Various Titbits #2

There's been a lot of those hyped American shows lately. Like a constant stream of them. Do we blame Lost? Yeah probably. Haven't been with it for a while now though, I'm going to try and slip back into it. Anyway, True Blood is the latest in this line. Its about vampires, which makes me shiver usually in thought of the gothic HSM shit casket that is Twilight. Werewolves are now cooler than vampires because of that crap pile. Tru(e) Blood though puts a different spin on it though, with vampires coming out of the coffin because a synthesised blood equivalent has been discovered. Which puts an surprisingly sane view upon preceedings. Undoubtedly it being a product of HBO helps this and I'm thankful for it. Its refreshing to see some sci-fi kind of television that isn't completely shit (Charmed, Buffy, Angel, Supernatural - there's a great many more than those too). I'm excited about episode two, Channel 4's fantastic catch up service is also a great blessing.

I really thought that I'd enjoy Generation Kill more than True Blood being the rabid Wire fanboy that I am. But the late time-slot, the crappy stream and the same unforgiving atmosphere as The Wire made this a difficult one for me to slide into. I'll give it another go over the next few days, as its going to be worth watching for just the 8 or so episodes that it is. I guess you forget what it was like watching those first few episodes of The Wire where not much was happening and you're debating why you're there. Looking back, it seems silly that you could have ever comprehended such nonsense.

Its been a really long summer this year for me. My relative inaction was a main contributer to this I guess but television did not help my stupour. But thankfully now its Autumn and animations favoured child has returned. I refer of course not to the horrificly misjudged shit fest that is "The Cleveland Show" but of course to South Park. Starting exactly where you'd expect, they're ripping into Micheal Jackson. Only through the medium of The Sixth Sense. Now I'm guessing that this one may have been in planning for a while, MJ's fate is not fresh by South Park standards. But still, to make shows so consistently funny in such a short amount of time should be applauded. God I've missed you South Park.

Squeezed a viewing of Dead Man's Shoes. A wonderful little film, disturbing all the way through thanks to an amazing performance from Paddy Considine. Its my favourite Shane Meadows film mainly thanks to its simplicity. It gives no other impression than being a story of revenge, a simple tale just well told. I highly reccomend it, its probably one of the better films set in the north of England.

I finish of with my induction tonight into the syrup filled delight that is The Evil Dead. Inspired by the gross-out brilliance of Drag Me To Hell I thought I'd pick up this trilogy and give it a whirl. Its pretty much what I expected, disgusting, hillarious and cheap as hell. Great fun though, you can see why its garnered cult status. I'll see how quickly boredom gets induced in me these next few days to find out about the rest of the trilogy. Considering Swapgame have sent me Guitar Hero 2 instead of any of the 5 games above it on my playlist this seems likely.

Various Titbits

I'm not sure how but cinematically speaking I've squeezed a great deal into my life recently. That being probably explains why I haven't done an awful lot else. Regardless, in short, I've watched many films of which most I overly enjoyed. Drag Me To Hell is a horror film about gypsies. Something I haven't come across all to often. The premise I refer to of course, I've had many encounters with gypsies. None quite like the ones portrayed in the film. I've never had a toothless pensioner gnaw on my chin with their saliva coated gums. Or crashed a said characters funeral and then fell into the corpse which preceded to drench me in some kind of embalming fluid. Drag Me To Hell is pretty gross, but in a very endearing way. Like a kitten coughing up a fur-ball, you can't help but embrace the graphic nature of the scenes with a wide grin and a small titter of laughter. There a few jumps along the way but nothing that's really ground-breaking, but a very enjoyable yarn it is.

Next up is Star Trek, a film which I was mildly excited about when it was chugging it's way towards multiplexes. Although by the time of it's release I had forgot of its existence and missed it entirely, things like this are easy to do in the sleepy county of Cornwall. I'm now regretting that lack of retention as the film is pretty awesome and I mean that in a genuine way. The film feels very cinematic, it was made for wide screen, surround sound, popcorn munching epicness. The lack of recognisable faces in the major roles I feel helps that, apart from Sylar and that bloke from Doom and maybe Harold. Of course there's old school Spock and Simon Pegg but their roles are minor really and you're completely drawn in before their appearance occurs. I have one foible with the film though, it was raised to me by a friend long before I'd seen it. It concerns black holes. They don't cause time-travel. They compress matter to nothing or something like that. Again I'm not a physicist, although the person who originally explained it to me actually was. I again blame this upon retention. But apart from that small fact the film is fantastic and might actually go someway to make Star Trek seem slightly less crap when compared to Star Wars.

Alright, Push is a science-fiction film of a different nature. I would explain the plot but basically imagine Akira and mix in a bit of the Heroes TV show and that's it. In fact it pretty much massively rips off Akira. Also Dakota Fanning is in it. I remember her best in Man On Fire where Denzel goes mental and shoots loads of people up. Trying to find her. Or something. Anyway, it's bad. Truly awful. Chris Evans is the lead and he does his usual "cool guy with quips" shtick that makes most people of notable intelligence immediately groan and fidget in extreme boredom. The film is also in Hong Kong, for apparently no real reason. You see people can't hide in America anymore, they have to hide in Hong Kong. Everything about the film is bad really, kids might like it and some of the effects are quite nice. Apart from that you're better off clambering over your sofas with your arms extended making whooshing noises to have a more fun replication of super-powers.

There's more. Session 9 is a small budget horror film set in a run-down mental asylum somewhere in the U.S. I not really bothered enough to find out where but you get the feeling it's probably still there. The guy from CSI:Miami is in it. Although I did not realise this till I saw the credits. This lead me to watching 7 minutes of CSI one-liners. Great fun. Anyway, I found the film actually quite scary, watching it in the house alone, in the dark at around 2am probably helped that feeling though. You can feel the tension building throughout and the plot does keep you guessing somewhat, although the small cast limits it really. A great film for the budget it was made on, definitely one of the better horror films recently especially given the lack of gore.

Almost done. Dark City came out before The Matrix. This is something to take note of before watching it. Also Keifer Sutherland wasn't always Jack Bauer. He had a failing career before that. Once you understand these two points you can really enjoy Dark City, the very 50's dystopia has a certain Bioshock feel to it (although that is my go to reference for seemingly everything). Once the mystery sets in motion its very easy to enjoy the movie, although Keifer Sutherland is just plain annoying. Not his fault really, I'm assuming whoever could have played the mumbling scientist would have been equally frustrating. Definitely a cult classic anyway, although the Akira reference in this film's finale is certainly more obvious. It was also ripped off again in the last Matrix film. Now that's recycling for you.

Not quite there. On a continuing sci-fi binge I decided to go completely in the opposite direction and watch indie flick Primer. Which is about time-travel. I think. It was hard to understand the jargon. You have to concentrate to enjoy the movie, its quite a compact feature really, only 70 minutes long or so. I've had toilet visits longer than that. I want to say I enjoyed it but I struggle to utter such favourable tones. It was a bit too much for me and I got very lost at the end. I imagine if I watch it again I might be in a better place to understand it. But the film has pace that constantly increases and by the end the plot is practically running away from you while you're there puzzling over your memories of Science class to help your understanding of the dialogue. If you're a smart ass or someone who likes talking about films no-one has heard of you'll enjoy Primer. For me it was kind of somewhere inbetween.

Finally! Clerks 2 was a bit of a surprise to me. I watched the original Clerks and didn't really enjoy it untill the end. Maybe it was my youth, my lack of a sense of humour, my general mood that day. I don't know. But it just didn't grab me. Alot of the jokes I'd heard before or could guess the ending before they'd got anywhere near the punchline. I feel bad that I didn't enjoy it though, I wanted to. I thought it would be a film I'd fall for and whisper to myself about in the tiny moments of the night. The second one I watched on low expectations, which was the best way to into it. I actually really enjoyed it, it might have been the fact I was massively hung over, or the fact that I cooked up some turkey dinosaurs to eat during it but the film really struck a chord with me. Also, the sequence about Lord of The Rings arguement was amazing and the finale with Kinky Kelly was also fantastic. A real feel good, witty comedy that isn't "from the makers of Superbad". It's nice I finally have a cinematic reason to enjoy Kevin Smith for that isn't Dogma.