Tellyblogus Cinematicus Fantasticus

Film Review: Shark Night 3D

2011-12-19T13:45:00.000-08:00

What the shit is this movie about?
It's impossible to tell from the poster.

Is that a shark fin?! Oh my god, I think it's a fin!
It's not really a fin; it's actually just a guaranteed return on investment. Don't beat yourself up - it's a fairly common mistake. I don't know if you've been reading the papers lately, but there's been a fair few human casualties attributed to shark attacks. It's only appropriate, then, that Hollywood pays tribute to the fallen in a suitably tasteful and befitting manner.

'Tasteful '.

What's that you say; we don't have a 'tasteful and befitting' script? Fuck it then, lets just do this instead. Shark Night 3D - boy, they don't give you any plot clues in the title either do they? - it's about two hick loons, some college kids, and a bunch of sharks; all with a rather careless attitude towards health and safety.

His arm's fallen off.
Well, I say 'fallen'...

The traditional assortment of startlingly beautiful, bikini-clad teenagers arrive at a picture-perfect lodge; a lodge conveniently positioned in close proximity to a shark-infested lake. Say - I don't suppose that these two key elements will run into each other at some point?

How convenient.

Safely ensconced within the lodge-of-certain-death, the group kick off the proceedings with a shamelessly mechanical, plot-furthering debate about whether or not a shark could realistically inhabit a lake. It's just what the audience has been waiting for - how can we possibly enjoy a shark film without some kind of reassurance that the events depicted stay true-to-life? You may remember that classic Box Office disaster, 'Jaws'? Yeah, well that wasn't a true story, and where's the director now? Nowhere, that's where. In professional limbo.

You won't remember this, because no one has ever seen or heard of it.

I'm just going to throw this out there: I don't think that an audience full of people who have paid good money to watch a CGI shark tooth-fuck the z-list care much about the zoological accuracy of what they are seeing.

All well and good, but what I really want to know is this:
could this jet-ski-humping shark realistically inhabit a saltwater lake?

My disregard for the (ahem) 'science' aside, the teenagers come to the conclusion that a shark might indeed inhabit a lake, despite it being a VERY DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENT to the sea 'n all, because this right here is a saltwater lake. So that's ok then. Because, y'know, that minute detail was the only thing about Shark Night 3D which didn't ring true to life.

VICTIM: 'Hey! What the shit are you doing here?'
SHARK: 'This is a saltwater lake, actually'.
VICTIM: 'Oh. I'm sorry. My bad'.
SHARK: 'That's OK. I get this ALL THE TIME'.
VICTIM: 'I'll bet! Not many people know that a shark can inhabit a saltwater lake'.
SHARK: 'I know! I get comments, like, on a daily basis'.
VICTIM: ''People are so ignorant about the natural migrational habits of saltwater-dwelling fish'.
SHARK: 'Aren't they? I'm always like, jeez, get some ed-joo-cay-shun!'
VICTIM: 'Hahaha, yeah!'
SHARK: 'Hahaha, so true'.
VICTIM: 'Ha. Hahaha'.
SHARK: 'So anyway, let's get to it, cuz, uh, I'm pretty hungry'.

Hello boys and girls! I am a shark, 'living in my natural environment'.

Hello boys and girls, I am a shark 'living in a convenient and spectacularly lazy plot twist'.
Is it just me, or do I look...I dunno....meaner to you?

The teens start doing the usual kind of thing that college kids do on films; mainly this involves behaving like prize-winning cunts while trying to unsuccessfully to breed with one another. One of the youngsters, a young 'Jock' type, prone to thumping his friends aggressively on the back in a frankly ridiculous simulation of alpha-male behaviour, chooses to spend the afternoon waterskiing. That's right; he decides to go waterskiing on a gloomy lake riddled with man-eating sharks. WHO DOES THAT?

You're doing it wrong.

A mischievous young shark observes the jock doing the waterskiing thing, and decides to join in. Well, I say 'join in', but what the shark actually does is knock the jock off his waterski pedestal and eat the shit out of him. It's a very poignant moment, actually, because the jock has this whole back story about how he comes from a really poor background, and he's just been offered a contract with a Major League Baseball Team, and..oh wait...that's right....I don't actually give a shit.

OM NOM NOM.

The jock crawls back to the lodge. I don't know if you've ever noticed, right, because maybe you have alot less time on your hands than I do, but it's pretty hard to crawl when you only have the one arm going on there to help you out. It's pretty tricksy, I'd say. A bit like trying to swim with your hands tied behind your back, or trying to maintain your integrity during the Leveson enquiry when you're guilty as fuck. Sorry, I meant to say 'when you're James Murdoch'.

You can sort of slide, I guess, but it'll take you like, oh, a good few days to cover some decent ground. With that in mind, let's debate how feasible it would for a one-armed jock, a one-armed jock who has recently lost a good 3-4 pints of blood, mind, to crawl back to the lodge-of-certain-death following a serious shark attack? Shall we agree that the answer to this question is: 'not very feasible at all'. Hold your horses, though, because it turns out that this jock has a saltwater arm.

A saltwater arm: possibly the shittiest superhero power ever?

The teenagers are shocked to discover that this genetic saltwater miracle will not save the jock from bleeding to death as a result of his terrible wounds. At least the stump will be sterile though, right? We don't have to worry about infection setting in or anything, which is good, because rather than immediately take him to a hospital, the teenagers decide to stay at the lodge and just chill for a bit. It's the X-Factor Final, right! You're going NOWHERE my lad.

Hey dude! Bring me back some Cheetos!

The jock abandons his friends, and leaves Lodge Island behind with a view to hunting down his piscarian assailant. He takes a spear with him, because..uh..well he needs a weapon, and..that..was...the...best... weapon.... that...a...one...armed...man...could...find? The jock dies (obviously) because hunting a shark down with a spear and only one arm isn't necessarily a recipe for revenge success. After his death, the remaining teenagers split into two groups (good thinking guys - that particular tactic never ends badly in horror films), with one group hitching a lift from two sociopathic fishermen manning the world's flimsiest boat, and the other group staying behind to watch 'Pay It Forward' and talk about how sad it is that Haley Joel Osment turned out to be a crackhead.

Prepare yourself for this next shocking revelation: the whole 'let's split up into two groups' strategy doesn't quite go to plan. Instead of reaching the mainland and contacting the relevant authorities for help, the kids on the boat both die horribly. I know I know: it's a Keyser-Soze-worthy twist. It turns out that two sociopathic fishermen are not the white knights in shining armour one might expect them to be, and instead of coming to everyone's rescue, they instead feed 50% of the remaining teenagers to the sharks.

This is what happens if you get into an unlicensed mini-cab, girls.

Back at the lodge, the archetypal innocent blonde lead is telling her love-interest that one of the fishermen tried to murder her once. You know it's funny, if a fisherman had ever tried to kill me, I probably wouldn't ask him to give my best friend a lift to the mainland, but you know I'm kind of uptight in that way.

Soon-to-be-dead brunette: 'But this guy's trustworthy, tight?'
Blonde cliche with curiously unquestioned penchant for sending her friends to a fate of certain death:
'Oh, sure, sure! He's like, the best!'

Bizarrely, the blonde girl's blatant disregard for her friend's welfare is completely ignored by the love interest. Do men actually listen at all? I don't think that they do. If they did, surely he would have said something more along the lines of: 'What the shit? You mad bitch! You just let her onto that maniac's fucking boat after he tried to KILL you? And you didn't think to fucking MENTION it? Stay the fuck away from me! You deserve to be in jail! Motherfucker!'

Seriously Dude; get some fucking standards.

On and on it goes. With the blonde girl and her anything-for-a-blow-job partner eventually coming to the conclusion that it might be about time for them to put a call through to the local Sheriff's office. Where I come from, we like to call for help BEFORE everybody gets eaten, but I guess I'm just a silly ol' square that way. And when the emergency services finally make their long-awaited arrival? Well they turn out to be....a murderous, sociopathic Sheriff, armed with a rohypnol-laced flask full of Spaghetti Bolognese. Yes, that's right. He brings Spaghetti. To the scene of a terrible tragedy. Nothing odd about that, nope nothing at all.

Did somebody here call for some help?

The Sheriff cunningly drugs Love Interest via the not-remotely-suspicious medium of a hot flask filled with emergency spaghetti bolognese, while Blonde Girl slowly comes to the realisation that her local Council need to start investing in CRB checks for staff members. It's a tense moment, or at least it would have been, if the fat bitch sat next to me in the cinema auditorium hadn't started rustling her popcorn like her fucking life depended on it. The Sheriff consults his Sociopath's Handbook For Dealing With Difficult Situations, and comes to the conclusion that the best remedy involves tying Love Interest to a chair, and then swiftly booting him into a barrel full of Mako Shark. That's what they refer to as 'best practise' in Louisiana.

Sheriff: 'I hate how us Southerners are stereotyped as these crazy hick-ass lunatics all the time'.
Man tied to a chair drowning in barrel of Mako shark: 'Yeah, you're so, like, victimised'.

Instead of eating Love Interest, the Mako Shark looks at him grumpily for a moment, before giving him ample opportunity to escape. Now, I've never been tied to a chair in a barrel filled with Mako shark, but I have heard that sharks are notoriously misunderstood and have developed an undeserved reputation for...oh hang on they've eaten the Sheriff. Love Interest breaks free from his restraints (in case you're wondering: they were saltwater restraints) and pushes the Sheriff into the barrell full of Mako. The Mako don't look at the Sheriff grumpily before disregarding him though, they immediately attack the Sheriff in a frenzy of convenient brutality. That's the thing with sharks; they much prefer to eat local produce.

Eat local.

Love Interest leaves...uh...well he leaves wherever the hell he is, I think it's some kind of garden shed...and goes to...uh...well he goes to rescue Blonde Girl from one of the sociopathic fishermen. You know it's odd. Usually when I visit a new town for the first time, I don't know where anything is, and I kind of have to explore it a bit. But love interest just kind of KNOWS. He knows where to find stuff in a town he has never visited before, and he knows where to find Blonde Girl even though she is out on the lake and could be anywhere. I guess because it's a saltwater lake. It's a well-know fact that saltwater can direct you to the location where a sociopathic fisherman is s-l-o-w-l-y trying to murder the crazy-ass bitch you have crush on.

What do you mean 'now's not the time to give me a blow job'?

The sociopathic fishermen have put Blonde Girl in a cage underwater to keep her safe. And she is safe, but 'safe' in the way that Gaddaffi was safe in that tunnel. Or Saddam was safe in that hole in the ground. She's drowning a bit and that, but hey, I'll bet that more people have died crossing the road than have died in a cage underwater without breathing apparatus surrounded by ravenous sharks.

All nice and safe.

Love Interest's a player, though, and nobody be tellin' him what to do! So he extricates Blonde Girl from her saline safe house and the two of them swim back up to the surface so that they can finish the film with the obligatory kiss-of-success. There'll be a twist, though, because it's this kind of going-through-the-familiar-motions nonsense that we've all paid good ticket money to see. So what's it going to be? Is blonde girl going to turn out to be a sociopath?

Blonde Girl - she's jus' a free spirit.
In the same way that Rose and Fred West were 'free spirits'.

Blonde Girl doesn't like to be pigeon-holed by sanity; why else would she ask her murderous ex-boyfriend the fisherman to ferry her college friends about? Or perhaps Love Interest will surprise us all and reveal himself to be some kind of half-man, half-shark hybrid? No, that's not it. So come on then, what is it? It's got to be something good, right? Something really good, because boy are they dragging out this whole 'wrapping up the film' thing, and...oh the credits have rolled. *Looks down at torn ticket stub with a mixture of hate and self-loathing*

Film Review: Lake Mungo

2011-10-13T13:56:00.000-07:00

Bit out of focus there, dude.
Probably just need to adjust the lens a bit.

'Mungo' - now that's a scary-sounding name, isn't it? Like 'Edgar'. Or 'Maxine'. Or 'Heather'.

I'm dead, me.

So; Lake Mungo. It's YET ANOTHER film about a haunted lake. Jeez, how many haunted-lake films does that make? Oh, that's right, only one. Because a plot which relies on a haunted lake is a terrible idea; the sort of thing that a stoner would dream up twenty-seven years into his career, shortly after befalling some form of blunt-trauma head injury.

Putting the dire concept aside, what do we have? Well, we have an Australian family visiting a haunted lake (snigger) for a holiday (fuck you, Thomas Cook!), only to find that their daughter is to be viciously murdered by the ghostly, demonic presence haunting the lake. Does it count as 'murder' if one of the parties is already deceased? I'm not entirely sure that it does. How would you even put a ghost on the stand?

Yeah, the trial's not going too well to be honest.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed though, or at least, I would be, if they hadn't decomposed and fallen off.

It's really annoying, losing your daughter in a haunted lake, so the dead girl's family spend the next 90 minutes explaining just how annoying it is. It's the sort of thing that I can image my mother watching, just so that she can tell her friends how 'thought-provoking' it was afterwards.

Is this, A. 'thought-provoking', or B. 'blurry'.
It's a tough call.

Turns out - it's quite boring being dead. To liven things up a bit, Dead Girl decides to start making repeated appearances in family photographs. You know, it's funny; most women H-A-T-E it when you take their photo, but Dead Girl, she's all like 'Hey! Hey take my photo y'all! Cmon!'. Dead Girl loves the camera, which is good, because I think we can all agree that she's pretty photogenic.

H-O-T.

Dead girl's family get a bit 'all up in yo' face' about their daughter making a posthumous guest-appearance in their photo album. They start asking questions, mainly questions such as: 'What the shit is going on?', and ' Why is our recently-deceased child appearing posthumously in family photographs?'.

Say 'cheese', bitch!

Dead Girl: now officially overstaying her shitting welcome.

Dead girl - seemingly a relentless self-promoter - steps-up her campaign for attention by going digital -she quickly tires of photography (bor-iing!) and graduates to video media....and...uh...and also to beating the living shit out of her elder brother. Basically, Dead Girl, she's all like: 'Hey! Notice me you ignorant cunts!! I am here y'know!'.

Dead Girl: she's such an applause-pony.

Dead Girl's family respond to this desperate cry for attention by...well, they sort of don't. Mostly, they ignore it, in fact. To be fair - that's the best thing to do with an attention-whore, y'know, just ignore her and she'll go away. Probably.

Seriously guys; just ignore her and she'll tire of it eventually.

Dead Girl doesn't go away; instead, she reveals (SPOILER ALERT!) that she had icky, under-the-legal-age-of-consent sex with her next door neighbour and his oddball wife. There's quite alot of photographic evidence about Dead Girl's extra-curricular bedroom activities, and, as you can imagine, Sex-Pest Neighbour and Oddball Wife don't really want anyone to find out what they've been up to.

Dead Girl's bedroom: not a safe hiding place for sex videos.
Makes you look a bit guilty, apparently

Here's a tip, boys and girls: if you don't want someone to find out who you've been fucking, don't film it. The sinister neighbours try in vain to get back the sex video that they made with Dead Girl, but they can't locate it. That's the thing with being a Paedophile, it's an administrative nightmare. The neighbours make a run for it and are never found, but at least now we all know...uh..well we know that Dead Girl had been having sex with her neighbour.

Don't judge me you cunts!

Dead Girl's brother steps forward and admits that he's actually been faking the seemingly-ghostly footage of his sister; apparently 'he thought it would make things better'. Now, I'm not being funny, but what in the shit was this fool thinking? How is pretending that your dead sister is haunting you going to clear things up?

All better now?

Dead Girl's family decide that it's time to take a breather, so they go to visit the place where Dead Girl went on her last school trip. The place they go to is called 'Runtime has now reached 96 minutes probably time to wrap this shit up y'all'. They find out that Dead Girl buried her mobile phone and her favourite bracelet on the school trip, and they keep asking 'Why?'. 'Why would she bury her favourite bracelet?!' and the audience has this to say in response: 'We don't give a pair of plastic tits why she buried her damn bracelet, just show us the fucking ghost so that we can all go home'.

Nice place; shame about all the mounds of discarded teenage paraphernalia.

Watch out now, because THE TWIST is on its way! Woop woop! Everybody loves a twist! Dead Girl's family come to discover that Dead Girl was in fact being haunted....being haunted by her future self. I'm just going to let that sink in a bit with you, kay, cos it's, uh, it's pretty special. And I want us all to take a moment just to...absorb.

This is what's referred to as a 'weak ending'.

Now one thing's for sho', we're ALL being haunted by our future selves. Every time that I look in the mirror and see left-over splashes of booze congealing on my face, and cold Fillet-o-fish matting my five-o-clock shadow, I see how things are going to pan out, and it ain't pretty. What I didn't realise was that I have been wasting my self-disgust and personal sense of self-loathing on myself, when I could have made it all into a feature film and shared it with you lucky fucks years ago.

So what have we learnt from Lake Mungo?

Stop filming shit that you don't want people to see! (I'm talking to you, Scarlet Johannssen).
Australian teenagers lose their virginity to their neighbours.
Family camping trips always end in disaster.
Don't invite a medium into your house, because he'll probably start trying to fuck your son.

Film Review: Insidious

2011-10-04T12:12:00.000-07:00

Jessica Rabbit gave me Mixi; Fuck you Jessica!

Hollywood Producer #1: 'Let's call it 'Insidious', yeah, because that sounds kind of haunted and shit'.

Hollywood Producer #2: 'What the shit does 'Insidious' mean, Dude? That sounds awesome!'

Hollywood Producer #1: 'I'm pretty sure that it means good return on investment in French'.

Hollywood Producer #2: 'OK sweet; that sounds perfect! I'll give that guy from 'Hard Candy' a call; he's got this rep for only getting involved with good projects, so by association this film will also be a huge success, even if, on the face of it, the production appears to be a total critical failure'.

Happy with my shiny face.

Hollywood Producer #1: 'Great - so who should we get on board to play the wife?'

Hollywood Producer #2: 'How about approaching Rose Byrne? She's got that whole 'vague melancholy expression' thing going on, which is, like, so insidious'.

Rose Byrne: so insidious.

Hollywood Producer #1: 'That is SO true. She's, like, totally insidious'.

Patrick: 'Why do you always look so sad, Rose?'
Rose: 'It's kind of my thing, y'know, like how YOUR thing is that really shiny face?'
Patrick: 'Oh, cool. That's so insidious'.
Rose: 'I know! Right?'

And so to 'Insidious', a word which actually means: 'Proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects'; a mixed metaphor then, for both the artistic integrity and the box-office performance of 'Insidious' as a whole.

Advocates of the silver ring thing explain why virginity is, like, so insidious.

We have a husband-and-wife team (Patrick Wilson and Rose Bryne respectively), who live in what appears to be a haunted log cabin of near-ecumenical proportions. Rose spends alot of time sitting at her piano, listening intently to baby monitors, and singing in a mournful voice, while Patrick busies himself with falling asleep at his desk and buffing his face.

I said YOU REALLY NEED TO GET OUT MORE Rose!

It's never made entirely clear why Rose is so resolutely fucking mournful all of the time; although there is mention made of her hard life AS A STAY-AT-HOME MOM. Yeah, it's pretty tough shopping at Target and sitting on a piano stool 24/7. Keep your chin up, Rosie! We're praying for you babe.

Eventually, Rose tires of listening to the baby monitor and starts a passionate affair with a nearby ghost.

Considering that she has three kids, Rose doesn't seem to get much in the way of housework done, although when Patrick comes home from his job as a UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR (good job, casting agents!) he often says things like: 'Well done Sweetie, you did a great job', and 'Don't worry sweetheart, things will get better soon'. Don't encourage her Paddy, she didn't do shit. She's been watching Judge Judy since 8AM.

Uh..good job?

Maybe the P-Man is just trying to boost Rose's confidence, because they seriously have a pretty sweet life going on from what I can see. To be 100% fair to Rosie, at one point she does have to (drum-roll please)......take the trash out. Well shit, I can see now why she be bitchin' and moanin' the whole damn time!

As if taking the trash out once in a period of several weeks WASN'T BAD ENOUGH, Rosie also has to contend with the fact that some fuck keeps hiding her sheet music. Now, I'm not exactly sure why Rosie needs her sheet music, because the only reason she and Patrick moved to the new house was so that she could write some new music. It's not like she needs to go over her old material or anything. FOCUS ROSIE! Stop looking to the past!

P: OMFG the trash is full again!
R: How is that POSSIBLE? I just took it out like three weeks ago! Motherfucker!

Rose's travails with her missing sheet music aside, it's difficult to see why this couple are so down all the time. Of course, there is the fact that their son is in a coma. That's right; a coma. He wasn't in a coma at the start of the movie, but then again neither was I.

Busy astral-projecting.

So their little boy (Dalton), is in a coma. Except that it isn't a coma, and the medics just can't figure out what's wrong with him. I'm pretty sure that if Dalton's Consultant Paediatrician spent more than ten seconds around Rose, he'd totally get it. A 'comatose' Dalton returns to the log cabin so that Rose can bore him to death. Sorry, I meant so that Rose can 'nurse him'. And that's when all the weird, haunted shit starts kicking off; the first weird thing being that Darth Maul turns up and starts bumming around the dining room table; I took this to be a sign that Patrick had sought solice from his wife's incessant musical mediocrity in the closest sexually-available neighbourhood figure...from Star Wars. At least it wasn't Ja-Ja Binks though, right Rose?

Patrick and Darth Maul: their eyes met over a comatose 7-year-old.

We weren't planning it; it just sort-of happened.

It's pretty tough when you find out that your husband has been sleeping with a fictional character from the Star Wars franchise, but Rose and Patrick decide to work through it. Trouble is, more and more ghosts start making an appearance, including one which appears to be Tiny Tim from 'A Christmas Carol'. You'd think that Dickens would at least have been given a brief mention in the credits, but N-O-T-H-I-N-G.

God bless us, everyone.

That hat is a BRAVE look there, my friend.
It takes a real kick-ass white boy to carry that off.

Rose and Patrick decide to hire first a disinterested priest and then a comedy medium to bring Dalton back from the Neverworld. Sorry; the Neverwhere? The NothingWorld? The LazyEnding? The WasteOfFifteenBucks?

Here to help.

The Medium tells Paddy and Rosie that Dalton is a gifted Astral Projectionist. Oh. Well that make total sense. We can just roll the credits right here then, because that explains E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G. No more clarification needed here! The Medium also tells Paddy that he is also a gifted Astral Projectionist, which makes sense because Astral Projection is a dominant allele notoriously passed on through the male gene. Good.

Has anyone seem my hubby?
Dickhead bailed on my ass.
Reckon he been creepin' wit that ho' Loretta.

Inexplicably, Miss Havisham from 'Great Expectations' turns up. And they thought that Dalton was lost! Miss Havisham seems to have a bit of a thing for Patrick, and the two of them really hit it off. Just to be clear, by 'hit it off', I actually mean 'she repeatedly tries to murder him'.

Patrick goes to the Neverland ranch to hang out a bit and save his son and shiz; but before he goes, the medium warns him 'not to draw attention to himself'. So Patrick, once he arrives at the Neverland ranch, immediately starts SHOUTING DALTON'S NAME AND GENERALLY DRAWING ATTENTION TO HIMSELF. Patrick wanders up to all the Neverland ghosts which look generally bad-ass and threatening, and asks them if they have seen his son. I'm not being funny, but basically Patrick does the complete shitting opposite of what the Medium tells him to do.

I'm a professional.

By a stroke of complete luck, Paddy runs into Dalton and they both try to escape Neverland together. It's looking pretty good, and they are both about to escape when Paddy decides that now is definitely a good time to kick back and jus' chill for a bit. He tells Dalton to go on without him, basically for no apparent reason at all. Good.

So, uh..she has to wear the gas mask 'to talk to the spirits', right?
Which educational establishment did she qualify as a medium from again?
Oh, that's right; none.

Dalton leaves his father to hang out with Miss Havisham, and runs into Darth Maul on the way. Now you'd think, wouldn't you, that Dalton running into the murderous, sociopathic, homicidal maniac demonic presence (which has its heart set on killing him and taking over his body) would be a BAD thing right? But, uh, but it isn't. And Dalton makes it back to the real world without incident. Don't hold your breath for an explanation, btw, because there isn't one.

Sup.

Patrick's back, too, and he's as shiny as he ever was. He's also possessed by the demonic spirit of Miss Havisham, but he still looks pretty hot so plus ca change, right? Miss Havisham should probably take it easy for a few days, y'know, blend in a little bit so that nobody realises she has possessed Paddy's body and abandoned him to die in the Neverworld. So she does this by....immediately murdering the medium. I know where she's coming from, though, because the medium took her picture when she wasn't ready and that's enough to piss anyone off.

So what have we learnt from 'Insidious'?

Hollywood hasn't got a dictionary, and even if it had one, it would consider it surplus to requirements.
Patrick Wilson stays shiny, even after a trip to the third realm and an episode of demonic possession.
Astral projectionists are playful explorers but it occasionally gets them into trouble.
Psychic mediums are, without exception, elderly women.
It isn't necessary to come up with new, original, exciting concepts for movie monsters when you can just regurgitate any ol' shiz from previous cinematic and literary triumphs. Regurgitation+shiny-faced-actor+spooky kid-PROFIT.

Film Review: Battle LA

2011-04-04T17:52:00.000-07:00

Gaddaffi tells Los Angeles: 'Fuck You. I am not a fan of your Celine Dion concerts'.

I went on a date the other day. With a boy and that. I generally prefer to leave the house only on those occasions when I run out of peanut butter or tampons; or when the little boy tied up in my basement starts bitchin' and moaning about how he needs some more insulin. My date offered to pay for the cinema, though, and for my popcorn, so I figured that he might be worth a test drive.

Time to leave the house. Guess I'd better take off that wedding dress and dust the cobwebs out of my vagina.

Tampons; the fun way to not bleed all over bus seats.
Remember that 'fun' is a relative concept.
And that some guys may deceptively describe themselves on dating websites as being 'a fun guy'.
Relative. Concept.

He took me to see Battle LA (my choice) because I thought that if we went to the cinema I wouldn't have to talk to him. Apparently though this was not th case, because he seemed to think that the film in front of us was merely a flickering support act to the critically-acclaimed main performance of his own voice.

This is what our date was like. Only we were in the cinema, not standing next to some hideous curtains.
And I am much better looking than she is. Much. Better looking. Yuh.

It did occur to me that my date might at some point try to take advantage of being seated in a dark room next to a vulnerable (ha!) lady, and that his 'taking advantage' might involve him getting his cock out and waggling it hopefully in my direction, but in actual fact no such cock-related activity took place.

There was none of this. He hadn't even bought any preparatory lube along with him.

This meant that I had to sit through a 90-minute-long performance of 'Battle LA', punctuated throughout by the bland, background conversation of a man whose idea of sparkling first-date conversation involved asking me what my favourite colour was (the colour of you; if you were dead), and whether I 'preferred waterskiing or wakeboarding' (I am morally opposed to sporting activity of any kind).

Waterskiing is for Cunts. I can say this with authority, because some of my best friends are Waterskiers.

So; to Battle LA. There is a man. A military man. He has killed alot of people, but not in the good way that the military endorses. In the completely different and VERY BAD, VERY BAD INDEED way that the military does not endorse. Oh no!

Hello; my name is 'Military Man'.
I like to wear uniforms and speak in a calm, husky, undertone because that way everyone can see how wise I am.
Calm, husky voice = wise. Kay?

Military Man has a reputation for getting people killed. Just to clarify, despite 'getting people killed' being the primary objective of all military personnel, Military Man's reputation does not appear to make him especially popular. I guess if you want to be popular in LA you just have to suck cock like everybody else.

Nobody likes me because I killed some people.
It's confusing, y'know, because killing people is my job.
I guess that's what they call 'double standards'.
Although my commanding officer told me that if I put his 'double standard' in my mouth,
I could forget all about that bad reputation of mine.

Military Man leads a Group of Idiots into battle against what appears to be a troupe of particularly aggressive Jellyfish. The Group of Idiots aren't very good at killing the Jellyfish, but perhaps that is because they are actually conscientious objectors stuck in the wrong fucking job. It sucks to be a conscientious objector in the current economic climate; but I guess you gotta take whatever job lands at the feet of your 'War is Wrong!' placard.

Hello; my name is 'Conscientous Objector Stuck in the Wrong Fucking Job'.
It sucks to be me y'all.

Alright Bitches!
I am a scary Jellyfish WOOOOOOO!
What do you mean 'You're not scared?'

The Agressive Jellyfish attack LA. Why? What do you mean, 'why'? They just do, ok? Probably so that they can tear it up at all those fucking Casinos. Or so that they can pretend to be in 'The Hangover'. Why the fuck else would you go to LA, unless you had a sudden, overwhelming urge to be surrounded by Herpes?

Welcome to LA!

The Jellyfish attack LA, and Military Man and his group of Conscientous Objectors go into the battle zone, so that they can pretend to be in 'The Hangover'. Unfortunately, it turns out that the Jellyfish are not big fans of 'The Hangover'; so instead of quoting Zach Galifianakis and wearing 'Phil' wigs, they instead kill almost all of the Conscientous Objectors and then then start drawing cocks on the faces of the newly-dead victims. Not so much the last part; that last part is mostly just 'implied'.

The Military do not come off well in 'Battle LA'.
It's as if they aren't really in the Military at all.
But are in fact just a bunch of Actors.
Huh.

In the end the Jellyfish sort of give in. Probably because they can't survive outside of the water for all that long. Seriously, how long can a Jellyfish survive out of water? An hour? Two hours? Battle LA lasted for about an hour and a half, so I guess by that time the Jellfish were ready to haul ass back to the sea yo.

Ready to haul ass back to the sea.
LA sucks.
Plus, some slut gave me Herpes!

Military Man and his gang of battle-hardened Conscientious Objectors take LA by storm. Actually, they sort of fuck it up a bit, what with all their explosive devices, poorly-aimed gunshots and the littered corpses of Herpes-infected children. The Jellyfish tire of the LA scene; probably because they are surrounded by fucking idiots. Military Man insists on interjecting every fifteen minutes of the finale with some piss-poor emotional dialogue cleverly masquerading as filler. The biggest Jellyfish of the lot (for the purposes of this review let's call him 'Dave') is blown up in what some might say is an excellent metaphor for the general attitude of teh United States towards illegal aliens, and the Military get bored of Conscientious Objecting and decide to make killing people their main purpose in life.

Blowing shit up is ALWAYS a good idea.
Especially when the thing you are blowing up is something that you don't understand.
Or something foreign.

What have we learnt from Battle: LA?

Don't go to the cinema with a cunt.
If you think something might be different to you IN ANY WAY, blow that thing up.
If you want to get along in the Military, it helps to be a Conscientious Objector.
Jellyfish, no matter how tall, well-armed or aggressive-of-character, are not an intimidating species of animal.
If Aaron Eckhart thought that starring in Battle LA would help to rise his profile amongst the 'Twats who go to watch any old shit at the cinema' demographic, then he was right. If he was shooting for an Oscar nomination, then it's fair to say that he was 'less right'.

Film Review: Cherry Tree Lane

2011-03-04T09:32:00.000-08:00

I'm just going to hover ominously outside for a little while until the Job Centre opens up.

Welcome to Cherry Tree Lane. We have a 'white picket fence' policy here, and any residents who deviate from that lifestyle 'choice' will find themselves subject to a compulsory sodomisation order, courtesy of our local Neighbourhood Watch Officer. We do it because we care, you see?

Don't fuck with us; we know where you live.

As a general rule, I find that when I am having trouble pitching my film to investors, labelling it as 'urban' often helps to get them on board and shift a few extra cinema tickets to boot. The concept of 'urban' - a word which essentially means nothing more than 'an area or population characterised by agglomerised development and a greater, more dense population' - has been applied in the name of marketing to clothing brands, musical genres, art, literature, theatre, residential developments, political electorates and, increasingly, to films.

This is the sort of meaningless wank which clueless, big-shot Hollywood Producers (that's 'Cunts' to the rest of us) think will appeal to us teenagers. I did buy it, though, so it looks to me as if their market research was bang on. Unfortunately, I am not prepared to start watching 'Legally Blonde' just to throw them off-track. Because it's fucking shit. As is everyone who has ever seen it.

The word 'urban' has changed over the years; where it once carried no more of a stigma than the word 'Burberry' originally used to, like Burberry, it now carries with it a far more ominous, dreadfully working-class undertone. Where we originally employed the use of the word 'Urban' primarily as a descriptive adjective, we now essentially use it as a by-word for Chavdom; a smug, judgey, I'm-much-better-than-you superiority trip to distinguish between us; the successful uber-class, and them; the cunts.

We are prepared to bum you into submission if you step out of fucking line.
Now take down that cunting balloon from your kid's birthday party and remove that tongue-in-cheek garden knome
or you will be picking my condemnation out of your arsehole for the next decade.

The Plebian conversion from 'real life' to 'screen' has made quite the successful transition, and recent blood-and-gore box office success stories 'Eden Lake', 'They' ('Ils'), 'Harry Brown' and 'Cherry Tree Lane' all have in common two main characters, each doomed to fight each other perpetually to the death in a continuous class-war of epic cinematic proportions; the Middle Class (self-important, wingeing, chino's-reliant, art-gallery-visiting wastes-of-space) and the Chavs (synthetic-material-clad malcontents).

Hello, we are the Middle Class. We enjoy buying groceries from Waitrose supermarket,
bragging to our friends about how 'different' we are, playing Tennis and buggery.

Hello, we are the working class. We like mugging people, dropping out of school, getting pregnant at an innapropriately young age and shouting at each other in the street while drunk.

The Machavellian character is difficult to distinguish here on 'Cherry Tree Lane', but rather than cause controversy I shall assume, as I am encouraged to do, that the baddies are those nestling unhappily on the poverty line. Alternatively, the Marxists amongst you may choose to adopt a nihilistic perspective and dismiss both factions as equally worthy of moral condemnation.

Hello, my name is 'Urban'. You can tell who I am by my poor complexion and badly-cut clothing made from synthetic fibres.
I am also easily identifiable by my voice, which sounds like somebody with a severed tongue being forced to do a Dick-Van-Dyke impersonation in a popular nightclub at three in the morning after ten pints of lager, two glass of wine, five Sambuca shots, three lines of Coke, a horse tranquiliser, three LSD tabs, a Rabies vaccination and a punitive arse-raping for not having complied with local Neighbourhood Watch residential obligations.

And so, to Cherry Tree Lane. Here we have Mr and Mrs Bland, going about their dull, insignificant, Cath-Kidston-lined lives on a bourgeois street, in a bourgeois neighbourhood presided over by a bourgeois MP. Mrs Bland is wearing a very safe frock and disussing her professional life unconvincingly on the telephone, Mr Bland is waiting for his wife to put tea on the table. I know, I know; why doesn't he get his own fucking tea ready? We'll never know. The message in 'Cherry Tree Lane' isn't about the Broccoli; it is a comment on the nature of society, on our social demographic, social relations and social inequality. How very worthy....except for all that mindless violence of course. Just to be clear, though; Cherry Tree Lane is not the sort of social commentary which wishes to challenge the boundaries of male and female stereotypes. Y'know, because misogyny and sexual stereotyping is not as important as blindly categorising the working class as violent career criminals.

Sexist pig.

Mr and Mrs Bland kick off the evening by eating dinner around a puzzlingly miniature dinner table; the sort of dinner table that you would usually expect to find at a low-end greasy spoon or space-poor parisien cafe. Neither party asks: 'Hey, here's an idea. Why don't we just buy a bigger fucking table?', but perhaps opinions of this nature are implicit. Perhaps the miniature dinner table at Cherry Tree Lane is actually a metaphor for the comparative poverty of the working class in comparison with the plush, financially resplendant surroundings of the Bland residence. It isn't for me to say, although if I were to say anything at all about Cherry Tree Lane it would be this: 'You can't made a valid point about social mobility in an environment laden with stereotypical assumptions about wealth, class, socio-economic relations and poorly-drawn-out fictional charicatures. Also; your chavs weren't nearly scary enough. They were only about as scary as when, say, you think that you may have had the wrong pizza order delivered and have already waved off the delivery boy, but then you realise that he is only several metres away and can still be recalled, and that it IS actually your order after all'.

Massive house; £650,000. Miniature table; £35.00. Arguments in massive house concerning pointlessly miniature table; priceless.

Mr and Mrs Bland are enjoying their relentlessly tasteful evening when a knock at the door signifies a change of pace (I know, I know; thank GOD). Mr Bland goes to open the front door and is promptly punched in the face by a member of the working class. Aha! You may think. Things are about to get interesting! Don't get your hopes up; there is far more tedium to come. The house invaders (a bunch of thin, unremarkable, middle-class actors) take over the Bland residence by throwing some Broccoli onto the floor (not the Broccoli you Bastards!), and, er, by sitting on the sofa. Not the cunting sofa! Yes, the sofa.

The Dummies Guide to dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses.

Mr Bland is tied up and left to have a little nap on the floor; Mrs Bland gets to have a nice sit down on the sofa next to the rapiest member of the house invaders. They have a bit of a chat; more an 'I'm going to kill you' sort of chat than the typical house prices fare, but a chat nonetheless. Mr Bland has a bit of a bloody nose, presumably from when he was punched in the face earlier, but it may be that his bloody nose marks a silent protest on the tax cuts instigated by the Conservative Government. Bloody noses and death threats aside, in all other respects the house invadors are relatively underwhelming and spend their occupation of Bland territory discussing DVDs, asking Mr Bland if he has any porn channels, and nearly eating the Broccoli. The Last House on the Left it ain't.

Throw my Broccoli on the floor, will you? I am going to Fuck.You.Up.

The villain of the piece repeatedly threatens to rape Mrs Bland. She doesn't look all that up for it, to be honest. After about half an hour of near-continuous rape threats, there is a part of you that thinks it might actually be easier to get raped than to listen to any more frontin' from one of these home-invading cunts. Mrs Bland seems to agree, because she basically tells him to get the fuck on with it. Which he does. So far, so 'Straw Dogs'.

Straw Dogs; sofa-based terror has been done before. And done better, too.

Mr Bland is left to listen to the inane chatter of Home Invader #2; lines uttered by an actor who looks remarkably similar to Forest Gump's friend Bubba in Forest Gump.

Bubba Gump.

Home Invador #2 from 'Cherry Tree Lane'.

When Mrs Bland and her new friend the sex offender return, the space invadors reveal the reason why they have broken into the bland household; they have come to 'fuck up' Bland Junior, Mr and Mrs Bland's Son.

Hello, friend.
I come in peace. On your face.

Bland Junior arrives home. The Space Invadors 'fuck him up'. I'm not really sure what 'fucking him up' involves, however I am relatively certain that it is unpleasant. The final fifteen minutes are neither tense nor particularly diverting; Mr Bland is awarded the opportunity of murdering the little brother of one of the Space Invadors (he doesn't), Junior Bland is on left on the verge of death and nearly dies (he doesn't), Mrs Bland spends an unnecessary amount of time intermittently squeaking, raging at Mr Bland, putting her clothes back on and wingeing about the miniature table (not so much the last thing, to be honest). By the time the credits rolled, I was left with a terrible feeling of abject disinterest and complete apathy; perhaps this must be how the working class feel about eating anything which has not been deep-fried?

So what have we learnt from 'Cherry Tree Lane'?

A hatred of Broccoli traverses socio-economic boundaries.
If your dining-room table makes you look like the Big Friendly Giant at a Borrower convention, it is probably tim to upgrade.
Horror films don't need a 'message', kay? Unless you are George A. Romero you probably won't be able to create a cinematic masterpiece which simultaneously terrifies and preaches; nobody wants to feel guilty at the cinema.

Film Review: Splice

2011-01-22T12:45:00.000-08:00

Well this all looks to be in order.

'Splice' is the romantic story of the love affair between Adrien Brody and a genetically modified butterbean.

I know, I know: how very old hat. The Director, Vincenzo Natali, manages to keep it fresh though. He keeps it fresh by, uh, well by weaving in themes of incest, quasi-bestiality, patricide, matricide and awkward-beyond-measure sex. Like I said, it's very romantic.

Romantic.

The butterbean (played by a post-rehab Lindsay Lohan) turns in an excellent performance as 'Splice', or as her creators insist on calling her, as 'Dren'. Did you know that 'Dren' is 'Nerd' spelt backwards. No? Well now you do.

Dren.

A butterbean.

Dren is manufactured in a lab by two gloomy emo scientists; Adrien Brody ('Clive') and that frowny chick from the 'Dawn of the Dead' remake ('Elsa'). Sarah Polley! That's her. Elsa has managed to escape the oppressive confines of a zombie-surrounded shopping mall to re-invent herself as a frowny Geneticist, and she and hubby Clive are busy genetically engineering what looks to me like a morbidly obese Witchetty Grub in their lab.

Witchetty grub or just a really awkward dump? You decide.

The Witchetty Grub has been created by intermingling the genetic identities of several different species of animal. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: this is definitely going to end well. And it DOES end well. It ends well if you like watching fathers and daughters have sex. So, that's all of us then.

DREN: 'You'll call me, right?'
CLIVE: 'Uh, yeah. I'll, uh, I'll definitely call you'.

The morbidly obese Witchetty Grub isn't generating protein synthesis like Elsa originally hoped it would. Boo! What do we want? Protein Synthesis! When do we want it? Now!

Listen here, obese Witchetty Grub.
I pay you to synthesise protein, not to sit around watching Four on Demand all day, kay? Kay?

A wormery is a great way to keep your broody girlfriend occupied.
You know, so that she doesn't go and genetically engineer some kind of animal-human hybrid
like a crazy-ass bitch.

Because the Witchetty Grub is a total fail, Elsa decides to have a baby instead. No, wait, that's right. She doesn't decide to have a baby, she decides to use her own DNA and the DNA of a butterbean to create some kind of frowny human-butterbean hybrid. It's what we all would have done in her position. Probably.

Human-butterbean hybrids: Good for synthesising protein.

Elsa is hoping that the human-butterbean hybrid will be better at 'synthesising protein' than the lazy Witchetty Grub. I'm not sure what sort of scientific research background Elsa has, but I think the answer to this is probably 'none'.

Totally worth it.

The plan is to terminate the human-butterbean hybrid early on, but Elsa sort of forgets. You know how it is; one minute you are genetically engineering a new lifeform, and then...um....oh forget it. You know what? She is a total fucktard.

Silly Elsa!

To be fair to Elsa, the human-butterbean hybrid is having none of that 'abortion' nonsense. Instead, it comes to term much earlier than anticipated and Elsa and Clive are sort of stuck with their creation.
Frankenstein, anyone?

Oh fuck.

SARAH: 'She takes after her father'.
ADRIEN: 'What? No she doesn't! Fuck you!'

Sarah and Adrien bring up their little baby butterbean in the lab. You would think, wouldn't you, that one of their fellow 'Scientists' would notice something? Would notice something like a genetically engineered animal-human hybrid toddling around the lab? But no one does.

Dren does the whole 'incognito' thing.

Dren spends her days in the lab squeaking like a rabid hamster, behaving timidly, eating sugary liquids and running away from Mom an' Dad. Clive tries to kill her a couple of times, but apart from that he's a really good Dad. The mutated butterbean appears to be growing at an alarming rate, and for the first time it appears to occur to Elsa that playing God is not such a good idea after all.

Hello boys and girls.
My name is 'Progress'.

After a little while, Elsa and Clive decide to move Dren away from the lab and into a large shed. You know the sort of shed! The sort of shed which is specially adapted for housing animal-human hybrids developed by irresponsible fictitious 'scientists'!

A common or garden shed is a great place
to raise a homicidal-maniac, animal-human hybrid.
Especially if that hybrid is a bit rapey and has itchy feet.

It isn't really explained why Dren is moved into the shed. Why can't they just keep her in the house? Elsa makes some lame excuse about Dren 'being seen' when Clive protests, but I think the truth is that Elsa is just really houseproud.

Elsa: surprisingly houseproud for a sociopath.

They move Dren into the shed after Clive's brother runs into Dren in the lab one day. Clive's brother says something along the lines of: 'What the fuck, guys?', and in response Clive and Elsa say: 'Science is up. Progress is up, MoFo!' and this seems to placate Clive's brother quite alot. It concerns me that Clive and Elsa seem to view 'science' as a catch-all response to questions of morality and ethical reasoning, but I guess I'm just a silly ol' square that way.

CLIVE: 'Say Sarah. Do you think that maybe what we are doing is wrong?'
ELSA: 'Shut the fuck up you prissy cunt'.

Dren gets settled into her nice new shed and begins to grow up. She gets a nice cat and starts engaging in all those activities which teenagers tend to do at that age: listening to music, dancing, experimenting with make-up and fashion, and having sex with her Dad.

Maybe some more foundation?

Dren begins to display sexually aggressive behavior, just like a normal teenage human-hybrid does. She starts by attempting to murder her own mother (ooh, naughty!) and then follows it up by stabbing Clive to death and brutally raping Elsa. Did I mention that Dren changes sex half-way through the film? Yuh.

This party sucks y'all. I'm going to kill my Dad and rape my Mom to liven things up a bit.

Anyway, so in the end Elsa kills Dren. She kills her own child. Seriously, what kind of fucking family is this?

Hey there Motherfuckers! Guess what? I'm a total bitch!

Even Leatherface would turn these cunts down as prospective foster parents.

Fuck no! I'll stick with what I got!

Elsa is all on her lonesome now, and it's tough being single, right? Right. So to cheer herself up a bit she decides to give birth to an animal-human hybrid baby. We've all been there, honey. You go girlfriend!

Time for another one of these.

It's definitely time.

What could possibly go wrong?
Oh, that's right. Everything. Everything could go wrong. Again.
Dumb bitch.

Elsa goes to her employer and explains about her little bundle of joy. Elsa's Boss doesn't seem particularly phased by the idea of another Rosemary's Baby situation, and offers Elsa a check to keep her and baby company during the gestation period. And Elsa takes the cheque, because she is a dumb bitch. Try not to judge her though; the current economic situation has been tough on us all.

This time its gonna be different.
Stop laughing! It is!

So what have we learnt from 'Splice'?

Don't fuck your Mum and Dad: it's just rude.
A bald head does not look good on a chick: animal-human hybrid or not.
Dren likes cats some days, and doesn't like cats on other days.
Adrien Brody would make a truly excellent Emo.
Vincenzo Natali has failed in his mission to make incest cool.
Men will fuck anything if the opportunity presents itself. A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G.

The sequel is definitely going to be worth a look.

Film Review: Crocodile

2010-10-14T08:09:00.000-07:00

Crocodiles are funny, aren't they? And by funny, I mean 'bastards'.

Fucking crocodile dickhead.

You never know where you are with them. One minute, they're giving you their nice cobbled skin to make a lovely handbag, the next, they're all like 'I'm probably going to kill you, to be honest'.

I'm going to sell you to Louis Vuitton you cunt.

So the message of 'Tobe Hooper's Crocodile' is something along the lines of: 'Yeah! Fuck crocodiles! Crocodiles are all cunts, aren't they? Fuck you, crocodile species as a whole!'

This might comes as a massive surprise, but crocodiles can be a bit dangerous.

In this brilliant* and ingeniously crafted** 'creature feature', Tobe Hooper builds up a career for himself as a laughing stock. Sorry, as a 'talented new director'. Often, when a studio lures some hot new directing talent onto its books, they decide to throw them a directorial bone in the form of a cheap, easily-manageable but otherwise black hole of a production, in an effort to see what they can do with it. And 'Crocodile' is certainly the sort of 'I-wouldn't-wipe-my-arse-with-this-shit' production that a hot young director desperate to make his mark upon the world would jump at the chance to direct.
*a lie.
** also a lie.

No expense spared on the special effects, I see.

All of this would make a great deal more sense if Tobe Hooper approached 'Crocodile' as his directorial debut. But he didn't. He came to it some 24 years after he put together the cinematic moonshine that was 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'. I'm just saying! I'm just saying: 'What the fuck were you thinking, pissing your talent away like that, Tobe Hooper?'. But I'm guessing that Tobe hooper probably has this to say in response: 'Fuck you, you fucking fanboy cunt'.

Let's just agree that this is a quality production shall we?

So here we have a film. A film about a crocodile. A crocodile which gets a bit pissy. Its hardly a winning formula, is it? Not a winning formula, unless it is 1974 and you are Tobe Hooper, racing Steven Spielberg down a corridor towards a door marked with a sign which reads: 'Ready to produce something a bit different'. I guess Spielberg must have won that race, leaving Tobe to turn on his doleful heels and head towards another door, a door with a sign reading: 'Ready to produce something derivative'.

Stop judging me you cunts!

Producers like derivative. They like derivative very much indeed. Fuck it, if I were a producer, and not just a penniless cunt, I would opt to spend my millions in the 'safe-bet' haven of derivative film-making also. And 'Crocodile' is certainly a safe bet, because both Tobe and the producers knew that they would always be able to sell this crap to some tasteless fool. Some tasteless fool like me. And they were right. Just FYI, they were also right about being able to get me to buy 'Crocodile 2'; 'Piranha 1' and '2'; 'Octopus 1' and '2'; 'Spider 1' and '2'; Shark Attack '1' and '2'; 'Shark Swarm', 'Jaws 1', '2', and '3'; 'The Creature From The Black Lagoon', 'Attack of the Killer Bees', 'Alligator 1' and '2'; 'Frankenfish'; 'Saber Tooth Tiger'; 'Anaconda 1' and '2'; Loch Ness'; 'Primeval'; 'Black Water' and 'MegaShark versus Giant Octopus'. No, I don't have a boyfriend, why do you ask?

This is me, watching 'Crocodile 2'.
I'm a bit tired in this pic, because me and Jono had gone a bit OTT on the booze the night before.

Tobe Hooper's 'Crocodile' follows a group of cunts as they deservedly get eaten and try to fuck each other, but not in that order. If you are thinking that this plot sounds strangely familiar, that is probably because this is the same plot as for every other creature-feature film that you have ever seen in your life, ever. Well done, Tobe! Well done on the old 'producing something 100% bona fide derivative' thingie that you did.

Welcome, idiots.

Look at how silly I am!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
So silly!
(Don't worry, I'll be dead soon).

The group of cunts rent a boat in which to fuck each other and die horribly. Sorry, in which to 'enjoy being in the full bloom of youth and then be struck by a tragic, semi-supernatural, fate'. I would have liked it very much if Tobe Hooper had called this film 'Titanic: What Really Happened', but that's the trouble with retrospective I guess.

If I give you this crocodile egg would you suck me off?

The cunts anchor their boat so that they can drink and get high. Let's agree that this is DEFINITELY going to end well for them all. The boys leave the girls, so that they can...uh...so that they can fuck each other? I don't know. They leave the girls to sunbathe in a provocative way, whilst they go in to the lake of certain death and splash each other in a homoerotic fashion. Just to clarify: the male actors of 'Crocodile' were all definitely fucking each other. After a bit of splashy splashy 'oh you got me!' 'hahaha! I'm going to get you back!', they find a bunch of crocodile eggs. And they don't touch the crocodile eggs, or pick them up, or interfere with the nest in any way***.
***Actually, one of them picks up an egg and puts it in a rucksack. No, I don't know why he did that either.

A vicious crocodile hellbent on destruction makes an excellent surprise gift for friends.

In their post-coital fug, the boys decide that it would be a great idea to smash all of the crocodile eggs (nature lovers I see!) and then hide the last remaining unharmed egg in a rucksack belonging to the most annoying, whiny little bitch that I have ever come across on screen. Why do they do this? you might well ask. And Tobe Hooper has this to say in response: 'Fuck you guys! I made the Texas Chainsaw Massacre! What the fuck did you make? Huh? You made shit! That's what!'.

Hooper peaked with Leatherface. Don't worry Tobe, so did most of the entire horror genre!

Crocodilian Mama gets a bit pissy that a bunch of cunts have killed all her kids and that. She decides to teach them a lesson....by killing them all. Well, that's one way to teach a bunch of naughty kids a lesson in morality I guess. Another way would be by reducing their allowance, but, y'know, every parent is different.

And you're grounded, too!

Your son is going to be just fine, Madam.

The whole egg-stealing debacle doesn't really end well, to be honest. Quite alot of people die. Only they weren't actually 'people'. They were just 'teenagers'. And one of them had rainbow hair. So that's alright then, because as we all know, we only need apply the concept of empathy to the adult and pre-pubescent populations.

What have we learnt from Tobe Hooper's 'Crocodile'?

Don't buy a DVD for under £2.50 and have high expectations.
Stop buying fucking creature feature DVDs generally, actually.
You can safely remove 'Tobe Hooper' from your 'People That I Would Like To Invite To My All-Time Best, Most Brilliantly Bitchin' wedding Buffet List Of Invitees'.
It's definitely ok to enjoy watching teenagers die.
Don't fucking steal a pissy crocodile's nest of eggs if you are about to go on a fucking boat trip.
If somebody shouts at you to get out of the water, GET OUT OF THE FUCKING WATER!

Film Review: Shark Attack 3 'Megalodon'

2010-10-13T09:07:00.000-07:00

Do you believe in 'facts'?

Everybody likes to enjoy a nice 'fact' every once in a little while, and sometimes an excellent way to stock up on 'facts', is to watch a cinematic masterpiece such as 'Shark Attack 3: Megalodon'. Or as I like to call it, 'Jaws on Crack'.

FISHERMEN: Would you like some more of that nice Crack, Megalodon?
MEGALODON: Yes please Fishermen I would love a bit more of that lovely Crack.

The historical 'facts', according to 'Shark Attack 3: Megalodon'.

'Shark Attack 3: Megalodon', a documentary, tells the true story of a lonely, HIV-positive shark and the prejudice which he encounters as a result of his disease.

Hello, my name is 'Megalodon', and I am HIV-positive.

Megalodon has a hard time trying to make friends, because this is the 80s, and his HIV-positive status still attracts stigma. Poor Megalodon. He tries to make some friends, but it doesn't really work out, what with him going about 'Mission Friendship' by brutally murdering potential playmates and everything.

Ho hum.

MEGALODON: Would you like to be my friend?
VELOCIRAPTOR: Fuck off, Megalodon!

Megalodon's campaign of friendship goes a bit too far when he decides to eat....a surfer. Because, as we all know, surfers are the very LAST type of delicious, ocean-dwelling treat that a shark would choose to snack on.

Well this is unusual.

I mean, when was the last time that you heard of a shark attacking a surfer? That's right. Never.

The YMCA decide to stage an intervention, because, y'know, it's wrong to eat people and stuff. I hope that you're listening, Armin Meiwes!

SCIENTIST 1: Shall we do some of that 'science' stuff?
SCIENTIST 2: What, instead of watching 'The X Factor' on this dashboard monitor you mean?
SCIENTIST 1: Yeah.
SCIENTIST 2: Well okay but I put on my X-Factor Final celebratory wetsuit especially for this evening, so I'll have to go change into my diving chinos and cashmere gimp mask.
SCIENTIST 1: Yeah, to be honest mate I was gonna say something earlier cos that wetsuit isn't really the appropriate regalia for a Marine Biologist.
SCIENTIST 2: Is that what I'm supposed to be? A Marine Biologist?
SCIENTIST 1: Fuck, I dunno. On the script it just read 'Science Fella'.
SCIENTIST: On mine it just said 'Dead Soon'.

The YMCA get involved, so that they can put a stop to sharkbait season.

On our way to an orgy. I mean 'to save some folks from certain death'. Yeah.

MARK: Do you notice anything unusual about that shark Helen?
HELEN: Not really, Mark. What exactly do you mean by 'unusual'?

The YMCA's 'Save our Surfers' Campaign doesn't really work out like how they had anticipated, and instead of saving a whole load of surfers, what actually happens is that a whole load of surfers are murdered by the giant shark.The best laid plans go to waste, eh YMCA? Perhaps if you stopped trying to fuck each other long enough to save somebody?

JOHN BARROWMAN: What's the point of this scene again?
GREY-HAIRED ACTOR: I dunno. To show that we had the budget to rent a submarine I guess?
JOHN BARROWMAN: What the fuck are you supposed to be holding in your hand?
GREY-HAIRED-ACTOR: Oh it's some of that 'science equipment' stuff. The prop department gave it to me.
JOHN BARROWMAN: I think that they were fucking with you grey-haired actor. That looks alot like an old Coke bottle with grey and yellow paint on it to me.
GREY-HAIRED ACTOR: I think that its supposed to be an oxygen tank.
JOHN BARROWMAN: Why the fuck would you need an oxygen tank in a Submarine? In fact, surely the whole point of a Submarine is that you can dive without the aid of a gas-cylinder attachment?
GREY-HAIRED ACTOR: Well, I asked the 'Fact Consultant' for this production, and he told while he was laughing like a hyena, clutching his sides and rolling around on the floor that I would need this old Coke bottle in order to make this scene historically accurate.
JOHN BARROWMAN: Oh, OK, fair enough. Guess we had better get on with those 'historically accurate' lines that he gave us too, huh? Ok, all together now!
ALL CHORUS: We all live in a yellow Submarine, A yellow Submarine, A yellow Submarine...

John Barrowman, who you may remember from such films as...'This One'....and...uh...'That Dr Who Spinoff Which Nobody Ever Watched'...and..uh...'Being Annoying', plays a man who wears a bright blue t-shirt and smiles alot in spite of the bloody violence that is taking place around him.

ME: Why are you smiling, John? Everyone around you is dying!
JOHN BARROWMAN: I'm a Sociopath.
ME:Oh.
JOHN BAROWMAN: Yuh, I've actually been killing and eating all of those surfers myself.
ME: What the fuck? What are you talking about?
JOHN BARROWMAN: Yeah, that was me. The shark actually had nothing to do with it, he just wanted to make friends with them, you know?
ME: Holy shit. I had no idea!
JOHN BARROWMAN: Yeah, I did pretty good, huh? I fooled you guys!
ME: Yeah! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! You crazy!
JOHN BARROWMAN: Hell yeah! I've killed, like, I dunno, twenty or maybe even thirty young male surfers and blamed it all on that stupid prehistoric shark.
ME: Wow. Kudos.
JOHN BARROWMAN: Yuh. Hey do you like my shirt?
ME: I was just about to say, actually, that I really love your shirt.
JOHN BARROWMAN: It's got some surfer blood on it.
ME: Don't worry John Barrowman that'll wash right out.
JOHN BARROWMAN: Yuh that's just what my Mom said.

It really isn't Megalodon's day. Not only has he failed to make a single friend, but the YMCA is now hell-bent on destroying him, and he is getting lumped with the blame for the psychosexual surfing murders taking place in the locality. It sure sucks to be Megalodon today.

Looking for quality computer generated images?

If you like to see a bit of the old CGI craftsmanship then 'Not Jaws' is the film for you.

John Barrowman is busy trying to cover up his murderous, sociopathological trail, when suddenly the Director decides that it is time for a bit of the old 'token love interest section of the movie'. Personally, if I had just seen a giant, prehistoric, HIV-positive shark brutally murder a series of young male surfers, I wouldn't much feel in the mood for romance, but I guess that's just because I have yet to experience the simple pleasure of sociopathy.

This here is what we in the business refer to as 'sexual tension'.

A bit more 'sexual tension'....although it looks to me like she is calling him a fucking prick.

Ah, the simple pleasures of killing surfers and blaming it on an HIV-positive prehistoric shark. After a bit of that glorious red-hot sexual tension between two actors who have no apparent sexual interest in each other whatsoever, we revert to type and Megalodon reappears.

Unlikely.

Megalodon, undeterred by recent events, decides that today would be a perfect day to strike up a friendship with John Barrowman.

SCIENTIST #1: What is that up ahead?

SCIENTIST #2: I think that it's probably just a 7-eleven.

SCIENTIST #1: Oh great! A 7-eleven! Lets stop and get nachos!

Stop tailgating me, Megalodon! I don't want to be your fucking friend, ok?

Unfortunately for Megalodon, John Barrowman isn't really looking for a friend, but more for a juicy young surfer to kill. Megalodon begins to feel increasingly low, and starts to comfort-eat.

Megalodon goes on 'The Speedboat Diet' to try to lose those extra pounds.

John Barrowman is mostly preoccupied with killing young surfers and doesn't really pay much attention to the downside of being a serial murderer. He's just having such a great a time chopping up those surfers and blaming it on Megalodon.

Good times!

Oh look! I found my dignity!

Megalodon gets a bit fed up after a while, what with everyone thinking he is a surfer-murdering-lunatic and everything. He decides that it is time to have a word with Barrowman.

Hi guys! Say, do you know where I can find a 'John Barrowman?'

Hi John, you and I need to have a little word..

So Megalodon and John Barrowman have a bit of a heart-to-heart. The 'heart-to-heart' mainly consists of Megalodon saying stuff like: 'What the fuck, John Barrowman?' and 'Why you been talking shit about me, man? What is UP with THAT dude?', and Barrowman saying stuff like: 'Just chill, Megalodon!', and 'Look, I didn't mean to offend you, ok?'.

Megalodon and John Barrowman then hug it out. Barrowman gets a bit of an erection during the hugging session (which is embarrassing for everyone concerned) but since Megalodon is a bit short on the old 'having friends' side of things, he decides to let it slide. They all live happily ever after, except, of course, for the surfing victims of John Barrowman's hypomaniacal, sadistic, murderous rage.

John Barrowman plays battleships with Megalodon. Look at how happy they are!

What have we learnt from 'Shark Attack 3: Megalodon'?

Don't wear your favourite blue t-shirt if you are contemplating an evening of unrestrained homicidal mania.
Don't try to have sex with a homosexual man if you are a woman, because the homosexual man will employ the use of frankly hillarious chat-up lines to get you in the sack.
Don't try to blame your own murderous ambitions on a lonely prehistoric shark.
Jaws was a fucking great film, and not even God himself could reproduce a viable competitor.

Film Review: The Last Exorcism

2010-10-07T04:56:00.000-07:00

Exorcisms, eh? What an absolute fucking pain in the arse.

You try to help people and they go and stab a crucifix in their vagina ('The Exorcist'), or they do that damn crab-walk (um, that's 'The Exorcist' again), or they go and spit pea soup all over your lovely Magnolia walls ('The Exorcist' again: notice the recurring theme?). Or they do Yoga. Yeah, 'Yoga'.

Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, fucking hell, Yoga scares the dump right out of my arsehole. And that is clearly what the makers of 'The Last Exorcist' were thinking, when they sold this Yoga-related horror film to its crackhead producers.

Yoga: Good for the body and soul

In the plot-thingy, a little girl gets possessed, and a specialist exorcist works hard to try to save her. Sound familiar at all? Yes, well, that's because this is actually the plot from 'The Exorcist', but the writers have changed it by....uh...well..they've...no...look its just different, alright? So in 'Not The Exorcist', we have a little girl, called 'Little Possessed Girl', and her family of inbred evangelistic worriers, called 'Inbred Evangelist Worriers' who respectively spend their time doing Yoga, and trying to stop each other from constantly doing Yoga all of the fucking time.

Stop doing Yoga, Little Possessed Girl! You aren't Jane Fucking Fonda!

As it turns out, the Yoga-obsessed Little Possessed Girl has a few 'personal problems'. Unlike most teenagers, whose personal problems consist of 'being ugly' and 'spending their free time wanking', Little Possessed Girl's personal problem is that she is harbouring an errant demon inside of her. An errant demon who is not 'Gary Glitter', that is.

Gary Glitter: the type of errant demon that I would usually expect to find trying to hide within a little possessed girl.

The demon which has taken up lodgings within the avatar of Little Possessed Girl's body is not all that keen on moving out of his current residence, and is causing her a bit of trouble and that. The biggest trouble that it is causing her, from what I can see, is 'a constant desire to do Yoga'.

DRIVER: 'Hey, can you tell me if any kids need exorcising around these parts?'
PEDESTRIAN: 'It's funny that you should say that, because my Sister, 'Little Possessed Girl', needs exorcising'.
DRIVER: 'How convenient'.
PEDESTRIAN: 'Sure is'.
DRIVER: 'It's almost like this was a setup, or something y'know?'
PEDESTRIAN: 'I think that it's more likely that the Good Lord Jesus sent you to help us'.
DRIVER: 'Whatever'.

A preacher man, called 'Preacher Man' turns up at Little Possessed Girl's house, to remove Gary Glitter from her vaginal passage. Sorry that should have been 'to dispossess her of the aforementioned demonic presence'. The Preacher Man is something of an unknown entity, and it is frankly difficult to say whether he is ACTUALLY a preacher man, or is, in fact a SPY from a competing YOGA COLLEGE. I think that we can all agree that he is actually a spy from the local Yoga college.

Say, you look friendly! Would you like to join our Yoga Club, Friendly-looking Man?

The Yoga spy, or 'Preacher Man' as he would have us believe, introduces himself as 'The Reverend Cotton Marcus'. Now, I'm not being funny, but 'Cotton'? 'Cotton'? Is that a real name? Because I, personally, have never come across an individual whose name was 'Cotton' before. I have come across numerous cunts who insist on introducing themselves to me using their nicknames. You know the sort of thing; 'Hello, my name is Sausage'. 'Hello, my name is Misty'. Hello, my name is 'Edward', but everybody calls me 'Twinkle-
chest'. 'Hello, my name is Rose 'Take It Easy!' West'.

In an unexpected plot twist, Preacher Man and Little Possessed Girl end up having a passionate affair. You can say whatever you like about Daniel Stamm, but he sure likes to keep his Audience guessing.

Anyway. 'Cotton Marcus' (real name 'Dave') arrives at Little Possessed Girl's spooky house. Travelling with Cotton Marcus are his soon-to-be-dead camera crew, who have arrived on the scene so that they can die horribly. Sorry, I meant so that they can 'sort things out'. Cotton Marcus feels bad about being an official spy for the local Yoga college, and he also feels bad about his career history to date, spying on various Yoga-enthusiasts and reporting back to the National Yoga Association about their breakthrough Yoga techniques. It's quite the weight to carry on his shoulders, and Cotton Marcus decides to give up being a Yoga spy for good, just as soon as he has just finished this ONE LAST JOB.

The 'One Last Job' scenario: bound to end well

Whatever you say, Cotton Marcus. Although I have to warn you that in the entire history of film, the 'One Last Job' scenario has never really ended well for the contractor. I guess it's a third-party liability issue, right? Right.

I've lost an earring can you help me look for it?

L'Oreal. Because I'm worth it.

Reverand Marcus sets up his usual array of video-camera recording equipment, so that he can record footage of Little Possessed Girl practising her cutting-edge Yoga techniques, but things do not go to plan. Cotton tries repeatedly to dispossess Little Possessed Girl of her powerful capacity to stretch and balance in different Yogi positions, but it doesn't work. He also tries to rid her of that silly ol' demon, but that doesn't work either. Poor Cotton. Poor Cotton, because he has a ridiculous fucking name.

After a bit more trying, it starts occurring to Cotton that maybe he is a bit out of his Yoga league. As a last-ditch attempt, he tries making Little Possessed Girl listen too Dido, to rid her of her Yogi powers.

God no! Not Dido! Please make it stop!

I don't like this bed.

Would you like to be a Midwife? Then call the National Midwife Association on 0666 666 666 and join us now.
JOIN US! JOINNN USSSS!!!

Little Possessed Girl's Brother, 'Richie Cunningham from Happy Days', is getting a bit fed up with everyone admiring her Yoga skills, and decides to put a spanner in the works. By killing everyone. Bad Richie from Happy Days! Bad! Still, it's one way to end things, I guess.

Little Possessed Girl's Murderous, Occultist Brother 'Caleb'.

Richie Cunningham from 'Happy Days'.
Hello Reporters. I am Richie Cunnilingus from 'Happy Days', and
I am contractually obligated to wear this stupid fucking hat.

Preacher Man and co. attend the National Yoga Championships (sponsored by Satan) to raise their Yoga profile, but Richie from Happy Days decides that a more efficient way to win friends and influence people would be by killing the camera crew. Richie sure knows how to get himself some media attention! Preacher Man notices that Little Possessed Girl, who is competing at the Yoga Championships and has made it right through to the quarter-finals despite having some Feng Shui trapped in her womb, is about to slip on a piece of Tofu which Richie has left lying on a Yoga mat in the arena, in an attempt to sabotage Little Possessed Girl's Yoga routine.

Good Times!

Preacher Man dives into the arena to remove the piece of Tofu, but as he arrives at the scene of IMMINENT TOFU DANGER he makes the tragic mistake of eating said Tofu. Now, as we all know, Tofu is not, in fact, a food product, but actually a biological weapon commonly used as a form of terrible punishment reserved only for the worst types of criminalised behaviour; paedophilia, rape, murder, and stealing your colleague's yoghurt.

AAAAGH!!!

Preacher Man spontaneously combusts into flames. You have lost an hour and a half of your life. The End.

Watch out Satan. Yoga is coming.

What have we learnt from 'The Last Exorcist'?

Don't have sex with your sister if you are Richie from 'Happy Days'
Don't attempt to steal cutting-edge Yoga techniques from a little possessed girl.
Don't go to an exorcism if you are a camera crew.
Don't pay to watch a film that you have already seen, thirty years ago when it first came out in the Cinema.

Film Review: Eden Lake

2010-10-03T04:03:00.000-07:00

Do you read the Daily Mail?

You do?

Well then welcome; Racists, Conspiracy-Theorists, Princess-Diana-Enthusiasts and Curtain-Twitchers!

Boy, have I got the perfect film for you! If you like worrying about the allegedly-increasing incidence of violent criminal activity and blaming knife-crime on the working classes, then this is your ideal slice of entertaiment pie.

'Eden Lake' tells the heartbreaking true story of a mentally-disabled ginger child ('Jenny'), affected by the debilitating 'Helium-Voiced-Syndrome'; a disorder which manifests itself by permitting sufferers to communicate only via the medium of a high-pitched, whispered, dolphin-like series of squeaks in the place where a normal human voice should be.

Hello Viewers, do you like how pastel I am? I am proud to tell you that my composition is 99.9% pastel, 0.1% humanity, and 0% bodily fluids. Hurrah for me, ya!

Caring for Jenny's particular brand of special needs, we have Michael Fassbender, playing a bourgeois dictatorial zealot. I can't remember Fassbenders character's name, and I frankly don't give enough of a fuck to Google it, but it was probably somehing irritatingly perky, like 'Tom', or 'Ed', or 'Jono'. Lets use 'Jono', shall we? Yeah, fuck you, Jono!
No, I don't want a fucking panini, you Dickwad.

Fuck you Panini! You don't know anything about my life!

Eden Lake follows Jenny and Jono as they both try ineffectually to survive a series of hate-crimes perpetrated by the Anti-Ginger-Republican-Organisation ('AGRO'). Yeah, 'AGRO'. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! 'AGRO'! Brilliant.

AGRO: 'Oi, Ginger!' JONO: 'Just ignore them, Jenny, they'll go away if you ignore them'.

JENNY: 'Are you sure my Dear? Only one of them has a Staffordshire Bull Terrier on his person..'

JONO: 'Tell me the truth, Jenny, do I look like a total cunt in this outfit?'JENNY: 'Ya Darling I mean its not even pastel where on EARTH did you get it from,
Halfords or somewhere dirty like that?'

Jenny and Jono go away together for a delicious Smug Weekend, intending no doubt to fill their free time with lots of middle-class superiority and Cath-Kidston-designed sex. Unfortunately, a bunch of nasty, synthetic-clothinged midgety cunts decide to fuck their plans up. And that, my lovely Friend, is where the Eden Lake fun really begins.

AGRO MEMBER #1: 'Hello Friend I am a World-renowned Plastic Surgeon please allow me to correct your impediments to aesthetic perfection with this Tetanus-rich, coagulated-blood-covered, blunt, rusty knife'. AGRO MEMBER #2: 'Thanks Doc, I'd like a designer vagina too please while you're down there'.

The Ginger Child and her Irish friend the Dictatorial Zealot are busy showing off their toned flesh and pastel-coloured lives when AGRO (a violent subfaction of the Ethnic Cleansing For Gingers United extermist organisation, known as 'FEC GU'. What? You come up with something better then!), turn the sounds up on what looks unmistakeably like a 1980's-style boombox, and all hell breaks loose. Yes. A 'boombox'. No, I hadn't realised that this was a period-drama either; I'm reasonably certain that Julian Fellowes himself must have penned this little torture-porn-flavoured treat.

Jenny regrets comissioning an open-plan cesspit as a 'water feature' in her dining room. Fuck you Homebase! Fuck you for making me believe that I needed a cesspit water feature slap-bang in the middle of my cunting dining room!

Jono does not appear to notice that he is wandering into dangerous Anti-Ginger territory by lodging a complaint about the boombox, and he inadvertently kicks-off some sort of entertainingly pointless turf-war. Pointless, because 'Eden Lake' is sponsored by the Daily Mail, and therefore these are unpredictable crimes of mindless, senseless violence, rather than senseless violence perperated by a group of underpriviledged, poorly-educated, broken-family-originating yoofs like the Guardian would have you believe.

Jenny searches for a reason behind her pointless existence in Jono's gaping mouth cavity.
Go on Jenny! You can find it!

The AGRO, who have cleverly disguised themselves as a bunch of council-estate, tracksuit-skinned, pallid-complexioned Chav fodder for the purposes of this ethnic cleansing exercise, relentlessly pursue our two pastel-personalitied wastelands around a large, moody wooden setting. During the pursuit, the League decide that an excellent form of peaceful anti-ginger protest would take the form of cutting Jono's tongue out. What a way to garner some publicity for their cause, eh? Their P.R. Department must be top-of-the-range.

Jenny's experimental colonic irrigation goes horribly wrong.

All I wanted was a clean anus Goddammnit!

Gone a bit O.T.T. on the old blusher there Jen-Jens

Things get a bit out of hand, what with the old 'tongue-cutting-out' incident and everything. Jenny gets a bit cross, because the AGRO have gone and defecated all over her lovely smug AGA-sponsored weekend. After a bit of crying and that (at a pitch beyong normal human hearing), she manages to reappropriate her Fiancee/Carer, and together, the two of them dcide that they should sit this attack-thingy out in a shed, and then, after that gets a bit tiresome, in a stagnant pond.

Terry and June sit down together for a nice traditional Sunday Lunch

Win this romantic Spa weekend for two by sending in your severed tongue along with an SAE to: AGRO, Chavstown, Dangerland, WARNING, Postcode: RUN 999.

Jenny goes a bit Cape Fear on us, and starts bumping off the AGRO members one-by-one. She even kills of Thomas Turgoose, national treasure and future King of England*.
*Probably.

THOMAS TURGOOSE: 'Why are you killing me again?' JENNY: 'Well it all started when I went for this colonic...'

THOMAS TURGOOSE: 'A what?'

JENNY: '...and I just ended up having, like, the WORST day of my life ever, ya, and then my pastel bikini was absolutely RUINED..'

THOMAS TURGOOSE: 'Um, I think you might've hit my ephemeral artery there Jenny..'

JENNY: '...I mean it was my FAVOURITE bikini and everything and I just felt, like, why me, you know?'

THOMAS TURGOOSE: 'Yep, I'm definitely bleeding to death now'.

JENNY: 'So, ya, sorry about that old boy'.

THOMAS TURGOOSE: 'That's ok. Sorry about cutting your boyfriend's tongue out and everything'

JENNY: 'Oh, that's ok he was a complete bell-end anyway!'

Jenny didn't want anyone to see her without her make-up on.

Killing Thomas Turgoose is a bad idea; you've got some serious bad karma coming your way Jenny!

AGRO audition for the 'Topgun' remake

AGRO get a bit pissy about Jenny having killed Thomas Turgoose, and they decide that now is the right time to step things up a notch. Up a notch from cutting her boyfriend's tongue out, that is. Call me naive. Call me a delicate little flower. But, seriously, WTF are they going to do that's even worse than that? Cheese grate her to death? Cut her fucking face off and feed it to the hungry caterpillar?

AGRO: 'I'm going to cut your cunting tongue out Jono!' JONO: 'Ugh, your breath could do with a fisherman's friend, old boy!

I've got a packet just next to my cock if you would like to reach in and get it?'

Jono dies (Oh no! Not Jono!), and Jenny doesn't really fancy much hanging around to find out in what manner AGRO decide to eviscerate her ginger geneology, so she leaves the forest. Yeah, just walks out, y'know.

AGRO celebrate victory with their annual members-only barbecue

JONO: Say, maybe we should have just WALKED OUT OF THE FOREST, like, right at the start of the film, ya? JENNY: 'Oh ya! I ,like, so totally never even thought of that! HAHAHAHAHAH!

JONO: 'HAHAHAHAHAHAHHA! We're so silly Jenny!'

JENNY: 'Ya! What are we like?! HAHAHAHHAHA!'

And then they all lived happily ever after. The end.

Our farts smell like Parma Violets

Hang on a stilton-minute. Actually, they didn't live happily ever after. Jenny (who has clearly never watched a horror film in her entire life) decides to go for help at the first house that she comes to. You know the house! The house which is BLATANTLY THE HOUSE BELONGING TO AGRO's PARENTS. Yes, that one.

The 'Eden Lake' branch of Pret-a-Manger

This doesn't look like South Kensington?

Jenny arrives at the House Of Certain Death, and then goes to the shitter, probably for a bit of 'me time'. Inside the aforementioned shitter, she then overhears the owners of the house discussing how she has just probably murdered all of their children and that. Is this going to end well for Jenny?

'Eden Lake': Probably not going to end well.

I'm pretty sure that she'll be absolutely fine, ya?

What have we learnt from 'Eden Lake'?

Don't go to Brixton on holiday if you are middle-class.
Don't kill Thomas Turgoose, because it will come back to bite you on the arse, and then some.
Don't experiment with colonic irrigation.
Don't cut someone's tongue out, unless that person is Jono.
Pouting and having a gamine haircut will not prevent you from certain death, nor will wearing a wetsuit from Halfords and asking a mentally-disabled child to marry you.
Don't ask a bunch of homicidal maniac chavs to 'turn their sounds down', because:

It makes you sound like you were born in 1936.
It makes people want to cut your tongue out.

Interview with Kelly Brook (which took place in my imagination, don't go all litigious on me now Kelly old boy!)

2010-09-30T14:35:00.001-07:00

ME: 'Uh, Kelly?'

KELLY BROOK: 'Yeah?'

ME: 'Um, I don't want you to take this the wrong way or anything, but..'

KELLY BROOK: 'What? What is it?'

ME: 'Well, I can sort of see your boobs'.

KELLY BROOK: 'What? What the fuck are you talking about? Why would you say something like that? What are you, some sort of pervert'

ME: 'No, I'm just saying, y'know, you can kind of see a bit of side boob there'.

KELLY BROOK: 'Are you kidding me?'

ME: 'No, seriously. You have side boob on display. And also a little nipple. A wink of nipple'.

KELLY BROOK: 'Oh my fucking God are you serious?!'

ME: 'Uh, yeah'.

KELLY BROOK: 'How much can you see? I'm so embarrassed! And on TV too!'

ME: 'Uh..'

KELLY BROOK: 'Do you think that anyone else saw?'

ME: 'Uh, maybe a few people'.

KELLY BROOK: 'Oh my God, my Mum is going to fucking kill me! Why the fuck didn't you say something sooner? Jesus!'

ME: 'Yeah. Sorry about that Kelly. I just figured you were already 'aware', y'know?'

KELLY: 'What the fuck? You think that I was AWARE that I was walking around some film set with my boobs out?! What do you think I am? Some kind of fucking slut?'

ME: 'Uh'.

KELLY BROOK: 'Fuck you'.

ME: 'I'm actually a massive fan. Could you please sign this naked picture of yourself for me?'

KELLY BROOK: 'Ok sure. Who should I make it out to?'

Film Review: The Crazies

2010-09-30T08:56:00.001-07:00

Do you like the Government?

I didn't think so. Not many people do.

Perhaps we should express our dislike for govermental authority figures through the medium of film?

Yes, that sounds like an excellent idea! We can satirise the covert nature of statutory procedure by injecting a little magic realism into the proceedings, then we can employ a ficitious 'Big Brother' style political authority to pretend that our cheap-shocks horror film is, in fact, an intelligent social commentary. Just for the record though - it isn't. Not even if you squint.

Now that we have agreed upon a business model, I would like to officially welcome
you to Cliche Town!

Welcome to Cliche Town: The Number One Tourist Destination For Uninspired Film Directors.

One of the wildly camp serial killers from 'Scream 2' has escaped the long arm of the law and is now trying desperately to go-it straight in Cliche Town. The killer from 'Scream 2' has left behind his lucrative career as a prolific murderer and has now taken a massive pay cut to pursue his dream of becoming the Cliche Town Sheriff.

'Hello Viewers I am living the dream in this shitty town'.

Congratulations, Serial Killer, on your new appointment as the Cliche Town Sheriff. I'm sure that you will turn out to be hugely successful and not an absolute fucking disaster. If I may, I would also like to praise you on your choice of 'bland, background wife'. Its nice to see that women are being offered better roles these days, and are no longer having to pay second fiddle whilst the man monopolises all of the critical glory.

Bring me a cup of tea you cunt!

Rhada Mitchell works hard to shatter that pesky glass ceiling with her performance as 'bland, background wife'.

Things are going very well for the Sheriff, apart from the whole 'imminent contaminated water debacle' of course. The Sheriff's Wife, played by that actress whom I always confuse with the one who played the naked, blue-skinned mutant in the 'X-Men' films with Captain Jean-Luc Picard from the Starship Enterprise, may or may not be pregnant. I know, I know, its really very difficult to care either way.

Lets play...SPOT THE DIFFERENCE!!

There are two IDENTICAL images immediately below:

PICTURE 'A'

PICTURE 'B'

Can you tell the difference between these to indistinguishable beige dullards? Send in your answers on a postcard to me at idontgiveafuckingshit@cocksmiths.com, and the first correct answer that I draw out of my own anus wins....too much time on their hands!!! Yay!!!

The Director hopes that a potentially pregnant Sheriff's Wife may help him to coax a smidgen of pathos from the Viewer in the event that the Wife is brutally murdered, but I think that he may have underestimated just how much the viewing public fucking hate children.

'I may or may not be pregnant. Please try hard to give a shit you heartless Bastards'.

I am a professional though, so I will not allow this confusion about the lady who starred in 'X-Men' to reveal itself. Much.

'Its so hard to find a decent Nanny these days'

The former serial killer and 'Sheriff' decides to attend a baseball game being played by a bunch of local school kids. He's dressed in his Sheriff's uniform so I have to assume that attending kid's baseball games is a regular part of his 'Sheriff's duties'. There's an awful lot of TERRIBLE CRIME that goes on at kids baseball games, you know. Mostly paedophilia, I would imagine.

This is me being at work. Do you like my uniform? My Mom made it for me.

The Sheriff likes his uniform so much that he likes to keep it on. Always. The people at the baseball game point at him and say 'Oh look there's that guy from Scream 2', and 'Why is he wearing a Sheriff's uniform on a Saturday?', and 'Have you killed any more teenagers recently, Sheriff?'. Whereupon the Sheriff turns around and starts yelling at the crowd: 'Who said that? Seriously, which dumb Fuck said that? Come over here and say that! I'm a real Sheriff now! I haven't killed anybody in ages! Not anybody who wasn't a criminal, anyway!'. Ok Sheriff we respect you now, although we would respect you more if you took that uniform off so that we could wash it once every so often. Yes, we know that its your favourite outfit but you can wear it again tomorrow, ok?

I'm a professional Sheriff! Take me seriously you Fucks!

The baseball game is going swimmingly, until a local 'character' (and by 'character' I actually mean 'mentally disturbed homicidal maniac who poses a very real and present danger') wanders onto the baseball pitch with a loaded rifle in his hand.

Spoilsport!

The Sheriff is delighted: its time for him to start doin' some law enforcin'! Instead of enforcing the law, though, what he actually does is shoot the local character to death. In front of a crowd of baseball-playing children and their parents. Job done! This is what happens if you employ a serial killer to enforce the law.

Our shootin' tootin' friend feels bad that he shot the man to death in front of all those people.

'I feel sad today can I have a hug?'

Its a good thing that he did shoot the man to death though, because, um, because...look, I'm sure that it was the right thing to do, ok? Let's not question the good Sheriff's judgement aready.

DEPUTY: 'Uh, Sheriff, are you absolutely sure that you had to shoot him?' SHERIFF: 'If in doubt, shoot! That's what I say! Are you writing these tips down because you could seriously learn something from me'.

DEPUTY: 'Couldn't you just have handcuffed him or something?'

SHERIFF: 'What are 'handcuffs'? Do handcuffs have bullets in them? I have a grenade if that helps...'

The Sheriff's good lady wife is a Doctor. Yes, you heard me right. The Doctor who may or may not be pregnant is observing something of an epidemic in Cliche Town. She phones her husband to tell him 'I am witnessing an epidemic you know', and he says 'Oh its probably that naughty water thingy', and she agrees. God, this script is, like, totally razor sharp!

The contaminated water is infecting the residents of Cliche Town with what looks to me like a severe form of facial crabs. Damn you, facial crabs! The facial crabs, latin name Crabbicus Slutticus Spreadicus Facicus, is taking down the Cliche Town citizens one-by-one, and the are displaying such serious symptoms as 'wearing dungarees' and 'repeating things twice'. The Sheriff goes to investigate and sort this contaminated mess out.

A clear-cut case of crabs.

I can't come to the phone Mom I'm in Crab Quarantine.

This should be right as rain again in no time.

Astonishingly, prodding the water tank with a spoon, and then prodding the water pipes with a spoon does NOT actually provide a legitimate cure for the crabs epidemic. What is the Cliche Town Sheriff to do? Perhaps he should do....absolutely nothing?

Hey Lady! Are you sure its crabs cuz my dick just fell off.

I got me a second opinion but the second opinion was that it was crabs too. Guess I better tell my wife.

And my wife's sister.

Do this five times a day and within two weeks your facial crabs will have completely cleared up.
Ok, thanks Doctor.

Yes, lets ignore it and hope that it goes away.

This one night stand is going well, wouldn't you say? We're so sexually compatible!

Say, can I see you again?

SHERIFF: 'It'll probably just go away if we ignore it'.
WIFE: 'Yes I agree would you like a glass of water'.
SHERIFF: 'Yes please I would love a delicious glass of contaminated crab water thank you wife'.
WIFE: 'I might have a delicious glass of crab water too, that way we can garuantee that our baby will be safe'.

It doesn't go away, and instead, a man locks his wife and son into a cupboard and then sets it on fire.

'Happy New Year Guys! Come on, sing with me!

And Auld Lang Syne...

SHERIFF: 'What the fuck do you mean 'my wife gave you facial crabs'? My wife is a virgin you prick!'

FACIAL CRABS SUFFERER: 'Isn't your wife pregnant?'

SHERIFF: 'Yeah? What's your point Fucko?'

FACIAL CRABS SUFFERER: 'Uh..well..I mean if she's a virgin, y'know?'

SHERIFF: 'What?'

FACIAL CRABS SUFFERER: 'How is she pregnant?'

SHERIFF: 'Oh! Right, right! Yuh, she explained that to me apparently the baby was a precious gift from Jesus'.

After that things start getting a bit weird. Weirder than a small-town sheriff who used to be a serial killer shooting to death a local character. Weirder, even, than a crab epidemic. Thats right. Things gets pretty fucking weird. You would think, wouldn't you, that the Sheriff and his wife would stop drinking the naughty crab water, since its encouraging the good Citizens of Cliche Town to start brutally murdering one another. But they don't.

Jesus goes for a nice walk with some friends.

'I like to throw caution to the wind, especially when there is a baby at risk. I'm just that kind of guy I guess'.

The Sheriff, his wife the 'Doctor', and the Sheriff's Deputy try to escape the town.

'You're it'.

Its quite difficult to leave town though, because our band of brothers keep running into homicidal neighbours which puts a bit of a spanner in the works.

SHERIFF: 'Ouch! What happened to you Dave?' DAVE: 'I drank the water and it gave me a bad case of Facial Crabs'.

SHERIFF: 'Oh'.

DAVE: 'Maybe you and your pregnant wife should stop drinking the water, so that you don't also get infected?'

SHERIFF: 'No, that's OK. I mean, what are the chances of it happening again, right?'

DAVE: 'Oh quite high I'd say Motherfucker'.

SHERIFF: Now there's really no need to be rude Dave.

DAVE: 'You're right. I'm sorry Sheriff. I'm on the rag, you see?'

SHERIFF: 'No need to apologise Dave I've been there myself!'

During the escape from the homicidal maniac Townsmen and the homicidal maniac Government Agents desperate to cover up their tracks using ANY MEANS POSSIBLE the Sheriff decides that now would be an excellent time to take his truck to the car wash.
Truck. Car wash.
Good.

There's always time for a car wash, class! At the car wash there are lots of people waiting to spray uncontaminated blood all over the truck's leather interior.

'Shit Guys that was a new car! Not funny! My Dad is going to kill me!

Off the Sheriff plods with his shiny, fresh new car (covered in blood stains) and after a bit of homicial hassle at the local diner, the Sheriff and his wife escape Cliche Town and arrive at the nearest City.

SHERIFF: 'Hey! Lets say we stop off here for a burger before we leave town?' WIFE: 'Maybe we should just keep going?'

SHERIFF: 'You are such a whiny little bitch! Look, I'm going to head in for a bite to eat, come and join me if you want to, OK?'

WIFE: 'Why is there a giant face watching us?'.

SHERIFF: 'I was just going to ask you abouT to ask you the exact same thing. I thought that maybe you put it there?'

WIFE: 'Why the fuck would I have a giant face follow us around?'

SHERIFF: 'Remember the last time that you were on the blob and you had that chicken dressed in a catsuit made out of discharge follow us around?'

WIFE: 'God! That happened ONE TIME! Would you just let it go? Jesus!'

Unfortunately, the Government has its Big Brother-style camera lens trained firmly on the escapees, and just when you think that the Sheriff and his Wife might make it out of there alive, you realise that the City is now the new target for the crab epidemic. The crab epidemic which will cover up all traces of the previous crab epidemic, yeah? Good, I'm glad that we've got that sorted.

Bon Voyage!

What have we learnt from 'The Crazies'?

Don't employ a former serial killer as a small-town Sheriff where a normal non-sociopath would suffice.
Don't put your wife and kid in a wardrobe and then set fire to it, even if you are suffering from the condition known as 'Facial Crab Shame'.
Don't think that Facial Crabs won't get to you in the end, because it will.
Don't shoot local characters to death in front of a group of kids, even if that local character is carrying a sexually-transmitted disease.
Don't be so foolish as to assume that feigning a potential pregnancy will manipulate viewers into feeling some form of empathy, because it won't you manipulative, film-directing Bastard.

Film Review: Piranha 3D

2010-09-29T02:42:00.000-07:00

Do you find aggressive species of aquatic life sexually arousing? If you are one of the few who doesn't, fear not, because 'Piranha 3D' has lots of tit in it to distract you from the fishily pornographic imagery of mutated scales, flapping fins and fanged mouths.

Hello sexy!

Hello, androgynous sexual wasteland.

'Piranha 3D' is a videographical account of a true story.*
* Not true.

The story follows a bunch of twats, sorry, 'teenagers' as they get eaten by a bunch of prehistoric mutated fish and try to fuck each other. In the film, what actually happens is that they try to fuck each other FIRST, and THEN they get eaten by the fish. I think that in the sequel they should consider reverting this sequence of events. They could call it: 'Its Funny When Annoying Fictitious Teenagers Die in 3D'.

We'll be dead soon.

Richard Dreyfuss sits in a crappy, tinpot boat on a lake drinking beer and fishing over the side. Richard Dreyfuss is wearing the same clothes worn by his Marine Biologist Character in 'Jaws'. That must have been embarrassing for the wardrobe department on 'Piranha 3D'. How could they not have noticed such a glaring error?

I was in 'Jaws' once, you know...

A denim jacket NEVER goes out of fashion!

Richard Dreyfuss chucks his empty beer bottle into the water and the bottle falls to the bottom of the lake, whereupon it somehow releases thousands of prehistoric killer piranha. God! I HATE it when that happens! The lesson here, kids, is 'Don't go fishing and drink beer at the same time, or you will die horribly at the hands of a fictitious, crudely-animated CGI fish'.

RICHARD DREYFUSS: 'Oh my God! Is that a shark's fin that I see on the horizon?!' FILM CREW: 'Its actually a piranha that you are supposed to be looking for, Richard'.

RICHARD DREYFUSS: 'Whatever'.

I would have liked to watch a film in which Richard Dreyfuss fucks the mutated piranha to death, but the director of this film, disapointingly, was not of a like mind. I guess that I'll just have to wait for that sequel. Richard Dreyfuss falls into the water (I know! I didn't see it coming either!) and dies. By drowning. I'm just kidding, he dies from mercury poisoning.

Mercury poisoning is no laughing matter. Never suck on a thermometer, kids!

Over in another part of town, a boy who got dressed in the early 90s is speaking to his Mother, Elizabeth Shue. Elizabeth Shue is pretending to be a small-town police Sheriff, and the boy does not appear to recognise his Mum as Elizabeth Shue, because he doesn't say anything along the lines of: 'Oh my fucking God! My Mom is Elizabeth Shue!'

'Hello boys and girls! Would you like to be my friend?'

Elizabeth Shue, played in this movie by Jean-Claude Van Damme, tells her son to look after his two younger siblings. Elizabeth Shue's Son - lets call him 'Twat #1', because that is his name if you read between the lines - is very sad. Twat #1 is sad, because he has to look after his younger siblings, rather than enjoy Spring Break along with his fellow teenagers. Poor Twat #1.

Jean-Claude Van Damme plays 'Elizabeth Shue'.

Things get worse for Twat #1, when his friend, (played by Megan Fox's classier sister), turns up and says something along the lines of 'HAAHAHAHAHAHAHA you can't go to Spring Break, Fucko!'. You have to read between the lines for that bit, though, because what Megan Fox's classier sister actually says is 'I'm really sorry that you can't make it to Spring Break'. Luckily, I am a trained Master at reading between the lines.

The piranha family explains the concept of a 'promise ring' to Megan Fox's classier little sister.

Twat #1 goes to pick up his little sister and runs into Kelly Brook and a softcore pornographer along the way. Yeah, its that sort of town, I guess. Anyway, Twat #1 agrees to show Kelly Brook and the softcore pornographer some good places to film pornographic material around town. Helpful, isn't he? Teenagers are great that way. Twat #1 then pays his twelve-year-old little sister money, so that she won't tell Elizabeth Shue about her son's imminent career as an expert wanker, and not so that she will agree to star in said pornographic material. He needn't have worried - Elizabeth Shue has her own troubles to worry about, since she has just discovered Richard Dreyfuss' rotted corpse floating in a pool of stagnant water.

'I'm doing a Pornography Internship!'

Twat #1 leaves his younger sister and brother alone at home so that they can die horribly at the hands of some mutated fish while he masturbates vigorously over Kelly Brook. The mini-twats decide to take a crappy tinpot boat (can you see where this is going?) out to sea. I'm sure that their little sailing trip will end happily and without gallons of coagulated blood.

'Maybe a boat trip wasn't such a good idea?'

'No, you're absolutely right. I'm probably just overreacting! I'm sure that they'll be fine'.

I'm such a worrier!

'Go right ahead and enjoy your boat trip kids!'

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Shue is busy. Busy waking up to the fact that this film is not 'Leaving Las Vegas. Again'. She decides to hire Carlos from 'Desperate Houswives' to check out the rabid piranha infestation. I'm not sure that Carlos from Desperate Housewives is qualified to help you sort out your piranha problem, Elizabeth Shue. Elizabeth Shue does not agree with me.

Do you like my beard? I grew it all by myself!

She appears to be under the impression that Carlos Solis is, in fact, a Marine Biologist, and keeps asking him questions about fish. That's not a Marine Biologist, Elizabeth Shue! That's Carlos Solis from 'Desperate Housewives'! Oh forget it, you stupid Bitch.

'Oh look! There goes my career!'

Carlos Solis doesn't help matters by wandering around in a wetsuit and answering Elizabeth Shue's questions about prehistoric fish, although I have to assume that his answers to her questions are a complete fabrication, and not, in fact, a valid academic response to a query relating to marine life.

Elizabeth Shue takes a break from filming.

Carlos takes his prank on Elizabeth Shue a bit too far, by proceeding to dive into the piranha-infested waters and swimming into a murky prehistoric underground cave. According to the 'science' propagated by 'Piranha 3D' the movie, the rabid, prehistoric piranhas have been trapped in this underground cave since the times when rabid prehistoric piranhas walked the earth. So, 'never', then. The piranhas have been trapped in the cave since 'never'.

'This looks inviting! Lets go in here!'

It seems that when Richard Dreyfuss dropped his beer bottle onto the sea bed at the start of the film, he released the prehistoric piranhas, who, after being grounded in a cave since 'never', are relieved to be out and about again. Silly Richard Dreyfuss! Try to be more careful next time Richard! Carlos Solis insists on faffing about in the cave, in the manner of a 'Marine Biologist'. Unfortunately, Carlos runs into a bunch of Piranha, and boy do they give him a welcome! Gabrielle's going to be really pissed at you, Carlos!

'He's been down there for three weeks now. You reckon maybe something went wrong?'

Hey Carlos! Your wife's a slut!

Megan Fox's classier sister crashes the pornographic film shoot, and they all sail off happily into the sunset. No, hang on; thats 'Fifty First Dates' that I'm thinking of. In 'Piranha 3D', they all sail off and everybody starts snorting coke and shotting Tequila. On a porn boat. Just another average day in a normal teenager's life, then. Before long, Kelly Brook begins cracking onto Twat #1 quite strongly, which surprised me because I had not anticipated that her character would turn out to be a Paedophile.

'Hello little boy! Would you like a sweetie?'

Now that Carlos Solis and his fellow 'Marine Biologists' have all died, Elizabeth Shue decides that it is time to approach a real fish expert. An expert about fish. Elizabeth Shue telephones Buffy the Vampire Slayer to ask for help with analyzing the piranha specimen that she has brought with her in a bucket full of water, but unfortunately she only gets through to Buffy's voicemail. So who does Elizabeth Shue choose to investigate her fish problem instead?

I am a highly decorated 'fish scientist'. What? Its a job!

That's right, she chooses the Doctor from 'Back to the Future'. Between you and me, perhaps it would be better for Elizabeth if she were moved to the 'Remedial' class?

The mad inventor from 'Back to the Future' takes pity on Elizabeth Shue, because she is clearly mentally retarded. He pretends for her sake to be a scientist 'of fish'. A fish scientist. Elizabeth Shue shows him her fish in a bucket and they agree that there is NOTHING AT ALL WRONG WITH THIS FISH. Nope, all good here. Nothing out of place.

Well, this all seems to be in order.

Yes, its definitely just a rather large Haddock.

Actually, they agree that this fish is a rabid prehistoric monster, and conveniently the doctor from 'Back to the Future' has a fossilised version of the ancient Piranha to prove to everyone that...um...that he collects fossils?

How convenient.

Elizabeth Shue and the Doctor from Back to the Future both agree that something needs to be done about this fish. But instead of doing something about it, they do absolutely nothing. How very 'New Labour' of them. The 'Fish Scientist' is left alone with the captured lone piranha left 'safely' in a tank, and it somehow manages to get out and kill him. Resourceful little fuckers, aren't they? I am totally rooting for the fish.

Whilst all this is going on, Twat #1's younger brother and sister have found themselves stranded on a small island that has nothing on it and will soon be covered by the tide. The little sister cuts her foot on a bit of glass and the piranhas smell the blood from her bleeding foot, which she has decided to dangle in the water. Twat #1's sister begins swooshing her bloodied foot around in the water. Swoosh swoosh. Why? Because she really hates her feet and wants to be rid of them, thats why. Then the tide comes in very quickly and they are both brutally raped and then eaten by the piranha. No, sorry, thats '50 First Dates' that I am thinking of again. They are actually rescued by the porn boat.

The Sex Industry provides a wonderful environment in which to raise children.

Kelly Brook on set before she goes into make-up. Morning, Kelly!

A porn boat. Always a safe haven for a twelve-year-old girl and her eight-year-old brother.
Remember kids!: Porn boat = Safe Haven.

Moving on! Twat #1 is watching Kelly Brook and her co-star in the porn film whilst they are filming an underwater scene. Kelly Brook's co-star, a character whom for these purposes I shall refer to as 'Nubile extra #1,000,001', does not have any lines to speak in this film, but she doesn't need any lines, because she prefers to communicate her performance through the medium of 'breast implants'. Twat #1 watches these two talented actresses while they are being filmed molesting one-another under water, hoping that he can learn something from their performance which will enable him to pass his GCSE Maths exam.

Kelly Brook and Nubile Extra 1,000,001 are underwater sexual acrobats, and luckily we have the opportunity to watch their antics through a glass-bottomed-boat. The underwater scene goes on for a while. And for a while longer.

'Why doesn't anybody take me seriously as an Actress?'

After about seven minutes of watching Kelly Brook and Nubile Extra #1,000,001 enjoying each other's company underwater, my mother, who had kindly taken me to the Cinema (under extreme duress I might add) to watch 'Piranha 3D', turned to me and said: 'They've been holding their breath for a awfully long time, haven't they?'. And I agreed with her that they were both clearly very talented not only at underwater sexual acrobatics, but also at holding their breath for a VERY LONG TIME.

KELLY BROOK: 'When can I come up for some air?' DIRECTOR: 'Give me ten more minutes, Kelly'.

KELLY BROOK: 'But I don't have any breathing apparatus!'

DIRECTOR: 'Do I have to remind you that you're on the clock, Kelly? You're wasting your time as much as mine'.

KELLY BROOK: 'My brain feels funny'.

After seven minutes underwater, Kelly Brook and Nubile Extra #1,000,001 have both suffered severe brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen to their brains. Luckily, because this is Kelly Brook that we're talking about, nobody notices a terrific amount of difference between her before/after brain damage personalities.

Its time now, I think that you will all agree, for people to start dying in droves. The Director appears to agree with us, because now that he has succeeded in arousing the section of his audience who are attracted to Kelly Brook, he is now ready to turn his attention to the portion of his audience who are aroused by shots of aggressive fish. You've got to keep the investors happy, haven't you?

Calm down Love, its only a scratch. Seriously, you're overreacting.

I bet no one will even notice it.

Its Spring Break. There are lots of completely idiotic teenagers doing completely idiotic things. The sort of things that make you think that either:

A. The Director has never been a teenager. Nor has he ever met one. We have to assume this, because the teenagers in 'Piranha 3D' behave unlike any other teenager that I have ever met.

Or:

B. All teenagers are exactly like the ones in 'Piranha 3D', and I have just never met one myself. Twenty-seven years of existence, and all of the teenagers that I have met, which I THOUGHT were teenagers, were in fact cleverly-disguised bears working for the FBI.

Elizabeth Shue arrives at the Sprink Break Party and shouts through a megaphone at the spring break idiots. Get out of the water, Spring Break Idiots! she tells them. The Spring Break Idiots either:

A. Are all completely deaf.

B. Do not give a shit what Elizabeth Shue says. Spring Break Baby! Yeah! Woop Woop!

C. Are all French and do not understand what Elizabeth Shue is saying.

I think we can all agree that the Spring Break Idiots are probably French. The piranhas arrive at the Spring Break Beach Party and decide that it is time to fuck things up. Go piranha! Go Go Go!

This 'rescue' lark's going well, isn't it?

I think that if we tell the Spring Break Idiots to get out of the water, and they choose to ignore us, then their deaths are referred to as 'natural selection'.

The Spring Break Idiots are working their full-time jobs of dancing very badly, shouting things like: 'SPRING BREAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKKK!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!', ignoring Elizabeth Shue when she tells them to get out of the fucking water, and jumping into the water full of Piranha, when, to everyone's complete and utter astonishment, the shoal of Piranha start tearing them all to bloody shreds. I know! I thought that everyone would make it back home safe and sound too! How's that for a twist?!

Looks like a suicide to me.

'Looking a bit sunburnt there Dude'.

Elizabeth Shue tries to help the Spring Break Idiots out of the water, but because of the rabid piranha attack, a bit of a panic ensues.

'Excuse me Sir, would you like some help? Sir?

Sir, have you been drinking?

Perhaps if Elizabeth Shue dangled precariously over the water on a flimsy thread of rope, that might help matters?

This is DEFINITELY GOING TO WORK.

The flimsy bit of rope breaks, but luckily Kelly Brook is lifted to safety by two Pterodactyls. You don't see the Pterodactyl scene though, because they had to cut that bit out. Editors, eh? What you actually see is Kelly Brook being hideously mauled to death by a swarm of vicous CGI fish. She dies because she did not tie her hair up in a ponytail properly before trying to escape the sinking boat (yeah, the boat is sinking by the way), and the piranhas latch onto her ponytail and pull her into the water by it.

I'm feeling much better, thanks. That cold I had has completely cleared up.

Just like how a goldfish does. You know, like when you have your pet goldfish in a tank in your room and you say to your friends: 'Tie your hair up before you go near my goldfish tank, or my pet goldfish will eat your face off', but there is always one careless friend who just doesn't listen, isn't there? Silly careless friends. Boy, have I been to an awkward funeral or two in my time ha ha ha!

After quite a bit of this sort of thing:

Get me out of the fucking water! I'm beginning to prune!

And this:

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. Seriously, Kelly, let your fucking hair down.

Everybody dies. The end.

Are we all dead then?
Yeah, sorry about thaat guys. Try not to let it get you down.

What have we learnt from Piranha 3D?

The film set for a pornographic video production makes an excellent place to keep a watchful eye on a child. Particularly if that child is eight or twelve-years-old, and there is an abundant supply of Cocaine, Paedophiles and rabid prehistoric piranha on offer for their amusement.
Do not hire mediocre actors in a situation where what you really need is a genuine academic. Its funny how a professional 'entertainer' who voluntarily choses to grow a goatee beard cannot provide you with a reasonable explanation as to why your neighbourhood is suddenly being terrorised by poorly-animated CGI fish.
Wearing a bikini and having fun is ony a good idea if you would really like to die.
If you are faced with a shoal of vicious piranha, do not attempt to commandeer a speedboat in order to escape the aforementioned piranha, if you are then going to decapitate your friends with it. Its just rude. Rude!
Do not litter the sea bed. Because the sea bed will get its revenge.
Wearing the same denim jacket since 1975 will not save you from a piranha attack, despite what you might think.

Film Review: Resident Evil 'Afterlife'

2010-09-27T14:30:00.000-07:00

The Umbrella Corporation, which shot to fame following the pop star Rihanna's infamous musical tribute to its biomedical weaponry research, is still up to its usual naughty tricks. Umbrella shareholders must be absolutely delighted, though, because from the looks of their Japanese headquarters the recession has been very kind to them. I suppose that, no matter how dire your financial situation, you always needs to buy zombies, doesn't you? They're like tampons. Or Milk. Or toilet paper. Yeah.

Tampons; not a luxury item.

Zombies; an everyday necessity.

So anyway. Resident Evil: Afterlife; the opening scene. We're in Tokyo. Its raining. Its raining alot. There is a japanese girl standing on a zebra-crossing in a short skirt, but the rain doesn't appear to bother her, because she's letting it soak her through. If my Mother were in this scene, standing next to the short-skirted Japanese girl, she would say something to the girl like 'Put a coat on, Japanese girl! You're making me feel cold!', but my Mother isn't in 'Resident Evil: Afterlife'. They offered it to her, of course, but she had to refuse due to the fact that she had a schedule conflict with the shoot for 'Die Hard 5'.

People walk past the Japanese girl in the short skirt getting soaked on the zebra crossing. They walk past her with umbrellas. Get out of my way, people with umbrellas! I'm trying to watch a film! But the Director must really like umbrellas, because he keeps filming people carrying them. Its almost as if he's trying to tell us something, and I think that what he is trying to tell us is: 'I really like umbrellas'.

Konichiha, Japanese girl!

The Japanese girl is jealous of all these umbrella-carrying show-offs, and she decides to start eating them all. The people crossing the road, I mean. Not the umbrellas. It is worth noting at this point, however, that 'Resident Evil: Afterlife' is such a convoluted and disorganised piece of cinema, that a scene showing a japanese girl eating umbrellas would not have seemed particularly out-of-place within this production as a whole.

The Japanese girl kick-starts the virus, and this little denouement serves as a helpful little reminder that you are watching a film about zombies. The director has to remind us that his film is about zombies, because we see very few zombies throughout the rest of the film.

I searched on Google images for 'Afterlife Zombies', and this is what came up. I don't seem to remember this scene from the film but maybe they cut it?

Enough about the plot though, yeah? Now its time to catch up with Milla Jovovich, who, since we last saw her has been busy getting her hair cut and cloning herself. Cloning herself alot. But I wouldn't dwell on the clones, if I were you, because the director can't be arsed to provide an explanation for them. The Milla clones have decided to siege Umbrella headquarters, but they have all turned up for the siege wearing the same outfit. How embarrassing!

Milla farted! Damn you Milla Jovovich, with your poisonous arse-gas!

The clones (who have dressed themselves in the ever-practical stilletto-heeled knee-high boot for the siege) manage to destroy Umbrella's underground lair, although they all die during the explosion. Milla doesn't seem to mind much, though. Don't worry Milla, I reckon that I'd probably feel the same level of complete indifference if I had a twin that died. Fuck 'em, right? Yeah! Seriously though, where have all those clones come from? Maybe they appeared towards the end of the last Resident Evil film? I can't remember. They all blend into one after a while. The 'Resident Evil' films, not the clones.

'Which of you Bitches copied my outfit?'

The 'original' Milla, or 'Alice', as she insists on calling herself, has escaped Umbrella's underground lair just before the explosion errupted, which is, y'know, helpful, because the film has only just started and without her it would probably have petered out a bit. So Alice has escaped and is on some sort of plane, and she has a plan to kill off the Pilot, not because she really fucking hates Pilots, but because this particular Pilot is an Umbrella employee, and therefore a terrible person worthy of utter hatred. Like people who work in Advertising.

Milla Jovovich: Botox-free and proud.

Rather than just shooting him in the back of the head from a safe distance (which she has the opportunity to do), Alice decides to get within punching distance of the Pilot so that she can...get caught? Yes, that must be it. The Pilot doesn't appear to like the idea of her killing him off this early in the film, though, because he injects her with something (Heroin?) and then kicks her a bit. He has injected Alice with something that will take all of her special powers away. So it is Heroin, then. This film has quite a strong 'Don't Do Drugs' message, if you read between the lines.

Can anybody recommend a good NHS Dentist?

The Pilot tells Alice that she is 'human' again, and she thanks him. I guess 'make you human' is slang for 'getting high'? I don't think that the Pilot actually intended to please Alice when he injected her with the Heroin but she seems quite pleased not to be a zombie-hybrid anymore. You don't have to worry about this much, though, because although you would think that making Alice human again would limit her ability to jump off Skyscraper buildings and to walk up walls, it doesn't. Not at all.

So the now-humanoid-lifeform Alice, limited by her homo-sapian deficiencies, survives the subsequent aircraft explosion COMPLETELY UNHARMED in the way that all humans do when the airoplane that they are a passenger on crash-lands in an explosion of fire and flying metal detritus. Good. Moving on! A competely physically unharmed Alice flies a helicopter towards Alaska. Hang on. Where the fuck did she get that fucking helicopter from? The Director - Paul W S Anderson - doesn't think that you need to know this. Stop wasting his precious time! God! And neither, apparently, does the film's Editor, because we never find out.

Adolescence can be pretty tough.

So far, so good, I think you'll agree? Alice flies the helicopter in search of her missing friends. Her missing friends in Alaska. Good. Also good, because it means that Alice (wearing a full face of make-up) can don this season's ultra-fashionable aviator jacket and not look out of place as she steps out of the helicopter. Or plane. I can't remember. Alice looks for her friends in Alaska, and finds one of them. The missing friend attacks her, but its ok, because the missing friend is wearing a red metal spider on her breasts which has made her attack Alice. Good. No, wait, what? What the fuck?!

'Do you like my new hairstyle? No? Well, fuck you!'

Paul W S Anderson doesn't have time to explain the red metal chest-spider, either. He's a very busy man, you know! But the good thing is that Alice has her friend back. And she decides to tie her up. Lots. I think at this point that the young lad sitting behind me in the cinema began masturbating enthusiastically. Alice flies her friend to...New York? Why does she fly there? We never find out, because Paul W S Anderson has decided that to explain anything would be to detract from the artistic temperament of his film.

The zombies apppear, at first sight, to have abandoned New York, but then, wait! There they are! Congregating around a giant prison, which appears to have survivors standing on the roof garden. I wasn't aware that Prisons had roof gardens, but I suppose that criminal rehabilitation is a complicated and multi-layered process. Alice lands her plane on the prison's rooftop, which you would think would be quite dangerous. But she decides to do it anyway, because she's Alice! Oh Alice! You naughty little zombie-fighting scamp, you!

On the prison roof garden there are several bland and vaguely sketched-out characters, namely; tall, hunky, muscly black basketball player, known as 'Cliche'; attractive latina girl who 'does the cooking', known as 'Stereotype'; untrustworthy shifty older man known as 'Baddie Who Will Die Horribly Later'; his sidekick known as 'I'll Die Horribly Later Too'; jersey muscles known as 'Zombie Fodder #1'; pervy old man known as 'Zombie Fodder #2'; and a fat Wentworth Miller Impressionist in a cage. Alice and the basketball player flirt awkwardly in the way that only an actress married to the Director and a homosexual actor who have been told that they must flirt can.

Last one to reach the finish line gets to star in Paul W S Anderson's next Resident Evil Film.

Wentworth Miller tells Alice that he can show her a way out of the prison if she lets him out of his cage. She doesn't let him out of his cage, and instead goes to have a shower. Cue more awkward flirting with the homosexual basketball player. Then some zombies appear who look an awful lot like the vampires in 'Blade 2'. Do you have anything to confess, Paul W S Anderson? Paul W S Anderson is far too busy to invent his own mythical undead. Don't you know who he is?!

Hello, Vampire from 'Blade 2'

Hello, zombie from Paul WS Anderson's 'Resident Evil: Afterlife'

Ooh! Deja Vue!

Because these 'new' zombies can bury through prison walls, Alice decides that she should probably get a move on. Its a good thing that Alice turned up when she did because the zombie situation has definitely taken a turn for the worse within the last few minutes since her arrival. Convenient, innit? At this point, a monster with a bag on his head carrying a giant hammer decides to make an appearance. Where has he come from?, you might ask. Paul W S Anderson doesn't have the time to tell you. Keep up!

'Its actually quite difficult for me to see with this sack on my head could somebody help me remove it? Thanks guys!'

The monster with the sack on his head and the giant hammer breaks into the prison, and starts attacking Alice. You would think, wouldn't you, that what with her being a bog-standard human and all she would find it quite difficult to fight him?. But she doesn't. Alice and her friend escape the confines of the Prison by tunnelling through the holes in the ground made by the 'new' hole-digging zombies.

Resident Evil 'Afterlife'. Sponsored by Rimmel.

Still with me? I would have thought that tunneling through a patch of ground which is full of tunnel-digging zombies would be a VERY BAD IDEA, but everybody seems ok with it, and they conveniently don't manage to run into anything which might attempt to eat them. This is actually a rather fitting manifesto for the entire film; never, at any point, do the characters run into many zombies. I run into more zombies on an average day than this lot do.

The Baddie takes the plane and flies off. How rude. His sidekick gets cut in half by the hammer-carrying monster. The Pervy man dies in the shower room, after trying to watch Alice taking a shower. That is Paul W S Anderson's way of saying 'Don't watch fictional characters taking a shower, or you will get eaten by a zombie whose design I copied from the sequel to 'Blade'.

Alice and her friend escape the tunnels unharmed, but the basketball player is dragged away, which at least means that we won't have to be party to any more of his godawful 'flirting'. The escapees head towards a large ship, which might have some survivors on it. How do they get onto the ship? Don't you worry your pretty little head about such irrelevant details. Paul W S Anderson has a vision, for Christsakes, and you, my ignorant friend, are defecating all over it.

PAUL: 'Say Milla, you don't think that I should explain the clones, the helicopter, the red metal spider or Alice's Friend's bizarre aversion to her brother, do you?'
MILLA: 'I quit'.

So Alice, Alice's friend, and Alice's friend's brother; the fat Wentworth Miller Impersonator, break into the ship. To get to the survivors, or something. Who cares, right? Sorry, did I not mention before that fat Wentworth Miller is Alice's friend's brother? Oh. Well he is. He explained this when they let him out of the cage in that prison. Rather interestingly, Alice's friend reacted pretty badly to the news that she was his sister. Like maybe she didn't believe him. Or maybe that she was just ashamed to be related to someone so hefty. Weight is a class issue, Wentworth, did nobody ever expain that to you?

Despite how it looks, Wentworth Miller does not play the role of 'Gay Sailor' in this movie

Perhaps fat Wentworth Miller's sister is reluctant to accept her sibing because he is actually a baddie, and is tricking them all to make them trust him? Well, 'no', actually. Oh. So what was the point of making Alice's friend react badly to the news that fat Wentworth Miller, her long-lost brother, is one of only ten people who have made it through the zombie virus apocalypse, then? And as an explanation, Paul W S
Anderson has this to say: 'Let it go! Fucktards!'

I tell you who else has died - that muscly lad with the New Jersey accent. I can't remember how. I think maybe that the baddie shoots him in the head. Yes, that's right. I mean, this is a zombie film, so for goodness sake, lets make sure that nobody in it actually gets eaten by a zombie, shall we? On the ship, fat Wentworth Miller, Alice, and Alice's friend agree that the ship is, in fact, a trap. A trap laid out for them by the Umbrella Corporation. Perhaps they should leave, then. Y'know, rather than venture deeper into the ship and actually get caught in the trap? No? Ok.

Yup! Its definitely a fucking trap! Lets go and investigate, shall we?

Alice and her inconsistently-characterised friends wander into the trap that they have established IS A TRAP. And they find another friend. But don't worry about this other friend, because they don't really do anything much in this film, except wander around in the background wearing white pajamas. In fact, everyone on this ship wears white pajamas. Odd, no? Anyhoo, Alice follows a trail of blood, which will, no doubt, lead her and her rescued friends to a safe exit, right? Actually, it leads her and her friends to certain death. A trail of blood. Who would have thought it?

The nature trail had been clearly marked out by the National Hiking Association

Woo! Pajama Party! Oh shit - have I inadvertently joined a cult?

At the end of the trail of blood sits the Pilot on a throne. Thats right, a fucking throne. Ideas above his station, that one. The Pilot has red eye, presumably from the overnight flight that he took to get to the ship in time for Alice's arrival. The Pilot takes off his sunglasses, and then watches Alice fight some dogs from 'Blade 2'. The fact that she is now nothing but a normal human does not in any way interfere with her ability to destroy the Pilot. Or the dogs. I had hoped that the Pilot might morph into some kind of very cool uber-monster, but Paul W S Anderson does not seem to agree with me, and prefers the pilot to just have red-eye from the flight. And a few snakes in his mouth. Or several cocks in his mouth, it was difficult to tell.

And the moral of the story is 'Don't take the red-eye flight just because its cheaper you fucking miser'

Then Alice gets stabbed in the arm by a knife which has the Pilot's blood on it. Is that relevant to the plot? Nope. Maybe it will be in Paul W S Anderson's next film: 'Resident Evil 5: Zombies which sparkle like Edward Cullen does in Twilight'. I shall have to wait and see. Before the film ends, the flirtatious homosexual basketball player turns up again in a sewer. Alive, and presumably drenched in faecal matter. What was the point of him turning up again?, you might well ask. Paul W S Anderson says 'Sssh!'.

To summarize:

Umbrella still appears hold a candle for 'mole's-den style' underground headquarters.
It has not occurred to Paul W S Anderson that living in a post-apocalyptic universe might encourage women to 'let themselves go a bit'.
Paul W S Anderson prefers to leave his films 'open to interpretation' rather than explain every silly little detail.
Paul W S Anderson is not interested in creating new and exciting movie monsters when he can just plagiarise movie monsters from other successful franchises.
Umbrella shareholders know a good investment when they see one.

Film Review: A Shark in Venice

2010-09-27T09:59:00.004-07:00

I could have left the house and found myself a husband on Saturday night.

I couldn't be bothered, though. And if I had he would probably have turned out to be an idiot.

To save myself the trouble of divorce, I instead decided to watch 'Shark in Venice ' starring Steven 'I'm-the-second-most-bloated-one-after-Daniel' Baldwin . You may recall Steve from his least embarrassing work alongside Benicio del Toro and Gabriel Byrne in 'The Usual Suspects'; he played the monosyllabic figure dressed in a long black leather jacket of the sort usually favoured by Steven Seagall in his paunchier years.

You won't believe this, but this isn't actually a CGI version of Steven.

As shark films go, if you're a fan of the genre, you could do much worse than wave
goodbye to an hour of your life in front of this. Of course that depends how exciting your Saturday night alternative might be, but unless Peter Stringfellow is looking to rent a DVD, I think I’m safe.

Like sharks? You can masturbate over this if you like.

S.I.V is an amusingly rubbish, mafia-meets-good-location-meet- gorefest concoction, which follows the earlier success of 'Snakes on a Plane'. It knows its audience (probably just me, to be honest) and panders to them well. Baldwin plays ‘David’, a university professor (hmm) who goes to search for his missing father in Venice .
Alongside Steven is his pointless and incredulously young girlfriend (Vanessa Johansson), who is mostly lumped with the thankless task of being stuck on the other end of a walkie talkie acting panicky, whilst we follow Dave getting himself into increasingly hairy situations dodging the Ûbersharks in the Venetian waterways.
The film disappoints in the exact place that it shouldn’t – there is a distinct dirth of shark-related deaths whilst the Mob plot dominates.

The Baddies are easily identified by their uniform of facial hair. Beard = BAD! Got it?

If the distributors had opted for a less creature-feature-esque title, I might have felt less short-changed, but if, like me, you don’t usually resent spending a tenner on a film about a toothy fish heckling the Z-List, you will feel that you’ve ended up with a lacklustre tribute to the Godfather rather than Jaws.

CGI Venice. Wait, isn't there a 'real' Venice that they coud have used?

Don’t expect anything too ground-breaking; the aim here is to satisfy, not delight, but there is fun to be had watching David search for plastic treasure followed closely by a heavily bearded troupe of baddies. The sharks themselves are thankfully CGI-free, the lead actors pleasingly attractive in an over-the-hill sort of way, and there is a welcome lack of comedy-sidekick usually found in this sort of ‘so bad its good’ rubbish.

Splash the cash if you want a good laugh and you aren’t looking for anything too mentally demanding; don’t, if you have any sense of taste or want to remember the plot by lunchtime tomorrow.

And the 'Worst Film of the Year Award' goes to....

2010-09-27T03:43:00.001-07:00

Jennifer Aniston fan?

No, nor me. Wait, come back!

Seriously, you need to see this just so that you can claim to have seen 'the worst film ever made'. No, not that one starring 'Madonna'.

The Bounty Hunter: Even worse than Jenifer Aniston's Farts

I'm talking, of course, about 'The Bounty Hunter'. Its got that Gerard Butler in it, too. Yeah, he's well-annoying, isn't he? In this black mark upon the history of film, he plays Matthew McConaghey, an inflatable and supernaturally smug tall person alongside Jennifer Aniston as herself, only older and with CGI-enhanced sun damage.

It was so bad that half an hour before the end credits rolled, as a limp and bothersome car chase was in full swing, I thought to myself :‘The only way to save this mess now would be if Will Smith were to appear out of nowhere and shoot both leads in the head at point blank range.

In the soon-to-be-released-straight-to-dvd sequel (The Bounty Hunter: Portrait of a Serial Killer) Eddie Murphy plays all roles with nothing but the theatrically remastered human skins of Butler and Aniston for inspiration.

Aniston, in a mild and barely noticeable deviation from her typical format, plays a kooky (grit your teeth), quirky, career-minded bore. She is alone (just like in real life, then, unless you count that prick John Meyer as company). Butler is, from what I can see, a bit of a loser, but inexplicably self-assured nonetheless.

They were together, in a couple type thing. Then, they split up. Presumably because there was too much smug in the recipe for either to survive without a colossal explosion of ego. They still want each other, obviously, because she’s just so…well I would have gone with bland, but anyway. And he’s just so...er....tall? Stocky? Fuck, I dunno.

Will they get it together? From the looks of this hand job, yes.

The point is that you are supposed to really like them both. And they are both supposed to be a bit kooky and a bit ker-ay-zee. But this is an American film, so by 'kooky', they mean that one of them only gets her highlights refreshed once every 10-12 weeks. Fucking nutters, I'm telling you! That is some crazy shit.

Anyway arrest-blah-bounty-hunt-blah-together-blah-not-together-blah-shootout (but not a very good one). Then Will Smith arrives, blows both their heads off and Eddie Murphy plays out the rest of the film, ultimating between Aniston and Butler skin suits made out of sun damage and forgettable performances. I’m so going to Cannes for this.

Film Review: Unknown

2010-05-19T08:15:00.000-07:00

A story about men stuck in a large warehouse. Five stars!

I am a devoted fan of the bargain basement DVD section of HMV. It is largely due to this commendably unprejudiced miserliness that I have recently come into contact with Jim Caviezel, God bless him. he tries. He tried in 'Angel Eyes', with Jennifer Lopez (only £3.59!). He tried in that Mel Gibson film about Jesus, where Gibson subtly interweaved the story of the Messiah along with subliminal imagery showing pictures of himself cuddling Jews and holding up signs saying 'Mel Gibson does not hate Jews'. That one only cost me £2.99! It would have been better in 3D though...

Caviezel also tried hard in 'Frequency'. In Frequency Caviezel maintained his 'I'm sad, me' face tirelessly for 120 minutes, whilst acting alongside that man who I tend to confuse with Meg Ryan's ex-husband who she cheated on with Russell Crowe. Dennis Quaid! Don't worry; Dennis; you're better off out of it anyway - I hear Meg was very rude to Michael Parkinson and only somone one with a morality vaccum in the place where their heart should be could be rude to Parky.

Now Jim is trying hard in 'Unknown', next to Bridget Moynahan (also wearing a sad face). Basically; Jim wakes up. He's confused. He doesn't know who he is. Or where he is. He's wearing double-denim, so things are VERY BAD INDEED. Also bad? He's surrounded by bodies; one has been shot, one is lying face down on the ground covered in blood, one is tied to a chair. Is this Saw VII? No, it isn't, unfortunately, because that would have been markedly less forgettable.

Jim wanders around...I think that he's in a warehouse somewhere? He can't get out, everything is soundproof and the doors are all heavy-duty and sealed. It doesn't look good. What is Jim to do? I know! How about sad face?

Columbia Pictures would like to introduce 'Sad Face'

Jim wanders around for quite a bit. A bit too long, actually, if you ask me, because I'm not here for the Warehouse tour of Mexican desert outposts. He takes his denim jacket off (good move). He puts it back on again (No!! What are you doing!). He needs to get out of the Warehouse, because if he doesn't then the Fashion Police are going to sentence him to appear on Ten Years Younger alongside that heavily plasticised South African villain.

Don't be rude about my denim jacket you cunt

Jim finds leaking gas (oh no!), then he answers a telephone call and it turns out that maybe he's a bad guy (Oh no!! Cue more sad face). The bodies around him start to wake up, and one of them is from 'Six Feet Under' and since leaving the show he has put on a beard and quite a bit of weight. The bodies argue. They accuse Jim of being a baddie. J'accuse, Jim!! Jim looks sad. The bodies don't want to be his friend, because he is wearing a denim jacket.

Jim is arrested for crimes against fashion, tells kids 'Don't do double denim!'

We cut to Bridget Moynahan. She's doing something with a locker, but nothing very interesting or worthy of subplot. They introduce her by using that pervy camera shot which introduces all female characters in films: she is walking along in a short skirt and the camera slides slowly up from her high heels to her legs as she walks in a sexy but determined way that I have never seen a woman walk in unless she is on the telly.

The film industry seemed to really embrace this slide-up-the-ladies-legs shot in the eighties and I have to assume that, given Jim Caviezel's wardrobe and the budding friendship-slash-adversarial relations playing out in the Warehouse that this film is in fact some kind of 1980s homage to the buddy movie.

Somebody offers Bridget a cup of coffee, I think its a nice policemen. She can't drink coffee; you idiot! She's too sad! See the sad face? She talks to him about sunsets. I'm not really sure whats going on and start having a conversation with my friend about underground Luxembourgish hip hop.

Jim is still in the Warehouse, but nobody can remember who they are yet or how they might know each other. They blame the leaking gas for their memory loss. Helpfully, on the side of the gas cannister there is a message which reads 'Leakage may result in memory loss or death'. Oh no! Oh well never mind, hopefully everyone will forget that when they first met Jim was wearing a denim jacket.

Each character blames the other for being the bad guy; but they don't really remember who is what. The fat guy from Six Feet Under tells Jim that he saved him from drowning when they were kids; then after finishing his story he dies. They cover Fatty in a dirty blue blanket and then fight over a gun. Jim reveals that he had a telephone conversation with the kidnappers, and that he might be one of them. Sad face.

Jim, practises 'Sad Face' keeps fingers crossed for that Oscar

Perhaps I am supposed to be hoping that Jim is not a superbad kidnapping gun-totin' criminal, but is in fact just a tour guide for the 2008 Mexican Warehouse Tour of the Midwest? Its difficult to say at this point which I think he is, although whichever personality transpires I would like very much to see a break from sad face. The Warehouse crew start sawing at some bars on a window. This is very dull. Then they start hoisting each other up to try shooting out another window. Go team! They they whistle for a bit. Its a very tense affair indeed. But not tense enough to prevent me from disappearing for ten minutes to make some cheese on toast.
When I get back, Jim is pointing a gun at two of his Warehouse cronies, because he thinks that he might be a baddie, and that is what baddies do. The denim jacket has made a reappearance: Video Killed the Radio Star! They ask him not to kill them, because they don't want to die and that. Surely there can't be a more humiliating way to die than at the hands of a sad-faced man wearing a denim jacket. Unless of course you died in the 80s; in which case what an admirably fashion-forward death you must have had. 'Put a trenchcoat on; Jim!'; his Warehouse friends say* (*if you read between the lines). At least then they can say that they were killed by a flasher.

The camera cuts away, and two shots ring out. Oh my God! I can barely take the suspense! Jim is fighting someone else. He looks like a sexy homeless person. His friends turn up - they aren't dead! Hurrah! It turns out that he isn't a baddie, he's an undercover cop. Sad face. Hang on; why is sad face here? Aren't we happy and relieved that Jim is an undercover cop and not in fact a kidnapper? Sad face looks at Bridget Moynahan. Bridget Moynahan looks at sad face. Knowingly. Am I missing something? Ooh -there's a twist coming! Watch out M. Night Shayamalan! M; Night Shayamalan can rest easy; this twist isn't exactly keeping the Usual Suspects awake at night.

In a series of vaseline-lensed flashbacks, we are told that Bridget and sad face were having an affair. A bit of an awkward affair, entirely free from the confines of any sexual chemistry. In lots of white rooms with white, cloudy curtains they hold hands and he looks at her legs. They hatch a plan to get her away from her husband, who it turns out is one of Jim's Warehouse cronies. The plan is not called 'divorce'. I'm a bit bored, and the cheese on my cheese on toast has curdled in an unappealing fashion. Sad face. Fuck you, cheese! Never mind, at least I'm not wearing a denim jacket.

Film Review: Outlaw

2010-05-18T15:58:00.000-07:00

'Outlaw': its a romatic comedy

Outlaw! Rah!! Lots of men! Being...men...and that.

So, who's in it? Well, Sean Bean plays Sean Bean with a slightly-angrier-than-usual face. Danny Dyer plays Danny Dyer. Bob Hoskins plays Helen Mirren. I'm lying. He plays Bob Hoskin of course (he's reaching!). Keira Knightly's boyfriend Rupert Friend is thrown in for good measure to corner the homosexual market. Rupert Friend is angry. He's angry...and Aristocratic. Rah!! Men!! Angry men!! He's angry because some senseless yobs have gone and bashed his beautiful face in for no good reason, leaving him hideously scarred for life and with nothing to do but shoot birds on his Dad's massive estate and look moodily vulnerable.

Sean Bean's 'angrier-than-usual' face

Get the fucking violins out, yeah? Just FYI: that's 'estate' as in 'landed property'. Not 'estate' as in 'embarrassing but practical family vehicle'. To be fair though, if they had left ol' Rupert with nothing to do but shoot pigeons off his Dad's estate car, I personally would have been better able to empathise with his bland, poorly-drawn-out, one-dimensional character.

Anyway, so Rupert's pissed off and that. Also pissed off is Sean Bean, because he's come home from the army in a truly horrific jumper and his wife has changed the locks and moved some other bloke in without, y'know, running it by him. So Sean Bean looks through the window at his wife on the sofa being cuddled by another man, and then, because this is a tough, violent film about MEN!! Real MEN!!! he... well, he just leaves, actually, without saying anything.

This, my friend, is called 'characterisation'. Sean's been in the army. Its been tough and that. Then he's gone and left; only to find his wife shacked up with somebody else. On a sofa, no less. Chin up, Sean! Presumably this other man is not a REAL man. Is that the message that 'Outlaw' hopes to convey? Well the credits haven't rolled yet, so I'll have to assume that it isn't.

Sad Sean. Saaad.

Sean's character, like, totally internalises everything, yeah? And all of this repressed rage turns him into this superviolent outlaw! Rah! So the message is: don't internalise everything, Sean Bean; or you'll turn into a violent outlaw with inconsistent characterisation and a feeble back-story. Still no sign of the credits, so I guess that isn't the message either. God, this film just has so many layers to it!!

Sean Bean meekly leaves his wife and her lover cuddling happily on the sofa. As he walks away he runs into some yoofs who tease him about his horrid jumper. Actually, they tease him about the fact that he's been in the Army, but between you and me its pretty clear that 'the Army' is merely a metaphor for his jumper. Sean gets quite cross, and it looks as if the yobs are in for a beating, only, there are quite alot of yobs and only one Sean Bean wearing an I'm-even-angrier-than-usual expression.

Do you like Sean's jumper? He wears it to make certain that everybody knows he is DEFINITELY HETEROSEXUAL.

The yoofs, revealing themselves as a remarkably perceptive bunch of road-dwelling chavs, seem to cotton onto the fact that Sean is not to be messed with, and leave him alone to cry into his jumper. Hurrah! Now Sean can devote himself wholeheartedly to the vainglorious task of teaching a group of angry social misfits to beat the living shit out of people.

I'm not gay, alright!

Can you see where this is going? A group of angry men; REAL men!!, and they are all pissed off at society, and feel helpless and unable to protect themselves. So the message of this film is: having a bad day? Call Sean Bean and he will probably do something about it before the end of the film (hopefully soon, because its been an hour now and I'm getting bored of fantasising that he and I will get married one day).

Sean Bean steals one of William Hague's favourite baseball caps and the gang warn Hague off when he visits Sean's bungalow to claim it back

No, that's not the message either. So these men get together and decide to do some manly killing and stuff. We see some montages of them thinking about the bad stuff that has happened to them: the Barrister and his lovely lady wife; Danny Dyer and his fiancee while he gets beaten up by more yoofs (are these guys living in a bad area or what?); Danny Dyers' mate, who is blatantly going to dob them all in later when things get out of hand; Keira Knightly's boyfriend, hideously scarred by prosthetic make-up; and there is also some tagalong security guard who joined forces with Sean Bean after showing him some CCTV footage of a couple having sex.

The outlaws get ready for their gymnastics class

By this point in the film, I was getting unreasonably angry about the level of 'hideous disfigurement' that Rupert Friend is supposed to be suffering from. Put it this way; I've had acne worse. Why do they do that? Like in Phantom of the Opera where the Phantom is supposed to be this complete aesthetic monstrosity, and instead of any actual deformity he's just got a bit of a cool scar which you just know that all the girls would love anyway.

Rupert's 'hideous disfigurement'

Sean Bean's tagalong mate wot showed him the naughty sexy CCTV doesn't have anything to be pissed off about, from what I can see. He reveals that he was once dismissed from the Army because he had a criminal record (surely a prerequisite for joining the Army; no?), and then he reveals that he was ejected from the TA for something else. Then he decided to become a Security Guard.

See how fucking suspicious this guy looks? Yeah. Well nobody else seems to notice that.

Hang on. This guy sounds a bit unstable. Is it possible that he might spiral out of Sean's control? Um, yes. Is it likely that he might enjoy the violent side of being a Outlaw a bit too much? Um, yes. Is that also a hint that he might look up to the ex-military Sean Bean for a bit, before swiftly spiralling out of control. Um, yes.
The Security Guard decides that Sean Bean's angry face is just a front. These two appear to have very different concepts of what 'being an outlaw' should consist of. The once-harmonious group-for-angry-men breaks down, because they can't agree about what being an Outlaw should involve. Also, Danny Dyer's mate who is seemingly in the group for no apparent reason? Well, guess what, he's going to betray them all later. Spoiler alert!

Danny Dyer's eyes disappear into two black holes carefully hidden on his face

I reckon this film is a message about good organisational skills. If Sean Bean had screened prospective members for his 'angry men group' by asking applicants to submit a 1000-word essay, entitled 'What being an Outlaw means to me', then none of the ensuing moral dilemmas would have come to the fore. So, the message is: if you decide to kill someone with a bunch of people of questionable reliability whom you have only just met, have a brief meeting with them first (a brain-storming session, if you will) about what direction this faction might potentially take. That way it won't be such a gore-laden surprise towards the end of the film, eh?

Sean models his new design for the official 'outlaw' uniform, but the gang disagree over wether the lapels will make them look fat and, after a bit of discussion, they opt for a branded leotard design instead

Not to worry, there's a big shoot-out which clears things up nicely and is full of some nice suspense. Danny Dyer escapes and doesn't marry his fiancee, because apparently he doesn't want to (I don't really care either way; do what you want, mate); Rupert Friend chickens out; the Barrister dies, because they didn't know what to do with him and the film's running time has reached the acceptable 120 minute-limit; Sean Bean dies, because he doesn't have the courage to kill his wife and her lover (who wasn't a real man anyway, and probably wasn't worth it eh Sean?); and Danny Dyer's mate seems to walk away unscathed with an envelope full of cash.

Its A Boy! Lenny James gives birth to Sean Bean. Poor Lenny. Somebody's going to need stitches!

I can't really be bothered to go into Bob Hoskins, but basically he dies too and there might have been some homoerotic subtext with him and Sean Bean which was sadly never developed because both of them are too much like REAL MEN! Rah! to do anything about it. Oh yeah, and a baddie gets stabbed in the cock. Hang on... which of them are the baddies now that they done all that terrible killing and that? This film just has so many damn layers to it. Its an absolute fucking onion of a film.

At work: le folder de merde

2010-04-26T12:33:00.000-07:00

All places of work have a system of folder navigation. They are, without exception, designed to make you want to kill yourself. Today, I stood over my colleague for half an hour while we watched hardcore pornography together on her computer. Sorry, wait, that’s right, we weren’t watching porn, we were looking for a document.

It took half an hour because there was only one document that we were looking for, but the folder we were looking in contained enough similarly-titled documents to contain the Arabic translation to Paradise Lost written in Times New Roman, size 36 font, on single sheets of A4, a million times over.

When she had finally located the document, insisting all the while that I loom over her in the manner of a particularly attentive stalker, I suggested:

‘Tell you what, now that we’ve found it, and hurrah for us by the way, why don’t I just file it into a ‘Master’ folder, so that the next time its needed we can locate it more easily. Because all of these other documents are just old versions of this one, right?’

She looked up at me, her face a recognisable mixture of apathetic disinterest and resentment. I began my usual round of apologetic prattle, but I think that the damage had already been done. I could see now that I had offended her deeply. What I had mistaken for me being helpful, albeit in an especially pedantic and anally retentive fashion, was in fact just a slur on her organizational skills, and probably also on the Belgians as a nation. So often I find that what is intended as me doing my job turns out, actually, to be me insulting the Belgians. And what a surprisingly racist individual I have suddenly revealed myself to be.

‘What’, she replied ‘what means zis ‘Master’?’

‘It means: here is the document that you are looking for’

‘We don know ‘Master’?’

‘No. Well…I can call the folder whatever you want, we can even just ignore the separate folder idea altogether and just label the document with the date that it was last amended, or we can rename the document as 'XXX new’.

‘But we find it now’

‘Well yes, yes we did find it. But we will need to access this particular document on a regular basis, and it just makes it more easy to find it ON A REGULAR BASIS if we put an identifier on it so that we don’t have to trawl through all of these old versions again’

‘But zis was izy to find: I sink zat we don need to chenj it becawz ze document is called what we are looking for’

‘I hear what you ‘re saying, but, um, its taken us half an hour to find it, right, because all of the old version are called by the same name’

‘But look urr, we can see wen ze document az been chenj, so we know which is ze one we want’

‘Yes, but now that you have opened it, the date has changed again. So every time we look through these documents to find this one’ - and by this point I could see this happening rather a lot - ‘the date changes to say that the document has been modified, you see?’

‘I don sink zat we need to chenj’

‘Right’

I decided at that point that I had spent quite enough time debating the relative merits of folder organisation, and that I didn’t really give enough of a shit to impose my new world order (of folders) upon the Belgians. It did leave me thinking, though: how does she organize her pornography?

The bank called ING

2010-04-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

I chose to open a bank account at ING. Well, I say ‘chose’, what I actually mean is that ING have an office directly opposite mine, therefore ING offered me the only chance to open a bank account which did not require a bus journey, time off work, and another chance to stockpile resentment in order to open it.

Before opening the bank account I had been reliably informed that banks in Luxembourg do not open on the weekends, and are in fact available to provide banking services only Monday-Friday 9am to 6pm, the time when most people who can make use of their services are at work. What did they do, I thought, before internet banking? Presumably not a great deal. Just like estate agents: available only during the hours in which the individuals who have the means to make use of their services are at work. It’s a conspiracy to make me piss my holiday allowance down the drain, I’m telling you.

I duly arrived at ING one lunch break, and was told by a man behind a plate glass window that I had to go to the caravan just opposite. I walked towards what looked an awful lot like a branded festival portapotty, went inside and sat down behind a vase full of easter eggs in ING colours and a man with a terrible black eye. The black-eyed man had an ING-branded pen on an ING pen-holder around his neck, and an ING polo shirt, name-badge, belt and mouse-mat.

I sat down in front of his desk, thinking to myself ‘Don’t stare at his black eye, don’t stare at his black eye, don’t..’

‘Oui?’ he said.

‘What happened to your eye?’

‘Quoi?’

‘Ton Oeuil – qu’est-ce-qui c’est passez?’

‘Je peux vous aider, mademoiselle ?’

‘I’d like to open a bank account. Une compte de banque. To put money in and that’

‘Identification?’

I pulled out my passport, and a copy of my employment contract which HR had helpfully warned me that I would need.

‘You liv urr?’

‘Yes’

‘You want credit card?’

‘Does that come with the account? I don’t know. I don’t care, really, I just want a bank account so that I can get paid, and I’ll worry about how I access the money later’

‘En?’

‘A bank account. Une compte de banque. I want one of those’

He wearily began the arduous task of filling out a form with my details, grafting away while I stared at his black eye and decided that he was living in an abusive relationship.

‘Can I pay in a British cheque?’

‘A shek? Not urr. You muss go to anuzzer ING in Cloche D’Or’.

‘Isn’t this ING Cloche D’Or? It says ‘ING Cloche D’Or’ on a big sign outside the entrance’

‘Non’.

‘If I go to this other ING, I can pay it in there? How long will it take?’

He shrugged, disinterested.

‘One week? Ten days? A year? A millennia?’

‘Maybe six week. I don naw. You giz shek to ING Cloche D’Or. Zey send next Muns. We mus send ze shek to ING UK’

‘Oh. Well in that case can’t I just send it to ING UK myself, by recorded delivery, and then it will take less time, yes?’

‘Non. It take six week’.

‘Right’.

After a few moments my battered, branded friend handed me a file full of information and a card with my account number and sort code on it.

‘What about my card, when do I get that?’

‘In sree week. We call you’

He was clearly concerned that I would start harassing him, and eventually become something of a stalker, which, to be fair, I eventually did.

‘Why has my account number got 25 digits? How am I supposed to pay for stuff online - American Apparel are never going to accept this?’

‘You want credit card?’

‘No. Wait – can I pay for stuff online by credit card?’

Another shrug.

‘Well, can I have a credit card?’

‘Non’.

‘Right. So where is the elusive ING Cloche D’Or, then?’

Black-eye handed me a leaflet decorated with branch details: then leaned back in his chair with an ‘I’d appreciate it if you suddenly died’ sort of expression.

The conversation was over.

At work: the 'clean desk' police

2010-04-26T12:30:00.002-07:00

I started a new job three weeks ago. New job, new City, new Country.

After three weeks, the colleague who sits at the desk next to mine had clearly had enough: ‘You naw’ she said ‘hactually, we az a clin desk policy ee-urr’.

‘A what?’ I replied, eyebrows knotted.

‘A clin desk policy’.

‘Yes, yes I heard you’.

‘Zis min zat your desk, eet muss be clin before you liv ze office. You muss clin your desk evewy hiv-en-ing befaw you live’. At this point, my esteemed colleague broke off to gesticulate with an irritable twitch of her finger towards the compost heap of a desk that I have swiftly made my own.

‘Right’.

‘So zat zee cliners, zey can clin’.

‘Right’.

‘Uzzerwise, zey cannot clin’.

‘I see’, I said, before nodding at what I assumed was the appropriate moment and turning back to face le problem in hand. She wasn’t finished. I think that she was waiting for something from me. Regret, perhaps? Shame? A complete mental breakdown with a little self-harm thrown in on the side for good measure? Who knows.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t really geared up to give a shit. I contemplated, briefly, taking a dump on my desk before I left the office that evening, to see how exactly the CDP (‘Clean Desk Police’) might choose to manifest their disapproval.

My colleague waited, quite patiently, looking at me as I tried with great effort to ignore her. After a moment or so I thought ‘Maybe I should approach this more efficiently: I’ll do the shit on my desk right now, yeah, and then later I’ll have the time to give her the finger before getting the sack. I don’t think that it was the moment she had been waiting for. I should have left it, but, well, you know, she was sort of annoying me and that.

I turned to her. ‘What happens if I just leave it as it is?’

‘If you live it? What ‘appen?’

‘Yes, if I live it, what ‘appen?’

A flicker of violence passed across her face. I could see her go through all of the five stages of grief: denial, depression, anger and two others that I can’t remember and can’t be naffed to look up. She tried to clarify the situation, presumably thinking that something had been lost in translation, which, of course, it hadn’t.

Here was a socio-cultural difference of such magnitude that she could barely equate my response with reality. I did consider meeting her half-way, but then again the idea of telling her to fuck off appealed to my innate sense of justice, you see, and, quite frankly, a really couldn’t have given a pig in shit what she thought of the state of my desk.

Later on, I fired off a whining e-mail to a friend to vent- subject title Re: The Cunts. My friend explained that there were clear-cut rules about such matters as post-it note use and desk tidiness.

‘You can’t just leave post-it notes lying around the place to remember everything, they told me that in my time-management course’.

‘I’m sorry’, I said, ‘But I have relied upon post-it notes and the back of my hand to remember things for the past ten years. I have found them both unfailingly reliable, provided, of course, that with relative frequency you steal supplies of the former from work, and wash the latter compulsively after visiting the toilet because otherwise the reminder alerts don’t garner one’s attention with sufficient regularity’.

‘The man in my time-management course wants post-it notes banned’.

‘Banned? From where? From here? Or from the world in general? What exactly does he expect us to use as an alternative?’

‘He said we should write it in a cahier’.

‘Write it in a cahier’.

‘Yes. Or use Microsoft Outlook’.

‘ Microsoft Outlook? We don’t have Microsoft fucking Outlook’.

‘Yeah, I told him that. He said to use the Cahier or Outlook’

‘Which we don’t have’

‘Yeah, because a cahier is more efficient, because you can’t lose it’

‘I can lose a cahier. I can lose pretty much anything, particularly if its standing in the way of my relationship with a fucking post-it note. Who is this Barbarian who thinks that he can swan in and dictate the fashion in which I choose to remember appointments, telephone numbers and the like. What a complete and utter bastard’.

‘You could use LotusNotes Calender’.

‘LotusNotes? You’re telling me that I should use LotusNotes. A piece of software so fundamentally flawed that I couldn’t bring myself to praise it even if praising it meant delivering a cure for AIDs. Presumably if your time-management course leader, who, by the way, is clearly a committed cunt, had his way, we would remember appointments by tattooing them onto our skin like that man in ‘Memento’

‘Like the man in what?’

‘Memento! You know! Guy Pierce. He keeps forgetting everything, so he tattoos himself to remember. The timing’s all over the place. We watched it together and you said that he was the only person with a tattoo that you’d ever fancied’.

‘I dunno. Who’s Guy Pierce? Do you mean Guy Ritchie?’

‘Yes. That’s exactly who I mean. Now lets just agree that my colleague is a cunt. That the system is a cunt. That the man who invented LotusNotes is a cunt but I that I am too much of a coward, or a too much of a cunt myself to do anything about it. Then I’ll crack on with my web-tree, internal conflict unresolved’.

My 'I am watching sport. It is good and enjoyable' face

2010-04-26T12:30:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I had to exercise my ‘I’m watching sport, me’ face again. Sooner than I would have liked. I thought that I had paid my penance with the Rugby. People were cheering and that. I wished that they would not cheer so that I could have a chat with my friend, but she had on her ‘watching sport’ face too, only I have a terrible feeling that hers was sincere.

Trouble avec le bus and le meeting

2010-04-26T12:29:00.001-07:00

Today I discovered that you cannot get on a bus in Luxembourg without making a friend. Or go to the supermarket. Or go for a shit. Probably not so much the last one. I like making new friends. I do. But I like it on my own terms, and not in the morning when I want to read my newspaper and pretend that no one else exists until I get to work and realize that this frame of mind is harder to carry off in a meeting.

Got to work. Had a meeting, which went in the way that all meetings do, with me mostly looking at the wall and thinking about lunch, and the man pretending to be very much involved and worrying about their career and whether or not they are bing taken seriously at work. They kept calling someone Fanny, which is very, very funny. Especially if the person they refer to as 'Fanny' is in fact called 'John'.

Film review: Chloe

2010-04-26T12:23:00.000-07:00

Ah! Un film un peu wanky et Arthouse. Un film qui pretends to be french. Tres bien!

Except that c'etait actually tres tres merde.

'Three heads are better than one'..is aparently what the uninspired graphic designer decided about the promotional photographs

Anyway. Le plot: Liam Neeson plays a voice with Julianne Moore as his red hair. The Voice and the Red Hair have been married for a painfully long time and live in a blandly-decorated, tasteful-looking house, which is presumably symbolic of their frustratingly bland and tasteful sex life. Ooh! Imagery! How very clever.

Liam and Julianne play 'Limpets' in their giant beige house

Moore and Neeson have a whiny and irritating son, who has problems, yeah, although because this is an 'arty' and 'subtle' film (ha!) we are left to guess what these problems are and where they might actually stem from. Presumably, they stem from his embarrassingly sexually-charged parents, but its difficult to say, because with the voice and the hair as his parents this kid has a colossal heap of self-congratulatory yawn to deal with.

A family trip to the cinema to watch 'Peggy Does Dallas'

Then Julianne Moore gets a daughter. Sorry, I meant a lover. Or an escort? Its difficult to say, but they end up having sex anyway, although neither of them seems to enjoy it very much. Its funny how incest is never as much fun as you think its going to be.

In this scene, Chloe offers Julianne a cup of tea.
CHLOE: 'Cup of tea, Chloe?'
JULIANNE: 'No, I'm alright for the moment thanks'.

The daughter kind of comes across as a bit of a slut, but I reckon that maybe I just wasn't the target audience for this film. The target audience probably saw her as 'just misunderstood'. She really is a slut, though.

I was in 'Mamma Mia', you know

Anyway, Red Hair gets her daughter - that pretty blonde girl from Mamma Mia - to flirt with Neeson and stuff, yeah, because she thinks, sorry KNOWS, that he’s playing around behind her back. So, by getting that escort from Mama Mia to seduce Liam Neeson she will prove that he’s …..something…something important, relevant to the plot and probably quite sexy, in a ‘we have no chemistry’ sort of a way.

Liam offers to 'water' Chloe's 'greenhouse'

So. Moore finds out that Neeson has been having sex in a greenhouse with the escort, and you know what they say, Julianne: Once a cheater, always a cheater. Oh yeah, and there’s lots of stuff. And they all stuff that girl from Mama Mia.

AbsolutCrap.

Sarah and Jerome in conversation

2010-02-28T04:29:00.000-08:00

Something to make you be glad to be single - I was party to the following conversation between my friend Sarah and her boyfriend Jerome yesterday;

Sarah (speaking to me): 'I gave him a book for Christmas ('1984') because he N-E-V-E-R reads anything.'

Sarah to Jerome:

'You NEVER READ ANYTHING!'

Sarah to me:

'Its a fucking disgrace, I'm telling you...'

Jerome (to me): 'I read! I read Spiderman!'

Sarah ( to me, but I sense also directed at Jerome): 'A comic book.'

Sarah looks witheringly at Jerome

'Its a fucking comic book!!'

Jerome: 'No! Its not! Its good!'

Sarah (spooning fried egg into her mouth with a sense of superiority, if that is indeed possible): 'He dropped my fucking bookmark in the toilet! With. His. Shit! With his fucking shit!'

Jerome: 'What? I cleaned it!'

Sarah (to me): 'He bleached it. He dropped my bookmark on his shit, and then he gave it back to me'.

Jerome: 'I cleaned it!'

Sarah: 'He shit on my bookmark. Then he cleaned it and gave it back to me'.

Me: 'And they say romance is dead, eh?'

Trying to change subject..

'And what did you think of '1984' Jerome, did you enjoy it?'

Sarah: 'Its still sat in the fucking bathroom, covered in shit...'