A short blog about the coolness of other people.
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.”
Bête de Jour has a way with words.
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.
In Bruges in three words: well worth seeing.
It’s pretty slow at the start and some of the acting jarred for reasons I can’t put my finger on, but the characters are a lot of fun to watch and the story does draw you in. I think I’d enjoy it more on a second viewing – it’s one of those films that isn’t quite what you’re expecting it to be, so it can be hard to just relax and enjoy it the first time around.
I’m not sure what exactly constitutes “an Irish film”, but the writer/director and the two main* characters** are Irish and that’s good enough for me. So I feel comfortable saying: In Bruges is unusual for an Irish film, in much the same way that a book that isn’t about cottages in the 50s, that chick-lit story we seem to like, or The Seedy Underbelly Of The Celtic Tiger is unusual for an Irish novel. I mean, are we really allowed to write this kind of stuff? Are we allowed to… have fun?
* Warning: Poncey website.
** Warning: Impressive beard.
In “When Film Gets Good…” Terry Southern maintained that it was “wasteful, pointless, and indeed in terms of art, inexcusable, to write a novel which could, or indeed should have been a film.” There were subtleties to his argument that I won’t go into – his point was that film, being more of a direct appeal to the senses, can run rings around novels when it comes to portraying straightforward dialogue and narrative. Now, being a writer himself he naturally didn’t leave it there, but insisted that prose writers needed to pull their socks up in terms of originality and offer something that films could not.
I mention this because I’ve just finished Thomas McGuane’s Ninety-Two in the Shade, which is one of those novels that’s infatuated with written language. Continue reading ‘Fun with words’
Very, very good. It’s incredibly focused – a simple setup, believably basic character motivations and very little exposition. This annoyed the crap out of me while I was watching it, because why doesn’t everyone write like that? Rule number one: only include what you need to include.
You can tell that the effort of avoiding the genre cliches got to the makers, because as soon as the end credits start rolling (which is the one and only time the film breaks character) the most epic, giant monster-est piece of music ever composed kicks in. It’s called “ROAR! (Cloverfield Overture)” and it lasts twelve minutes. It’s almost unbearably awesome.
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