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Showing posts with label Tom Hanks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tom Hanks. Show all posts
3 February 2020
We're All Horrible But At Least I Know It Now
8 January 2017
An Infernal Waste Of Time
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11 April 2016
My Big Fat Waste Of Time
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13 December 2015
The Benefits Of Being A Slow Burner
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Do you ever have one of
those evenings in which one second you're having a casual sip of
alcohol and the next you're screaming abuse over some loud music and
projectile vomiting up the walls? Ah, nights in are the best aren't
they?! Well, in many ways the new film Bridge Of Spies is
a non-aggressive version of that kind of night except it won't
result in you needing a new liver or losing custody of the kids.
Well, not unless you're watching it with them whilst rubbing your belly
button and masturbating, anyway. So the movie began calmly, I
relaxed back into my chair, and then two hours later I left the cinema
having seen one of my new favourites of the year. In the same way
that David Hasselhoff can't handle his drink, I had no idea that I was
being affected as much as I was until the credits rolled and I could
feel my sense of awe. Except in my case I'd just gone to the cinema
to see a really good movie - in the Hoff's case, he was filmed
trying to eat a broken burger off his bathroom floor whilst naked
from the waist up. I don't know if you've seen that video of him
making a complete fool of himself? Although I will say, in his defence,
and as Pamela Anderson will be aware, there is more undignified
footage online featuring the cast of Baywatch.
It's called Baywatch.
6 December 2015
Toy Story Changes Meaning The Older You Get?
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Last night I finished watching the Toy Story Trilogy for the first time since the third installment was first released at the cinema. Obviously the whole experience was fucking amazing. I laughed, I cried, and I felt guilty as hell about some of the things that my toys would have seen happen in my room during my teenage years. This morning when I got into work however my boss had brought his six year old grandson with him and by shear coincidence the kid was playing with his figurines from the film. Either that kid has a seriously decent taste in pop-culture or it's about time that I grew the fuck up. As I was trying to crack on with my job, I could hear the little scamp playing out his own stories with Woody, Buzz, Jessie, and Rex, and I was genuinely impressed. Beyond anything, I had no idea that kids still played with toys if I'm honest. I just assumed that the youth of today had thrown away their love of figures and imagination after being seduced by the charms of computer games, crack-cocaine, and violent pornography. Admittedly he was wrapping the characters up in sellotape and suffocating them as though trial-running the future murder of his fucking pets but still... until a cat turns up dead, it seemed sweet to me.
2 December 2013
Sea-Dog Day Afternoon
‘Honesty is the best policy’... Really?
During an interview, I was told they were looking for somebody who was honest
to which my instinctive response was to simply shout out, “well I'm not a
thief”. Considering that there's nothing that could make me sound more like a
thief than that, I instead decided on the much better alternative of, “Well I
don't lie... often”. Panicking about my stupid inclusion of the word ‘often’ I
then added “I mean like, I- err, only lie if I have to”. Obviously by this I
just meant that I could be trusted to keep my mouth shut if somebody told me a
secret about their love life, finances or horrendously rotten genitals. However,
at this point my interviewers were already pulling the exact facial expression
that Bruce Wayne's parents did about two seconds before they were shot by a
mugger in a darkened ally. When they asked me about honesty, if I had just lied
and said that I only ever speak the truth then ironically I would have saved
myself from losing most of my bodyweight through stress-induced sweating. In general I am a very honest person but I
also have common sense and sometimes it is for the best to lie. All I did was
tell the truth here and by accident I managed to convince everybody in the room
that I had a secret history as a slimy Victorian grifter.
I mention all this because firstly I like
to waffle and secondly, the question of honesty has been the main focus
surrounding the release of the new film Captain Phillips. Based on a
true story the movie claims to accurately depict the hijacking of an American
cargo ship by Somalian pirates back in 2009, however the film feels as though
it is being presented in two halves with the first hour specifically being
dedicated to the attempted ship-theft-bullshittery. There are so many things
that I loved about this but I suppose I'll start with the way in which the
attackers are less equipped than a young eunuch boy in a whore house. They've
got a few men, a few guns and a ladder to take them onto a ship that has a working
telephone and the entire U.K. and U.S. Navy on speed dial. Sadly though when
Captain Philips notices these desperate chancers, America is too busy to pick
up the phone and we Brits kind of have a tendency to dismiss huge problems as
being “a lot of bother about nothing”. Although his ship does have a defence
system, it's really not that good because it makes the assumption that
hijackers are like stray cats and can be scared off with the quick spray of a
hose. It is therefore up to the unarmed crew to resort to the ships second
defences which involves hiding in the shadows and hoping the whole thing just
blows over.
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The second hour is however much more of a
kind of claustrophobic thriller in which the hijackers attempt to piss off back
home in a small lifeboat with a hostage... I won't say who it is but as a hint
there might be a subtle clue in the film’s title. Here Phillips must use his
wits, charm and common sense to survive as tensions begin to build and the
hijackers develop a bad case of itchy-trigger-finger. If you're watching this
for the do's and don’ts of surviving a hostage situation then I think the film
makes it very clear that writing notes is a big mistake. At one point, Phillips
notices a biro-pen and so makes a grab for it after being shown the naughty end
of a machine-gun and ordered fairly clearly to stay completely fucking still.
For one amazing moment, I thought Phillips was going to go ape-shit and stab
them all to death with it Joe Pesci style, however as it turned out he'd
instead been struck by inspiration and decided to leave a note to his family
telling them how much he loved them. However to just say “I love you”
apparently isn't enough and so in one of the most suspenseful scenes of the
year and despite the risk of having his brains shot out he attempts to scrawl
out a fucking novel. With them all confined to a small space as a rescue
operation is formed by the Americans, this second half really reminded me of a
kind of sea-based remake of Dog Day Afternoon. Hmm... Sea-Dog Day Afternoon
is such a shit pun but using it would save me coming up with a title for this
blog. Fuck it, it's done!
Anyway so the reason I mentioned all that
bollocks about honesty earlier is because since its release, a lot of chatter
has been shat out about the accuracy of this movie. According to Phillip's crew
members, the film neglects to mention that he had been warned about the
likelihood of an attack and also that he failed to take any action when alerted
to the hijackers’ initial presence. Some crew members have also claimed that
Phillips probably wanted to be taken hostage and had a death wish, although
from what I've researched they didn't really offer any explanation as to why?
Because you know... if you're going to publicly perform a character assassination
then you really don't need to back up your claims or provide the little things
such as evidence and hard-facts. I suppose to defend the film from this, I
would highlight two main points... The first is that Captain Phillips is
a Paul Greengrass movie and the second is that where film and facts are
concerned, who really gives a solitary fuck?
So to address point one I guess we should
give some background on Greengrass as a filmmaker. Whereas most directors start
their career off by making music videos, short films or bullshitting about
sneaking into Hollywood offices, Greengrass began by working for current
affairs show World in Action. From here he took his journalistic skills
and applied them to drama's that investigated the Gulf War, institutionalised
racism within the police-force specifically in regards to the murder of Stephen
Lawrence and then most famously Bloody Sunday. From here he got his big budget
break and made a couple of Bourne Movies which not only mixed action
with the bollocks of bureaucracy but were so good that they even managed to
donkeypunch the Bond franchise
into a new direction. Perhaps even still though, the biggest proof
of both Greengrass's integrity and his huge balls is the 2006 film United
93. A mere five years after the world got even more fucked-up on 9/11 he
made a movie that not only dealt with the slightly sensitive subject but that
focused predominantly on the hijacked plane that was brought down by the
passengers. My point is that if his ability to accurately depict true stories
on film was in anyway less than genius, United 93 would have killed his
career more effectively than a broken bottle through the eye. Not only did he
survive this though but the film went on to huge acclaim with Greengrass
receiving the kind of backslapping praise that Michael Bay could only ever
achieve if he announced his imminent retirement.
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| Oh, look! There's another oscar on the horizon! |
The second point is, as I said- who really
gives a fuck about sticking to the facts in a movie? Despite being a
masterpiece, Fargo opens with some text explaining that the film is
based on a true story. As it turns out the whole thing is completely fictitious
having been made by The Coens who claimed that they couldn't find a true story
that was interesting enough and so just made one up instead. Films don't exist
to simply report back the facts or to even educate us on the subject that they
claim to be about. Their sole purpose it to entertain, to tell stories and
perhaps to seek out what Werner Herzog refers to as 'the ecstatic truth'. As it
happens though with Captain Phillips, Greengrass actually stands by his
version of events having researched the shit out of what went down. By his own
admission, he has obviously condensed the events so that what may have taken
eight hours now only takes about fifteen minutes. He has also obviously
invented dialogue and conversations because there are only so many interviews
and so much record reading can help you before you'd need an actual fucking
psychic. The film doesn't need to stick to the truth at all if this compromises
the quality of the narrative however it seems like Greengrass is fairly happy
that what we see is coincidentally still pretty close to the truth. This would
therefore surely suggest that the crew who are publicly screaming “bullshit”
must have some reason for wanting to discredit the film? If so I can't for the
life of me figure out what that reason might be. Although having said that if
this film does contradict them and their claims are in fact false, I guess the
$50,000,000 law suit that they've filed against their ex-employers would
probably get farted into oblivion. So there is that I suppose...
Greengrass makes politically aware films
that are rooted in reality and yet never feel preachy, po-faced, miserable and
certainly not boring. In fact, if we pretended that this movie was entirely
based on fiction you'd still be left with a stunning thriller that explores
both the experience of being hijacked and also the desperation of the
hijackers. Throughout the story we're treated to the perspectives of all sides
involved with the suggestion that in fact the root cause of all evil may
predictably be the usual herd of world-fucking, corporate cunts. Hanks gives an
extraordinary performance in the lead role although we should probably expect this
now since he's played a man with a sniffle in Philadelphia, a fake cowboy in Toy
Story and a fish fucker in Splash. Praise should also go to Barkhad
Abdi who is the unexperienced actor cast in the role of lead hijacker. Not only
did he expertly hold his own against Hanks here but his terrifying performance
will ensure that if I'm ever on a boat and a stranger approaches I'm going to
kill the fucker straightaway rather than take any chances. If you get past all
this mudslinging about the truth then in my humble opinion Captain Phillips is
without a doubt one of the best films of the year. Having experienced something
as powerful as this, am I really expected to care if some money-hunting cunt
tells me it's all based on a load of old shit? I couldn't give two fucks either
way and if I'm being honest if you've got any sense then you won't either!
Follow this blog or I'll fucking cut you.
11 June 2012
Holding Out For A Hero
Aron Ralston is not, by my definition, a ‘hero’. I'm sure there are people out there who consider him one, however really- what did he do? He got stuck behind a boulder and then chopped his own arm off to escape... I mean, how exactly does that make you a hero? Of course it shows what we as a species can achieve and could be both massively motivational and inspirational but have you seen Superman Returns? I swear I saw that kryptonian motherfucker throw an island into space with just his bare hands. How can you compare what Ralston did to that? Sure, he probably gets a few extra bonus points for being ‘real’ but so what. I once saw a video on the internet of some knobhead shoving a glass jar up his arse which then cracked and shattered. He then proceeded to pluck the broken shards out of his bleeding shit hole before heading off to hospital with a limp and presumably one of the funniest excuses of all time. To me, that tit with the scarred poo-hoop and Ralston are in the same ball park. They both did something stupid for fun and then had to deal with the gorey consequences. The only difference is that Ralston's Story also makes a bloody good film.
Following his Slumdog Oscar win you would have thought that Danny Boyle would seize the chance to make a film for more than his usual £78 budget. It's therefore interesting to see that what he actually made was 127 Hours. The story couldn't be superficially smaller if it tried. Although it might deal with large issues such as spirituality and survival it is still one actor alone for 90% of the screen time with a big bolder pinning him in place. It's basically Cast Away if you replaced Tom Hanks with James Franco and Wilson with a giant cunting rock.
The film starts with a series of quick cuts pretty much setting up who Ralston is. He's one of those tits that needs to go to the extremes of the world and probably considers himself an ‘adrenaline junkie’. My average days consists of drinking too much caffeine with my adrenalin pumping only when the Rich tea biscuits run out and I have to switch to Chocolate Hobnobs. Ralston however prefers to ride around in the middle of nowhere, go rock climbing, camping and pretending to be Ethan Hunt. I have no problem with people doing all of those adventure sports but surely I'm not alone in thinking that they're complete idiots? On one of his expeditions Ranulph Fiennes got frostbite in his fingers and so chopped them off in his shed with a Black & Decker power-saw. That is literally the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard. Usually when people do shit like that it's whilst under the influence and becomes an argument for why drugs should be illegal. The obvious message is if you ever take mushrooms get yourself a few quid in sponsors. At least if you try to fly out the window you'll die as an inspiration to others. Apparently charity is the excuse that makes idiocy acceptable.
Anywho, so Ralston heads out for his latest adventure which is to take place in Blue John Canyon. Apparently this is an area in America famed for being one of the hiding places of the legendary “Hole In The Wall Gang”. I'm not sure what they're famed for actually doing but judging by their name I'm going to assume it was cottaging. What this opening 20 minutes does is allow us to judge Ralston and get to know him a little bit. He is a tit but like Richard in The Beach he's a likeable tit. Of course it does help that he's played by James Franco who was the second best thing about Spiderman after Toby Maguire's screwed up running/angry jizz-face.
Considering this is what the entire film centres around, when he falls, the incident is almost anticlimactic. Even he doesn't seem to notice what's happened allowing the horror of his imprisonment to slowly sink in. It's kind of like watching Titanic and only showing minor concerns about those pesky leaks until the boat has gone under, DiCaprio has died and worst of all Celine Dion starts singing. The other similarity it shares with that film is that everyone knows how it's going to end. 127 Hours is therefore not about what will happen but will we believe it when it does. For the next 70 minutes we're simply subjected to the trapped Ralston as we witness his emotional journey which ends with him deciding to hack off his own arm. I guess it's sort of like a cross between JackAss and Saw but real. Faced with a choice of removing my arm or watching Titanic again I think that like Ralston, I'd have to accept that my wanking days are over.
The title and promotional material for 127 Hours would have you believe that this is a race against time for survival. However it's not really like that as whilst trapped, Ralston looses track with minutes and hours blending into one. I guess it must be a little bit like playing Age of Empires on the computer in that respect. Back in about 1997 I actually experienced something a little similar to Ralston myself. I was about eight years old and needed a dump. There was however one problem... The shit I was trying to pass was significantly bigger than my child sized arse hole and it really fucking hurt. At first you panic and don't know what to do but eventually you rationalise and deal with the situation. As Ralston begins to use a knife to chip away at the rock, I started to cry and called for my Mum who talked me through it like a fecal-midwife. The irony is that some of the expressions Franco pulls in the amputation scenes are near identical to those that I pulled as my giant turd began to breach.
Before he does hack of his arm, Ralston attempts various ways of removing the boulder. One of the purposes of the film is to apparently show us what we would all do in his situation. I think I know what I'd do though and removing a limb would not be how it ends for me. At one point he throws a rope out of the chasm, ties it around the boulder and tries to hoist it off. As soon as that failed I think I'd just give up, turn the pulley into a noose and asphyxi-wank myself to death. Given a choice I'm naturally a righty but seems as that hand is the one that's trapped well I guess we all have to make sacrifices.
In order to get into his mindset we are treated to various flashbacks, hallucinations and dreams. He also at one point drinks his own piss which is I'm sure something we've all been curious about but never had a proper excuse to do. Rather than having a straight up narration Ralston starts expressing his thoughts by talking to a camera. Effectively he makes a number of video blogs like he's auditioning for some shitty Big Brother reality show. To be fair he doesn't do anything that those cuntestants wouldn't do either. I think the moment people start shoving wine bottles up their fat, clammy vaginas they'll do anything as long as it's being recorded.
By the time he decides that his arm has got to go, Boyle and Franco have done their job. Although I don't think I could do what Ralston did I believe that the depiction of him on screen could. The scene isn't quite as disturbing as the pre-release hype would have you think but it's still pretty full on. The worst part about the scene is the point where he has to cut through a nerve. The last time I hit a nerve like that was when I accidentally called my mate a beaver forgetting he was sensitive about his teeth. The jokes on him though as I think his teeth are fine, I meant he was being a cunt. Eventually Ralston frees himself, takes a photo of his arm and walks off to freedom. I'm not sure why he took a photo but I'm hoping it was for the most fucking up facebook profile picture ever. Nor do I know what happened to his arm after he left. He's famous now so I'm assuming someone will have found it and stuck it on eBay. If he signed it, he could auction it off for charity to a lonely woman or some obese gays whose fingers can't quite reach their own arse hole.
Danny Boyle is one of my favourite directors and this easily shows off his abilities. The editing matches Ralston's mentality, fast and jumpy when he's exploring, slow and disorientating when he's trapped. It's got a cool soundtrack, a knobhead main character and an optimistic ending. It's basically your typical Boyle movie which is fine by me. Like “Perfect Day” in Trainspotting, this also includes an ironic use of the song “Lovely Day” by Bill Withers. My idea of a perfect day is finding a big bag of marijuana, opening a packet of quavers and then wanking myself to sleep. Chopping myself up does not feature in that for me.
For anyone who hasn't seen the film I can't recommend it strongly enough. Since escaping his situation the real Aron Ralston has gone on to make millions of dollars with books and public appearances. If there is a message to this movie then it's one of two things. Either that humans are a remarkable species who can adapt to survive any situation given the right amount of motivation. Or that self-harming to the extreme will make you rich and famous. I'm not recommending you start cutting on your arms to become well-known but if you died you'd probably get your name in the newspaper. If that sounds tempting then go for it- prove Darwin right, motherfucker!
Follow this blog or I'll fucking cut you.
10 April 2012
Silence Is Golden
The fact that The Artist won
so many oscars is not an indication of it's quality. According to that
tasteless golden bell-end, Dances With Wolves was better than Goodfellas
which, like the power of psychics, 9/11 conspiracies, and the
existence of gravity is quite clearly bullshit. Anything Kevin Costner does
instantly becomes almost unbearably dull due to the vortex of boredom that is
his soul. Costner is a bit like a cross between Jeff Bridges, Tom Hanks and a
lobotomised ventriloquist's dummy.
Sean Connery spent the entire running time of The Untouchables cheekily confusing us all by playing an Irish man with a Scottish accent. However, against Costner's string operated performance as Elliot Ness, the academy lost all perspective and awarded the ageing James Bond an Oscar of his own.
Sean Connery spent the entire running time of The Untouchables cheekily confusing us all by playing an Irish man with a Scottish accent. However, against Costner's string operated performance as Elliot Ness, the academy lost all perspective and awarded the ageing James Bond an Oscar of his own.
Regardless of it's awards
however, The Artist was receiving glowing reviews and so peaked my
interest. It's interesting in that by being a silent film The Artist will
be one of the most original films out this year. As 3D sails closer to the
iceberg of public apathy where it will die a slow and inevitable death, it
seems that one of the most attention grabbing things that cinema can do is
borrow techniques from about 80 years ago. It's kind of like getting sex tips
off your granny. Just because we live in a shallow, loveless time of fisting
and death by deep-throat, doesn't mean we shouldn't enjoy the simplicity of
lights-off missionary followed by shame and pregnancy.
As soon as I walked into the
screening of The Artist, it was obvious that it was a silent film. There
was about 40 other people already seated with the average age ranging from
between 90 and dead. Despite the nostalgic waft of piss and the retirement home
feel of the room, I was originally relieved by the coffin dodgers around me. I
hate the public in general but at least these ancient doderers wouldn't ruin
the film for me by loudly phoning their drug dealer or wanking each other off
through the pop corn box.
Unfortunately though, this was
a silent film and old people aren't healthy. There was so much coughing
and spluttering throughout the movie that I'm genuinely going to get myself
checked out for tuberculosis. Like going to a foreign country, I would advise
anybody thinking of seeing this film to go for their jabs before hand. It's
only been a couple of days since I saw it but I know already I'm one of the few
survivors of that screening. There was one guy a few seat down from me who
seemed to be trying his absolute hardest to cough out a lung. I would have made
sure he was okay but fuck it, I'm British- helping strangers just isn't our
'style'.
The plot of the film is fairly
simple, although with no dialogue for exposition it was never going to be The
Usual Suspects. The Artist begins with a silent actor named George
Valentin at the top of his game and enjoying his fame. After a chance encounter
with a wannabe actress, George uses his power and influence to kick start her
career with an odd lack of exploitation and not a single dick sucked in
sight.
Unfortunately for George
though, the talkies are on their way and John Goodman's 1920's Harvey Weinstein
wants a new group of meat puppets to whore out on screen. With George being
closer to 40 than birth he swiftly finds himself out on his arse and battling
depression.
For someone who is not that
experienced with this style of film, this was a massively enjoyable experience.
So far the only examples of silent film that I've seen are The Cabinet of Dr
Caligari, Metropolis and porn when there are other people in the house.
Regardless though, this is not a style that takes long to get used to. Just
watch the flashing images and read the occasional card of dialogue that pops up
on screen. In a way it's not too dissimilar to reading a comic book. It was odd
too how that when deprived of a sense, the imagination really takes hold. A bit
like a Flintstones obsessed schizophrenic when John Goodman speaks you
read his lips and you hear his voice just as loud in your head.
It's a credit to both the
actors and director that without any words to guide us, the film is just as
emotional as any other. It's visual comedy is funny and it's moments of
depravity are just as frustrating or heartbreaking. Perhaps the film has been
slightly over-hyped but for being bravely un-ironic, genuinely creative and
confidently relatable it deserves its galaxy of five star reviews. With it's
self-reflective, post-modern storyline it's basically the silent film version
of Scream that the 20's never got.
Although the cast are all
great, many people were recently lobbying for George's dog to be awarded an
Oscar nomination. Not only was this Korean appetiser deserving of the
praise, so too was the music with both being just as much a character as John
Goodman's shrunken cleavage. Near the end of the film, the music sneakily
sneaks into the love theme from Vertigo. For me though it wasn't
Hitchcock that this film was most reminiscent of, but rather the Coen Brothers.
The Artist has the 'screwball' feel of The
Hudsucker Proxy and the hippy hating colour scheme of The Man Who Wasn't
There. It had the old school Hollywood feel of Barton Fink and, like
the opening to A Serious Man, was presented in a ratio that under no
scientific circumstances could result in square eyes. Even the cast had a
distinctly Coen feel with the obvious example being their lovable sun-blocker
John Goodman. Jean Dujardin too had that charming
presence of someone like George Clooney. Like the Burn After Reading star, his
smug levels were luckily always one raised eyebrow below the slime levels oozed
off by the likes of the talentlessy hard-titted Alex Pettyfer.
Despite the
success of The Artist I don't think we need to prepare ourselves for a
shipment of silent films any time soon. The style was used here because it
conveniently suited the story as opposed to 3D which is being forced onto us by
piracy-injured studio executives. Avatar was a decent film despite the
hype of being poked in the eye. This too is a great film that rises above the
novelty of it's format to deliver a story, and characters that are worth
braving the grim-reaper feel of a cinema full of the grey-haired living dead.
If I have any criticism of the film, it would simply be the vocal twist at the
end. If I'd known that the main character was French all along, there's no way
I'd have sympathised with the garlic-reeking surrender-cunt. Patriotic
xenophobia aside though, it's a good film and worth checking out. Although if
it had any sense of humour, it would have ended with James Cromwell looking
into the camera and uttering, “That'll do, pig”. Not having him do that line is
bit like George Lucas hiring Samuel L. Jackson and not having him say
'motherfucker'.
Missed opportunities...
Missed opportunities...
Follow this blog or I'll fucking cut you.
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