The Origins Of Everyones Favourite Addiction

How long has it been? Months and months and months I know, I am awful. Then again I am sure you all lived and moved on just fine without my shoddy blog flooding your newsfeed every other second, forcing you to click and read with the ever present threat that if you don't you would be spammed forever by my incessant bullshit reviews. To make up for my long absence I have half heartedly changed the look of the blog, to make it seem like a comeback or something....I don't know. Anyway, lots can happen in such a short amount of time, such as you ask......me getting engaged for one. I know, who would want me? Thats what I thought, but I promise you, being exceedingly happy in general does not prevent One from being a good film blogger, I don't think so anyway; I mean look how depressed I was when I wrote the last two and how bad they were, surely this should be the opposite.

I imagine anybody who got here did so through Facebook, I sure as hell didn't email this shit to you and I doubt you check in on my blogs barren progress to pass the time, but thats good, because if you have Facebook you have probably heard of The Social Network, the film of Facebook if you will. I loved this idea when I first heard it was in production, as it could either be a total steaming pile of dwarf vomit, or be groundbreaking. When you consider that it was to be directed by David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club, Alien 3) and the writing and screenplay was composed by the amazing Aaron Sorkin (created the amazing West Wing, the underrated Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and the not so funny but still ok-ish Sports Night series) the latter was the more probable outcome, despite Fincher also directed the fucking atrocity that was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, we are willing to forgive him this once.

But know David, better men have died for less

The Social Network shows us how a young nerd in a Harvard dorm room became the worlds youngest billionaire, through an almost flashback account during the numerous lawsuits filed against him after he straight up boned many of his peers and laughed all the way to the bank with his newly created papers (papers meaning money of course). And it is a lot of papers, the money in such a social network is huuuuuge, I mean, we all have a Facebook account, its just what you do when you go to university or when you are a pedophile, how else is such a busy man meant to keep in touch with his many many friends all across the country and world, and also stalk people he has met and people he works with, even family members for embarrassing photos and super secret banter ammo.

"Um.......Dad?.......Wha?!....."

The story goes that Mark Zukerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) was a quiet but very bright student at prestigious Harvard University, recently dumped and a little intoxicated, he creates a website where people from his uni can rate the pictures of two girls to decide who is hotter, all these pictures being hacked from the universities database face book. He creates this website, whilst simultaneously blogging, and being drunk, in one night and it gets 22,000 hits in 2 hours........at 4am in the morning. Now I am no computer nerd, but even I know thats pretty fucking impressive; in real manly man terms I would say that is on par with nailing 10 slamming hotties in one night, whilst simultaneously downing a bottle of absinthe, smashing a PERFECT score out to Through the Fire and Flames on Guitar Hero and kicking a cat in the head with your precision kung fu ninja feet whilst it zips by on the home-made car battery powered merry-go-round you created with your BARE FUCKING HANDS! Then making sure 22,000 people knew about it in a two hour window afterwards. So yeah, the kid had talent. This leads to Zukerberg being unceremoniously sentenced to 6 months academic probation and his reputation on campus being left in tatters.

All the drama begins when two big jock guys, from an exclusive 'Final Club', called the Winklevoss twins offer him a chance to get some pride and image back, whilst also offering the chance to help in a business project called 'The Harvard Connection" which was planned to be some douchey website based on the assumption that all girls want to nail a nerd who studies at Harvard.

Unfortunately nobody told them that you can only have sex with a personality for so long

Essentially Zukerberg steals a part of this idea and creates The Facebook, behind their back and whilst stringing them along, naturally. This leads to one of the lawsuits, the other stemming from Zukerberg's best friend Eduardo (Andrew Garfield) but I wont ruin how that one comes about as it is kind of the driving point in the movie. Needless to say, we are treated to the ride as Zukerberg goes from lonely loser to internet .com heroface.

Mark Zukerberg is played by Jesse Eisenberg, who I always thought of as the rich mans Michael Cera, always playing nervous, uncomfortable geeks with zero game but much lust for the ladies. Here he is still a nervous, uncomfortable geek with zero game, but he has an edge. Eisenberg is brillopads as the quietly conspiring Zukerberg, especially in the scenes where he is a defendant in the numerous lawsuits, despite being the accused he holds an air of authority over the room and his former peers who he used to want to be, but now the tables have turned. I think he channeled some kind of personal issues from when he quite obviously got picked on in high school, and threw that inspiration into the faces of the actors around him (I have no proof of this, but I am going to go right out and say that he ran home to his mum after every scene, his hands tightly clasped over his ass to prevent atomic wedgies). Lets just say that the Eisenberg rose in my estimations after I saw this film.

Garfield is impressive as the young, driven and slowly betrayed Eduardo, and I see big things in the future for him. Also there are some nice smaller roles from Rashida Jones and Armie Hammer (playing both Winklevoss twins), but for the acting accolade, I have to, reluctantly give it to......Justin fucking Timberlake *holds head in hands and sobs uncontrollably*

Justin seen here, looking so dickbaggish that 1 in 7 wombs implodes out of instinctive fear when in this pictures presence.

JT plays Sean Parker, the creator of Napstar and a bit of a rock star on the silicon valley circuit, a poster boy for young .com entrepreneurs everywhere. He is also massively delusional, paranoid, vengeful and scheming; he grooms Zukerberg into his own play thing to get back at the corporate industries who have wronged him in the past, but also to make himself a lot of money, if a few of Zukerberg's friends had to be the collateral for that then so be it. JT is astounding as the energetic, confident, almost mentor-like God that is Parker, flying around and popping up to join the Facebook team and try and guide them in his shadow, whilst also subtly showing this to be a thin veneer for the damaged and scared young man underneath, who is so clearly affected by his explosive past and scathing by the music industry that he cant help but take this chance to prove he still has it in the big competitive world of internet business.

All of this is made better by the script that Sorkin masterminded, it is funny and chilling in parts, yet powerful when it needs to be, which is perfectly matched to Fincher's directorial style, which is exhaustive in the search of perfection. Fincher has a great way of showing us glimpses of vulnerable characters are, which is perfectly noticeable in the final scene, after all the hard talk and harsh words that Zukerberg has thrown around to the lawyers grilling him throughout the film, he sits down after proceedings and tries to add his ex girlfriend, who he gets dumped by at the start of the film, on Facebook, his own creation. Then he just sits there refreshing the page, waiting for her to respond. He is the king of everything online, yet he is still just an average 20 something with average thoughts and feelings. Awwww look at me getting all deep and shit.

Sooooo, I mark my triumphant return with a call for you all to go and buy this wonderful, compelling masterpiece and absorb every last lovely second, you wont regret it, and it will get your fat ass of of your Facebook for an hour or two.

Till next time

Peace

Forget Communism, Look At The Lovely Scenery....And This KICK TO THE FACE!!!!

Yeah I am about to write my second review of the day, I don't know how long this blog will be up for, so time is of ze essence!! Im a little bit tipsy now, I have taken the dog for a walk and I am waiting for my man Don Juan Ryan and my sister to turn up so I can get suitably drunk. Until then I am here, pouring the booze off my soul and onto your eyes!! Does that make sense? I don't know! I don't care!

Essentially what I am doing to your eyes right now

I have chosen to review another film I saw recently at the cinema, which is The Karate Kid! Whenever that phrase is mentioned, I know we all think of "wax on wax off" and a very un-natural relationship between a 15 year old Italian American and an 80 year old Japanese man, a film which shaped many of our childhoods, teaching us the importance of standing up to bullies, and being a warning that most films made in Hollywood will be 'Underdog' tales. Which reminds me, don't let your kids go to school with my kids; my kid will be on the bench press by 3 and will have protein shakes instead of chocolate milk! He will be THE Bully, and nothing shall stop him! He shall be named EXCALIBER!!! (it will be in capitals on the birth certificate with the exclamation marks and all) and he will not hesitate to fuck yo kids up! Anyways, in 2010 we have this new remake, which doesn't actually contain any Karate at all, it is all Kung-Fu, which is fine by me, because....well....fuck Karate, it is shit!

We all remember the original, young guy moved to new district, finds trouble with local bullies, can't join Karate school cos all those asshats train there, so a mad Japanese hermit teaches him Karate whilst getting his fence painted. Essentially this is the same tale, but instead of being a poor lil, sassy faced Italian American in another American hood, it is a young black kid who gets taken to China with his Mum and it all happens over there. Jaden Smith plays (Dre Parker) who is the young black kid, and when he spots the fancy of a young Chinese girl Meiying (Wenwen Han) he stirs up some shit, as apparently that bitch should be practicing her violin! No seriously, the entire plot hinges on the fact that this girls parents want her to be a mad fly violinist and these dicks at school are almost like hired cockblockers to ward of any cocky foreigners trying to get their finger stinky!

Obviously Dre meets Mr Han (Jackie Chan) who teaches him about Kung-Fu and he is the only bit that almost saves the film! Mr Han trains Dre not only how to figt but that Kung-Fu is about more than violence, that it transcends all that he does, the way he thinks, the way he speaks, the way he behaves; basically that it isn't for revenge! But whilst they are there, fuck it, lets join a tournament! Why not?! We all know the story, Dre limps through and defeats the evil bully in the final, not with a shitty Crane style kick though (seriously that kick in the original wouldn't have done shit; you cannot generate that much power from that stance). In the new update Dre beats the fool with some Matrix shit, like a tumble turn moon kick! Its mental, and would actually spark a fool. You know the rest, some feel good things and we are meant to feel all uplifted and shit!

"Uplifted yet bitch? Wait till I plant my foot in your face!!"

Ok, so it was a bit feelgood, but I mean, it is set in China, and the entire time they avoid the subject of communism. You should at least touch on it, try and make some kind of deeper statement, if not, whats the point in setting it in bloody China? They just distract you with all the lovely sweeping shots of the great wall and all the happy temple people. All in all it was an OK film; i liked it a lil bit less than the first one, but the original is pure nostalgia; the only bit I hated was Jaden Smith! That mother fucker cannot act, he only got the part because his damn parents produced the film. Its like they used this as a promotional tool, like "ooohh if lil Jadens going to have a future in film, we should showcase his dancing skills! Hey Jaden, throw some of that robot dance into that scene!!!!!" and he does, but it is all just cringe worthy! He is meant to be comic relief too, but the only part of the film I laughed at was when the young lady Meiying calls him 'funny' but her lil face is so Asian it sounds like she said "You fanny" and I was the only person in the cinema laughing! Fuck the rest of the audience if they can't take a joke! My advice to Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith is...Stop putting your shitty son in films! He sucks balls!

"Try and fire me!! My Dad is the producer yo! Suck a dick!!"

Anyway, I think you should still see the new Karate Kid, its is good all round fun, a bit of a fodder film, but worth having in your collection.

Till next time

Peace

Back With A Bang, And A Film I Have Seen 4 Times....Already

This is so weird, I was almost certain that this blog had been removed from the internet. Maybe it has been, and the internet in Staffordshire is just subject to different rules, I don't know, but I am slipping in a quick review before it all gets taken away from me again. A quick update for you; I have literally spent hundreds of pounds at the cinema recently, I can't stop going. And one film I saw many times was Inception, a film which blew my face right off its hinges.....if my face had hinges I mean.

Do I really need to go into the plot? Surely you have all seen it already?! I mean, it is the best film I have seen in the last 5 years, and is in my all time top 5, how can you not have seen it? It literally got perfect 5 star reviews from every film publication in the world....ever! Il explain it to you anyways.

Inception is a mind fuck, no two ways about it. The story follows Cobb (Leo DiCaprio) who is an 'Extractor', which means his job is to enter peoples dreams and extract ideas and thoughts from their conscience, and he is the best in his craft. To be honest, to try and fully explain the plot is almost impossible, it has so many levels and so many totally unheard of concepts that I would be here forever describing it, but the basic idea is that Cobb is given an assignment by Saito (Ken Watanabe) who was a victim of Cobb's extraction; but rather than extracting an idea, Cobb is asked to insert an idea, a practice labelled 'Inception'. Although the practice is said to be impossible, Cobb has no choice as his employers who hired him to extract Saito are hunting him for failing, and Saito offers him a way back into the U.S, where he is wanted for the apparent murder of his wife, and where his two small children still reside with their Grandparents. Unable to turn down the chance of seeing his sprogs agin he accepts the offer, and so entails the assembling of a team, a team capable of performing Inception, consisting of Arthur (an incredible Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Ariadne (the ever lovable Elen Page), Eames (everyones new fave British actor Tom Hardy) and the fore mentioned Saito. The plan is to inspire young rich-bag Robert Fischer, to dissolve his fathers huge energy empire so Saito's company does'nt get blown out the water, but to perform Inception, the team cannot just go into Robert's dream; they have to delve deep enough into his psyche to plant a seed of an idea, and let it grow naturally. This means once inside his dream, they must enter a dream inside that dream, and once in that dream, enter another dream, so they are essentially three dreams deep. God if you haven't seen this film yet I must sound like a fucking nutter right now. I wont go further than that, because if you haven't got around to seeing it yet I don't want to ruin your life, but there is mad backstory and loads of moral questioning that I cannot delve into here. Plus all the wall walking

Yeah Im walking on a wall! AND WHAT?????

The reason everything works so well is the way that Nolan directs. Have you ever heard that thing, like, your dreams only last about 30 seconds, but they seem like ages when your in them? well the premise of the film is that that compounds when you enter a dream within a dream and so forth, so when the assignment is being carried out we have a spectacular timeline of events on each level, with a crazy riveting car chase in the 1st dream, a mad gravity defying fight sequence in the second, and a Tom Clancy style assault on the 3rd level of the dream, all played out in real time, but at different speeds. Fuck it, I cannot explain what I mean in words, you just have to go watch it!

But is it good? OH MY SWEET JESUS YES!!!! It is hands down the best film I have seen in a long time, and I don't mean to just jump on the Chris Nolan bandwagon, but the guys a fucking genius. The cast is awesome, with an in form DiCaprio (being is Shutter Island and Inception in an actors career would be brilliant, to do both in one year is kind of taking the piss Leo, we know your amazing, stop it)

"How is it Im shitting on all other actors ever without even trying? Am I a God?"

Joseph Gordon-Levitt proving he isn't all mushy rom-com typecast man (not that I didn't love 500 Days of Summer) Elen Page is charming, Tom Hardy provides the snippets of comedy, Marion Cotillard (whose role I cant explain without ruining plot points) is haunting, and everyone is tied into this mad world and this insane concept that Nolan thought up himself. To make it even better he refused to shoot it in 3D, as he thought it would distract from the story (a man after my own heart). I know I haven't done a great job at inspiring you all to see it if you haven't yet, but just ask anyone who has, they will say the exact same thing, "Why are you not at the cinema right now watching it?". Im fucking serious, if you haven't enjoyed Inception yet you shouldn't even be sitting at you god damned computer! Get your ass up and get to the cinema fools, your mind is yet to be BLOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pictured: Blown minds.....and a suave Godon-Levitt

God I'm out of practice, if this blog is still her tomorrow I promise to do a film better justice by review than I have today! I couldn't even think of funny captions

Till next time...if there is one

Peace

Once Again A Sucker To False Advertising

How long has it been?.....Too long is how long! I am so busy at the minute wit work and stuff that I haven't had time to get a phone line installed in my new crib out West, which I kind of need to get the internet, to entertain all you simpletons with my lean reviews. So I am taking this opportunity whilst it is here; I am currently in the house of my ex-flatmates, I crashed here last night as I managed to lock myself out of my place on Saturday, and the stupid management company who own my gaff don't work on the weekends, so later today is the earliest I can get let back in. On the bright side, the lovely resourceful friends I have decided they really wanted the internet, so here I am using theirs, about to blow your collective minds with another review. I hope your ready...

Have you ever caught a glimpse at a movie poster, or a snippet of a trailer on TV and instantly thought "God Dang I wanna go see that bitchin' lookin' film. That shit right there wil put hairs on my chest!"? Thing is, we all have! It is the wonderful power of advertising, gently pulling at my senses, enticing me to float around the cinemas of London absorbing film after film, then dining at McDonalds and maybe changing my electricity provider on the way home, before I search my room for any old mobile phones I could sell for money; before finishing my evening comparing car insurance quotes online; before realizing I don't have a car....but that flashy looking one on the TV with all those gadgets in it sure looks nice. You get the idea, basically I am a mad sucker for advertisements. You could literally sell me a turd wrapped in tinfoil if you gave it a 30 second spot advert every evening, or maybe a billboard in Turnham Green tube station, and I wouldn't think twice when buying it as I am simply a sheep following the giant corporations who want me to buy shit. Despite me knowing that I react on impulse when it comes to buying shit, it still doesn't stop me from doing it, so whilst wandering through Blockbuster I caught a glimpse of the manliest film ever made...possibly. It was a DVD case that screamed "TESTOSTERONE" and there were all those lil' star ratings from various critics, but mostly I was distracted by the orgy of promised violence depicted right up front.

LIEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSS!!!

I mean just look at it. There is all that red splashy blood behind the title, in Bold white. The words "Savage", "Exciting", "Violence", "Blood", and "Hell" are all a font size or two larger. Then you have an angry looking Norse dude covered in claret weilding a giant ass sword flanked by several hundred angry Viking types. How could this film not rock total devil dick. It just has too, otherwise it would be the worst lie ever told, why would anyone do that to me?


Because they hate me! Thats why


Valhalla Rising is the biggest waste of time in the world ever. I want to find the Director and forcibly retrieve those 90 minutes of my life back by tearing them straight from his soul. I want to castrate him as a lesson to future film makers not to fuck with my head and get me all excited before ceremoniously shitting right in my eyes. From all that was promised on the DVD case, here is a run down of what happens in this film.

We begin up in Scotland somewhere and these weird highland people are keeping One Eye (Mads Mikkelsen) locked in a cage 24/7 apart from when they let him out to watch him fight fools so they can bet on him. When I say fight fools, it isn't really fair because he is always bound to a post with a rope around his neck. And when I sy it isnt fair I mean for the other guys, as this One Eye fuck should have his hands cut off and his other eye poked out to make these fights fair. At one point he almost decapitates this bro with his own neck rope, suffice to say there is something very very wrong with Mr One Eye. After about 20 minutes where all we see is people milling around One Eye's cage, him killing bitches and some lovely scenery, with no words spoken up to this point; One Eye finally escapes from his funky kilt wearing friends when one tribe sell him to another. He proceeds to slaughter their faces and at one point actually ties a guy to a rock and, with his bare hands...HIS BARE HANDS, he rips the guys stomach open and pulls out all his organs, before leaving him to die. Pretty fucking badass; and you are probably thinking "But Alex, this all sounds awesome and exactly what was promised on the cover!" But alas this was all just a further tease before everything descends into a steaming river of stale urine.
After he escapes with his random adopted child thing, he joins up with some religious nutters who are convinced they can be part of the Holy Crusades, despite the fact that they are not registered military men, neither are they fucking Knights. Anyway, they decide that One Eye would be a good member to add to their lil party as they have heard he likes a bit of the old ultra violence. So off they go in a boat to the Holy land but then shit takes a turn to the weird...and the mind numbingly boring. Basically the idea is that One Eye is from hell, and he takes these crakpot religious fools there to test them. So when the boat enters into a deep fog for a while and comes out on the other side to what they assume in the new Holy land, it is all a bit confusing when people start slowly going mad and doing weird shit because they have been brought to some twisted corner of Lucifer's kingdom. See at this point you don't know that, I only figured it out after watching it again and reading reviews and shit, so to the virgin viewer its just plain crazy. It all ends when everyone has killed themselves and each other and the boy and One Eye get confronted by some tribal people who proceed to batter the shit out of One Eye, who sacrificed himself to spare the boy. I am pretty sure there is some kind of deep religious commentary in this film somewhere but I was so busy eating the DVD case in rage that I didn't fully grasp it. In summary, the 1st 20 minutes promise much, but the remaining 70 minutes is mind numbing and yet physically painful, somewhere on par with having your whole body bathed in ice whilst somebody stabs you repeatedly in the face and sternum with a biro!

"Hi Mum, Film was well shit, on way home now, via Hospital"

Look, this is less of a review and more of a rant. Everyone always moans on about downloading films and how it damages the film industry blah blah blah...but people stopped paying money for films for this exact fucking reason; you never know what the film is actually like as the ad teams and the distribution teams hired for the production have completely changed the plot from those cool trailers you saw and have lied to you on the cover of the DVD and every movie poster on the Underground. The industry can't trust us to watch all their films in the cinema and on DVD when we can't trust them to honestly tell us what we are paying for. Until they start being honest with me, I will cut any corner I can to veto these films. Oooo yeah look at me fighting the power.

Bottom line is, don't watch Valhalla Rising unless you really really want to consider suicide through boredom.

Till next time
Peace

Good Try Tim, But You Tried Too Hard

I will start by issuing a small update on the life of me. I will be moving house tomorrow, I am escaping Peckham and heading west...west London that is, i wouldn't actually head to the west of England, the west of England is more like a concept than a reality to me. As such, I will be a week or two without internet, so this will be my last post for that time, but trust me, I will be getting the internets as fast as I can once I am all moved in, in-between my mad hustlin' that I will be undertaking for charities. It is all very exciting round these parts. Anyway, today I got home after sorting out my house and getting employed and watched Alice In Wonderland, the Tim burton vehicle that had such contrasting reviews depending on which sources I went to that I started to suspect that my friends were watching different films. I mean, I am not a huge Burton fan, his films are a bit too inconsistent for my liking and I think sometimes he over does the 'quirkiness' factor in an attempt to be different. Despite this I pressed play with an open mind.

Alice In Wonderland doesn't follow the same path as the adaptations before it or the book itself for that matter. We enter the story 13 years after Alice's initial adventure down the rabbit hole. Whilst attending a party that it turns out is a secret engagement party for our new, older Alice (Mia Wasikowska) and Lord Hamish, a ginger twat with a stupid face

ERGHHHH IM A GINGER!!!!

Alice gets this assbag proposing to her in front of a mad large crowd and instead of punching him in the face, which she should have done, she pegs it off after a rabbit in a waistcoat...you know...as you do. Cue her stumble into the rabbit hole and down down down she goes. Once in Wonderland it is as you would expect it to be; Alice is introduced to a series of totally nuts characters from the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), to the awesome opium toking Blue Caterpillar (Alan Rickman), this caterpillar literally fucking LOVES opium, nd his constant toking on the ol erb made him my favourite character by far, just for his drug intake.

Baller

So her adventure folds into the story of two queens (Helen Botham Carter and Anne Hathaway respectively) who are stuck, along with their quirky comrades, in a long running war for the throne; and it appears that prophecy has singled Alice out as the saviour for the good guys following the White Queen (Hathaway), which helps drag our heroine into a quest for a weird sword whilst trying to rescue her new friends from the clutches of the wicked Red Queen (Carter) who has some mad anger issues and a fetish for beheading chumps.

So I will start with the good bits; the film is beautiful aesthetically, you can tell a lot of thought and imagination went into the landscapes and the characters themselves. Everything is colourful and captivating and each character has a strange little personality that is mirrored by their appearance, I can't really fault Burton here as he defiantly had a good vision for what he wanted the film to look like. Secondly the acting is brilliant in places, nothing award winning of course, but just how some of the actors took over their roles with such energy, Depp in particular, whose Mad Hatter is a superb mix of adorable nut job and menacing Glaswegian psycho (I don't know why he gave the character a Scottish side, but it was funny).

Pictured: A typical Scotsman

The problem is, and this could just be my personal opinion, but when Burton decided to try and change the entire concept of the original book he kind of overstepped the line and rendered his adaptation void. Basically, the original text by Lewis Carroll was a strange journey into the drug fuelled mind of the writer, I mean, nobody can deny that that fucker was quite obviously off his tits on LSD when he popped this lil tale out onto his typewriter, there is no way a sober or stable mind could invent the shit he depicts in Alice's adventures. The element that gave the writing of Carroll such an enchanting and hilariously strange feel was that there wasn't a story as such, it was more a documentation of Alice simply wandering around and meeting different characters in different situations, with no apparent narrative structure to which her encounters are based. What Burton has tried to do, which no other adaptations have bothered, is to try and tie Alice and her new Wonderland friends into a story, a plot and try to mesh all of their stories together into one big patchwork, which you may think sounds great, I mean, who wouldn't want a bit of structure to their films? Me thats who. I don't want structure to this film. By ditching the 'wandering girl' aspect of Carroll's book, Burton has binned the drugged up, psychedelic charm that the original prose and the film adaptations before hand embraced so willingly. It seems that in his quest to stand out even bloody more from the Hollywood make up, Burton has tried too hard and completely distanced himself from the best element of his project that if he had just kept the premise the same, could have been a unanimous classic. But instead he decides he is going to slap his label on a legendary story and completely twist the shit out of the thing to make it 'his'. You should have just left the narrative structure alone Tim. Bloody can't trust you with anything mate

Would you trust this man with anything? Anything at all?

Still a good effort though. You should see Alice In Wonderland just for the visuals, but none the less, it is an enjoyable film, defiantly one I could watch again.

Till next time
Peace

Kick Ass Indeed

It was everywhere, all over the review section of Empire, and Total Film, all over IMDb message boards, all over everyones filthy little tongues, being indiscriminately flicked out mid conversation "Have you seen how awesome Kick Ass is?". "No" I would reply, as I am far too poor to pay London cinema ticket prices most of the time "But maybe if you keep talking about it I will FUCKING FEEL BETTER ABOUT IT!!" dicks. I wanted to see it but I couldn't, so all these people talking about it 24/7/365 was getting a bit on my tits. But I have seen it now, I finished watching it 5 minutes ago, and now I am a happy happy man! Cos it really was kick ass.

The story follows Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) your typical teenager, living it up in NYC! Unlike most super hero tales Dave isn't a super nerd who turns super awesome, he isn't the coolest kid ever either, with a mega rich family to fund his super hero hobby. No Dave is just middle of the pack, normal, average, mediocre, invisible. He just sits at home jerking off loads and hangs out with his friends at their local comic book store, drinking stupid drinks (why has everyone stopped drinking normal fucking coffee? What the fuck is a grande mocha choca shattee anyways?) and then they get routinely mugged on the way home. Dave decides that he has had quite enough of this shit and that somebody should do something, I mean why has nobody ever tried to be a super hero in real life?

"I tried. And now I am 35 and still a virgin!"

So he invests in a green wetsuit on the internets and models himself as Kick Ass, a super hero for the people. Needless to say, he is a bit shit, I mean, he is a comic book loser in a wetsuit, what do you expect. And as such, on his first "crime fighting mission" he gets himself stabbed and then run down by a car. It isn't all bad though as his injuries mean that the doctors have to fit him up with all these mad metal bones and his nerve endings are all totally fucked up so he can't really feel pain

Bit like this, but less straight up baller

He makes himself into somewhat of an internet celeb when he gets filmed fending off some random gangster dudes who are trying to beat the shit into some other gangster dude, and in doing so picks up the attention of two vigilante superheroes by the names of Big Daddy (Nic Cage) and his daughter Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) who have their own agenda concerning a mobster Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong) whose operations they take pride in fucking up due to a storied personal history. Kick Ass and the father/daughter combo cross paths when they are both hitting a D'Amico stronghold at the same time. This doesn't do much to please D'Amico and he demands that his men bring Kick Ass in as they believe it was him who has been killing all their men. This raises the bar a bit much for poor Dave and when he is lured into a trap by D'Amico's son, played brilliantly by Christopher Mintz-Plasse (McLovin), he sets himself, Big Daddy and Hit Girl up in a bit of a sticky situation

Mmmmmmmm....Sticky

I won't tell anymore of the story cos that would be mean and would ruin the super badass ending. But I can tell you why this film is awesome and you should all go see it, if you haven't already that is. Its damn funny, for one, I mean really funny. Its that kind of effortless humour, they don't throw jokes in your face or set up dreadfully complex scenarios to set up more jokes; it is just plain good script writing and a dab of improv and it works, really bloody well. It helps that the premise for the whole film is a bit goofy, with your regular Joe trying to make a difference by buying an outfit off the internet and walking the streets at night looking to save missing cats and such; but the dialogue could hold up on its own. There is a mad soundtrack, its really bloody good, which is always important in these kind of films. Plus there is a totally rad first person shooter bit, which made me jizz all over the damn place! On to the more important stuff, the action direction is superb, every fight scene is brilliantly choreographed, the fights at the beginning being very real and gritty, such as the fight he has with the 3 gangster folk, and later in the film when he meets Hit Girl and Big daddy the fighting gets a bit more extravagant, but it never passes into the realm of ridiculous. It is just good plain up stab-tastic, gun toting fun, and I could watch it all again right now probably. The acting is great, with new talents like Mark Strong and Mintz-Plasse stealing the screen with their parts and Nic Cage proving this was one of the gems in his wildly inconsistent career

"I will sexy your face......off"

Most importantly Kick Ass just out right refuses to take itself too seriously, which I loved. Most super hero or action films try to fix that balance between badass action, light comedy and then striking a serious note, but in Kick Ass they took that method and just shat all over it, mixing scenes that, in other films, would have been the moment to pull a concerned stoic face and act all thoughtful, and they break it right in the middle with a completely inappropriate joke. For example when Big Daddy is getting set on fire (small spoiler...sorry) and I was about to say to myself "Shiiiiit, this just got real live!" but I was brought back to laughter when they cut to Dave's friends in the comic store, watching all this on the internet and one of them is gesturing wildly at the other to notice that a girl is using him to shield her eyes from the torture fest on screen. It was this kind of thing that made me love Kick Ass more than I would have anyway, as I refuse to take life too seriously, so films mirroring my personality will always be OK by me.

I mean, could you take this seriously? Thats a 13 year old with a silenced pistol!

So bottom line...Go watch this film. You shall not regret it, even if you live in London and have to shell out 17 quid for the pleasure.

Till next time
Peace

Finally, Martial Arts Films Get Back To The Roots

I have watched martial arts films since I was tiny. My Dad had a good collection of them, and along with him being an enthusiast of Tai Chi, Wing Chun and other arts, he let me watch all these totally badass films that I really shouldn't have been watching at that age. Crazy brilliant films like Shaolin vs Ninja and the Fong Say Yuk series which were all brutally physical and had some proper gnarly shit occur on screen, especially those early Jet Li movies, which were beyond all others in the amount of blood used in generous sprays onscreen, and the amount of bones broken and shown sticking through skin! Those were the days, before the Americans took a liking to it and destroyed the genre, so other kids growing up heard "Kung - Fu movie" and had this image come to mind

"Gay? What on earth do you mean?"

Ok not to take anything away from Jackie Chan, I have a tremendous amount of respect for him, and some of his early films were absolutely brilliant, but not even I can forgive Rush Hour 3

"Chris! That was your cue to make a charming race relations joke!"

"Awww shit, my bad Jackie, I was just distracted by my career disappearing into the distance"

Lost were the films that were proud showcases of Chinese culture and tradition, also offering insights into the history of such a great country and the events that shaped the nation; instead we gained Americans and Jackie Chan running around jumping off buildings and getting in fights over women and stolen honour or some shit. Don't get me wrong, there are still some things that get on my nerves with martial arts films; the humour for one. The Chinese film industry spawned from, and still remains very close to, the Chinese theatre, and so all the humour in the films is ridiculously slapstick and pantomime.Think back, if you will, to the opening scene of Enter The Dragon, widely seen as Bruce Lee's best film, where Bruce is in the airport and can't read the menu, so he just points at everything on there. When the waiter turns up with 8 bowls of soupy goodness and Lee gives it that "what have I got myself into?" look, we were all meant to piss ourselves laughing, but we didn't, not that I can say the same for the Chinese audiences

"LOL...Soup...gets me every time"

Well all martial arts films are full of the same kind of cringe inducing "humour". I also hate the plague that has hung over martial arts films post Bruce Lee, and thats the use of wirework in all of them. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was a good film, but it really took the piss when it came to the wirework, and the early Jet Li films were peppered with the same floaty shit, although usually for more hardcore purposes, like Li would kick a guy through a tree and he would fly 30 ft backwards, more than Chow Yun Fat gracefully jogging up a bit of bamboo. But anyway, when i found Ip Man lying in my dads film collection, I was intrigues. Mostly because Ip Man is one of the overlooked heroes in the martial arts world, I mean the guy taught Bruce fucking Lee everything he knew when he was young, and he made the art of Wing Chun a worldwide practise. But what also got my attention was the casting of Donnie Yen, who I first noticed in Once Upon A Time In China 3 where he fights Jet Li with a big damp cloth (seriously) so this was already getting my testosterone running.

The film Ip Man, follows the legendary grandmaster in his early years before and throughout the Japanese occupation of China during the Second World War. Basically the story is this, Master Ip is living happily with his super hot wife and his wee lil son in the martial arts district of Fo Shan, he just relaxes all cool and duels random other masters who admire his mad talents. One day these asshats from the north come to town and are all like "Yo, we are better than youse lot, show me your main boss lad and il spark him proper, then set up a school and teach you southern fairies how to kick a man in the face!!" So this tool called Jin beats the shit out of some pansy ass teachers and think she is big man, until he hears he must beat Master Ip to truly beat the best. He turns up at Ip's gaff and starts talking real live shit about Wing Chun being created by women (which is true, it was thought up by a nun in the Mountains of ancient China) so after acting all peaceful and modest for a while Ip gets permission from his wife to tell this buttplug where he should take his northern monkey kung-fu. Ip Man proceeds to smash the dick faced Jin in the mouth with his fists...repeatedly. Then, after the dirty out of towners pissed off, he probably went and banged his super hot wife, because he is the man

Warning ladies, after he punishes that guys face, he will punish your womb

The story gets more dark when the Japanese take over, and all the Chinese people are forced into homelessness and starvation. Master Ip still gets some perks, such as getting picked for work in the lines over others, mostly just by his local celebrity, but times are mad hard yo. Many of the workers at the coal mine Ip is working on are taking up offers from the Japanese general Miura, basically they go and fight generic Karate men and if they win they get a bag of rice. After some of Master Ip's mates don't come back from this tournament, he decides he should go along to see what in the world is up with this crazy Jap general. When he sees his old friend and fellow kung-fu master get shot in the face for taking rice when he lost his fight, Ip gets all like "hey, more like Japs eye!!! Am I right guys?" and then he goes and takes on 10 guys at one time to prove how balls out steel he is. This mad act of crazy heroics impresses Miura and the rest of the film is your general fare of Master Ip helping liberate his fellow Chinese and obviously taking part in a mad showdown with Miura towards the end.

What I loved about this film is that it took the martial art film back to the style that I used to watch and love as a kid. Obviously the process has been helped along with the emergence of stars like Tony Ja, who is incredible, but im pretty sure The Warrior King was just him walking into rooms screaming "WHERES MY ELEPHANT" and then kicking everyone square in the teeth whether they were involved or not, lets just say it wasn't the most intelligent of plots. But Ip Man stays true to all the classic themes of good martial arts films, they all have this feeling of tradition to them, like the Chinese are always glorified over an oppressive regime, be it the Japanese in Ip Man, or the British in Once Upon A Time In China. It is like a small shout out for us not to forget the great history of China, and the traditions and importance of their culture. As such all the films used to have a lil scene where kung-fu would trump a firearm, guns and munitions being the acid that dissolved Chinese culture towards kung-fu when foreigners decided they would colonise the Chinese, proving to everyone that these ancient arts were a little out dated, but still effective, and important in the storied culture the Chinese possess. Donnie Yen gives a very stoic but powerful performance as Master Ip Man, which was nice to see, as I didn't want the film to be let down buy awful acting. The fight scenes are all fucking brutal, not over the top, just to the point; direct and real, much like the art of Wing Chun itself. I mean, Ip Man does not fuck about, don't get me wrong, but he isn't jumping all over the place doing it, he just stands there and waits for you to try and hit him, then he proceeds to remove your teeth with his knuckles.

Pictured: Ip Man dentistry - tooth removal with a twist (The twist is he punches you in the mouth)

I urge you all to go and buy this DVD right bloody now, and enjoy a bit of cinema that doesn't always crash the box office, but is great film making all the same. Who knows, maybe you can get to love these films as much as I did as a kid, and as I still do, with Ip Man giving me renewed confidence that martial arts films havn't totally lost their way

Till next time
Peace