War of the Animations Results in 1 Death: The Legacies

It’s been a while since I updated this blog. A combination of Uni work, the odd bit of real journalism and the futile attempts at some form of social life have blocked my attempts to write about some of the most disappointing films I’ve seen in the past few months, so now, just like the first post started. It’s stupid o’ clock and I’ve realised I’ve got time to do an update before the day starts.
Since we last met I joined Lovefilm, a great way for me to get all the movies I ever wanted to see without me taking the lonely walk down to Blockbusters to be greeted by a bunch of ignorant prats who seem to know nothing about film. Two of the films I’ve seen since this time are the two biggest animated films in the fast year or so: Toy Story 3 and Shrek 4. Both had been hyped to fuck since we all knew that this would be the last time we saw Woody do something selfish or Shrek hold back from telling Donkey what a prick he is.
Toy Story 3 started as it meant to go on. Diving us headfirst into a sea of depression as Woody, Buzz and ... you know the other ones, risk been thrown away as Andy moves away to college. Of course it’s all a terrible mistake because no 18 year old wants to throw away the toys he hasn’t played with in a decade, but still they end up at a preschool, where Lots of Huggin’ Bear isn’t giving out hugs but prison sentences in the nursery section where toys are ripped apart. From here on in it becomes like every other Toy Story, they escape in ways that make the toys look a damn sight more intelligent than most humans.
All this would be fine if it hadn’t been done funnier in the first one, and in a more touching way in the second. I know it’s a kids’ film but do we really buy into the idea that Andy gets upset about losing them? Did the writers believe that by sugar coating the idea that things are expendable it would change how people are? Kids are the most fickle creatures out there, always after the new set of stickers or the latest toy, half of the underwritten characters would have been binned a month after the Christmas where misguided parents saw it in Toys R Us and thought “Oh Andy has got a dog with a spring in the middle!”
Shrek 4 was even worse. Shrek is made to look like a truly selfish prick in this one, more so than before as he trades the day he was born for one day as an ogre with no responsibilities. No doubt the carnage that ensues is a way of telling kids “be grateful for what you have”, I took “stay away from magic midgets”. Having traded the day, Shrek has to regain the love of Fiona before midnight or else he disappears, the only problem is that Donkey doesn’t know him, Fiona’s a warrior woman who has no time for Shrek’s bitching, something that I will admit was a nice touch, and all of Far Far Away is under the control of Rumplestiltskin.
Personally I think letting Shrek disappear would have been the better option, that way when Dreamwork Animation’s next flick bombs at least they can’t bring him back. The attempts to win Fiona back are cringe worthy, the idea that she somehow falls in love with him again is stupid. If most are agreed that the smallest changes in the past created huge ramifications in the present then surely Shrek not been born would have created a huge enough change to eliminate all the Shrek sequels? Ok, so tackling our own insignificance might be a tad heavy for kids, but fuck them, they need to know sooner or later.
Once, the films that preceded these non-starters were legendary; the funniest, cleverest animations since The Lion King, without all the death, and now they’ve been destroyed by subpar sequels all in the desire to make money. If these films are teaching our kids anything it’s that as long as the people above are making profit it doesn’t matter what shit you produce.

Rain Man - Retard Meets Dustin Hoffman

A couple of months ago my girlfriend bought me 1001 Films to See Before You Die and since then I have scoured it's pages finding what I should watch next. It would be fair to say that it has controlled my life a wee bit. One of the films hidden within was Rain Man, a film I had heard a lot about but never got round to seeing, and when I finally did take the plunge I couldn't quite understand how it had ended up on a list that included The Godfather, All the President's Men, Breaking the Waves etc.

The film begins with a twat (played reliably as ever by Tom Cruise who has made a career out playing this same guy) who is greedy and angry and hurt because his Daddy didn't love him. Said Daddy dies, which rudely interupts Cruise's plan to watch his car dealership go under while screwing his girlfriend, and to really dig the boot in poor old Tom gets none of the millions he really didn't deserve, luckily Tom shows us why he didn't deserve it by reacting in a truly prickish way.

Now the film gets interesting as Tom ends up meeting his brother (by chance as he greedily tries to reclaim the millions he is in no way owed). Raymond, the brother, has severe autism and is played by Dustin Hoffman who chews up every scene, overshadowing Tom Cruise everytime. Cruise kidnaps Raymond in an attempt to blackmail the guardian of his inheritance but grows to love him, at least that's how the story was supposed to go.

Instead Cruise's character is so intensly dislikable that you don't feel any sympathy for him, feeling bad instead for Raymond who should have stabbed his cunt of a younger brother as soon as he saw him. Backstories are revealed and you can't help but feel Raymond should have smothered his brother at birth, and when Cruise is pulled up by a casino manager after using his brother's incredible memory to count cards I found myself hoping we were in for a deleted scene from Casino where Tom has his hands smashed in with a hammer and his head put in a vice. Even at the end where Cruise admits he was wrong and confesses all out brotherly love it felt like he was only doing it because he felt he was entitled to his brother, not because his brother wanted it.

It's a film that had the potential to be a full on weepy, where grown men hug their friends and tell them how much they mean to each other, and it is worth watching just for Dustin Hoffman's performance which is equal parts eye opening and heart warming but Tom Cruise ruins it. His character Charlie Babbat is overrun by greed and any regret he feels by the end is already tainted by the truly prickish way he acts throughout a good 4/5ths of the film.

Worth watching; yes. I wouldn't recommend repeat viewings though as I nearly kicked the screen in just watching Tom Cruise the once.

Doctors - the cure for daytime tele?

Daytime television is the pit in which every untalented cretin that ever insulted a combination of our senses is flung and forced upon us in waves of repetitive, badly written nonsense. This aside, there is the occasional gem that appears in this mist of dirge and one of these is Doctors.

For those who aren't University students Doctors is a soap based in the Midlands at a Uni surgery in the fictional town of Leatherbridge and is shown Monday to Friday at lunchtime. It's location in a doctor's surgery allows the writers to create entertaining semi-permanent and cameo characters which give more variety than watching the same people sleep with each other in mainstays of misery Coronation Street and Eastenders, and the characters who do hold major parts actually hold some joy in their lives which no doubt cheers the viewers up after the BBC news.

It's crap yes, but it's enjoyable crap which is surprisingly well acted and well written considering its budget compared to the bigger shows in this genre of television and the creators aren't afraid to take risks, stepping away from the copycat nature of soaps and gently scratching the surface of bigger issues.

So there you have it: a British soap that interjects some humour into proceedings, and is of a higher quality than any of the Aussie imports. It's funny, quirky and a brilliant little guilty pleasure that shows it's not all affairs, murder and tram crashes.

The Grudge (Ju-on) - Boredom, weakly disguised as scares

This, like a lot of the original Japanese horrors which have been raped and pillaged by Hollywood, is held in high regard among cinephiles and having heard a lot about it, including the outrageous claim that it is scarier than Ringu, I decided to rent it. It was late when I put the DVD in and I sat on the bed with my girlfriend waiting to be scared, and we were...by the menu screen.

That was the most scared we got. The screams and jolting images of ghosts on the main menu pretty much disappeared and we stepped into an hour and a half of sheer boredom. Sure it starts promisingly enough, with the first segment been genuinely creepy as the first of the female horror fodder catches glimpses of the spirits in an old woman's house, then it rapidly grows repetitive as pretty much exactly the same thing happens to various other people. Literally the only difference is that sometimes a black mist takes them instead of a blue little shit, or that whining blue bint and the whole thing becomes yawn worthy.

I don't expect jump of your seat thrills, or full on gore. Ringu didn't work because of that one climatic scene, Ringu worked because it took it's time building a true sense of dread which made the final, fairly simple scare all the more effective. It's a root that some of the best horrors have taken; films like: Don't Look Now, The Wicker Man and Audition. Films that a simple scare and repeat it like Ju-on include: the Halloween sequels, the Friday the 13th sequels, and any Scream rip off from the late nineties.

Honestly, which category has the better selection? If you think it's the second then this blog might disappoint you in the long run.

Avatar - Cameron blows the budget once again

James Cameron has an amazing ability. I'm not talking about his ability to make huge blockbusters because let's face it; we know he can do that. I'm talking about his ability to take what should be an epic story with a big meaning and reducing it down to an underwritten, overly clichéd love story. I mean look at the film he did before Avatar, you know that one about some ship sinking. He took one of the most tragic, non wartime disasters and made it all about two people with some overly sentimental, Spielberg-esque bookmarks to really drive the nail in.

Twelve years later and he takes what could have been a powerful film about our attitudes towards other cultures and the environment and then smeared the same shitty love story that dominated Titanic all over it. I'm surprised he didn't add a side story to Aliens where Sigourney Weaver and Paul Reiser fall in love despite their different lifestyles. That's basically what both Titanic and Avatar are; two people from completely different worlds (Avatar literally, Titanic metaphorically) thrust violently together, with some heartstring pulling added in, while the story Cameron should have been telling is thrown to the side like a technophile's outdated iPad.

Now I know what you're all thinking. You're all thinking that I'm crazy. That Avatar can't have been that bad because it's the highest grossing film ever. That it looks so beautiful and that Cameron created whole new ways of filming to put his vision into action and that it got nominated for NINE Oscars.

I put it to you that Oscars do not always mean quality (and besides that it only won three of the fucking things, none of which are any representation of quality, more a representation of how it looks). Secondly, since Cameron had been working on this turgid, overlong cliché for nearly fifteen years you'd have thought he could a written a story that resembled something original, or at least could have thrown some of that 200 million at a screenwriter.

Style over substance might work for balls out action films, but when you're trying to make a point with your films you need a little more substance than boy-meets-girl...