Triple Bill Mini-Cine-Musings: Scott, Cyrus and a Schmuck...

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World...

It's hardly surprising that Scott Pilgrim didn't fare so well at the Box Office. The film is so insanely niche that it most likely confused and alienated vast swathes of the audience, and let's be honest, some people are getting a bit tired of Michael Cera's style - he really needs to mix up his movie roles a bit too.

Ideally you'll be under 30 and will have read the graphic novels, but you should enjoy yourself with just one of those ... but at least knowing a bit about the franchise might be a good idea as even though the movie takes its time to establish the world around us, there's an awful lot to cram into the 112 minute running time (essentially six volumes worth of content).

It's enjoyably brash and colourful and the whole 'hipster' thing is - as a style of living - mostly not annoying, and Edgar Wright's typically whip-pow look is well at home with this content.

Scott Pilgrim is a hard thing to sell though, and it's tricky to write about. Naturally I'll be getting the home video release and the six volumes of the graphic novel are on the list for Santa this year, so yeah ... niche. Very niche ... but enjoyably daft and hip and nerdy.


Dinner For Schmucks...

I'm not entirely sure why this has received such a drubbing in many reviews, because aside from the opening fifteen minutes where it's nothing but joke-free plot establishing, the rest of the movie (pretty much from where Steve Carrel's idiot turns up) is a bloody good laugh.

It's not deep and it's not going to be a comedy that really lasts to become a classic, but it's just a barrel of fun.


Cyrus...

I never saw the trailer, and went into it thinking along the lines of 'Jonah Hill a la Superbad and Funny People' and 'John C. Reilly a la Talladega Nights and Step Brothers' ... however, it's neither. Belonging to a subgenre of indie fare apparently dubbed "mumblecore", it carries few chuckles. You won't be laughing out loud any time soon, but it's actually something very different than what I had in my head. It's all awkward silences and twitchy zooms, nothing is broad or obvious and then ending comes to you unfinished and suddenly.

It's a strange flick ... I kind of liked it, but I also kind of didn't. I would have rather seen it on Sky Movies than stumping up more than six quid at the cinema for it though.

VOTE FOR ME! - "Doing Our Bit"...

I've entered the 1 Minute To Save The World competition, in which filmmakers are invited to create a one minute film (90 seconds including credits) about the environment and climate change, and such.

You can find my entry here:

http://www.1minutetosavetheworld.com/2009/10/doing-our-bit/

So please , would you kindly go and vote for me - but don't deliberately vote other people down - a spiffing vote for me will be very kind indeed.

I'll naturally put up a full project blogpost all about it in due course, but for now, I need me some votes, thank you kindly.

Cheers folks.

The Haunted World of El Superbeasto...

From the mind of Rob Zombie, this animated straight-to-DVD movie is a must-see for any self-respecting Rob Zombie fan.

While he's not reinventing any wheels with this sleazy little flick, he is having an absolute laugh - it's a veritable who's who of Rob Zombie film regulars, horror icons and horror movie references, nods, winks and prods - plus it's got tons of cartoon boobs in it and zombie Nazis.

If you'll remember from my thoughts on the bloody excellent Dead Snow, if you've got zombie Nazis in your flick, then you're pretty much golden, and fortunately El Superbeasto is bloody good fun.

Some of the gags stray wide of the mark, or feel a tad out-dated, but it moves at such a pace that any flaws are quickly paved over with another sleaze-filled scene of boob-surrounded violence. Plus the song during Suzi X's first big battle with the zombie Nazis had me laughing out loud as I sat there all on my tod watching this cheeky feature.

To be fair, it isn't all from the fevered mind of Rob Zombie - there's a variety of additional directors, writers and sequence-specific staff, but RZ is the lead writer and director, so regardless, it feels very much his baby, and as such there are a few nods to his own work.

Not only does Michael Myers (a la Rob Zombie) crop up at one point, but we also find Otis, Baby and Captain Spaulding hanging out in a hellish bar surrounded by monsters galore - and yes, Sid Haig and Bill Moseley return to their roles. Also, there's the inclusion of werewolf Nazis - like those in his ideal-for-a-trailer "Werewolf Women of the SS" for the Grindhouse project ... and that's just the tip of the ice berg.

Character wise, there's something for everyone - from Tom Papa's (who was also co-writer) ego-fuelled Beasto to Sheri Moon Zombie's sexy 'n' sassy Suzi X, from Rosario Dawson's foul-mouthed sex bomb Velvet Von Black to Paul Giamatti's tantrum-fuelled Dr Satan, and Brian Posehn's horny-as-all-hell Murray.

The voice talent throughout is top notch, and it's full of names - just a quick squizz on the IMDb page reveals some of the other aural treats that are in store for you: Danny Trejo, Harland Williams, Clint Howard, Dee Wallace, Geoffrey Lewis, John Di Maggio, and Ken Foree among others.

A bloody good laugh, it's only a shame the DVD didn't have a greater variety of extras - all you get are deleted scenes & shots, as well as alternate scenes (which at the time of writing I am yet to see) - but even still, it's a must-see for Rob Zombie fans, and it's highly recommended for those who enjoy a delve into RZ's craziest cartoon images ... it's almost like a White Zombie album cover come to life, come to think of it.

The Last Man On Earth...

First there was Richard Matheson's book I Am Legend, then came this - The Last Man On Earth - starring he of that great voice and 'tache, Vincent Price. Then it was the recently departed Charlton Heston gruffing up the silver screen in The Omega Man ... then the mediocre, dripping-with-Hollywood big budget Will Smith pop-corner I Am Legend. The Will Smith flick is pretty good for the first-half-up-to-two-thirds, then it all just goes rather arse as the CGI monsters with their silly rubbery jaws go yomping around and all tension, intelligence and effort goes right out the window. A missed opportunity for post-apocalyptic greatness ... next stop, the adaptation of World War Z, which could quite possibly be an astounding zombie apocalypse epic ... or it could suffer the same fate as I Am Legend's recent incarnation, or worse. Tracking back and we have The Omega Man, which upon first viewing I really liked, it certainly has that 1970's charm when films could hold a simpler thrill without being absolutely idiotic. However, upon a recent re-watch, I was much less impressed, I'm genuinely shocked to say. It is showing its age worse than I originally recall, the music is almost entirely camp and out-of-step with the over-all pace, and the brotherhood of infected nut-jobs don't play out as well as they once did. They bitch about the machines of man, right before they roll out a complex catapult to fling fireballs about ... then again, there's no reasoning with nutters. That said, it's still a great little flick, but nowadays it feels too cheap to have really pulled off what it set out to do, as well as the fact that it ignores the majority of Matheson's book. Indeed, the Will Smith version of Legend feels more like a 'no-more-than-based-on' adaptation of the book mixed with a hefty dollop of a remake of The Omega Man, with a dusting of 'lets make the monsters really shitty CGI things' zest. Track back even further to the mid-60's and we find ourselves with Vincent Price as The Last Man On Earth. An incredibly faithful adaptation of Matheson's cultural landmark book it most certainly is, a big budget extravaganza it sadly is not. Evidently it's a mish-mash of American and Italian filmmaking (originally it was going to be a British Hammer Horror effort), seemingly foreseeing the likes of Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 (aka Zombie Flesh Eaters) and other such cheapy combination horror flicks. Price isn't exactly the Robert Neville in the book, mainly due to the main man's underlying reputation as a mad cackler and entertaining scenery chewer (he was gleefully so in The Pit & The Pendulum, which I fortunately got to see at the Bristol Bloodbath 2006 film festival, in true grindhouse fashion on a rickety old print which broke down twice - it was certainly a memorable viewing which took me back to my Uni days watching the old prints of classics like The Maltese Falcon, or some Godard flick when the reel got jammed and the projector burned out the film...) ... hmm, gotten carried away with a tangent, ah memory lane... Anyway, Price is perhaps 90% the Neville we know from the book, although he's now Robert Morgan. It's sad in a way because this, still the most faithful adaptation of I Am Legend, is such a low budget affair. Again, the process of aging hasn't been especially kind, but the downsides of a cheap-as-chips, USA/Italian partnership is clearly the harshest mistress standing over this otherwise solid film. Many performances are wooden, lazy or just unskilled (meanwhile Price is overtly dramatic, but a comparative thespian of legend). The production value is rock bottom - either that or Morgan is a magician and can drive a car at night and at day at the exact same time. It really is an incredibly cheap film, insanely cheap sometimes, which is the main flaw. However, as previously stated, a wonderfully typical turn from Price and the sincere nature of the adaptation ends up making this quite possibly the best I Am Legend re-telling. At the very least, it is in terms of storytelling. Meanwhile, the Will Smith version pimps great visuals (aside from the awful compu-monsters) but a story that holds few resemblances to the source material, ultimately raping it in the third act. As for The Omega Man, it's somewhere in the middle. Middling production value, middling script and retrospectively rather camp, even kitsch. Perhaps, if only, instead of Smith's I Am Legend partially remaking The Omega Man, it could have looked a decade further back and taken several pages out of TLMOE's book. Maybe the fourth book-to-film adaptation will get it properly right? Any Hollywood players with bundles of cash who fancy giving me said green backs would easily tempt me into doing it justice. Scale and story, both of which are intensely important for this particular tale.

Surfing through new viewing adventures...

Or, in other words, me catching up with films I've had recorded off TV on video for years and have only just got around to watching! It's always the way, too many movies, not enough time to watch them all...and inevitably you end up with a bunch unwatched (I've even got "The African Queen" on DVD which I bought years ago but still haven't watched, hell, a friend borrowed it and watched it years ago and I've still not sat down and checked it out).

Anyway, first up it was "The Thing From Another World", and for what it is (guy in a suit, loosely based on the source story), it's actually pretty good fun, took me back to my Uni days watching old black & white films...obviously, Carpenter's rendition is infinitely superior (and still utterly terrifying), but the old rendition was quite enjoyable...I don't know why it took me so long to get around to watching it, I had it polished off in no time (despite it not being the longest film anyway, sometimes it can take me a while to get through a film I've been putting off for a long time, but not in this case...I would have seen it straight through had I not had some filming to do elsewhere that day...)

Next up, and on the same videotape, "The Wild Bunch", another film I'd been leaving for ages unwatched. Well...I think I'm more a "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly" kinda guy personally, although when the action kicks off in TWB, I have to admit it's rather spiffing and I certainly do appreciate it's place within Westerns but also Western Cinema...mind you, I prefer "Straw Dogs" in terms of Peckinpah (a film I must re-watch sometime soon, much like "The Crazies", which I've been hankering for of late...and yes I know, that's a George Romero movie...but you know what I meant regardless).

Then - "Chopper" - I'd had this recorded for me whilst I was away at Uni, if memory serves, and FilmFour were doing one of their free weekends (back when they had cash and were a extra-fee-based service). Eric Bana - brilliant in this - a charming nutter brought to life. Not really sure whether there was much over all point to the film, or over all arc to the story, it almost felt like a collection of moments or sections of time in the title character's life (yes, I know he's real, but again, you know what I meant). Fortunately it was of mere running time, so it didn't out-stay it's welcome.

And finally - and currently - "Blue Velvet". I've often seen the same bit on Sky (with Kyle Mc-thingymy in the cupboard watching Hopper go nuts), and once again, never really got around to sitting down to watch it. So far I'm 30 minutes in, interesting...but I'll have to finish it off before I'd even attempt to comment, not that I predict I'll really understand most of what is going on - take "Eraserhead" for example. I famously took a good 2 or 3 months to actually finish the film, watching it for no longer than 10 minutes at a time because it wigged me out so much, it was just too much weirdness and freakiness and that damn bird-person-baby-thing wailing just sent me off every time...a wailing baby just creeps me out man *picks nose* ... (if you didn't get that vague reference, pfft, whatever mate, yeah? lol...)

So yes...I must try and crack on with "The African Queen" as well, and get that return-viewing of "The Crazies" done and dusted as well...

Such a hard life isn't it? YARGH!!!