John's Got The Hump

Despite ranking a toxically high 9.7 on the geek-o-meter, I've never gotten into the original Star Trek from the 60's. From what I've heard though, the biggest difference between the main series and the new films is the level of action on display. Apparently the show was less about kicking people in the throat and more about philosophising and exploring humanity’s big ideas. Having said that however, there is a clip on YouTube of Shatner's Kirk on all fours pretending to be a horse whilst a dwarf rides on his back. I'm not sure what idea they were exploring here as I'm not sure of the context. Perhaps this is a deep metaphorical investigation into the works of Bertrand Russell or Rene Descartes, however when I see Kirk galloping about all I can think is what a stupid Kant. Having said that there's a part of me that would now like to watch the original show if only for the sake of irony. As though he's a cosmic Roger Moore, the idea of watching Kirk explore a 60's vision of the future and fucking anything with a pair of tits sounds like fun to me.

Released in 2009, the film Star Trek took the series out of the nerds’ bedrooms and made it cool enough for the rest of the world to enjoy. For some reason though, a lot of them seemed to hate it because, “it changed too much from the originals”. But the way I see it, they should be happy because the franchise was successfully rebooted in a way that didn't erase everything that they'd loved from the current cannon. Also by being set in an alternate timeline, these new films also avoided the main prequel problem of there being no real threat because it's obvious the characters will survive into the original films. Maybe I'm not a Trekkie/Trekker but I am a fan of Star Wars and until your franchise is rebooted with a massive fucking racist Jamaican Gungan thing, I've really got no sympathy.

"I knew I shouldn't have studied rocket science..."

Anywho, so Star Trek Into Darkness is all about the story of John Harrison who despite sounding like a fifth member of The Beatles is actually an intergalactic terrorist. Because John is running around blowing shit up like a massive space-twat Kirk is recruited to track him down and kill him. Like Raoul Silva and Loki however, Harrison instead finds himself captured and locked up in one of those giant villain sized fishtanks. The great thing about this film is in just how much of it is an ensemble with almost everybody getting something interesting to do. Kirk and Spock continue their blossoming bromance which involves about the same amount of bickering and sex as a ten year marriage. Scotty gets to run around whilst cracking jokes with his slightly dodgy accent and Uhura continues to prove that the franchise isn't racist. Alice Eve also shows up as Carol Marcus but from what I could gather her only purpose is to flash her pubes for the movie’s trailer and to look pretty. There's also a bit near the end where Carol is put in danger when it looked to me as though someone had just stamped on her vagina.

So before we go any further, I guess I should say that I really loved this film. From the moment it begins to the moment it ends it is just non-stop action. It's as though it was conceived in the racing mind of Oscar Pistorius whilst he enjoys a domestic shoot-out with the missus. However this relentless spectacle, as enjoyable as it is, is possibly one of the movies bigger problems. After watching Iron Man 3 last week I was reminded of just how big a fan of Shane Black I was and so began revisiting his older films. I also slightly lowered my mandatory four hours a day criteria of porn browsing in exchange for finding old interviews with him in which he talks about screenwriting. When asked about the state of the modern action movie he claimed that they were all a bit crap because there's no downtime. Instead, blockbusters these days try to simply deafen the audience by shouting at them for two hours. This is definitely the case with Star Trek Into Darkness which really cuts out the character moments and emotion of its predecessor in exchange for making things go bang a lot of the time. Having said that, there is a slightly hammy but enjoyable little speech by Cumberbatch in which he seems to accidentally morph into Alan Rickman.

In fact, the comparisons to Rickman don't end there with this film also suffering from the same minor problem as Die Hard. Like Hans Gruber, John Harrison is so charismatic and cool that despite the general dickishness, you can't help but find yourself occasionally rooting for them. I know I just criticised the movie for having too much action but the scene in which Harrison shits all over a gang of Klingons is still pretty cool. I also thought that one of the final fights between Harrison and Spock was pretty funny considering the size of their body frame. Back in the 80's action movies were dominated by giant hulk-men whose brains where the size of their steroids-shrunk cocks. Cut to only a few decades later and the beeftards have been replaced by two lanky nerds kicking the shit out of each other. Not only that but the film also features Peter Weller and Karl Urban meaning that director J.J Abrams decided to have his scrawny man-slap instead of a much more epic fight between Robocop and Judge Dredd.

Anyway so we're heading into spoilery territory now so it's about time those who are yet to see the film went for a wander. For the rest of us I'm sure it was a huge surprise to discover that Harrison was actually the series’ main villain of Khan all along. Of course though, by ‘huge surprise’ I mean completely fucking obvious thanks to IMDb thoughtlessly listing the name on their bloody cast list. I'm putting it out there that, that may be the most annoying thing since I asked my Dad if Se7en was any good and his response was, (spoiler alert), “Is that the one that ends with Gwyneth Paltrow's decapitated head in a box”. It took me years to get my revenge on him for that but eventually I seized my moment and locked him in our attic without food and only an angry wasp for company. True story.

For those who don't know, Khan is one of the big baddies of the original Star Trek world and was unsurprisingly the villain in the supposedly brilliant Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan. Personally I've not seen that film but I hear good things about it. From what I do know though, things are the reverse to Into Darkness with the original killing off of Spock instead of Kirk. This of course results in Shatner calling on all of his acting powers to famously scream, “Khaaaaaaaaaaan” with all the anger of man who’s being forced to hold in a particularly rebellious ands jagged shit.  From what I do understand though, the original at least had the balls to kill off Spock and keep him dead until the crappy sequel. In this film sadly, I don't think that anybody is under any illusion that Kirk’s death will be any more permanent than his earlier demotion. Near the start of the film, Kirk is fired, demoted and then promoted back to Captain with so much speed that that if you popped out for a piss you'd have missed it. On the brightside though it's good to know that thanks to Kirks pogo up and down the career ladder that by the year 2259 we'll have finally solved this recession. With all the warring alien races, that's at least something to look forward to.

I heard the supermarket is hiring...

So considering Khan was pretty much new to me, I think, as mentioned earlier that he's probably the best thing in the film. However what did annoy me was that it was his blood that was used to bring Kirk back from the dead. By doing that, there's pretty much no threat now in any future films ever. As soon as anybody dies, all the crew have to do is pop to the fridge, crack open a bottle of Khan juice and generously, drizzle it all over their favourite corpse. In fact the only person who is now in any danger is Bones who I'm assuming will quickly find himself out of a job. It's kind of like how in the original Superman he flies up into space and then backwards around the world to reverse time. From this point on, we've got nothing to worry about at all. Having said that, now people can come back from the dead it's nice to know that the future will be a time in which we can stop banging on about how special Jesus is.

I guess that's pretty much everything I've got to say on Star Trek Into Darkness. I've been writing for too long now and I'm kind of feeling ill after eating an out of date tube of Pringles. Obviously this film gives me even more faith that Star Wars Episode 7 will be great, with Abram’s main skill being to dish out nostalgia for things you're seeing for the first time. Actually if you want a tip, you should go to the bookies and bet money on Benicio Del Toro being the next Star Wars villain. Considering he almost played Khan here and Darth Maul in Episode 1, I reckon he's a dead cert. You heard it here first! Anyway I think I'm going to go and be sick now. Although in case you didn't believe me earlier about Shatner being ridden by a midget then here it is for your viewing pleasure... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avTfiRccYIA

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Time for Judgement

I saw a crime happening once...

It was about 2:00 in the morning, I was sitting at the computer and rain was beating heavily against the window. I was probably searching for porn when in the corner of my eye I noticed a flash of light. Initially I assumed it was lighting but there was suspiciously no sound of thunder. I was about to ignore it when there was a second flash, and then a third. I looked out of the window to investigate and was stunned with what I saw.

Walking down the road was a young couple who had been caught in the rain. Because of how wet it was, the girl had done what any classy dame would and stripped completely off. There was another flash of light and I realised it was, assumedly, her boyfriend- he was walking ahead and taking pictures. Only a few seconds later, they'd turned the corner and were gone. I don't know what happened to them after that, but I'd have loved to have seen the photos the next day. Excited to see proof of their mischief, they'd have opened the photographs and then noticed it- in the background of every single shot would be my face pressed up against the window, breathing and drooling. I'm aware that wandering the streets with your clam-flaps out is illegal, but frankly it's a law that I feel needs revising.

One man who wouldn't have been seduced by this naked marathon of criminality is Judge Joseph Dredd. Dredd 3D is the latest film to be released about the fascist rozzer of the future and the first in which he's depicted by a fully evolved human. He received his original cinematic outing in 1995 when he was famously portrayed by the dopey-faced humanzee, Sylvester Stallone. Unfortunately the film was notoriously crap and further proof that Mongy Kong should stick to making his Rocky movies. They're crap too but at least he can successfully take a punch to the head without a risk of any long term damage.

Dredd is of course a reboot for the character who is now being played by Karl Urban. Not that you can tell of course as the character rightly spends the entire film with his face hidden from view. Considering how iconic his helmet is, to not have Judge Dredd wear it is a bit like having Indiana Jones without his whip or Lisbeth Salander without her anti-rape dildo. Of course this was therefore one of the many errors of 95's Judge Dredd in which Stallone spent the whole movie offending viewers with the sight of his Deliverence-esque face. In contrast however, Urban luckily proves himself to be very good at mouth acting by gurning himself up the cool list like a pissed off Popeye on bathsalts. His trick in projecting pure menace and cool seems to be simply fixing his lips to a grimace that suggests he's about to shit out a watermelon but then clenching tight, until his balls hurt. I actually did something very similar the other week by trying to force out a crap that I didn't really need. In the end I pushed so hard that my face turned bright red and I accidentally puked in my mouth.

Anyway, so the film starts with a brief history of Mega-City One. It has a population of 800 million people and a crime problem almost as serious as modern day Manchester. As a result, certain law enforcers have been granted the privilege of Judge Judy and Executioner. Dredd is one of those trigger happy authoritarians and one who has just been given the task of observing a new recruit called Judge Anderson played by Juno's Olivia Thirlby. Anderson is a young female mutant who, like all women, thinks she can read your mind and attempts to prove it by deducing that a criminal is picturing her naked. Although being honest, it probably doesn't take magic powers to know that anybody in Olivia Thirlby's company is thinking about shagging her.

Unlike famous British bullshitter Sally Morgan however, Anderson is an actual psychic and not just a manipulative cunt who takes advantage of vulnerable members of the public. So far my favourite Sally Morgan video is where she holds up a photograph of an old person and asks a member of the audience if the pensioners name was Bernard. The audience member then corrects Sally the Charlatan by informing her that it's actually their Nan. I'd hate to imply that all “psychics” are evil fakes like Sally Morgan is because that's obviously not true. At least a couple of them are probably mental too.

So Dredd and Anderson are called to a tower block to investigate the death of several junkies. It seems that this area has been flooded with a new substance known as Slo-Mo which has to be the most boring drug ever invented. I've never taken ecstasy but I hear it hippies you up with temporary joy and happiness, making music and people more tolerable. Slo-Mo however simply makes the brain perceive things at one percent its normal rate, which is a bit like watching Sex and the City 2 whilst trying not to fall asleep after a horribly failed attempt at masturbation. Despite the violence of Dredd, I ironically found that 2010 tart-a-thon to be a lot more morally offensive with its ignorant undertones of sexism and racism. Also, Sarah Jessica Parker spent far too long trotting around without a jockey for me to take it seriously. Every time her character referred to her writings, I wasn't sure if she was after a Pulitzer or a sugar cube. I'm currently in the middle of writing a fanscript for Sex and the City 3 which consists simply of a five minute visit to the glue factory followed by a round of applause. The encouraging thing is that I'm yet to type anything up and already my blank script is more insightful than the crayon-and-shit-smeared screenplay of the first two movies combined.

Anyway unfortunately for Dredd and Anderson, the tower block in which they are investigating is run by a powerful gang leader known as Ma-Ma. Once she gets wind of their presence, she has the building locked down and orders her people to kill the two Judges. The rest of the film from this point on simply consists of Dredd and the rookie trying not to die as waves of tooled up residents head straight for them. It's kind of like walking into a busy high-street, finding a random stranger and then shouting, “there's the paedophile”. Within minutes the unfortunate cunt will be running for his life as each member of the public unquestionably chases after him with bricks and knives

There appears to be one big problem with the plot of Dredd and that is that it's apparently near identical to that of The Raid. Not only that, but from what I hear, The Raid may well be one of the best action movies of recent years. Of course nobody is accusing either film of copying the other with it obviously being just one of those things. Dredd's cameras may have been rolling almost five months earlier but The Raid was released first. Luckily for me though I'm yet to see that superior film and so was able enjoy the genius of Dredd free from the curse of comparison. Not only that but I've got another even better film apparently still to watch. It's kind of like fucking someone in the folds of their fat and then finding out afterwards that there's still a vagina to explore. I definitely had fun the first time and so can't wait for the the superior experience.

Dredd has several other things making it brilliant, with the most obvious being the character himself. Judge Dredd may well be a monosyllabic, unlikeable cunt but he's also fucking cool. Steven Seagal has been larding his way through action movies for years and he's never said anything even half as cool as any one of Dredd's three lines. “Ma-Ma's not the Law- I'm the Law”, may sound like something from an inevitably explosive remake of Psycho by Michael Bay, but here it becomes Dredds equivalent of, “Make my day, punk”. In the world of red tape and bureaucracy that we live in, it's nice to see a man of action. I think when Dredd shoots a flare into a criminals mouth causing his face to melt off, we get the impression that that's exactly what he is. Dredd isn't quite the kind of guy who shoots first and asks questions later. He's more the kind of guy who shoots first and then forgets about the questions altogether.

In recent years, action films have had their balls well and truly chopped off. Whereas once we were inundated with the adult orientated gunplay of Die Hard and Point Break, we are now smothered in a world of the suffocating bland. Our cinemas are full of films like Resident Evil: Retribution which clog themselves up like a stubborn turd that refuses to flush. What Dredd does to counter this is to include a little bit of politics and the goriest movie violence this side of an Al-Qaeda snuff movie. I can't stand real violence in the slightest but a film in which we see someone's cheek slowly rip open as a bullet passes through it is a real treat. In any case, it certainly provided an effective antidote to the decaying pain of brain-syphilis that is still infecting me from my viewing of Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

As for the politics- well, Dredd is of course an undeniable fascist. However, in the locked down tower, his lethal actions seem fairly justified with his violence being as a result of his need to survive. In future instalments I'd perhaps quite like to see him simply executing people as a result of his own judgement. Beyond the joyously head splattering violence that this would provide, it would also be an interesting exploration into the morality of his life whilst at work on the streets. Personally I'm against capital punishment, with my main objection being in regards to its ethical hypocrisy. I honestly don't know how a simple serial killer can be put on death row for their atrocious crimes whereas someone as evil as Piers Morgan gets his own chat-show. I know that a nutter with a knife may seem like more of a threat to society but in actual fact, Morgan's smug levels are so high that they're almost radioactive. I don't know if it's true, but I heard that licking his face is actually more fatal than sticking a poisonous frog up your arse and then trying to fart it out. Either way, it's the latter that certainly sounds a hell of a lot more fun.

Director Pete Travis and writer Alex Garland have done a great job of finally getting the real Judge Dredd to the big screen. Travis' back catalogue might not exactly be the most impressive, however I've been a huge fan of Garland's since he wiped out the population of London in 28 Days Later. Despite Dredd simply being Dirty Harry meets Die Hard-in-the-future, his script does its best to stay as grounded as possible, avoiding the trap of most action movie cliches.

If I have any criticism, it's during a scene in which Dredd is about to be killed. Rather than just shoot him, his attacker instead begins to gloat. Not just for a second either, he begins to waffle on and on like an attention starved retard for a couple of minutes. Although the entire film is brilliant, this one scene does accidentally turn into that Simpsons episode in which Bart delays Sideshow Bob by asking him to perform the H.M.S. Pinafore in its entirety. After Dredd obviously escapes this situation he tends to a stomach wound by simply stapling it up. I'm not a doctor but I'm pretty sure Dredd's staples wouldn't prevent any internal bleeding. I'm therefore going to assume that the moment the closing credits began, his adrenalin would have stopped pumping and he'd have collapsed unconscious to the ground. I once shaved my face so fast that it started bleeding to the point that I thought I should call for an ambulance so there's no fucking way he'd just 'be fine'.

A final compliment to the movie would be the price that I had to pay for it. When arriving at the cinema, I hadn't realised it was exclusively showing in 3D and so became suitably pissed off. Personally I hate this shitty gimmick that's being forced upon us and so can't wait for it to just fuck right off. I was also forced to watch Avengers Assemble this way which was a pain in the arse because of the way it reduces the light. That film apparently begins with Nick Fury surviving a night time assault but all I could see was his one fucking eye bouncing around the screen. When I arrived to see Dredd and was charged extra for both the ticket and glasses, I felt well and truly raped. Being forced to pay extra for something I didn't want in the first place must be like being forcefully arse-fucked up an alley and then told to thank your attacker for his effort. When the film started I was obviously still feeling dirty, annoyed and abused. The 3D adds nothing to Dredd whatsoever but within seconds I'd forgotten all about it. From the moment Urban's voice growls over the film's introduction, I was lost in the world of Mega City One. Dredd is a film with a cool, fuck-you attitude, as blunt and to the point as being kicked in the face. It has similar drug effects to Limitless, the action gore of Wanted and the gritty visuals of District 9. I can only assume that if The Raid is better then it must simply be two solid hours of watching someone machine gun Piers Morgan's lifeless corpse back to Hell. If I was to summarise this overly-long blog of waffle, it would probably be these five words, “Stallone should be fucking ashamed”. Now, I apologise for taking up so much of your internet-time. Please get back to enjoying some porn and hopefully see you back here soon.

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Follow this blog or I'll fucking cut you.

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