Manhattan (1979)
I had thought that Vicky Cristina Barcelona wasn't the return to form for Woody Allen that everyone thought it was, but I'm beginning to think the problem may be that I simply don't like Woody Allen movies. Asides from "Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex..." (out of which, I liked the Gene Wilder section and that's about it), my enjoyment of Woody Allen's movies seems to be something to do with how close they are to Annie Hall. "Sleepers" was Annie Hall in the future. Curse of the Jade Scorpion was low budget Annie Hall with an absurd age difference between the lead and the love interest and very few laughs.

I absolutely loved Annie Hall and actually beginning to think that the thing I really like about Woody Allen movies (asides from Gene Wilder) is Diane Keaton. I think that the way she reacts and plays off of Allen might actually be funnier than a lot of Woody Allen's own lines. Though actually there are plenty of funny points in Annie Hall that have nothing to do with Diane Keaton. There's the Christopher Walken cameo and the "sneezing" scene, for example. Annie Hall also has some really interesting imagery in places, like when Woody Allen's home growing up is depicted as being literally underneath a rollercoaster.

Asides from Diane Keaton, everything good about Annie Hall is missing from Manhattan. On the plus side, I now appreciate Diane Keaton's role in Annie Hall more than ever. On the negative side, I HATED Manhattan. Woody Allen's jokes generally relied on name-dropping people I'd never heard of, so that some of the few times I even raised a smile were (worryingly enough) due to references to Hitler or Nazis (since at least I knew what Woody was talking about).

I get the impression that Manhattan is praised as being a very well-filmed and beautiful movie, but there are some points where the filming technique is quite dodgy. One conversation involves the camera cutting back and forth between each character as they say their lines. This makes the conversation so disjointed that I could easily imagine that neither actor was in the same room when those lines were delivered. Considering this was the follow-up to Annie Hall, I was actually annoyed that there weren't more camera tricks.

Okay, so perhaps comparing this to Annie Hall is unfair. Sadly judged on its own merits it's not great either. While many jokes may have gone over my head, there are plenty of points where there simply aren't any laughs anyway. On top of that, the central seventeen year old love interest seems a little odd, but in the light of Woody Allen's real life lovelife it feels seriously unnerving.

It's not funny, it's slow paced, it's stuck up its own arse. But yeah, I'll admit it, there's the odd touching moment. In the end, Diane Keaton and Woody Allen really do have good chemistry onscreen. Nevertheless, I just did not get this movie one bit. Perhaps I just don't understand Woody Allen movies in general... On the plus side, I now understand the reference in the opening episode of Spaced, series two.

E+ (The better side of awful)


13 Assassins (2010)
I was quite excited about this film when I heard that Takashi Miike had made an action film with samurai. I'd heard that Audition was absolutely horrible and that Takashi Miike is generally known for making horrible horrible stuff and so the idea of him taking that skill and transfering it into an ancient world of swords and death was highly appealing. The movie begins appropriately with a guy committing hari-kuri.

So what could go wrong?

Well, sadly after the movie spends a long time slowly progressing with lots of highly restrained and uptight dialogue interspersed with the occasional example of either horrible violence or the aftermath of horrible violence. There's something very annoying about seeing someone commit horrific atrocity with very little reaction asides from people muttering about how they really ought to do something about it.

When the warriors finally get together things get a bit more interesting. It's great to think that the monster they've set up at the beginning is going to finally meet his match. (Not literally a monster, just a horrible horrible person.) This was the point where it could have turned out overall to be a really great movie. Unfortunatley this is also the point where the film starts introducing comedy.

There seems to be a growing tendency in Asian movies to have a dodgy balance of tragedy and comedy (and this is coming from a black comedy fan). Joon-Ho Bong has shown that he can get the balance really well with movies like "The Host" and "Mother". But Chan-Wook Park, while inserting a relatively small but sweet level of humour into "Oldboy", has come to rather overdo the comedy side of things in films like "Thirst" and "I'm A Cyborg". Sure "13 Assassins" is a Japanese movie and those two were Korean directors, but they do well to highlight the problem all the same.

When "13 Assassins" reaches the big action scene at the end it is, admittedly, spectacular. Unfortunately, as great as it is, it doesn't feel earnt. The long drawn out set-up beforehand does not really seem to have done much to aid our enjoyment at the end. Perhaps the most interesting character is one is Kiga: a hunter who is not introduced until late on. Annoyingly though, he feels very much like comic relief and manages to be so entertaining precisely because he does not share the retraint of the band of assassins he joins.

Right at the end of the movie there's some random magic which really comes out of nowhere in this otherwise very realistic and down-to-earth film.

Yes, the long fight scene at the end is spectacular, but in order to really appreciate action scenes it is best if the characters have been built up so that we really care about them. I think the assassins are sufficiently distinguished from one another (just about), but little has been done to develop them and make us route for them as individual characters. I'm reminded of the film Akumi which was rather boring for most of the runtime but also ends with a long exciting action sequence.

Perhaps the biggest problem with 13 Assassins is the way the movie just seems to stop dead at the end. This is how the film ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper. That needn't have been a big problem, but I just didn't think that the film connected up properly. The ending didn't follow on from what had come before. It just happened and then the credits rolled.

I would actually argue that you'll have most fun with this movie if you skip to the big fight scene at the end. What makes this so sad is that I felt this movie had an awful lot of missed potential.

C- (Bog standard, average)

The Escapist (2008)

The first film from the director of the recent ROTPOTA movie (remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes). This isn't perfect, but there's no doubting the quality of Brian Cox's central performance. There's also a number of other awesome cast members including Liam Cunningham (The Guard, Shooting The Past) and Steven Macintosh (Lock Stock, various TV stuff).

I'm really annoyed that the DVD had no subtitles. The characters speak gruffly to one another and it's really hard to follow, not least because so little genuinely happens. I had trouble believing this was a real prison because there seemed to be hardly any sign of control by prison staff. On the one hand, we could easily believe that any prisoner could be murdered at any moment, but on the other hand we had little understanding of what kind of risks were involved in attempting to kill someone in there.

The best bits were the scenes of the escape, the first of which happens the moment the movie begins. I think we'd have been best off with the slower talking scenes gradually building up to the escape scenes rather than mixing up the two. In the end, there turns out to be a reason for this time mix-up style, but it was the ending that I felt really let the movie down.

In the end, there just wasn't enough happening both in terms of events in the movie and character development. However, whenever we get a scene of the prison break it is like a shot of adrenaline and you can easily tell that this is the same guy who made some of the more gripping scenes in the new Planet of the Apes film.

Perhaps the problem is that I couldn't understand the dialogue, but in the end I think the problem was that the set-up and development simply wasn't effective and the director wasn't playing to his strengths. He's clearly got a knack for directing action and easily has us empathising with the plight of our escapees, even before we've spent much time with them. I'd have happily spent the whole film watching them attempting to break out of prison, but most of the scenes leading up to the break-in just had me scratching my head and the ending didn't justify this.

D- (Not particularly entertaining)

Julia's Eyes (2010)
imdb link
One line synopsis: The story of a woman who is slowly losing her sight whilst trying to investigate the mysterious death of her twin sister.
Genre: Horror/Thriller

Another movie produced by Guillermo Del Toro. I think it's important to note that, asides from Mimic (which Del Toro is pretty miffed about), he has a really good track record for movies. The list of movies he has produced is nothing like as impressive. It must be said that Julia's Eyes contains a lot of good ideas. It's just that none of them are very well executed and sometimes ideas are ignored as if they were never put forward in the first place.



Fans of "Sherlock" will remember the first episode featuring a mystery of a number of victims who have all committed suicide. We have similar situation in the set-up for Julia's Eyes. Julia's sister Sara is being harassed by an unknown intruder and is flailing in the dark. She then stands on a stool and puts her head in a noose. Why has she done this? How did the villain of this murder mystery convince her to do that? She even shouts at the villain in this first scene defiantly, as if she doesn't really intend to hang herself at all. - Unfortunately, this major part of the mystery is, as far as I could tell, never solved. It seems that people in this film happily put their heads in nooses because the script says so.

So, the film gets started and I must admit that I had mixed feelings very early on. The film seemed to be taking on the style of a ghost story - and I've long had issues with the ghost story style. Ghost stories often involve ghosts with no proper rules. They harass, intimidate and attack people, but whether they succeed in killing people tends to have no real pattern. On the other hand other rules can be set up that make no sense, like the ghost's real aim being that their murderer be sent to prison. (The ghost cares about prison, why?) By the end, the ghost either turns out to have some fatal weakness or some kind of unfinished business. The ghost is finally exorcised, defeated, has their revenge or, in the cheesiest cases, the kind-hearted protagonists solve the unfinished business so the ghost can go to heaven. The classic case of a crap ghost story is "What Lies Beneath" (2000 - starring Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer). It features a ghost with unfinished business and the most horrendous communication skills imaginable.

I think comparisons with The Eye (2002 - Hong Kong film directed by the Pang Brothers) are unavoidable. While "The Eye" was more in the style of films like "The Ring", the draw was the idea that the main protagonist is uncertain about the world around her because she has problems with her eyes. In "The Eye" the protagonist had been given an operation to allow her to see for the first time (as far as she could remember) in her entire life. However, as she learns to use her new sense of sight, hallucinations are to be expected and in many ways her sight can feel like more of a curse than a blessing. Now, "The Eye" actually features ghosts and I'm not sure what makes me give it a pass. It was just very imaginately done. At the early stages of "Julia's Eyes", I felt that we were getting the same sort of confusion about real world events, except that the cause wasn't ghosts, but rather it was real life misunderstood due to her specific eye problems. For example, at one point Julia believes she feels her husband's hand on her shoulder, comforting her. When she looks up she suddenly realises that her husband is several feet away talking to someone. The mysterious man touching her shoulder disappears and, with her impaired eyesight, she cannot tell where he went. Quite creepy and it's a good idea that could have worked pretty well. Eyesight problems are being used to replace the supernatural.



Then, rather randomly, we are suddenly told very eloquently and in a no-nonsense fashion that the villain actually does have something genuinely supernatural about them:
"There are people with no light. Do you know what it is like to walk in somewhere and not be noticed? Or to walk on the street and have people stumble against you? Or to ask something for the third time and have no one answer your question? That's the man you are looking for. A pause, a vacuum. An absence."
Those are some awesome lines, aren't they? Now magic realism can be a problem for a movie if it's not consistent, but if the filmmakers decide to make this a genuine rule (or at least explain why this one character thinks it is true) then we could have a really good idea here. Unfortunately, while this is used in a few more scenes the filmmakers seem to lose faith in the idea. Not before making me think that the film was going to get rather more interesting first though.



The "invisible man" belief is gradually explained away as a psychological issue of the villain himself with Freudian undertones. While Julia's belief in the whole idea might be explained by her experiences with her eyesight problems, that still doesn't explain how the man who conveyed the idea to her in the first place ever came to believe it, nor the very real issue that no one ever seems to remember what this mysterious figure looks like. The filmmakers clearly decided that fantasy elements don't really work in their film, making a great deal of the plot into a huge betrayal.



Towards the end, as the film gets more convoluted and daft, there are still some quite interesting bits. There's one part where Julia is pretending to be completely blind which, to me, represents the only properly tense scene in the whole film. However, since the tension doesn't continue to be effectively built up, that tension is pretty much lost. There are a lot of points at this stage in the movie where the scene changes. If they'd stuck to a single location then the tension might have built up more consistently. "The Disappearance of Alice Creed" (2009) comes to mind as a film where very few changes in setting is used to good effect. Later we have a rather interesting hunt going on in a dark house using the flash of a camera. It's quite interestingly filmed, but unfortunately that goes on too long and I found myself losing interest.



Quite a massive problem though was pointed out by a rather astute commenter on imdb. In the scenes where Sara or Julia are living in their house on their own while dealing with a relatively recent case of blindness, they decide to wear high heels. *facepalm*

There is so much missed potential in this film, but every good idea is messed up. This ends up resorting to a pretty by-the-numbers murder mystery by the end, only with plot holes you could drive a double decker bus through. Rather bizarrely Mark Kermode had this on his list of five favourite movies at the mid-point of the year (and that's in a list where two of the entries were documentaries).

D- (Not good and not very entertaining)


La Horde (2009)
imdb link
One line synopsis: An end of the world battle between gangsters, cops and zombies.
Genre: Zombie movie

This French zombie film hadn't been rated very highly, but the trailer looked so impressive that I decided to check it out anyway. Did it live up to the trailer? Well, no (but when do films ever manage that?). However, I couldn't understand the wide panning this film has received. In fact, I felt the need to watch this film a second time just to be sure I hadn't made a mistake. My first theory was that people were upset by the lack of action, but oddly many of the criticisms seem to say almost the exact opposite. I mean sure they seem to say that the action is too cliched, that there's too much gore and the like, but no one seems to be saying that they were expecting a more action-packed and less character-focussed movie.


This is precisely the sort of image that could give you the wrong impression about "La Horde".

The film begins with simply a dead body. No coming back to life. No monsters. But already there's clear evidence of a culture of violence as a man looks angrily down at the body of a fallen comrade lying in a rubbish dump. At the funeral it's clear that a number of people close to the murdered man are planning some kind of revenge attack, making it look likely that this is a criminal gang. The sense of family amongst them feels very gang-like. So imagine my surprise when it turns out that these are actually police working outside of their remit in order to ensure that they get justice. A clear sign that they are probably corrupt. However, their attempt to ambush a Marseille gang which appears to be run by two Nigerian immigrant brothers goes very wrong. The sounds of a growing number of police cars and fire engines outside (which we in the audience know could not possibly have been called in by our corrupt police officers making their off-the-books attack) do not endear the gang members to our police officer protagonists.



It's not long however, before we start seeing zombies. They appear to have super strength and only a bullet in the head will do the trick. Two common criticisms of The Horde have included that the protagonists don't always aim straight for the head and that we are never given an explanation for where the zombies came from. Needless to say, if you aim for someone's head you are liable to miss. The torso is a much easier target and even if our protagonists can really accept that these monsters cannot be harmed by bullets to the chest, that still doesn't mean that they shouldn't use it as a method to slow the zombies down. Better to hit them in the chest and slow their advance than to miss their head and be killed all the sooner. As for explanations for zombies, I think anyone who thinks "radiation" is a proper explanation for the zombies in "Night of the Living Dead" is kidding themselves. I could be wrong, but I think anyone who dies with their head intact in "La Horde" becomes a zombie, making this completely consistent with Romero zombie rules.



There are some rather cool scenes where characters attempt hand-to-hand combat with zombies. So long as you aren't bitten you ought to be able to knock a zombie down and while killing a zombie isn't easy, stopping them from moving is still possible. Still, there does appear to be one scene where someone is basically locked in a room with two zombies unnecessarily so that we can watch him fight, when really his friends should have helped to get him out of there.


She turns out to be a real badass.

I said before that this is quite character-focussed and I mean it. Of course, police who were seeking revenge teaming up with gang members who have no problem murdering police is a rather problematic scenario. The question that arises is, can both sides really forget who they are? Can they ever let down their guard and trust each other? If new alliances are being made between these two groups, what does that mean for existing relationships within both groups?

There's also the aspect of family. The first of the Nigerian brothers we see looks pretty scary the first time we see him. There's a definite difference between him and another black gang member who he sends downstairs. However, his brother, while not having the same gravitas, is similarly brutal and, we notice, a little unstable. Regularly the older brother has to caution his younger brother not to take things too far and to keep a level head. There's also sense of brotherhood amongst those living in this decrepit block of flats which is paralled by the sense of family between the police officers (which I'm not sure I entirely understand. Are all the police officers related?).



Things get more interesting when they run into Rene, an ex-soldier with some knowledge of explosives who seems to feel more affinity with the low-life types where he lives than for the police and, it seems, he also misses the thrill of the war zone. He refers to all zombies as "chinks" and this appears to be related to the area he was fighting in when he was in the army. With no asians in the gang/police team-up, nobody takes offence to him using the term. And certainly no one in either team is really in much position to criticise his character. Still, it's interesting to see a character introduced at this stage who is so larger-than-life that he can weird out both the police and gang members alike, yet he has a commanding enough presence that he's able to assert himself pretty well amongst both. Rene is played by an actor called Yves Pignot and he gives a really entertaining performance.



One idea that is done particularly well in La Horde is the "feeling sorry for the zombies" trope. It's so often done badly (in "Nightmare City" for example) and of course, the big problem is that man-eating members of the walking dead don't easily attract sympathy. Well, on the one hand we are told that the zombies are starving and certainly if there's one thing we can accept about zombies, it's that they are ravenous. However, the real source of pity for the zombies isn't to do with "cruelty to zombies" per se, but rather more to do with what that cruelty suggests about the living human beings performing it. One of the Nigerian brothers finds that the mockery of a zombie no longer able to walk stirs up memories from before he and his brother came to Marseilles. The question isn't "How dare you treat zombies that way", but more "Do you think this is funny? Do you think you're a badass?" It's clear that this character can see all too easily how in another scenario the victim of this behaviour could be an innocent human being. Both he and the audience are sickened by their behaviour in a way that doesn't always come across in similar scenes in Romero's "Of The Dead" movies.

The ending is perfect. The film as a whole is a bit by the numbers, but it's good fun. There is a limit to the amount of action, but a great deal of it works very well. Overall, this isn't a masterpiece, but it's a very good solid piece of entertainment and a must-see for any zombie fans.

B- (Solidly good movie)


It Came From Outer Space (1953)
imdb link
One line synopsis: A spaceship from another world crashes in the Arizona desert, and only an amateur stargazer and a schoolteacher suspect alien influence when the local townsfolk begin to act strange.
Genre: Science fiction classic/ monster movie

"It came from outer space" is one of those over the top titles which have come to define cheesy 50s sci-fi, but I'm discovering more and more that the cheesier titles often seem to hide more entertaining movies. I seem to be finding myself a much bigger fan of movies with more obvious titles like "Earth Vs The Flying Saucers" and "Them!" than I am of movies like "This Island Earth" or "Forbidden Planet". Possibly luck of the draw to some extent, but I certainly found "It Came From Outer Space" was a lot better than I had any right to expect.



That said, this was originally released in 3-D format (and unsurprisingly I wasn't watching it that way). There were a few points where the gimmicky format seemed rather more obvious. In some cases it didn't matter. When the spacecraft is crashing to Earth and there's a shot of it flying straight towards the camera that's still cool with or without the 3-D effect. Later on, however, when the male protagonist is checking out the crater and an avalanche is set off the camera seems to spend far too long looping between one camera angle showing the man trying to avoid falling rocks and another where the falling rocks are coming straight towards the camera. It'd be nice to see how well the 3-D effect worked all the way back in the 50s, but right now the "it's coming right at you" intention is a little too obvious. That said, it's not really an issue found too often in the film.

There's another point that felt annoying where the male protagonist is pointing a torch around and the female protagonist screams when a joshua tree comes into centre-frame. I wonder whether this scene was more emphasised by the 3-D effect. Of course, the audience isn't scared by joshua trees (and considering the number of joshua trees around in the setting, neither should the female protagonist), so perhaps this is the predecessor to the milipede nonsense in the American remake of "The Ring". This isn't the only time we have irritating screams from the female protagonist either and I think this was generally overdone, not least seeing as she doesn't really come across as easily frightened asides from these sudden high-pitched screeches every so often.

While the alien is shown pretty early on in the film, a lot of shots are shown from the aliens perspective and avoid showing the alien at all. There's a good reason for this which I'll avoid explaining right now. The aliens are depicted as having one eye, so the 'alien perspective' shots appear to be shown as if looking through a large blob of jelly.



The movie starts with John Putnam, an amateur astronomer, noticing a large meteor (or so it seems) crashing down to Earth. He and his girlfriend, Ellen Fields (played by the gorgeous Barbara Rush), decide to check it out. John insists that Ellen stays out of the crater, but he sometimes has a tough time convincing her to stay put. (It's good when the sexism can, arguably, be placed on a character rather than the filmmakers, especially when the sexism is tied to misplaced protectivism rather than obnoxious condescension.) In the crater John sees an alien spaceship but, when spotted, the aliens hurriedly shut the spaceship door, triggering an avalanche. John escapes the crater unharmed, but the spaceship is now buried. John believes that the spaceship will be unearthed by scientific researchers and happily lets journalists know his beliefs about the involvement of alien beings. Unfortunately the scientific evidence points to a simple meteor and a single witness isn't deemed enough to warrant a highly expensive dig. John is viewed as either a nutcase or a troublemaker.



Ellen joins John as he searches for answers, taking time off work at a local school where she teaches. The Sheriff criticises John for leading her astray, having already decided that his astronomy hobby is bizarre behaviour. Meanwhile the audience knows that at least one of the aliens left the spaceship before John and Ellen turned up at the crater and it's still probably wandering somewhere in the desert.

There's a wonderful point where the movie really captured me, where John finally receives a proper answer from the aliens. The problem is a matter of trust. If the aliens tell you to back off, can you trust them to keep their end of the bargain? What might happen if you decide not to trust them?



The pacing isn't always perfect, but then again it is a movie trying for a consistent sense of ominous dread. Certainly this would come to be done to much greater effect in my personal favourite "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", but then again that doesn't involve the same kind of ambiguity present here. There's a consistent uncertainty as to whether these are rampaging monster aliens or misunderstood "E.T." aliens and there's some really good sci-fi-ey questioning going on regarding this issue.

"It Came From Outer Space" is a genuine classic sci-fi movie. It's stood the test of time very well and there are clear signs of elements inspiring later works. In some cases improving on those elements or, perhaps in the case of Ed Wood's "Plan 9", failing to live up to them. The central performances keep us invested in the plot and  as "John Putnam" manages to pull off the very awkward task of explicitly pointing out all the elements that the film wants us to think about without sounding contrived or confused. (Watch "Nightmare City" to see just how bad it can get when a character starts drawing out morals.) Like I said, it's not perfect, but it's damn good all the same.

B+

Mario Bava's "Black Sabbath" (I tre volti della paura) (1964)
imdb link
One line synopsis: A trio of atmospheric horror tales.
Genre: Horror

This was a set of three rather cheesy short films with an introduction by Boris Karloff (as well as an outro from him too). To be honest, I enjoyed the bits where Boris Karloff talked up the short movies rather more than the short films themselves.



We have a very early slasher movie, where a woman is harassed over the phone by a now-released convict with a grudge. We have a vampire story in a rural setting along with a protagonist who does not believe in vampires. Finally we have a ghost story in Edgar Allen Poe style where guilt eats away at our protagonist as lights and noises plague her in the night.



I can't say I was terribly impressed with any of the stories, but they were fun all the same. Perhaps many of the elements in this film were probably being used for the first time and weren't the cliches they seem to be today. Certainly Black Sabbath has not aged well. However, I feel I must judge a film as it appeared to me and not as it would have appeared to an audience of the time. (And I think this would be seen as pretty silly in any era.)



There were elements that could have made for a rather better film and there was a good sense of fun. However, this hasn't aged well and it's still very cheesy. I'm glad I watched it though, all the same.

C+ (Contained elements that could have made it a good solid movie)
x-posted to candycorncomm

(Via Monster Brains)

(video link)

This totally new to you, like it was to me? I think this is an idea that's being approached in a really interesting way. I'm a bit puzzled as to who's holding the camera during all of this, but it's certainly a topic not yet covered in any found footage movies I've heard of. The effects were effective, but it doesn't look like they'll detract from character development. Ooooh and now that we've spent over two minutes with these guys without them irritating the hell of me, I'm reckoning they'll certainly be more interesting than anyone in Cloverfield.

As you'll see from the tags, this is a "too good to be true" entry. That means this a movie being judged entirely by the trailer. (Or, in a few cases, names attached mean I'm expecting it to be good AND it's got a good trailer.) In this case I really have no idea if it'll be any good, but I really think the trailer shows promise. What do you all think?

Ardent Atheist Podcast. Very rude, but often very funny podcast about atheism.

http://www.newdissidentradio.com/rss/ardent.xml


Beyond Belief. Podcast from Radio Four discussing religious ideas and issues from a variety of religious perspectives.

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/...belief/rss.xml


Filmsack. Excellent comedy podcast focussing on older cheesy movies. Anything from Cronenberg's "The Fly" to "Troll 2". From the Frogpants network.

http://filmsack.com/feed/


Fourcast. Discussions about the possible future. Sometimes serious, mostly silly. Great fun. From the Frogpants network.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/fourcastpodcast/hxMY


Friday Night Comedy Podcast. Sometimes this will be the Now Show and rubbish like that. The only weeks you need take an interest is when it's the News Quiz. Funniest UK news-related comedy you'll find.

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/...comedy/rss.xml


Horror Etc. Discussions of all things horror and some things vaguely related. If you like horror, it's worth checking out. Interesting discussion, not comedy.

http://recordings.talkshoe.com/rss72742.xml


Jumpcut Junkies. Vodcast rather than podcast. A short video discussion with a opinions on recent releases with a fair bit of bantering between the two presenters. Like a lower budget version of Red Letter Media, but with the benefit of LJ's resident moviebuff fabfunk.

http://www.jumpcutjunkies.com/feeds/posts/default


Kermode and Mayo Film Reviews. Often very funny podcast of Radio Five show reviewing the latest films.

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/...ermode/rss.xml


The Movielicious. Ordinary people discussing recent films. It's actually got a bit lacklustre recently with one of the contributors having recently had a baby, meaning that she's often been missing. It's been great in the past and I'm inclined to stick with it. Often very funny. From the Frogpants network.

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/themovielicious


Now Playing Movie Podcast. Quite amusing podcast discussing films. Often dedicated to looking back at whole franchises or similar sets of films. Warning: Spoilers aplenty. If you haven't seen the film yet and actually plan on seeing it, leave the podcast aside until you've watched the film yourself.

http://www.nowplayingpodcast.com/NPP.xml


The Phileas Club. Discussion of the news considering the different perspectives around the world. Each contributor not only says their own views on the latest news, but also the bias in the way the news was reported in their part of the globe. More serious than comedy, but occasionally quite amusing anyway. From the Frogpants network.

http://www.thephileasclub.com/phileasrss.xml


The Pod Delusion. A Podcast about various interesting things. Some episodes are better than others. Particularly interesting stuff will normally be even longer in Pod Delusion Extra (which contains extended interviews and such). Affiliated with the BHA (British Humanist Association).

http://poddelusion.co.uk/blog/feed/
http://feeds.feedburner.com/PodDelusionExtra


Red Letter Media. Vodcasts rather than podcasts, but features some very funny reviews of the latest films. (The same people who did the extra long Star Wars Prequels critiques, explaining precisely why those films were awful.) When they try to do comedy sketches, it's a bit lame. However, asides from that, they are hilarious.

http://redlettermedia.com/feed/


Slashfilmcast. My second favourite podcast for film news and reviews after Kermode and Mayo. Not a comedy podcast. I actually prefer the "After Dark" episodes because they discuss movie-related issues rather than simply have people giving their personal opinions on current films.

http://slashfilm.com/filmcast/?feed=rss2

Point Blank (2010)

So Fred Cavayé, the director of Pour Elle (Everything For Her), the film which was remade into "The Next Three Days" (starring Russell Crowe), has released a new film. Point Blank is very similar to Pour Elle. Both films involve a husband who will do anything for his wife. The difference is that while in Pour Elle it was a husband breaking his wife out of prison, in Point Blank it is a husband saving his wife from kidnappers.

The explanation of jail-breaking by an expert in Pour Elle made it very clear that there was moral ambiguity at play. The husband knew full well what he would have to become in order to succeed and we in the audience knew that it wasn't a good thing. Unlike in the remake where the facts of the case are left ambiguous to start, in the original Pour Elle the facts of the case were made clear from the very beginning. This meant that Pour Elle didn't have the same self-righteousness of The Next Three Days which seemed to argue "look see, you should always trust your wife to be honest even if she's a convicted murderer" (as well as that a popped coat button will make all the difference to a murder case *facepalm*).

The Russell Crowe remake seemed to imagine that the moral ambiguity should lie with whether the wife was guilty or not, meaning that once revealed as innocent, the audience could rest easy that everything was justified and Russell Crowe could be accepted as the hero we wanted him to be. The original "Pour Elle", however, showed that the moral ambiguity still remained even if the wife was innocent. Breaking someone wrongly convicted out of jail isn't a matter of "defending the innocent". You have to be utterly desperate to attempt it and you put many people at risk. There was something sick about the whole enterprise and that sickness is made very clear when a friend discovers the father with his son in an empty house, having sold all their belongings to fund their escape abroad. Though this darker element meant that the audience could never fully identify with the lead character, there's no doubt that it was conveyed effectively and seriously.

In Point Blank the tone is rather different. The new moral quandary for the protagonist is whether he should listen to the kidnappers or the police. It's all very well saying "call the police", but if the police rush in, his wife will die. There's a level of silliness in Point Blank which was not present in "Pour Elle" but it makes the movie a lot more fun and there are still definitely darker aspects of the plot all the same. A few necessary plot contrivances keep the pace and there's plenty to make clear that this is not the ultra-serious gritty movie that Pour Elle was.

Our protagonist in "Point Blank" is buddied up with a hardened criminal on the run from both the police and some unknown criminal element alike. He has ties with the kidnappers, but it becomes clear that something more is at play. The relationship between this criminal and our protagonist is interesting since while both are desperate men, the criminal is much more at home in the chaos.

Another important change between Pour Elle and Point Blank is that Point Blank is an action movie. Both films have a similar sort of adrenaline to them, since the struggle to break someone out of prison was far from uneventful. However, Point Blank involves a lot of chasing and running as the plot unfolds.

Point Blank is a crime thriller which is able to pull you in without having the protagonist seem comedically out of place (like "True Romance"), making the protagonist into James Bond (like "Taken" did), or having the protagonist bizarrely morph from one into the other in the final act (like "Collateral"). While Point Blank has its funny moments and is a lot of fun, one thing that the audience is always able to take seriously is that the protagonist is an ordinary person in extreme circumstances. He's not learning to be a hero, he's not finding out what kind of man he is, he's just doing what anyone might do when put in desperate circumstances. While the desperate husband presmise seems to be a common theme for Fred Cavayé's movies, it's clearly where his talents lie and he wouldn't be the first director to stick to similar themes in their movies.

A+

The Terminal (2004)

So with the release of "In Time" I thought I'd check out "The Terminal". It's pretty much the only film written by Andrew Niccol that I had not yet seen and my dad recommended it several months back. His other writing credits include The Truman Show (brilliant!) and he has also directed Gattaca (also brilliant!), S1m0ne (deeply flawed but interesting) and Lord of War (excellent and oddly underrated). Sadly it sounds like "In Time" is more of a flawed but interesting addition to Andrew Niccol's repetoire, so I'll probably wait til DVD to check that one out.

Admittedly Andrew Niccol's input into "The Terminal" is limited to "story", which means he had initial ideas but the end script wasn't really his work. Still there are other reasons to be interested. For one this is a Spielberg movie. That doesn't guarantee quality, but with movies like "Minority Report" and "Schindler's List" under his belt it's not a credit to be sneezed at. What's more the central premise of "The Terminal" is extremely loosely based on the real life story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri who was trapped in Paris airport.

The premise is that New York airport has a bizarre translator shortage so our protagonist (who it turns out can speak Russian) is barely able to work out what is going on. Meanwhile the audience understands full well that he is stuck in an airport because, during his flight, a military coup has managed to overthrow his government. Until a new government is set up, we are told, the visa that our protagonist applied for is invalid and the country to deport him to has yet to be recognised by the US government. Ooooh what a pickle.

It seems that the evil customs officer (erm...) has no choice (really?) but to persuade him to leave the airport illegally. If he tries to enter America illegally then he would either fail and could be taken to a prison or he would succeed and join the other illegal immigrants in America. Instead, he decides to stay in the airport and wait to be legitimately allowed to go home.

Catherine Zeta Jones' inclusion in the story is daft. It's hard enough buying into the idea that Tom Hanks is the only person from that country to take an international flight that day, without also having to accept that he could have a romantic relationship with a woman he randomly meets without her ever realising his situation.

It's remarkable how well the film is initially set up, but as the film goes on the romantic interest plays a bigger and bigger part, the officer in charge of customs becomes more and more cartoonishly evil, the plot becomes increasingly contrived, the number of characters builds with more of them becoming flimsy and insubstantial and I found myself increasingly uncertain as to why I should care. What's more the relationship between two characters seems to rather bizarrely shift from being barely able to talk to one another to a wedding inside the airport. That was probably the turning point from thinking this was good silly fun but with missed potential, to thinking it was stupid trash that was wasting my time. I think this could have been better and there were parts that were fun, but overall it was just plain average.

C-

Red Dust (2004)

Chiwetel Ejiofor is great. A Tom Hooper directed TV movie, like "Longford", which is way above ordinary made-for-television work. A cinema could show this without any embarassment and in fact it was shown at a film festival with high praise from Desmond Tutu.

The central premise is that, with Nelson Mandela now leading South Africa, there are Truth and Reconciliation Trials taking place across the country. The idea is that white people who committed crimes under the old regime can be pardoned so long as all the details are confessed. These figures can still be charged for anything they don't confess to.

Hilary Swank plays a lawyer returning to her birth place in South Africa in order to represent Chiwetel Ejiofor and contest an application for "truth and reconciliation" by a white man who tortured him. Things are complicated, however, by Chiwetel Ejoifor's plans for a political future since testimony that he gave up details under torture could severely undermine his aspirations.

Hilary Swank is okay, but Chiwetel Ejiofor and Jamie Bartlett (playing the local police officer applying for a pardon) are both fantastic in their roles. The film is emotionally powerful, well-directed with a tight script. Everything we now come to expect from the now Oscar-winnng director Tom Hooper.

A+

Crossing Ed Hunter with the Animal muppet? What freak of nature is this?!!


(Via Popped Culture)

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After the somewhat cartoonish bird at the beginning, everything looks fantastic. The effects look amazing, the film looks exciting and I'm finding myself taking a retelling of Snow White seriously. What's more, the cast looks pretty good from Charlize Theron (In The Valley of Elah, Monster) and Chris Hemsworth (Thor) in leading roles, to various smaller roles played by Eddie Marsan, Toby Jones, Ray Winstone, Nick Frost and Bob Hoskins.

The problem? Kristen biting-my-lips-means-I'm-acting Stewart. She had me half-believing she could act in Adventureland (though I had my suspicions), but the double-whammy of the Twilight movies and Into The Wild seems to have confirmed that she's a bit pants really. Now it's possible that this is a more suitable role and the director working on his debut feature will get the best out of her, but I'm not holding my breath.

But damn that trailer looks good....

(Via Flea Snobbery)

Saw (2004)
imdb link
One-line synopsis: With a dead body laying between them, two men wake up in the secure lair of a serial killer who's been nicknamed "Jigsaw". The men must follow various rules and objectives if they wish to survive and win the deadly game set for them.
Genre: Crime/Horror/Mystery/Thriller

So, the (by now, surely) classic original "torture porn" movie. It didn't really involve the graphic violence and gore that I was expecting. It also seemed to be very strongly influenced by David Fincher's "Seven". There's the same dingy settings, the police investigation, but the major link is the central premise: A serial killer who uses special traps to trick or punish his victims.

Still, early on we hear the element that makes "Jigsaw" stand apart from the 'seven sins' obsessed murderer in "Seven". Jigsaw isn't really a murderer at all. As far as the police can tell, he's never actually murdered anyone. That said, if I leave a bomb in your house on a timer and then tell you about it, I reckon I'd still be guilty of murder if you ended up not leaving the house before it explodes. As such, when the trap involves strapping a potentially lethal mechanism to someone's head first, I think that really challenges the "technically not a murderer" argument. Still, that's definitely an ambiguity we didn't have with "Seven".


Not your average kidnapping....

There are a few points where the transitions between scenes seem to be done in a way that's intended to be cool, but overall the filming style is a little cheesy. I never thought I'd say this, but Saw is actually cheesy horror fun. It's not actually the 'sit in your seat feeling sick' film that I expected.

Still, the logic of "Saw" is a little convoluted. The "he wants us to saw through our feet" line (from the trailer) comes fairly early on, but no one then acts on it. The order in which people act feels a little random sometimes and towards the end people seem to have already forgotten their old tricks. (Early on they realise that you can use your shirt to whip things a little closer to you. By the end, a character seems to strangely forget this.) There are some aspects which acted as fridge logic, so when I went away I thought "hang on!", but there were plenty of other points where I recognised straight away that things didn't make sense.


Is that mechanism really so sturdy that an onlooker couldn't knock it down or stop it working? Really?

Apparently the whole puzzle is still going on six movies later, but when it was so mixed-up in the first film I hate to think how dodgy things might have got in the substantially lower rated sequels.

Best thing about this film? Danny Glover. Danny Glover is both able to embrace the silly factor of the movie while keeping up some serious proper actor gravitas. He not only pulled me in, but helped me to accept the shlocky nature of this film. The acting isn't bad in this film, but Danny Glover captures the mood and I think the film really needed him to be included in the cast in order to make this work.


"I'm too old for this s**t, but I can still kick your ass"

Saw was a perfectly adequate cheesy horror film, so long as you don't expect too much. It's basically a rather naff attempt to recapture the thrills of "Seven" and while it fails, it manages to come up with a few little tricks of its own.


Perhaps the police should start looking into puppet makers? That's one awesome puppet. :)

C- (Bog standard, average)

Cross-posted to candycorncomm

Sword In The Stone.... of course! :P


"Excuse me?"

The thing is, I don't really understand why Sword In The Stone isn't more popular.


The songs are ridiculously catchy, but never feel tacked on.


Madam Mim has to be one of the most fantastic baddies of all time.
>

The characters are extremely well developed and there are some fantastic minor roles.


On top of that there are regular bouts of excitement and the whole thing is most often hilarious. Plus there's darker elements too and it doesn't talk down to its young audience.

Recently watched Doomsday since it was sitting in a bargain bin. Director Neil Marshall's follow-up to The Descent is actually not bad at all. It's crazy and more like Resident Evil quality than The Descent quality. That said, if Paul WS Anderson came out with something as good as Doomsday it would be a huge step up for him.


Left: Siouxsie Sioux (pronounced "susie sue"). Right: crazy cannibal woman from "Doomsday".

Anyway, a nice little "Escape From New York"-esque cannibalism scene takes place backed up by Siouxie And The Banshee's "Spellbound". It made me want to look back at some of their stuff. The band seem to have been at the height of their career while I was still very young and were pretty much yesterday's news by the time I would have been old enough to enjoy them. Still, some of their songs just seem utterly brilliant and just seem so different from other music of the time that they are one of the few eighties bands not to sound horrifically dated.

Here are some of my favourite Siouxsie And The Banshees songs, starting with the one I just mentioned.

Spellbound
Notable lyric: "And don't forget, when you elders forget to say their prayers, take them by the legs and throw them down the stairs."



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Cities In Dust
Notable lyric: "Your former glories, and all the stories, dragged and washed with eager hands. Oh your city lies in dust, my friend."



(video link)


Happy House
Notable lyric: "There's room for you if you say "I do", but don't say no or you'll have to go"



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Israel
Notable lyric: "Waiting for a sign to turn water into wine, the sweet taste in your mouth turned bitter in its glass."



(video link)

The Staircase (Mystery)
Notable lyric: "Slide down the bannister, take the escalator, slide down the bannister or try the elevator"



(video link)

(via Dork Tower)

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This song has been going around my head constantly for the last few days. It's so insanely brilliant.

And if that doesn't impress you, how about this other song where Daffy goes METAL? (Iron Maiden fans definitely need to see this.)



(video link)

Some nice fan art posters to start off...

I've found myself a little obsessed with the music from what is still my favourite movie of the year (unless you count Black Swan which didn't reach UK cinemas til January). The soundtrack of Drive has an 80s-style theme, but all the actual songs are modern. I think the style they adopt might be linked to moves by bands like Crystal Castles to make use of videogame sounds in their music and I'm also reminded of the recent trend to do 8-bit versions of songs (as seen in another recent soundtrack).

In this post I'm going to look at several bands or artists I've come across either from the soundtrack or from searching for similar sounding music. If you loved the Drive soundtrack as much as I did, you might want to check this out...

1. Electric Youth

Anyway, possibly the best example of a song made to sound 80s on the Drive soundtrack is "A Real Hero" by College featuring Electric Youth:



(video link)

Having done a bit of digging, I'm inclined to believe that it is Electric Youth, not College, who are the real secret to this song's success. Oddly one of their own songs sounds even more 80s than the one featured on the Drive OST:



(video link)


2. Kavinsky

The opening song from the soundtrack, "Night Call", comes from Kavinsky.



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Kavinsky seems to be quite well-known for his work on the soundtrack of at least one of the recent GTA games. Here's one of his more typical songs.



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As you can hear, the 80s aspect in his own work mainly comes from his use of synth. Asides from that it's fairly obvious that this is a modern dance track.

3. Desire

Desire are responsible for my favourite song from the "Drive" soundtrack: "Under Your Spell":



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I must admit that I've found rather less that stood out for me in Desire's other work than I did with Electric Youth and Kavinsky. Still, I was quite impressed with their song "Don't Call".



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Ok so now for some stuff that isn't in the soundtrack....

4. Crystal Castles

Now admittedly this song probably fits the bill mainly because of the inclusion of Robert Smith from The Cure. It's hard to listen to him without thinking 80s to be honest:



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5. Tesla Boy

When I discovered this band this just blew me away. How can a recent band sound this 80s?



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But is this really what 80s music sounded like, or is it just keying in to nostalgia by using a few small elements of some 80s music? When I find a genuine 80s synthy band, it doesn't sound anything like so cool.

6. Anoraak

Another very 80s sounding band. Perhaps rather more clearly owing something to modern dance music, but I can still imagine this is an old 80s song and if they can sound this cool too, then all the better.



(video link)

7. Flashworx

This is more in line with Kavinsky's style, but it's rather more clearly aiming for an 80s style. A dreamy synth style with cheesy electric drums which somehow comes together to make something really cool. I mean seriously how is "cool-sounding 80s synth music" even possible? What unholy alchemy is this???



(video link)

8. Ladytron

Okay, I'm probably cheating including this band. I don't think they are trying to sound 80s at all. Even so, they're still relatively synthy and I think they just about fit into this list. Plus I love this song.



(video link)

9. Spleen United

I saw this being recommended as a Drive soundtrack style song, but actually, from what I can tell, it's probably the only Spleen United song that would fit. (I don't think the lead singer's voice really fits with the style, so perhaps if more of their songs had no lyrics like this one I'd have had a wider choice?)



(video link)

10. Daft Punk

To finish, Daft Punk are a band that seems to jump to mind for a lot of people when they consider this style of music. However, listening to their music, I don't think they sound quite right. I guess I just connect Daft Punk too much with the 90s (when they began their career) to view them as 80s style music. Still, here's one of their more recent well-known synthy songs because, why not?



(video link)

First Michael Gove tells the striking teachers that there's no money.

Then he announces that the government can afford to provide every school with a copy of King James Bible (where clearly the language is perfectly suited to schoolchildren *facepalm*) specially published with a foreword from Michael Gove himself! (What a treat!)


"It's a thing of beauty, and it's also an incredibly important historical artefact. It has helped shape and define the English language and is one of the keystones of our shared culture. And it is a work that has had international significance."

The King James Bible is of so much significance that they cannot bear for school children to miss out. Meanwhile, teachers' pensions? Who cares about those, eh?

There just isn't enough facepalm for all this s**t. Jesus f---ing Christ...

Hellraiser II: Hellbound (1988)
imdb link
One-line synopsis:  Kirsty Cotton wakes in a psychiatric hospital, owned by Dr Channard. Kirsty begs the homicide detective investigating her family tragedy to burn the recovered bloody mattress, thinking her evil stepmother, Julia, might use it to return from Hell.
Genre: Horror

The intro is pretty similar to the first movie with a figure opening the Lament Configuration puzzle box. However, there's a slight twist on that which makes all the difference (and which I shall not reveal here). That is then followed by a complete recap of the events in the first movie. It would actually be possible to watch this film and completely miss out the previous film and not really miss anything at all. Still, I think the emotional connection due to familiarity with Kirsty's father, her stepmother Julia and her creepy uncle Frank will make you appreciate this movie rather more.

One thing shoehorned in is that Julia finally dies on a mattress and not on the staircase as happened in the first film. Kirsty appears to have worked out how Frank escaped from hell and is very concerned that Julia should not be able to escape from hell the same way. While all this is discussed Kirsty is sitting in bed in a dark room in a psychiatric hospital. It seems we are supposed to believe that her boyfriend was sensible enough to lie about everything so he could go home... and that no one knows how to use a light switch. I mean seriously, never mind why the boyfriend got to go home. I'm much more concerned as to why they are always sitting in the dark with only the glow of the moon and the ominous lightening flashes to illuminate them.

Meanwhile a new character has been introduced: Dr. Channard. He's played by Kenneth Cranham who many will recognise for his role as the drug kingpin in "Layer Cake", but you may also know him as the easily bought union boss in "Made In Dagenham", the farmer James Reaper in "Hot Fuzz" and Pompey Magnus in the TV series "Rome". It was great to see him in this role bringing some serious acting chops to a central character.



Dr. Channard owns the psychiatric hospital where Kirsty is undergoing treatment. He is also very keen on opening up people's heads and messing around with their brains. In the basement of his psychiatric hospital there are a whole set of rooms with patients who are tormented by hell-like delusions. It's like hell on earth is found in the basement of his hospital. Dr. Channard, we discover, has long taken interest in the occult, possesses a number of familiar puzzle boxes and I wonder whether he hasn't had some success with the occult in the past since one patient says "105 years and he still doesn't know my name".

There's some interesting references to the idea that Hellraiser is a kind of twisted fairytale. Naturally Julia is coming back, otherwise we wouldn't have been shown the mattress and her relationship with Kirsty as a wicked stepmother is used to far better effect than before. There just seems to be a far better focus on characters in this film than there was in the original Hellraiser. Fuelling Kirsty's hatred for he stepmother is her fear that her father has become trapped in hell. This fear is brought to its apex when she sees a vision of him begging for her help in the corner of her room at the psychiatric hospital.



Eventually, of course, we are going to meet up with the cenobites again. So expect visions of the inside of hell and perhaps it shouldn't surprise us that this hell is less of a fiery vortex and more a creepy maze. What's more, it seems that there is a higher authority than the cenobites in this hell realm, so this film adds a whole new level to the Hellraiser mythology.



I will admit that overall the plot is pretty simplistic, that the film overall is silly and that the final act is resolved rather too easily. Still, I have to insist that this is a far better movie than the original. I have since looked back at the original film and, while I guess I panned it when I last reviewed it, giving it the equivalent of a D+ score, I later found myself keen to rewatch it. I now recognise that it is a silly film but with a great deal of missed potential and a strange sort of twisted charm to it. (I'd now give it a C+ as a fairly average film, but with clear potential.) It was that same twisted charm that made me extract Hellraiser 2: Hellbound from the bargain bin and casually place it in the DVD player.

Hellraiser 2 is a strong contender because the horror is palpable and the, now more fleshed-out (so to speak), characters further that feeling. While in the first film the horror was hard to connect with, in this new film the characters have a very strong presence. This means that we in the audience become concerned, not just with what is happening, but also who it is happening to. I was genuinely gripped from beginning to end and felt that this was much more successful than its predecessor in making me care. Where the first movie made me laugh, the second movie often had me seriously concerned. I cared about the safety of the characters rather than mocking them as movie cliches. I fully recognise that part of my enjoyment of this movie was linked to lowered expectations and I will admit that there is a lot of daftness and not a particularly clear narrative structure. Still there's no doubting that I really enjoyed this film and would highly recommend it.

B+ (Very good)


Tucker and Dale Vs Evil (2010)
imdb link
One-line synopsis: Tucker & Dale are on vacation at their dilapidated mountain cabin when they are attacked by a group of preppy college kids.
Genre: Horror-comedy

Enough reviews have been released for this already that I'm sure it'll come as no surprise to anyone that this is good. What's more confusing is why a film of such quality was a straight-to-DVD release here in the UK. I'd compare this to Shaun Of The Dead in the sense that it's a horror comedy where the horror is in the subject of the film rather than in the content. Nevertheless, I think I laughed at this a lot more than I did at Shaun of the Dead.

While "horror" might be the wrong term for this film, there's no lack of gore. The premise of "scary hillbillies" inevitably involves one of the "college kids" telling a scary story in the woods with accompanying flashback images. Also, the deaths of various college kids are often quite bloody.



What is most interesting about the premise of turning around the good guys and the bad guys is that in this sort of film there is always someone who becomes the leader. A determined take-charge figure who recognises the threat and has the willpower and common sense under pressure to tackle it properly. In Tucker and Dale, this figure isn't really so different from what you'd normally expect, except he comes off like some kind of psychopath.



Naturally the main parts are played brilliantly by Alan Tudyk (Firefly, Dollhouse) and Tyler Labine (Reaper). Also the "leader" college kid is played really well by Jesse Moss who many will recognise from the horror-comedy werewolf movie "Ginger Snaps". The whole film is really well put together, brilliantly entertaining and just generally had me in stitches.

A+

cross-posted to candycorncomm

Earlier there was a post on the wtf sexism community criticising the odd choice of pose for male characters and female character (just the one, hmmph!) in early Avengers posters. The issue can be seen clearly in the following image (click on it to see it full size):


As you can see, the female character is the only one showing off her bottom while all the other characters are facing straight forwards.

Someone has decided to reverse the gender poses, as follows (once again, click to enlarge):


The same artist has also done some work with Master Chief.
(Master Chief gender swap piece here.)

(Gender swap Avengers piece can be found on Deviant Art here.)
(Story originally found on the intentionally immature movie news website, Filmdrunk.)

x-posted to wtf_sexism

I'd imagine there are people reading the title thinking that I've just picked a random bit of poor dialogue from the Captain America movie for the title above. Actually "nope" is a line from Captain America which seems to receive some of the biggest fanfare towards the climax of the movie. If you haven't seen the movie, I suspect that the way you are imagining the delivery of those lines is quite a bit more impressive than they way they appear in the movie itself.

I'm not going to blame Chris Evans for his dull protagonist. I'm not even going to blame the script writers, since there are actually plenty of pretty good lines that fall flat. My blame falls first and foremost on the director. Funny lines fall flat, while absolutely ludicrous elements are played straight. There's a similar problem with Captain America as there was with the Rocketeer, where an over-the-top story about Nazis set on global domination is littered with dull lifeless characters and has all the energy of a damp used teabag.

So, the positives. Hugo Weaving decides to switch the typical stereotypical Nazi accent for what is, essentially, a Werner Herzog impression. For those who are confused, here's Vince Mancini's impression of Werner Herzog upon hearing of his plans to make a movie about an insane serial killer:
"Oont ven ve zoom een on za killer, I vant zat ve make sure za closeup ist on za eyes. Zeess man hast no soul.  Zairfore, I vant zat ze pupils vill reflect zacstate of nussink, za infinite blackness zat vaits for us all.  I sink is beautiful, no?  It is like za death of za puppy, or za child who starve. Oont less light!  I hate za sunlight on my set moar zen I hate za sugar on mein cheerios."

Asides from the fact that Hugo Weaving's bad guy character in this movie, the Red Skull, is not a filmmaker, he pretty much talks just like this, both in accent and (pretty much) in sentiment.

Perhaps the reason why the director doesn't really seem to play up the campiness of The Red Skull as much as he ought to is because he recognises that this probably the character with the greatest depth in the entire movie. Goodness knows Captain America himself has no depth. The essential idea is that Steve Rogers (the ordinary guy who becomes Captain America when he is subjected to the "super soldier serum") is desperate to join the army even though he's blatantly not sufficiently physically fit to survive. Heck, many people who were physically fit died very very quickly during the war and even though America entered the war pretty late on, let's not forget that this is the same senseless war that "Catch 22" was about.

As much as I respect Vince Mancini's attempt to make out that this first half is actually a brilliant start to a rushed and lacklustre film, the fact is that the intro does not work. While I have recently been made aware that the American dream is being shamelessly exploited while slowly dying of cancer, I guess I'm having trouble accepting the heroism in having a blatant death wish. Even if I were to buy into this concept, it feels rather undermined when one of the signs of Steve Rogers suitability for the super soldier programme is his decision to cut all effort out of a physical challenge by cheating. Now sure, I know what they were going for: determination, selflessness and (prior to his transformation) plenty of skill in using brains over brawn. The problem is that whenever you take characteristics to the nth degree they'll end up looking silly and that is what happens here. Instead of determined, selfless and smart, we get foolishly-stubborn, self-destructive and self-righteous.

That said, taking characteristics to extreme doesn't matter so much if you play it for laughs. Hugo Weaving's Red Skull character barely succeeds in entertaining us (in spite of a clearly excellent performance) because the director refuses to play his scenes for laughs. However, Tommy Lee Jones is allowed to become his typecast stubborn commander character that won him the Oscar for "The Fugitive". Oddly it's perhaps because we are allowed to stop taking him seriously in "Captain America" that we can actually enjoy Tommy Lee Jones' performance so much.

Dominic Cooper plays Steve Rogers best friend while Sebastian Stan plays Iron Man's father (as a young man of course). Oh wait I got them mixed up because in the right light they are barely distinguishable from one another:

Dominic Cooper actually has a pretty good screen presence, but put these two guys in the background in the same outfit and I'd have trouble telling between them.

The love interest has a posh English accent. This is referenced quite explicitly when she first turns up, but is never actually explained. Even when the setting moves to London, it doesn't appear that the love interest character is a go-between for the British and American military because it seems that in this movie there is no British military (asides from a briefly mentioned but visually absent MI6 organisation).

As a clear example of things happening so that other things can happen, we have a woman randomly kiss Captain America because "American women owe him their gratitude" solely so that the love interest (who is not actually in a relationship with Cap) can get insanely jealous and arrogantly fire bullets straight at Cap's untested adamantium shield (with no way of knowing that this wouldn't lead to him being killed). Oh yeah, it also seems that she has pinpoint accuracy with a pistol at distances where this should not be physically possible because - hey it's cool, right?

While "Thor" played up the silliness and "Iron Man 2" was a set of silly but engaging set pieces, "Captain America" takes the bizarre approach of taking itself seriously and failing to give anything any weight. Captain America seems to have the Superman curse of being a figure who is so powerful that we are never worried about him. Yet strangely, the best part of the movie is where he gets to run around as a man suddenly blessed with superpowers, but no weapons. At this early stage the character who is discovering his powers is someone we can relate to. He is imperfect and still working things out, so even if he's pretty much invincible, there's some drama because he doesn't know his strengths properly yet. However, most of the action takes place with a pretty much fully realised Captain America figure who fights against ridiculous odds without any real use of strategy and performs absurd stunts, which would be great fun if the movie actually put something at risk during these sequences and didn't play these rather humourously absurd elements entirely straight.

Some might be wondering how I can complain about "Captain America"'s lack of depth by comparison to Iron Man 2. Well I'm afraid that Iron Man 2 simply has more depth, end of story. Sure, it helps that the characters of Iron Man and Pepper Potts were established in a prior movie, but we also have Sam Rockwell and Mickey Rourke playing some superbly over-the-top bad guys. What's more, while the Black Widow character got very little time in Iron Man 2, she manages to deliver one of the most impressive action sequences in any of the Avengers set-up movies.

In Captain America, Red Skull is after some kind of blue glowing cube related somehow to Norse mythology. Why? Well to tie in with the Thor movie of course! I was really glad to see clear hints that through this macguffin Hugo Weaving will undoubtedly be returning as the Red Skull in later Avengers movies. And last but not least, I really ought to mention Toby Jones' part as Red Skull's somewhat reluctant lackey who designs Red Skull's death rays. He does a great job with what little is given to him to work with.

Perhaps the biggest source of annoyance for me is that Captain America's set-up was much more impressive in the "Ultimate Avengers" cartoon movie. The intro has Captain America flying in to defeat the real Nazi bad guys after the death of Hitler
(video link)

Captain America is arguably the worst Avengers movie so far, which admittedly isn't a bad track record. It's possibly better than Ed Norton's "The Incredible Hulk" movie. (I'd have to look back at that one to be sure.) But it's really not very good at all. It's entertaining enough and there are some hints that there was potential for something better, but in the end this is brainless popcorn fodder and ultimately disappointing.

D+

There's an article in The Guardian today about the Children's Commissioner who is who wants to stop young offenders from the recent riots being named by the media. I'm admittedly pretty much in agreement on that issue. Any information released by the press can lead to a trial being thrown out. It actually benefits the victims of the riots if information about these offenders remains confidential.

I am much more concerned by the Children's Commissioner's expressed principle that: "a child shall only ever be arrested or put in prison as a last resort and for the shortest possible time".

Why am I concerned about this?

Well the less controversial aspect of this would seem to be the suggestion that prison should be a last resort. That is, asides from the fact that young offenders don't go to prison. They are sent to Young Offender's Institutions, which are rather different. Still, those do count as a type of prison so we'll move on. Absolutely we want prison to be a last resort for anyone, so naturally that includes children. But how do we decide what counts as a last resort? When young offenders have been involved in violent crime the punishment needs to reflect that crime and, it seems to me, sending them to a YOI seems to be the next sensible step.

Rather more worrying for me, however, is the decision that any stint in a YOI should be "for the shortest possible time". Do you know who else held that position? Margaret Thatcher....

Naturally I'm not trying to say that everything that Margaret Thatcher promoted must be bad no matter what. But let's look at the mentality behind it in her case. The prisons were filling up and she wanted a way to seem harsh on crime without increasing the prison population. So what was her solution? Well, they called it the "short sharp shock". The idea was that being sent to a YOI should be an unpleasant experience, but it mustn't last too long. This whole principle directly contradicted the intended purpose of prison which is rehabilitation. Now perhaps rehabilitation is somewhat naive, but if we are going to use prison that's the goal we ought to be aiming for those institutions to achieve.

Those working in YOI institutions could see a notable change when the "short sharp shock" was introduced. Young offenders at these institutions now knew that they would not be there very long. They weren't in there for the long haul and so they didn't feel so much need to respect the rules. The result was the complete opposite of what the "short sharp shock" had intended. It reduced the effectiveness of the imprisonment.

And now Maggie Atkinson is encouraging shorter sentences for seemingly the opposite ideological reasons. She just doesn't think that children should have long terms in YOIs if she can possibly help it. It sounds like her main goal must be to keep young offenders out of YOIs at all costs, but if it's been decided that their sentence should be played out in a YOI what sense is there in making the term too short for any progress to be made? A short sharp shock in a YOI is a pathetic joke and the young offender who comes away from their trial with about a week's worth of time left to serve knows this all too well.

I'm actually given cause to wonder whether Maggie Atkinson isn't against punishment as a whole. Now someone wishing to back me up on this point, might point to her insistence that spanking be outlawed. However, as I understand it, the reason for such legislation is because many cases of abuse are not currently being reported. Spanking can include cases where excessive force is used, where implements such as belts are used, or simply cases where spanking is used far too often. Even if spanking becomes illegal, it will likely still be practiced and parents who use a light slap on the bottom in moderation when disciplining children are unlikely to find themselves in court. Meanwhile many more people whose punishments are abusive will be recognised. Heck, it would be nice if cases of abuse were actually brought to justice. The whole "baby P" fiasco was a pretty typical case where the authorities did not have the means to act.

Maggie Atkinson is on rather more shaky ground when she says that a YOI would be the wrong place to send the murderers of James Bulger. The murderers were both 11 years old and they knowingly committed a brutal murder on a younger boy. As a general rule younger offenders are not sent to YOIs, but this would be the sort of case where they would make an exception and I think we can see why.

The Children's Commission has recently started an inquiry into the number of exclusions and they've discovered that the children least likely to be expelled are girls of Indian ethnicity. Colour me entirely unsurprised. Naturally this is a stereotype and being an Indian does not instantly mean that you will given lots of support and encouragement to succeed by your parents (just as being a boy doesn't instantly mean you will cause trouble at school). Even so, it is statistically significant that Indian children are often given a lot of encouragement to do well at school by their parents. If children are going to show respect for others and act in a socially positive way then their parents are generally the ones who will instil that behaviour in them. The positive reinforcement is the most important thing. However, the other side is that those who act in an anti-social way need to know that there are real consequences. If we send out the message that we will do our utmost to avoid punishing young offenders then they will take advantage of that. They will most likely not see it a sign of a caring society. Rather it will be a sign of just how little anyone cares.

The solution to offenders (not just youth offenders, but offenders in general) is to make rehabilitation work. Prisons and YOIs should not simply be places we send people. They should have a goal to turn things around for those sent to them and make them more productive members of society on their release. Perhaps that's naive of me. However, I cannot think of anything more stupid than to say "well it doesn't work so let's send them there for as short a time as possible". That is ridiculously defeatist and counter-productive. If it doesn't work, find out what is going wrong and make appropriate changes.

Obviously we shouldn't release information about youth offenders who rioted in the media. Either they should be successfully tried and convicted, receiving an appropriate punishment for their crimes, or they should be found innocent and be released. Neither requires their names being printed for public consumption. However, if they've committed violent criminal acts (as many young offenders in the riots clearly have) then being sent to a YOI (as much as that might be a last resort) will often be the appropriate punishment for their crime. Once they are there, we need to help build up their skills so that they can have a life worth living when they leave and feel less inclined to reoffend. If they are only given a very short sentence in a YOI then you've pretty much given up on them.