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Showing posts with label Film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Film. Show all posts
18 May 2015
A Fuel-Injected Suicide Machine
11 May 2015
This Is Hardcore
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When
I was younger, I was well aware that the true meaning of Christmas was
to receive as many presents as possible whilst hiding behind the sofa
from anybody who may attempt to visit. Since my parents' divorce however,
almost every Christmas has been completely different from the last. A
couple of years ago in fact I found myself sat around a table with a
friend's loving family as they sang songs and had a great time. This
might seem normal to you but because I have nothing to do with my family-
and we've never sang songs- I couldn't help but assume the night would
end with me being burnt alive in a giant Wicker Man. The next year I was
kindly invited back but this time we'd be staying in an empty hotel
that one family member had been tasked with looking after for the
season. Not only that but I swear to God that that specific family
member genuinely did show me both an axe that he kept hidden and also some
documents stating that someone of his name had worked there a good
hundred years earlier. I couldn't go past a fucking lift without
expecting to see a river of blood come flooding out. God knows what I'll
be doing this year for it. Maybe it'll be another quiet one at home or
maybe I'll be floating above my bed as somebody throws holy water in my face and I call their mother a cunt.
30 March 2015
Flying High
The
worst flight I've ever been on was when I was blackmailed into going to
Greece for my dad's second wedding. I travelled with my nan and aunt
on a plane full of horny teenagers who were all excited for the
non-stop partying that they were presumably about to enjoy. I was only
in my early twenties but after my two family members, I was easily the
third oldest person on board
by some fucking years. Imagine arriving at a rave with your nan and not
being able to leave because the only exit was a ten thousand foot drop
and that's exactly what it was like. They were loud, drunk, annoying, and
I'm pretty sure that the two in front of us were basically shagging.
I'm not exactly a people-person at the best of times and so this was
literally my worst nightmare. I promise you that for the few hours we
were in the air I was praying for something to go wrong to shut these
fuckers up. Just one massive explosion and the noisy bastards would have
been blasted out and burnt up in the atmosphere! Obviously I'd have
been killed too but it would have been worth it. Like a martyr for the
misanthropes, I'd have died fucking happy.
3 August 2014
Crashing The Party
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I
don't like sports, however that's not to say I have anything against
sports movies- so long as they do something more inventive than spunk out
the usual shit about being an underdog. Despite the obvious appeal of
watching Stallone get his face punched in, I'm not a huge fan of Rocky however I'm certainly willing to turn my back on anybody that doesn't love Raging Bull. Of
all the sports to have films about them, it seems like boxing is the
most popular which I suppose is simply due to the dramatic ways in which
people can get their mush fucked up. I thankfully haven't been exposed
to that much crap but I did see Goal a little while ago and obviously hated it. Like
football itself, I guess I just found it hard to feel much tension over
some smug little shits ability to use his over-valued trotters to nudge a
ball into a net. Obviously that's not a blanket rule and I'd always
have an open mind but the general thing seems to be that sports films
are better when they're about the player and not the game. With this in
mind and considering what I said before, I'm surprised there hasn't been
more films about racing cars. Are they even called 'racing cars'? Because
when I read that back just then, it sounded like it was written by a
child with learning difficulties... Fuck it- they're cars and they race
so I'm not wrong to say it. Anyway, I'm surprised there haven't been more
films about racing cars because they can have the same guff around them
in terms of story but it's broken up by some high speed chases. I
wouldn't ever watch F1 by choice but in terms of movies, I can't see
anything unappealing about interesting characters being blasted around a
track in a fuck off car that's using a rocket as a butt plug.
21 July 2014
Who Will We Become?
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Who the fuck ever knows what they
want to do with their lives? Obviously I know what I'd like to do but, unless
you happen to know of a private island that treats its bloggers to blowjobs
then I guess I'll have to head back to the drawing board. How To Train Your
Dragon 2 is all about this train of thought, with the lead character ‘Hiccup’
also struggling to find his place in the world. Having said that, it is
interesting to see just how his situation differs to mine. When I was
unemployed, my Mum genuinely suggested that I become an escort for lonely old
women whilst a close friend actually recommended that I start “performing” for
cash on a webcam. Both Hiccup and I are at a point in our lives where we just
feel a bit directionless however at no point here does this film present him
with the only two choices that I had. Will he fuck the hell out of some ageing,
wrinkled tarts or will he wank himself stupid for some dirty old men? No... he'll
just hang out with his dragon and explore a fantasy land until he figures it
all out. What a prick!
30 June 2014
Fight Your Guts Out
23 June 2014
Let's Be Frank
Frank starts
in some fucking God-awful British coastal town where the beach is made out of
broken rocks and the sky is constantly threatening to piss down. Life for Jon
is predictably boring with his attempts at writing songs resulting in both
unproductive brain-farts and well... shit. One day when out walking, he spots a
man attempting suicide which, having seen the grottiness of the area, seems
like common sense to me. Being both British and human though, Jon doesn't
really worry and instead watches apathetically from the side in the vain hope
that he'll suddenly be struck by some musical inspiration. Also, watching this
breakdown with understanding nonchalance are the chap’s bandmates who are now
in need of a new keyboard player. Jon plays keyboard. He joins the band... it's
as easy as that. Sadly though, the band he's joined are so musically experimental
that their sound is like listening to somebody angry fuck a dustbin and
everybody except the lead singer hates his ginger guts. Oh, and just because
that's not already enough of a set up for a ninety minute film, the lead singer
is clearly fucking mental having made the common-as-muck life choice of
permanently wearing a giant Frank Sidebottom mask on his head. Yep, it's
another one of them... A film about the creative process as filtered through
the deranged mind of a nutcase, hidden behind a papier-mâché symbol of musical
old Madchester. God, I hate all the fucking clichés!
17 March 2014
I Approve Of This Union
Here's a quick test to work out how you'll
feel about The Grand Budapest Hotel... Did you like the last film you
saw by director Wes Anderson? If ‘no’ then I wouldn't expect you to like this
one either. I mean, I don't like trifles and so when I'm presented with a new
one it's not that I won't like it but rather I suppose that the odds just
aren't in my favour. You can change all the little details such as the type of
jelly and all that shit but at the end of the day you’re still only left with a
trifle. If however you went for the correct answer of yes then congratulations
because you are in for a hell of a treat. This film is the magnus opus of
Anderson's puddings made by a chef at the top of his game and with such a
confidence in his own recipe that it's the purest and most expertly crafted
trifle that you'll have ever tasted. If you like trifles then you will
seriously love this film. Wait… what? Oh- I'm talking bollocks. Just, err...
Well, to put it bluntly, The Grand Budapest Hotel is fucking phenomenal!
The film starts with a young girl opening a
book near a monument dedicated to its author. The film starts with that author
talking about his life. The film starts in the 1960's with the author as a
younger man in a hotel and chatting to its current owner. The film starts with
that owner as a younger man in the 1930's when he began his tutorage as a lobby
boy under the current concierge, Mr. Gustave. The film starts... the film
starts with a lot of fucking openings. The stuff in the 30's seems to take the
bulk of it though with Gustave running The Grand Budapest Hotel with the
precise efficiency of an obsessive watchmaker suffering from a bad case of the
autism. He attends to all his clients’ needs ensuring that everybody has a
pleasant stay and that all of his staff are at the absolute top of their game.
Also because he's a true British gent, Gustave takes special care of some of
his older female visitors by paying them a little extra attention and then
occasionally fucking them stupid. Sadly, the sudden murder of his one favourite
dodderer disrupts everything when it's revealed that she'd left him some
significant inheritance in gratitude for fiddling with her leathery old lady
wallet. As the main suspect, Gustave and his lobby boy then go on the run in a
land that's so stylised it's like boiling Wes Anderson's brain on a rusty spoon
and then injecting it straight into your fucking eyes. This is some good
shit...
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| With pleasure, M. With pleasure. |
I'm a huge fan of the James Bond franchise to the point that I
once had a dream where, by sheer coincidence, I happened to meet both Sean
Connery and Roger Moore at the exact same time. I know full well that this
incident took place entirely in my own head but I still think it's a good
contender for the best day of my life. What a fucking depressing fact... anyway,
considering how many of those films there are, how important they've been and
how blatant their formula is, I think there's a genuine argument that the Bond
franchise should be classed
as its own sub-genre. At this point and having now seen The Grand Budapest
Hotel, I almost think the same could be said of Anderson's films too, to a
degree. Any single frame of any one of his movies is so impenetrably his own
that it's as if all he's done is stick a torch against one of his ears and then
project the beam out through the other and onto a screen. Whether this latest
film is his best I suppose is up for debate but at the very least it's
certainly the most Wes Anderson film he's ever made. Kubrickesque camera
movements, use of stop-motion, yellow titles, characters dressed up like
himself, precisely symmetrical framing and quirkiness coming out of its arse
are all more than present. If this was a Bond film it would definitely be his Goldfinger
in which all the elements of his previous films have come together with such a
confidence that the final product is a brick shit-house of his own unique
style.
However, like marmite, rap music and
un-consented titty fondles, Wes Anderson does seem to be a little divisive.
Whereas some people go into a full-on jizz-fit over his shit, others seem to
struggle to feel the hype and I therefore presume also find his style too
distancing to get into. As I'm guessing has been made clear at this point I'm
very much on team jizz-fit for his work and so I struggle to understand how
people can't like him. I understand that they think he has style over substance
but that's not too say he doesn't also have a lot of substance. People also
claim that his characters aren't so much characters as they are simply walking
quirks but my response to that is simply that it's just bollocks. I admit that
perhaps this might be slightly true of some of his side characters with Willem
Dafoe's psycho here being a good example of that I suppose. Although even to
defend that, he's no less a character than a million others like him in other
films... Perhaps the grizzled biker in the Coen Brothers Raising Arizona might
be another one and that has been scientifically proven to be a masterpiece.
Well, not by any actual scientists but certainly in my own head it has. I think
the silent nutter is just a trope that gets dished out now and again and so
what? At least in the case of both the Coen's and Anderson, I'd suggest their
use of it is done somewhat ironically. Take almost any main character in any
one of Anderson's films and I'll bet you that they're more well-drawn than
almost any you'll find anywhere else. Richie Tenenbaum, Steve Zissou, Max
Fischer and now Gustave H. I don't know what the rest of the year has in store
for us but presuming Russia doesn't nuke us off the planet then I guarantee
that Ralph Fiennes’ performance will become one of the more memorable of 2014.
Beyond his style, the written characters,
the crazy amount of amazing actors, the story, and the soundtrack however,
there are two other reasons that I love Anderson's films. Firstly they're just
hilarious and secondly they're also heartbreakingly sad... again this latest
one is no exception. Depending who you are, the odds are you'll think of
Fiennes as the noseless bastard who tried to kill a magical child or even the
fat slice of fuck who succeeded in killing a hell of a lot of Jews. The closest
he's come to doing comedy that I know of is In Bruges and even in that
the humour comes from how fucking demented he is. Here however there's a side
to Fiennes that has remained untapped as it turns out he's as natural at
performing comedy as he was being a hate-filled Nazi cunt. What a range! This
might be the most Wes Anderson film that Anderson has ever created but I don't
think it's my favourite with The Life Aquatic possibly retaining the top
spot for me. Having said that, I think Gustave may be my new favourite
character from all of his films which is quite the statement considering that's
contending with at least seven lots of Bill Murray. There's just something
about Gustave with his complete Britishness, his politeness, his sweary rants,
his appreciation of life's niceties and then these random fucking existential
outbursts that I loved. This questioning of life also comes back to the sadness
however as, like all the others, this is a film that's drowning in melancholy.
Everybody knows that nothing lasts forever and it's obvious that all of these
people are coming to the end of their relevance. In many ways, this really is The
Wild Bunch of nostalgic old hotel employees.
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| This film has everything from huge laughs to effective prison survival methods! |
So yes, as usual, Anderson's style is more
eye catching than a giant ballsack made of rainbows but so what? In our boring
world of the bland, why is such an obvious sense of identity such a bad thing?
Visually, I can't really distinguish between a Michael Bay movie and a Roland
Emmerich one and yet despite also being shittier than a fat man’s undercrackers,
they make a fuck load of cash. I can't tell from looking whether a film is by
either of those two men although if it turns out to be Michael Bay then I can
generally guess from the crippling pangs in my soul. Anyway, to go on a slight
tangent, I once spent a long time chasing after some girl who was clearly a
bitch and I knew it. To find out why I wasn't listening to my brain I did a
little post-porn internet research and found a psychological thing called The
Halo Effect. To sum it up, it's basically a disease of the mind that allows you
to like people you think are fit despite the fucking grief and kicks to the
heart they might cause. The girl kind of took the piss with me but I couldn't
just walk away because I'm a nice guy and she had nice tits. It happens. I
mention this because, to a degree, I think this Halo effect has sort of
consumed me for Wes Anderson's films too... except he's done nothing wrong for
me to need to ignore, I guess. I love his stuff so much that I struggle to see
how somebody can't like them at all. It's not that I don't agree with them,
it's that I literally can't work out what's not to enjoy. If you're one of
those people then please send in your issues on a postcard to help me
understand... Or better yet, there's always the comments section below.
Otherwise we should all just assume I'm right and accept that like everything
else he's made, The Grand Budapest Hotel is a fucking masterpiece.
24 February 2014
The Dreams Of The People Live On
There are certain films which, like the
genitals of an old French whore, should be left untouched. If anybody remade a
classic like Casablanca then they'd effectively be condemning themselves
to that section of Hell where angry geeks spend an eternity pissing fire into
their victims’ eyes whilst crying. For some people, The Wizard of Oz is
one of those 'untouchable films' with the original being very close to their
probably-quite-camp hearts. Personally I only got around to seeing it last year
which by coincidence ended up being the same week that Thatcher snuffed it and
the song 'Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead' made an amusing appearance in the
charts. I really enjoyed the film though and could more than see everything
that was great about it from the iconic set design to the ambiguous reality and
particularly the brave choice of having a sociopath as the lead character.
Seriously, watch it again and pay attention to just how many times Dorothy
kills and how little a shit she gives about it. She fucks people up whilst
expressing all the concern of a retarded cabbage with empathy issues and a
historically awful upbringing.
Despite enjoying the film though I suppose
I probably admired it more than I actually loved it. Therefore when I heard
about the prequel, Oz The Great And Powerful I really wasn't too arsed
either way. As far as I'm concerned, there's a load of books in that series to
draw from and there's already been a few other crappy movies to taint the
legacy as it is. Directed by Geek God Sam Raimi, this new addition aimed to
tell the journey of Oz, the Wizard from the original, as he goes from being a
barebones nobody to the fraudster leader of a bullshit world. Of course, like
anybody with eyes, I'm a huge fan of Raimi's and would more than donate a few
hours of my life to experience anything that sprang from his demented mind.
However like the extra bollock in an already crowded nutsack there was
something about this film that worried me. From the moment it was announced as being
a big budget update of an old classic, and particularly by Disney, I'm sure I
can't be the only person to get flashbacks to Tim Burtons Alice in
Wonderland... which at our politest I'm sure we all remember as being a
massive lump of shit.
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| "I hope to fuck this isn't Wonderland..." |
This film begins during the dark days of
1905 as a giant storm rips through the monochrome grimness of a dustbowl
Kansas. Oz is a selfish cock who performs rubbish magic shows to mostly empty
seats whilst treating his only friend like shit and trying to shag any woman
that dares to have tits. After unsuccessfully trying to chat up the wrong girl,
her boyfriend chases after Oz causing him to make the logical decision of
jumping into a hot air balloon and flying straight into a tornado. So although
he might not have managed to have sex that day at least he can still claim to
have been sucked off... also, I know
that's an awful joke but fuck you. Anyway, after surviving the ordeal he crash
lands in the mysterious world of Oz which is currently enduring a three way
power struggle between three controlling witches. Obviously he's got to defeat
them or at least the two evil ones... because you know... God help us be
subjected to an original story! However there is at least some degree of
mystery because although we know he does succeed thanks to this being a prequel,
we also know that he doesn't kill them. That's for crazy old Dorothy and her
blank faced murder spree later on. So I guess the tension isn't about how Oz
will kill his adversaries but more about how will he outsmart them. Also I know
that Oz the man shares his name with Oz the world he ends up in but I guess
that just a coincidence. Kind of like if Paris Hilton crashed in the city of
Paris, Orlando Bloom crashed in the city of Orlando or Rip Torn crashed in the
vagina of Lindsey Lohan. Urgh... that's two bad jokes in one over-long
paragraph... Fuck you again!
So if I was worried about this being
reminiscent of that shitty Tim Burton film then the opening few minutes didn't
exactly put me at ease. I know Danny Elfman has worked with Raimi a lot too but
because he's a musical slut, his work and sound is surely mostly associated
with Burton's movies? Well I think so anyway. I actually already tried to watch
Oz The Great And Powerful a day earlier but it just put me in the mood
for Big Fish so I ended up switching it off with the plan of watching
that instead. I didn't in the end because I got distracted by a row with my
stepmum but the point still stands. Also she's a bitch. Anywho, the Burton
references don't just end there as they also pretty much look like they're set
in the same world too. Every so often, Franco's Oz would turn a corner to which
I half expected him to find a ginger Johnny Depp performing the futterwacken.
Fact fans might be interested to know that the literal translation of
Futterwacken is 'to make a twat of oneself'. That's a lie but whatever... Both
films also take two classic films and then annoyingly build them up to a final
showdown in which armies are expected to clash. And in both cases the promise
of that battle sounded about as exciting as trying to toss off to a broken egg
timer whilst wearing oven gloves and crying.
On the bright side though, there is one key
difference between Raimi and Burton’s two films and it's that Raimi's isn't
shit. It's one of those movies that lives in the bland world... never offensive
and always teasing the satisfaction of something better. Although because that
satisfaction never comes I guess this is really the cinematic equivalent of
'blue ball'. Also, as much as it has aspects that are similar to one of Burton’s
more piss poor efforts, it also has traces that stand this apart as very
definitely a Raimi film. For a start there's its love of classic cinema,
slapstick and a noticeable use of kinetic, comic book style camera movements.
Oh and of course there's also the traditional cameo from Bruce Campbell who is
this time buried under a layer of prosthetics so thick that it was only thanks to
his fuck-off chin that I recognised him. Oh and if that wasn't enough I suppose
there's also the small similarity between the plot of this movie and of Raimi's
1992 film Army of Darkness as they're near fucking identical.
Both Army of Darkness and Oz The
Great And Powerful begin when a man accidentally travels from our world to
a fantasy one. The hero also instantly starts a kind of relationship with a
woman who, spoiler alert- turns evil as the film progresses. Although I guess
that's the logical conclusion of most relationships to be fair... In both
movies’ cases, the main character is also kind of a cock whose charm can be
found in their smugness and who seems to be the solution to an ancient prophecy
that predicts peace for the land. Oh and there's an evil witch in each film
with the two looking so similar that they could start a weekly support group
with Mark Wahlberg and Matt Damon called, 'nobody can tell us apart'. On top of
all that, the flying monkeys of Oz look remarkably similar to the flying
deadites of Darkness. Although sadly Franco doesn't kill his souring
simians by blowing their heads off with a bastard shotgun and then start
screaming that everybody's a “primitive screwhead”.
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| Hail to the king, baby! |
To kind of conclude, if you saw Jack The
Giant Slayer then this is pretty much on par with that. Actually, if it
wasn't quite so long it'd probably even be better. Oz the Great and Powerful isn't the Wonderland
shaped shit stain on Raimi's filmography that many worried but nor was it
worthy of his talents. In fact if you watched Army of Darkness and
wished it was longer, child-friendly and smacked of studio guidelines then
honestly you'll fucking love this! Kind of like Singer's Giant Slayer it's
just one of those films that was alright but not worth sticking an extra two
year delay on a great director making a film more worthy of them. If you loved
the original Wizard of Oz then this won't rape your childhood- although
at worst I suppose it's probably given it an inappropriate fondling.
10 February 2014
Beans: The Ultimate Disaster Movie
Apparently Americans are relatively unaware
of what a pantomime is so let's explain... Every Christmas, theatrical
productions of classic fairytales are opened to the public in which shit actors
take their careers to die. Primarily, these things are aimed at kids but also
often include smutty jokes for the adults that have been dragged along too.
Because there's nothing a kid loves more than not understanding a reference to
anal sex. The shows are kind of like a cross between one of the Grimm's
Fairytales, a Carry On film
and a brain haemorrhage. I actually went to one of these at the end of last
year starring none other than the famous singer Sonia!!! Well actually- I say
famous.. I mean I'd never heard of her but she was definitely in it because I
remember her being seriously fucking awful. Not that it is a bad thing by the
way. No- well, yeah it's definitely a bad thing but pantomimes are always shit
and so if you're going to see one, you want to make sure it's proper dire. The
worse the show is, the more embarrassing it is for the people on stage, the
funnier it is for me. I'm going back again next year but to make the whole
process even more amusing I plan to arrive with plenty of munchies and
completely stoned off my tits.
Anyway so I recently watched Jack the
Giant Slayer which tells the story of a young boy who swaps his horse for
some magic beans. Jack meets a girl, the beans get wet, a giant stalk shoots up
and suddenly he's able to travel into a sky-world of giants. So basically just
your stereotypical sexual awakening I guess. Sadly though, the girl gets
carried up into this world and so requires rescuing... because as any old
sexist will tell you, women are useless and rely on men to help them out.
Because she also happens to be a Princess, quite a few men go to her rescue
including Jack, some soldiers and an untrustworthy Stanley Tucci who intends to
bring the giants back down with him to take over our kingdom. That's pretty
much all there is to it really as this has already become the odd film out of
director Bryan Singer’s filmography. From the director of The Usual
Suspects, X-Men and Superman Returns comes a reasonably silly,
child-friendly film that's about as unmemorable and hollow as the average
persons head. I'm generally not a fan of people so if Tucci wants giants to
come down and smash us all to bits then I'm honestly not too fucked about it.
When I hear a film is directed by Singer
and written by McQuarrie I tend to expect something special that might redefine
a genre as I race to the cinema to spunk away my cash. The first X-Men wasn't
perfect but I still loved it and there's no denying that it was an integral
element regarding the recent explosion of Superhero blockbusters. On the
outside, X-Men was a film about people with special powers but
underneath was obviously about prejudice of any kind with its sequel even
including a 'coming out' scene. It's quite surprising then to see that Jack the
Giant Slayer really is about fuck all more than the title suggests. Do you
want to see some ugly tall people get killed in variously comical ways? Then
this is probably the film for you!
 |
| "Anyway, tonight's speeches are fucking cancelled. Nurse your fucking wounds." |
I think Jack the Giant Slayer is
roughly just under two hours long and if I'm being honest I was proper titty-bored
by the first half hour. I went in expecting a Bryan Singer film but what I got
was some bog standard American bullshit with stilted dialogue, a contrived set
up and a fairly standard look to the world. However before the disappointment
infected too much of my body, Ian McShane turned up as the king and he was
dressed like an absolute knob-end. It was at that point that everything
suddenly clicked for me. By coincidence, I'm actually re-watching Deadwood right
now where his gritty, nuanced and just generally fucking brilliant portrayal of
Al Swearengen may be one of the greatest performances I've ever seen. So to see
him go from that to wearing tight golden armour, a cloak that looks like a
hernia and generally just being as camp as a row of tents was kind of shocking.
Only now did I realise that this film is basically just a bigger budget and all
star version of one of those shitty old pantomimes that I explained about
earlier!
So Ian McShane mincing about whilst dressed
as a fucking plum was my original clue and of course the story is an obvious
choice for a pantomime but there are a few other signs as well. Firstly the
lead character played by Nicholas Hoult is about as much fun as trying to piss
a stray pube down the toilet... It's not that he wasn't good, it's just that
it's such a copy and paste farmboy-esque character that in terms of
memorability, he lingers as briefly as a fart in the wind. I mean I do like
Hoult in other things and he did his best here considering what little there
was to work with but as a main character, he's just Luke Skywalker without the
incest. However.. having a boring main character is kind of the done thing with
pantos as usually it's the villain who gets all the 'funny' lines. This is
certainly true of this film too with Stanley Tucci continuing his campaign of
being one of the funniest actors who isn't actually a comedian. At the show I
went to last Christmas, an example of the villains comedic lines which he
shouted at the audience was, “I'll come down there and paint all your
M&M's the same colour”. Like I said, pantomimes are very shit. Plus if he
shouts that again next year when I've got the full blown munchies then there's
a good chance that I'll pull a whitey and glass the fucker. To the credit of Jack
the Giant Slayer... it might not be the best film of all time but there
were moments were Stanley Tucci was certainly much funnier than that.
Another thing that got me to catch on to
the panto connection was the use of one of the most clichéd lines in cinema
history. One of my huge movie pet peeves is when somebody’s looking into the
distance before something bad happens and they say “There's a storm coming”. I
know that the storm is metaphorical of some upcoming 'trouble' but presumably
when they say it they're unaware of their place within the films narrative
structure and so are literally just referring to the storm. In which case other
than a bedraggled old sea-dog, who the fuck says “There's a storm coming”? If I
see a grey cloud then at best I'll just say “This weather's looking a bit shit”
and that's if I even bother to comment at all. If somebody paid me to write
films.. which they fucking should.. I'd still have a scene where our hero's
existentially contemplate their uncertain future whilst staring at the
horizon.. that's all fine.. but this time I'd have one turn to the other and
both meaningfully and stoically ask “Is it just me or is it going to piss down?”...
anything for originality! Anyway- rant aside, that's not actually the line in
the movie but you get my point. The line in the film is when Hoult tries to act
heroically, thinks its working and then realises there's an army behind him. To
which he says “There's something behind me isn't there” and with that, the
record was broken for the most times a shit joke has even been said on camera.
The first time he said it I felt a large
part of my soul die of cringe-tumours... however when the joke was used again
at the end of the film, I got it. I mentioned before that at the panto I attended,
the villain shouted out to the crowd because at these shows audience
participation is very much a part of it. They have stock phrases that come up
time and time again to partly make it more fun and presumably to drag the
crappy show out a few extra minutes. One example of a panto phrase is when the
character on the stage is about to be knifed in the back of the head by the
villain... or something slightly more child-friendly... to which the audience
shouts out, “He's behind you”. I'm therefore giving Jack the Giant Slayer a
huge benefit of the doubt and hoping to fuck that their use of that
ball-achingly awful line was a reference to these shitty stage shows. Using it
once would perhaps be a tenuous connection but to use it twice must surely
suggest a link because, if not, that's too depressing to actually contemplate.
Plus this is the second paragraph I've now dedicated to that phrase and clearly
I have an angle on this blog so for the sake of my point let's say we all agree
it's definitely a reference to the real pantomimes and just move the fuck on!
 |
| "Is that tagline being rude?" |
So both the real shows and this film are
inspired by fairytales, feature boring main characters, a funnier villain,
generally camp acting, catchphrases and... innuendos! To be fair the movie from
what I can remember didn't feature too many unsubtly hidden, rude jokes... but
the tagline does kind of allude to swearing. “You think
you know the story. You don’t know Jack.”...Hurrhurr it's funny coz it made me
fink da word 'shit'... although to be fair I did think it was pretty funny and
it did make me think of the word shit. The only issue with it as a teaser is
that if you think you know this story then to be honest you probably do. It's
formulaic to the point of agony but again that's also true of pantos. If the
film has one problem... which it doesn't- it has fucking loads... but if it did
have only one problem it would be that it is neither great nor shit. Jack the
Giant Slayer is a thoroughly average movie which will kill a couple of
hours in the most harmless way possible. It's not as fun as sleeping with
another real human but nor is it as boring as being stuck in a lift whilst
needing a piss. If you've got nothing better to do then I'd happily say it's
worth checking out but there are so many more films that are so much better. Is
this the best film in the world? All together now, “OH NO IT ISN'T”... No it
really fucking isn't but it's still good so whatever, see it, don't see, I
don't care. Bye!
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