Substance abuse sets the user apart from the daily lives of ordinary people. No matter how well the addict may seem to be functioning, there is always the secret agenda, the knowledge that the drug of choice is more important than the mundane business at hand, such as friends, family, jobs, play and sex.
Because no one can really understand that urgency as well as another addict, there is a shared humor, desperation and understanding among users. There is even a relief, lies and evasions are unnecessary among friends who share the same needs. 'Trainspotting' knows that truth in its very bones. The movie has been attacked as pro-drug and defended as anti-drug, but actually it is simply pragmatic. It knows that addiction leads to an unmanageable, exhausting, intensely uncomfortable daily routine, and it knows that only two things make it bearable: a supply of the drug of choice, and the understanding of fellow addicts.
Former alcoholics and drug abusers often report that they don't miss the substances nearly as much as the conditions under which they were used, the camaraderie of the true drinkers bar, for example, where the standing joke is that the straight world just doesn't get it, doesn't understand that the disease is life and the treatment is another drink. The reason there is a fierce joy in 'Trainspotting', despite the appalling things that happen in it, is that it's basically about friends in need.
The movie, based on a popular novel by Irvine Welsh, is about a crowd of heroin addicts who run together in Edinburgh. The story is narrated by Renton (Ewan McGregor), who will, and does, dive into “the filthiest toilet in Scotland” in search of mislaid drugs. He introduces us to his friends, including Spud (Ewen Bremner), who confronts a job interview panel, on drugs, with a selection of their worst nightmares, Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), whose theories about Sean Connery do not seem to flow from ever having seen his movies sober, Tommy (Kevin McKidd), who returns to drugs one time too many, and Begbie (Robert Carlyle), who brags about not using drugs but is a psychotic who throws beer mugs at bar patrons. What a lad, that Begbie.
These friends sleep where they can be it in a drug den, squats and in the beds of girls they meet at night clubs. They have assorted girlfriends, and there is even a baby in the movie, but they are not settled in any way, and no place is home. Near the beginning of the film, Renton decides to clean up, and nails himself into a room with soup, ice cream, milk of magnesia, Valium, water, a TV set and buckets for urine, feces, and vomit. Soon the nails have been ripped from the door jambs, but eventually Renton does detox (“I don't feel the sickness yet but it's in the post, that's for sure”), and he even goes straight for a while, taking a job in London as a housing rental agent.
But his friends find him, a promising drug deal comes along, and in one of the most disturbing images in the movie, Renton throws away his hard-earned sobriety by testing the drug, and declaring it... wonderful. No doubt about it, drugs do make him feel good. It's just that they make him feel bad all the rest of the time. The characters in 'Trainspotting' are violent (they attack a tourist) and carelessly amoral (no one, no matter how desperate, should regard a baby the way they seem to). The legends they rehearse about each other are all based on screwing up, causing pain, and taking outrageous steps to find or avoid drugs. One day they try to take a walk in the countryside, but such an ordinary action is far beyond their ability to perform.
The massive cult following 'Trainspotting' has generated here in the UK, as a book, a play and a movie. It uses a colourful vocabulary, it contains a lot of energy, it elevates its miserable heroes to the status of icons (in their own eyes, that is), and it does evoke the Edinburgh drug landscape with a conviction. But what else does it do? Does it lead anywhere? Say anything? Not really. That's the whole point. Drug use is not linear but circular. You never get anywhere unless you keep returning to the starting point. But you make fierce friends along the way. Too bad if they die.
Trainspotting - Movie Trailer
Monday, 26 May 2014
Sunday, 25 May 2014
Movie Review - Filth
Bruce Robertson is a cunt. A lying, thieving, cheating, racist, misogynist, homophobic dickhead who would sooner drug you and steal your watch than give you the time of day, and if he did give you the time of day it would be after looking at your own watch, which he has just stolen. He pinches kids' balloon's, blackmails an underage girl into oral sex and screws his friends' and colleagues' wives. He's also a Detective Sergeant in Edinburgh's Lothian Constabulary. Filth is brought to you by Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting, so I suppose this is the bit where we make all the comparisons. Yep, there's a killer soundtrack which includes some ironic use of classical music, some unsettling fantasy sequences, some kinetic camerawork, a dash of hyperactive editing and, of course, a deeply flawed, quite awful character from whom it's impossible to tear your eyes away. It'd make an excellent companion piece to Danny Boyle's film, but Filth also stands on its own as a movie bold and ballsy enough to jolt you into realising how stuffy most of what you've seen lately really is.
Most of Filth's success is down to an astonishing performance from James McAvoy. McAvoy plays bastard Bruce Robertson with a fierce, boggle-eyed lunacy. Required to run the gamut from sympathetic, troubled victim of circumstance to sweaty, coke-fuelled rage monster, McAvoy is a horrifically enjoyable revelation here.
As Robertson wildly navigates a murder enquiry by spending more time stepping over his colleagues in order to win promotion than actually investigating the crime, he fucks over almost everyone he meets: Eddie Marsan's likeable doormat Clifford Blades, and weirdly Robertson's best and only friend; Jamie Bell's cocky but inadequate rookie Ray Lennox; even Kate Dickie's Chrissy, the wife of another colleague with whom Bruce enjoys regular S&M sessions. Only Joanne Froggatt's Mary brings out the nice guy - and there is a nice guy, but he's buried beneath layers of arseholery so deep that we're encouraged to wonder how things ever got so bad.
Which is where Filth loses its edge somewhat; scenes in which a nightmarish psychiatrist played by Jim Broadbent gradually reveals what's at the centre of Robertson's rotting soul, feels as if they've been added at the last minute in order to clear up any ambiguity. But it's a minor niggle in a film that's otherwise perfectly judged: writer/director Jon S. Baird never lets the insanity get too exhausting, and when sentimentality threatens to creep in you know you're not too far away from someone yelling something like "GET YER FACE OFF MA COCK!"
As the murder investigation, the promotion race and Bruce's severe mental issues culminate in typically berserk fashion, seasoned audiences may be unsurprised by the final act revelations. But that's a small price to pay for a journey so utterly bonkers, degraded and, well, filthy. Wrong on almost every level but so, so right, Filth is simultaneously hilarious, appalling and tragic, and James McAvoy both its greatest asset and its biggest cunt.
Filth - Movie Trailer
Most of Filth's success is down to an astonishing performance from James McAvoy. McAvoy plays bastard Bruce Robertson with a fierce, boggle-eyed lunacy. Required to run the gamut from sympathetic, troubled victim of circumstance to sweaty, coke-fuelled rage monster, McAvoy is a horrifically enjoyable revelation here.
As Robertson wildly navigates a murder enquiry by spending more time stepping over his colleagues in order to win promotion than actually investigating the crime, he fucks over almost everyone he meets: Eddie Marsan's likeable doormat Clifford Blades, and weirdly Robertson's best and only friend; Jamie Bell's cocky but inadequate rookie Ray Lennox; even Kate Dickie's Chrissy, the wife of another colleague with whom Bruce enjoys regular S&M sessions. Only Joanne Froggatt's Mary brings out the nice guy - and there is a nice guy, but he's buried beneath layers of arseholery so deep that we're encouraged to wonder how things ever got so bad.
Which is where Filth loses its edge somewhat; scenes in which a nightmarish psychiatrist played by Jim Broadbent gradually reveals what's at the centre of Robertson's rotting soul, feels as if they've been added at the last minute in order to clear up any ambiguity. But it's a minor niggle in a film that's otherwise perfectly judged: writer/director Jon S. Baird never lets the insanity get too exhausting, and when sentimentality threatens to creep in you know you're not too far away from someone yelling something like "GET YER FACE OFF MA COCK!"
As the murder investigation, the promotion race and Bruce's severe mental issues culminate in typically berserk fashion, seasoned audiences may be unsurprised by the final act revelations. But that's a small price to pay for a journey so utterly bonkers, degraded and, well, filthy. Wrong on almost every level but so, so right, Filth is simultaneously hilarious, appalling and tragic, and James McAvoy both its greatest asset and its biggest cunt.
Filth - Movie Trailer
Saturday, 24 May 2014
Movie Review - Highlander
Every now and again a movie comes along that fails at the box office, bombs, crashes and burns, call it what you will it just isn’t a hit. But then for some reason, a few years later, either as it’s released on video then DVD everyone seems to be talking about it. The movie gathers pace, it’s everywhere, your friends can’t stop talking about it and nothing is going to stop you from owning a copy. That’s what happened to Highlander.
Set between 1518 and 1986 (no, really) the film follows Connor Macleod (Christopher Lambert) a Scottish tribesman ‘Highlander’ who receives a fatal wound in battle but doesn’t die.
Banished from his village, Connor lives out a lonely existence until in walks, or rather rides, the cheeky, wise and rather decadent looking Ramirez (Sean Connery) who explains that Connor is immortal and can only die if he is beheaded. He must therefore train to defend himself and take his place as the last of the immortals. Cue some excellent montages of his training in martial arts and swordplay and we see Connor becoming the Highlander he was destined to be. But, alongside him, his wife grows old while he remains young and so begins a deep undertone of the film that immortality is not the gift we might hope it is. As good and true as Ramirez is, he is not the only immortal that Connor meets and The Kurgan (Clancy Brown) turns up to show that Connor has more than a simple fight on his hands. Brown plays The Kurgan brilliantly, pure evil and suitably terrifying enough to hammer home that if the world is to be saved it must be by someone honourable that becomes ‘the one’.
As time goes on we follow Connor from 16th century Scotland to the 17th century England, through the world wars and into 80’s New York. By now Connor is a rich antiques dealer but no older looking than when we first met him, wise beyond his years and trying to avoid the NYPD after metallurgist, Brenda J. Wyatt (Roxanne Hart) links him to rare metal from an ancient sword at the scene of a beheading in the city.
Connor leads Wyatt on a historical treasure hunt as she comes close to finding out the truth about this man, who seems closer to the antiques he trades than most people realise, all the while preparing himself for the ‘Quickening’ where he must literally fight for his life to ensure the power of the immortals remains in good hands. As quality of performance and direction go there’s something about Connor’s loneliness and depth that makes this more than your typical action film.
The excellently (for the time) choreographed medieval/Samurai sword fights are a pleasure to watch and as the film has grown in cult status you’ll see how it has helped influence other similar scenes in film (think Kill Bill, Blade, Batman Begins) whilst itself being referenced and quoted in far too many post 80’s films and TV shows to mention. The soundtrack is also not to be ignored, provided entirely by rock band Queen, you’ll instantly recognise 'It’s a Kind of Magic' and possibly know the ballad 'Who Wants to Live Forever?' which leaves a lump in your throat as you realise this film is as much about the loss we all face as we go through our lives as it is about immortals fighting with swords and cutting each other’s heads off.
Sadly with a lot of films that end up doing well the sequels appear and, while Highlander’s cult status seemed to be enough for five sub-standard movies and two TV spin-offs, it proves that sometimes, in the end, ‘there can only be one’.
Set between 1518 and 1986 (no, really) the film follows Connor Macleod (Christopher Lambert) a Scottish tribesman ‘Highlander’ who receives a fatal wound in battle but doesn’t die.
Banished from his village, Connor lives out a lonely existence until in walks, or rather rides, the cheeky, wise and rather decadent looking Ramirez (Sean Connery) who explains that Connor is immortal and can only die if he is beheaded. He must therefore train to defend himself and take his place as the last of the immortals. Cue some excellent montages of his training in martial arts and swordplay and we see Connor becoming the Highlander he was destined to be. But, alongside him, his wife grows old while he remains young and so begins a deep undertone of the film that immortality is not the gift we might hope it is. As good and true as Ramirez is, he is not the only immortal that Connor meets and The Kurgan (Clancy Brown) turns up to show that Connor has more than a simple fight on his hands. Brown plays The Kurgan brilliantly, pure evil and suitably terrifying enough to hammer home that if the world is to be saved it must be by someone honourable that becomes ‘the one’.
As time goes on we follow Connor from 16th century Scotland to the 17th century England, through the world wars and into 80’s New York. By now Connor is a rich antiques dealer but no older looking than when we first met him, wise beyond his years and trying to avoid the NYPD after metallurgist, Brenda J. Wyatt (Roxanne Hart) links him to rare metal from an ancient sword at the scene of a beheading in the city.
Connor leads Wyatt on a historical treasure hunt as she comes close to finding out the truth about this man, who seems closer to the antiques he trades than most people realise, all the while preparing himself for the ‘Quickening’ where he must literally fight for his life to ensure the power of the immortals remains in good hands. As quality of performance and direction go there’s something about Connor’s loneliness and depth that makes this more than your typical action film.
The excellently (for the time) choreographed medieval/Samurai sword fights are a pleasure to watch and as the film has grown in cult status you’ll see how it has helped influence other similar scenes in film (think Kill Bill, Blade, Batman Begins) whilst itself being referenced and quoted in far too many post 80’s films and TV shows to mention. The soundtrack is also not to be ignored, provided entirely by rock band Queen, you’ll instantly recognise 'It’s a Kind of Magic' and possibly know the ballad 'Who Wants to Live Forever?' which leaves a lump in your throat as you realise this film is as much about the loss we all face as we go through our lives as it is about immortals fighting with swords and cutting each other’s heads off.
Sadly with a lot of films that end up doing well the sequels appear and, while Highlander’s cult status seemed to be enough for five sub-standard movies and two TV spin-offs, it proves that sometimes, in the end, ‘there can only be one’.
Friday, 23 May 2014
Movie Review - Mr Deeds
At one point during the long ordeal of "Mr. Deeds," it is said of the Adam Sandler character, "He doesn't share our sense of ironic detachment." Is this a private joke by the writer? If there's is one thing Sandler's Mr. Deeds has, it's ironic detachment.
Like so many Sandler characters, he seems fundamentally insincere, to be aiming for the laugh even at serious moments. He plays Longfellow Deeds, pizzeria owner in the hamlet of Mandrake Falls, New Hampshire. The pizzeria is one of those establishments required in all comedies about small towns, where every single character in town gathers every single day to provide an audience for the hero, crossed with a Greek chorus. Nobody does anything in Mandrake Falls, except sit in the pizzeria and talk about Deeds. When he leaves town, they watch him on the TV.
Turns out Deeds is the distant relative of an elderly zillionaire who freezes to death in the very act of conquering Everest. Control of his media empire and a $40 billion fortune goes to Deeds, who is obviously too good-hearted and simple-minded to deserve it, so a corporate executive named Cedar (Peter Gallagher) conspires to push him aside. Meanwhile, when Deeds hits New York, a trash TV show makes him its favorite target, and producer Babe Bennett (Winona Ryder) goes undercover, convinces Deeds she loves him, and sets him up for humiliation. Then she discovers she loves him, too late.
Consider a scene where Deeds meets his new butler Emilio (John Turturro). Emilio has a foot fetish. Deeds doubts Emilio will like his right foot, which is pitch black after a childhood bout of frostbite. The foot has no feeling, Deeds says, inviting Emilio to pound it with a fireplace poker. When Deeds doesn't flinch, Turturro actually punctures the foot with the point of the poker...wtf???
There's no chemistry between Deeds and Babe, but then how could there be, considering that their characters have no existence, except as the puppets in scenes of plot manipulation. After Deeds grows disillusioned with her, there is a reconciliation inspired after she falls through the ice on a pond and he breaks through to save her using the Black Foot. In story conferences, do they discuss scenes like this and nod approvingly? Tell me, for I want to know.
The moral center of the story is curious. The media empire, we learn, controls enormous resources and employs 50,000 people. The evil Cedar wants to break it up. The good-hearted Deeds fights to keep it together so those 50,000 people won't be out of work. This is essentially a movie that wants to win our hearts with a populist hero who risks his entire fortune in order to ensure the survival of Time-AOL-Warner-Disney-Murdoch. Of the many notes I took during the film, one deserves to be shared with you. There is a scene in the movie where Deeds, the fire chief in Mandrake Falls, becomes a hero during a Manhattan fire. He scales the side of a building and rescues a woman's cats, since she refuses to be rescued before them. One after another, the cats are thrown onto a fireman's net. Finally there is a cat that is on fire. The blazing feline is tossed from the window and bounces into a bucket of water, emerging wet but intact, ho, ho, and then Deeds and the heavyset cat lady jump together and crash through the net, but Deeds' fall is cushioned by the fat lady, who is also not harmed, ho ho, giving us a heart-rending happy ending. That is not what I wrote in my notes. It is only the set-up. What I noted was that in the woman's kitchen, nothing is seen to be on fire except for a box of Special-K cereal. This is a species of product placement previously unthinkable. In product placement conferences, do they discuss scenes like this and nod approvingly? Tell me, for oh, how I want to know.
Green Day: Brain Stew - Song Meaning
Great song that I'm sure will be about drug use or something but to me its about the effects of insomnia on the mind, such as hallucinations (the clock is laughing in my face) and all that good stuff. It also seems to scream alcohol at me. "My eyes feel like they're gonna bleed // Dried up and bulging out my skull" seems like a bit of a description of a hangover, doesn't it?
Green Day: Brain Stew - Music Video
Green Day: Brain Stew - Music Video
Movie Review - Parker
Over the last decade or so, Jason Statham has been making a bid to become the next big international action movie star and has demonstrated that he has most of what it takes to achieve that lofty goal: he has loads of charisma, a sly sense of humor and is one of the few people working in the genre today who can convincingly pull off fight scenes. The only thing that has kept him from becoming a full-fledged superstar is that while he has appeared in some hits (such as the "Transporter" and "Expendables" movies) and a few cult favorites (like the demented "Crank" films), he has yet to find that iconic role that would put him over the top like Clint Eastwood with "Dirty Harry" or Arnold Schwarzenegger with "The Terminator".
Unfortunately, his latest effort, 'Parker', is unlikely to do much to boost his career. It's another middling effort in which his undeniable presence is unable to elevate the usual mixture of convoluted plotting and grisly carnage. As bland and indistinct as its generic title, this is a film that seems to have been manufactured solely to play in mostly empty cinemas for a bleak midwinter week or two before evaporating from the marketplace and the mind.
In theory, signing on for 'Parker' must have seemed to Statham like a good idea at the time. The film is based on one of the books that the late, great crime novelist Donald E. Westlake wrote under the pseudonym of Richard Stark about the tough-as-nails criminal Parker, whose adventures previously appeared on the screen most famously in John Boorman's
classic 'Point Blank'.
Statham plays Parker, a master thief whose chief attributes are the code of ethics he lives by and a penchant for disguises. Our story begins as he and a group of fellow thieves (Michael Chiklis, Wendell Pierce, Clifton Collins Jr. and Micah A. Hauptman) are executing an elaborate heist at the Ohio State Fair. Perhaps not surprisingly, the intricately-plotted caper goes sideways due to the incompetence of one of his cohorts. When Parker refuses the gang's demand that he re-invest his share of the loot as seed money for another caper with a bigger payoff, they attack him and leave him for dead by the side of the road.
Parker manages to survive and after a little legwork learns that his former associates are in Palm Beach planning a new heist that, with its reliance on such items as booby-trapped speakers, scuba outfits and a fire truck, appears to be the most complex set of manoeuvres.
Parker follows them to Florida and begins doing surveillance in the guise of a rich Texan looking to buy a house in the same area. This puts him in contact with Leslie Rodgers (Lopez), an ambitious realtor who is swimming in debt, living with her overbearing mother (Patti LuPone). She twigs that Parker is not who he appears to be and wheedles her way into a small percentage of the prospectively ill-gotten gains. She begins to have second thoughts when she has to somehow conceal Parker bleeding in her bathroom after a brutal fight while a would-be policeman suitor is in the next room; that's Bobby Canavale in a role that looks to have been cut to ribbons in the editing room.
All of the ingredients are here for a sexy, dark-humored crime film along the lines of Steven Soderbergh's great "Out of Sight," but they never jell into anything coherent or satisfying. Outside of a few flashes of wit here and there, blessed reminders of Westlake's gifts as a writer, John J. McLaughlin's screenplay fails to lift the crime-drama cliches above the routine.
This is Hackford's his first foray into the action genre and it becomes clear why he has avoided it. The action scenes come across as flat, uninspired and often too grisly for their own good. Worst of all, the film is flat-out dull — everything seems to take three times longer than it should and lacks the tautness a film like this needs to succeed.
The best things about 'Parker' are the two lead actors. Although working with material that is lackluster even by his standards, Statham manages to demonstrate a commanding screen presence that cannot be dismissed. Opposite him, Lopez delivers one of her more convincing performances as a woman who knows she still has it, but who is also painfully aware that those days are coming to a close. This film may not contain the finest work from either star but at least they're making an effort, which is more than one can say about the rest of the picture. Statham can hope for better luck next time, or, well, there's always "Expendables 3."
Parker - Movie Trailer
Unfortunately, his latest effort, 'Parker', is unlikely to do much to boost his career. It's another middling effort in which his undeniable presence is unable to elevate the usual mixture of convoluted plotting and grisly carnage. As bland and indistinct as its generic title, this is a film that seems to have been manufactured solely to play in mostly empty cinemas for a bleak midwinter week or two before evaporating from the marketplace and the mind.
In theory, signing on for 'Parker' must have seemed to Statham like a good idea at the time. The film is based on one of the books that the late, great crime novelist Donald E. Westlake wrote under the pseudonym of Richard Stark about the tough-as-nails criminal Parker, whose adventures previously appeared on the screen most famously in John Boorman's
classic 'Point Blank'.
Statham plays Parker, a master thief whose chief attributes are the code of ethics he lives by and a penchant for disguises. Our story begins as he and a group of fellow thieves (Michael Chiklis, Wendell Pierce, Clifton Collins Jr. and Micah A. Hauptman) are executing an elaborate heist at the Ohio State Fair. Perhaps not surprisingly, the intricately-plotted caper goes sideways due to the incompetence of one of his cohorts. When Parker refuses the gang's demand that he re-invest his share of the loot as seed money for another caper with a bigger payoff, they attack him and leave him for dead by the side of the road.
Parker manages to survive and after a little legwork learns that his former associates are in Palm Beach planning a new heist that, with its reliance on such items as booby-trapped speakers, scuba outfits and a fire truck, appears to be the most complex set of manoeuvres.
Parker follows them to Florida and begins doing surveillance in the guise of a rich Texan looking to buy a house in the same area. This puts him in contact with Leslie Rodgers (Lopez), an ambitious realtor who is swimming in debt, living with her overbearing mother (Patti LuPone). She twigs that Parker is not who he appears to be and wheedles her way into a small percentage of the prospectively ill-gotten gains. She begins to have second thoughts when she has to somehow conceal Parker bleeding in her bathroom after a brutal fight while a would-be policeman suitor is in the next room; that's Bobby Canavale in a role that looks to have been cut to ribbons in the editing room.
All of the ingredients are here for a sexy, dark-humored crime film along the lines of Steven Soderbergh's great "Out of Sight," but they never jell into anything coherent or satisfying. Outside of a few flashes of wit here and there, blessed reminders of Westlake's gifts as a writer, John J. McLaughlin's screenplay fails to lift the crime-drama cliches above the routine.
This is Hackford's his first foray into the action genre and it becomes clear why he has avoided it. The action scenes come across as flat, uninspired and often too grisly for their own good. Worst of all, the film is flat-out dull — everything seems to take three times longer than it should and lacks the tautness a film like this needs to succeed.
The best things about 'Parker' are the two lead actors. Although working with material that is lackluster even by his standards, Statham manages to demonstrate a commanding screen presence that cannot be dismissed. Opposite him, Lopez delivers one of her more convincing performances as a woman who knows she still has it, but who is also painfully aware that those days are coming to a close. This film may not contain the finest work from either star but at least they're making an effort, which is more than one can say about the rest of the picture. Statham can hope for better luck next time, or, well, there's always "Expendables 3."
Parker - Movie Trailer
Thursday, 22 May 2014
Movie Review - The Wolf On Wall Street
Martin Scorsese's 'The Wolf of Wall Street' is shameless, exciting and exhausting, disgusting and illuminating, it's one of the most entertaining films ever made about loathsome men. Its star Leonardo DiCaprio has compared it to the story of the Roman emperor Caligula, and he's not far off the mark.
Adapted by Terence Winter from the memoir by stockbroker Jordan Belfort, who oozed his way into a fortune in the 1980s and '90s, this is an excessive film about excess, and a movie about appetites whose own appetite for compulsive pleasures seems bottomless. It runs three hours, and was reportedly cut down from four by Scorsese's regular editor Thelma Schoonmaker. It's a testament to Scorsese and Winter and their collaborators that one could imagine watching these cackling swines for five hours, or ten, while still finding them fascinating, and our own fascination with them disturbing. This is a reptilian brain movie. Every frame has scales.
The middle-class, Queens-raised Belfort tried and failed to establish himself on Wall Street in a more traditional way—we see his tutelage in the late '80s at a blue chip firm, under the wing of a grinning sleazeball played by Matthew McConaughey—but got laid off in the market crash of 1987. He reinvented himself on Long Island by taking over a penny stock boiler room and giving it an old money name, Stratton Oakmont, to gain the confidence of middle- and working-class investors. Per Wikipedia, at its peak, "the firm employed over 1000 stock brokers and was involved in stock issues totaling more than $1 billion, including an equity raising for footwear company Steve Madden Ltd." Belfort and his company specialised in 'pump and dump' operations: artificially blowing up the value of a nearly worthless stock, then selling it at a big profit, after which point the value drops and the investors lose their money. Belfort was indicted in 1998 for money laundering and securities fraud, spent nearly two years in federal prison and was ordered to pay back $110 million to investors he'd deceived.
Taking its cues from gangster pictures, 'Wolf On Wall Street' shows how Belfort rose from humble origins, becoming rich and notorious (the title comes from an unflattering magazine profile that caught the attention of federal prosecutors). This Robin Hood-in-reverse builds himself a team of merry men drawn from various corners of his life. All have been given nicknames: Robbie Feinberg, aka "Pinhead" (Brian Sacca), Alden Kupferberg, aka "Sea Otter" (Henry Zebrowski), the dreadfully-toupeed "Rugrat" Nicky Koskoff (P.J. Byrne), "The Depraved Chinaman" Chester Ming (Kenneth Choi), and Brad Bodnick (Shane Bernthal of "The Walking Dead"), a DeNiro-esque neighborhood hothead who's known as the Quaalude King of Bayside. His office enforcer is his volcanic dad (Rob Reiner), who screams about expenditures and workplace sleaze, but often seems to live vicariously through the trading floor's young wolves.
Belfort's right hand man Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) is perhaps even more conscienceless than Belfort: a hefty wiseass with gleaming choppers who quits his job at a diner after one conversation with the hero, joins his scheme, helps him launder money, and introduces him to crack, as if Belfort didn't have enough intoxicants in his system, on top of the adrenaline he generates by making deals and bedding every halfway attractive woman who crosses his path. As McConaughey's character tells Belfort early on, this subset of investing is so scummy that drugs are mandatory: "How the fuck else would you do this job?" At one point a broker declares that they're doing all that coke and all those Quaaludes and guzzling all that booze "in order to stimulate our freethinking ideas."
Belfort is married when the tale begins, to a good and respectable woman who doesn't approve of his financial shenanigans or chronic infidelity, but he soon throws her over for a blond and curvy trophy named Naomi LaPaglia (Australian actress Margot Robbie), then marries her and starts supporting her in the style to which they've both become accustomed. After a few years, Belfort is living in a mansion that another DiCaprio character, Jay Gatsby, might find gaudy, and buying a yacht, and helicoptering to and from meetings and parties while drugged out of his mind. Then a federal prosecutor named Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler) enters the picture, sweating Belfort by confronting him on his own turf (including Belfort's yacht) and letting him brag on his own awesomeness until he hangs himself.
Imagine the last thirty minutes of "GoodFellas" stretched out to three hours. That's the pace of this movie, and the feel of it. It's one damned thing after another: stock fraud and money laundering; trips to and from Switzerland to deposit cash in banks (and give the increasingly wasted Belfort a chance to flirt with his wife's British aunt, played by "Absolutely Fabulous" costar Joanna Lumley); rock-and-pop driven montages with ostentatious film speed shifts (including a slow-motion Quaalude binge); and some daringly protracted and seemingly half-improvised dialogue scenes that feel like tiny one-act plays. The best of these is McConaughey's only long scene as Belfort's mentor Mark Hanna, who at one point thumps a drum pattern on his chest while rumble-singing a la Bobby McFerrin; this eventually becomes the anthem of Belfort's firm, and it's weirdly right, as it suggests a tribal war song for barbarians on permanent rampage.
As is often the case in Scorsese's films, 'Wolf On Wall Street' gives alpha male posturing the attraction-repulsion treatment, serving up the drugging and whoring and getting-over as both spectacle and cautionary tale. In his most exuberant performance DiCaprio plays Belfort as a pipsqueak Mussolini of the trading floor, a swaggering jock who pumps his guys up by calling them "killers" and "warriors" and attracts hungry, self-destructive women, partly via brashness and baby-faced good looks, but mostly by flashing the cash. The film lacks the mild distancing that Scorsese brought to "GoodFellas" and "Casino." The former contrasted Henry Hill's matter-of-fact narration with occasionally shocked reactions to bloodshed; "Casino" adopted a Stanley Kubrick-like chilly detachment, as if everyone involved were narrating from a cloud in Heaven or a pit in Hell. 'Wolf On Wall Street' is in the thick of things at all times, to suffocating effect, depriving the viewer of moral anchors.
This is not the same thing as saying that the film is amoral, though. It's not. It's disgusted by this story and these people and finds them grotesque, often filming them from distorted angles or in static wide shots that make them seem like well-dressed animals in lushly decorated terrariums.
You can tell how much Belfort cares about his people by the way his narration segues from an anecdote about a broker who fell into a spiral of misery and shame: "He got depressed and killed himself three years later," Belfort says over a photo of a corpse in a bathtub trailing blood from slit wrists. Then, without missing a beat, he says, "Anyway..." The brokers classify prostitutes by cost and attractiveness, referring to them as "blue chips, "NASDAQs" and "pink sheets" (or "skanks"); they're warm-blooded receptacles to be screwed and sent on their way, much like the firm's clients, including shoe mogul Steve Madden, whose deal Belfort describes as an oral rape. The directorial high point is a Belfort-Azoff Quaalude binge that spirals into comic madness, with Azoff blubbering and freaking out and stuffing his face and collapsing, and Belfort suffering paralysis during a panicked phone call about his money and then crawling towards his car like a nearly-roadkilled animal, one agonizing inch at a time.
These images of censure and humiliation, and there are a lot of them, including a gif-worthy moment of Belfort paying a prostitute to stick a lit candle in his bum—coexist with moments that get off on the men's howling and profit-making and chest-thumping. We're supposed to figure out how we feel about the mix of modes, and accept that if there were no appeal whatsoever to this kind of behavior, no one would indulge in it. This isn't wishy-washy. It's honest.
Scorsese and Winter never lose track of the bigger picture. In theory, the movie's subject is the Wall Street mentality, which is just a clean-scrubbed version of the gangster mentality showcased in Scorsese's "Mean Streets," "GoodFellas" and "Casino" (one could make a case that guys like Belfort are the ones who pushed the Vegas mob out of Vegas). 'Wolf On Wall Street', starts with a Fellini-like party on the floor of Belfort's firm, then freeze-frames on Belfort tossing a dwarf at a huge velcro target, literally and figuratively abusing the Little Guy. The traders get away with their abuse because most people don't see themselves as little guys, but as little guys who might some day become the big guy doing the tossing. "Socialism never took root in America," John Steinbeck wrote, "because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” Belfort chides the prosecutor Denham for living what Henry Hill would have called the goody-two-shoes life, and in a scene near the end, as Denham rides the subway home, we can see that what taunts the most. Everyone at Belfort's firm seems to have the same title: "senior vice-president." Everybody wants to rule the world.
But the film's vision goes beyond cultural anthropology and antihero worship. Its like a good many films by Scorsese—who overcame a cocaine problem in the early '80s—at its root, it's about addiction: a disease or condition that seizes hold of one's emotions and imagination, and makes it hard to picture any life but the one you're already in. Many people get a contact high from following the exploits of entrepreneurs, financiers, bankers, CEO and the like, and when such men (they're nearly always men) get busted for skirting or breaking laws, they root for them as if they were disreputable folk heroes, gangsters with fountain pens instead of guns—guys who, for all their selfishness and cruelty, are above the petty rules that constrict the rest of us. Such men are addicts, egged on by a cheering section of little guys who fantasize of being big. We enable them by reveling in their exploits or not paying close enough attention to their misdeeds, much less demanding reform of the laws they bend or ignore—laws that might have teeth if we hadn't allowed guys like Belfort (and his far more powerful role models) to legally bribe the United States legislative branch via the nonsensical "system" of campaign financing. After a certain number of decades, we should ask if the nonstop enabling of addicts like Belfort doesn't mean that, in some sense, their enablers are addicted, too—that they (we) are part of a perpetual-motion wheel that just keeps turning and turning. In the end 'Wolf On Wall Street' is not so much about one addict as it is about America's addiction to capitalist excess and the "He who dies with the most toys wins" mindset, which has proved as durable as the image of the snarling gangster taking what he likes when he feels like taking it.
Scorsese and Winter aren't shy about drawing connections between Belfort's crew and the thugs in Scorsese's mob pictures. Those mob films are addiction stories, too. Wolf of Wall Street' showcases Belfort Henry Hill-style, as if he were an addict touring the wreckage of his life in order to confess and seek forgiveness; but like a lot of addicts, as Belfort recounts the disasters he narrowly escaped, the lies he told and the lives he ruined, you can feel the buzz in his voice and the adrenaline burning in his veins. You can tell he misses his old life of big deals and money laundering and decadent parties, just as Hill missed busting heads, jacking trucks, and doing enough cocaine to make Scarface's head explode.
There will be a few points during 'Wolf On Wall Street' when you think, "These people are revolting, why am I tolerating this, much less getting a vicarious thrill from it?" At those moments, think about what the "it" refers to. It's not just these characters, and this setting, and this particular story. It's the world we live in. Men like Belfort represent,even as they're robbing us blind, they represent America, and on some level we must be OK with them representing America, otherwise we would have seen reforms in the late '80s or '90s or '00s that made it harder for men like Belfort to amass a fortune, or that at least quickly detected and harshly punished for their sins. Belfort was never punished on a level befitting the magnitude of pain he inflicted. According to federal prosecutors, he failed to abide by the terms of his 2003 restitution agreement. He's a motivational speaker now, and if you read interviews with him, or his memoir, it's obvious that he's not really sorry about anything but getting caught. We laugh at the movie, but guys like Belfort will never stop laughing at us.
The Wolf Of Wall Street - Movie Trailer
Adapted by Terence Winter from the memoir by stockbroker Jordan Belfort, who oozed his way into a fortune in the 1980s and '90s, this is an excessive film about excess, and a movie about appetites whose own appetite for compulsive pleasures seems bottomless. It runs three hours, and was reportedly cut down from four by Scorsese's regular editor Thelma Schoonmaker. It's a testament to Scorsese and Winter and their collaborators that one could imagine watching these cackling swines for five hours, or ten, while still finding them fascinating, and our own fascination with them disturbing. This is a reptilian brain movie. Every frame has scales.
The middle-class, Queens-raised Belfort tried and failed to establish himself on Wall Street in a more traditional way—we see his tutelage in the late '80s at a blue chip firm, under the wing of a grinning sleazeball played by Matthew McConaughey—but got laid off in the market crash of 1987. He reinvented himself on Long Island by taking over a penny stock boiler room and giving it an old money name, Stratton Oakmont, to gain the confidence of middle- and working-class investors. Per Wikipedia, at its peak, "the firm employed over 1000 stock brokers and was involved in stock issues totaling more than $1 billion, including an equity raising for footwear company Steve Madden Ltd." Belfort and his company specialised in 'pump and dump' operations: artificially blowing up the value of a nearly worthless stock, then selling it at a big profit, after which point the value drops and the investors lose their money. Belfort was indicted in 1998 for money laundering and securities fraud, spent nearly two years in federal prison and was ordered to pay back $110 million to investors he'd deceived.
Taking its cues from gangster pictures, 'Wolf On Wall Street' shows how Belfort rose from humble origins, becoming rich and notorious (the title comes from an unflattering magazine profile that caught the attention of federal prosecutors). This Robin Hood-in-reverse builds himself a team of merry men drawn from various corners of his life. All have been given nicknames: Robbie Feinberg, aka "Pinhead" (Brian Sacca), Alden Kupferberg, aka "Sea Otter" (Henry Zebrowski), the dreadfully-toupeed "Rugrat" Nicky Koskoff (P.J. Byrne), "The Depraved Chinaman" Chester Ming (Kenneth Choi), and Brad Bodnick (Shane Bernthal of "The Walking Dead"), a DeNiro-esque neighborhood hothead who's known as the Quaalude King of Bayside. His office enforcer is his volcanic dad (Rob Reiner), who screams about expenditures and workplace sleaze, but often seems to live vicariously through the trading floor's young wolves.
Belfort's right hand man Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) is perhaps even more conscienceless than Belfort: a hefty wiseass with gleaming choppers who quits his job at a diner after one conversation with the hero, joins his scheme, helps him launder money, and introduces him to crack, as if Belfort didn't have enough intoxicants in his system, on top of the adrenaline he generates by making deals and bedding every halfway attractive woman who crosses his path. As McConaughey's character tells Belfort early on, this subset of investing is so scummy that drugs are mandatory: "How the fuck else would you do this job?" At one point a broker declares that they're doing all that coke and all those Quaaludes and guzzling all that booze "in order to stimulate our freethinking ideas."
Belfort is married when the tale begins, to a good and respectable woman who doesn't approve of his financial shenanigans or chronic infidelity, but he soon throws her over for a blond and curvy trophy named Naomi LaPaglia (Australian actress Margot Robbie), then marries her and starts supporting her in the style to which they've both become accustomed. After a few years, Belfort is living in a mansion that another DiCaprio character, Jay Gatsby, might find gaudy, and buying a yacht, and helicoptering to and from meetings and parties while drugged out of his mind. Then a federal prosecutor named Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler) enters the picture, sweating Belfort by confronting him on his own turf (including Belfort's yacht) and letting him brag on his own awesomeness until he hangs himself.
Imagine the last thirty minutes of "GoodFellas" stretched out to three hours. That's the pace of this movie, and the feel of it. It's one damned thing after another: stock fraud and money laundering; trips to and from Switzerland to deposit cash in banks (and give the increasingly wasted Belfort a chance to flirt with his wife's British aunt, played by "Absolutely Fabulous" costar Joanna Lumley); rock-and-pop driven montages with ostentatious film speed shifts (including a slow-motion Quaalude binge); and some daringly protracted and seemingly half-improvised dialogue scenes that feel like tiny one-act plays. The best of these is McConaughey's only long scene as Belfort's mentor Mark Hanna, who at one point thumps a drum pattern on his chest while rumble-singing a la Bobby McFerrin; this eventually becomes the anthem of Belfort's firm, and it's weirdly right, as it suggests a tribal war song for barbarians on permanent rampage.
As is often the case in Scorsese's films, 'Wolf On Wall Street' gives alpha male posturing the attraction-repulsion treatment, serving up the drugging and whoring and getting-over as both spectacle and cautionary tale. In his most exuberant performance DiCaprio plays Belfort as a pipsqueak Mussolini of the trading floor, a swaggering jock who pumps his guys up by calling them "killers" and "warriors" and attracts hungry, self-destructive women, partly via brashness and baby-faced good looks, but mostly by flashing the cash. The film lacks the mild distancing that Scorsese brought to "GoodFellas" and "Casino." The former contrasted Henry Hill's matter-of-fact narration with occasionally shocked reactions to bloodshed; "Casino" adopted a Stanley Kubrick-like chilly detachment, as if everyone involved were narrating from a cloud in Heaven or a pit in Hell. 'Wolf On Wall Street' is in the thick of things at all times, to suffocating effect, depriving the viewer of moral anchors.
This is not the same thing as saying that the film is amoral, though. It's not. It's disgusted by this story and these people and finds them grotesque, often filming them from distorted angles or in static wide shots that make them seem like well-dressed animals in lushly decorated terrariums.
You can tell how much Belfort cares about his people by the way his narration segues from an anecdote about a broker who fell into a spiral of misery and shame: "He got depressed and killed himself three years later," Belfort says over a photo of a corpse in a bathtub trailing blood from slit wrists. Then, without missing a beat, he says, "Anyway..." The brokers classify prostitutes by cost and attractiveness, referring to them as "blue chips, "NASDAQs" and "pink sheets" (or "skanks"); they're warm-blooded receptacles to be screwed and sent on their way, much like the firm's clients, including shoe mogul Steve Madden, whose deal Belfort describes as an oral rape. The directorial high point is a Belfort-Azoff Quaalude binge that spirals into comic madness, with Azoff blubbering and freaking out and stuffing his face and collapsing, and Belfort suffering paralysis during a panicked phone call about his money and then crawling towards his car like a nearly-roadkilled animal, one agonizing inch at a time.
These images of censure and humiliation, and there are a lot of them, including a gif-worthy moment of Belfort paying a prostitute to stick a lit candle in his bum—coexist with moments that get off on the men's howling and profit-making and chest-thumping. We're supposed to figure out how we feel about the mix of modes, and accept that if there were no appeal whatsoever to this kind of behavior, no one would indulge in it. This isn't wishy-washy. It's honest.
Scorsese and Winter never lose track of the bigger picture. In theory, the movie's subject is the Wall Street mentality, which is just a clean-scrubbed version of the gangster mentality showcased in Scorsese's "Mean Streets," "GoodFellas" and "Casino" (one could make a case that guys like Belfort are the ones who pushed the Vegas mob out of Vegas). 'Wolf On Wall Street', starts with a Fellini-like party on the floor of Belfort's firm, then freeze-frames on Belfort tossing a dwarf at a huge velcro target, literally and figuratively abusing the Little Guy. The traders get away with their abuse because most people don't see themselves as little guys, but as little guys who might some day become the big guy doing the tossing. "Socialism never took root in America," John Steinbeck wrote, "because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” Belfort chides the prosecutor Denham for living what Henry Hill would have called the goody-two-shoes life, and in a scene near the end, as Denham rides the subway home, we can see that what taunts the most. Everyone at Belfort's firm seems to have the same title: "senior vice-president." Everybody wants to rule the world.
But the film's vision goes beyond cultural anthropology and antihero worship. Its like a good many films by Scorsese—who overcame a cocaine problem in the early '80s—at its root, it's about addiction: a disease or condition that seizes hold of one's emotions and imagination, and makes it hard to picture any life but the one you're already in. Many people get a contact high from following the exploits of entrepreneurs, financiers, bankers, CEO and the like, and when such men (they're nearly always men) get busted for skirting or breaking laws, they root for them as if they were disreputable folk heroes, gangsters with fountain pens instead of guns—guys who, for all their selfishness and cruelty, are above the petty rules that constrict the rest of us. Such men are addicts, egged on by a cheering section of little guys who fantasize of being big. We enable them by reveling in their exploits or not paying close enough attention to their misdeeds, much less demanding reform of the laws they bend or ignore—laws that might have teeth if we hadn't allowed guys like Belfort (and his far more powerful role models) to legally bribe the United States legislative branch via the nonsensical "system" of campaign financing. After a certain number of decades, we should ask if the nonstop enabling of addicts like Belfort doesn't mean that, in some sense, their enablers are addicted, too—that they (we) are part of a perpetual-motion wheel that just keeps turning and turning. In the end 'Wolf On Wall Street' is not so much about one addict as it is about America's addiction to capitalist excess and the "He who dies with the most toys wins" mindset, which has proved as durable as the image of the snarling gangster taking what he likes when he feels like taking it.
Scorsese and Winter aren't shy about drawing connections between Belfort's crew and the thugs in Scorsese's mob pictures. Those mob films are addiction stories, too. Wolf of Wall Street' showcases Belfort Henry Hill-style, as if he were an addict touring the wreckage of his life in order to confess and seek forgiveness; but like a lot of addicts, as Belfort recounts the disasters he narrowly escaped, the lies he told and the lives he ruined, you can feel the buzz in his voice and the adrenaline burning in his veins. You can tell he misses his old life of big deals and money laundering and decadent parties, just as Hill missed busting heads, jacking trucks, and doing enough cocaine to make Scarface's head explode.
There will be a few points during 'Wolf On Wall Street' when you think, "These people are revolting, why am I tolerating this, much less getting a vicarious thrill from it?" At those moments, think about what the "it" refers to. It's not just these characters, and this setting, and this particular story. It's the world we live in. Men like Belfort represent,even as they're robbing us blind, they represent America, and on some level we must be OK with them representing America, otherwise we would have seen reforms in the late '80s or '90s or '00s that made it harder for men like Belfort to amass a fortune, or that at least quickly detected and harshly punished for their sins. Belfort was never punished on a level befitting the magnitude of pain he inflicted. According to federal prosecutors, he failed to abide by the terms of his 2003 restitution agreement. He's a motivational speaker now, and if you read interviews with him, or his memoir, it's obvious that he's not really sorry about anything but getting caught. We laugh at the movie, but guys like Belfort will never stop laughing at us.
The Wolf Of Wall Street - Movie Trailer
Tuesday, 20 May 2014
One Republic: Counting Stars - Song Meaning
I think this track was written about the life the songwriter was living at the time.
He's in a busy relationship where the both of them are so worried about the money, paying the bills and stuff, that they forget to simply live life and appreciate the things it offers, therefore,
"Lately I been, I been losing sleep
Dreaming 'bout the things that we could be
Baby I been, I been prayin' hard
Said no more counting dollars
We'll be counting stars
Yeah, we'll be counting stars"
He talks about the conduct people, including him, are living these days, not what they wish they could do, but what they are made to do, what they're forced to do. And it's probably about unnecessary work, rules and manners imposed by society.
"And I don't think the world is sold
I'm just doing what we're told"
Complementing the commentary above, he wants to free himself from those fake rules which are made only to keep people under control, under the 'normal' way of living.
"I, feel something so right
But doing the wrong thing
I, feel something so wrong
But doing the right thing"
In the verse "Everything that kills me makes me feel alive" he talks about drugs, and when I say drugs it's not only drinking and smoking, but it can be anything. For example, adrenaline, gambling, love, etc.
"Everything that drowns me makes me wanna fly". Here he talks about those things we are not allowed to do and because of that we are stirred up to do them. It's better because it's forbidden. Or when you want to prove something to someone who doesn't have faith in your capacity.
"Take that money and watch it burn
Sink in the river the lessons are learned"
In this part he says that the money he was referring to earlier will disappear quickly, it won't last forever, it's ephemeral. And you will truly learn the lesson when you go through a tough situation.
One Republic: Counting Stars - Music Video
He's in a busy relationship where the both of them are so worried about the money, paying the bills and stuff, that they forget to simply live life and appreciate the things it offers, therefore,
"Lately I been, I been losing sleep
Dreaming 'bout the things that we could be
Baby I been, I been prayin' hard
Said no more counting dollars
We'll be counting stars
Yeah, we'll be counting stars"
He talks about the conduct people, including him, are living these days, not what they wish they could do, but what they are made to do, what they're forced to do. And it's probably about unnecessary work, rules and manners imposed by society.
"And I don't think the world is sold
I'm just doing what we're told"
Complementing the commentary above, he wants to free himself from those fake rules which are made only to keep people under control, under the 'normal' way of living.
"I, feel something so right
But doing the wrong thing
I, feel something so wrong
But doing the right thing"
In the verse "Everything that kills me makes me feel alive" he talks about drugs, and when I say drugs it's not only drinking and smoking, but it can be anything. For example, adrenaline, gambling, love, etc.
"Everything that drowns me makes me wanna fly". Here he talks about those things we are not allowed to do and because of that we are stirred up to do them. It's better because it's forbidden. Or when you want to prove something to someone who doesn't have faith in your capacity.
"Take that money and watch it burn
Sink in the river the lessons are learned"
In this part he says that the money he was referring to earlier will disappear quickly, it won't last forever, it's ephemeral. And you will truly learn the lesson when you go through a tough situation.
One Republic: Counting Stars - Music Video
Movie Review - American Hustle
David O. Russell out-Scorseses Martin Scorsese with 'American Hustle', a '70s crime romp that is ridiculously entertaining in all the best ways. 'American Hustle' is apparently more thrilling and satisfying experience than Scorsese's latest, the upcoming 'The Wolf of Wall Street', (I got this yesterday so will review soon) which similarly was inspired by the true story of an irrepressible financial huckster. The unreliable narration and urgent zooms, the 1970s milieu of flashily dressed scammers and mobsters, the carefully chosen pop songs underscoring key emotional moments: all those recognizably Scorcesean signatures are there, yet Russell infuses them with his unique brand of insanity.
This director has always has shown a fondness for characters who are on the brink of imploding or exploding, and with 'American Hustle' he's assembled his own posse of stars from his last two films to serve as his personal acting troupe: Christian Bale and Amy Adams from 2011's 'The Fighter' and Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence from 'Silver Linings Playbook'. But he's so skilled with these actors (despite reports of his exhausting methods of motivation on set), he not only finds a side to them we haven't seen in his previous films, he finds a side we haven't seen, period.
Co-written with Eric Singer, Russell's latest is based on the Abscam sting operation of the late '70s and early '80s, in which a con artist helped the FBI catch members of Congress taking bribes. "Some of this actually happened," a title card playfully informs us at the film's start, before Russell introduces us to the glorious sight of Bale's paunchy Irving Rosenfeld plastering a horrendous hairpiece onto his shiny dome. To play the swaggering Rosenfeld, the owner of a small chain of Long Island dry cleaners who makes his real money through fake art and fraudulent personal loans, Bale seemingly downed all that food he denied himself while shooting 'The Machinist' and 'Rescue Dawn'.
He meets his match at a pool party in Adams' Sydney Prosser, a scrappy young woman from Albuquerque with dreams of reinventing herself in high style. It's Sydney's idea to don a fake accent and take on the alter ego of the posh Lady Edith, a Londoner with elite banking connections—and in doing so, she kicks Rosenfeld's cons into high gear. (While all the choices from costume designer Michael Wilkinson are spot-on in their tacky period allure, Adams' ensembles are to-die-for: a plunging and sparkling array of sexy little numbers that help the actress assert her untapped va-va-voominess).
Irving and Sydney quickly become partners in crime and love—but wait. Irving has a young son, and a wife: Lawrence's needy, vulnerable and spectacularly passive-aggressive Rosalyn (Lawrence). With her fake tan, high hair and vicious nails, Rosalyn is a force of nature. She knows just enough to be dangerous, which may make her an even bigger threat to Irving and Sydney than the federal authorities who are closing in on their operation. Her complexity and unpredictability make her fascinating to watch—she's just unhinged enough to think she's the voice of reason—and Lawrence is a radiant scene-stealer. Regardless of genre, it seems there's nothing this actress can't do.
Cooper's Richie DiMaso is a hotheaded (and tightly permed) FBI agent who's eager to make a name for himself with a big bust. (Seriously, the hair is awful, almost as bad as Bale's; Russell even goes so far as to show Cooper wearing the itty-bitty curlers at the kitchen table). Richie exposes the lovers' scheme and forces them to help him net even bigger fish to get themselves out of trouble. But he also finds himself falling for the sexy Sydney—er, Lady Edith—and she may feel the same way. Or does she? Part of the fun of 'American Hustle' is that it keeps us constantly on our toes wondering who's scamming whom.
Russell doesn't judge any of these people for their idiocy or their aspirations. He revels in their quirks. The fact that Rosalyn is constantly on the verge of burning the house down, for example, ends up being endearing in Russell's hands. (Microwave ovens aren't for everyone.) We even end up feeling sympathy for Jeremy Renner as crooked Camden, N.J., Mayor Carmine Polito. He's a criminal, too: He's on the take and coaxes more powerful politicians to join him, all in the name of rejuvenating Atlantic City. Yet Renner makes us feel this gregarious family man's generosity, and the bromance that forms between him and Bale's character is actually sweet lol.
Russell's film is big and big-hearted and more than a little messy, but that's due to the over-the-top characters, their insatiable greed and their brazen schemes. Sure, it looks like the cast went nuts at a Goodwill store and splurged on the grooviest threads they could find for an elaborate game of dress-up, but the clothes more than just a source of laughs: they're a reflection of their characters' ambition, a projection of their glittering notions of the American dream.
The film is probably also a tad overlong, but it's a blast to hang out with these people, and Russell creates such an infectiously zany vibe around them that if even you notice the running time, you probably won't mind. For all its brashness and big personality, 'American Hustle' is a character study at its core—an exploration of dissatisfaction and drive, and the lengths to which we're willing to go for that elusive thing known as a better life.
American Hustle - Movie Trailer
This director has always has shown a fondness for characters who are on the brink of imploding or exploding, and with 'American Hustle' he's assembled his own posse of stars from his last two films to serve as his personal acting troupe: Christian Bale and Amy Adams from 2011's 'The Fighter' and Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence from 'Silver Linings Playbook'. But he's so skilled with these actors (despite reports of his exhausting methods of motivation on set), he not only finds a side to them we haven't seen in his previous films, he finds a side we haven't seen, period.
Co-written with Eric Singer, Russell's latest is based on the Abscam sting operation of the late '70s and early '80s, in which a con artist helped the FBI catch members of Congress taking bribes. "Some of this actually happened," a title card playfully informs us at the film's start, before Russell introduces us to the glorious sight of Bale's paunchy Irving Rosenfeld plastering a horrendous hairpiece onto his shiny dome. To play the swaggering Rosenfeld, the owner of a small chain of Long Island dry cleaners who makes his real money through fake art and fraudulent personal loans, Bale seemingly downed all that food he denied himself while shooting 'The Machinist' and 'Rescue Dawn'.
He meets his match at a pool party in Adams' Sydney Prosser, a scrappy young woman from Albuquerque with dreams of reinventing herself in high style. It's Sydney's idea to don a fake accent and take on the alter ego of the posh Lady Edith, a Londoner with elite banking connections—and in doing so, she kicks Rosenfeld's cons into high gear. (While all the choices from costume designer Michael Wilkinson are spot-on in their tacky period allure, Adams' ensembles are to-die-for: a plunging and sparkling array of sexy little numbers that help the actress assert her untapped va-va-voominess).
Irving and Sydney quickly become partners in crime and love—but wait. Irving has a young son, and a wife: Lawrence's needy, vulnerable and spectacularly passive-aggressive Rosalyn (Lawrence). With her fake tan, high hair and vicious nails, Rosalyn is a force of nature. She knows just enough to be dangerous, which may make her an even bigger threat to Irving and Sydney than the federal authorities who are closing in on their operation. Her complexity and unpredictability make her fascinating to watch—she's just unhinged enough to think she's the voice of reason—and Lawrence is a radiant scene-stealer. Regardless of genre, it seems there's nothing this actress can't do.
Cooper's Richie DiMaso is a hotheaded (and tightly permed) FBI agent who's eager to make a name for himself with a big bust. (Seriously, the hair is awful, almost as bad as Bale's; Russell even goes so far as to show Cooper wearing the itty-bitty curlers at the kitchen table). Richie exposes the lovers' scheme and forces them to help him net even bigger fish to get themselves out of trouble. But he also finds himself falling for the sexy Sydney—er, Lady Edith—and she may feel the same way. Or does she? Part of the fun of 'American Hustle' is that it keeps us constantly on our toes wondering who's scamming whom.
Russell doesn't judge any of these people for their idiocy or their aspirations. He revels in their quirks. The fact that Rosalyn is constantly on the verge of burning the house down, for example, ends up being endearing in Russell's hands. (Microwave ovens aren't for everyone.) We even end up feeling sympathy for Jeremy Renner as crooked Camden, N.J., Mayor Carmine Polito. He's a criminal, too: He's on the take and coaxes more powerful politicians to join him, all in the name of rejuvenating Atlantic City. Yet Renner makes us feel this gregarious family man's generosity, and the bromance that forms between him and Bale's character is actually sweet lol.
Russell's film is big and big-hearted and more than a little messy, but that's due to the over-the-top characters, their insatiable greed and their brazen schemes. Sure, it looks like the cast went nuts at a Goodwill store and splurged on the grooviest threads they could find for an elaborate game of dress-up, but the clothes more than just a source of laughs: they're a reflection of their characters' ambition, a projection of their glittering notions of the American dream.
The film is probably also a tad overlong, but it's a blast to hang out with these people, and Russell creates such an infectiously zany vibe around them that if even you notice the running time, you probably won't mind. For all its brashness and big personality, 'American Hustle' is a character study at its core—an exploration of dissatisfaction and drive, and the lengths to which we're willing to go for that elusive thing known as a better life.
American Hustle - Movie Trailer
Movie Review - Friday The 13th Part IV
This is the one that comes to everyone’s mind when you ask them which is your favourite Friday the 13th. While I’m partial to part 3 for its 3d effects this really is the best entry in the whole series. Why you ask? I don’t know if I have enough room to get to it all.
First and foremost, for me the one factor that has put this way over the top for has been the inclusion of Tom Savini back into the series. It would only make sense that the man who essentially created Jason was brought back to kill him off. Tom is at the peak of his powers in 'The Final Chapter'. While yes as always he’s limited by the films budget, it’s a joy to watch the master work his magic. You get some great gags like several knifed torsos, ripped off heads, a meat cleaver to Crispin Glover’s face.
Savini also breaths some fresh air into Jason as he once again tweaks his look. Jason now looks like some sort of troll or monster, much more bestial as compared to his earlier looks but the hockey mask is still there.
Filling Steve Miner’s large shoes is Joseph Zito who at the time was fresh off the highly under rated “Prowler”. Zito brings a fast paced exploitation style the series was beginning to lack. The tongue is firmly is cheek and they never forget why the audience is really there; they want to watch Jason kill people. The only downside to Zito is there are clearly a few moments where they could have just cut a scene out. In particular the death of Gordon the dog, the scene it filmed and cut so poorly you’re never sure if the dog is thrown from the window by Jason or he just kills himself.
The acting is also kicked up a few notches by the inclusion of the eccentric Crispin Glover. While his performance is nothing to write home to the academy about you can defiantly tell he’s on a level the others in this aren’t. The only person that maybe holds a candle to Crispin’s manic performance as Jimbo in 'The Final Chapter' has to be a 12 year old Corey Feldman and that’s more on the fact he’s “fucking Corey Feldman” and not a great actor. You can clearly tell there are moments all over the movie where Crispin goes off the script and just begins to ad lib his character, none more evident than his infamous dance number as seen below. Seriously either the director is blind or they gave up trying to reign in Crispin and gave into his interpretive dance demands.
Apparently the original song was an AC DC tune but the producers went with Lion’s Love is a Lie instead; if Crispin is any indicator they used the soundtrack from cats. Also why does every fucking Friday have a character that clearly no one would be friends with hanging around? Seriously what the hell is wrong with Jimbo?
'The Final Chapter' is also the first time in the Friday universe where someone proactively does something about Jason. Not only do you have Rob actively hunting Jason down for killing his sister, you also have Trish and Tommy Jarvis beating the hell out of Jason every second they get. By this point in the series you really begin to wonder why no one tried to stand up to Jason instead of just running, well it’s nice to see some one finally doing something even if it does little to actually stop Jason. It’s kind of ironic that the one to finally bring down Jason is a 12 year old boy.
Friday the 13th part 4 the final chapter is by and far the best entry in the series and if you have to watch just one, watch this one.
Friday The 13th Part IV - Movie Trailer
Tuesday, 13 May 2014
Movie Review - The Expendables 2
Saying I love the first Expendables movie is like saying that its body count is a little high. Yet despite my enthusiasm for both its execution and concept, even I couldn’t admit that it was perfect. Sure, it contained all the right elements, including the long-awaited moment when Stallone, Willis and Schwarzenegger finally appeared on screen together, but it struggled a little under the weight of expectation.
If you’ve seen The Expendables documentary, Inferno, on its Blu-ray, you’ll appreciate that Stallone almost killed himself trying to get it made, while both starring and directing. My hopes were high, then, that by handing over directorial responsibilities to Simon West (Con Air), The Expendables 2 would surpass the original. What I could never have predicted was how superior Expendables 2 would be in every single way.
It’s bigger, better and bloodier, even nailing the humour this time. From start to finish it’s a joy to behold, especially as the much-needed sense of the ridiculous that permeated West’s Con Air is present throughout.
I’m used to action movies starting with bombastic openings - after all, anyone who’s grown up with James Bond simply expects such things - but the opening scene for The Expendables 2 is excellent. If ever there were doubts that the level of violence would drop with the addition of Chuck Norris, then those are soon assuaged in seconds, as Stallone and the gang decimate an entire army with guns, knives and Jet Li.
If you were one of those people who delighted in the explosive pay offs in Rambo 4, then be prepared for the entirety of that film to be surpassed in the first ten minutes of Expendables 2. It’s as if the film’s mission is to build a higher amount of exploded bodies than any of the cast's previous movies.
Expendables 2 is relentless in pace, with no time lost to anything other than setting up a new threat and a couple of new additions to the team. And when there’s finally a momentary ceasefire in the action, the comedy prevails. Every one of the returning cast members seem so much more relaxed, as they set about ridiculing each other, lending a much greater sense of camaraderie to the team, from Toll Road’s ears, to Christmas’ ego and Gunnar’s pulling technique.
It’s an inspired choice to make Gunnar a more comedic foil, with Dolph Lundgren eating up his chances to play for laughs – his seduction face has to be seen to be believed, though it’s an image that no amount of mental scrubbing can remove.
Thankfully, in the midst of the chaos both Stallone’s Barney Ross and Statham’s Lee Christmas still get a few scenes together, which were a definite highlight of the first film, and their relationship combining brothers in blood with a father/son dynamic provides a solid core for the film and a lot of the humour. Their reversion to an old ‘classic’ style of interrogation is a highpoint. Christmas’ love life is also still a mere set up for ribbing and jokes.
Nan Yu, by contrast, as Maggie, fares a lot better. Despite having a character one sheet released, Yu sadly seems to be absent from the final poster line up in order to make way for the bigger names, which I guess makes sense from an advertising point of view, but is in no way representative of her role. She makes a great addition to the team, quietly dispelling any fears of becoming a token female with enough verbal and physical sparring to stand on level pegging. I’m assuming her link with Dolph Lundgren in Diamond Dogs put her on the radar, and rightly so, but I’m still hopeful that the likes of Cynthia Rothrock (who’s just recently returned to acting) and Gina Carano will even the sexes at some point in another sequel.
I did have concerns that, with Expendables 2’s increased line up, the film would become cluttered and unfocused, but the use of every major new name was shrewdly done for maximum effect, and it worked. I won’t spoil anything here but everyone was used very, very well. I felt sorry for Chuck Norris, though, as it did appear that he wasn’t in on the joke, but that’s no bad thing.
Reprising his role as Church, Bruce Willis is still effortlessly cool, and still steals every scene he’s in. His part in the story's well reasoned, and his character is quite the shit, which is by far the best way to exploit Willis’ sly charm and sarcastic nature.
Now, I have a confession to make but if there was a weak point in the film, it was Arnold Schwarzenegger. There, I said it.
I was absolutely thrilled to see him back where he belongs, but his absence from the big screen does seem to have made him a little rusty (see my review of The Last Stand), and his part doesn’t help matters. His character, Trench, has dialogue that's little more than self-referential quips, something he once excelled at, and some, not all, come off as a bit forced. Maybe it’s abandonment issues on my part, but there’s still only so many ‘I’ll be back’ jokes that can be made in the space of 102 minutes.
Then we come to Jean Claude Van Damme. He’s an actor that I’ve stood by since the beginning, so it was a crushing disappointment when he turned down Stallone’s offer of a part in the first film. It turns out it was the wisest decision Van Damme could’ve made, since the subtly-named Jean Vilain provides him with a plum role here - JCVD burns up the screen in what is arguably a career best performance.
The rivalry shared by Stallone and Van Damme in real life doesn’t just stop at name calling. The tension between them is tangible, and when the inevitable time comes for a face off, things snap in the most brutal and exhilarating way.
I grew up at a time where action movie franchises spawned sequels on the straight-to-video market, mostly without their original stars (just look at JCVD’s own early vehicles such as Bloodsport, Kickboxer and Cyborg) with even the bigger franchises such as Lethal Weapon, Rambo and Beverly Hills Cop deteriorating over the course of several films. This makes The Expendables 2 an anomaly in the best possible way.
It’s hysterical, explosively violent, full of references to its cast’s work (and even real life experiences) and it's all handled exceptionally well by Simon West, a director who’s already given us one excellent action movie in Con Air. With The Expendables 2, he's delivered again: it's a rollicking action movie, one of the most downright enjoyable of recent times. And, for me, The Expendables 3 can't come quickly enough...
The Expendables 2 - Movie Trailer
If you’ve seen The Expendables documentary, Inferno, on its Blu-ray, you’ll appreciate that Stallone almost killed himself trying to get it made, while both starring and directing. My hopes were high, then, that by handing over directorial responsibilities to Simon West (Con Air), The Expendables 2 would surpass the original. What I could never have predicted was how superior Expendables 2 would be in every single way.
It’s bigger, better and bloodier, even nailing the humour this time. From start to finish it’s a joy to behold, especially as the much-needed sense of the ridiculous that permeated West’s Con Air is present throughout.
I’m used to action movies starting with bombastic openings - after all, anyone who’s grown up with James Bond simply expects such things - but the opening scene for The Expendables 2 is excellent. If ever there were doubts that the level of violence would drop with the addition of Chuck Norris, then those are soon assuaged in seconds, as Stallone and the gang decimate an entire army with guns, knives and Jet Li.
If you were one of those people who delighted in the explosive pay offs in Rambo 4, then be prepared for the entirety of that film to be surpassed in the first ten minutes of Expendables 2. It’s as if the film’s mission is to build a higher amount of exploded bodies than any of the cast's previous movies.
Expendables 2 is relentless in pace, with no time lost to anything other than setting up a new threat and a couple of new additions to the team. And when there’s finally a momentary ceasefire in the action, the comedy prevails. Every one of the returning cast members seem so much more relaxed, as they set about ridiculing each other, lending a much greater sense of camaraderie to the team, from Toll Road’s ears, to Christmas’ ego and Gunnar’s pulling technique.
It’s an inspired choice to make Gunnar a more comedic foil, with Dolph Lundgren eating up his chances to play for laughs – his seduction face has to be seen to be believed, though it’s an image that no amount of mental scrubbing can remove.
Thankfully, in the midst of the chaos both Stallone’s Barney Ross and Statham’s Lee Christmas still get a few scenes together, which were a definite highlight of the first film, and their relationship combining brothers in blood with a father/son dynamic provides a solid core for the film and a lot of the humour. Their reversion to an old ‘classic’ style of interrogation is a highpoint. Christmas’ love life is also still a mere set up for ribbing and jokes.
Nan Yu, by contrast, as Maggie, fares a lot better. Despite having a character one sheet released, Yu sadly seems to be absent from the final poster line up in order to make way for the bigger names, which I guess makes sense from an advertising point of view, but is in no way representative of her role. She makes a great addition to the team, quietly dispelling any fears of becoming a token female with enough verbal and physical sparring to stand on level pegging. I’m assuming her link with Dolph Lundgren in Diamond Dogs put her on the radar, and rightly so, but I’m still hopeful that the likes of Cynthia Rothrock (who’s just recently returned to acting) and Gina Carano will even the sexes at some point in another sequel.
I did have concerns that, with Expendables 2’s increased line up, the film would become cluttered and unfocused, but the use of every major new name was shrewdly done for maximum effect, and it worked. I won’t spoil anything here but everyone was used very, very well. I felt sorry for Chuck Norris, though, as it did appear that he wasn’t in on the joke, but that’s no bad thing.
Reprising his role as Church, Bruce Willis is still effortlessly cool, and still steals every scene he’s in. His part in the story's well reasoned, and his character is quite the shit, which is by far the best way to exploit Willis’ sly charm and sarcastic nature.
Now, I have a confession to make but if there was a weak point in the film, it was Arnold Schwarzenegger. There, I said it.
I was absolutely thrilled to see him back where he belongs, but his absence from the big screen does seem to have made him a little rusty (see my review of The Last Stand), and his part doesn’t help matters. His character, Trench, has dialogue that's little more than self-referential quips, something he once excelled at, and some, not all, come off as a bit forced. Maybe it’s abandonment issues on my part, but there’s still only so many ‘I’ll be back’ jokes that can be made in the space of 102 minutes.
Then we come to Jean Claude Van Damme. He’s an actor that I’ve stood by since the beginning, so it was a crushing disappointment when he turned down Stallone’s offer of a part in the first film. It turns out it was the wisest decision Van Damme could’ve made, since the subtly-named Jean Vilain provides him with a plum role here - JCVD burns up the screen in what is arguably a career best performance.
The rivalry shared by Stallone and Van Damme in real life doesn’t just stop at name calling. The tension between them is tangible, and when the inevitable time comes for a face off, things snap in the most brutal and exhilarating way.
I grew up at a time where action movie franchises spawned sequels on the straight-to-video market, mostly without their original stars (just look at JCVD’s own early vehicles such as Bloodsport, Kickboxer and Cyborg) with even the bigger franchises such as Lethal Weapon, Rambo and Beverly Hills Cop deteriorating over the course of several films. This makes The Expendables 2 an anomaly in the best possible way.
It’s hysterical, explosively violent, full of references to its cast’s work (and even real life experiences) and it's all handled exceptionally well by Simon West, a director who’s already given us one excellent action movie in Con Air. With The Expendables 2, he's delivered again: it's a rollicking action movie, one of the most downright enjoyable of recent times. And, for me, The Expendables 3 can't come quickly enough...
The Expendables 2 - Movie Trailer
Movie Review - The Last Stand
Here's our man and he's old. He's seen the wars, been through the bloodshed and now just wants to settle down into peace and quiet, accepting that his time has passed. But every time he tries to get out; well, you know how it goes. Of course I am talking about Arnold Schwarzenegger's return to action. Although in this case, it's flinging himself bodily into it and hoping he'll land on his feet.
Sheriff Ray Owens (Schwarzenegger, who definitely looks like an 'Owens' to me) who is the more pensive personality. After several years as an LA narcotics cop (living through what I assume was some version of a '90s Schwarzenegger movie), Ray has semi-retired to the sleepy town of Sommerton, Arizona. Unfortunately his plans are ruined when the most incompetent band of FBI agents the world has ever seen let drug-lord/racecar driver Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) escape. His goal is to get to Mexico as quickly as possible, which means going right through Sommerton.
It's been quite a while since Schwarzenegger has tried his hand at this sort of thing, and he and the filmmakers know it. With his weather-beaten face he looks more tired than angry after nearly a decade in politics. Whether he realizes it or not, Schwarzenegger himself seems to be making his own last stand as a still-relevant action star. It's a look and feel which director Kim Jee-Woon (in his first Hollywood film) plays to the hilt, trying his best to build Ray as a reluctant warrior.
But it doesn't really work.
Part of that is the script by Andrew Knauer which is all over the place. You know any story that starts with a state trooper eating a donut is going to be 'playing with well-worn genre concepts' which is a nice way of saying cliché-ridden mess. And a lot of "The Last Stand" is like that, particularly the dialogue, which is flat at best and filled with oddly-timed 'comic relief' like a restaurant full of customers who refuse to leave before a fight starts because they just ordered their meals.
It's a feeling which culminates in Johnny Knoxville's poor impulse control gun nut Lewis, who fortunately does not have enough screen time to be as fully annoying as he could be. But he certainly tries his level best.
Lewis points out another speed bump in the pace as "Last Stand" is filled with side characters drawing attention away from Ray, who they would like to develop more, without offering anything of substance to make us care about them. Will Deputy Torrance ("Thor's" Jaimie Alexander) ever forgive Frank (Rodrigo Santoro) for having PTSD from serving in Iraq. Will Deputy Bailey (Zach Gilford) make it to LA like he dreams? Who knows? Who cares? They're not really characters or subplots, they are distractions to get us through the movie's run time and the filmmakers aren't really sure how to do that.
Which is the real disappointment. Jee-Woon is a fantastically talented director; "I Saw The Devil" managed the difficult juggling act of combining drama, action and horror into a satisfying whole without losing out on character or story. One would hope even a degree of that could be translated to "The Last Stand," but that's a hope in vain.
And it must be said, Schwarzenegger himself is badly miscast. Yeah, he may be an aging acting star, but he doesn't really act one. He's the same statue he's always been, so exhibiting sadness at the loss of a deputy, or frustration at having to use glasses now doesn't come off with any punch at all.
Nor does he get much in the way of villains to test himself against. Cortez spends most of his time behind the wheel of a car and the promised confrontation we've been promised once he finally reaches the town is lackluster at best.
As action movies go, it's okay.
The Last Stand - Movie Trailer
Sheriff Ray Owens (Schwarzenegger, who definitely looks like an 'Owens' to me) who is the more pensive personality. After several years as an LA narcotics cop (living through what I assume was some version of a '90s Schwarzenegger movie), Ray has semi-retired to the sleepy town of Sommerton, Arizona. Unfortunately his plans are ruined when the most incompetent band of FBI agents the world has ever seen let drug-lord/racecar driver Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) escape. His goal is to get to Mexico as quickly as possible, which means going right through Sommerton.
It's been quite a while since Schwarzenegger has tried his hand at this sort of thing, and he and the filmmakers know it. With his weather-beaten face he looks more tired than angry after nearly a decade in politics. Whether he realizes it or not, Schwarzenegger himself seems to be making his own last stand as a still-relevant action star. It's a look and feel which director Kim Jee-Woon (in his first Hollywood film) plays to the hilt, trying his best to build Ray as a reluctant warrior.
But it doesn't really work.
Part of that is the script by Andrew Knauer which is all over the place. You know any story that starts with a state trooper eating a donut is going to be 'playing with well-worn genre concepts' which is a nice way of saying cliché-ridden mess. And a lot of "The Last Stand" is like that, particularly the dialogue, which is flat at best and filled with oddly-timed 'comic relief' like a restaurant full of customers who refuse to leave before a fight starts because they just ordered their meals.
It's a feeling which culminates in Johnny Knoxville's poor impulse control gun nut Lewis, who fortunately does not have enough screen time to be as fully annoying as he could be. But he certainly tries his level best.
Lewis points out another speed bump in the pace as "Last Stand" is filled with side characters drawing attention away from Ray, who they would like to develop more, without offering anything of substance to make us care about them. Will Deputy Torrance ("Thor's" Jaimie Alexander) ever forgive Frank (Rodrigo Santoro) for having PTSD from serving in Iraq. Will Deputy Bailey (Zach Gilford) make it to LA like he dreams? Who knows? Who cares? They're not really characters or subplots, they are distractions to get us through the movie's run time and the filmmakers aren't really sure how to do that.
Which is the real disappointment. Jee-Woon is a fantastically talented director; "I Saw The Devil" managed the difficult juggling act of combining drama, action and horror into a satisfying whole without losing out on character or story. One would hope even a degree of that could be translated to "The Last Stand," but that's a hope in vain.
And it must be said, Schwarzenegger himself is badly miscast. Yeah, he may be an aging acting star, but he doesn't really act one. He's the same statue he's always been, so exhibiting sadness at the loss of a deputy, or frustration at having to use glasses now doesn't come off with any punch at all.
Nor does he get much in the way of villains to test himself against. Cortez spends most of his time behind the wheel of a car and the promised confrontation we've been promised once he finally reaches the town is lackluster at best.
As action movies go, it's okay.
The Last Stand - Movie Trailer
Movie Review - Friday The 13th Part 3
It's hard to argue that it is the best of the slasher saga, as its filled with repetitive stalking sequences, dragged down by slow pacing, and possessing some of the dumbest dialogue in any of the 'Friday' movies (and that's saying a lot). But particularly when viewed in its original 3-D dimensions, it's just so much fun - at least if, like I do, you never tire of corny shots of sharp instruments being stuck into the camera.
The plot regurgitates the first two 'Friday' movies, except for a change in locale. With Jason (and his mum) having slaughtered two summer's worth of counselors, finally no one is stupid enough to venture back to Camp Crystal Lake. Instead, with the authorities hot on his trail, Jason high-tails it to the surrounding countryside. After a bloody detour to a local convenience store (where he dons new duds and, apparently, finds time for a haircut and a body-building regime), he gets himself down to Higgins Haven, the summer home of one Chris Higgins (Dana Kimmell). Of course, she doesn't watch the news, so she invites her friends out for a weekend of carefree partying and sex. One by one, Jason picks them off in predictable (if always creative) fashion, only this time, the gimmick is 3-D.
No, there is absolutely nothing new in 'Friday the 13th Part 3' aside from its extra dimension. But what I've always liked about 'Part 3' is the same thing many find fault for in the films - the combination of unknowing teens who are not proactive, combined with a deliberately slow pace. What always bugged me about later 'Friday' flicks (and most slasher films in general) is that they so overtorqued the editing and kills that there was little time for build-up, mood, or stalking. 'Part 3,' however, is so darn slow that all Jason seems to do for most of the first hour of the film is walk around and stare. Director Steve Miner (returning from 'Part 2') swipes even more from John Carpenter's 'Halloween' playbook, and constantly places the hulking, shadowy Jason in the foreground and/or background of shots, as stupid teens wander about, blissfully unaware that they are about to be killed. Unlike later 'Fridays,' where everyone was uber-smart and already knew Jason was out there, allowing the filmmakers to turn the flicks into action movies (see 'Jason X' for a perfect example), here the characters are still largely unaware of what is going on. I find slasher movies much scarier when the threat is unknown and largely unseen - and unexpected - so the old-school approach of 'Part 3' has always worked for me.
'Friday the 13th Part 3' also gives us a new, scarier looking Jason. This is the one that would introduce the world to the now-iconic hockey mask, and as played by former circus performer Richard Brooker (who has a unique slouch and arm movement), there is a creepy, deranged side to Jason in 'Part 3' that is unsettling. Watch how he goes berserk near the film's climax, when he is unable to find the hiding Kimmell in a barn. I like when actors are able to give Jason enough recognisable human dimension to make him more than just a lumbering piece of meat, as well as avoid turning him into a MTV-ready, posing superstar. Brooker does that quite well in 'Part 3'.
None of this, of course, will convince anyone that 'Part 3' is actually a good movie. It's a predictable, exploitative, poorly written, and sometimes even worse acted, slice of '80s slasher camp. Indeed, much of 'Part 3' is now simply hilarious (love that bad-ass biker gang!) Add to that the over-the-top 3-D (which is even goofier in 2-D), and you may spend as much time laughing during 'Part 3' as being scared. Yet, with its deliberate mood, a kick-ass Jason, and legitimately suspenseful third-act chase sequence, 'Part 3' is totally entertaining, quintessentially vintage 'Friday the 13th'.
Monday, 12 May 2014
Bionetics Hair Test
So I read this online and was intrigued:
Have you been ill for sometime and unable to make a breakthrough that brings you real improvements?
Would you like help to change your diet, nutrition and lifestyle to get your health and life back on track?
Bionetics is a well-established company that is the UK’s leading provider of non-invasive Body Field Analysis Testing. We are proud to have helped many thousands of people improve their health by identifying and helping to eliminate many of the basic underlying imbalances which have caused the problem.
Take advantage of our NEW pre-test consultation to find out if this test is suitable for you. The most informative sites often don't answer all of your questions or help to alleviate your doubts about ordering a service online. A simple 5 minute chat with one of our advisors may help you to make a decision. Simply call us on 0845 456 0570 (local call rate numer) or email us your contact details to info@bionetics.co.uk and we'll get back to you. We can only offer this service for consultations on landline numbers.
Regardless of the condition or symptom you are suffering from, the Bionetics Test and resulting Personal Health Program can help you rediscover good health! We have successfully helped people suffering from a varying range of health problems including Allergies, Food Intolerances, IBS, Chronic Fatigue, M.E, M.S, Acne, Eczema, Fibromyalgia, Asthma, Weight Gain, Constipation, Arthritis, Thyroid Imbalance, Anxiety, Depression and more.
Non-invasive hair testing is proving to be an increasingly popular tool, used by more and more people seeking a natural, safe and effective path to better health and wellbeing. Hair testing is a very cost-effective alternative to conventional tests such as saliva, blood or urine. It is also extremely convenient as you simply send us several strands of your hair in the post and receive your results by post or email in the comfort of your own home.
We even offer a FREE 15 minute phone consultation or email support should you wish to discuss your results with an expert and learn how to make positive changes to your health.
The tests and recommendations are designed to look beyond the specific condition or symptoms and address many of the dietary, nutritional and lifestyle influences that are real underlying factors dictating the state of your health.
These influences include food intolerance's, nutritional deficiencies, pathogenic influences (bacteria, fungus, parasites and viruses) and toxic burdens (toxic metals, chemicals and radiation), which are undermining the body’s homeostatic and immune functions, which in turn leave the body weakened and prone to poor health.
For Example: food intolerances and gut pathogens may be the cause of IBS symptoms or toxins and nutritional deficiencies could be causing fatigue related illness.
How does the Bionetics Test work?
We use samples of hair to carry out our testing. Hair has become a very important factor in forensic and complementary medical practice due to its ability to store information about an individual. The government recently released information about the use of 'hair testing' as a method of tracking terrorists; where they have been and what they have eaten. Although relatively new when compared to more conventional blood, stool, urine and saliva screening, hair testing is proving to be a popular, non-invasive and cost effective alternative to normal tests. The technology used is manufactured in Germany under ISO standards and carries CE Mark IIa approval for medical diagnostic use.
Body Field Analysis uses well established electromagnetic frequency principles to generate waves that cause the hair sample to vibrate setting up a unique resonant pattern for that sample. This sample is then scanned.
So I got my test results back on Saturday. My food sensitivities are Buckwheat (WTF?), Cow's Milk, Yellow Pepper, Cauliflower, Rhubarb, Paw Paw (piss take surely?), Goose, Chicken (no way!!!), Coconut, Lemon.
To eliminate my primary stress, herbal remedies Astaxanthin & Capsicum are required. My nutrional deficiencies is Zinc.
To eliminate my primary stress, herbal remedies Astaxanthin & Capsicum are required. My nutrional deficiencies is Zinc.
FES Foot Drop Device
I still suffer issues with my left leg, mainly what is known as foot drop. I exercise everyday but have purchased an FES device to hopefully help. See below for the website address and full details of product.
http://www.stressnomore.co.uk/xft-2001-foot-drop-system-91846.html
http://www.stressnomore.co.uk/xft-2001-foot-drop-system-91846.html
The XFT-2001 Foot Drop System is a pioneering home-treatment device designed to alleviate drop foot in people with upper motor neurone conditions.
What Is Foot Drop?
Foot drop is the inability to lift the foot and toes properly when walking due to paralysis or weakness in the muscles on the top side of the foot. This makes it difficult for the sufferer to fully lift their foot up when talking a step, causing them to drag their toes along the ground. This scuffing of the toes affects their gait (the way they walk) and balance, making walking even short distances incredibly tiring and with the risk of stumbles and falls.
There a number of different conditions which cause foot drop, all of which affect the motor nerves and reduce muscle function. The motor nerves carry impulses from the central nervous system which triggers muscles to contract, so if these nerves are damaged it results in paralysis of the muscles. The most common conditions which result in foot drop include:
- Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
- Stroke
- Cerebral Palsy
- Muscular Dystrophy
- Myositis
- Acquired Peripheral Neuropathy
- Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease
- Nerve damage below the knee
- Motor Neurone Disease
- Spinal Stenosis
Foot Drop Treatments
One of the most common ways to manage foot drop in the UK is with ankle-foot orthosis, a hard, plastic brace that supports the foot and ankle to hold it upright at all times and prevent the toes from scuffing the ground with each step. Although this helps to some degree it doesn’t correct gait or help to strengthen and rehabilitate weak muscles, and it still means that walking is laboured and unbalanced. Plus, when worn for long periods of time these braces have been known to cause chafing and soreness as the plastic rubs against the skin, even when worn with socks.
The most effective treatment for foot drop is Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES). This is where the nerves and muscles that control muscles on the top of the foot are stimulated with electrical impulses. The nerves are stimulated when the patient lifts the affected leg from the ground so that the muscles contract and flex the foot upwards, preventing the toes from scraping on the ground.
FES can be undertaken by implanting electrodes into the skin via surgery, or alternatively by applying self-adhesive electrodes on the surface of the skin which connect to a battery-operated stimulator.
FES for Foot Drop has been fully approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). Despite this, the treatment is not readily available throughout the UK due to budget restrictions in certain health authorities. Just like many other expensive medical treatments, it’s a bit of a postcode lottery as to whether or not FES will be available to you.
Now though FES technology is available to use at home via the XFT-2001 Foot Drop System, an advanced medical device that is simple to use and incredibly effective in overcoming foot drop.
How Does the XFT-2001 Foot Drop System work?
Self-adhesive skin electrodes are placed over the peroneal nerves at the top of the lower leg. A cuff is then wrapped over the top to connect them to a Functional Stimulation Unit. A wireless foot sensor is then placed in the shoe of the affected foot.
When the user takes a step and lifts their heel the sensor uses Bluetooth technology to notify the Stim Unit to apply a mild electrical impulse via the skin electrodes. This impulse stimulates the nerves, causing the muscles in the foot to contract. This causes the foot to flex upwards (dorsiflexion) and tilt slightly (eversion) in order to lift the toes up and prevent them dragging against the floor.
This improves balance and means that the ankle is supported when the foot hits the ground once again. Each step is less laboured, making the user’s ability to walk much easier, more comfortable and faster.
Plus, using FES technology for long periods of time helps to strengthen weak muscles and rehabilitate damaged nerves as it retrains the entire leg. With the exception of degenerative conditions such as MS, users will find that with time the severity of their foot drop will improve and they will be able to walk without the device and their muscles will naturally work to lift the foot.
This process is aided by the Training function on the Stim Unit. In Training mode the XFT-2001 will deliver targeted, persistent stimulation to exercise the muscles and make them stronger. There are five Training levels to choose from, each different depending on the existing strength of the muscles. The user will be able to slowly increase the intensity of their Training session to speed up the rehabilitation process.
Who Can Use the XFT-2001 Foot Drop System?
The XFT-2001 Foot Drop System can only be used in conjunction with your clinician or physiotherapist. The device has a simple and accessible interface which makes it easy to use at home once it has been set up and adjusted for you the medical professional treating you. A medical expert will know your existing muscle tone and level of nerve damage and be able to show you where to place the electrodes for the most effective treatment. They will also be able to support you during training sessions in order to help you work towards recovery.
The XFT-2001 is suitable for anyone who has upper motor neuron lesions as a result of Stroke, Multiple Sclerosis (MS), Cerebral Palsy, Parkinson’s disease, brain injury or spinal cord injury. Upper Motor Neuron lesions are when there is nerve damage within the brain or spinal cord.
Please note that the XFT-2001 is not suitable for lower motor neuron lesions including Poliomyelitis (Polio) Guillian-Barre Syndrome, peripheral nerve lesions and Motor Neuron disease. This is because the nerve running from the spinal cord to the muscle is damaged and electrical stimulation will not work on these damaged nerves. If you are unsure whether the XFT-2001 is suitable for you ask your doctor, clinician or physiotherapist.
Foot drop is most commonly found in the left foot but it can occur in the right foot also; please select ‘Left’ or ‘Right’ when purchasing as the design of the cuff and foot sensor differs slightly for each. Some people can experience drop foot in both legs and if this is the case you may wish to use an XFT-2001 on both feet, which is perfectly fine. Your physiotherapist or clinician should advise you on this.
Saturday, 10 May 2014
The Fray: How To Save A Life - Song Meaning
I've always thought this song was about someone who blames themselves for their loved one's suicide.
"Step one, you say, "We need to talk"/He walks, you say, "Sit down, it's just a talk"
Have you ever tried talking to someone about their health when they're obviously mentally ill? They don't want to talk about it. They just want to curl up in themselves, and whenever you confront them about their well-being, they try to walk away.
"Let him know that you know best/'cuz after all, you do know best"
They try to convince their loved one to get help, get better, etc. To me, this line always sounded a little sarcastic. Maybe they didn't know what was best, maybe their advice actually made their friend even more depressed, or, if they weren't already, suicidal.
"And I would have stayed up with you all night/had I known how to save a life"
If they had only known what their friend had been attempting, they would have stayed up and talked them out of it, or at least tried to. Instead, they either didn't know what was happening, or didn't know how to deal with it and let their friend slip away.
"As he begins to raise his voice/You lower yours and grant him one last choice"
The loved one gets angry and defensive, and an argument ensues. The two choices they give him--"driving until he loses the road" or "breaking the ones he's followed"--may have been taken wrong and the loved one was driven to suicide.
This is just is my take on it, but it's probably actually about drug use.
The Fray: How To Save A Life - Music Video
"Step one, you say, "We need to talk"/He walks, you say, "Sit down, it's just a talk"
Have you ever tried talking to someone about their health when they're obviously mentally ill? They don't want to talk about it. They just want to curl up in themselves, and whenever you confront them about their well-being, they try to walk away.
"Let him know that you know best/'cuz after all, you do know best"
They try to convince their loved one to get help, get better, etc. To me, this line always sounded a little sarcastic. Maybe they didn't know what was best, maybe their advice actually made their friend even more depressed, or, if they weren't already, suicidal.
"And I would have stayed up with you all night/had I known how to save a life"
If they had only known what their friend had been attempting, they would have stayed up and talked them out of it, or at least tried to. Instead, they either didn't know what was happening, or didn't know how to deal with it and let their friend slip away.
"As he begins to raise his voice/You lower yours and grant him one last choice"
The loved one gets angry and defensive, and an argument ensues. The two choices they give him--"driving until he loses the road" or "breaking the ones he's followed"--may have been taken wrong and the loved one was driven to suicide.
This is just is my take on it, but it's probably actually about drug use.
The Fray: How To Save A Life - Music Video
Snow Patrol: You Could Be Happy - Song Meaning
Beautiful song.
The message is easy enough: let go of the person who wants to be happy without you, but never let go of the happy memories. What's exceptional is the way it achieves this message, its pairing of lyrics and music.
The lyrics are simple and bittersweet. They are sung with a tiredness and loneliness that is very appropriate. The music is simple too, but almost cute and child-like. Absolute sweetness and absolute caring with undertones of sadness & truth.
I'd like to have it go on longer and become a real valley in the album. Not more lyrics, just repeating chords over and over and over. To linger on this gem would give it more weight, which it is certainly deserving of.
It seems that within this song lies the realization of true love: wishes of happiness without selfishness. A realization that was perhaps made a little too late...
...a realization that doesn't feel as good as you thought it would.
Snow Patrol: You Could Be Happy - Music Video
The message is easy enough: let go of the person who wants to be happy without you, but never let go of the happy memories. What's exceptional is the way it achieves this message, its pairing of lyrics and music.
The lyrics are simple and bittersweet. They are sung with a tiredness and loneliness that is very appropriate. The music is simple too, but almost cute and child-like. Absolute sweetness and absolute caring with undertones of sadness & truth.
I'd like to have it go on longer and become a real valley in the album. Not more lyrics, just repeating chords over and over and over. To linger on this gem would give it more weight, which it is certainly deserving of.
It seems that within this song lies the realization of true love: wishes of happiness without selfishness. A realization that was perhaps made a little too late...
...a realization that doesn't feel as good as you thought it would.
Snow Patrol: You Could Be Happy - Music Video
Paolo Nutini: Last Request - Song Meaning
He wants to end the relationship the way it started, with meaning and love and warmth. He ultimately wishes it didn't have to end but it's clearly just a lost battle and holding someone you love for the last time, leaves a beautiful memory and you try to forget all the bad that's gone on and just remember the love you have for each other.
Paolo Nutini: Last Request - Music Video
Paolo Nutini: Last Request - Music Video
Maroon 5: Moves Like Jagger - Song Meaning
Moves like Jagger could be about cougers. If you've ever seen Jagger dance - he can't dance. And he's not exactly handsome.mBut he can get a woman a fraction of his age - because he has the moves or the money lol - google his love conquests. This song is reverse though, it's not a younger woman conquest but an older woman.
"I swear I will behave" -- a child says to an adult
"You say I'm a kid, my ego is big" -- hello?
"And you want to steer / But I'm shifting gears" -- power struggle
"So watch and learn, I won't show you twice/../But if I share my secret/You gonna have to keep it/Nobody else can see this" -- older women think of younger boys but few will make it public
And finally the way you conquer a woman is not by controlling but by looking in her eyes with a total look of confidence.
Or I'm way off lol.
Maroon 5: Moves Like Jagger - Music Video
"I swear I will behave" -- a child says to an adult
"You say I'm a kid, my ego is big" -- hello?
"And you want to steer / But I'm shifting gears" -- power struggle
"So watch and learn, I won't show you twice/../But if I share my secret/You gonna have to keep it/Nobody else can see this" -- older women think of younger boys but few will make it public
And finally the way you conquer a woman is not by controlling but by looking in her eyes with a total look of confidence.
Or I'm way off lol.
Maroon 5: Moves Like Jagger - Music Video
Friday, 9 May 2014
Movie Review - The Human Centipede Part Ii
In the first "Human Centipede" movie, a young woman found herself sewn mouth-to-anus by a sadistic surgeon with two other victims. Every cloud has a silver lining. In "The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)" we meet the same actress (Ashlynn Yennie), and from what we can judge she survived that ordeal with little permanent facial damage.
Despite what must have been an unhappy professional experience, Miss Yennie is a trouper, and soon after the beginning of "Human Centipede 2" she optimistically looks forward to what she thinks will be a meeting with Quentin Tarantino. I can imagine her letter home: "Hi Mom and Dad! Thanks for not seeing my first movie! I've got great news! Tarantino wants to consider me!"
Alas, this is not to be. She is met by the singularly disquieting, definitely deprived of lots of things, Martin (Laurence R. Harvey), a pudgy, near-sighted, pear-headed, clammy-skinned, mentally disabled momma's boy who works as a security guard in a mostly-deserted subterranean parking garage. Since Martin very rarely ever says anything in this movie, how, you may ask, have I made my diagnosis of his mental condition? I submit to you that if this man spends his waking moments looking at the first Human Centipede movie over and over and over again, and wants to make his own version by connecting as many as 12 people, he is four tires short of a car.
Laurence R. Harvey is described as "a British performance artist." I raced off to the always helpful Google and discovered that his artistic career to date hasn't generated a single link. It may be that his performance art consists entirely of walking down the street as himself. But I believe he is coming back in Part III of this trilogy.
Martin kills a lot of people in this movie, in addition to sewing others together. Perhaps the message is that the first movie influenced its viewers to do sadistic and cruel acts. Since both films were made by the same man, Tom Six, it is inarguable that the first film inspired him to make the second.
The film is reprehensible, dismaying, ugly, artless and an affront to any notion, however remote, of human decency. It makes a point of Martin's lack of all surgical skills. He seems to have sewn his victims together with summer camp skills where you stitch the parts of cord together or something. I was left with this question after viewing: After Ashlynn Yennie's first movie role was in the first "Human Centipede" movie, and now her second is in "Human Centipede Two," do you think she'll leave show business?
The Human Centipede Part II - Movie Trailer
Despite what must have been an unhappy professional experience, Miss Yennie is a trouper, and soon after the beginning of "Human Centipede 2" she optimistically looks forward to what she thinks will be a meeting with Quentin Tarantino. I can imagine her letter home: "Hi Mom and Dad! Thanks for not seeing my first movie! I've got great news! Tarantino wants to consider me!"
Alas, this is not to be. She is met by the singularly disquieting, definitely deprived of lots of things, Martin (Laurence R. Harvey), a pudgy, near-sighted, pear-headed, clammy-skinned, mentally disabled momma's boy who works as a security guard in a mostly-deserted subterranean parking garage. Since Martin very rarely ever says anything in this movie, how, you may ask, have I made my diagnosis of his mental condition? I submit to you that if this man spends his waking moments looking at the first Human Centipede movie over and over and over again, and wants to make his own version by connecting as many as 12 people, he is four tires short of a car.
Laurence R. Harvey is described as "a British performance artist." I raced off to the always helpful Google and discovered that his artistic career to date hasn't generated a single link. It may be that his performance art consists entirely of walking down the street as himself. But I believe he is coming back in Part III of this trilogy.
Martin kills a lot of people in this movie, in addition to sewing others together. Perhaps the message is that the first movie influenced its viewers to do sadistic and cruel acts. Since both films were made by the same man, Tom Six, it is inarguable that the first film inspired him to make the second.
The film is reprehensible, dismaying, ugly, artless and an affront to any notion, however remote, of human decency. It makes a point of Martin's lack of all surgical skills. He seems to have sewn his victims together with summer camp skills where you stitch the parts of cord together or something. I was left with this question after viewing: After Ashlynn Yennie's first movie role was in the first "Human Centipede" movie, and now her second is in "Human Centipede Two," do you think she'll leave show business?
The Human Centipede Part II - Movie Trailer
Movie Review - The Human Centipede
It's not death itself that's so bad. It's what you might have to go through to get there. No horror film I've seen inflicts more terrible things on its victims than “The Human Centipede.” You would have to be very brave to choose this ordeal over simply being murdered. Maybe you'd need to also be insane.
I'm about to describe what happens to the film's victims. This will be a spoiler. I don't care, because (1) the details are common knowledge in horror film circles, and (2) if you don't know, you may be grateful to be warned. This is a movie I don't think I should be coy about.
OK. Dr. Heiter is a mad scientist. He was once a respected surgeon, but has now retreated to his luxurious home in the German forest, which contains an operating room in the basement. His skin has a sickly pallor, his hair is dyed black, his speech reminds us of a standard Nazi, and he gnashes his teeth. He is filled with hatred and vile perversion.
He drugs his victims and dumps them into his Mercedes. When they regain consciousness, they find themselves tied to hospital beds. He provides them with a little slide show to brief them on his plans. He will demonstrate his skills as a surgeon by — hey, listen, now you'd really better stop reading. What's coming next isn't so much a review as a public service announcement.
Heiter plans to surgically join his victims by sewing together their mouths and anuses, all in a row, so the food goes in at the front and comes out at the rear. They will move on their hands and knees like an insect. You don't want to be part of the Human Centipede at all, but you most certainly don't want to be in the middle. Why does he want to commit this atrocity? He is insane, as I've already explained.
Dieter Laser, who plays Dr. Heiter, takes the role with relentless sincerity. This is his 63rd acting role, but, poor guy, is seemingly the one he was born to play. Tom Six is apparently the director's real name. I learn his favourite actor is Klaus Kinski, he is an AK-47 enthusiast, and wears RAF sunglasses and Panama hats. Not the kind of guy you want to share your seat on a Ferris wheel. He is known to have said, “I get a rash from too much political correctness.”
The director makes, for example, effective use of the antiseptic interior of Heiter's labyrinthine home. Doors and corridors lead nowhere and anywhere. In a scene where the police come calling, Six wisely has Heiter almost encourage their suspicions. And there is a scene toward the end, as the Human Centipede attempts escape, that's so piteous, it transcends horror and approaches tragedy.
The members of the Centipede are Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie and Akihiro Kitamura. The Japanese actor screams in subtitled Japanese, perhaps because he will broaden the film's appeal among Asian horror fans. In the film's last half, the two actresses don't scream at all, if you follow me.
Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? How many stars would I give this? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don't shine.
The Human Centipede - Movie Trailer
I'm about to describe what happens to the film's victims. This will be a spoiler. I don't care, because (1) the details are common knowledge in horror film circles, and (2) if you don't know, you may be grateful to be warned. This is a movie I don't think I should be coy about.
OK. Dr. Heiter is a mad scientist. He was once a respected surgeon, but has now retreated to his luxurious home in the German forest, which contains an operating room in the basement. His skin has a sickly pallor, his hair is dyed black, his speech reminds us of a standard Nazi, and he gnashes his teeth. He is filled with hatred and vile perversion.
He drugs his victims and dumps them into his Mercedes. When they regain consciousness, they find themselves tied to hospital beds. He provides them with a little slide show to brief them on his plans. He will demonstrate his skills as a surgeon by — hey, listen, now you'd really better stop reading. What's coming next isn't so much a review as a public service announcement.
Heiter plans to surgically join his victims by sewing together their mouths and anuses, all in a row, so the food goes in at the front and comes out at the rear. They will move on their hands and knees like an insect. You don't want to be part of the Human Centipede at all, but you most certainly don't want to be in the middle. Why does he want to commit this atrocity? He is insane, as I've already explained.
Dieter Laser, who plays Dr. Heiter, takes the role with relentless sincerity. This is his 63rd acting role, but, poor guy, is seemingly the one he was born to play. Tom Six is apparently the director's real name. I learn his favourite actor is Klaus Kinski, he is an AK-47 enthusiast, and wears RAF sunglasses and Panama hats. Not the kind of guy you want to share your seat on a Ferris wheel. He is known to have said, “I get a rash from too much political correctness.”
The director makes, for example, effective use of the antiseptic interior of Heiter's labyrinthine home. Doors and corridors lead nowhere and anywhere. In a scene where the police come calling, Six wisely has Heiter almost encourage their suspicions. And there is a scene toward the end, as the Human Centipede attempts escape, that's so piteous, it transcends horror and approaches tragedy.
The members of the Centipede are Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie and Akihiro Kitamura. The Japanese actor screams in subtitled Japanese, perhaps because he will broaden the film's appeal among Asian horror fans. In the film's last half, the two actresses don't scream at all, if you follow me.
Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? How many stars would I give this? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don't shine.
The Human Centipede - Movie Trailer
Thursday, 8 May 2014
5.20am and another sleepless night...
The title of this post says it all really another sleepless night listening to my music, I think I got an hour of sleep :-(
My online horror group
I created and run an online horror Group called 'All Things Horror' (if your interested in joining such, get in touch with me for the details).
I was checking it last night and was amazed to see that we have nearly 14,500 members!!! I was also proud to see the members talking about meeting at horror movie sites namely The Overlook Hotel from The Shining.
I'm happy I have created friendships between people.
I was checking it last night and was amazed to see that we have nearly 14,500 members!!! I was also proud to see the members talking about meeting at horror movie sites namely The Overlook Hotel from The Shining.
I'm happy I have created friendships between people.
Proud father...
So proud of my boy Connor, he is doing ever so well at school, attends an after school club everyday, take swimming lessons twice a week, has joined a football club every Thursday, now has weekly piano lessons, and goes to Karate every week...not bad for being only 7!!!!
Saturday, 3 May 2014
Movie Review: Pain & Gain
Much has been written in recent years on the apparent death of the American Dream. Corporate profits are at all time highs, wages have either remained stagnant or fallen behind, and unemployment continues to rise. More people have been leaving the workforce than are obtaining jobs, and the work that is available is increasingly part-time employment with no health insurance, stability, paid time off, or any other benefits. In light of all of this, how likely is it that most Americans will be able to attain the dream of controlling their own destiny? How can one obtain independence when they are not guaranteed a living wage on any type of long-term basis? How likely is it that the upcoming “Millenial” generation will be able to pay for all of the foreign wars and for Social Security/Medicare when most work part-time at Starbucks in spite of degrees?
These questions are all irrelevant, as the American Dream never dies. It just transforms and mutates into different forms across the decades, welcome to Michael Bay’s new classic, Pain and Gain.
You know your life has reached either a new high or a new low when you watch a film that includes a scene where a man takes an injection to the dick in order to obtain an erection, and you keep watching it. You don’t turn it off and do something better with your life. In my case, that may be because watching movies like this is my life, but whatever. I could have fired up Roadhouse instead, but I did not. I persevered, and was richly rewarded for my efforts. For Michael Bay has finally done it: he has made something other than a Transformers movie. Welcome back, Michael. Now go make Transformers 4 and disappoint me all over again.
Pain and Gain tells the story of three personal trainers who channel the forces of pandering self-help philosophies, sociopathic tendencies, and All-American bullshit in an effort to get rich or die trying. Mark Wahlberg plays the lead Douchebag, who schemes to kidnap a small business owner and force him to sign over his property and business by repeatedly beating him. Anthony Mackie plays Douchebag #2, who goes along for the ride with Wahlberg’s character so he can impress his overweight white girlfriend. Incidentally, he met his girlfriend while visiting a clinic for erectile issues. A classic love story if there ever was one. Finally, The Rock plays Douchebag #3, who is not really a douchebag, to be honest. He is a guy with pre-existing mental issues, a substance abuse problem, and possible gay feelings. He is the only sympathetic character of the three, and also the only one who avoids the death penalty.
Rounding out the cast are Tony Shalhoub as the small business owner, Ed Harris as a retired private detective, and Bar Paly as an exotic dancer who hangs out with the douchebags in exchange for money and/or drugs. Bar Paly’s character may be the most honest person in the whole movie. At one point, she has sex with Douchebag #1 outside a club while bent over the back of a parked car, and she engages in these sexual relations without care or judgment. By the way, the movie includes an educational bit where Wahlberg’s vigorous thrusting causes the parked car to roll forward and hit the back of the car in front of it. Always remember to put on your parking brake!!
Wahlberg’s character is a sociopath who commits kidnapping, murder, racketeering, and whatever else. Mackie’s character is pathetic, lame, and accidentally murders a woman by injecting her with too much horse tranquilizer. Both face considerable difficulty in using power tools for non-standard corpse-dismemberment purposes. In typical fashion, Wahlberg’s character blames the fact that the chainsaw was manufactured in China rather than his own incompetence. It’s never your fault, even when it is your fault. Modern America in a nutshell.
In the end, Bar Paly’s stripper character lives to have sex another day. Two of them sleeps with her repeatedly and all of them treat her like garbage, but in the end she overcomes them and prevails. She is the true embodiment of the American Dream. In fact, maybe she’s the middle class, and the douchebags are Corporate America, Wall Street, and the Federal Reserve. The same metaphor applies. Michael Bay really outdid himself here. We should be proud.
Overall, I learned quite a bit from this film. You don’t need to murder or steal from people to assert yourself. Beyond all the strip club scenes, the steroid injections, the beatings, the murders, the lies, the dildos, the cocaine, the body parts, the running from the cops, and the mispronunciations of the word “vagina”, there emerges one truth: America is whatever you want it to be.
Bottom line 'Pain & Gain' was a great movie. Check it out.
Pain & Gain - Movie Trailer
These questions are all irrelevant, as the American Dream never dies. It just transforms and mutates into different forms across the decades, welcome to Michael Bay’s new classic, Pain and Gain.
You know your life has reached either a new high or a new low when you watch a film that includes a scene where a man takes an injection to the dick in order to obtain an erection, and you keep watching it. You don’t turn it off and do something better with your life. In my case, that may be because watching movies like this is my life, but whatever. I could have fired up Roadhouse instead, but I did not. I persevered, and was richly rewarded for my efforts. For Michael Bay has finally done it: he has made something other than a Transformers movie. Welcome back, Michael. Now go make Transformers 4 and disappoint me all over again.
Pain and Gain tells the story of three personal trainers who channel the forces of pandering self-help philosophies, sociopathic tendencies, and All-American bullshit in an effort to get rich or die trying. Mark Wahlberg plays the lead Douchebag, who schemes to kidnap a small business owner and force him to sign over his property and business by repeatedly beating him. Anthony Mackie plays Douchebag #2, who goes along for the ride with Wahlberg’s character so he can impress his overweight white girlfriend. Incidentally, he met his girlfriend while visiting a clinic for erectile issues. A classic love story if there ever was one. Finally, The Rock plays Douchebag #3, who is not really a douchebag, to be honest. He is a guy with pre-existing mental issues, a substance abuse problem, and possible gay feelings. He is the only sympathetic character of the three, and also the only one who avoids the death penalty.
Rounding out the cast are Tony Shalhoub as the small business owner, Ed Harris as a retired private detective, and Bar Paly as an exotic dancer who hangs out with the douchebags in exchange for money and/or drugs. Bar Paly’s character may be the most honest person in the whole movie. At one point, she has sex with Douchebag #1 outside a club while bent over the back of a parked car, and she engages in these sexual relations without care or judgment. By the way, the movie includes an educational bit where Wahlberg’s vigorous thrusting causes the parked car to roll forward and hit the back of the car in front of it. Always remember to put on your parking brake!!
Wahlberg’s character is a sociopath who commits kidnapping, murder, racketeering, and whatever else. Mackie’s character is pathetic, lame, and accidentally murders a woman by injecting her with too much horse tranquilizer. Both face considerable difficulty in using power tools for non-standard corpse-dismemberment purposes. In typical fashion, Wahlberg’s character blames the fact that the chainsaw was manufactured in China rather than his own incompetence. It’s never your fault, even when it is your fault. Modern America in a nutshell.
In the end, Bar Paly’s stripper character lives to have sex another day. Two of them sleeps with her repeatedly and all of them treat her like garbage, but in the end she overcomes them and prevails. She is the true embodiment of the American Dream. In fact, maybe she’s the middle class, and the douchebags are Corporate America, Wall Street, and the Federal Reserve. The same metaphor applies. Michael Bay really outdid himself here. We should be proud.
Overall, I learned quite a bit from this film. You don’t need to murder or steal from people to assert yourself. Beyond all the strip club scenes, the steroid injections, the beatings, the murders, the lies, the dildos, the cocaine, the body parts, the running from the cops, and the mispronunciations of the word “vagina”, there emerges one truth: America is whatever you want it to be.
Bottom line 'Pain & Gain' was a great movie. Check it out.
Pain & Gain - Movie Trailer
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