Thursday 28 April 2011

BlogalongaBond Thunderball: Water, water everywhere

The majority of the BlogalongaBond posts for Thunderball thus far have been fairly negative, view them all HERE. So when I sat down to watch it I really wanted to like it just so I could offer a contrasting view of the film. Unfortunately, Thunderball really isn’t all that great.

From the opening, where Bond kills a man dressed as his own wife and then flies away in a jetpack, it all just feels very flat and uninteresting, despite sounding amazing on paper. There are a few moments during the first hour where it looks as though the film is going to pick up, such as Blofeld being a bad ass by electrocuting one of his top men just because he stole a few quid, but sadly the film never gets out of this rut, mostly due to the fact that nothing really very thrilling happens.

After the halfway mark the plot gets very confusing, due to long, boring conversations between some of the key characters where they discuss lots of spy things. Most of these conversations don’t really make much sense, and I’m pretty sure the director Terrence Young realised this, so whenever any of these spy talks are taking place, he just stuck a beautiful woman in the corner of the shot in hope that she would draw the audience’s attention away from the nonsense that the other characters are spouting.

There is also far too much water in the film, it seems as though the baddies set themselves a little target in which they have to kill Bond while he’s in the water. After many attempts of this, I actually got a bit bored of looking at water. I know the fact I’m getting annoyed about the use of water in a film seems very pedantic, but it’s a theme that doesn’t really have any depth (lol) or major relevance. Anyway, imagine my distain when I realise that the big climax of the film is set, you guessed it, under water. Usually the final battle is the part of all Bond films that is the most energetic and fun, but all the bloody water ruins this and makes things disastrously sluggish. Bond moves on from one wet suited enemy to the next, as though he is in a video game where the object is to discover how many places you can impale a man with a harpoon. The sequence goes on for ruddy ages as well, which makes things ten times worse.

When he miraculously survives the ordeal, I was actually looking forward to seeing him getting some nookie while the credits rolled, BUT THIS DIDN’T EVEN HAPPEN. He just gets pulled away by a helicopter or some shit.

However, the film did give me the opportunity to make this;

eo98QK on Make A Gif, Animated Gifs

Yup. (It’s probably even better if you’ve never even seen the film.)

Stay tuned next month for: You Only Live Twice

Sunday 17 April 2011

A tiny Sunday night rant.


Look at this poster, just look at it!


I’m sure you’ve seen it at every single bus stop under the sun, and I doubt you get as annoyed about it as me, but just look at Russell Brand’s smug face.

I’ve had a very on, off relationship with Mr Brand, I used to hate him, then he made a lot of funnies on the TV and I grew to love him like the messy tramp that he is, but now he’s started to shovel out tons of middle of the road comedies like this (the trailer is more than enough proof that Arthur will is pretty crap.)

Whatever my thoughts are on Brand, I don’t think you can argue with me when I say that you’d never stop wanting to punch his face in this poster, it’s pretty much the epitome of ‘smug bastard.’

Jennifer Garner isn’t looking as hot as she usually does either, so the poster loses points there as well.

Boourns!

Thursday 14 April 2011

Another post about a film I'm very excited about.

So here's the trailer for Lars Von Trier’s new film Melancholia.

I usually hate trailers, but after having no exposure to this film before watching this one, it’s done a very good job of getting me very hyped to see what it's advertising.

I’m not very clued up on Trier’s earlier work; I’ve still only seen Antichrist, but I loved that and I love this trailer. I love that Charlotte Gainsbourg still looks like the clit cutting nut job that she played in Antichrist, I love that it hasn’t ruined the film by giving too much away but has given us enough insight to warrant the state of anticipation that I am in, I love that the sci-fi element is only hinted at and isn’t completely overblown, I love how 75% of the shots that Kirsten Dunst is in, she’s got a good percentage of her tatty boobs on show. As everything in this post implies, I'm very excited about this film.

I also know that simply listing all the reasons why I like something is pretty lazy writing, but I don’t care what you think.

Tuesday 5 April 2011

The first of many Monsters Inc 2 posts

Hello, and welcome to Douche on Films first post based solely on all things Pixar. I’ve had to refrain so far, otherwise all my posts would be filled with incessant ramblings on how I think Pixar is the best thing to happen to film, EVAR!

Before I go any further, I just want to tell you all that Monsters Inc is my all time favourite film, a lot of people seem to scoff at me when I tell them this, because it isn’t Citizen Kane, it isn’t The Godfather, it isn’t some random obscure film that only a few people have ever seen. My favourite film is certainly Monsters Inc, and if you have a problem with that, you can go and suck a fuck.

When it was announced last year that my favourite film was going to get a sequel, my face probably looked a little like this;

Although I have an amazing amount of faith in Pixar, I was very worried that they were going to arse it up and ruin the story of Michael "Mike" Wazowski & James "Sulley" Sullivan as we know it. As we can all agree, the first film has an amazing, heart wrenching ending and I didn’t want it to be changed in anyway. There was a rumour that in the sequel we were going to see Boo as a teenager, and I’m sorry, but that just sounded like the worst thing ever. Boo is the cutest, most loveable character that Pixar have ever produced and nothing sounds worse to me than seeing her as a spotty, bratty teenager, as that’s what all teenagers are like, right?

However, it was announced last week that the new film will actually be a prequel, entitled, Monsters University. So now we’ll never know what happened after Sulley opened Boo’s door again at the end of the first film, and we can still imagine what fun and frolics they got up to. This has made me a lot more optimistic, one thing that we never really got from the first film was any back story for the characters, unlike most other Pixar films, for example the amazing opening of Up and the equally tragic opening of Finding Nemo. Instead we are simply thrust into the world of Monstropolis with Mike blowing an air horn straight into Sulley’s face. I might be the only person who really cares about all this, but I’m seriously considering freezing myself until June the 21st 2013 so I don’t have to wait one and a half years pondering about what happened when my two favourite characters met at university.

Sadly, the only glimpse of the film we’ve seen so far is this very lazy logo;

I’m sure things will improve though; they’ve got to improve, SURELY!