up there as being one of the big rivals for the Summer blockbuster top spot, rivaling Transformers: ROTFL with its predicted biggest opening evah. Call me mean spirited, but I was kinda glad to see it tank and tank badly, opening to under $20m over the weekend on a reported budget of $100m+. I find Will Ferrell about as funny as a forced colonic irrigation and the sight of him doing his mind-numbingly banal petulant man-child act in another movie, just with CGI dinosaurs, made me want to punch someone. It seems that moviegoers have metaphorically done that for me, though.

Michael Bell, voice of Prowl, Swoop and other characters in the original Transformers cartoon, is urging people to convince IDW to take up his proposal for a series of motion comic books that would be available for download on iPhone, iTouch and other outlets. The animated comics would also include several of the voice actors from the early Transformers shows as well as other voice actors. The problem is, IDW seems to have stalled out on the issue, but he's posted a short clip (from the recent "All Hail Megatron" series) below:


Scans_Daily is having a "One Perfect Moment" Week and it is chuffing awesome. I love [info]icon_uk for coming up with it and it's thrown up so much good stuff in just a few hours. My first contribution? Jono laying out an immensely smug Warren with a single punch, but I have others to post.

Apparently not having a beard makes me look years younger. Or like a completely different person, apparently, judging by the reaction of my neighbours who came out of their flat yesterday when I was putting something in the bins to ask who the hell I was and what the hell I thought I was doing. Cruel people have pointed out that once again I look like a young Timothy Spall. Bastards.

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With yellow speech bubbles?

  • Jun. 1st, 2009 at 5:04 PM
Deadpool Approved


Also, the question is, will Fox let Ryan Reynolds get away with this?

Making the Deadpool movie like the comics?

Surely this is some kind of madness.

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Don't Blink!

  • Jun. 1st, 2009 at 2:40 PM
Rosencrantz Guildenstern Blood


So, yeah, I've been quiet most of the weekend. In combination between deadline snowballing into Saturday (and then Saturday night) and... other stuff I've been in a BAD PLACE™. There were highs (yesterday I had a nice day with the folks and spent most of the day sunning myself on the beach) and lows (please do not ask about last night as emo Matt often offends).

Thankfully I'm feeling better today, looking at things afresh and wondering where to go from here. Yes, I'm being cryptic AND ranting. Gotta love it, haven't you?

So, random distractions:

Rich Johnson's new comic site's launched - www.bleedingcool.com I like Rich, have enjoyed butting heads with him on the occasions we have and wish him luck with his new site. He's rarely anything less than an entertaining read, even when he's completely and utterly wrong.

I managed to miss the actual announcement of the winner of Britain's Got Talent as I was on the phone to our printers, sorting out a major crisis, but walked in to see Susan Boyle's face as the Diversity boys celebrated. I have a few things to say on this - frankly I wouldn't have been disappointed if any of the final ten acts had won it - everyone was very good at what they did, but that said, i thought that Diversity were worthy winners, who upped their game for every performance and created a completely original routine each time. And the final performance was mindblowing. A lot of the other performers came out and repeated the routines that had got them through the auditions (with the exception of Stavros Flatley, god bless 'em), but for delivering something new each time, Diversity deserved the win.


Which leads us to Susan Boyle who, this morning, has been sectioned under the mental health act and booked into The Priory after an incident with the police after her running wild in a hotel. Now, I do feel sympathy for her, as she clearly believed everyone telling her there was no way she couldn't win. And then didn't. Clearly she's ill equipped emotionally to cope with the pressure that has been put on her. I'm not entirely sure whether she's disgruntled over losing or blown away by the multi-million pound contract she's just signed, but either way, I can understand her struggling to deal with it.

But at the end of the day, as she said herself, the better act won.

In other geek news, Tom Hiddleston talks Thor’s Loki. "Ken wants Loki to have a lean and hungry look, like Cassius in Julius Caesar." Sounds good to me.

And, of course, Doctor Who has his new companion. And, much like the new Doctor himself, I don't really have a clue who she is. Chalk this up as a good thing, in my mind. General opinion appears to be OMG SHE'S SO YOUNG!, which I don't really see myself. She's 21 and looks it.

Looks like Wolverine's still ahead of Star Trek in the worldwide box office. I'm not sure what this tells us, but it's probably not great.

Meanwhile, The Daily Mash tells it how it is. "SEVEN million people in the UK are illegally downloading the sort of music and films you wouldn't pay for even as you heard the ominous click of a gun being cocked."

Oh, and FilmDrunk can always be relied upon to deliver the best summaries of Twilight sequel news. Vampires are so dreamy!

Was that really a No Country For Old Men spoof in Benidorm last night? Fair play for them for including an extended joke only about 2% of the audience actually got. The Die Hard gag? Probably more obvious.

And Michael Caine is epic.



Rosencrantz Guildenstern Blood


There were still a few movie quotes in the quiz left unclaimed. So, for those interested, here are the remaining answers:

1. "As God is my witness, as God is my witness, they're not going to lick me!"
    Gone with the Wind

4. "Looking at the cake is like looking at the future, until you've tasted it what do you really know? And then, of course, it's too late."
    Excalibur

5. "No, they say if you make one jump, you've only got 50% chance of injury, two jumps, 80%, and three jumps, you're bound to catch a packet. The consensus of opinion is that the most sensible thing for Major Shears to do is to go ahead and jump, and hope for the best. "
    "With or without a parachute?"
    Bridge on the River Kwai

6. "Oh, Lawrence! This is the happiest day of my life! I think my testicles are dropping!"
    Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

8. "Christ! What are you? 15? My God man! You gotta be gettin' that young stuff! The young stuff is the best stuff in the world. You see, you're jail bait, they're jail bait. It's perfect! You turn eighteen and you're looking at three to five."
    Little Miss Sunshine

9. "Wouldn't we look like a bunch of Johnny-come-latelies, bragging on our own midget, doesn't matter how stumpy!"
    O Brother Where Art Thou

14. "What's wrong with him?"
     "My first thought would be... a lot."
     Con Air

15. "I've got an idea... Why don't you come 'round for breakfast? I'll squeeze some orange juice and grind some coffee and we can talk about this like adults. How's that sound?"
     "Sounds very hospitable."
     "Do you know where I live?"
     "No."
     "Well, f*** off then."
     Layer Cake

16. "Say, Lou, didya hear the one about the guy who couldn't afford personalized plates, so he went and changed his name to J3L2404?"
     "Yah, that's a good one."
     Fargo

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The Movie Quotes Quiz: Director's Cut

  • May. 26th, 2009 at 6:40 PM
Heathers - Draino


It's been positively ages since I did this and I have new readers now, so it's time for another movie quotes quiz.

The quick rules: Below are quotes from 20 movies. All you have to do is name the movie without using Google, at which point I'll strike through and credit.

Here goes!

1. "As God is my witness, as God is my witness, they're not going to lick me!"

2. "What did you expect? "Welcome, sonny"? "Make yourself at home"? "Marry my daughter"? You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons."
"Blazing Saddles" - Guessed by [info]julia_sevin and [info]wal_lace

3. "You remember the one I said that got away, yeah well that one was her. It all came flooding back how I was the one she confided in, the one she trusted, meanwhile she was doing every other guy in school. It was the first time I felt it, how pitying someone and wanting to fuck them can get all tangled up in your head... overwhelming sadness while having a rodney. Is that sick? Hm yeah, I think that's sick..."
"Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" - Guessed by [info]wal_lace

4. "Looking at the cake is like looking at the future, until you've tasted it what do you really know? And then, of course, it's too late."

5. "No, they say if you make one jump, you've only got 50% chance of injury, two jumps, 80%, and three jumps, you're bound to catch a packet. The consensus of opinion is that the most sensible thing for Major Shears to do is to go ahead and jump, and hope for the best. "
    "With or without a parachute?"

6. "Oh, Lawrence! This is the happiest day of my life! I think my testicles are dropping!"

7. "They all have husbands and wives and children and houses and dogs, and, you know, they've all made themselves a part of something and they can talk about what they do. What am I gonna say? "I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork. How've you been?""
"Grosse Pointe Blank" - Guessed by [info]foxfyre and [info]wal_lace

8. "Christ! What are you? 15? My God man! You gotta be gettin' that young stuff! The young stuff is the best stuff in the world. You see, you're jail bait, they're jail bait. It's perfect! You turn eighteen and you're looking at three to five."

9. "Wouldn't we look like a bunch of Johnny-come-latelies, bragging on our own midget, doesn't matter how stumpy!"

10. "Harry, let's face it. And I'm not being funny. I mean no disrespect, but you're a c***. You're a c*** now, and you've always been a c***. And the only thing that's going to change is that you're going to be an even bigger c***."
"In Bruges" - Guessed by [info]wal_lace

11. "Red wine with fish... Well, that should have told me something."
"From Russia with Love" - Guessed by [info]uncanny_rman and [info]wal_lace

12. "We are now up against live, hostile targets. So, if Little Red Riding Hood should show up with a bazooka and a bad attitude, I expect you to chin the bitch."
"Dog Soldiers" - Guessed by [info]wal_lace

13. "Got any beer?"
     "This is a school."
     "So that's a no?"

"X2: X-men United" - Guessed by [info]fullmetal_cute and [info]wal_lace

14. "What's wrong with him?"
     "My first thought would be... a lot."

15. "I've got an idea... Why don't you come 'round for breakfast? I'll squeeze some orange juice and grind some coffee and we can talk about this like adults. How's that sound?"
     "Sounds very hospitable."
     "Do you know where I live?"
     "No."
     "Well, f*** off then."

16. "Say, Lou, didya hear the one about the guy who couldn't afford personalized plates, so he went and changed his name to J3L2404?"
     "Yah, that's a good one."

17. "Ray. If someone asks if you are a god, you say, "yes!""
"Ghostbusters" - Guessed by [info]julia_sevin and [info]wal_lace

18. "We just cut up our girlfriend with a chainsaw. Does that sound "fine"?!"
"Evil Dead II" - Guessed by [info]julia_sevin

19. "Death is... whimsical... today."
"Leon" - Guessed by [info]wal_lace

20. "You know, I'd almost forgotten what your eyes looked like. Still the same. Pissholes in the snow."
"Get Carter" - Guessed by [info]uncanny_rman and [info]wal_lace

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Bones
This past weekend, $76.5 million worth of people saw Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy onscreen in J.J. Abrams' blockbuster "Star Trek" reboot. The one person they didn't see, however, is larger-than-life "Trek" icon William Shatner.

During the course of the film's production, a bizarre battle of words erupted between Abrams and the 78-year-old original Captain Kirk over a never-filmed, top-secret scene. Recently, we got the spoiler-heavy details on the very different ending once intended to be Nimoy and Shatner's final time together onscreen.

"We did write a Shatner scene," Roberto Orci, one of the film's writers and producers, explained. "And we were ultimately split internally. We didn't want it to be a gimmick; we wanted to really bring him back in the right way."

Spoilers beneath. )

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It's Trek, Jim, but not as we know it...

  • May. 7th, 2009 at 10:44 PM
Kermit ZOMG


Just back from seeing Star Trek.

What did I think?

Spoilerific thoughts lie beneath. )

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Rosencrantz Guildenstern Blood


Joss Whedon never gave her material like this.


I love this girl so much.

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