I Love You Too Man

I should apologize again for the massive break in between posts, the folks across the road refuse to fix the internet I was so handily stealing from them. I have had a temptation to write them a note, something along the lines of "Fix your internet, your ruining my life!!!" but that may be a bit too ballsy. Anyways, it has led me to invest time in other things that are more important, like finishing my dissertation, actually going outside and enjoying the sunshine, talking to people etc etc, so I shouldn't complain too much. So yeah, here I am, to review another film for you all, and I stewed over which one to write about, as I have watched alot lately; I almost chose a Spike Lee film, as I just finished my dissertation on his works and could have actually written something of worth, but who wants that?! Not you lot. So more fodder it is, and I have chosen I Love You, Man, the one film I think was funnier than The Hangover this year. Booyaaaa!

So the general plot be this, we have our lovable asshat protagonist Peter Klaven (Paul Rudd) who is a 'girlfriend guy', which is a man who totally ignores the age old adage of bros before hos and decides his current lady friend deserves all his time; whats that all about? Do these men exist? Where did they lose their nuts? Anyway, Peter proposes to his girlfriend and she says yes. Yes this woman wanted the marry this man ok yeah thats a very bad photoshop job, but you get the huge rift in hotness. Zooey (the lovely fiancee played by the edible Rashida Jones) realises that her husband-to-be is a massive loser and has no friends and that their wedding will be a bit lopsided if she has like, bare bridesmaids and all her husband has with him at the alter is his Dad and gay brother. Thus Peter vows to get him some friends with the quickness, which proves difficult, as Peter seems to have some mild form of autism, he has social skills on par with a hybrid wasp...on its period. Basically he has no idea how to function in front of his bros; and so we are on our way to 2 hours of hilarity and cringe worthy comedy. The main turning point in the plot comes when Peter meets Sydney Fife (the awesome faced Jason Segel), who seems to be the perfect candidate for the job of soppy bollocks' best man. Then loads of shit happens that is so funny you find yourself picking your brains up off the floor...as the film just blew....your.....MIND!

Oooooo what are the good points? Well lets start with all the lovely cast; we have Paul Rudd, who has great improv skills in front of camera, and provides most of the laughs with his squirmingly uncomfortable social disasters; he has a tendency to just make up gibberish words in the middle of conversations and leaves you with your hands over your face wondering if God would ever make a human being that useless at life. There is obviously Miss Rashida Jones, who wouldn't get kicked out of bed for farting; and then Jason to the Segel, of How I Met Your Mother and Forgetting Sarah Marshall fame. Hes super G, at life, and manages to roll waist deep in super fine honey clunge 24/7 despite being a bit ugly and overweight...a true hero if I ever knew one. Hes also hugely likable, and reminds me of many of my friends at once, which I liked. A great supporting cast including Jon 'am I fat or am I stacked?' Favreau, J.K Simmons and Jaime Presley, all of who provide some good laughs along the way,
The comedy is very reminiscent of the Judd Apatow school of fun, which is to be expected with Rudd and Segel onboard, many of the scenes are obviously improvised, but the one problem I have with this style of directing which Apatow has injected into Hollywood, is that its lazy as fuck. Apatow pretty much sits down and says "yeah just do shit until I think its funny enough to make the final cut"; which makes for great outtakes, yet lacks the perfectionist attitude usually expected in directors, then again what the fuck do I know? I would be the worst director in the world, and Apatow is probably bathing in a swimming pool of burning money right now. Even though I Love You, Man isn't directed by Apatow, it is evident that actors like Rudd and Segel are encouraged to perform the way they would for an Apatow vehicle, as it does have a way of making money.
I preferred the comedy in I Love You, Man to the Hangover, mostly just out of personal preference, but I am sure you will enjoy it just as much as The Hangover regardless if your taste is similar to mine, but obviously yours should be like mine, as my taste in everything is always right, ALWAYS!

So yeah, go watch it, if you havn'e already, and if you have, watch it again damn yous!
SLAPPA DA BASS MAN!

Till next time
Peace

Its Films Being Treated Like This That Makes Me Want To Work In Distribution

I first watched Cashback a year ago when my flat mate Chris had it, and it instantly became one of my favourite films. It is the feature length version of the Academy Award nominated short film, and I was fortunate enough to find it lying in my Dad's film collection, nestled amongst a bunch of Danny Dyer films and the Dune boxset, so it is lucky I was even scanning that area at all.

The story follows Ben (Sean Biggerstaff - yeah I know, what a name), a student in his final year of Art college, who is going through the mourning stages of breaking up with his long-term girlfriend, and I would be pissed too if I had just broken up with Michelle Ryan...


oh yeah well done Ben. During this period of depression Ben develops insomnia, and decides, seeing as he now has 8 extra hours a day, he may as well find a constructive way to fill his time, and so he gets a job at his local Sainsbury's, working the night shift. During his employment there, he realises all his colleagues have their own little ways of dealing with the incredibly boring night shifts, making the time fly by with techniques such as never looking at the time, or simply doing anything that can't resemble work as much as possible. Ben discovers his own coping technique; he imagines the opposite. Instead of thinking about time speeding up, he imagines it slowing down, right down to a stop. Somehow this allows him to stop time, whenever he wants, and make it resume again just by cracking his fingers. Sounds strange I know, but believe me, they do it in a way that you don't even realise that there is no explanation to this time warping phenomenon. Anyway, Ben, being an artist, spends his frozen time admiring the female form, which at first sounds pervy, a bit like Bernard's watch got into the wrong hands, but Ben isn't going around plugging frozen honeys without them noticing, he is observing them, and then he draws them. Its all very arty. Then the love story part of the film begins, which I will leave for all of you to discover on your own when you go buy this film, and you will go buy this film *Jedi Mind Trick*

What makes me love this movie? Where to start...first of all its the content, which I think speaks to anybody who has ever been through a terrible breakup. I hate to exit my alpha male state for a minute but the first 20 odd minutes of Cashback cut close to the bone, with Ben doing things that we have all done in those moments when all we can think about is the ex (alcohol fueled or not). Secondly, it is the way that Sean Ellis (the director) manages to fill a film full of naked women, and not at one point have me thinking of sex. I have no idea how he managed that, but you start to see the women the way that Ben sees them, as objects of beauty to be admired, but not to be violated (I will come back to this point in a bit during my rant, just you wait). Thirdly, Cashback is funny. I don't want to go as far as to call it a romantic comedy, because the scenes between Ben and Sharon (the love interest, played brilliantly by Emilia Fox) is whole heartedly delicate and real, with all the funny points mainly focusing on Ben's best friend Sean, a self proclaimed ladies man; and the other male colleagues at Sainsbury's, who are more a comedy of errors. Although some of the comedy is a tiny bit slapstick, a lot of it is based on brilliant one liners and brutally witty trueisms. Fourthly, the film is just brilliantly shot, for such a shoe-string production budget, it is done brilliantly, with the acting, the camerawork, just everything, being top notch and giving you more for less, which I prefer sometimes to the overbearing money machine method sometimes employed in Hollywood.

So yeah, before I begin getting angry, let me insist that you all go buy this film now, it is out on DVD, so you have no excuse.

Now...let me try and calm myself...as I get onto the way the film has been marketed. Cashback, is a film about heartbreak, moving on, grabbing opportunities, and young love; i mean, if I am being honest, it borders on pretentious and 'arty'. Yet on the DVD cover it is portrayed as a softcore porno. I have no idea why, but it is almost like the distribution company didn't even watch the fucking film. They make it seem as if Ben is some kind of rapist who wants to shag women whilst they are frozen in time; trapped in his twisted little world. For instance, lets have a look at the front of the DVD...


see that woman is in the film for around 4 minutes. But they put her on the cover, just because she gets her tits out. Also the tag line "When work's a bore - Turn on your imagination". He isn't using his imagination you tools, he is actually stopping time.Shit like this makes me want to kick a fucking puppy. He isn't sitting at his counter day dreaming about naked women. The second thing that pissed me off about the DVD cover was on the back, a quick snippet from a film review by Nuts magazine, and it quotes "Top Babes" ..... and that is it!?!? What the FUCK? How is that relevant? At all? I mean I can see the inbred chav scum who work at Nuts could watch this and all be sitting around bathing in chants of "GET YOUR BAPS OUT!!" but really thats not what the films about. This has helped me become positive that I should work in distribution, so that films like Cashback don't get marketed to people wanting to see some naked women, but rather to people who want to see good cinema! Although I, quite handily, fall under both categories, so who am I to complain?


Till next time
Peace

The Hangover...With A Hangover

Off the bat, I have to say sorry, to anyone who bothers reading, for not posting anything in bare time, I have been super duper busy with stupid boring dissertation and other university crap, and then the internet in my London diggs decided to stop working; so I am currently in Staffordshire, where there is internets! YAY! But if you have kept me bookmarked, or do bother to come back and read my shit reviews, then thanking yous for the patience.

Soooooo, on Thursday 15th of April it was my birthday, and as such I spent a large amount of the following two days in what i have come to affectionately know as a "booze coma", which is basically just me rolling around in alcohol until i can barely walk, again...and again....and again....and then some more, because I can, its my birthday fools, try and stop me! So as I travelled to my Dads place for a visit, I was still recovering from the raping I gave my liver the night before, and trying to scrub clean my soul, from the stench that £15 entry strip clubs leave on ones aura. As I come through the door, dad is putting on The Hangover. "Brilliant" I say to myself, "Breasts" i scream internally...perhaps out loud...I was still a bit drunk; but I promptly slumped down onto the living room floor, semi conscious, and began watching The Hangover, again!

Im sure everyone has seen The Hangover, when it came out it was shoved in everyones grill as the best comedy in years and so on so forth, and as such, everyone wanted to go see it, to see what all the hype was about...well I did anyway, I bend very easily to the wills of advertising; I almost bought a Justin Bieber album the other day, just because I saw his poster in Waterloo, and also as I wanted to burn the cd and piss on the ashes...to prove a point. So was it as good as the hype machine had led me to believe?

The Hangover chronicles a bachelor party of 4, consisting of Phil, a school teacher who hates his married life; Stu, the groom-to-be; Doug, a man so whipped by his girlfriend it is hard to tell if he still has his testicles attached to his body, or whether she keeps them in a little box where she can crush them at any time she pleases; and finally we have Alan, the slightly retarded brother-in-law-to be, who nobody really likes, but they have to bring him along out of courtesy. They do what any real men do for a bachelor party, they trek to Las Vegas, a land of strippers and gambling and drugs and just general debauchery; so basically it couldn't be any better tailored to the needs of 4 men out trying to forget their mundane boring lives and to maybe, just maybe, get a bit of strange tail on a weekend out. The story follows this fateful foursome all the way up to their toast on the roof of their hotel, then we flash forward. The boys wake up to a hotel room, trashed, plus a baby, plus a live tiger, plus a chicken, plus brutal hangovers, minus one tooth, and minus one groom. yeah they lost the groom a day before his wedding, good work lads. The rest of the film is Phil, Doug and Alan, running around Las Vegas, trying to piece together their madcap evening and find out where they have left Stu, as a wedding can't really go forward without a groom, and I think we all know what happens to women near wedding time, they become like wild animals, hell bent on perfection. So if you have lost the groom, not only will you have lost a friend, but you may also lose an eye, as it is clawed out by a rabid, snarling bride.

My favourite character was Alan, who is probably everyones favourite. played by comedian Jack Galifianakis (Greekest name ever?) he is totally likable yet cringe worthingly embarrassing at the same time. His "Wolf Pack" speech at the beginning of the film being a particular highlight; although most of his lines, and just his general being, are funny. There are cameos by Heather Graham and Mike Tyson, which is all good fun, but the best thing about The Hangover is the pacing. It all moves by so fast, yet you still feel attached to the plot. Not once did I find myself having to go back in my mind to check for continuity, you are just dragged along at breakneck speed, through the city of sin with these 3 total ass clowns, and every moment is funny, and charming, and at times just plain weird. One point I can make is there could have been more boobies. Yeah I said it, call me immature, but I am a male, and I like boobies. And when I see a film based in Las Vegas, and it is a bachelor party, there should be boobies, boobies waiting for them at their hotel room, boobies on their dinner plates, boobies in their car, boobies constantly in their faces!. If there were boobies in this film imdb would have that rating boosted to a motherfucking 11!!!!

But yeah, it is really good, I would say "go see it" but you probably all already have, so instead, I will say, go see I Love You, Man; which is equally as funny, if not more so, and has Jason Segal in it, and he is a massive legend.

I will probably write another review tomorrow, as I plan on watching Havoc, simply for the fact Anne Hathaway seems to be naked in a majority of the film. Sweet!

Till next time
Peace

Really Hated It, But It is Surprisingly Entertaining Fodder

I shouldn't really have to say how unimpressive Dead Man Running is; i mean we can just look at the cast and tell pretty much instantly how gash this film will be. We have regular London rudeboy Danny Dyer (never have I wanted to stamp on a persons face more than I do when I see Dyer do anything...ever), Tamer Hassan, who stars in all the same films Dyer does, and has some minimal acting talent, and finally we have Curtis Jackson, yeah thats right, 50 fucking Cent. While 15 year old chavs the country over would probably have a wet dream at the prospect of this ensemble all bunched up in one film, I wasn't really looking forward to it.

The story follows Nick (Hassan), who is an ex-criminal type, trying to make it straight by selling ski holidays in Dubai (yeah i don't know how anybody could think that is a viable buissiness venture either; I think it was an attempt at comedy?!), Dyer plays Bing, Nick's sidekick type thing, and Mr 50 plays Mr Thigo, a loan shark who has decided to collect all outstanding debts, seeing as the recession is hitting his pocket mad hard. But ooooo a twist that is revealed far too early, Thigo is not going to let Nick pay back his debt, as he wants to use him as an example to hustle the other fools who owe him money into action. So Thigo kidnaps Nick's mum and gives him 24 hours to snatch up 100 grand, or the old lass and Nick get a bullet sandwich. Cue a madcap race around London, up the M6 to Manchester and to the racetrack as Nick and Bing try to rally together the dough in time, before mummy gets shot at. Oh also cue a single underground fist fight, which from the trailer is what I thought the whole film was, but turns out there is just one, terribly choreographed fight, and then its on to the next scam; this sucked, as I wouldn't have minded if Dead Man Running was a shitty British Bloodsport, maybe they could have worked in a cameo for Van Damme; see that would have been a great film, i should start writing that screenplay right now...watch this space.

What makes Dead Man Running so average is that it is totally predictable from the first minute, I sat there watching as Thigo was discussing calling in all debts, and instantly thought "Hes going to use Tamer Hassan's character as an example and at the end hes going to get murked standard" and I was right (yeah I know SPOILERS :O but honestly were you going to watch this film?) and like I said earlier, even if you didn't pick up this lame ass twist straight away, they reveal it to you around 15 minutes in, so there was no point in even attempting to veil the ruse at all. Idiots. Obviously the acting is just....meh, apart from Brenda Blethyn, yeah thats right Brenda fucking Blethyn, I have no idea how that poor woman ended up on this project, maybe it is a really weak attempt at career suicide?! Perhaps she is diddling 50 Cent and he thought it would be super sweet to promote his oldest ho in his shittest film?! I don't know, but whatever the excuse, Brenda, just deny any involvement in the future. You are far too good an actress to be galavanting around in this rolling pile of turd. She tries her best though, bless her, providing a fairly versatile performance as Nick's mum, and she provides some of the funnier moments, trying to make the most out of the script, but this was just a bad film to attach herself to.

Good points? Well the soundtrack was pretty good, with a bit of Prodigy, some Wiley, some other stuff. ummmmmmm, Im reaching here...............I suppose there were some funnyish moments, even if it does feel unbelievably forced and sounds like the lines were written by 14 year old who were experiencing being drunk for the first time, example; Nick pulls over at a petrol station on the way to Manchester, as he needs a poo. He and Bing have had some coke (why not ey?) and the clerk in the station is a bit rude, so, without warning, Nick smashes through the security glass, drags the unfavorable petrol station attendant out and takes the loo keys from him. Bing comes in, examines the scene, and asks, "What the fuck are you doing?" to which Nick replies "Im going...for a shit!". Don't know why, but that made me laugh, further proving how much of an infant I am.

Despite all of the above, Dead Man Running does have a niche in a film collection, it would be perfect as a rainy Sunday afternoon time filler, a quick 90 minute distraction before you do something more productive with yourself. For instance it just provided me with 90 minutes to ignore my dissertation, so that was good. The story unravels fast so the pace of the film is pushed to 11, which does make it somewhat entertaining, in it's own way, a bit like the Crank films, but not as good. It is entirely up to you if you watch it or not, I can't decide whether to recommend it or not, think for yourselves fools!

Oh and by the way, I am tired of searching for new films to watch and review, sooooo it would be greatly appreciated if you left comments on this post, maybe suggesting a film for me to review, and I will pick the best of the bunch to watch. If you don't, I will just continue to watch shit I want to watch.

Till next time
Peace

An Education On Being A Pervert In The 60s

I haven't hated all over a film in a while now, and I really need to vent and shit al over somebody's work, like, right now. And as An Education just so happened to be the film I watched this evening, An Education is going to be the film that gets the full brunt of my dickishness. I just can't go on being nice for too long, it feels wrong, and besides, destroying the work of professional film makers, whose achievements I could never, and never will, match, is so much more fun and massaging to the ego. I should probably leave out my personal mood when I am watching a film to review, but I don't care, this is my god damn blog and I will do what I bloody well please; besides, my university project group and I made a film today far superior to anything ever made,...in the history of man... possibly the universe...even if it does have me trying to act (and I mean trying, I fail spectacularly as an actor, Im massively shit). So before I begin tearing a new asshole into this film, I will say this; it is really good, I recommend you go see it, I really do. Everything I say in this bitch rant will be true, 100%, only I am going to take things out of context, over analyze and use paraphrases of the script, just to make it sound bad...because I want to.

An Education is like a manual on how to be a sexual predator in the 60s. Peter Sarsgaard plays David. David is the creepiest man EVER. Seriously! He rides around local Twickenham schools looking for young girls, he likes the young girls does our David, and when he finds a suitably innocent and vulnerable one, he picks them up in his car, then tries to groom them to get all up on his junk. We follow the short tale of the time he spends with one of these girls, by the name of Jenny (played by Carey Mulligan). Jenny is like, smart as shit, and has dreams of going to Oxford to read English and be all Oxfordy, but for a 16 year old girl, the temptation to hang out and be wooed by a man in his mid thirties is just too much, and so she and Davis begin a weird little tryst, and it is creepy.

I will first point out, how seemingly nobody seems to care that this 16 year old girl is dating a man more than twice her age; I was not around in the 60s, but I am pretty sure that shit was still frowned upon. Her friends are blinded by his sports car, her parents like him because he is charming, Jenny likes him because he is new and exciting, the only people who seem to be against this romance are her teachers, but not because it is just plain weird that she is dating a man on the verge of a mid-life crisis, they just want her to go to Oxford. Her own father is so fucking stupid, that he can't see when David is lying blindly to his face, just to pry Jenny away for a weekend here and there to examine her lady bits, he even claims to know C.S. Lewis. Jenny's dad is on another level of retardation.

I want to come back to the point of how creepy this David guy is; first he scouts for this young piece of prime in a bloody school district, he takes her to a classical music thing, then gets her drunk. He proceeds by taking her to Oxford for a weekend with his friends, and this is where he gets really REALLY slimy. When he and Jenny are in their hotel room, Jenny informs David that she is a virgin and would like to remain that way until she is 17. David responds be saying "good on you old girl" but then shit gets really fucked up. He slides over to the end of the bed, looks her in the eye and outright tells her she is now to be known as Minny Mouse, and she has to call him Bugalub!?!?!?! WTF? Somehow this crazy psycho babble works and after asking "Can I have a peep?", Jenny promptly drops her dress and flashes him a bit of barely pubescent boobage. Thats account number 1.
Later, he takes her to Paris, but the night before they miss their flight, so they end up shacked in a hotel room near the airport. Jenny has just turned 17, so obviously David is ready to get all up in that, but nooooo, before they can have sweet sweet cradle snatching sex, he requests she takes some preparations by shoving a banana...yes a banana,...up her woo woo to test the waters. I wish I was making this shit up! It was like a scene from some rejected Amsterdam porno, I just sat there slac jawed thinking "he has to be joking! Right?" but he wasn't, he was deadly bloody serious. To top it all off, David has his job. Oooooh his job, this is a classic; David takes advantage of scared old women, by moving black families into houses next door to them, forcing the racist old dust bags to move out, after which, he promptly buys and resells their abandoned houses. Thats right everyone, David is in the buissiness of the slave trade, only thing is the slaves don't know they are slaves. They just think they are getting a sweet deal on a new house, but before they know it they have scornful looks from all the OAPs in town and the Womens Institute are mailing them cyanide laced Victoria sponges. David is an asshole. I won't ruin the ending for you, but his ass clownery continues.

This leads me onto my next point on how apparently everybody in 1960s London is massively bigoted. Jenny happily asks David "What were you doing talking to those negro people?", as if they were some strange sub species. But to be honest nothing can brush on the perception that everyone in 60s London hated Jews. I mean my god, Jenny's father accuses every boy she brings home of being a "Wondering Jew", her head mistress tries to convince her to break up with David as he is Jewish and "did you forget the Jews murdered or Lord Jesus?!", and her friends don't seem to up on the idea either. Again I wasn't around then, but I can't believe that being that anti semitic was still in fashion.

I will conclude this cack pile of a review with the fact that Jenny wants, for some strange reason, to be French. I think she may have an illness of some kind that is just never mentioned, but she seems to have a hampering to join the ranks of our smelly friends across the channel. However this may just be a clever narrative structure as Jenny does seem very quick to run away from her education as soon as an easier alternative, namely doing nothing and letting David do everything for her, becomes available; and the act of giving up and crawling into the fetal position whilst other people do your shit for you, could be considered a trait of the French, by some...not necessarily me. But obviously me as well.

Aaaaanyway, fuck An Education
But at the same time go see it it is awesome.

P.S - I think Carey Mulligan may be the new Audrey Hepburn, she has that same classic beauty (even if her imdb picture is a bit lesbiany), and she looks just like her with her hair up. She has a effortless class about her and after checking her imdb, I discovered she is due to star in My Fair Lady, in 2012, so I gave myself massive kudos for guessing that shit ahead of time.

So till next time (when I will hopefully be in a mood to write a serious review)
Peace