A Big Foot With A Big Sole

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I can't say I'm a huge believer in conspiracy theories, whether they are the existence of Nessie, Jesus, or Mickey Rourke, but there's always been something interesting about Big Foot to me. With his huge sloping forehead, hunched back, massive saggy tits, and almost humanoid squint, my friend Graham could be mistaken for our missing link. In fact, during my speech as his best man at his wedding, I went into further detail; “when Graham was in school he would quite literally get told off by the teachers for drinking rainwater from the puddles on the floor. And I think that we could have probably guessed that from looking at him. I don't mean to suggest that Graham is strange looking, and he looks very smart today, but Jesus. He's got a head that is the exact shape of a monkey nut, weird slitty nostrils like a snake, he doesn't have any lips, and his tiny little ears haven't grown since birth.” Despite all evidence to the contrary, however, my bizarre friend is, in fact, a human and therefore essentially fucking useless to me. Especially when considering, and as I went on to say in my speech, that “If this was Victorian England then I could wheel him around in a circus and make money from simply showing him off to people.” So, of course, I don't definitely believe in the existence of Big Foot but with friends like Graham I obviously can't entirely rule it out. 

Freaks And Geeks

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“Do you want to go and watch that new Hugh Jackman thing?” I asked my mate. “The musical?” he responded, “Hell yeah I want to see that.. but where will we see it?” This question threw me slightly because we literally only ever go to the same cinema. “Err where do you think?” I asked. “Well..” he responded with slight irritation, “It's a musical isn't it so how the fuck am I supposed to know?” “It's still a film though” I stated whilst still confused. “Oh” he said with an obvious realisation that I was about to take the piss out of him. “Did you think it was a live show?” I asked whilst knowing full well that he had. “Well ..yeah” he answered sheepishly “But it's an easy mistake to make isn't it?!” ...“You thought that Hugh Jackman was doing a live musical show around here.. in the arse-end of nowhere.. and not only was I asking if you were interested the day before but that tickets would still be available for us to just rock up with zero notice?” “Yes” he snapped whilst now on the defence. “Well, I'm sorry to disappoint” I said remembering that he was the same person that once thought a double cheese-burger meant that he'd get a single burger with double cheese on top. “Do you still want to come?” I checked. “Yeah” he said, “But can you do me a favour? When you write about this film in your blog can you not tell people that it was me who thought I'd be seeing Hugh Jackman live?” “That's not a problem, Kris” I promised, “Nobody will ever know it was you”.

No Country For Old Man Logan

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In the way that the media presents us with an unrealistic expectation of beauty, it also, to a slightly lesser extent, presents us with an unrealistic expectation of coolness. I mean, we all agree that James Bond is cool, right? But apply his lifestyle to reality and imagine that dopey fucker surviving more than a year. If his hard-drinking hasn't left his liver on the verge of packing in then at the very least his years of sexually exploiting a never ending conveyor belt of vulnerable simpletons would surely leave him with a horrendously crippling case of knob-rot?! Well it seems to be in this later and slightly more realistic world that Logan takes place. Having spent his cinematic career watching everybody he ever loved end up with a bad case of being completely fucking dead whilst remaining a total bad-ass himself, Wolverine has finally hit rock bottom. He's a shadow of what we've seen in the past and now lives the kind of life that Mel Gibson might in an alternate world in which Hollywood failed to find him. He's got a shitty job, his anger issues and mental anguish have isolated him from society, and his alcoholism could only be worse if before taking a shot he replaced the sprinkle of salt on the back of his hand with the ashes of George fucking Best.

Was Chappie Really That Bad?

At least in terms of its themes, if Pinocchio, Oliver Twist, Robocop, and Short Circuit ever got bored and decided to start fucking then Chappie would be the spunky mess that gets left on the bed sheets. Set in the near future, Johannesburg has become so shitty that the South African government has had to invest in a squadron of attack robots to try and stem the flow of crime. These cyborgs have pinpoint accuracy, armour plating, and are as ruthlessly efficient at stopping wrong-doers as the American police are with little, unarmed, black children. Meanwhile the robots creator Dev Patel has just figured out how to make his products a little less murdery and a little more thinky which he celebrates by having Chappie, his prototype, promptly stolen from him by a couple of criminals. By coincidence, it's also worth noting that the two kidnappers are two of the biggest fuck-nuggets I've ever seen... more on them later I suppose. Essentially Chappie tells the story of the worlds first, completely sentient robot, and how it's forced to choose its morality whilst simultaneously learning the hard facts about how shite our species really is.

Time In A Bottle

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Suspecting The Worst

If you've not yet seen The Hunt yet then cancel everything and get the fuck to it! It's a genius slab of drama that focuses on the trauma an adult can suffer when accused of introducing a child to his fleshy man-dick. I know the film has been out a little while but due to life’s incessant bullshit, I'd somehow unknowingly avoided it for far too long… however like the irregular schedule of the bastard bus, you wait forever for one pedo-film and then two come along at once. Only a couple of weeks after buzzing off The Hunt, I recently caught up with the pervert-tacular Prisoners. Both films take place during a holiday, begin with a deer hunt and feature the fucktarded consequences of spontaneous vigilantism. The difference between the two is that in The Hunt you know that the accused is innocent of his crime. Prisoners on the other hand is a bit more of a kiddy-fucking free for all.

Prisoners tells the story of two families whose Thanksgiving is ruined when they misplace their daughters like a set of shitty car keys. Luckily though there was a greasy looking critter parked outside their house all that day in a large pedo-mobile who probably knows where they are. One of the missing girls’ dads, played by Hugh Jackman, therefore makes the logical decision to kidnap the oddball and punch the living shite out of him until he talks. I guess he just figured that the chap would be more likely to co-operate if choking on his own teeth and being screamed at by fucking Wolverine. Meanwhile, detective Donnie Darko is on his own mission to find the girls and uncovers so many more pedo-ish suspects that the area starts to resemble a holiday camp for retired BBC presenters. The plot set-up then is simply that there are several potential kidnappers with Jackman's character already having picked his 'molester du jour’ before even glancing at the full menu. What plays out is therefore just a classic game of nonce-roulette in which you take one of several local creeps, crack open their head and then hope to fuck that you had the right one.

You've got to love There's Something About Mary...

On the bright side, there's no doubting that Prisoners is a good film. In fact for the first two-thirds there's an enjoyably suffocating Zodiac-esque feel to the thing as it attempts to establish itself as being both sombre and weighty. Helping this is of course the predictably brilliant acting in which Wolverine and Donnie Darko do their best to inflate their unblinking eyes to blood-shot and bulbous levels of intensity and anguish. Nothing hammers home the serious intentions of a film more than having your two leads stare so hard that their face veins explode in a way that only naturally occurs during anal rape. Although both men are indisputably impressive throughout, I think that for me I was perhaps most impressed by Gyllenhaal. I guess that you kind of expect intensity from Jackman because he's most famous for playing an angry twat with knives up his hands, however Gyllenhaal has had to fight to be taken seriously as an adult against the curse of his annoyingly handsome but boyishly dopey face. Here though he manages to believably play a demented detective so successfully that I almost didn't mind the odd haircut that made it look as though he was being scalp fucked by a tattered doormat.

If they're on one side though then I suppose we should also have a little look at their rivals over on Team Nonce. Sadly though, I kind of think that this is one of the areas that the film kind of lets itself down in as it lazily just reaches into the big bag of pervert clichés. Paul Dano plays one of the twitchy suspects and don't get me wrong- he is as amazing here as he usually is in terms of immersing himself in the role. I don't know what it is about Dano considering I know nothing about his real life but for some reason I really think me and him could one day be friends. Although that might just be because of his mute performance in Little Miss Sunshine and my desire to know somebody who literally has no choice but to listen to my everlasting drivel… However as great a performance as it is, his character couldn't be more classically pedo if he walked around with his cock disguised as a new born puppy. As the other suspects show up they too all have a look about them that's so sinister that you'd be forgiven for an involuntary scream of “FUCK OFF, CREEPER” if you passed them in the street. Films like Hard Candy and The Woodsman went someway to showing that the most dangerous thing about a sex offender is that they don't necessarily look like monsters. They could be anybody, anywhere and at any time, but here with their greasy hair, twitchy energy, bullet proof glasses and the pin-prick, tiny eyes of shrew, they couldn't be anything fucking else.

The other festering cock of a problem is pretty much the entire third act which, in my opinion, kind of undermines everything that had been done over the previous two arse-numbing hours. Like I said, the film has a moodiness to it that suggests a degree of realism and importance however the concluding third just goes a bit fucking mental. I won't spoil the details but it's like the plot slips over and accidental falls tit first into the boring world of the bog-standard thriller- the kind where some dick of a main character starts acting like the worlds thickest plank and walks gormlessly into the gaping, toothy snatch of the villain. Real life is both dull and as predictable as fuck and does not contain as many twists as this story attempts to suggest. If a little girl goes missing then the odds are she's dead- killed by either the school caretaker or her pervy uncle. What starts off as a downbeat, gritty depiction of child abduction concludes with so many bullshit 'surprises' that it's like a weird pedo-sequel to Ocean's Eleven. It's a shame too because everything starts off pretty great, it's just that when it comes time to explaining itself, it kind of starts to fuck up. Maybe if they'd gone for the gothic horror of Silence of the Lambs, the conclusion would have rang slightly more believable. It's like that moment when you ask somebody who’s lying a question and suddenly they get stumped and splutter out some panicked bollocks that sounds so much shitter than the previously prepared story of crap.

Anyone who uses a Blue Shell is a dick.

Still the whole thing is still pretty enjoyable for the most part. It's just such a shame that for a film that's about two and half hours long the story still seems to have bigger, gaping holes than an eighty year old whore. If they could just re-write the end and then squeeze the bagginess out of it then I think you'd end up with a movie worthy of its performances. Although, to give credit where it's due in regards to the end, there is a pretty cool high-speed car scene in the middle of heavy snow as the driver's head-wound gushes blood into their eyes. The film was lit by a cinematographer named Roger Deakins whose work, for those who don't know, is the human equivalent of having your eye gauged out by a golden paintbrush. Everything he works on has his unmistakable stamp of beauty on it and this is no exception. However this speeding car scene near the end is almost painful in its artistic genius. With the snow, the blood and the passing neon signs, there's so much colour being seared into our retinas that everything starts to look like Mario Kart’s Rainbow Road if it had been designed by a psychopath.

Prisoners is a good film that's just nowhere near perfect. If you have a few spare hours and there's nothing else to do then I recommend you give it a go.  On the other hand though, The Hunt almost is perfect and as I said at the start, you should go check that out before it's too late and we're all dead. They're both very enjoyable but if you only get chance to relax to one film about child abuse this year then really, it isn't a hard decision as to which you should go for. I don't regret having paid to watch Prisoners at all but if I'm honest I don't think I'd pay to own it on DVD. If however I was lucky enough to trip over the frozen corpse of a rotten tramp and he had a copy of it in his lethally chilled begging-claw then I would be more than happy to steal it from him and I'd appreciate the repeat viewing. But only under those circumstances.

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Clawing A Way Back

Despite being in my mid twenties I'm depressingly still not able to grow facial hair. A full beard is completely out of the question and what I can get of a moustache is just embarrassing. Imagine the upper lip of a pretentious French child and that's kind of where I'm up to. Thankfully though, the one thing I can grow is a pair of meaty sideburns which I've insisted on sporting since first being raped by puberty. As a young teen I probably looked fucking ridiculous with my youthful complexion overshadowed by a hedge of spidery pubes that were sprouting out of the side of my face but I didn't care. I still have them now although I think that after about ten years of hatred my ageing face will have weathered enough to, hopefully, suit them. The problem was that when I was young my Mum hated them and I'm stubborn enough that that would be reason enough to keep anything. Nor did it help that to try and deter and insult me she once said, “You look ridiculous, you look like that bloody Wolverine”. Now, I know that I didn't look anything like him at all but as insults go my Mum couldn't have said anything that would make me want to keep my sideburns more that that.

I've been a huge fan of The X-Men since I saw the animated series in the early 90's and Wolverine has always been my favourite character. I guess when I was about three or four years old, I was the kind of cute little boy who loved nothing more than seeing a man stab people in the face with knives protracting from his knuckles. X-Men Origins: Wolverine was released a few years ago and was so bad that its was statistically more shit than an actual shit. Considering that X-Men: The Last Stand was also about as enjoyable as pouring vinegar into an open bollock wound, my enthusiasm for the franchise was sadly being replaced by apathy. With The Wolverine now on release I went to see it, although this time more for the sake of curiosity and hope than anything else. It might be receiving average reviews but I guess no matter how much disappointment a franchise might inflict, there's always going to be a toddler in me that's desperate to see a character that glorifies knife crime.

X-Men 3 was shit...

Like the rest of us, Wolverine is now suffering from the aftermath of X-Men: The Last Stand and is rightly living a life of shame. Haunted by memories of a woman that he loved and murdered, he's wandering the Earth like a wounded bear which might explain an early scene in which he meets an actual wounded bear. If you like your metaphors to be obvious and very annoying then this is the film for you. To cut a long story short, some old dying Japanese man tracks Wolverine down and drags him to Tokyo for a pre-death chinwag. Things don't go too well though and suddenly our snazzy haired anti-hero is wrapped up in somebody else’s shit which, despite being nothing to do with him, still results in several attempts on his life. As the film progresses it becomes very apparent that the message it's trying to convey is that 'helping people isn't worth the fucking bother'.

 Okay, so on the bright side I didn't hate The Wolverine but nor did I particularly love it. It is a text-book definition of an average film which to be fair is such an improvement over its predecessor that I think it actually deserves some praise for that. It's like when the thick kid spells his name right and you feel you should pat him on the back for managing not to dribble at the same time. Also, it's good to see that Wolverine is still so enjoyably cool that Hugh Jackman must get into character by smoking cigars rolled with John Waynes dead scalp. Not only that but since his sweary cameo in First Class, he hasn't half developed a fucking potty mouth on him. However sadly I would say that one of my biggest gripes with this film was in how for the majority of its running time he'd had his powers taken away from him. One of the main selling points of the character is surely his mutant healing abilities and so to remove them is slightly defeating the point. When someone punches Wolverine, I don't want him to wince, I want him to get angry and start smashing shit up like a drunk Mel Gibson during the Sabbath. I understand the logic behind him suddenly being vulnerable as supposedly it provides the film with a sense of threat. However does anyone really think that Wolverine is going to die? With the exception of Brandon Lee, there isn't a bullet out there that a studio would allow kill a main character in a valuable franchise.

"My garden needs tending!"

Many people have criticised the third act action sequence as being a bit out of place and although I kind of agree, I still loved every single fight in this film. The movie is composed of two elements - one part mystery and the other part action, but in honesty I think that it's the latter that's done much more competently. The drama kind of feels like a Chinatown for idiots whereas the fight scenes are actually pretty imaginative. For example there's an enjoyable scene near the end in which Wolverine is shot with so many arrows that despite dying and gushing blood from his back he ends up looking like Toy Story 3's loveable Mr Pricklepants. The films problem is therefore actually in its inability to blend its tone in a particularly un-obvious way. It doesn't help either that the end is completely obvious and the villains are a little on the shit side. I won't give away who the mysterious big bad is although anybody who doesn't work out their identity should probably think about waking up their brain from its forever-sleep. Plus there's another baddie here called Viper who spits poison, seduces strangers with a kiss and dresses in green. Short of having flowers sprouting out of her vagina, she's basically just Uma Thurman's desperately slutty Poison Ivy. I guess I'm not an expert but perhaps if comic book movies are going to start ripping each other off then maybe Batman and Robin is the one to avoid.

Still, like I said though, The Wolverine is an enjoyable but average film. It doesn't do anything spectacularly wrong and there's enough in it to make it worth at least two hours of your life. Unless of course you're dying and two hours is all you've got left, in which case I'd just crack on with the consequence-free rape and murder. The film has a strong main character, two well rounded female leads plus it makes good use of Japan as a location and culture. Oh but when I say, “well rounded female leads”, I should clarify that I do obviously mean it in terms of their depth and not as a smutty Roger Moore-esque one liner that refers to their tits. Film is a male dominated medium and so it's always nice to see some non-men get a look in too. Although having brought attention to it I'm sure that they do have nice tits as well. Personally I'd recommend The Wolverine to anyone who hasn't already seen it and I'm sure I'll end up buying the DVD. In fact, now I know it's just a guilty pleasure I'm kind of looking forward to seeing it again.

 Although whilst I've still got you here, I do have a slight theory. A while ago Nick Cave wrote a script that was meant to be a sequel to the film Gladiator in which Maximus was brought back from the dead and became a warrior through time. Is it just me or would this not have been a fucking amazing idea for a Wolverine movie? Just a thought, I guess. I suppose you could argue that, that idea was done in the opening credits of X-men Origins: Wolverine but that was a shit film that we've all forgotten and so should consider my suggestion an original idea. People think that the key tragedy of Wolverine is his extraordinarily long life which inevitably means that he's going to be suffering the loss of a lot of loved ones. But on the flip side to that it also mean he'll outlive a lot of people that he considers cunts. Finding out that someone you hate has died is always a good day if you ask me and I'm already well into preparing my, “Fuck You Piers Morgan Party”. However, for me the real tragedy of the character is that more or less nothing can kill him and yet he still mopes about looking like a fucking tramp. He could make a hell of a lot of money with some sort of Jackass style television show and from that point on live quite happily for the remaining centuries. I know money can't buy happiness but it can buy things that will make you happy, like medicine for sick children, computer games and a lot of cheap prostitutes. Anyway, as you can probably tell I'm never sure how to end these blogs so lets just save me three hours of struggling and say it's ended now. Blog has ended, see you next week and good bye!

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Heaven Knows Les Miserables Now

I might not know any French people and I've never been to France but because I'm British, I just know I can't stand them. I'm actually not into this whole ‘national pride’ thing. I don't like our Royal Family and when I see the Union Jack blowing in the wind, all I notice is the traditionally crappy weather. However I do still live here and I suppose we've all got to do our bit. If I have to display any British patriotism then an ignorant and arbitrary disliking of the arrogant French is the one I'll go for! I was forced to learn their language in school and so did my best to remain as dumb to it as possible. As I'd walk towards those classrooms, I'd find myself suddenly surrounded by their flags and photographs of Paris as though I'd accidentally entered the French fucking Embassy. People say they have a beautiful language but they don't- it just sounds gormless and as though they're constantly about to puke. Every word they say starts with a 'blurgh' noise which isn't surprising thanks to the shite they eat. I genuinely think horse racing is an abhorrent sport due to the unnecessary injuries and deaths of the animals involved, however where I see a tragedy, the French see a running buffet. Not only can they eat the horse but they can keep its hooves as a frog-squishing tool for dessert. It might be a cliché to joke about the weird shit that they eat but sod it, it's saving time.  I could start moaning about their pathetic surrender of Paris back in 1940 but I'd hate to genuinely risk hurting the feelings of a valued member of The Big Four'.

So with all that in mind, this week I ended up seeing Tom Hooper's adaptation of Les Miserables. For anybody who doesn't know, it's basically a musical about a bunch of 19^th century, dirty, depressed, fucking losers who didn't get the best start in life. So it's about your average French person then. The film begins with Hugh Jackman serving his last day in custody under the watchful guise of Russell Crowe. It turns out that Jackman has been imprisoned for nineteen years after stealing a loaf of bread and Crowe has become all fascist and started deep throating the veiny shaft of the law. It turns out that the ex-Gladiator has no tolerance for anyone caught doing anything illegal whilst conveniently forgetting the time he twatted a hotel employee with a telephone. In general, I find Russell Crowe to be a hard chap to judge because on the one hand he's quite rough looking but on the other he writes poetry. It's almost as though he'd be a great bloke to chat to down the pub if he wasn't such a pretentious arsehole. Not that it matters as I'm yet to see a film of his that I didn't enjoy and that includes 2010's Robin Hood: Where The Fuck Am I From?

"Mother warned me about getting into cars with strange men"

Anyway, so Jackman is released from prison but fails to stick to the terms of his parole. Apparently nineteen years of hard labour actually isn't enough to teach this thieving fucker right from wrong. Instead he goes on the run and becomes a well liked businessman who owns a factory that employs Anne Hathaway and a gang of pain in the arse bitches. Sadly though, the mass of screeching tarts are in the majority and very jealous of Batman's latest gimped-up squeeze. To teach her a lesson for being so good looking, they have her fired on the grounds that she's a single Mum. As you can tell, the French are a sympathetic people. Anyway, so the newly unemployed Catwoman takes a step-down off the career ladder which naturally leads to the inevitability of prostitution. I guess the morale is that you don't need A-Levels to earn a wage so long as you've got a semi-workable minge. The last bit of this paragraph is a spoiler, so if you've not seen the film, skip to the next one now... Anyway so despite jobs being scarce Hathaway refuses to fucking smile making her a very ungrateful slice of hump meat. Not that it matters I guess seems as her career is cut embarrassingly short when she randomly decides to die. I'm not sure what kills her because it just kind of happens so I'll assume that she simply died of ‘whore’.

Because of Jackman's involvement in turning Catwoman into a frowning clunge dispenser, he vows to take care of her child. From what I hear, parenting isn't easy but I imagine it's made even harder when you're a convict on the run from Crowe's obsessed Romper Stomper. Also for the record I really think the way Jackman talks to the young girl is hugely inappropriate. He meets the child whilst she's fetching water alone in the woods and the first thing he asks her is if she needs any help with her bucket. I guess he just presumes that it's a case of ‘like-mother, like-daughter’. So, basically the film from here just follows Jackman and the little girl over the years as they spend it on the run. Meanwhile even the French are getting sick of themselves and so attempt to start a revolution. If I have to watch a film set in France then I guess the only way I'll enjoy it is if they all sound like cockneys and conclude the story by shooting the living shit out of each other. As a result, I did thoroughly enjoy Les Miserables.

"I dreamed a dream in time gone by..."

Although it's probably obvious from my outburst of unjustified racism in the first paragraph, I had never previously seen any version of this story. I obviously knew it was going to be a musical but what did surprise me was just how much of the film is sung. Whereas most musicals I've seen would punctuate their warbling's with some spoken chitter chatter, Les Mis is pretty much non-stop bellowing throughout. Everybody delivers their lines to a tune and generally at the top of their lungs as though this is the missing link between performing an operatic ballad and a Fiddy Diddy rap. Unfortunately though this constant bursting into song is too easy to take the piss out of with knob-heads everywhere claiming that because people don't do that in real life it's unbelievable and stupid. However this is a bollocks thing to say because firstly; we're not watching real life and secondly, people do perform impromptu tunes to express themselves all the time. I've seen loads of people singing made up songs about their emotions whilst walking down the street they just tend to be either nutters, tramps or bladdered. If The Invention of Lying takes place in an alternate world where everybody has to tell the truth, then just imagine that this film takes place in an alternate world where everybody is a fucking loud, self-centred attention seeker... a distant, lonely world called France.

Speaking of the songs, I did really quite enjoy them although I think it'll be more fun on second viewing now that they're a little more familiar. Since watching the film I actually can't get their version of 'One day more' out of my head. I don't know if constantly humming musicals is the first sign of turning gay but if a mate invites me to go camping on a mountain I might turn it down just to be on the safe side. It goes without saying that the cast are all pretty good at hitting the right notes with only one or two exceptions. Eddie Redmayne, who is the toff that looks like a lesbian, sounded a bit odd- as though he was literally singing out of his nose. But even if he was like a Whale trying to attract a mate, that didn't quite compare to whatever Russell Crowe was doing. It's not that Crowe was bad, it's just that he's clearly not in the same ball park as anybody else here. From what I know, someone like Hugh Jackman is very experienced in musical theatre whereas Crowe is in a band called '30 Odd Foot Of Grunts' which kind of tells you all you need to know. So it's not that he can't sing it's just that when he does, it sounds a bit like somebodies just kicked Bono up the arse and then killed an African in front of him.

FAB Javert

However hitting the right notes really isn't as important to this film as having the cast deliver the emotion. People keep banging on about how the singing was recorded live on set which was impressive at first but I've heard about it so much now that I just don't care. However the transition into song was much smoother when done this way. By sheer coincidence, I recently saw Rock of Ages and the dubbing in that was so bloody awful that it was like listening to people who have only read about music but never experienced it. Beyond anything else, they'd been proper auto-tuned into oblivion with one character actually sounding like one of the fucking Chipmunks. So in contrast, I really didn't mind Crowe doing his pub-band thing. In fact he was probably my favourite character because firstly; I like it when he's in hard bastard mode and secondly, I liked his Thunderbirds fancy dress costume at the start.

Story wise, this was clearly quite the epic with it spreading over several decades however the only real constant to it was Crowe chasing Jackman. As such, the whole world was made to seem rather small with the same two people bumping into one another over and over again. Not just those two, but Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter had a bizarre habit of just turning up too. Either this film relied a lot on coincidence, that country is a lot smaller than I thought it'd be or Hugh Jackman is really lazy with how far he'll go to hide. Although, speaking of SBC and HBC I'm not saying that they weren't brilliant but they were clearly out of place and from a different film. For the most part, Les Miserables looked like it was from the director of The Kings Speech but then every so often we were randomly treated to deleted scenes from Sweeney Todd. Even the set those two lived in was suitably gothic and Burton-esque with so many holes in the walls that it was like a pervert’s paradise.

"You complete me!"

So like I say, I did genuinely enjoy this film but if there's one thing that really bugged me, it was just how quickly the characters of Marius and Cosette fell in love. All they did was glance at each other and suddenly they were head-over-heels. I know those deluded types who believe in it won't pay any attention, but the concept of love at first sight is clearly complete bullshit. The only way people can fall in love that quickly is if one of them is tied up with their ear cut off and Stockholm syndrome quickly starts to kick in. Also the film was really, really long. I didn't get bored or anything but there were a few false ends where I thought it was about to start winding down. The most obvious one was probably when the projector fucked up and everything just cut to black for like five minutes. It was worth it though just for the moment when a man returned from the toilet to discover the film had restarted. Because he briefly blocked the screen, an oldish sounding woman behind proper hissed at him to “Ssssssit down!” I know that's nothing to do with the film but knowing the evil gypsy from Drag Me to Hell was in the same audience really added to the experience.

Speaking of the screening that I was at, there was a box of tissues available to the audience on the way in. I was told that this film was going to be a weepy but I can honestly say it didn't upset me once. I'm not trying to sound like one of those knob-heads who laddishly claims to be devoid of emotion and I'm happy to admit crying during films in the past. I was balling my eyes out during Transformers 3 but only because I was ashamed of myself for paying to see it. In the end though the free tissues were certainly useful if not for the heartache then definitely the few scenes in which Anne Hathaway became a prostitute. Just because her character wasn't having a good time doesn't mean I can't. In fact I would say her performance was so good that I could continue masturbating even while I was being reminded of the existence of Susan Boyle.

"Five hours of photoshopping and puss holes are barely visible"

So yeah, all-in-all it was a good film. Good songs, strong performances and nice images of my least favourite nation tearing itself apart. I'm not sure what the title Les Miserables is referring to but I assume it's probably just that gut feeling you get whenever you hear their sickly, French accent.

After both this and The Kings Speech, director Tom Hooper is really doing well to keep me as a fan. I hate the Royal Family and as you've by now probably gathered, I don't have much love for our snotty, froggy cousins. If he continues this trend of using things I can't stand as the primary subject then I look forward to his next film which will presumably be a biopic of Piers Morgan. I don't know what it might be called- not because I can't think of anything, but because I think somebody already owns the rights to The Creature From The Black Lagoon.

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