dMYD DVD
Starring Blobert De Niro
Y
Fuck men. Fuck them. They’ve fucked you, they deserve it. They’ve fucked women, they’ve fucked each other, and they’ve fucked an entire planet. Every conceivable problem in the world at any given time is the result of a McCoy chomping, dick swinging, Jaguar sliding Y chromosome, but for what reason? Why? The answer is balls. Big balls.
Raging Bull is a film about balls, a film about men, and a film about a man. And that man is Robert De Niro. In the most sado-masochistic casting decision until Alec Baldwin signed up for Thomas and the Magic Railroad, De Niro here elected to gain 27 kilograms to play the demented, wife-mashing Jake LaMotta, with phenomenal results. The film belongs to the him, to a performance so nuanced and natural that you feel you’re watching the real LaMotta’s own dreams of his wasted life, Scorcese’s elegant, classical tone and direction making beautiful the story of a man whose choices made him one of the ugliest creatures alive. As a document of the failings of a gender it’s heartbreaking, the raging LaMotta simultaneously a flailing figure of compassion, desire, fear, disgust and ultimately pity, De Niro showing every conceivable facet of a man as complicated as any. On a technical level it’s probably the best of the duo’s get-togethers, mixing a timeless classical quality with the harsh realities of being a fuck-up with no future, whilst De Niro has never really bettered it. But he didn’t have to, it’s one of the greatest performances of the twentieth century, which probably qualifies it for a quick two hour torrent between making soup and playing Modern Warfare 2 again. For the rest of your waking life. You’re a regular Raging Bull.
Friday 26 March 2010
THE WHITE STRIPES: UNDER GREAT WHITE NORTHERN LIGHTS
dMYD
Starring Jack White and his sister, Meg
Y
Christmas at Cinema’s was business as usual. Comedy was half-cut by eleven, tripping over the table cloth while attempting to scream at the ceiling about how funny he was this time, Indie and Arthouse pulling him back and telling him to shut up; Blockbuster was sat in the big chair in the corner, smoking a Havana and giving them that look that meant he was threatening to cut them off. Period-Drama shrieked and tittered at his poorly scripted quip, before looking down sadly at her reflection in the ashtray and thinking how old she looked. Late again, Music Documentary sighed as he turned away from the window, flicked up his collar and slowly wandered off into the rain. Poor bastard has to work extra hard, pull every stylistic trick and quirk in his repertoire to get a fraction of the other’s meat. Because he’s different. He’s specialist. Music documentary has a tragic case of aggressive limited appeal.
A sobbing shame, because whatever you think, or completely fail to care to think about Jack White, man and music, he’s unarguably one of the few modern uber-buskers to earn the batted-about term of ‘rock star’. A frighteningly streamlined collision of talent and drive has culminated in a walking, guitar-lacerating embodiment of old fashioned blues and Warhol-level stylistic tropes, wrapped up in a seven foot tall red-clad doll of porcelain skin and scarecrow wig hair. He’s a terrifying man, a more terrifying star, a true enigma in an age of playing chum-buckets with your idols. Though seemingly a documentary, this isn’t a film about reveals, rather it’s another product of the singular vision that Jack White has brought to his life and career, all blacks, whites and reds, fuzzy cuts and oblique quotes. Any fan looking for gossip and rumour behind the three colour genius of his meticulous art-block-barrier will stomp off disappointed, but for anyone else in the world with a pulse that beats to a rhythm the film serves as a timeless portrait of an artist on top form, a demented screaming beast of a showman who seems to be channeling eight generations of dead bluesmen through his head at the same time, shuddering and screeching as he blasts them out through his throat and fingers. Musically it’s incredible; White Stripes shows seem to be entirely built of those tiny moments in other gigs where your favourite band deviates slightly for a fraction of a second during a song, when the world comes alive and your heart races at how much you love them. This is nothing new. There’s no doubting that the man is a genius, one of the few in the history of the medium to ever hold the title, and the film does a nice job at saluting him and bolstering the legend. But the real meat, red and dripping, comes straight from the eyes of his beloved ‘sister’ Meg. As the film progresses it centers more and more on her, the camera gazing intently as she listlessly peers from windows and across arctic beaches, cigarette fuzzing down, saying nothing. Humanity trickles out of the film whenever they share an interview, the strange glances and suppressed giggles suggesting a childish game being played on a global scale, a private joke stretched to a decade-long career. By the end it’s almost entirely Meg’s show as emotion begins to mix with the music, not the wall-cracking intensity of Jack’s blood squall guitars but something smaller and quieter, a tear on a piano pedal. Being the greatest bluesman of the modern age guarantees some soul; the man clearly breathes and pisses music every second of the day, and as musical portrait it’s something to be kept in a box and treasured. But the film goes some way to revealing that it’s Meg White who is something different, something smaller and greater. She’s his heart.
Starring Jack White and his sister, Meg
Y
Christmas at Cinema’s was business as usual. Comedy was half-cut by eleven, tripping over the table cloth while attempting to scream at the ceiling about how funny he was this time, Indie and Arthouse pulling him back and telling him to shut up; Blockbuster was sat in the big chair in the corner, smoking a Havana and giving them that look that meant he was threatening to cut them off. Period-Drama shrieked and tittered at his poorly scripted quip, before looking down sadly at her reflection in the ashtray and thinking how old she looked. Late again, Music Documentary sighed as he turned away from the window, flicked up his collar and slowly wandered off into the rain. Poor bastard has to work extra hard, pull every stylistic trick and quirk in his repertoire to get a fraction of the other’s meat. Because he’s different. He’s specialist. Music documentary has a tragic case of aggressive limited appeal.
A sobbing shame, because whatever you think, or completely fail to care to think about Jack White, man and music, he’s unarguably one of the few modern uber-buskers to earn the batted-about term of ‘rock star’. A frighteningly streamlined collision of talent and drive has culminated in a walking, guitar-lacerating embodiment of old fashioned blues and Warhol-level stylistic tropes, wrapped up in a seven foot tall red-clad doll of porcelain skin and scarecrow wig hair. He’s a terrifying man, a more terrifying star, a true enigma in an age of playing chum-buckets with your idols. Though seemingly a documentary, this isn’t a film about reveals, rather it’s another product of the singular vision that Jack White has brought to his life and career, all blacks, whites and reds, fuzzy cuts and oblique quotes. Any fan looking for gossip and rumour behind the three colour genius of his meticulous art-block-barrier will stomp off disappointed, but for anyone else in the world with a pulse that beats to a rhythm the film serves as a timeless portrait of an artist on top form, a demented screaming beast of a showman who seems to be channeling eight generations of dead bluesmen through his head at the same time, shuddering and screeching as he blasts them out through his throat and fingers. Musically it’s incredible; White Stripes shows seem to be entirely built of those tiny moments in other gigs where your favourite band deviates slightly for a fraction of a second during a song, when the world comes alive and your heart races at how much you love them. This is nothing new. There’s no doubting that the man is a genius, one of the few in the history of the medium to ever hold the title, and the film does a nice job at saluting him and bolstering the legend. But the real meat, red and dripping, comes straight from the eyes of his beloved ‘sister’ Meg. As the film progresses it centers more and more on her, the camera gazing intently as she listlessly peers from windows and across arctic beaches, cigarette fuzzing down, saying nothing. Humanity trickles out of the film whenever they share an interview, the strange glances and suppressed giggles suggesting a childish game being played on a global scale, a private joke stretched to a decade-long career. By the end it’s almost entirely Meg’s show as emotion begins to mix with the music, not the wall-cracking intensity of Jack’s blood squall guitars but something smaller and quieter, a tear on a piano pedal. Being the greatest bluesman of the modern age guarantees some soul; the man clearly breathes and pisses music every second of the day, and as musical portrait it’s something to be kept in a box and treasured. But the film goes some way to revealing that it’s Meg White who is something different, something smaller and greater. She’s his heart.
Thursday 18 March 2010
RIVER'S EDGE
dMYD DVD
Starring Keanu Reeves
Y
Who cares? There’s a body by the river and its eyes have turned white, it’s naked and dead and it’s one of your friends. Want a beer?
Generation X didn’t give a fuck about you and it certainly didn’t give a fuck about not caring. Bill and Ted didn’t care about history, John Bender didn’t care about his Saturdays and the kids down by the stream don’t care that one of their friends has been stripped and strangled by their buddy John, then left on the River’s Edge to rot. There’s laid back and there’s stone dead, the line blurring slowly through the film as the tone slowly shifts from bemused satire to horrifying reality. They really don’t care? They really feel nothing? No, they don’t, and no one understands. Your film has a problem when a blitzed-out, one-legged, blow-up doll dancing Dennis Hopper is the pivot of your moral compass, but boy he’s sympathetic, a relic from another time when anything meant something, when reacting against the man gave a reason to be. But this is 1986 and the hippies are dead.
The film is laconically stringent at projecting a glazed, frosted over view of American life, grey lenses and minimal music accentuating the nothingness of the town and its inhabitants. The performances of the teenagers are suitably understated and empty, sometimes evoking the callous dumb-bastardy of Heathers but more often showing off a frightening, more realistic void that’s entirely believable, even when sloped out of the open mouth of Admiral Whoah, the human Bonsai. And then there’s Crispin Glover. The professional genius/ waxwork scarecrow here gives a performance of such breathtaking toddler-screaming and monkey-flailing that it’s a wonder he got cast at all, and nearly serves to throw the whole thing out of whack with his scrawny Brando aping tantrum disco of distraction. You were told never to come in here, McFly. It’s the film’s one jarring piece of rubbish but then again, who cares? Overall it’s a great work of art about nothing, a portrait of a generation born to a world where everything’s possible but pointless, a frightening fable of what could happen if really, genuinely, no one cared.
It’s based on a true story.
Starring Keanu Reeves
Y
Who cares? There’s a body by the river and its eyes have turned white, it’s naked and dead and it’s one of your friends. Want a beer?
Generation X didn’t give a fuck about you and it certainly didn’t give a fuck about not caring. Bill and Ted didn’t care about history, John Bender didn’t care about his Saturdays and the kids down by the stream don’t care that one of their friends has been stripped and strangled by their buddy John, then left on the River’s Edge to rot. There’s laid back and there’s stone dead, the line blurring slowly through the film as the tone slowly shifts from bemused satire to horrifying reality. They really don’t care? They really feel nothing? No, they don’t, and no one understands. Your film has a problem when a blitzed-out, one-legged, blow-up doll dancing Dennis Hopper is the pivot of your moral compass, but boy he’s sympathetic, a relic from another time when anything meant something, when reacting against the man gave a reason to be. But this is 1986 and the hippies are dead.
The film is laconically stringent at projecting a glazed, frosted over view of American life, grey lenses and minimal music accentuating the nothingness of the town and its inhabitants. The performances of the teenagers are suitably understated and empty, sometimes evoking the callous dumb-bastardy of Heathers but more often showing off a frightening, more realistic void that’s entirely believable, even when sloped out of the open mouth of Admiral Whoah, the human Bonsai. And then there’s Crispin Glover. The professional genius/ waxwork scarecrow here gives a performance of such breathtaking toddler-screaming and monkey-flailing that it’s a wonder he got cast at all, and nearly serves to throw the whole thing out of whack with his scrawny Brando aping tantrum disco of distraction. You were told never to come in here, McFly. It’s the film’s one jarring piece of rubbish but then again, who cares? Overall it’s a great work of art about nothing, a portrait of a generation born to a world where everything’s possible but pointless, a frightening fable of what could happen if really, genuinely, no one cared.
It’s based on a true story.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
dMYD
Starring Johnny Depp
d
The review became a rant. The film is an assault on childhood. See this instead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeIXfdogJbA
Starring Johnny Depp
d
The review became a rant. The film is an assault on childhood. See this instead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeIXfdogJbA
Wednesday 17 March 2010
STAR WARS (Or Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, for the Pedantically-Challenged.)
dMYD DVD
Starring Harrison Ford
D
Swords made of light. A hovering car. Spaceships that scream. A severed arm on a bar-room floor. A gun the size of the moon, blown up by a farmhand with the voice of an ancient religious fanatic in his head. Nearly being crushed to death in an ocean of shit and refuse. A gay, English butler made of gold. Harrison Ford. Rescuing a princess. Midget scavengers. All the best lines given to a character only capable of emitting beeps and whistles. The phrase ‘Millennium Falcon’. Charred corpses. People called Biggs, Wedge and Han. A gigantic walking shag carpet that emits guttural, existential sobs and carries a rapid fire crossbow. Something called a ‘Moff’. The greatest score by a composer known for a large heap of greatest scores. Alec Guinness. Killing a smuggler by blasting a white hot laser into his alien testicles. Running and shouting. An extra banging his head on a door. A walking bin. A strong, independent Princess who maims and cusses whilst wielding the most improbable haircut in this or any or galaxy. ‘Let’s blow this thing and go home.’ A respiratory-impaired eight foot gimp with the power to strangle you with his thoughts. War, in the STARS.
Starring Harrison Ford
D
Swords made of light. A hovering car. Spaceships that scream. A severed arm on a bar-room floor. A gun the size of the moon, blown up by a farmhand with the voice of an ancient religious fanatic in his head. Nearly being crushed to death in an ocean of shit and refuse. A gay, English butler made of gold. Harrison Ford. Rescuing a princess. Midget scavengers. All the best lines given to a character only capable of emitting beeps and whistles. The phrase ‘Millennium Falcon’. Charred corpses. People called Biggs, Wedge and Han. A gigantic walking shag carpet that emits guttural, existential sobs and carries a rapid fire crossbow. Something called a ‘Moff’. The greatest score by a composer known for a large heap of greatest scores. Alec Guinness. Killing a smuggler by blasting a white hot laser into his alien testicles. Running and shouting. An extra banging his head on a door. A walking bin. A strong, independent Princess who maims and cusses whilst wielding the most improbable haircut in this or any or galaxy. ‘Let’s blow this thing and go home.’ A respiratory-impaired eight foot gimp with the power to strangle you with his thoughts. War, in the STARS.
SHUTTER ISLAND
dMYD
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio
M
It’s the ‘70s and dope-smoking, guilt-ridden Jewish celluloid-addict Marty ‘Eyebrows’ Scorcese is thrown into the back of a giant penis on wheels and deposited in an abandoned Technicolor warehouse by B-Movie Impresario and Poe-Acolyte Roger Corman. The bug eyed king of crap proceeds to pour eighty-six tons of industrial grade exploitation know-how into young Marty’s open mouth in a desperate bid to pass on everything he knows in case of an early syphilis-related death, before running out into the night and making seven films before he goes to bed. Marty, left to die, collapses under the weight of B-Movie technique and enters a forty year fever dream of masculinity issues, alienation and the Italian-American experience. But now he’s woken up, ran to the bathroom, and sicked up Shutter Island as a congealed mess of everything Corman crammed him with in ’72. So Scorcese has made a B-Movie then, but a B-Movie with a budget, a B-Movie based on a novel… a modern day crap-flick, with the integrity and good will that come from making nearly half a century of great movies. Somebody else already does this, with roughly half the respect. Tarantino’s Death Proof and Inglorious Basterds gloriously pastiched and applauded the genius of the Bs with a smile and a kick to the balls and despite being regressive and simplistic they were fun and funny, true to the spirit of the genre and directed with such verve and panache that nobody cared that they were essentially nonsense. Scorcese doesn’t quite work that way. Shutter Island is a grim, long, lonesome affair, devoid of fun but full of ridiculousness, with a twist that could be seen from Cardiff if it was locked in a room at the top of the Empire State Building. The dopey plot might have cut it back in the ‘50s with a bit more rough and readiness but here, buried under the slick camera work and insane period detail that propagate all Scorcese flicks it all seems a bit jaw-dragging and overblown. A festival of ham-acting is revived from the old days, but looks even stupider with all the HD-readiness and reality-bolstering CGI that scuttles around the corners of every modern thriller, meaning there’s no empathy for any of the characters or any real interest in what’s going to happen next or why. Taking the B-Movie approach to a thriller is obviously nice and cockle-warming for geriatric directors and walking picture-house-history deposits but essentially doesn’t work for an audience more attuned to subtlety and realism in its best pieces, crucially resulting in a yawning gap of non-thrills and heavy-handed exposition scenes. However, being Scorcese it’s all done with a sheen of class and professionalism, a cut above the other work-a-day wankers that Hollywood rents out on a regular basis to ruin ‘trilogies’ and prequels. It’s just not in the spirit of the Bs. Something of a confusing mish-mash oddity then, but shit-fuck-damnit not a very enjoyable one.
Jab this in your pipe and steam it instead, a true wedge of quality-non-quality from the cock of the bargain-basement walk: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=C2E68D68B0CCA888&search_query=roger+corman+fantastic+four Martin can still learn from the Master.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio
M
It’s the ‘70s and dope-smoking, guilt-ridden Jewish celluloid-addict Marty ‘Eyebrows’ Scorcese is thrown into the back of a giant penis on wheels and deposited in an abandoned Technicolor warehouse by B-Movie Impresario and Poe-Acolyte Roger Corman. The bug eyed king of crap proceeds to pour eighty-six tons of industrial grade exploitation know-how into young Marty’s open mouth in a desperate bid to pass on everything he knows in case of an early syphilis-related death, before running out into the night and making seven films before he goes to bed. Marty, left to die, collapses under the weight of B-Movie technique and enters a forty year fever dream of masculinity issues, alienation and the Italian-American experience. But now he’s woken up, ran to the bathroom, and sicked up Shutter Island as a congealed mess of everything Corman crammed him with in ’72. So Scorcese has made a B-Movie then, but a B-Movie with a budget, a B-Movie based on a novel… a modern day crap-flick, with the integrity and good will that come from making nearly half a century of great movies. Somebody else already does this, with roughly half the respect. Tarantino’s Death Proof and Inglorious Basterds gloriously pastiched and applauded the genius of the Bs with a smile and a kick to the balls and despite being regressive and simplistic they were fun and funny, true to the spirit of the genre and directed with such verve and panache that nobody cared that they were essentially nonsense. Scorcese doesn’t quite work that way. Shutter Island is a grim, long, lonesome affair, devoid of fun but full of ridiculousness, with a twist that could be seen from Cardiff if it was locked in a room at the top of the Empire State Building. The dopey plot might have cut it back in the ‘50s with a bit more rough and readiness but here, buried under the slick camera work and insane period detail that propagate all Scorcese flicks it all seems a bit jaw-dragging and overblown. A festival of ham-acting is revived from the old days, but looks even stupider with all the HD-readiness and reality-bolstering CGI that scuttles around the corners of every modern thriller, meaning there’s no empathy for any of the characters or any real interest in what’s going to happen next or why. Taking the B-Movie approach to a thriller is obviously nice and cockle-warming for geriatric directors and walking picture-house-history deposits but essentially doesn’t work for an audience more attuned to subtlety and realism in its best pieces, crucially resulting in a yawning gap of non-thrills and heavy-handed exposition scenes. However, being Scorcese it’s all done with a sheen of class and professionalism, a cut above the other work-a-day wankers that Hollywood rents out on a regular basis to ruin ‘trilogies’ and prequels. It’s just not in the spirit of the Bs. Something of a confusing mish-mash oddity then, but shit-fuck-damnit not a very enjoyable one.
Jab this in your pipe and steam it instead, a true wedge of quality-non-quality from the cock of the bargain-basement walk: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=C2E68D68B0CCA888&search_query=roger+corman+fantastic+four Martin can still learn from the Master.
Monday 15 March 2010
PONYO
dMYD
Starring Fantastically Descriptive Masterworks of Animation
Y
Well it’s not My Neighbour Totoro. And it’s certainly not Princess Mononoke. Studio Ghibli Films largely jump with a swath of bold colours into one of two categories; the epic, twisting, mind boggling genius of Miyazaki’s slightly more grown up works, coming of age fables carried aloft by an ancient mind fizzing on poppers and traditional woodcuts, and his simpler fare, his ones for the tots with their singing trees and buses made of cats. Ponyo swims neatly into the second group, a children’s picture book come to life in a standard tale of friendship, toy boats and A SEA WITH EYES THAT COMES ALIVE AND TRIES TO EAT YOUR MOTHER. It’s as deep as the ankle-high water that Saosuke spends much of his time splashing about in, but the usual Ghibli morphine drip of endless charm and mind-tapping flourishes of formless absurdity is still sat next to the bed, pumping away in a stream of incomparable animation. The sentences don’t get any longer than the one I just wrote and the usual flair for understatement and silence is adhered to, along with the myriad pleasures of everyday actions expertly animated. A film studio has never found so much quiet wonder in food and ripple effects, whilst the voice acting is unusually good for a Japanese translation, with the exception of Liam Neeson, the flame-haired king of the sea with an Irish Burr. Ireland has a sea. So what’s the problem?
Like the Princess and the Frog it’s not up there with the Studio’s A-List, but it’ll do until Miyazaki bows to the death threats and single-handedly adapts The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Starring Fantastically Descriptive Masterworks of Animation
Y
Well it’s not My Neighbour Totoro. And it’s certainly not Princess Mononoke. Studio Ghibli Films largely jump with a swath of bold colours into one of two categories; the epic, twisting, mind boggling genius of Miyazaki’s slightly more grown up works, coming of age fables carried aloft by an ancient mind fizzing on poppers and traditional woodcuts, and his simpler fare, his ones for the tots with their singing trees and buses made of cats. Ponyo swims neatly into the second group, a children’s picture book come to life in a standard tale of friendship, toy boats and A SEA WITH EYES THAT COMES ALIVE AND TRIES TO EAT YOUR MOTHER. It’s as deep as the ankle-high water that Saosuke spends much of his time splashing about in, but the usual Ghibli morphine drip of endless charm and mind-tapping flourishes of formless absurdity is still sat next to the bed, pumping away in a stream of incomparable animation. The sentences don’t get any longer than the one I just wrote and the usual flair for understatement and silence is adhered to, along with the myriad pleasures of everyday actions expertly animated. A film studio has never found so much quiet wonder in food and ripple effects, whilst the voice acting is unusually good for a Japanese translation, with the exception of Liam Neeson, the flame-haired king of the sea with an Irish Burr. Ireland has a sea. So what’s the problem?
Like the Princess and the Frog it’s not up there with the Studio’s A-List, but it’ll do until Miyazaki bows to the death threats and single-handedly adapts The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
BADLANDS
dMYD DVD
Starring Martin Sheen
Y
BADLAAAANDS YOU GOTTA LIVE IT EVERYDAY, LET THE BROKEN HEARTS STAND AS THE PRICE YOU GOTTA PAY! WE’LL KEEP PUSHIN’ TILL IT’S UNDERSTOOD AND THESE BADLANDS START TREATING US GOOOD…
Bonnie and Clyde for cynics and psychopaths, Badlands is another fine film in the outlaw-running, lawman-shafting genre, but tonally-totally different to the jolly blood letting of Parker ‘n’ Barrow. Essentially a commentary on the romanticised nature of the older film, and of love and violence in general, the film depicts the teenage hoodlum Kitt as a genuine sociopath, his swathes of uncaring squib-blasting overlaid with the endless laconic babble of Sissy Spacek’s bored girlfriend. The mix of romantic cliché and almost cartoon levels of violence makes the film seem like a fairy tale from the mind of Harold Shipman (If he was cool. Which he wasn’t.), whilst the soundtrack and genius images compliment the overall feel of sixty pound prints on a college student’s wall. The scene in the posh man’s house is a masterpiece of cross-generational, class-snubbing comedy, whilst you must enjoy Michael McIntyre if you don’t admire Kitt blasting towards a police helicopter with only a torn-off Cadillac door for protection. Knights in denim, fucking the world up. A stupidly cool movie, and it rips it out of the media two decades before Natural Born Killers. KABOOOOOOM!
Starring Martin Sheen
Y
BADLAAAANDS YOU GOTTA LIVE IT EVERYDAY, LET THE BROKEN HEARTS STAND AS THE PRICE YOU GOTTA PAY! WE’LL KEEP PUSHIN’ TILL IT’S UNDERSTOOD AND THESE BADLANDS START TREATING US GOOOD…
Bonnie and Clyde for cynics and psychopaths, Badlands is another fine film in the outlaw-running, lawman-shafting genre, but tonally-totally different to the jolly blood letting of Parker ‘n’ Barrow. Essentially a commentary on the romanticised nature of the older film, and of love and violence in general, the film depicts the teenage hoodlum Kitt as a genuine sociopath, his swathes of uncaring squib-blasting overlaid with the endless laconic babble of Sissy Spacek’s bored girlfriend. The mix of romantic cliché and almost cartoon levels of violence makes the film seem like a fairy tale from the mind of Harold Shipman (If he was cool. Which he wasn’t.), whilst the soundtrack and genius images compliment the overall feel of sixty pound prints on a college student’s wall. The scene in the posh man’s house is a masterpiece of cross-generational, class-snubbing comedy, whilst you must enjoy Michael McIntyre if you don’t admire Kitt blasting towards a police helicopter with only a torn-off Cadillac door for protection. Knights in denim, fucking the world up. A stupidly cool movie, and it rips it out of the media two decades before Natural Born Killers. KABOOOOOOM!
AVATAR
dMYD
Starring Myriad Blue Humanoids with Vaguely Rubbery Skin
M
Damn they look rubbery. Get up close. Let the 3D get up close to you. Look at those Navi, look at their skin. They look rubbery. The dawn of the digital picture is upon us and the ridiculously advanced computerized flesh looks rubbery. Like a man in a rubber suit.
So it’s one step forward and eight steps back then, stepping backwards and flumping back into that coke addled seat to watch the movie that took eighty six years to make and couldn’t find a likeable character. The mass experiment to develop the cameras of the omni-future, descending from timelines random to bring celluloid rapture to an undeserving world that couldn’t bring itself to think up a vaguely original story. The work of art with no script. The ‘unobtainium’. It’s easy to kick Avatar in James Cameron’s face because of the marketing, the steady tributary of revolutionary concepts and barefaced lies that propagated from the first inkling of his bashed about dream project. But taken just as a film it’s beautiful. It’s beautifully shot and beautifully conceptualized, with great leaps forward for the digital age of film. But it’s a Mills and Boon book printed and bound with diamond. Every aspect about it aside from the visuals is a film that you’ve seen before, from the acting to the script to the score. The themes are trite and basic, the characters stunted and stupid, the bad guys cliché-mongering American-cigar-chomp-yee-ha-boredom-deposits… But it looks like a Turner painting. In 3D. The audiences of one hundred years hence will sit and watch a clip in the New Johannesburg Celluloid Museum and think, ‘Wasn’t Heath Ledger amazing in The Dark Knight?’.
Starring Myriad Blue Humanoids with Vaguely Rubbery Skin
M
Damn they look rubbery. Get up close. Let the 3D get up close to you. Look at those Navi, look at their skin. They look rubbery. The dawn of the digital picture is upon us and the ridiculously advanced computerized flesh looks rubbery. Like a man in a rubber suit.
So it’s one step forward and eight steps back then, stepping backwards and flumping back into that coke addled seat to watch the movie that took eighty six years to make and couldn’t find a likeable character. The mass experiment to develop the cameras of the omni-future, descending from timelines random to bring celluloid rapture to an undeserving world that couldn’t bring itself to think up a vaguely original story. The work of art with no script. The ‘unobtainium’. It’s easy to kick Avatar in James Cameron’s face because of the marketing, the steady tributary of revolutionary concepts and barefaced lies that propagated from the first inkling of his bashed about dream project. But taken just as a film it’s beautiful. It’s beautifully shot and beautifully conceptualized, with great leaps forward for the digital age of film. But it’s a Mills and Boon book printed and bound with diamond. Every aspect about it aside from the visuals is a film that you’ve seen before, from the acting to the script to the score. The themes are trite and basic, the characters stunted and stupid, the bad guys cliché-mongering American-cigar-chomp-yee-ha-boredom-deposits… But it looks like a Turner painting. In 3D. The audiences of one hundred years hence will sit and watch a clip in the New Johannesburg Celluloid Museum and think, ‘Wasn’t Heath Ledger amazing in The Dark Knight?’.
TAXI DRIVER
dMYD DVD
Starring Robert De Niro
D
Ambiguity is a confusing thing. You’re never going to watch Forest Gump and label him a closet racist, or take Nightmare on Elm Street as a treatise on the Falklands War, though this would make both of them infinitely more interesting. ‘AND AH MISS YOU GINNY’ takes on a whole new meaning. Taxi Driver is so well painted and open to interpretation that it’s a completely different film depending on what sort of person you are and crucially what sort of person you think Travis Bickle is, if a person at all. Horror, war film, romance, tragic-comedy… though shot through with violence and beauty, it increasingly falls to De Niro’s performance as to how you view the piece, with him sometimes seeming a babbling pervert and others a clear-headed voice of old fashioned reason in a hopelessly confused shit-world. Watching it nowadays it all feels like a modern fairy tale, the endless streams of headlights and dive-theater signs creating an eerie otherworld of gothic castles and helpless virgins, with Bickle as the courageous knight strolling through searching for someone to save. His disgust with the world around him seems particularly noble in light of society’s recent acceptance of some of the film’s harsher themes, whilst the tiny glimpses of hope that blink through all seem to stem from his dedication to simple common sense. Of course, you might watch it and think that he’s a sick-inducing sociopath with a racist haircut and firearm addiction, like everyone else in America. But you’d be wrong. Or right, or something. Good film, clever film.
Starring Robert De Niro
D
Ambiguity is a confusing thing. You’re never going to watch Forest Gump and label him a closet racist, or take Nightmare on Elm Street as a treatise on the Falklands War, though this would make both of them infinitely more interesting. ‘AND AH MISS YOU GINNY’ takes on a whole new meaning. Taxi Driver is so well painted and open to interpretation that it’s a completely different film depending on what sort of person you are and crucially what sort of person you think Travis Bickle is, if a person at all. Horror, war film, romance, tragic-comedy… though shot through with violence and beauty, it increasingly falls to De Niro’s performance as to how you view the piece, with him sometimes seeming a babbling pervert and others a clear-headed voice of old fashioned reason in a hopelessly confused shit-world. Watching it nowadays it all feels like a modern fairy tale, the endless streams of headlights and dive-theater signs creating an eerie otherworld of gothic castles and helpless virgins, with Bickle as the courageous knight strolling through searching for someone to save. His disgust with the world around him seems particularly noble in light of society’s recent acceptance of some of the film’s harsher themes, whilst the tiny glimpses of hope that blink through all seem to stem from his dedication to simple common sense. Of course, you might watch it and think that he’s a sick-inducing sociopath with a racist haircut and firearm addiction, like everyone else in America. But you’d be wrong. Or right, or something. Good film, clever film.
FROM PARIS WITH LOVE
dMYD
Starring John Travolta
d
I’ve seen the full trailer for Kick-Ass now, and it does look very good. After nearly a decade of CGI catching up to comics in order to make superhero films… kick ass, it finally seems as if clever directors are bringing a second wave of all-new, all-different hero flicks to piss about with the formula, such as the forthcoming ‘A RENZOKUKEN TO THE FACE OF THE ENTIRE FILM INDUSTRY, THE MOVIE’ and this, Mark Millar’s hyperjumpy teen-kicking fantasy punktacular. The colours are as bold as spitting in Barack Obama’s face, and the action looks suitably wire-tastic, specifically the bits where a ten year old girl literally kicks a gangster in the arse whilst shooting him in the face. Funny too, with swearing and dick jokes a-plenty, like going to a Blink 182 concert in ’96 with Jason Statham. Most unbelievable award goes to Nicholas Cage though, who finally seems to be doing something good in something good. A return to greatness? This greatness? http://cageloveskart.ytmnd.com/. I’m looking forward to it, and it looks 860,000 times better than Wanted.
From Paris With Love is pure shit.
Starring John Travolta
d
I’ve seen the full trailer for Kick-Ass now, and it does look very good. After nearly a decade of CGI catching up to comics in order to make superhero films… kick ass, it finally seems as if clever directors are bringing a second wave of all-new, all-different hero flicks to piss about with the formula, such as the forthcoming ‘A RENZOKUKEN TO THE FACE OF THE ENTIRE FILM INDUSTRY, THE MOVIE’ and this, Mark Millar’s hyperjumpy teen-kicking fantasy punktacular. The colours are as bold as spitting in Barack Obama’s face, and the action looks suitably wire-tastic, specifically the bits where a ten year old girl literally kicks a gangster in the arse whilst shooting him in the face. Funny too, with swearing and dick jokes a-plenty, like going to a Blink 182 concert in ’96 with Jason Statham. Most unbelievable award goes to Nicholas Cage though, who finally seems to be doing something good in something good. A return to greatness? This greatness? http://cageloveskart.ytmnd.com/. I’m looking forward to it, and it looks 860,000 times better than Wanted.
From Paris With Love is pure shit.
E.T THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL
dMYD DVD
Starring A Charming Puppet or a Soulless CGI Ninja Turtle, Depending on Which Year you were Born
Y
E.T isn’t a family film. It’s not for everyone. Your fifty-eight year old Uncle, pissing, slurring his words and making crude fist motions for whiskey and tits isn’t going to be placated by the heart-warming story of an elderly space penis desperate to go home. So not fun for all then, not a film for family but rather about family, about connection and about trust. Spielberg’s soppiest jump to sci-fi nicks a lot from his own Close Encounters of the Third Kind (the lighting, the small town weirdery), but sugar carpet-bombs everything else into oblivion with cross-dressing comedy interludes, fish out of water slapstick and an overreliance on the admittedly pretty good child actors. The film isn’t funtastic, but it is sweet, with a simplistic fable of lonely people finding friendship that resonates through the pop-culture references and broken family tear-grabbing. Drew Barrymore’s never been better, and the first time that the bike flies over the woods your sad, jaded heart will splutter and gasp out a trickle of nicotine-negative, possibly for the last time. E.T kills with love.
Starring A Charming Puppet or a Soulless CGI Ninja Turtle, Depending on Which Year you were Born
Y
E.T isn’t a family film. It’s not for everyone. Your fifty-eight year old Uncle, pissing, slurring his words and making crude fist motions for whiskey and tits isn’t going to be placated by the heart-warming story of an elderly space penis desperate to go home. So not fun for all then, not a film for family but rather about family, about connection and about trust. Spielberg’s soppiest jump to sci-fi nicks a lot from his own Close Encounters of the Third Kind (the lighting, the small town weirdery), but sugar carpet-bombs everything else into oblivion with cross-dressing comedy interludes, fish out of water slapstick and an overreliance on the admittedly pretty good child actors. The film isn’t funtastic, but it is sweet, with a simplistic fable of lonely people finding friendship that resonates through the pop-culture references and broken family tear-grabbing. Drew Barrymore’s never been better, and the first time that the bike flies over the woods your sad, jaded heart will splutter and gasp out a trickle of nicotine-negative, possibly for the last time. E.T kills with love.
UP IN THE AIR
dMYD
Starring George Clooney
Y
Any pretentious film student/town drunk will scream at you that all films say something big and important about their own time, from Apocalypse Now (WE WERE AT WAR) to Sleepless in Seattle (NO ONE LIKES TOM HANKS). Sometimes it’s blindingly obvious, sometimes it’s buried in such swathes of subtlety and surface prettiness that a bearded muso will still sick up his theory that Donnie Darko was about feudal Japanese clansmen at a dinner party three full years after the film’s release. Up in the Air belongs largely in the former camp. A daringly bleak picture of being a modern day human bipedal, it stands as one of the few great carved monoliths of western civilization’s confused status at the beginning of the new millennium and it does it by having George Clooney make a young woman burst into tears by telling her how rubbish everything is. Essentially a romantic comedy, the film skips between many aspects of human connection, some good, some war-crime atrocious, using Clooney’s latte-smooth one man firing squad to contain and embody all points in-between of being a stunted animal forced to live in a world of wireless broadband and LCD. Clooney generally plays the same character in all his films, but here his stereotype is dumped into such an odd and depressing cycle of events that an entirely new performance emerges, one that barges about with the lowest dregs of disconnection but retains the crucial sparks of decency needed to keep an audience interested. Amazingly shot throughout, the pacing of the locations and the odd, fake brightness of the airports and hotels present a world of pointless, perfunctory opulence, a system going through motions it no longer entirely understands. For popcorn spilling gurners it’s a film about the recession, but for everyone else it’s a film about everyone else, finally turning romantic cliché on it’s face and presenting a daring new aerial-path for human satisfaction to follow in an increasingly futuretastic new century. From the guy who directed Juno. Colour me impressed.
Starring George Clooney
Y
Any pretentious film student/town drunk will scream at you that all films say something big and important about their own time, from Apocalypse Now (WE WERE AT WAR) to Sleepless in Seattle (NO ONE LIKES TOM HANKS). Sometimes it’s blindingly obvious, sometimes it’s buried in such swathes of subtlety and surface prettiness that a bearded muso will still sick up his theory that Donnie Darko was about feudal Japanese clansmen at a dinner party three full years after the film’s release. Up in the Air belongs largely in the former camp. A daringly bleak picture of being a modern day human bipedal, it stands as one of the few great carved monoliths of western civilization’s confused status at the beginning of the new millennium and it does it by having George Clooney make a young woman burst into tears by telling her how rubbish everything is. Essentially a romantic comedy, the film skips between many aspects of human connection, some good, some war-crime atrocious, using Clooney’s latte-smooth one man firing squad to contain and embody all points in-between of being a stunted animal forced to live in a world of wireless broadband and LCD. Clooney generally plays the same character in all his films, but here his stereotype is dumped into such an odd and depressing cycle of events that an entirely new performance emerges, one that barges about with the lowest dregs of disconnection but retains the crucial sparks of decency needed to keep an audience interested. Amazingly shot throughout, the pacing of the locations and the odd, fake brightness of the airports and hotels present a world of pointless, perfunctory opulence, a system going through motions it no longer entirely understands. For popcorn spilling gurners it’s a film about the recession, but for everyone else it’s a film about everyone else, finally turning romantic cliché on it’s face and presenting a daring new aerial-path for human satisfaction to follow in an increasingly futuretastic new century. From the guy who directed Juno. Colour me impressed.
MAN-THING
dMYD DVD
Starring Steve Parker from Neighbours
M
Being a Marvel movie that nobody knows or cares about, not a Dutch Pornography Instructional Video. Obscurest of the obscure Marvel comics headliners, Man-Thing is a supernatural defender of swamps and the South and stuff and… Jesus. It’s poorly filmed, poorly directed, badly acted, terrible, dimly lit, hastily though-out, gimpily plotted, stupid, vaguely racist, unfunny, badly scripted (that’s no man, it’s a MAN-THING, man!), hideous, unfaithful to the source-material, misogynistic, crap and terrible again, with a special effects budget of 58 dollars and a villain who looks like an obese Terry Gilliam.
Consequently, it’s better than Daredevil, The Punisher, The Punisher: War Zone, Blade Trinity, Elektra, X-Men: The Last Stand, Ghost Rider, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and the upcoming Ghost Rider 2.
Starring Steve Parker from Neighbours
M
Being a Marvel movie that nobody knows or cares about, not a Dutch Pornography Instructional Video. Obscurest of the obscure Marvel comics headliners, Man-Thing is a supernatural defender of swamps and the South and stuff and… Jesus. It’s poorly filmed, poorly directed, badly acted, terrible, dimly lit, hastily though-out, gimpily plotted, stupid, vaguely racist, unfunny, badly scripted (that’s no man, it’s a MAN-THING, man!), hideous, unfaithful to the source-material, misogynistic, crap and terrible again, with a special effects budget of 58 dollars and a villain who looks like an obese Terry Gilliam.
Consequently, it’s better than Daredevil, The Punisher, The Punisher: War Zone, Blade Trinity, Elektra, X-Men: The Last Stand, Ghost Rider, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and the upcoming Ghost Rider 2.
THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG
dMYD
Starring Oprah Winfrey
M
Well, it’s not Aladdin. And it’s certainly not The Lion King. There’s a lot of lovely things jumping about here, not least of all Disney’s courageous return to the distant past of cave paintings and scribbles on the backs of hands, a retroactive approach that’ll have dribbling old cultural codgers literally dribbling with glee. And it looks amazing, way better than the 90s output did, all swirls and fancy lights and smooth movements, with one bang-smash musical sequence looking like a swath of 1920s Jazz posters brought to omnicolour life. The problem which smacks these amphibian try-hards away from the studio’s glory days lies with the plot and characters, the former being an overly simplistic, unengaging fairy tale pastiche, the latter being a boring mess of stereotypes and carbon-copies from previous efforts. The fat alligator is literally cut and pasted from Peter Pan, whilst the others all sing and dance and wince through a hesitant script and uncatchworthy songs. It’s like Oliver and Company. Tiana, the main draw, does deserve plaudits for not only being the first black princess, but also having a modernized take on the fairy-tale journey; she wants to start her own business, and make the handsome prince her subservient bitch in doing so. Go 2010! Girl Power and… no, actually, it is quite refreshing. So, yes, it’s good, but it’s not great. A tentative step in the right direction for a studio which was bludgeoning itself in the skull with a hammer made of hardened thousand dollar notes a few years back. Little Mermaid wasn’t as good as Beauty and the Beast, was it? WAS IT? No. All hands on Rapunzel….
Starring Oprah Winfrey
M
Well, it’s not Aladdin. And it’s certainly not The Lion King. There’s a lot of lovely things jumping about here, not least of all Disney’s courageous return to the distant past of cave paintings and scribbles on the backs of hands, a retroactive approach that’ll have dribbling old cultural codgers literally dribbling with glee. And it looks amazing, way better than the 90s output did, all swirls and fancy lights and smooth movements, with one bang-smash musical sequence looking like a swath of 1920s Jazz posters brought to omnicolour life. The problem which smacks these amphibian try-hards away from the studio’s glory days lies with the plot and characters, the former being an overly simplistic, unengaging fairy tale pastiche, the latter being a boring mess of stereotypes and carbon-copies from previous efforts. The fat alligator is literally cut and pasted from Peter Pan, whilst the others all sing and dance and wince through a hesitant script and uncatchworthy songs. It’s like Oliver and Company. Tiana, the main draw, does deserve plaudits for not only being the first black princess, but also having a modernized take on the fairy-tale journey; she wants to start her own business, and make the handsome prince her subservient bitch in doing so. Go 2010! Girl Power and… no, actually, it is quite refreshing. So, yes, it’s good, but it’s not great. A tentative step in the right direction for a studio which was bludgeoning itself in the skull with a hammer made of hardened thousand dollar notes a few years back. Little Mermaid wasn’t as good as Beauty and the Beast, was it? WAS IT? No. All hands on Rapunzel….
BONNIE AND CLYDE
dMYD DVD
Starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway
D
Outlaw fiction relies on the cast iron-steel alloy fact that all of us, no matter how boring or polite or employed by Child Protection Services, all of us desperately, subconsciously want to rocket around the sunlit plains of Middle America, shooting, maiming, killing, thieving and fucking in a whirling dervish of pure brilliance and joie de vivre. Bonnie and Clyde does all of that, with impeccable style (Warren Beatty looks sharp as a sharpened flick knife even wearing shades with a lens shot out) as well as that other magic ingredient to living and stuff: love. Certainly in the upper Cassavetes-Balconies of coolest movies ever made, the film is awesomely shot throughout, from the Greysville crawl of the opening scenes to the flash fire bang-bang-death-run of the closing seconds. Everyone jumps into their roles so brilliantly that you start to think you’re watching some forgotten newsreel from a parallel earth where people weren’t dicks, whilst Faye Dunaway’s performance is still probably the most eye-laceratingly attractive ever committed to celluloid, at least until Kathy Bates finally gets round to remaking And God Created Woman. But the thing that flicks it away from being the greatest music video ever made is the undercurrent of real, soul-jarringly wonderful love that beats through the piece from the couple’s first meeting. This is a world where nothing matters except Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, and the film conveys their relationship so well that the audience knows this for a fact every time they look into each other’s eyes. Especially the last time.
Starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway
D
Outlaw fiction relies on the cast iron-steel alloy fact that all of us, no matter how boring or polite or employed by Child Protection Services, all of us desperately, subconsciously want to rocket around the sunlit plains of Middle America, shooting, maiming, killing, thieving and fucking in a whirling dervish of pure brilliance and joie de vivre. Bonnie and Clyde does all of that, with impeccable style (Warren Beatty looks sharp as a sharpened flick knife even wearing shades with a lens shot out) as well as that other magic ingredient to living and stuff: love. Certainly in the upper Cassavetes-Balconies of coolest movies ever made, the film is awesomely shot throughout, from the Greysville crawl of the opening scenes to the flash fire bang-bang-death-run of the closing seconds. Everyone jumps into their roles so brilliantly that you start to think you’re watching some forgotten newsreel from a parallel earth where people weren’t dicks, whilst Faye Dunaway’s performance is still probably the most eye-laceratingly attractive ever committed to celluloid, at least until Kathy Bates finally gets round to remaking And God Created Woman. But the thing that flicks it away from being the greatest music video ever made is the undercurrent of real, soul-jarringly wonderful love that beats through the piece from the couple’s first meeting. This is a world where nothing matters except Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, and the film conveys their relationship so well that the audience knows this for a fact every time they look into each other’s eyes. Especially the last time.
YOUTH IN REVOLT
dMYD
Starring Michael Cera
M
Do you like Michael Cera? I like Michael Cera. He’s a prince of downbeat, an envoy of perfect reactionary shots and doe-eyed monkey boy indie romanticism. He’s not annoying yet. If you sort of like Michael Cera, you’ll sort-of-like Youth in Revolt. You’ll sort-of-like ‘The Guy From The Hangover’s’ chubtastic cameo as a failbag stepfather, you’ll sort-of-like the pretentious ridiculousness of a drawn-out summer romance based on a love of French art-house cinema, with superfluous gay jokes. The film rambles along, gently tugging at your attention with a peppering of quirky narrative spikes (running from the pigs, squirreling out on mushrooms, Steve Buscemi) to keep you interested. The narration is pleasant, the acting’s great and little Mikey even gets to change his shtick for a while towards a promising future role as a chain-smoking paedophile. It’s good. It’s a good film, but it’s not that funny. Don’t expect a chuckle factory and you’ll be pleasantly entertained by the every-so-slightly edgy niceness of it all. Diverting, or something, but this is hardly Cera’s masterpiece. Time to dig out some Arrested Development (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Arrested-Development-Complete-Seasons-1-3/dp/B002JIN1KC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1267007417&sr=8-1) or wait until August for ‘A RENZOKUKEN TO THE FACE OF THE ENTIRE FILM INDUSTRY, THE MOVIE’ for his reason for existing on the Earth.
Starring Michael Cera
M
Do you like Michael Cera? I like Michael Cera. He’s a prince of downbeat, an envoy of perfect reactionary shots and doe-eyed monkey boy indie romanticism. He’s not annoying yet. If you sort of like Michael Cera, you’ll sort-of-like Youth in Revolt. You’ll sort-of-like ‘The Guy From The Hangover’s’ chubtastic cameo as a failbag stepfather, you’ll sort-of-like the pretentious ridiculousness of a drawn-out summer romance based on a love of French art-house cinema, with superfluous gay jokes. The film rambles along, gently tugging at your attention with a peppering of quirky narrative spikes (running from the pigs, squirreling out on mushrooms, Steve Buscemi) to keep you interested. The narration is pleasant, the acting’s great and little Mikey even gets to change his shtick for a while towards a promising future role as a chain-smoking paedophile. It’s good. It’s a good film, but it’s not that funny. Don’t expect a chuckle factory and you’ll be pleasantly entertained by the every-so-slightly edgy niceness of it all. Diverting, or something, but this is hardly Cera’s masterpiece. Time to dig out some Arrested Development (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Arrested-Development-Complete-Seasons-1-3/dp/B002JIN1KC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1267007417&sr=8-1) or wait until August for ‘A RENZOKUKEN TO THE FACE OF THE ENTIRE FILM INDUSTRY, THE MOVIE’ for his reason for existing on the Earth.
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