After the potential good news that Kick-Ass may (very speculative at this stage based purely on my blog logs – nothing may come of it, but come on – why else would a film studio query something like that in Google? I may be reading into something that isn’t there, but we’ll see..) come to LOVEFiLM, here’s Matthew Vaughn & Jane Goldman’s latest work, as screenwriters for John Madden’s The Debt. I must say it’s looking damn good.
Category: Films (Cinema)
First five minutes of a movie online? And five trailers? Why not post the ENTIRE movie online, then?
Posted by – June 11, 2010
The film industry’s latest marketing endeavour in getting bums on seats at the cinema is posting the first five minutes of a film online so that people can make up their mind and go see their local cinema and watch it. As well as these first five minutes, the studio releases at least three or four trailers. This makes me wonder: why not just post the entire damn film online (streaming, perhaps) and let people see for themselves if they want to watch it on a bigger screen?
Can you really make up your mind whether to go see a film from just the first five minutes? From my perspective, yes. I walked out on Michael Bay’s Armageddon after about four minutes, and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator after 10. THREE TIMES across three different cinemas in the US. I eventually saw both films on DVD. They weren’t too bad to be honest. Actually, I misjudged the film terribly and perhaps you CAN’T really judge a film from just five minutes. Unless the film nosedives spectacularly after 30 minutes, it’s worth staying to watch the entire thing. I hated the Lovely Bones, but I did stay until the end. Not much point walking out – it might have gotten better, and I’d have lost my money paid to the cinema.
What do you think? First five minutes of a film? Good idea? Bad idea?
Kick-Ass Hot Tub Time Machine: a film for those that lived through THE best decade EVER
Posted by – May 12, 2010
Last weekend we went to see the intriguingly titled, Hot Tub Time Machine. Starring John Cusack, Clarke Duke (Kick-Ass), Craig Robinson, Rob Corddry and Lyndsy Fonseca (also Kick-Ass) along with Crispin Glover and Chevy Chase (now that’s a name I’ve not seen on the silver screen in YEARS), HTTM catapults four men through time to 1986 – in a hot tub – to an alpine ski resort they used to visit as teenagers (all except Clarke Duke’s Jacob who wasn’t born yet).
There are plenty of BJ jokes, vomit jokes, future references jokes (“what’s an email?”) and everything else in-between. Clarke Duke gets some wonderful one-liners, including some techno-babble that Jacob attributes to him being a Stargate fan fiction writer and is that sort of thing is his bread and butter. It’s a kind of Animal House meets Monty Python and Back to the Future. But with a hot tub.
We found it hugely entertaining and very funny, and loved the 80s references as well. Great comedy, great performances and good writing. Well worth watching.
Time to ban mobile phones from cinemas?
Posted by – April 25, 2010
Went to see The Joneses at Ambassadors Cinema in Woking on Saturday, and am now convinced that it’s time to perhaps banning punters from bringing in any form of mobile phone into the cinema. Why? There are far too many people checking or using their phones during the film. You see this little window of light pop up at the corner of your eye, distracting you from the film. And the phone owner will not put it away. Oh no.
The majority of the phone bandits are teenagers, but to be fair, teenagers with an attention span of a gnat. If they’re not playing with their phones, they’re talking (and not quietly either) to their friends. Watching Dear John the other weekend was unbearable at times due to thoughtless, ill-mannered social halfwits from whom I wonder why they ever bothered to go to the cinema in the first place. It really spoils the experience.
I am still very tempted to call in the cinema staff and tell them that somebody is attempting to take pictures of the screen or are videoing it. That would be evil, of course, and I wouldn’t do it unless I really DID suspect somebody was really being that stupid, but given that virtually every mobile phone has decent storage and not bad cameras on them, this is certainly quite plausible.
And this would be a shame because I’m sure that the majority of people carrying a mobile phone into the cinema are sensible enough to (a) not to use it or (b) switch it off completely. I leave my phone at home. I’ve lived half my life without needing a mobile phone to be on my person 24/7, so I can leave it behind for a couple of hours.
On a somewhat related note, what the heck is going on at the Ambassadors with their loyalty card scheme? For the second week running they’ve had no new loyalty cards. As a consequence we’ve had one card stamped twice in one week, but stamped only once this week. As it is it’s difficult to trade in the cards due to the restrictions placed on when they can be used. Not good.
Forget technology – invest in textiles..
Posted by – April 18, 2010
Just came back from the Ambassadors Cinema in Woking having watched Dear John. A very good film – much better than I thought it would be. The downside was having to put up with an audience made up mainly of teenagers with an attention span of a one day old gnat. Many of them were still using their mobile phones during the film, or talking. A more evil me would have gone up to a member of staff complaining that there were people videoing the film on their camera phones which would have prompted ejections from the cinema at a pace that would make a gold-winning Olympic athlete look bad. As for the talking, I wanted to tell them that I’m grateful for the additional audio commentary but I’m having problems finding the MUTE button.
What shocked me most was coming home. Whilst walking through Woking we noticed the Saturday night crowd of girls. They were mainly wearing spandex/lycra – either leggings or mini-skirts. Which prompted to think that perhaps I should have invested some of my mother’s inheritance money in the textile industry back in 2000 rather than my then-employers, a web hosting and ISP company for which I lost over £2,000 of my investment. Everybody needs clothes, and the cycle of which particular fashions is regular enough that one would probably see a better return than in a technology company. An ironic statement from me given the industry I work in, but even so I still think that’s the case. If I still had the money today, I’m not sure I would risk in with the likes of Apple & Co. Too risky an investment. Every other girl seems to be wearing leggings, jeggings or something spandexy. That’s where my money should have gone. Du Pont, I should have invested in you. I am kicking myself.
But back to the issue that made me think about this in the first place. I’m wondering if Woking is turning into Soho given the drunkenness, the loudness, the poor taste in clothing and general lewdness that was going on. It felt like a Friday night in Soho with the prostitutes touting for business. Either way, it’s not good.
Daily Mail’s verdict on Kick-Ass: “Evil”
Posted by – April 2, 2010
Some spoilers ahoy, so if you don’t want to be spoiled, go read the Daily Mail. Oh. Mind you, given the quality of the journalism in that rag, it’s all made up anyway..
Best review of the day, if not the last few years, has to be this complete load of trollop from the Daily Mail’s film critic, Christopher Tookey. In it, he says that:
“It deliberately sells a perniciously sexualised view of children and glorifies violence, especially knife and gun crime, in a way that makes it one of the most deeply cynical, shamelessly irresponsible films ever.”
Eh? It seels a perniciously sexualised view of children? Clearly Mr. Tookey and I have not been watching the same film! The only sexuality this film aligns itself to is that of mid-late teenagers who, at that age, are wanting girlfriends and wanting to look cool. This film is no different that many teenage comedies in that respect (American Pie, etc.). If he’s referring to Hit-Girl, I really cannot understand the comparison at all. Unless Tookey is harbouring dark and dangerous thoughts.
As for:
“The plot is an unimaginative clone of Spider-Man 2, and the screenplay – by director Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman, wife of comic-book enthusiast Jonathan Ross – conforms slavishly to the cliched norms of Hollywood action movies by working towards not one but two huge action set-pieces at its climax.”
Spider-man 2? Clone? Again, Mr. Tookey and I must watch different movies. Perhaps he refers to the end of the Kick-Ass which offers a similar but most definitely not a clone of son potentially avenging the death of his father. But that sort of thing has been going on in stories – including Shakespeare – for hundreds of years anyway. I can’t see how you can compare a single element in one movie to that of the entire plot of another.
“The movie’s writers want us to see Hit-Girl not only as cool, but also sexy, like an even younger version of the baby- faced Oriental assassin in Tarantino’s Kill Bill 1. Paedophiles are going to adore her.”
This is the real WTF moment and I fail to understand how the hell Tookey can derive at this thought. Again, this guy must really harbour some dark and terrible thoughts that I don’t even want to contemplate further. He goes on to quote child abuse figures and makes a big play for it when there is absolutely nothing in this movie that comes close to offer sexually suggestive imagery involving younger children. Hit-Girl dressed in a school uniform is there to trick the gangsters into feeling sorry for her (as she comes into the building crying). Once their confidence is gained, she shoots them. That’s all there is to it.
So there you are. A terrible review in more ways than one. But kudos to Millar, Vaughn and Goldman for attracting the wrath of the Daily Mail. A verdict of “evil” is fantastic, to be honest, and I hope they put that quote on the DVD and Blu-Ray when the film is released on those formats.
The thing about the Daily Mail and the Ross clan is that it’s a bit like a Roadrunner cartoon. The Daily Mail (or Paul Dacre) is essentially Wyle E. Coyote and Jonathan Ross is the Roadrunner. Whatever crazy antics that Wyle E. Coyote gets up to in attempting to capture Roadrunner always fails, leaving the Coyote injured, dead or embarrassed and the Roadrunner to bask in glory and live another day, unhindered.
Meep! Meep!
