A Message from the Doc
Welcome Action lovers.
Hello, hello, hello I AM DR.ACTION, and if you are reading this, you will have guessed me and the Kick Ass Kid are venturing into the written word of action. Reviews, news and our thoughts on the greatest movie genre ever. FACT.
I’ve been trying to figure what my first post should be, and really there is no better way to start than telling you why I love this genre so much.
It’s simple right, who doesn’t want to be the lethal highly trained guy, who dispenses with the bad guy’s, say’s a cheesy one liner and saves the day. In the case of The Expendables, is there a better way to do it, than with your mates at your side?
In my eyes thats what action flicks are, a great way for men or women to sit back and cheer on the good guys, and just enjoy yourself. Gunfights, fistfghts, karate chopping and roundhousing kicking onscreen is fun, then afterwards talking about the awesomeness you’ve just witnessed onscreen, or during as our podcast proves.
I seriously love action movies, but I can see the funny side of them, thats why myself and the Kick Ass Kid have such fun recording the podcasts, you should never think we do not fully love and appreciate these gems.
Some have their Rom Coms that bring them closer together and make them aaawwwww.
Well we have action and it brings us together and makes us go YIPPEE-KI-YAY,
MOTHERFUCKER!!!!
So please listen to us, contact us, read our reviews and thoughts, after all, 2013 is the year of action, and if we have anything to do it with, every year after.
from Dr.Action
Hello, hello, hello I AM DR.ACTION, and if you are reading this, you will have guessed me and the Kick Ass Kid are venturing into the written word of action. Reviews, news and our thoughts on the greatest movie genre ever. FACT.
I’ve been trying to figure what my first post should be, and really there is no better way to start than telling you why I love this genre so much.
It’s simple right, who doesn’t want to be the lethal highly trained guy, who dispenses with the bad guy’s, say’s a cheesy one liner and saves the day. In the case of The Expendables, is there a better way to do it, than with your mates at your side?
In my eyes thats what action flicks are, a great way for men or women to sit back and cheer on the good guys, and just enjoy yourself. Gunfights, fistfghts, karate chopping and roundhousing kicking onscreen is fun, then afterwards talking about the awesomeness you’ve just witnessed onscreen, or during as our podcast proves.
I seriously love action movies, but I can see the funny side of them, thats why myself and the Kick Ass Kid have such fun recording the podcasts, you should never think we do not fully love and appreciate these gems.
Some have their Rom Coms that bring them closer together and make them aaawwwww.
Well we have action and it brings us together and makes us go YIPPEE-KI-YAY,
MOTHERFUCKER!!!!
So please listen to us, contact us, read our reviews and thoughts, after all, 2013 is the year of action, and if we have anything to do it with, every year after.
from Dr.Action
Finding Your Manself At The Movies
Men (and I am talking about the human gender and not their genitals when I say this) come in all shapes, sizes and types.
I will give some of you a moment for the innuendo fueled snickering to subside, and then I will continue.
Sure the image of us as sports and tits loving, lager beer swilling yahoos with a Neanderthal mentality may seem an easy go-to generalisation sometimes, but really our gender is rich, complex and confused. No, really.
The geeky Brit-com Spaced had three main, but very different, examples of the male psyche and, to quote John Hughes (another master of the subject), in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions: Tim was a Geek, Brian was an Artist and Mike was a wannabe action man; but the show hypothesized that when you get 2 or more males in a room and start some fake gun-play, they would all join in regardless of race, creed, class, style or hobbies.
Now while I myself would have no problem still as a grown man flailing about like a child engaged in a fictional battle with some of my sillier friends, I know plenty of repressed and/or defiantly ‘adult’ chaps that would look forcibly down their nose and scoff at such a bonding ritual (despite, no doubt, strangling that rambunctious child deep within their soul or maybe smothering it with a cushion so they didn’t have to hear its cries of agony and longing).
So I would make an addendum to Spaced’s previously stated claim, and say that the single element that unites us as a gender is action movies.
Now before I go on, I am not being in any way sexist. Women can love action movies too. My wife, for one, loves them and introduced me to some that would become life-long favorites (I am not above calling myself a little inexperienced on the breadth of action available before I met her); but this article is purely speaking to one half of the population I am afraid, the ones with the funny looking, dangly genitals that we were all snickering about just a few paragraphs earlier.
Action Movies, like men, come in a variety of forms. Sure they might end up in the same place (exploding and/or on fire) but depending on their star or stars and their positioning on the fabled A, B and C Lists of Hollywood, they might take very different journeys, or distribution if you will, to get there.
While there has been action in the movies since their very inception (Inception, too, was, in its own way, a trumped up action movie funnily enough), the era that I am currently splashing around in is the late 80’s / early 90’s golden age of either ‘play on a few screens somewhere in the mid-west’ or straight-to-video action gems. I realise I am late to the party, and I understand that there are people more qualified than me out there to wax rhapsodic about the misunderstood genius of Michael Dudikoff, or folks who can reel off the name of every Cynthia Rothrock movie. I mean, up until 5 years ago my pure action knowledge was restricted mainly, but not exclusively, to the Die Hard and Leathal Weapon Franchises! But firstly, this article isn’t necessarily for the hardcore fans and freaks of this high-kicking kingdom; and secondly I can learn fast.
So watch your back Jack, I am coming through!
I presume, although I have never done the research, that you could stop a gent of any age on a street corner in any part of the globe, and they would know the name of someone like Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger (although they might not be able to pronounce that last one).
I would also say that maybe 1 in 4 would know someone of the level of a Van Damme, a Steven Seagal or a Dolph Lundgren; but how many would know a Jeff Speakman? a Sho Kosugi? or a Leo Fong?
And that’s where this article slowly moves from being about how men love action movies, and how there is a rich seam of action movies to suit all men, to being about movie fanatics and just what kind of man are you anyway, huh?
Like almost any genre, thanks to the VHS revolution of the mid 80’s and distributors popping up everywhere dying to make a quick buck on the back of some barely bearable b-movie, peel back the A List Hollywood layer and you will find a labyrinth of seemingly never ending tunnels (not to mix analogies), each one of them containing film after film, each one more obscure and fascinating than the last. Some may be content to go and see the latest Bourne or Bond flick in the cinema and watch the stunt men of millionaire actors engage in the latest fight/chase trend from ‘the streets’ and that would be fine. I go see those movies and they are fantastic, but if someone asked you to name an action star would your first answer really be Matt Damon or Daniel ‘pouty’ Craig?
Others though are going to want more, or will go to the opposite extreme, to become collectors and completists. They used to spend their days rifling through endless racks of clamshell VHS cases trying to find something they’d never heard of before with a glistening man’s fists on the front and a title featuring the word ‘death’ or ‘ninja’, and now they spend their days searching Amazon, E-Bay or any number of online DVD retailers for films starring people like Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson or anything that features a mutant killer robot, a villain in a bad 80s shiny suit with a female sidekick that looks like Chewbacca in leather hot pants, or an exploding oil rig (in fact, preferably many exploding oil rigs).
I know of what I speak; with the films of Bruce Campbell I was that guy, and any weird films like Traxx (a 1988 film about a highlighted and feathered mullet sporting ex-soldier dude who just wanted to settle in a small town and bake horrible cookies but keeps getting embroiled in trouble), or something like Dead Heat (another 1988 film that I came across sitting on the shelf in the back of a second hand record store), well so much the better.
Film fans have this strange burning urge inside them to know something more obscure than the other guy; to find something only a tiny community of people know about and treasure it. Which is ironic, when deep down all any of us really wants to do is belong; just not to any group big enough so we cease being the best one in it I guess.
It’s either that, or so-called money-making ‘popular’ movies are such lazy piles of crass horseshit that us folks who want to watch something genuinely different have to hunt a bit. Probably six of one and half a dozen of the other, as my old man used to say.
So anyway, as I had always been a film fan, and had always been a little bit of a jack of all trades where being creative was concerned, I decided to blend the two and I started a blog. Then 8 months later I started a podcast (both called The After Movie Diner), and 8 months after that I started ANOTHER podcast focusing specifically on action movies (Dr.Action and the Kick Ass Kid Commentaries). One of the reasons for telling you all of this (and indeed the name of this article for all those still paying attention) is that doing any internet venture leads you, just in the promoting of it, to meet other people who are normally roughly in the same ballpark. And when you meet this community (because 95% of the people I have met online since the beginning have been incredibly nice and now are practically family!) you realise two things:
1. You don’t know half as much about movies as you pretend to know to the friends who don’t know any better
and
2. Somewhere along the line you had forgotten that there is a wide, rich and varied world in every genre just waiting for you to delve right in.
For me these realisations both humbled me a little and made me hungry for movies again, not in a Steve Seagal way where I went on a gut inflating rampage devouring films like they were chocolate cake, but in a way that I hadn’t been in almost a decade; specifically, and most recently, action films.
So as I step and stumble through this world of films featuring sweaty muscle bound goons with across-the-board bad hair and bad clothing choices who break arms, bounce crims heads off the hoods of cars and make things go BOOOOOM! I come across people on twitter, websites, blogs, podcasts, facebook posts and forums that give me info, new film titles, actors I could look out for and lead me further down the path to…
I don’t know what…
maybe a film where Louis Gosset Jnr, Al Leong and Robert Davi all have to wrestle a giant, genetically-mutated, electronic boa constricter on a runaway train loaded with conflict Diamonds, that is in the process of being hi-jacked by a Lithuanian splinter group hell-bent on using the diamonds to buy a new super weapon being manufactured by a ludicrously pock-marked gentleman who has decided to wear a series of man-boob-exposingly-tight turtle necks. He is the defecting ex-partner of a New York cop, played by Brian Dennehy, who is down on his luck trying to solve his last case when his daughter gets kidnapped by a death metal band and a megalomaniacal robot Orangutan who is secretly a cover for James Hong and Yaphett Koto who are in league with the Lithuanians as they are trying to get their new, highly potent and illegal strain of cocaine fueled fire arms into Eastern Europe… or something…
My point being, I found a part of my manself again. I reconnected with the fan in me through venturing out there reading and listening to things, and I am learning more about my manself with each man-movie I watch.
Will today be the day that you find your manself?
Written by The Kick Ass Kid
I will give some of you a moment for the innuendo fueled snickering to subside, and then I will continue.
Sure the image of us as sports and tits loving, lager beer swilling yahoos with a Neanderthal mentality may seem an easy go-to generalisation sometimes, but really our gender is rich, complex and confused. No, really.
The geeky Brit-com Spaced had three main, but very different, examples of the male psyche and, to quote John Hughes (another master of the subject), in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions: Tim was a Geek, Brian was an Artist and Mike was a wannabe action man; but the show hypothesized that when you get 2 or more males in a room and start some fake gun-play, they would all join in regardless of race, creed, class, style or hobbies.
Now while I myself would have no problem still as a grown man flailing about like a child engaged in a fictional battle with some of my sillier friends, I know plenty of repressed and/or defiantly ‘adult’ chaps that would look forcibly down their nose and scoff at such a bonding ritual (despite, no doubt, strangling that rambunctious child deep within their soul or maybe smothering it with a cushion so they didn’t have to hear its cries of agony and longing).
So I would make an addendum to Spaced’s previously stated claim, and say that the single element that unites us as a gender is action movies.
Now before I go on, I am not being in any way sexist. Women can love action movies too. My wife, for one, loves them and introduced me to some that would become life-long favorites (I am not above calling myself a little inexperienced on the breadth of action available before I met her); but this article is purely speaking to one half of the population I am afraid, the ones with the funny looking, dangly genitals that we were all snickering about just a few paragraphs earlier.
Action Movies, like men, come in a variety of forms. Sure they might end up in the same place (exploding and/or on fire) but depending on their star or stars and their positioning on the fabled A, B and C Lists of Hollywood, they might take very different journeys, or distribution if you will, to get there.
While there has been action in the movies since their very inception (Inception, too, was, in its own way, a trumped up action movie funnily enough), the era that I am currently splashing around in is the late 80’s / early 90’s golden age of either ‘play on a few screens somewhere in the mid-west’ or straight-to-video action gems. I realise I am late to the party, and I understand that there are people more qualified than me out there to wax rhapsodic about the misunderstood genius of Michael Dudikoff, or folks who can reel off the name of every Cynthia Rothrock movie. I mean, up until 5 years ago my pure action knowledge was restricted mainly, but not exclusively, to the Die Hard and Leathal Weapon Franchises! But firstly, this article isn’t necessarily for the hardcore fans and freaks of this high-kicking kingdom; and secondly I can learn fast.
So watch your back Jack, I am coming through!
I presume, although I have never done the research, that you could stop a gent of any age on a street corner in any part of the globe, and they would know the name of someone like Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger (although they might not be able to pronounce that last one).
I would also say that maybe 1 in 4 would know someone of the level of a Van Damme, a Steven Seagal or a Dolph Lundgren; but how many would know a Jeff Speakman? a Sho Kosugi? or a Leo Fong?
And that’s where this article slowly moves from being about how men love action movies, and how there is a rich seam of action movies to suit all men, to being about movie fanatics and just what kind of man are you anyway, huh?
Like almost any genre, thanks to the VHS revolution of the mid 80’s and distributors popping up everywhere dying to make a quick buck on the back of some barely bearable b-movie, peel back the A List Hollywood layer and you will find a labyrinth of seemingly never ending tunnels (not to mix analogies), each one of them containing film after film, each one more obscure and fascinating than the last. Some may be content to go and see the latest Bourne or Bond flick in the cinema and watch the stunt men of millionaire actors engage in the latest fight/chase trend from ‘the streets’ and that would be fine. I go see those movies and they are fantastic, but if someone asked you to name an action star would your first answer really be Matt Damon or Daniel ‘pouty’ Craig?
Others though are going to want more, or will go to the opposite extreme, to become collectors and completists. They used to spend their days rifling through endless racks of clamshell VHS cases trying to find something they’d never heard of before with a glistening man’s fists on the front and a title featuring the word ‘death’ or ‘ninja’, and now they spend their days searching Amazon, E-Bay or any number of online DVD retailers for films starring people like Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson or anything that features a mutant killer robot, a villain in a bad 80s shiny suit with a female sidekick that looks like Chewbacca in leather hot pants, or an exploding oil rig (in fact, preferably many exploding oil rigs).
I know of what I speak; with the films of Bruce Campbell I was that guy, and any weird films like Traxx (a 1988 film about a highlighted and feathered mullet sporting ex-soldier dude who just wanted to settle in a small town and bake horrible cookies but keeps getting embroiled in trouble), or something like Dead Heat (another 1988 film that I came across sitting on the shelf in the back of a second hand record store), well so much the better.
Film fans have this strange burning urge inside them to know something more obscure than the other guy; to find something only a tiny community of people know about and treasure it. Which is ironic, when deep down all any of us really wants to do is belong; just not to any group big enough so we cease being the best one in it I guess.
It’s either that, or so-called money-making ‘popular’ movies are such lazy piles of crass horseshit that us folks who want to watch something genuinely different have to hunt a bit. Probably six of one and half a dozen of the other, as my old man used to say.
So anyway, as I had always been a film fan, and had always been a little bit of a jack of all trades where being creative was concerned, I decided to blend the two and I started a blog. Then 8 months later I started a podcast (both called The After Movie Diner), and 8 months after that I started ANOTHER podcast focusing specifically on action movies (Dr.Action and the Kick Ass Kid Commentaries). One of the reasons for telling you all of this (and indeed the name of this article for all those still paying attention) is that doing any internet venture leads you, just in the promoting of it, to meet other people who are normally roughly in the same ballpark. And when you meet this community (because 95% of the people I have met online since the beginning have been incredibly nice and now are practically family!) you realise two things:
1. You don’t know half as much about movies as you pretend to know to the friends who don’t know any better
and
2. Somewhere along the line you had forgotten that there is a wide, rich and varied world in every genre just waiting for you to delve right in.
For me these realisations both humbled me a little and made me hungry for movies again, not in a Steve Seagal way where I went on a gut inflating rampage devouring films like they were chocolate cake, but in a way that I hadn’t been in almost a decade; specifically, and most recently, action films.
So as I step and stumble through this world of films featuring sweaty muscle bound goons with across-the-board bad hair and bad clothing choices who break arms, bounce crims heads off the hoods of cars and make things go BOOOOOM! I come across people on twitter, websites, blogs, podcasts, facebook posts and forums that give me info, new film titles, actors I could look out for and lead me further down the path to…
I don’t know what…
maybe a film where Louis Gosset Jnr, Al Leong and Robert Davi all have to wrestle a giant, genetically-mutated, electronic boa constricter on a runaway train loaded with conflict Diamonds, that is in the process of being hi-jacked by a Lithuanian splinter group hell-bent on using the diamonds to buy a new super weapon being manufactured by a ludicrously pock-marked gentleman who has decided to wear a series of man-boob-exposingly-tight turtle necks. He is the defecting ex-partner of a New York cop, played by Brian Dennehy, who is down on his luck trying to solve his last case when his daughter gets kidnapped by a death metal band and a megalomaniacal robot Orangutan who is secretly a cover for James Hong and Yaphett Koto who are in league with the Lithuanians as they are trying to get their new, highly potent and illegal strain of cocaine fueled fire arms into Eastern Europe… or something…
My point being, I found a part of my manself again. I reconnected with the fan in me through venturing out there reading and listening to things, and I am learning more about my manself with each man-movie I watch.
Will today be the day that you find your manself?
Written by The Kick Ass Kid
Parker and Let's Get Serious About Statham
The character has been portrayed many times on screen, most famously by Lee Marvin in Point Blank.
If I am honest I can't speak to their fandom or concerns as I have never read the books, I am, however, a fan of Point Blank and Mel Gibson's now, sadly, overlooked film Payback.
When it comes to Taylor Hackford's new take on the character though, I am there for one reason and one reason only and that is Jason Statham. I couldn't exactly or rightly pinpoint when exactly it was I became proudly gaytham for Statham (as my buddy Moe would say) but The Mechanic being a surprisingly good remake and the 1-2-3-4 mega punch of The Expendables, Killer Elite, Safe and The Expendables 2 certainly cemented me as a life long fan.
We'll get onto The Stath in a minute though, let's just quickly give Parker the once over. I will try, where I can, to not spoil anything.
As I did last week for The Last Stand, I caught the 10pm Thursday preview screening of Parker last night in a cinema with the wife, one other couple and a solitary man. A big turn out it was not, sadly.
The film tells the tale of a principled, pleasant enough thief who is double-crossed, left for dead and, of course, given no choice but to wreak long bloody but highly principled revenge.
I will say, up front, that this is not classic Statham. It falls into the not-as-good-as-Safe-but-better-than-Blitz territory, possibly a good double bill with the slightly similar themed Bank Job maybe.
What problems the film has, though, must be planted firmly at the feet of the director, Taylor Hackford and Jennifer Lopez. Parker walks a slightly similar path to Lopez's most successful screen outing, Out of Sight but where her character in that film shines with strength, sizzling sex appeal and satisfying sarcasm, in Parker, while she's putting the effort in, the part doesn't give her much to work with. Also, at a certain point, her character makes one of those decisions that film-characters do in order to heighten a tense scene and that grated ever so slightly with me.
The same can be said for the direction, where Out of Sight employed Soderbergh's usual bag of stylistic and artistic tricks to keep the slower parts of that film visually rich, Parker falters a little and can be just plain bland when it's concerned with character and plot rather than indulging in pleasing bouts of over-the-top, gory ultra-violence. It really needed to be Soderberghed up or to be made more gritty like a Get Carter, sadly, the cinematography at least, winds up being a little on the beige side.
That's about all in terms of niggles though.
Statham is as assured as ever and even a sequence which I was sure was going to be blatantly laughable, when the notoriously-not-very-good-at-accents Stath has to imitate a Texan, turned out to be fine and did the job well. The action is phenomenally well performed and there's lots of claret splashing all over the place, way more than I expected in fact.
To be fair to this film though, much like The Last Stand before it and I suspect Bullet To The Head (coming next week), it has been marketed all wrong. A better campaign would've linked it to slower paced yet strongly violent 70s fare. I know the books are set in the past and Statham's wish was to do it, like Killer Elite and The Bank Job, in the correct period but there wasn't any support for that from the producers. Instead I feel that, while the setting maybe contemporary, they have tried to imbue the film with the colder, slightly grittier feel of a 70s film. It isn't entirely succesful as I have said, it needed more interesting direction and a funky soundtrack but on a second or third viewing I definitely see this growing on me.
Unlike The Last Stand I am not sure this is necessarily going to please hardcore action fans, as there are long sections where nary a nose is broken or a knee dislocated with the butt of a shotgun, and I can't imagine it's the Parker film all the fans of the novels have been waiting for either but for us Stathamites it's a chance to once again bask in the bullet headed Brit's brilliant screen presence as he defies expectations again and tries something a little different.
While James Bond may have run 50 years, having a muscle bound English action hero is something of an extreme rarity. Yes there was Gary Daniels before him and Scott Adkins fast on his heals but both seem to stay firmly in the realms of the straight-to-video world, at least for now. I am not sure I could think of another Englishman who has achieved what Statham has and I am genuinely surprised how often that goes un-noticed on both sides of the pond. Also I am genuinely surprised how often our beloved Stath is dismissed as being one note, always making the same film, not being a good actor or only doing films in which he takes off his shirt.
It's perfectly true to say that Statham makes films within similar genres and it would also be true to say that he is aware that there are certain things expected of him when he makes a film: shirts off for the ladies, a fight scene for the lads and a couple of cheesy one liners but there is definitely more to the cult of Stath than this paltry check list of genre cliches.
Some may have wondered, back in 2010 when they went to see The Expendables, who is this gruff voiced, cockney Bruce Willis sitting next to Stallone in the cockpit of this plane? and others may have wondered that with talent and bigger names like Lundgren, Li and Rourke in the film, what was Jason Statham, a relative young upstart, doing playing Sylvester Stallone's right hand man? but when you examine what Statham has done with his career it doesn't remain a mystery very long.
It also shows that Stallone is an astute observer of talent and the industry as well as a consummate professional film-maker of the highest order.
First of all, due to his love of Bruce Lee and Stallone movies, Jason Statham was dedicated to doing things, as much as he could, for real. He trained and studied martial arts and in his Transporter and Crank series he does almost every single physical stunt seen on screen.
Secondly, much like Stallone and Willis, while aware of his little niche in the industry or 'pigeon hole' if you like, he has tried, wherever possible to make different and interesting choices.
Sometimes the impetus behind the decisions maybe obvious things like working with first time, maverick, guerilla style film-makers on the Crank series or starring in a period heist flick written by two veteran British comedy TV writers and sometimes his reasoning for taking a project might be subtle to the outsider but, gathering what I can from interviews, Statham carefully picks his film roles based on either cast members, director, script or the chance to do something he's not done before.
Now before you say 'wait a minute, isn't that what everyone does? why is that special?' think about how easy it would be for Statham to currently be making The Transporter 7 right now, or Crank 5 or think about how instead of doing a straight to DVD 80s style action film we've seen a million times he chose to take a true-ish spy story with ambiguous characters and make a big-ish budget action film set in drab early 80s Britain with Robert DeNiro and Clive Owen.
I don't care what you say that shows someone who is striving to make things as interesting and as different as possible.
The other thing to note is that what is also rare these days and wonderful to see, is how the industry has allowed him to do it. His box office has not always been strong and yet he continues to get so much funding for different projects that the man can remain as prolific, hard working and challenged as he wants to. Yeah there might be misses, for some audiences the majority of his stuff might not interest them in the slightest but at least he is being given the opportunity to chase a variety of projects because from that model you always get a few cast iron classics. Safe showed him to have some surprising depth in his performance and like Stallone had his Rambo breakdown in First Blood, Rocky's simple but earnest underdog character and his fantastic nuanced performance in Copland, so too will Statham get his chance. I hope.
So while Parker had bits I loved and bits I didn't, it defied my expectations again by simply not being just-another-action-film (not that it would've been bad if it was either) but having a script just as interested with characters and plot as it was with blood spewing fight scenes. It's just a shame it didn't have a director good enough to 100% pull it off.
3.5 out of 5
The Last Stand and 2013 A YEAR OF ACTION!
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS NO SPOILERS
As well as writing this blog and presenting The After Movie Diner Podcast I also co-host a weekly film commentary comedy show called Dr.Action and the Kick Ass Kid (I'm the kid) and we normally watch and gently, with love, poke fun at an 80s or 90s action classic.
For me, 2012 was a year of making GREAT new friends and learning more about action films. It was a rich wonderful time. Now, 2013, is about kicking back and watching the stars of those movies, post Expendables, come back to the big screen and excite us all over again. I have done my homework and I am ready to be entertained.
Dr.Action and I have said it time and again recently, 2013 is going to be the year of action and if The Last Stand is anything to go by it is going to be one hell of a ride.
Yes Stallone was back with Rocky 6, Rambo 4 and The Expendables 1 & 2 but in 2013 we get to see him in his first film, by himself, with no previous franchise and no band of super famous friends to back him up, since 2002's lackluster effort, Avenging Angelo. This new film is A Bullet To The Head and it's directed by 80s Action maestro Walter Hill (and there was much rejoicing). As if this wasn't enough we're going to get The Tomb with him and Schwarzenegger somewhere at the beginning of autumn.
The second Planet Hollywood partner, Bruce Willis, who, to be fair, never really went anywhere has GI Joe: Retaliation, the surprisingly entertaining looking RED 2 and, of course, the Valentine's Day return of his most famous creation, John McClane in A Good Day To Die Hard all coming out in 2013!
No-Longer an up and comer to the genre but, after the 1-2 kick of Killer Elite and Safe a bona fide action superstar, Jason Statham is back in 2013 with a vengeance and not 1 but 3 movies! Starting with the insanely silly, fun looking Parker in January and continuing later in the year with the intriguing sounding Homefront, written by none other than Sylvester Stallone.
Which left only Arnie who, after his stint as the Governator, had a grand old time recently parodying himself, to great effect, in The Expendables franchise. Not to be outdone, however, he wasted no time getting back into his fighting trousers with the spectacularly strong looking schedule of The Last Stand, The Tomb with Stallone and Ten. If that doesn't convince you that the Austrian oak ain't going nowhere then let future fair like Unknown Soldier, Captive, Triplets and even the rumour of a Terminator 5 movie convince you.
After The Last Stand however, which I had the pleasure of seeing tonight, January 17th, you won't need anymore convincing. Arnie is well and truly back and I say that without any joke intended. I say it with a passionate fist pump to the air, a hearty, happy chuckle in my gut and my action gland well and truly throbbing with adrenaline. I write this an hour after leaving the cinema and I am still vibrating with the sheer happiness a man gets from watching great action.
The Last Stand IS Arnie's movie. He is absolutely superb and tremendous in the film and with no hint of ironic detachment (because I am not 15 or a hipster dick-bag) his acting is genuinely great, affecting and endlessly watchable. Whenever he is on screen the film is a delight.
That's not to say that when he isn't on screen, during the slightly long and maybe a little slow opening exposition that the film isn't watchable, it's fine but when he appears he knocks it out of the park and into another park 100 miles away where it explodes into a thousand pieces of sheer awesome.
As for the rest of it, well the script, story and direction are all pedestrian enough. It's a perfectly serviceable, if little lazily written and not overly-directed, simple plot with the whole set up being a pleasingly typical, mediocre 80s and even 60s Western throw-back.
Where it succeeds though is that it plays it out as an actual proper film.
Let me explain that.
What I mean is, in The Last Stand, Arnie is playing Sheriff Ray Owens, he's not playing Arnie. Yes there are little mentions of his age etc. and yes he has wacky sidekicks and the odd one liner but the film is a proper action film, with all the humour and exaggeration that implies but without any knowing winks to camera.
In The Expendables films Arnie can get away with playing Arnie and throwing catchphrases and knowing one liners all over the place because part of the joy of those films is seeing one movie contain all of those massive stars having tremendous fun. That stuff belongs in those movies but The Last Stand, to be successful and to put Arnie back on the map where he belongs, as an iconic movie star, it HAD to be played straight. I couldn't be happier typing this to you all now reporting that it IS played straight and is all the better for it.
The violence and action is pleasingly, properly R Rated and bloody. You get car chases, gun play, a fist fight, running, jumping and crashing through windows. Basically everything you want or need from a Schwarzenegger film.
The sidekicks are fine too and the success of the film is through very little character beats you genuinely care about this small border town and its misfit inhabitants. Johnny Knoxville as the town kook isn't too annoying at all and in fact doesn't have anywhere near the screen-time the posters and promotional material would suggest and Luis Guzman is as reliable and fun to watch as ever.
Peter Stormare, as usual, has a tremendous time chewing up the scenery around him like vast gobs of ham and then spitting it out all over the place.
It's interesting as they have surrounded Arnie with some other thick accented fellows, maybe as a way to take some of the attention off his but also, as the head villain is a Mexican heading to the border there are little comments on immigration in the film and that's sort of nice too.
Oh and the women in it are all smoking hot, which is always a BIG plus.
Yes the beginning was on the verge of being too slow and heavy handed, yes Forrest Whitaker is phoning this one in from 1999 and no the plot or the direction didn't exactly blow my mind but it didn't matter because after a little while I was watching the musclebound Austrian dispatching bad guys with a sawn-off shotgun and a ready quip and all was right with the world again.
In the lead up to this film the marketing team seemed to believe that Johnny Knoxville was also a big name and after an initial solo Arnie poster, the rest of the marketing seemed to also hover around Knoxville. This was either because the marketing people believed there was some rich, lucrative vein of as-yet-untapped Knoxville fans hiding out there (probably walloping themselves in the balls with a toaster or whatever) OR there was a slight worry that Arnie, post government and sex-scandal couldn't open a movie anymore.
Well I, for one, hope this movie opens BIG because it seriously deserves to.
How a marketing team can seemingly doubt a man whose whole life has been spent living up to a last name that's so huge it needs two cinema marquees just to contain it and a name so iconic it even appears on my computer's built in spell check is beyond me but then I learnt along time ago that nothing those idiots in marketing do is surprising anymore.
Go see The Last Stand and tell Hollywood you want MORE!
8 out of 10 for the film
15 out of 10 for Arnie!
The After Movie Diner's 2nd Alternate Oscars
OK so the Oscar noms have come out again for another year and yet again it reads like a list of predictable boring, beige tedium, some over enflated Hollywood "serious" films to have come out in the last month and a half (because the academy are mostly old farts with the combined memory span of a guppy fish) and only a couple of nods in the right direction (and those mainly being for anything involving Argo or Moonrise Kingdom).
So we will again be hosting the After Movie Diner Alternate Oscar show this year on Monday February 25th!
So please E-MAIL me at aftermoviediner@gmail.com with your alternate nominations.
The rules are simple: The film HAS to have come out for the FIRST time in 2012 on any format - theatrical, straight to video, on demand - ANYTHING as long as it had its FIRST release any day of 2012.
Let's get those NOMS in!!
Hear last year's show here: http://amdpodcast.blogspot.com/2012/02/episode-30-after-movie-diner.html
So we will again be hosting the After Movie Diner Alternate Oscar show this year on Monday February 25th!
So please E-MAIL me at aftermoviediner@gmail.com with your alternate nominations.
The rules are simple: The film HAS to have come out for the FIRST time in 2012 on any format - theatrical, straight to video, on demand - ANYTHING as long as it had its FIRST release any day of 2012.
Let's get those NOMS in!!
Hear last year's show here: http://amdpodcast.blogspot.com/2012/02/episode-30-after-movie-diner.html
John Dies At The End - The NYC Premiere Jan 7th 2013
The Director himself and star Paul Giamatti were on hand afterwards to answer questions and even, graciously, shook people's hands, signed people's stuff and even pose for photographs.
It was a fantastic night.
I intend to cover the film in a little more depth over on the podcast and I have some exclusive content from the Q&A that I will be sharing very soon as well but I just wanted to get down my initial impression of the film here on the blog.
Let me begin by saying I am a big fan of Coscarelli's work, you can read my Phantasm and Bubba Ho-Tep reviews elsewhere on this site but I really dig his style and sensibility behind the camera. So couple that with the always reliable and likable Giamatti and a plot that promised some absolutely bonkers stuff and me wanting to see this film, from the moment it was first mentioned, became a no-brainer.
Having seen the film the first thing that came to my mind was 'I need to see that again'. It has a very definite vibe, a particular disjointed mindset and I am not just referring to the weird plot, I mean in the way it was written, shot and performed. If I am honest. I am not sure tonight I was always in the groove with it, maybe it was having spent the day at work in my mind-numbing 9 to 5 surrounded by beige and grey tedious indifference or maybe it was the fact that usually on a Monday I am operating on hardly any sleep but sometimes I connected with it and other times I didn't. Hence I need to see it again and soon. Clear headed, awake and ready to go anywhere with it.
I am not even going to bother to try and explain the plot in depth, as it would do the film a disservice, but it has something to do with a drug called soy sauce that makes you see into the past and the future, travelling to other dimensions, monsters, friendship, zombies, exorcisms and a magic dog. Anyway, this thing is different and I urge everyone to see it.
It's the mutant love child of Naked Lunch, Twin Peaks, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Phantasm and contains references to a dozen more cult genre favs.
In fact an ever so slight criticism of the film is that, while it clearly marches to the beat of its own drum, as much as it can, the script does, on occasion, have the distinct whiff of a fan boy's giggly, immature paws all over it but never to the annoyingly grating and smug extent of someone like a Tarantino (who has all the subtlety, where homages are concerned, of a 15 Ton, Monty Python, style weight).
On the plus side it has phenomenal, pleasing performances from almost the entire cast, it's directed and edited with Coscarelli's usual charm, flourish and delight in the downright weird or darkly comic and the script throws endless curveballs at you both clever, comedic and also sometimes just for curveballs sake. I am not someone who usually likes a film that tries to be all smug, clever and different for difference sake and I am pleased to report that John Dies At The End does narrowly avoid sliding into that territory.
There's also some great Bob Kurtzman practical effects and also some not so great B-Movie CGI but, to be honest, that they did it at all for the low budget, it's incredible.
I haven't read the book and from comments made in the Q&A I understand that a vast passage of it would be unfilmable, no matter how much money you had, but I can say that the film version could have, to please more pallets, attempted some level of coherence in it's third act. What it lacks in pleasing structure, however, it more than makes up for in vivid, intriguing and artful images.
Now is it ever going to be as successful or as much of a fan favourite as the Phantasm series? probably not and will it ever match up against the understated perfection of Bubba Ho-Tep? definitely not but that's not to discount it, when you have a resume as sparse but as cult and fan friendly as Coscarelli's, winning out over past glories becomes a fools errand and, with John Dies At The End, he, thankfully, doesn't try to. There is, however, plenty here that fans of his previous work will eat up with a spoon.
It has been 10 years since Bubba and 7 years since his Masters of Horror episode and in that time mostly all we've heard about was the ill-fated Bubba sequel. I, for one, am glad that John Dies was, eventually, the film Coscarelli made and not Bubba Nosferatu, while he will no doubt get a lot of idiot critics desperately trying to compare this film to the nuanced brilliance of Bubba Ho-tep, imagine how much harsher it would be if he had gone ahead with the planned, Campbell-less, sequel instead.
As much as I believe this film will divide his fans and have as many embracers as detractors, I am going to go ahead and say we NEED films like this and we NEED film-makers like Don Coscarelli. At the Q&A Paul Giamatti said that it's films like this that America should be embracing, he is clearly a passionate genre fan, and I couldn't agree more. Love it or hate it we just don't get enough films like this being made and so when one comes along I think we owe it to ourselves, as passionate genre fans also, to do what we can to make sure it's not the last time a film like this sees the inside of a cinema.
Me with director Don Coscarelli
Other photos from the Q&A
Christmas Cinema Viewing - Pulpy Thrillers and Pointless Bum Nummers
The wife and I like to, over the Christmas period, visit the movie theatre and check out all the new films pushing and fighting their way into the multi-screen havens of stale popcorn, rancid piss smells and cough created germs at the hope of the almighty seasonal dollar.
This year was no exception.
Saturday December 22nd we strolled in and watched new Tom Cruise vehicle, Jack Reacher.
Now, firstly, a couple of things: I have never read a Jack Reacher book and I was only excited to see this film, initially for 2 reasons
1) Action Cruise tends to be good Cruise and
2) Werner herzog as a Bond style villain with a comically milky eye.
Apart from those things I had fairly low expectations and they were further lowered when I was set upon on Twitter and told that it was a load of old rubbish and I should avoid it.
Well I'll tell you the problem with Jack Reacher the movie and no, Lee Child purists, it has nothing to do with Tom Cruise's height you bunch of negative whiny bitches. The problem with Jack Reacher the movie was the marketing. As always marketing companies (who should really change their name to mismarketing companies or talentless hacks, they can take their pick) have fouled this up and advertised it as a relatively dumb action film. This is to do the film a disservice as it has a clever witty script, it trundles along at a decent pace, the performances are excellent and it's a good old fashioned pulpy, unpretentious, wise-crakin', ass-whuppin' good time of a conspiracy thriller.
It has a twisty-turny-yet-fairly-obvious-if-you-know-how-these-things-go type story to tell and it gets in and out with no fuss. The action is good, clear, tight and to the point too with a great finale that manages to amuse, thrill and surprise in a satisfying way.
In the shadow of the events recently in Connecticut it's a little tricky in parts because it does fall squarely on the side of the right wing where guns are concerned but, to be fair, that is hardwired into its western style, dime novel sensibility.
Lastly the casting of Werner Herzog is a stroke of sheer genius, every word he utters (and that's not a lot as he doesn't have nearly enough scenes) is the sort of nonsensical yet deep sounding babble that drips from the Bavarian's lips as easy as if he were reading a shopping list. It's an absolute wonder to behold and, actually, a little went a long way where he was concerned, any more and it would've veered into really questionable and confusing Bond style villain antics and that would've derailed the simplicity and succinctness with which Christopher McQuarrie told the story.
The wife and I thoroughly enjoyed this, sorry if you didn't that is a real shame because this movie is fun, aware of its cliches but written well enough to not over play them.
8 out of 10
Next up was This is 40 on Dec 24th
which really needed to be renamed 'Man these attractive white folk who are their own worst enemy really do whine ALOT!'
Ok, let's get started. I have a love hate relationship with Judd Apatow. I love that he has made possible some really great comedy films and that without him comedy in the last 10 years might have been just whatever Tyler Perry finds funny this week but I hate Judd Apatow because of his clear belief that, in his own directed films at least, that he is some Woody Allen like exposer of deep truths and a witty commentator on the silly little flaws of human nature. I also hate him because he seems to think showing naked bits of people that are usually, thankfully covered up is somehow hilarious and daring... oh and he produces that shitfest of incessantly pointless whiny drivel and mind numbingly shallow pile of arse 'Girls'... oh and he puts his famous musician friends in movies... oh and he needs someone to tell him to fucking stop once in a while.
Lets make something clear, hardly any film needs to be over 2hrs long and certainly not a comedy. OK. There are only a handful of stories in the world and the art form of film used to have a 90min standard because it worked. If you can't tell your story in a three act structure over the course of 90 minutes then you really shouldn't be working in film. You want to ramble? write a book, do a podcast anything but make a movie, let alone a comedy movie that is LITERALLY ABOUT NOTHING.
Are there exceptions to the 90min rule? sure - plenty.
Is there wiggle room where a movie at 105mins or even 120mins can be good or better? of course
Can you name a time you laughed for longer than 90mins? Probably not very frequently and certainly not at this Crate & Barrel catalogue looking mound of beige whining arse.
In fact John Cleese, the far too psychologically minded member of Monty Python, once said that, on average, people can laugh happily for around 40 minutes and after that there better be some plot, action or emotion going on to maintain momentum into the third act. The easiest example of this is Four Weddings and a Funeral because you laugh at the first three weddings, then there's the quiet bit where you are a little sad at the funeral, then end strong with a big, funny ending that ties all the story-lines together.
The trouble with 'This Is 40' is actually not that it isn't funny, it's actually, in places, very funny and when it comes to actual funny lines it is funnier than Apatow's previous effort 'Funny People' but the problem is it's not about anything.
The movie starts and two very annoying, idiotic, pretty people who live in a wonderful home, spend money like it's going out of style and with two daughters who are far cleverer and less annoying than them, have two Dads both of whom fucked up their first marriage and are now living with second families with varying degrees of success. When the movie ends this is all still true, except that Leslie Mann's Dad, played by John Lithgow, is a little more sympathetic and that's it. Nothing is learnt, nothing has changed and no one has said to these two whiny, whingey, stupid people "Shut the fuck up and sort yourselves out!"
The performances are fine too, although Leslie Mann, because of her high pitched nasaly voice, gets to points in this film where I could've quite easily beaten her to death with a shovel but all round there's nothing really bad about the way it's acted or shot.
It's just we're talking about a film where two people, because of their woeful communication, utter inability to manage their money and staggering lack of personal awareness and insight decide that selling their beautiful home is the solution to their problems rather than, I don't know, not spending $12,000 on flying a band no one has ever heard of ever to play in a tiny bar, not spending $10,000 on a catered Birthday party and suing the pilled-up, drippy girl who just robbed them of another $10,000.
I don't care about any of the people in this film and if the ending was that they were all mowed down by a hail of machine gun bullets from the arseholes of 8ft robot destroyers it wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest and, at least, it would've been an ending.
4 out of 10
Lastly, Django Unchained on Dec 25th
I don't even know where to begin with this. Well, firstly, unlike this film, I'll just give you a quick bit of back story. I used to like Tarantino. My patience wained with him, however, somewhere around the middle of Kill Bill 2 and after the howling and irritating mistakes of Death Proof and the masturbatory Inglorious Basterds I was about ready to give up.
Then came Django Unchained. I have seen the original, Franco Nero starring, film which is an ambiguous, rambling, strange, pulp, cult spaghetti western and like it, for what it is.
So, there, a few sentences and you understand where I am coming from and can probably see I didn't enter the screening tonight with anything more than a glimmer of hope.
Well after what felt like 5hrs but was really, a still ludicrous, 2hrs 45mins later I left the cinema utterly frustrated because while half of me wants to scream, shout, break things and write Tarantino off completely as a tired, old, unoriginal, repetitive, long winded, self congratulatory, masturbatory hack, the other half of me found a lot to enjoy in this saga of a film.
Whichever way you slice it though, it's TOO DAMN LONG. It's not one film, it's about eight and like all of Tarantino's stuff it's ever so pleased with itself and the way it sounds. For the first 3 films Christoph Waltz wanders around with a case of, sometimes amusing but mostly incessant, verbal diarrhea and in the second 5 films he is joined in his eloquent verbiage by Leonardo DiCaprio. They both swan about spewing out endless dialogue for ages and ages and ages.
Then, after all the talk, there's lots of shooting and blood letting, just like there was at the end of the previous 7 films that make up Django Unchained and also at the end of Inglorious Basterds because, in the absence of plot or momentum, violence will do.
I felt like I was actually living the year that this film takes place in, every single day of it, every moment.
I firmly believe that Tarantino is so surrounded by sycophantic dribbling nerds in his infamous screening room in LA that no one has the balls to read one of his scripts and say to him "MAKE IT SHORTER" and no the answer, in this case, just like it wasn't for Kill Bill and isn't for the Hobbit, is not to make this two films, three films, eight films, whatever. It's to have an editor or a script doctor go over his work and tear vast useless chunks out of it and then say "there... go make that movie"
So enthralled is he with his own repetitive, obvious and not-as-clever-as-it-thinks-it-is dialogue that he believes every word must be left in, clearly! because, if not, explain to me how a fairly run of the mill rescue and revenge film takes almost 3hrs to finish.
Ok, so enough about the bloated running time, what about the whole 'making Django African American' thing, well considering the time period this film is set in (2 years before the civil war) it's an absolutely brilliant idea if he hadn't already done the same thing with the far superior Jackie Brown. Also, before everyone goes and gets confused, thinking that Django somehow has some big important statement to make about racism, slavery, hatred etc. it doesn't.
Honestly, it really doesn't.
I don't know about you but I didn't need 2hrs 45mins of N words and racist violence from Quentin Tarantino to know that slavery was wrong and despicable. Ok?
This is how the conversation went at Tarantino towers:
"The original Django is set just after the civil war and this is going to be a prequel. Well, you know how I like black people and am best friends with Samuel L Jackson? how about Django is black and we set it before the civil war... am I a genius or what"
That's it people, seriously.
If the film was more serious then I would completely take your point but, and I hate to sound like Spike Lee because he's an over reactionary idiot who needs to get over himself, sitting watching the film is a bit like watching a white guy relish getting away with a ton of harsh racist slurs and referencing things like Mandingo fighting while patting himself on that back for being oh-so-clever.
And on that subject, Tarantino, just because you know one German opera does not make you a cultural scholar, ok?! especially when you have so little faith in your own audiences intelligence that you spell out EXACTLY your incredibly obvious plot references.
Lastly, and then I'll get on to some good stuff about the film, Tarantino needs to pick: either you're making an exploitation film or you are making an epic western with a serious message. Never before have a mix of genres and styles from someone who is supposedly a master at it, been so all over the place.
Man it was a frustrating vast chunk of my time I will never get back.
On the good side the acting is showboaty but entertaining, the script has some genuinely funny and exciting moments and the direction, when he can be bothered, is decent. His use of titling and soundtrack however, is, by now, completely tedious and irritating.
The exploitation elements are fantastic, the gore is excessive, the gun play enjoyable and the odd comic asides, like a scene where early Klan members dispute their poorly made eyeholes in their hoods, are genuinely surprising and funny but would be perfect if included in an exploitation film length film.
Despite the length there was enough going on to keep me watching but it felt like plowing through a miniseries on a Sunday afternoon rather than watching a film. The cinematography was pleasing and there was some interesting use of the camera but if I am honest, I am struggling to come up with lots of really positive things about it.
We all know that Tarantino rips off other films but when he starts ripping himself off (the exploitation violence and Tarantino cameo of Resevoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, the African American switch from Jackie Brown, the epic length and revenge plot from Kill Bill, the shoot everything ending from Inglorious Basterds - shall I go on) it's maybe time someone call him on his bullshit.
All I can say is, despite how this review sounds, I didn't hate it and the things that are wrong with it come completely from Tarantino (and others) believing that his shit doesn't stink. There is a GREAT film in there screaming, kicking, clawing and endlessly nattering trying to get out but until he either gets an editor or someone cuts him down a peg or two, he's not going to make one again it seems.
As to whether I will ever watch another QT film in the cinema (I have seen every single one since Pulp Fiction) well when the next one comes out, if it's below 2hrs long then I'll think about it.
5 out of 10
This year was no exception.
Saturday December 22nd we strolled in and watched new Tom Cruise vehicle, Jack Reacher.
1) Action Cruise tends to be good Cruise and
2) Werner herzog as a Bond style villain with a comically milky eye.
Apart from those things I had fairly low expectations and they were further lowered when I was set upon on Twitter and told that it was a load of old rubbish and I should avoid it.
Well I'll tell you the problem with Jack Reacher the movie and no, Lee Child purists, it has nothing to do with Tom Cruise's height you bunch of negative whiny bitches. The problem with Jack Reacher the movie was the marketing. As always marketing companies (who should really change their name to mismarketing companies or talentless hacks, they can take their pick) have fouled this up and advertised it as a relatively dumb action film. This is to do the film a disservice as it has a clever witty script, it trundles along at a decent pace, the performances are excellent and it's a good old fashioned pulpy, unpretentious, wise-crakin', ass-whuppin' good time of a conspiracy thriller.
It has a twisty-turny-yet-fairly-obvious-if-you-know-how-these-things-go type story to tell and it gets in and out with no fuss. The action is good, clear, tight and to the point too with a great finale that manages to amuse, thrill and surprise in a satisfying way.
In the shadow of the events recently in Connecticut it's a little tricky in parts because it does fall squarely on the side of the right wing where guns are concerned but, to be fair, that is hardwired into its western style, dime novel sensibility.
Lastly the casting of Werner Herzog is a stroke of sheer genius, every word he utters (and that's not a lot as he doesn't have nearly enough scenes) is the sort of nonsensical yet deep sounding babble that drips from the Bavarian's lips as easy as if he were reading a shopping list. It's an absolute wonder to behold and, actually, a little went a long way where he was concerned, any more and it would've veered into really questionable and confusing Bond style villain antics and that would've derailed the simplicity and succinctness with which Christopher McQuarrie told the story.
The wife and I thoroughly enjoyed this, sorry if you didn't that is a real shame because this movie is fun, aware of its cliches but written well enough to not over play them.
8 out of 10
Next up was This is 40 on Dec 24th
Ok, let's get started. I have a love hate relationship with Judd Apatow. I love that he has made possible some really great comedy films and that without him comedy in the last 10 years might have been just whatever Tyler Perry finds funny this week but I hate Judd Apatow because of his clear belief that, in his own directed films at least, that he is some Woody Allen like exposer of deep truths and a witty commentator on the silly little flaws of human nature. I also hate him because he seems to think showing naked bits of people that are usually, thankfully covered up is somehow hilarious and daring... oh and he produces that shitfest of incessantly pointless whiny drivel and mind numbingly shallow pile of arse 'Girls'... oh and he puts his famous musician friends in movies... oh and he needs someone to tell him to fucking stop once in a while.
Lets make something clear, hardly any film needs to be over 2hrs long and certainly not a comedy. OK. There are only a handful of stories in the world and the art form of film used to have a 90min standard because it worked. If you can't tell your story in a three act structure over the course of 90 minutes then you really shouldn't be working in film. You want to ramble? write a book, do a podcast anything but make a movie, let alone a comedy movie that is LITERALLY ABOUT NOTHING.
Are there exceptions to the 90min rule? sure - plenty.
Is there wiggle room where a movie at 105mins or even 120mins can be good or better? of course
Can you name a time you laughed for longer than 90mins? Probably not very frequently and certainly not at this Crate & Barrel catalogue looking mound of beige whining arse.
In fact John Cleese, the far too psychologically minded member of Monty Python, once said that, on average, people can laugh happily for around 40 minutes and after that there better be some plot, action or emotion going on to maintain momentum into the third act. The easiest example of this is Four Weddings and a Funeral because you laugh at the first three weddings, then there's the quiet bit where you are a little sad at the funeral, then end strong with a big, funny ending that ties all the story-lines together.
The trouble with 'This Is 40' is actually not that it isn't funny, it's actually, in places, very funny and when it comes to actual funny lines it is funnier than Apatow's previous effort 'Funny People' but the problem is it's not about anything.
The movie starts and two very annoying, idiotic, pretty people who live in a wonderful home, spend money like it's going out of style and with two daughters who are far cleverer and less annoying than them, have two Dads both of whom fucked up their first marriage and are now living with second families with varying degrees of success. When the movie ends this is all still true, except that Leslie Mann's Dad, played by John Lithgow, is a little more sympathetic and that's it. Nothing is learnt, nothing has changed and no one has said to these two whiny, whingey, stupid people "Shut the fuck up and sort yourselves out!"
The performances are fine too, although Leslie Mann, because of her high pitched nasaly voice, gets to points in this film where I could've quite easily beaten her to death with a shovel but all round there's nothing really bad about the way it's acted or shot.
It's just we're talking about a film where two people, because of their woeful communication, utter inability to manage their money and staggering lack of personal awareness and insight decide that selling their beautiful home is the solution to their problems rather than, I don't know, not spending $12,000 on flying a band no one has ever heard of ever to play in a tiny bar, not spending $10,000 on a catered Birthday party and suing the pilled-up, drippy girl who just robbed them of another $10,000.
I don't care about any of the people in this film and if the ending was that they were all mowed down by a hail of machine gun bullets from the arseholes of 8ft robot destroyers it wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest and, at least, it would've been an ending.
4 out of 10
Lastly, Django Unchained on Dec 25th
Then came Django Unchained. I have seen the original, Franco Nero starring, film which is an ambiguous, rambling, strange, pulp, cult spaghetti western and like it, for what it is.
So, there, a few sentences and you understand where I am coming from and can probably see I didn't enter the screening tonight with anything more than a glimmer of hope.
Well after what felt like 5hrs but was really, a still ludicrous, 2hrs 45mins later I left the cinema utterly frustrated because while half of me wants to scream, shout, break things and write Tarantino off completely as a tired, old, unoriginal, repetitive, long winded, self congratulatory, masturbatory hack, the other half of me found a lot to enjoy in this saga of a film.
Whichever way you slice it though, it's TOO DAMN LONG. It's not one film, it's about eight and like all of Tarantino's stuff it's ever so pleased with itself and the way it sounds. For the first 3 films Christoph Waltz wanders around with a case of, sometimes amusing but mostly incessant, verbal diarrhea and in the second 5 films he is joined in his eloquent verbiage by Leonardo DiCaprio. They both swan about spewing out endless dialogue for ages and ages and ages.
Then, after all the talk, there's lots of shooting and blood letting, just like there was at the end of the previous 7 films that make up Django Unchained and also at the end of Inglorious Basterds because, in the absence of plot or momentum, violence will do.
I felt like I was actually living the year that this film takes place in, every single day of it, every moment.
I firmly believe that Tarantino is so surrounded by sycophantic dribbling nerds in his infamous screening room in LA that no one has the balls to read one of his scripts and say to him "MAKE IT SHORTER" and no the answer, in this case, just like it wasn't for Kill Bill and isn't for the Hobbit, is not to make this two films, three films, eight films, whatever. It's to have an editor or a script doctor go over his work and tear vast useless chunks out of it and then say "there... go make that movie"
So enthralled is he with his own repetitive, obvious and not-as-clever-as-it-thinks-it-is dialogue that he believes every word must be left in, clearly! because, if not, explain to me how a fairly run of the mill rescue and revenge film takes almost 3hrs to finish.
Ok, so enough about the bloated running time, what about the whole 'making Django African American' thing, well considering the time period this film is set in (2 years before the civil war) it's an absolutely brilliant idea if he hadn't already done the same thing with the far superior Jackie Brown. Also, before everyone goes and gets confused, thinking that Django somehow has some big important statement to make about racism, slavery, hatred etc. it doesn't.
Honestly, it really doesn't.
I don't know about you but I didn't need 2hrs 45mins of N words and racist violence from Quentin Tarantino to know that slavery was wrong and despicable. Ok?
This is how the conversation went at Tarantino towers:
"The original Django is set just after the civil war and this is going to be a prequel. Well, you know how I like black people and am best friends with Samuel L Jackson? how about Django is black and we set it before the civil war... am I a genius or what"
That's it people, seriously.
If the film was more serious then I would completely take your point but, and I hate to sound like Spike Lee because he's an over reactionary idiot who needs to get over himself, sitting watching the film is a bit like watching a white guy relish getting away with a ton of harsh racist slurs and referencing things like Mandingo fighting while patting himself on that back for being oh-so-clever.
And on that subject, Tarantino, just because you know one German opera does not make you a cultural scholar, ok?! especially when you have so little faith in your own audiences intelligence that you spell out EXACTLY your incredibly obvious plot references.
Lastly, and then I'll get on to some good stuff about the film, Tarantino needs to pick: either you're making an exploitation film or you are making an epic western with a serious message. Never before have a mix of genres and styles from someone who is supposedly a master at it, been so all over the place.
Man it was a frustrating vast chunk of my time I will never get back.
On the good side the acting is showboaty but entertaining, the script has some genuinely funny and exciting moments and the direction, when he can be bothered, is decent. His use of titling and soundtrack however, is, by now, completely tedious and irritating.
The exploitation elements are fantastic, the gore is excessive, the gun play enjoyable and the odd comic asides, like a scene where early Klan members dispute their poorly made eyeholes in their hoods, are genuinely surprising and funny but would be perfect if included in an exploitation film length film.
Despite the length there was enough going on to keep me watching but it felt like plowing through a miniseries on a Sunday afternoon rather than watching a film. The cinematography was pleasing and there was some interesting use of the camera but if I am honest, I am struggling to come up with lots of really positive things about it.
We all know that Tarantino rips off other films but when he starts ripping himself off (the exploitation violence and Tarantino cameo of Resevoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, the African American switch from Jackie Brown, the epic length and revenge plot from Kill Bill, the shoot everything ending from Inglorious Basterds - shall I go on) it's maybe time someone call him on his bullshit.
All I can say is, despite how this review sounds, I didn't hate it and the things that are wrong with it come completely from Tarantino (and others) believing that his shit doesn't stink. There is a GREAT film in there screaming, kicking, clawing and endlessly nattering trying to get out but until he either gets an editor or someone cuts him down a peg or two, he's not going to make one again it seems.
As to whether I will ever watch another QT film in the cinema (I have seen every single one since Pulp Fiction) well when the next one comes out, if it's below 2hrs long then I'll think about it.
5 out of 10
SPREAD THE WORD! Catch Your Death – Viral Campaign – #CYD
Have you seen Death lately? If you’re lucky enough, you can snap a shot of Death before it retires for good in the Bahamas. Last time on sight, eye witnesses reported Death was riding a bike. What will your video of Death show us?
Send the link to your film to marketing@curiosityquills.com. The footage with the highest number of views wins a prize to hang out with Death on a white sanded beach and cocktails in hand. Seriously there's a trip for 2 somewhere glorious up for grabs!!
No gore. No porn. No pooping, peeing, vomiting. No violence. No political, religious, racial themes either. If your video is deemed offensive for any of the aforementioned reasons or just because it’s gross and you have no shame, you will be automatically disqualified from the contest.
You’ve been warned. Now get your cameras rolling and catch you on YouTube.
Use the hashtag #CYD on Twitter!
Death, The Devil and The Goldfish
Andrew was this week's guest on The Podcast from the After Movie Diner where we discussed his influences and everything that went into the book.
A little while ago Andrew did me the huge honour and graciously asked me to do the audio book! So that too will be available soon!
The moment we know how it's going to be available we will let you know but until then please listen to the show and head on over to Planet Kibi to whet your appetite!
You can find Andrew online at www.planetkibi.com
and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/AndrewBuckleyAuthor
Cross Words
This blog post is just to announce my wife's fantastic new website: http://www.tcrosswords.com/
As an aspiring writer, a sometime photographer and occasional guest on the After Movie Diner Podcast you will find short stories, quotes of the day, film reviews, photos and her podcast episodes.
I really urge you all to give it a look, her short stories alone are a fantastic read.
Thanks!
Jon
Proprietor of The After Movie Diner
As an aspiring writer, a sometime photographer and occasional guest on the After Movie Diner Podcast you will find short stories, quotes of the day, film reviews, photos and her podcast episodes.
I really urge you all to give it a look, her short stories alone are a fantastic read.
Thanks!
Jon
Proprietor of The After Movie Diner
October = HORROR
Yes it's almost time for us all to fall into the scariest month of the year: October! and for all of us here at the After Movie Diner Blog & Podcast it's definitely our favourite month of the year. That annoying sun isn't around as much, that stupid heat is dwindling and it's time for us to tear into our respective horror collections with willful abandon!
To this end I have decided to present this list of a selection of my collection and ask you the listeners/readers which films you'd like to hear covered on the After Movie Diner Podcast.
My intent is to watch as many of the following films below as possible between now and Oct 31st, mainly for my own enjoyment BUT whatever films prove popular between now and October 1st, either in the comments section below, on Twitter or Facebook I will cover them either as 1 minute reviews or as main show subjects in the 4 shows I do in October.
So it's simple - read the list below and let me know what you want reviewing either in the comments section
by e-mail: aftermoviediner@gmail.com
on twitter: https://twitter.com/aftermoviediner
and on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/aftermoviediner
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Films (in no particular order):
Maniac Cop Trilogy
Intruder
Waxwork 1 & 2
Drag Me To Hell
Halloween 2-7
Someone's Watching Me (Early carpenter flick)
Prince of Darkness
Vampires
Candyman
Black Christmas
Terror Train
The Prowler
Night School
Slumber Party Massacre trilogy
All or Any of the Nightmare on Elm Streets
Puppet Master 1-9
Demonic Toys
Dollman Vs Demonic Toys
Dr.Giggles
The Hand
Scream 1-4
Deep Red
Sleepless (later Argento)
Eyes of a Stranger
Vacancy
Hostel
Color Me Blood Red
Gruesome Twosome
The Pit & the Pendulum (Vincent Price/Corman)
The Raven (Vincent Price/Corman)
Night of the Hunter
The Hitcher (original - please!)
Alone in the Dark
Society
Raw Meat
Faust
Rosemary's Baby
Demon Seed
Omen 1-3
The Prophecy 1-5
Carrie
Final Destination 1-3
Phantasm 1-4
Deadly Friend (Wes Craven)
From Beyond The Grave
The Crazies (original Vs remake)
The Dark Half
Zombie
The Living Dead in the Manchester Morgue
Return of the Living Dead 1-3
Undead
Dead Snow
28 Days Later
28 Weeks Later
Fright Night
Wolfen
Sharktopus
Black Sheep
Blood Island Trilogy
Q the Winged Serpent
The Stuff
Critters 1-4
Psycho (original - of course!!)
The Birds
Cemetery Man
Aerobicide/Killer Workout
Chopping Mall
Horror Express
Meat-cleaver Massacre
Pieces
Rats (1982)
Shock Waves
Street Trash
The Pit
The Mutilator
The Video Dead
Independant Film-Makers! We want to hear from YOU!
SOON The After Movie Diner will be delving back into the world of Independent film making with 3 movies from some truly great folk in the Baltimore, Maryland area:
The Lee Doll films 'The Fixer' and 'Little Bit of Love'
and
ROULETTE: a film by Erik Kristopher Myers
We've also got an interview with a gentleman about to set out to make his first film in New Zealand!
This got us thinking about a regular independent film-maker spotlight on the show. We could chat about the film, review the film and even offer our listeners the chance to win a copy of your film, putting your creative hard work into the hands of an awesome film fan!
SO we want to hear from all independent film-makers!
If you're doing something different, creative, independently minded and if you've got a film that you're anxious to talk about or get in people's hands then drop us a line at aftermoviediner@gmail.comWe accept any and all applications from features to short films and web series but we reserve the right to only cover the films we choose. The After Movie Diner strongly supports independent content and we recognise the hard work, effort and energy that goes into producing anything but will not be able to cover everything so a space on the show will be at producers discretion.
THANK YOU and we can't wait to see what you've come up with!
The Bourne Legacy - 10th August 2012
First off there's nothing really wrong with this film. It's fine. It goes from A to B understandably, you know who everyone is and what they're doing, it takes places in locations and situations you'd expect and it climaxes with a genuinely exciting stretch of chase based action.
If you're looking for a serviceable action thriller that doesn't exactly manage to reach the heights of former Bourne movies but doesn't exactly embarrass itself either then read no further, go, enjoy and come home content.
The cast are watchable and the direction and cinematography assured and, when given the chance by the surroundings, genuinely stunning.
Nothing overly bothersome at all.
The trouble is, nothing really exciting, tense or original either. If you've seen a Bond film, a Bourne film, a Mission Impossible film or hell, even the Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz starring Knight and Day (which also features a bike chase sequence on a red bike with our hero in sunglasses and a leather jacket) then you've seen this film.
It doesn't really start and it doesn't really finish, it just is. If you've seen the trailer then you know the plot and if you've seen films like this before you know the outcome. That's not to say it's bad, it's not, I am just not sure what the point of it was except, of course, to allow the studio to just continue making more of these.
One of the problems for me was the pacing. It spends a lot longer setting up the premise and characters than it needs to, repeating and slotting in bits of information that we already knew from the last two Bourne films and while it's done very well, it also feels a lot like the studio saying to someone somewhere 'We have to make this a film anyone can see, even if they haven't seen the first three films' and despite the lengthy feeling set up, it just isn't. Without the previous two films, at least, this film doesn't really work. It could've worked as a stand alone, it actually didn't need to be a part of the Bourne series at all and that might have actually served the story better but that's another discussion.
Now I sat through all the exposition expecting maybe a twist I didn't see coming or a plot strand I wasn't expecting but after 2hrs plus of this movie and nothing deviating from it's directive of 'there be big nasty government types who screwed up and so are now hunting down genetically modified super human Jeremy Renner and his pretty, scientist, would-be girlfriend' I was a little nonplussed as to how it took the film-makers so long to get to the actual 'chase' part of the film when clearly that's what it is: a CHASE film.
It's a bit like The Fugitive only you don't root for the hero because he's been wrongfully accused, has to, while on the run, find out who the actual killer is etc. because, you know, that's a plot. In The Bourne Legacy you root for your hero because it's Jeremy Renner, he's all kick ass, the pretty science lady likes him and because governments are evil, right?
Which is fine but A) seen it all before and B) see point A
The words of Matt Damon and Paul Grengrass calling the fourth part 'The Bourne Redundancy' now keep echoing around in my head.
Ok so to individual aspects of the film itself.
Like I said, it's well shot and especially the opening scenes in the Alaskan wilderness and the last few shots of the film look amazing.
We see, at one point, a stunningly beautiful, old house in the woods that is apparently being renovated by Rachel Weisz and yet looks like a house in the latest edition of 'You'll Never Be Able To Afford To Live Like This' monthly.
It is captured on film well and much like a hero cop in an 80s buddy action film who shows up with a suspiciously pristine vintage car, we know that sucker isn't making it to the last reel in one piece.
Despite all that, everything else in this film takes place in tiny rooms and merely has the illusion of a Bond style, globe-trotting adventure. On the government side it's all oak paneled offices at the beginning before transitioning into secret, bluey green tech rooms filled with screens covered with every bit of information they could ever possibly need, which is all delivered to those screens in a split second by the kind of powerful speedy computer you could only ever dream of. On the Bourne side it's little crappy bedrooms, factory basements, an airplane toilet or a Holiday Inn, not the stuff visual cinema is made of.
Lastly on the directing side my only other point would be that when the action does kick in it is handled ok and in certain parts they remember to keep the camera far enough away that I know what's happening but yes, in an attempt to ape the more capable Paul Greengrass, it suffers from Chris Nolan levels of shaky, I don't know who hit who and how (even though it's on a 40 foot cinema screen), close up camera work which actually feels badly done and a bit old. This may have something to do with the fact that, for the most part, they have Aaron Cross (who's NOT Bourne right?) doing everything in very close, narrow quarters but it's also just annoying especially as, just occasionally, you get a glimpse through the swishes and blurs that something actually cool is going on.
Sorry Jeremy you did all that training etc. for nothing
As for the acting, for the most part it's great.
Jeremy Renner is, as always, watchable, although it was the TV series The Unusuals (criminally only got one season) that really endeared me to him and not his series of fairly bland film roles.
I personally felt Rachel Weisz wasn't spectacular and her American accent wavered all over the place in scenes with long passages of dialogue, but she is pretty though and believable, just, as a scientist.
Ed Norton is Ed Norton and I can't decide whether that's ok yet or not, as an actor he confuses me. I can tell you that their attempts to make him look older and more like someone who would work for the government is a tad laughable and a big grey kids wig would've looked better but, for the most part, he plays the 'villain' well but despite some scenes designed to hammer home the point, you never really get the feeling of ambiguity about all our protagonists that I think the director was going for.
No one is really a hero and no one is really a villain, which would've been a great story to tell but alas, this is an 'action' thriller and so we need a long pointless chase sequence where we see Renner and Weisz escape America through and then watch the Government figure out EXACTLY how they did it despite that being what the audience just saw, just a few seconds ago! and why do we get that scene? So that the film can happily jump the genetically altered shark in its third act.
All that said, I will re-itterate, the film is fine, enjoyable and even exciting in places, I am just not sure there is any point to any of it but I am sure you could say that about most films... I never will but I am sure you could say that.
6.5 out of 10 predictable sandwiches (because there's nothing else in the fridge)
The Diner and The Basement JOIN UP for the FIRST time!
Well one of the very best shows around is We Came From The Basement featuring the ever jovial film and music aficionados Jason and Shawn.
There was much talk about getting the 2nd Unit guys together to do round-table shows or cross-over shows and while we have all, at one time or another, appeared in some capacity on each other's shows this will be the first time where to get the FULL EXPERIENCE of the conversation you will have to listen to BOTH shows.Yes on August 20th in the Diner - http://amdpodcast.blogspot.com
and on August 25th in the Basement - We Came From The Basement
Jason, Shawn and Myself will unite in a podcasting frenzy of awesome to provide you with, what I hope is just the first,
Cliff-Hanger Podcast Cross Over Extravaganza!
We will be discussing 2 1970s Peter Fonda starring Road Movie type films!
First up is:
Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry
A rip roaring yet existential cops and robbers chase flick chock full of awesome lines, hair-raising stunts and groovy hair!
and then we've got...
Race With The Devil
Exciting, nerve wracking and fun!
YOU WON'T WANT TO MISS THIS!
Both shows will be posted at: www.aftermoviediner.com and http://amdpodcast.blogspot.com
The Podcast from the After Movie Diner TURNS 1 on July 23rd
BIG SPECIAL EVIL DEAD SHOW!
We have fans of the series, friends of the show AND
So JOIN US won't you for the
BEST EVIL DEAD PODCAST ever produced.
It's BY the Fans, FOR the Fans!
E-MAIL YOUR EVIL DEAD AND BIRTHDAY MESSAGES TO
aftermoviediner@g-mail.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/aftermoviediner
Website: www.aftermoviediner.com
Podcast Blog: amdpodcast.blogspot.com
Twitter: @aftermoviediner
We have fans of the series, friends of the show AND
SPECIAL GUESTS FROM THE FILM ITSELF!
Including
The Ladies of the Evil Dead
& Hal Delrich the STARS of the film!!
and the surprise interview with a pivotal and invaluable someone from behind the scenes on the film can now be revealed!!
I am so VERY HAPPY to announce we have special effects and make up wizard extraordinaire
Tom Sullivan!
on the After Movie Diner!
MONDAY JULY 23rd!So JOIN US won't you for the
BEST EVIL DEAD PODCAST ever produced.
It's BY the Fans, FOR the Fans!
E-MAIL YOUR EVIL DEAD AND BIRTHDAY MESSAGES TO
aftermoviediner@g-mail.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/aftermoviediner
Website: www.aftermoviediner.com
Podcast Blog: amdpodcast.blogspot.com
Twitter: @aftermoviediner
The After Movie Diner Podcast Survey
Hey Diners! (listeners and friends of the show) How are we all doing today?
I had some questions to ask you lovelies:
1.How did you find the show?
2.How do you download/listen to the show?
3.How regularly do you download the show?
4.Do you find downloading/listening to the show is easy?
5.We are available on iTunes, Podbean, Podcast Pickle, Talkshoe, Stitcher etc is there any platform we should look into being on to make your lives easier?
6.We have www.aftermoviediner.com, amdpodcast.blogspot.com, Facebook and Twitter as well as the platforms listed above, which website do you visit most?
7.Do you find all the information on the show is easy to find?
8. How many shows on the 2nd Unit Podcast Network do you listen to?
9.Anything we could do different or better?
Any suggestions at all?
Thanks for your feedback and for your continued support of the show, you are all beautiful, rare, weird and much appreciated!
I had some questions to ask you lovelies:
1.How did you find the show?
2.How do you download/listen to the show?
3.How regularly do you download the show?
4.Do you find downloading/listening to the show is easy?
5.We are available on iTunes, Podbean, Podcast Pickle, Talkshoe, Stitcher etc is there any platform we should look into being on to make your lives easier?
6.We have www.aftermoviediner.com, amdpodcast.blogspot.com, Facebook and Twitter as well as the platforms listed above, which website do you visit most?
7.Do you find all the information on the show is easy to find?
8. How many shows on the 2nd Unit Podcast Network do you listen to?
9.Anything we could do different or better?
Any suggestions at all?
Thanks for your feedback and for your continued support of the show, you are all beautiful, rare, weird and much appreciated!
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - June 28th 2012
Yes, you read that correctly, it's really REALLY good and I can't urge people enough to go see it on the big screen this week before it is yanked from cinemas for unfortunately bombing and is resigned to the bargain blu-ray bin of history.
People (like me) who complain that there aren't enough good, fun, innovative ideas out there and people (like me again) who condemn the vast majority of CGI heavy films, need to see this film and be proved wrong but, of course, go see it in 2D (seriously I may be wrong about a lot of things but screw 3D, screw 3D in it's muddy, blurry pointless face)
It looks incredible, the cinematography is beautiful and hovers just the right side of something like Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow for example (Burton serves as producer on the film). The big strength of the film is that it's concerned not just with flashy set pieces (although there are plenty) but also with story telling, drama, emotion, loss, friendship and love.
It manages to walk the line so few 'geek/horror-fan' marketed-to films manage to traverse and that is the action scenes are genuinely thrilling, entertaining, laughably ridiculous but in a way great action cinema should be and everything a good fan-boy could want while also providing you with, wouldn't you know, characters you care about!
It gives the story room to breathe, it makes you give a crap, it makes you want to be part of it all and under lying it all, it even may 'shhh say this in a whisper' have something to say
GASP!
That's right not only is there satisfying action, vampires, historical figures, an understandable plot, great characters, interesting performances and it's all stunning to look at but somewhere buried deep beneath everything it has a teeny weeny message that makes you leave the cinema feeling something! and what a WONDERFUL experience that is for a change!
The trick they had up their sleeve the whole time was they played it completely straight. There are chuckles in there for people who either know the period, the characters or the quotes and there are laughs of glee as something brilliantly ludicrous happens a-top a speeding train or something but the best thing about the film is that it tells the story like what you are watching really happened once. Oh yes and like I said, it cares about its characters in an endearingly charming and commendable way.
That's not where the finely tuned excellence of this piece ends because it actually manages to throw in all the big, over simplified or falsified historical, patriotic and heroic stuff without, for one, this cynical, tired and jaded movie goer ever feeling anything less than riveted and swept along, all with a big dopey 'this is f'ing cool' smile plastered firmly on my face.
A quick word about the vampires. I have not been one for this recent spate of vampire related films and TV, in fact you could say that the mere mention of Edward from Twilight or that potato faced, thick-foreheaded, vacant pillock from the Vampire Diaries is enough to send me into a fit of vomitous rage but the vampires in this (a very very nice mixture of make-up, practical effect and cgi) are genuinely scary and very well done. Plenty of jumps in the first half of the film can be had as you get used to their impressive appearance, slathering jaws, black eyes, veiny skin and all.
It's closest film predecessor, it being a famous story from history re-told in comic-book format with added supernatural elements, a gothic horror style and then made into a hip flashy film, would be 'From Hell'. Now 'From Hell' has problems with its stars it's true but look past Depp's atrocious accent and inability to drop Hunter S Thompson's mannerisms and ignore entirely the blight on the cinematic landscape that was the brief reign of Miss.Brain-Fart herself, Heather Graham and actually 'From Hell 'was remarkably well done, engaging and gruesome. Well AL:VH is that but with some strong, likable, earnest central performances.
Look if you had told me 4hrs ago that I'd be sat here hurriedly and excitedly racing to extoll the virtues of a film called Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter I would've scoffed at you, in that way that I am wont to do, and a little bit of you internally would think I was an arse, probably right but still a bit of an arse.
It's still surprising me, even sat here wracking my brain to find something negative to say about it, I really can't think of much!
Well, except that Mary Elizabeth Winstead, despite being cute, is a bit flat but it doesn't derail the film, it's perfectly fine and she even has a couple of moments that border on better-than-average which, for her, is an improvement!
So apart from that, this film, for me, on the big screen, in glorious 2D, with a very empty cinema, on one of the last showings my local multiplex is having sadly, it was a resounding and air thumping success.
9 out of 10 bloody steaks (see what I did there)
The After Movie Diner hosts #MTOS this Sunday!
Ok so before we get started, all those new to this (like me!) and want to know just what the flaming heck #MTOS is please go here and read this:
http://tickertalksfilm.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-is-mtos.html
Right now we've got that out the way you all know to join us on Twitter at 3pm Sunday June 17th NYC time and get ready to answer 10 questions on my specialist chosen subject.
WELL that subject is.... (insert drum roll here and then insert the sound of said drummer being strangled and his body being smuggled into the trunk of a nearby station wagon)... SLASHER FILMS
Yes indeed.
You'll also know (if you did the reading for this class) that I have to supply 10 open ended questions designed to spark debate.
Well, baring in mind I am not that inventive and have very little time, here are my questions:
1. Favourite slasher film or series?
2. Favourite slasher villain and why?
3. Favourite slasher hero?
4. Who would win in a fight Freddie, Jason or Michael Myers and why?
5. What elements does the best kind of slasher have to have?
6. Original 80s slashers or the knowing slashers of the late 90s?
7. Are any slasher sequels better than the original?
8. What's the most overlooked slasher film?
9. What mask would you wear if you were going to be a slasher villain?
10. Who would you cast as what in your ideal slasher film?
Ok! so I hope you think they're good questions... or at least something for you to think about before Sunday.
If you want to see what I think about certain slashers you can read these blog posts:
Maniac Cop
Sleepaway Camp
Halloween 4&5
Friday 13th pt.4
OR
You could listen to this Holiday themed slasher podcast I did:
http://amdpodcast.blogspot.com/2011/10/episode-15-halloween-special-holiday.html
I do hope you'll check these out and JOIN US SUNDAY
my Twitter is @aftermoviediner
After Movie Diner - Winner of TLA Cult Award for best Webiste/Podcast/Blog/Whatever
I am incredibly overwhelemed, happy and honoured to announce that
The AFTER MOVIE DINER WON the TLA CULT AWARD!!!!! YES!!!!!
I honestly can't believe it!! that's amazing!
Thanks go out to TLA for the nomination in the first place and against such amazing and incredibly stiff competition too, it seems surprising and undeserved!
I said I share it with all my co-hosts and I do! This is for them as well! THANK YOU everyone!
and THANK YOU all who voted you are by far the best listeners and friends a podcat podcaster like myself could ever hope to have!
The Crowd That Entertains - FREE Independent album!
PLEASE if you're not already then GET ON THIS!
The Crowd That Entertains are a band of two members, both good old friends, one of whom writes this blog AND hosts the After Movie Diner PODCAST!
They are working on their third collaborative album called The Heist
http://www.soundsofjag.co.uk/TheCrowdThatEntertains/TheHeist/index.html
It's being released exclusively by SoundsOfJag song by song every month FREE in an e-mail which will ALSO contain another tremendous track by another of the artists on Jag.
However you can catch up on the tracks by following this link AND also sign up for the e-mail which will help you complete the 'Brit take on Americana' tale of
The Heist
YOU WON'T REGRET THIS.
Support independent music, get a whole album FREE and GET THEE TO JAG!
The Crowd That Entertains are a band of two members, both good old friends, one of whom writes this blog AND hosts the After Movie Diner PODCAST!
They are working on their third collaborative album called The Heist
http://www.soundsofjag.co.uk/TheCrowdThatEntertains/TheHeist/index.html
It's being released exclusively by SoundsOfJag song by song every month FREE in an e-mail which will ALSO contain another tremendous track by another of the artists on Jag.
However you can catch up on the tracks by following this link AND also sign up for the e-mail which will help you complete the 'Brit take on Americana' tale of
The Heist
YOU WON'T REGRET THIS.
Support independent music, get a whole album FREE and GET THEE TO JAG!