Thursday 31 March 2011

BlogalongaBond: Douchefinger (Yes, that really is the best I could come up with)

As I pointed out at the end of last month’s From Russia With Love ‘review’ I bloody love me a bit of Goldfinger. Well I hadn’t seen it for about 8 years before this, but I can definitely remember the ten year old me going mad for it! However I can also remember going mental over A Goofy Movie, so I wasn’t sure how much faith I should put in the former me.

However, after the re-watch, I can now safely say that Goldfinger is totes awesomez!

I’m going to dive straight in here and say that the reason that Bond’s third outing works so well is that it is the perfect mix of a serious action movie while slightly delving into parody. In the opening sequence alone Bond wears a fake duck on his head, blows up a whole chemical plant with what looks like playdo and gets his latest squeeze knocked out by a plank of somesort without any thought. There was moments throughout the film that had me in stitches and with a character called Pussy Galore, I’m sure that the film wasn’t meant to be taken completely seriously. It’s also got one of the most feared villains of all time.

In spite of all of this, there was still plenty of unbelievably tense moments that got me thinking about what I would have done if I was in the same conundrum that Bond was in, because of me pondering this, I’m crossing out ‘working for the MI6’ as a possible career path, as I’m sure I’ll just get fed to the sharks after ten minutes of embarking on my first mission. Bond however, survives all these ordeals, such as a lazer coming to burn his todger off, or a plane hurtling to a crash landing, but, of course he survives, we all know that there are 20 more films after this. So the fact the film still manages to create tension is quite remarkable as the audience knows that the film will end with Mr Bond doing the nasty amongst some bushes.

It draws comparisons with this year’s wank bucket, 127 Hours, as the audience knew from the start of that film that James Franco was going to lob his arm off, but throughout its hefty run time it managed to create about as much tension as watching a poster slowly peel off a wall in your bedroom.

So yeah, Goldfinger, bravo, two thumbs up, hooray hoorah!

P.s. For those who haven’t seen it, here’s a picture of Shirley Eaton, who plays a Jill Masterson in the film. There’s nothing else I can say, apart from, LOOK AT HOW AMAZING SHE IS!

Stay tuned next month for: Thunderball

Wednesday 23 March 2011

One for the baby book.

As I’m currently an 18 year old university student, living somewhere that isn’t London, I’ve not yet had any invites from PR companies asking me to go to screenings of their films. I’m sorry if that’s come as a big shock to you!

However, my local Picturehouse cinema recently put on an event so awesome that I actually handed over twelve pounds of my hard earned money (coughstudentloancough) to go and see it.

This event was my first ever double bill at a cinema; the two films I saw were last year’s acclaimed documentary, Best Worst Movie, about the story of early 90’s cult horror movie, Troll 2, which was then shown in all its glory.

Instead of writing a review, I could just put up these two screenshots which clearly show the direction that this post is going;

But I’m going to make you all listen to my opinion anyway.

Best Worst Movie follows the original cast and bat shit insane director of Troll 2, as they travel across America showing their film to its devoted fans, some of which had travelled hundreds of miles to watch a screening of the film in a showing room reminiscent of Fritzl’s basement. Many of the people involved with the film, which was released in 1990, kept it a secret from family and friends for as long as they could, as even they knew how terrible it was. One of these people is George Hardy, who played the father of the family that Troll 2 focuses on, the opening of the film shows Hardy living his life almost 20 years after the film was made, and he is a strong contender to beat James Stewart for the ‘Most Likeable Person Ever’ award.

The main emphasis of the beginning of the film is that Hardy’s friends and family were all shocked that he could be involved in something this terrible, despite being such a great guy. However, as we reach the end of the documentary, after seeing tons of Troll 2 parties, people getting Troll 2 tattoos, and countless sold out screenings, it’s evident that it isn’t as bad as everyone first thought. The fact that the film never got a proper release, was made on peanuts and is unintentionally hilarious hasn’t stopped people across the globe getting their hands on it and loving it like their deformed little brother. If this was a fable by Aesop, the moral would be that people can always find good qualities in anything, just like Friday by Rebecca Black is so damn catchy. I made a popular culture reference, check me out! The fact that Best Worst Movie is pretty damn great is also another example of Troll 2 adding to its legacy.

It did go on a bit though, and I’m not too sure how many shots of fat horror fans screaming nonsense one film can take, but it’s great fun and has a strong message that isn’t constantly pointed out to you like other documentaries.

As I expected, Troll 2 was hideously bad film making, but it contained scenes of people turning into trees, a small boy pissing on some cakes and a woman exploding into popcorn, which all had the room in a bout of giggles, so, to reiterate what Best Worst Movie was getting at, it wasn’t all bad.

Monday 21 March 2011

Please, STOP!

I know that the popularity and plagiarism of The Social Network poster has been well documented on better blogs such as Ultra Culture HERE, and Your Turn Heather HERE, but this recent find at a London tube station really takes the biscuit;

Who is this man? Why is he so mysteriously happy? And what the fudge is Cloud Power? If we are going to be using this design to advertise everything, can we not get Jesse Eisenberg involved in it all, please?

Friday 18 March 2011

RIP Micheal Gough

It’s quite a sad state of affairs when my first blog post in over a week is about an actor passing away, it’s also very sad that the actor in name was pretty great.

I may seem like quite an uninformed person to be writing this post, as I’ve only seen five of Michael Gough’s films, the last being 2010’s god awful Tim Burton self indulgence wank fest Alice In Wonderland, the other four being (as you might have guessed) the four Batman films of the 80’s/90’s where Gough plays Bruce Wayne’s loyal butler, Alfred. Before you start to cry out ‘Mr Douche, Batman Forever and Batman & Robin are also terrible films’ please read on.

One faithful day last year when I found myself with bugger all to do apart from vegetate in front of my TV, I decided to watch all four of these Batman films back to back, and as the quality began to quickly diminish there was one thing that stayed constantly amazing, this is of course was Gough’s acting.

He managed to stay true to the original deadpan nature of Alfred from the Batman comics that were made decades earlier, while still carrying an instantly likeable charm which makes him quite high up on the ‘actors who I wish were my Granddad’ list. He managed to deliver a lot of brilliant one liners that evoked actual laughs, not just embarrassed giggles that the awfulness of Mr Freezes’ puns produced.

In the latter films, he was the only character I actually cared about, and not just because he was the only protagonist not wearing the infamous nipple plates, but also because he was the only character who had any real depth. Batman & Robin is constantly voted ‘The Worst Film of All Time,’ and it is pretty dire, but the fact that Gough managed to draw out an emotional response, despite being surrounded by turd, is a pretty amazing achievement. My hat really goes off to the man and I hope he’s fondly remembered.

Michael Gough (1916-2011)

Wednesday 9 March 2011

Two things...

1.

Is it just me, or does this poster for ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’ make it look like the most unappealing film ever to exist, and I know that’s a very hard record to take from the main ‘Knight and Day’ posters. Everything about it makes me want to be at least a thousand metres away from any showing, that stupid licence plate, McConaughey’s stupid pensive expression and that odd rusty effect to tell everyone that it’s obviously set in the past (it might not be, but I can’t think of any other reason for using that effect.)

2.


This is the new Cars 2 trailer that hit the internetz yesterday, and it’s our first proper look at footage from the film. I seemed to be the only one who had a lot of faith in this film, mainly because of my absolute devotion to Pixar, but even I’m beginning to worry after this trailer.

We were originally told that the main plot of the film would involve Lightening McQueen and Mater travelling around the world for a series of races, and that sounded like the perfect way to move the story along as I really couldn’t imagine another film set in Radiator Springs. Now we’re seeing that it’s turned into some odd spy caper which I really don’t think suits the Cars universe. Also, Pixar have a knack for picking a mix of great voice actors and celebrities whose voices really match their characters, but I’m afraid to say every time I hear Michael Caine’s character talk, I’m going to wish that he was voicing an old Mini, not a car that is seems to be made out of explosives.

All I can say is, fingers and toes are tightly crossed.