Tom Cruise: The Cursed Avenger

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So it seems like The Mummy is basically just a Tom Cruise vanity project in which he runs about looking cool with a couple of women obsessing over him as though both oblivious to his weird middletooth... Google it if you don't know what I mean by that. The film begins in which we see a large drill performing an act that can only be described as boring and in many ways that should have prepared us for the rest of the film. This scene is set in England which we can tell for two reasons. The first is the big text on screen saying “England”, the second is that it takes approximately eight seconds before we hear somebody say “Bloody hell!”. Along its path the drill accidentally finds a tomb of dead crusaders which leads Russell Crowe to waddle in and begin telling us about the history of an Egyptian Mummy... for some reason. He plays Dr Jykle and Mr Hyde because everything has to be a shared universe now... more on that in a bit. However he's essentially just an overweight guy with a bad cockney accent. If anybody sees Ray Winstone heading towards Russell Crowe after he's seen this film and with a sock in his hand then make sure to get out of his fucking way.

Go Forth And Multiply

Of all the big questions that humanity has pondered, the most important must of course be what species Piers Morgan is and how do we kill it? After that I suppose the next issue down the list might be ‘is there a God?’ and ‘if so, why is he such a twat?’ I should point out that I'm an agnostic and don't completely deny the possibility of the existence of the magical sky man. It would be arrogant of me to say there's no such thing as there's currently no chance that I can prove or disprove the concept either way. Having said that though, nor can I prove that in his spare time, God isn't a blacked up drag Queen called Sweet Latisha with diamond encrusted nipple tassels and a skull-shaped ivory cock ring. I can guess that, that is probably not the case in, as much as I can guess, he probably doesn't exist either but for now I suppose I just can't know for sure. Sadly however, a lot of the world is ironically a lot more closed minded than this, electing to instead believe a gut feeling or childhood indoctrination over something as silly as the freely available facts. Not only that but if you even attempt to point out the obvious ridiculousness of blind faith then they tend to get a little pissy for some reason. I don't know why this is the case but I'm going to guess it's possibly the result of an underlying insecurity that suggests they're worried we non-believers are probably right. Call a sensible skinny person fat and they'll just look at you as though you're stupid. Call a sensible fat person fat and they'll go crying to the ice-cream trough because secretly they know you might be right. 

In 1979, the geniuses that are Monty Python dared to make a comedy which had the nerve to take place around the same area and time as when Jesus was allegedly performing his magic tricks. Despite The Life of Brian making fun of the fictional title character and actually treating the real words of the Bible with surprising respect, the religious folk unfortunately failed to see the funny side. In fact, many of them failed to see the movie at all instead deciding once again to just believe what they'd heard and wrongly protest the film on the assumption that it ridiculed their faith. Had they  actually bothered to see it then they would have realised that in reality it depicts a world that validates their beliefs and instead makes fun of people who act irrationally in the name of religion. By protesting the The Life of Brian without having watched it, the Bible-bashers inadvertently became the exact thing the movie was taking the piss out off. Imagine the 'don't worry about the vase' scene from The Matrix but played out between a bunch of hilarious but mischievous comedians and a gang of humourless God Botherers and that's basically what happened here... and now it's happening again.

Today is not a washing day...

Darren Aronofsky's Noah is the latest film to get a religious kicking from that vocal minority of brainwashed fuckwits with some countries even going as far as simply banning the film outright. The movie tells the story of Noah who lived in that first half of the Bible where God is portrayed as being a great angry cunt who, like an evil dictator, punishes those who defy him. He's basically a bit like Hitler but without even the redeeming feature of a funny moustache. Anyway, God doesn't actually appear in this film with Noah instead suffering from a series of hallucinations that suggest to him that he needs to build a big old boat before the world floods and kills everybody. Rather than putting this down to too much cheese before bed and not enough schizophrenia medicine in the morning though, Noah does as he thinks he's told and decides to make a floaty wooden box for every single animal that he can find... as you do. Anyway, this is all going quite well thanks to a fair bit of help from some giant rock monsters until, of course, King Ray 'I'm the Daddy now' Winstone finds out he's going to be drowned and doesn't quite fancy the idea. On top of that, Noah's three sons have started to worry that they might not have anything to fuck whilst on the ark whilst somehow forgetting that they'll be surrounded by a boat load of mostly sleepy animals. 

I should say at this point that, although I'm still yet to see his debut film Pi, I am a huge fan of Aronofsky's films and so was really excited to see this movie. However I'd also say that I was probably left feeling a tiny bit disappointed by it in the end which isn't to say that it's a bad film at all but simply that it just doesn't quite hit the extraordinary heights of Black Swan or The Wrestler. As the film went on, and I tried to work out why I wasn't quite connecting to it, I think I came to one ironic point. Despite all of the controversy from Gods angry cult, the reason that this film doesn't work quite as well as a masterpiece such as Requiem For A Dream does is simply because of the batshit stupidity of the original source material. Aronofsky can do his absolute best with this story but at the end of the day it's a morality tale in which every single animal on the planet hides in a boat as God punishes the naughtiness of man with a merciless global genocide. The irony of this being that for me, the biggest criticism is the ridiculousness of the Bible story that the film is based on, but for everybody else, the controversy centres around the looseness of the adaptation. 

Due to the fact that the original Bible story is a relatively short one, Aronofsky has padded it out with strange mutant animals, Helms Deep style battles and an environmental message that surely nobody could take issue with…? Well, issue with it they did take as some braindead church goers seem unable to understand the definition of the word 'adaptation'. Apparently in his mission to roll a turd in glitter, Aronofsky decided to combine several Noah-esque tales from various different cultures in an attempt to create a more cinematic and believable story. As a result of this, the religious obsessives have been throwing their shit out of the pram in anger because he dared to make some logical changes to their original holy text. However for me, this is the same argument that people make whenever any book is adapted into a film and the fans get all pissy about it. 

People assume that because both books and films have the primary purpose of telling a story that the two mediums should be easily interchangeable.. but they're not. What might work in a novel might not in a film (for one of a million reasons) and as such will need to be adapted. Incidentally, that rule applies both ways but you rarely seem to hear people bitching about how shit the novelisation of their favourite film is! Anyway, my point is that a film has the right to tell the story that it wants to regardless of the content of whatever it's based on, and as such should be taken on its own merits. Note the use of the word 'adaption' as opposed to 'replication'. Blade Runner and The Shining are two prime examples of great films that took significant liberties with the books that they were adapted from and last time I checked they hadn't been banned in any countries, so why should Noah? Considering the believers are so fucking obsessed with sticking to the text, it's also worth noting that the ark in this film is built to the exact specifications as is laid out in their book. However despite this being the case, filming on Noah ran into some delays when Hurricane Sandy struck New York producing both storms and floods that the set was unable to cope with. So much for sticking to the 'facts’, hey?

I should re-emphasise too for the sake of fairness that it's not every religious person who is this narrow minded, with most, I'm sure, living perfectly social lives and having a good sense of perspective. In fact, according to the actual source of all information... I read on Wikipedia that the Arch-bishop of Canterbury referred to Noah as being, “interesting and thought-provoking”. It's just that the crazy ones tend to scream louder then the sane ones and it's easy to get pissed off by their manic and irrational hatreds. Not liking the film is one thing but banning it is something completely different. Just because they believe their bullshit doesn't mean anybody else should be dictated to by it as well. But like I say.. for the most part I'm sure religious people can see this film for what it is. It's just a shame for the odd nutcase, the American Bible belt, the worlds supply of creationists and the Governing censors of Pakistan, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Malaysia and Indonesia. It's also worth pointing out that in a few of the countries that it's been banned in, it wasn't banned because of a love of the Christian Bible but rather because they have their own different religion that this film seemingly contradicts. Like I mentioned above with my 'fatty and the trough of ice-cream' analogy, I guess you have to question the certainty of a religion that feels it has to deprive its members of an alternate perspective.

But ignoring all that, is the film actually any good? Well as I said, the story is a bit silly but by giving it a sense of timelessness, Aronofsky does a good job of making it fun. Set in a world that's kind of Star Wars-y and a bit Planet of the Apse-y this feels more like a sci-fi movie than it does any of those 1950's biblical epics that made a shit tonne of money and had a running time of about nine days. If there has to be a film about this story then I honestly think this is the best it's going to be although I kind of wish it had been more intense. Aronofksy is at his best when making a film that's just fucking brutal to watch and despite the apocalyptic theme of this, it didn't quite reach the horror of his previous efforts. However when things did come to a head, the film itself came into its own with Ray Winstone's character adding some much needed anger and Noah himself enduring a full on descent into guilt and madness. In fact when the flood does arrive, the film almost becomes a biblical remake of the previously mentioned film The Shining as the ark’s captain stomps about after his confined family with murderous intent. Before this however, the movie occasionally gets too close to taking itself a little too seriously considering the absurdity of the story. There's some scenes early on in which Anthony Hopkins obsesses over a quest for berries which was fucking hilarious and I still can't quite work out whether that was intentional or not. 

Speaking of taking-itself-too-seriously, people often slag of Russell Crowe for coming across as a bit up himself but fuck them because I think he's great. Although his Noah isn't exactly a sympathetic man, he's always watchable thanks to that mad ‘Travis Bickle’ glint in his eye that suggests he's kind of glad that a real rain has finally come down to wash away all the whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers and junkies. Perhaps more credit though should go to Jennifer Connelly who has the more thankless task of reminding the audience of Noah's hidden goodness by cowering from him and crying for an hour or so. Oh, and when she's not doing that, she's out preparing for the flood by trying to find a workable womb for her sons to impregnate whilst completely ignoring the option of simply taking one for the team. In fact, incest does seem to be another theme running through this film as in order to repopulate the world they only have one girl, Emma Watson, with them who’s not only been raised as a sister to the boys but also turns out to be barren anyway. Having not seen her in much else, it is nice to see Watson having a post-Potter career by competently portraying the anguish of a girl who has a Fault in her Chamber of Secrets. Still, the incest thing is again more of a problem with the Bible than it is this film with it here simply adding to the whole Star Wars-y vibe that I mentioned before.

Master and Commander: The Early Years

I suppose the real star of the film is, as is often the case with Aronofky's films, the composer Clint Mansell whose soundtrack is predictably phenomenal here. I guess I have nothing else to add to that point except that I recommend you check it out on YouTube... and then listen to everything else he's done whilst you're at it because his work is fucking amazing. Aronofsky himself too reminds us he's in charge here with the odd creative flourish such as a weird montage of birds flying and a cool scene in which cells divide and begin to evolve through time. It's kind of like that Fatboy Slim music video for Right here, Right now but here sadly ends just short of the creature turning into a short fat man in a T-Shirt saying, “I'm Number one so why try harder?” Anywho, as ever, I’ve waffled on for far too long so I'll end it here by saying that a lesser Aronofsky film is still a more satisfying prospect than a good effort from most other filmmakers. If you've not already seen Noah then my advice would be to ignore the religious criticisms and if anything, just make an effort to see the film if only to piss them off. But then what do I know? As I said in the opening paragraph, I'm not an atheist- I'm an agnostic, so maybe the fruitcakes are right all along. After all, God’s flood was designed to wipe out the evils of man and seems as the world is now run by such angels as the cuddly Putin, the maternal Mugabe and the self-deprecating Kim Jong Un, I suppose there must have been some divine help in creating our Utopian World of Peace. Ha then again... What a load of old shit. 

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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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