watch tHe skies

So I’m stuck in Bracknell for the week. For those of you who have visited Bracknell and survived, for those of you wondering - it’s a bit like Slough to look at, but with less nice concrete and more, er, desolate landscape.

The upside of working away is that at least I get to watch a few movies, and last night I sat down to watch Jackass Number Two.

I’m a big fan of the first movie - it’s daft, brutal and at times painful to watch, but overall it is really really funny - I can’t watch it all the way through without pausing to get my breath back.

Number Two laughs at Jackass. The bungie wedgie is just too tame when compared to anaconda ball pits and snakes biting penises. By the time that Steve-O has a leech attached to his eyeball, I’d kind of gone past laughing really hard, and moved to really appalled. So whilst Jackass Number Two is funny in bits, for the most part, it’s just damn wrong.

Saying that, some of it is so funny I can’t even think about it without laughing - the fart mask and the big green ball made cry laughing, but for the most part it is uber puerile and not as funny as the first one. I do hope that they don’t make another one, because I’m pretty sure that they’ve all used up their 9 lives, and surely people will die if they make Jackass 3…

Still, if you are stuck in a hotel in Bracknell, then it’s still an entertaining 90 minutes, and much safer than venturing on to the streets.

Kung Fu movies are a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine. I love stuff like the Transporter, the more over the top the fighting is, the more fun I have.

So when DOA: Dead Or Alive dropped through the letterbox from my rental company I looked forward to some top class craziness from the assistant director from Transporter 1&2, The One and Kiss Of the Dragon - all top class OTT Kung Fu movies that are just pure popcorn fun.

I was also aware that DOA was based on the video game that involves cgi ladies bouncing majestically around a virtual beach volleyball pitch. Bonus points already.

And so I settled down to watch the movie whilst Jen was out, and was pleased to see plenty of eye candy in the form of major wire-fu and lovely lasses like Holly Vallance, Jaime Pressly and Devon Aoki high-kicking their way through a tournament arranged by the up-to-no-good Donovan (hammed up like a butcher’s shop by Eric Roberts). Fortunately they have brought enough bikinis with them to survive through to the final.

Sure enough, the tournament is a front for Donovan’s naughtiness and before you know it our girls are fighting for their lives and hoping to escape from the island. This is a completely potty movie - it’s like a video game with real actors - even the KO’s are just like a fighting game, and as soon as characters are out of the competition, they are gone, gone, gone, we don’t see them again! The fighting is beautifully choreographed, and the fights are set in typically dramatic locations, and the only thing that gets in the way is that pesky need to have some sort of story.

It is worth mentioning that this film is a lot of fun - sure it’s daft, sure it’s loopy, but it’s fun and, particularly for male viewers, chock full of eye candy. One for the gents to hire when the missus is out shopping, but whatever you do don’t expect her to like you if you make it your Valentines’ movie… (more…)

My missus is a big fan of Jason Statham, she has enjoyed his previous movies such as The Transporter and Lock Stock, so when his latest offering, Crank, hit the shops it was an easy decision to rent it.

Jason Statham is a hitman who wakes up to find that he’s been killed. A lethal poison has been injected in to him that will eventually stop his heart. His only chance is to keep his heart pumping fast enough to hold back the poison and  allow him to seek a cure and take revenge on his murderers. This results in a frantic race through Los Angeles, leaving a trail of death and destruction as he pieces together the reasons for his assassination, and seeking opportunities to get his heart pumping even quicker, taking him through car chases, gunfights and even a quick stop to see his girlfriend.

The movie is very stylishly directed, giving you a real first person perspective of our hero, it is also fused with some rather peculiar humour and plotting, which conspires to keep you guessing throughout the movie, such that I really didn’t have any idea of the ending until (and possibly after) the credits rolled. I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t more action in it - it’s a highly kinetic movie but it’s not a Transporter movie so you don’t get the cool kung fu sequences of that genre, and most of the action is actually character oriented - check out the sequence where his girlfriend drops her handbag and he is trying to keep her from seeing him taking out the various goons that have been sent to finish him off.

All in all it is a good, but quite dark and bizarre film that evades classification in to a genre and is quite an interesting experience. Jenny’s view of it - she thought it was good and was pleased to see Statham’s bum - and I thought she liked him for his acting skills…

Just noticed that Play are selling the original versions of the Star Wars movies for £8 each!! Absolute bargain if you want to see the untainted versions where Han shoots first!

It with utter dismay that I read yesterday that New Line have decided not to bring Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh in to produce the two planned Hobbit movies (one based on the book itself and another based on writings and sketches by Tolkien of the stories that linked the Hobbit and Rings trilogy).

It appears that due to an outstanding lawsuit between Jackson and New Line regarding their accounting practices, that many hoped would be resolved before a director was selected, New Line have decided to look elsewhere for the talent to make these movies. You can read Peter and Fran’s official statement here.

Now given that the LOTR movies were not only amazingly good, but also incredibly profitable, it seems to me that New Line are really shooting themselves in the foot with this approach, with what is the equivalent of taking Star Wars Episode III away from George Lucas. Give the movies to Jackson and anticipation would be at such a peak when the Hobbit was released, that we could seriously be looking at the highest grossing movie ever. With someone else, the negative reaction with the fanbase will probably still be around when the first movie opens.

So personally I think that New Line should grow up, settle the case and set about making two great movies to sit alongside the majesty of the Lord Of The Rings movies.

So we caught Bond’s latest outing, the Bond Begins Casino Royale, showing us for the first time, the genesis of a super-agent.

The first Bond film to sport a Fleming title since The Living Daylights, we see Bond at the start of his 007 career, taking on the terrorists and their banker, the villainous Le Chiffre. Facing him with guns and a poker hand, the film is a heady mix of non-stop action and tense poker faces, combined with some top class Bond girls, a couple of Aston Martins and some neat one liners.

It’s a very different Bond film from previous efforts. Gone are Q branch and their wonderful gadgets. Gone is the Bond swagger and the bulletproof superspy. Bond gets well and truly beaten several times and the baddies are far more brutal than the comic book Blofeld types.

And to complement this new style, Daniel Craig puts in an excellent turn as the rough around the edges Bond - brutal, deadly and with a chip on his shoulder the size of an Aston Martin. I look forward to seeing where he takes Bond in the next movie, as he becomes more of the spy we know and love.

All in all it’s a good movie, with some of the best action sequences that I’ve seen in a movie for some time. This is also coupled for some nice dialogue scenes - Bond’s head to head with Vesper is great, and even the poker scenes are soaked in tension. For me, the only thing that lets the movie down is an overly long and badly paced third act, which brings the movie rating from great to very good. Still, worth seeing for the set pieces alone, though be careful if you suffer from vertigo.

Bond is back and on the strength of this, he will be around for a while.

Is it me or is tere an enormous amount of hype surrounding the new Bond movie; Casino Royale? Ford have been telling us for weeks that Bond drives a ford, the film reviews have been unbelievably positive, Sony are encouraging us to buy their 007 memory sticks and every Bond movie has been re-re-re-released on DVD. Even our local radio station has been playing Bond themes every hour on the hour.

So it had better be good. Granny is looking after Ben tomorrow whilst we sneak off to a 6pm showing. Deluxe seats too - very nice, if only they were fitted in an Aston Martin…

So I finally got around to watching Mission Impossible III - a film I desperately wanted to see at the cinema but couldn’t so as soon as it hit the shelves on monday I was there to buy it, and back home to watch it… (more…)

When you are looking after an ickle fella only 5 months young, your chances of getting to the cinema are severely limited. So I love it when a movie comes out on DVD in North America before it reaches the silver screen here in Blighty.

And despite Adam Sandler having produced a few turkeys recently, his films are still consistently entertaining enough to warrant a night in with one. So when Click was released on DVD shortly before it hit the big screen here, I nabbed a copy and we settled down to watch.

Starring Sandler as Michael Newman, a workaholic architect whose boss (The Hoffmeister himself) is flogging him to death on the promise of making a partner after the next big job. As a result, Michael’s wife (the highly comely Kate Beckinsale) and his two kids are increasingly sidelined in his life.

In a slightly contrived search for a universal remote control, Newman finds himself in electronics shop of the highly eccentric Morty (played with spacey aplomb by Chrisopher Walken), who offers him a universal remote that controls everything. And I mean everything. Newman soon realises that the remote can do more than mute his nagging wife - it allows him to fast forward through the boring stuff so that he can get his work done.

However, as with similar morality tales, the gift soon becomes a curse as he finds himself jumping enormous periods of his life as if on autopilot, leaving him to rue the big moments of his family’s life that he has passed by.

It’s a funny movie, fairly simple humour, necessary really as the story itself moves at quite a pace. It’s plenty of fun although after a while I “got it” and didn’t really need to see the movie moving in to a future in Bicentennial Man stylee. For a film of this type it carries a strong message; live in the moment, don’t wish your life away looking towards the future, something that perhaps resonates with me now having a little fella to bring up. However there was one aspect of the movie that really annoyed me - Newman fast forwards through things rather than the obvious answer. If you need to get your work done…PAUSE!

Anyhoo one to catch when you get a chance…

Jenny was going stir crazy last night and needed to get out of the house. Ben was stocked up on carrot so our local babysitter (Jen’s Mum) looked after the bairn whilst we headed over to the cinema to catch a movie.

The Devil Wears Prada wasn’t my first choice, however The Departed and World Trade Center were both considered a little heavy for a wednesday night, and Jen fancied a chick flick so off we went.

To my surprise, it wasn’t a chick flick at all. It looked like it was going to be one, but it turned out to be a smart, funny look at the modern challenge of maintaining a healthy work \ life balance, and the stereotypical nightmare boss, whilst neatly avoiding all of the cliches of chick flick type movies. The overarching “will you sell your soul to the devil for a good career” theme was great and very relevant, whilst the performances from all of the main characters made the film very watchable. Scene stealer was of course Meryl Streep, whose modern day cross between Gordon Gekko and Cruella DeVille is an absolute pleasure to watch.

Finally, worth a mention is the photography and design. those of you who know me know that I am no sartorial expert, however some of the photography and sets, combined with the high-end fashion, worked brilliantly, particularly when the story moved to Paris, I got this deja-vu feeling that I was watching an Audrey Hepburn movie.

Overall a very good film with something to enjoy for most. Great soundtrack too.