I went to see eight films in January, all of which were worth seeing1. This would normally have cost me something like exactly eighty quid, but because of my Unlimited card, almost certainly the greatest invention in history, it only set me back twenty. Thrift!
(Incidentally I think I’ve worked out this fiendish scheme. Studios take a vast slice of the profits for the first couple of weeks a film is screened. Say it’s 75% – an adult ticket costs a tenner, therefore €7.50 goes to the studio, while tickets bought with the card are rung up as a sale of €3.30, so only €2.48 goes off into the nether2. Meanwhile the cinema is still collecting a steady €20 per month from everyone who has a card. Economics!)
Anyway, more or less the reason I mention this is because I happened to notice that Billy Chainsaw (that’s Bizarre’s Billy Chainsaw to you) has an enthusiastic endorsement on the poster for some yoke called The Broken. Now this strikes me as a pretty efficient use of real estate, because if a man called Billy Chainsaw likes a film then I reckon you should be able to figure out straight away what your feelings on it are going to be. Frankly all pen names should be chosen on this basis. Benjamin Black? Iain M Banks? THEY TELL ME NOTHING.
The rest of the reason I mentioned it is because while I was waiting for people to turn up I amused myself by imagining that Underworld: Rise of the Lycans was actually called Underwear: Rise of the Lycra. Readers, I have never had a more enjoyable two minutes.
I can’t off the top of my head think of a film I’ve actually regretted going to. Except Blade Trinity, obviously. You could put all my possessions in a cargo crate full of elephant dung and drop it in the middle of the Atlantic and I wouldn’t be as angry as I was after sitting through that. Go on, throw in my closest friends – wave that DVD at me and you’ll get away scot free. [↩]
In the time it took me to switch back to this window from the calculator, I forgot what the number’s supposed to be. €2.48 is three quarters of €3.30, yeah? [↩]
My friends, I did something last night that I haven’t done in ages. Yes, that is correct: I am talking about schooling noobs.
Now, as anyone will tell you, full-on schoolination can only take place in a deathmatch. I mean, that’s understood. Team games are like, you can hand out leaflets to noobs for correspondence courses or whatever, but if you’re going to really give the personal touch and school the motherfucker, it has to be a free for all.
I haven’t played a proper deathmatch in ages, but was I rusty? Was I fuck. There was this one guy, I swear to god, I schooled the bastard to hard he came out with a PhD. I mean, I’m the god damn Gordon Ramsay of schoolin’ a noob here. Crossbow. Rocket. Crowbar. Done. Wait, where’s your arse gone? Oh that’s right, I schooled it right off your body.
I done messed up Burt Bacharach and all.
In other night-wasting developments, I watched the pilot episode of Fringe. The main character is a feisty female FBI agent, the kind of feisty you needed to be back in the 50s when you had to prove yourself to a load of smug men who gave you dismissive nicknames like honey and sweetheart and sugardonkey and so on, which for some reason people also do in this show even though it’s not the 50s anymore. I would speculate that it’s a feeble attempt to get us to root for her, because she’s terribly, terribly uninteresting in every other respect.
So Fringe: not so good. On the other hand it does feature that guy from The Wire and some dudes with transparent skin, and both of those are some pretty cool things. So who knows, it just might pick up.
I’m thinking give it 30 years or so, then get this kid and Old Man Bale and lash out The Dark Knight Returns. Magic.
Oh god… in getting that TDKR link, I found out that Frank Miller is writing a prequel called Holy Terror, Batman!
The plot revolves around Batman defending Gotham City from an attack by Al-Qaeda. According to Miller, the comic is a “piece of propaganda” in which Batman “kicks Al-Qaeda’s ass.”
This week I have been not so much burning the candle at both ends as chucking the candle into a bonfire. One might think a nice relaxing weekend would be in order… but no.
The plan tonight is to break open a few bottles and watch Batman Begins and Gotham Knight. There are a few reasons for this – firstly, any excuse to watch Batman Begins, secondly none of us have seen Gotham Knight. Thirdly, and most importantly, we’re preparing for tomorrow afternoon, when 12 of us will be toddling along to Cineworld to see The Dark Knight.
I’ve been waiting for this for a very long time. I can safely say I’ve never been so excited about a film in my life. I’ve always loved Batman, been properly fascinated with the character and the world, and the first time I saw the ending of Batman Begins (“Take this guy…”) I broke into a cold sweat. This is a big, big deal for me.
The reason I didn’t go see it on Wednesday (and again on Thursday, and again at lunchtime today) is because we decided we should make an event of it. This entailed getting the old crew together, from various parts of the country, and the only way that was going to happen is if we waited til the weekend*. It is nice to go on a Saturday, though, because that means we have an entire night to drink and analyse and recover, and in some perverse way the extra few days of self-imposed waiting is adding to the whole experience.
I was going to write a bit more about the hot tub/pool table/Mario Kart/barbecue party on Sunday, but can it really compete with Batman? Nothing can compete with Batman. So I shall leave it there. Have a good weekend everybody.
*Has anyone ever noticed how badly tenses get mangled in Hiberno-English?
In particular, and by way of neatly segueing away from the film this post is supposedly about halfway through my first sentence, I was reminded of a great scene in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest in which the inmates are seated at a discussion group and talking amongst themselves while the camera remains focussed on McMurphy. There’s some great acting from Nicholson as he watches each person talk and reacts to what they’re saying – you can see the cogs turning in his head as he figures out the dynamics of the relationships and as the reality of the situation becomes clear to him. It’s brilliantly done.
Of course it would be wrong to say that there’s no restraint in modern filmmaking, but this particular technique – closely following a character’s expression even while there are other, more conventionally interesting things going on – is not something you see often. The temptation, overtly or otherwise, is to pander to the audience, so it’s always nice to see someone really take hold of a narrative and do their own thing.
From some idiots who fought with electric swords comes the story of one gimpy-lookin’ man on a quest for stabby justice. Or such is my understanding – it may turn out that justice isn’t his bag at all. The important things to note are gimpiness and stabbing, and I think we can all agree that those are some top-notch things.
The post title implies that I’m going to link to at least two trailers so… here, go watch Heath Ledger being cool again.
Secondly: the new Dark Knight trailer was put up yesterday. There are some things in it that I maybe didn’t strictly speaking want to know, so you might want to avoid it. It occurred to me after watching it that I had decided, more than a year ago when the first teaser came out, that I didn’t want to find out too much, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside. In my defence, they are throwing down a pretty relentless campaign.
Thirdly: a new Nine Inch Nails album was released today as a free download. The first few tracks are not necessarily anything special (I’m undecided) but it gets very good. Includes spiffy post-apocalyptic triptych.
ohmygodgtaissomuchfun ok ok, to the matter at hand: Last night, thanks to the independently adjudicated generosity of one David Maybury, I was at the movies.ie preview of Iron Man. Capsule review: very cool.
It occurred to me yesterday that Iron Man is essentially the Marvel Batman: no superpowers to speak of, but he gets by on his ingenuity, determination and fabulous wealth. I can imagine Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne being drinking buddies. Or at least, I can imagine Robery Downey Jr and Christian Bale being drinking buddies. That is a cocktail party I would gladly attend.
Anyway… my point is, Iron Man is a hero I can get behind.
As everyone assumably knows by now, RDJ makes a perfect Tony Stark. Some people, myself included, worried that the eventual transformation into Iron Man and the attendant action extravaganziaaa would take away from the charming brilliance of the character as seen in the trailer. This is not remotely the case. If you’re sceptical… well, just wait until you see the amazing comedy double act that is Robert Downey Jr and a fire extinguisher.
Where it succeeds most of all is in its subtlety. The Spiderman and X-Men films beat you over the head with spectacle and hammy emotion, but this is much more finely tuned. There’s just the right amount of (very well shot and choreographed) action and just the right amount of character development. The film is aware of the wider Iron Man/Marvel mythology, but it brings it in gradually and realistically rather than just throwing in some nudge-wink moments. And in a supremely tasteful move, it puts the insert sequel here moment at least twenty minutes from the end.
Finally: watch out for the Stan Lee cameo. It’s a good one.
1) “And all the while your silver-brown moon-foxed face gives me full throb, hard and wet, something akin to a cement mixer and a tropical dishwasher going at it like mechanical bullfrogs in full view of a thousand cock-fisted jackhammers.”
2) Via The Chancer, some fellas and a lady have sweded Rawhead Rex. In contravention of all existing treaties on Irish comedy, it’s actually very funny. (If you haven’t seen the film, watch the trailer first.)
They have a curious habit of putting on long films at times like half five and nine pm. So, right, my options are a) teleport directly from work, or b) end up getting a taxi home and being wrecked the next morning. A bitta consideration here, lads. Surely it wouldn’t be too much of a bother to have a film on at, say, six? Even once a week? Lads?
Adding insult to injury is the fact that I left my Unlimited card at home today and had to pay eight euro to see There Will Be Blood, which isn’t even that good. Neither of those things have anything to do with Cineworld as such, but they’re all part of the package deal, along with Dip-Dabs and strawberry Refreshers, and occasionally one of the nicest cheeseburgers you’ll get in the city centre if you ever actually have time and if the kitchen isn’t backed up. It’s all stuff they need to be keeping track of, is my point.
Recent Comments