If there’s one thing the British Film Industry is fantastic at, it’s toadying up to Hollywood. There’s very few actors writers or directors, who won’t bugger off to Los Angeles at the first sniff of blockbuster supporting role, or the chance to have their dream project re-shaped beyond all recognition to fit a demographic whilst pocketing a huge wodge (I make an exception for craftspeople because they are paid a fraction of the cost of ‘the talent’ and by necessity have to go where the money is).

And last night saw the annual celebration of our ‘special relationship’: The Baftas.

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the Baftas. Years ago I despised its insularity and refusal to recognise popular film, unless it was British. Now I despise it’s willingness to suck up to Hollywood’s great and good in an attempt to feel important, which, quite frankly, it isn’t. It’s a rather sad exercise in pretending it’s part of the Hollywood machine, whilst desperately trying to retain it’s own identity. And as a result it ends up falling between two stools and looking rather foolish.

Until a few years back the Baftas were a little bit awkward. It operated very strict rules regarding which films could qualify, insisting on a ‘proper’ release and a cut off point of release of December 31st.

This led to the, seemingly, embarrassing situation where Oscar would be awarding those films released in the month or two before the awards, whilst Bafta would invariably be bestowing honours on last years Oscar winners (or in the case of Silence of the Lambs, next years)

This made it very difficult for Bafta to attract top (Hollywood) stars, as they would be there promoting films that were anything up to a year old, and therefore, in business terms, no longer worthy of their attention.

In addition to this, the Baftas were usually scheduled a week or two AFTER the Oscars. Again, the stars, by this point would consider their ‘press-the-flesh duties finished until the awards season started up again in November. The point of attending award ceremonies is to get your face out there, promote the film and maybe take home a paperweight. By the time Bafta came around the films they were promoting were all but done at the box office, and they had no other awards to promote themselves for.

This led to a very bizarre ceremony a few years back, where Bafta hosted TWO shows simultaneously, one in London, for British winners, and one in LA for those American stars who deemed London unworthy of their time. It was dreadful.

The decision in 2000 to shift it forward in the calendar resulted in more Hollywood stars shipping over in a desperate bid to market themselves while the Oscar voting was still ongoing. It also, rather more controversially, set in motion a change in Bafta rules which led to the rather embarrassing situation last night, where all the Best Film nominees had only been released in the past five weeks.

But wait! Bafta rules state, to be eligible a film must have been released in the previous calendar year? I quote from Bafta’s website “Films that open between 1 January and 6 February 2009 inclusive may be ‘qualified’ by Distributors by being screened to Academy Film Voting Members by Thursday 18 December 2008.”

So, the best film of 2008, is actually one which had one screening late in the year, but was only released to the public in 2009. This is ONLY there so that Bafta can be seen to be honouring the same films as its American counterpart, and to attract Hollywood A-listers who may be in town promoting their Oscar-baiting wares (this year, for instance, Brad Pitt was in town promoting Benjamin Button, which had been on release for a whole THREE DAYS before the ceremony at which it walked off with three awards, but was nowhere to be seen when the nominations were announced).

Quite simply, it makes us look ridiculous. The Oscars have always been ridiculous (as most award ceremonies are) because it’s never really been about the ‘Best’ movies or the ‘best’ performances. It’s always been about politics, public feeling (how else do you explain the feel-good Chicago taking home Best Picture at the first post 9-11 awards?) and celebrating itself.

The Baftas have become nothing more than yet another Oscar barometer, alongside the Golden Globes, and the various Screen Guilds seemingly in every major city in the USA.

No other international film awards chase Hollywood acceptance as much as we do.

Maybe the case for the defence is we need American dollars at Pinewood/Shepperton (bestowed an award last night) to keep out industry going. But the French and Germans don’t have the facilities and craftspeople that we do (sor so we are constantly told) but their film industries are very healthy, and in fact actively repel American colonialism in their cinemas (there’s an interesting article here, which argues that this is a bad thing, but it’s a fascinating read).

Bafta needs to grow some balls, frankly. It needs to reinstate the 31st December deadline, and insist on a minimum number of screens to qualify as a ‘release’; it needs to stop trying to anticipate what Uncle Oscar is going to do, and give awards to those it genuinely believes to be worthy winners; but by the same token it needs to be less back-slappingly pleased with itself. If it wants to reward British films, then make it a British films only awards, but if it wants to be seen as a fair and open awards, it needs to stop simply aping the Americans at their own game.

If Brad Pitt doesn’t want to come, then fuck him. What’s the point anyway? You only want him there because the BBC will give up the lucrative rights if there isn’t enough stars. And what do you do when they stars are there? You ask Sharon Stone and Goldie Hawn to give out awards!

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 Wayhay! There’s just a week to go until the most pointless horror remake since… er… the last one, so in honour of Friday the 13th‘s place in horror movie lore, it’s time to assess one of the many films which appeared in its blood-soaked wake.

Sleepaway Camp was not the first film to attempt to cash in Friday the 13th‘s success. That particular award, most probably, goes to the Weinstein’s The Burning. A great film for gore fans thanks to Tom Savini, but also overall utterly dreadful, despite early appearances by Holly Hunter, Fisher Stevens and Jason Alexander (and, no, he didn’t have much hair then either).

And Sleepaway Camp appeared in 1983, around the same time that Friday the 13th was entering it’s 3rd film in the series. Yet, somehow, it managed to not only be successful, but also retain a rabid cult support that lasts to this day, including TWO competing ‘offical’ fan clubs.

In fairness, whilst Sleepaway Camp incorporates many familiar slasher film conventions, it also rejects just as many. We may get POV stalking shots, but we don’t get blood splattered all over the place. Only one murder is particularly gory. The others are very cleverly designed and directed to leave the worst excesses to your imagination, which is, of course, much worse.

Following a tragic boating accident in which her brother and father are killed, Angela is sent to live with her eccetric Aunt Martha. In the first of many bizarre scenes the introduction to Martha not only makes us think she’s a washed up soap actress, due to her exaggeratted acting style (she’s actually a doctor, suppossedly), but we also see she has the largest hands in the world.

Anyhoo, Angela and her cousin Ricky are packed off to summer camp for skinny dipping, volleyball and peadophile cooks. (I’m not making this up, I swear… they actually make a joke about the fact one of the cooks is a nonce! Ah, happy days.)

Angela is a tad shy, and upsets a lot of people by refusing to speak, or eat, until she takes a shine to Ricky’s friend Paul, a dead ringer for Doogie Howser.

Slowly eveyone who upsets Angela is put to the sword, or rather the boiling pan of water, the sea snakes and, of course, that hunting knife confiscated by the camp counselors, before we get to the end (I won’t give away the ending but will get back to it in a bit).

This is all played out against the now very familiar backdrop of hormonal teenagers, but everything here seems slightly off, compared to Friday the 13th or The Burning.

On top of the lack of obvious gore, the other classic element of the slasher film, gratuitous nudity, is also missing. In the one scene where nudity, gratuitous or otherwise, would normally have been included (the inevitable shower scene), the camera stays resolutely just above the nipples. Even the skinny dipping scene only results in some spotty looking men’s bums.

This may be a result of the fact that unlike its predecessors, Sleepaway Camp, focusses on the KIDS, rather than the camp’s almost-adult staff. Sometimes, it’s difficult to tell which is which, such as the dickhead jock who hits Angela with a waterbomb. he was a guest apparently, but looks at least 20 years old.

What it does have is some of the finest kids swearing ever committed to film. In the waterbomb scene alone, Ricky manages at least two each of ‘cocksucker’, ‘motherfucker’ as well as various ‘pricks’ and ‘fucks’ throughout the duration. And he’s suppossed to be about 13. Good work, fella!

But does a lack of gore and T&A make for a bad movie? Not when the fashions on display are probably the most terrifying thing in the movie. Now, I may have only been a kid in 1983, but I certainly don’t remember wearing shorts as tight as the ones on display here. These things look like they could cause serious damage to the male anatomy. Not to mention the camp chief’s golf trousers, or his knee-high black socks with shorts and sandals combo.

So, seemingly, lacking in all the ingredients neccessary for a hit, how has Sleepaway Camp retained such affection? Two words… The Ending.

Watching it for the first time, and knowing how it ends, I could easily spot the hints dropped throughout. But if you are a Sleepaway virgin, it may genuinely shock you. And that’s all I’m saying.

Sleepaway Camp is great fun. As with just about every slasher from the era, you know pretty much what you’re going to get from frame one, but it does have the ability to surprise you once or twice. It’s murders are positioned like clockwork throughout the running time and it’s certainly never dull.

If I had one complaint it would be the decision to shoot the last half an hour in almost total darkness (though this could be due to me still trying to find the right settings on my TV).

If you like your horror cheesy, with a pair of tight shorts, you could do far worse. Like watching the F13 remake, probably.

Trailer

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Richard Curtis is such an enigma, I swear he has an evil doppleganger who is going around trying to bismirch his good name.

How else can you explain that the same man who wrote Blackadder also created The Vicar of Dibley? Or that th eman who gave us the witty and emotional Four Weddings and a Funeral also gave us the cynical, emotionless Notting Hill?

 (And the least said about Love Actually the better, except that Lady Scaramanga has vowed never to watch it again, and she’s seen Notting Hill at least five times!)

 For me, Curtis’ masterpiece, in cinematic terms at least, is the underrated and near-enough forgotten The Tall Guy. It’s a film that remembers it’s a comedy first, then a romance; it laid down the ground rules for Brit RomComs for years to come (for better or worse) and gave the world probably the greatest sex scene ever (of which more later).

 In terms of structure, anyone who’s never seen it before will see we are in familiar territory. Jeff Goldblum is the lovable loser who just can’t find the right girl. His circle of friends include his nympho flatmate, a funny foreigner and a blind man (the disabled friend would become a Curtis fixture; here it’s simply for comedic effect rather than as a crowbar plot device in the final reel).

 Whilst recieving injections for allergies, he meets and falls in love with kooky nurse, Emma Thompson (never lovlier than she is here), and their relationship goes through the standard cinematic motions.

 Also in the mix is Goldblum’s employer. Rowan Atkinson plays the odious and ridiculously successful comedian Ron Anderson. Goldblum is Anderson’s straight man in his West End show, and he eventually gets fired after missing a show. Anderson is such a wonderful creation, mainly because, if rumours are true, his persona is not a million miles away from Atkinson’s. Only Curtis and director Mel Smith (yes, THAT Mel Smith) could have possibly persuaded him to do it.

 Following a hilarious montage of Goldblum trying out for various ‘legitimate’ theatre productions (the Berkoff is easily my favourite), he lands the plum role in a vulgar new West End musical based on the life of John Merrick, called, simply, Elephant! (exclamation mark included).

 And so on, until Goldblum and Thompson split, then get together again for a slow-mo hug in the middle of casualty.

 It all sounds dreadful, and it very nearly could have been. Watching with cynical eyes everything seems cliched up to the hilt. But it’s like watching the original Halloween now: it only seems cliched because everything that followed ripped it off so much.

 There’s so much good stuff here, it’s difficult to know where to start, so I’ll start at the end, or rather Goldblum and Thompson’s ends.

 The sex scene they share together is easily the funniest ever put on screen (funnier even than Body of Evidence) as the pair proceed to wreck Thompson’s flat in a fit of hormones. Anyone who says they don’t find the sight of a piece of toast stuck to Emma Thompson’s bum funny is either lying or dead.

 Then there’s Elephant! A musical so tasteless and vulgar you’d swear it had been running for ten years in the West End. We get glimpses of what’s in store through the various rehearsal scenes, but actually witnessing it is pure joy.

The sight of Thompson barely able to believe what she’s seeing, whilst Goldblum’s flatmate sits there lapping up every awful second of it is a wonderful piece of acting from both actresses.

 There’s also one-liners to die for (“What in the name of Judas Iscariot’s bumboy is going on?”; “I hope all your children have very small dicks! And that includes the girls!”), blink-and-you’ll-miss-em appearances by Angus Deayton, Mel Smith himself and Jason Isaacs.

 This being a romantic comedy, of course, the path of true love never runs smooth, and everything is rather too neatly wrapped up at the end, but by then  you just don’t care because you’ve had such a laugh for the past 90 minutes.

And who knew that all you had to do was take this formula and change the sex of your imported American star to take over the world?

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 It must be January,because the cinemas are filled with ‘worthy’ films. Biopics of people who made the front page, once, in 1976; real life stories that normally end up in TV movies on Channel 5 on a wet Tuesday afternoon; actors ‘playing against type’; and Will Bloody Smith in a bloody black bloody suit looking at me all smug and mysterious.

Yes, Oscar season arrives with all the attendant banality that goes with it, namely, the films.

Until a few years back, I loved the Oscars. It was something about all that glamour, shininess and the fact you had to stay up all night to watch it. Legends would be honoured, and occassionally get overlooked in favour of saying ‘well done’ to a rookie (Fact: Martin Scorcese lost out on Best Director Oscars TWICE to actors directing their first films, Robert Redford and Kevin Costner… think on).

But now, rather than being a celebration of the best Hollywood (and occassionaly Britain; those damn foreigners can have their own category) has to offer, it is now just a love-in for all those heartfelt dramas, true-life tales, and costume epics that appear in the last two months of the year.

Of this years Best Picture nominations, only two, Slumdog Millionaire and The Reader, were on release in Britain at the time the nominations were announce, and they both came out this month. Of the others, Milk and Frost/Nixon are both out today, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button isn’t out until February.

“Aaaah”, I hear you exclaim, “But this is for films released in America last year”.

Indeed. To qualify for the Oscars, a film needs only a ‘limited’ release in 2008. As FOUR of the five films did. Only The Curious Case of Benjamin Button had a full release. A limited release can consist of just ONE public showing normally either in New York or LA. So at the time of the nominations probably about 200 people have seen each of the nominated films. Hardly worthy of best film of the year, is it?

Another aspect of the process is the use of ‘screeners’. These used to be specially arranged screenings of films for voters, who, as they all work in the industry, are normally two busy to have a spare evening to go to the cinema. Or they just can’t be arsed to see a pretty actress wearing shock-horror prosthetics.

These days, the ‘screener’ has been superseeded by free DVDs and (it wouldn’t surprise me) downloads. So the people voting haven’t even made the effort to actually go and watch the films. The films come to them.

Now, call me picky, but surely if a film is any good people will WANT to see it, rather than be COERCED into seeing it? (This is the point where I remember that good films do get overlooked… but it doesn’t fit my argument so I’m going to ignore it)

I remember years ago, when MOVIES got nominated. You remember ‘movies’? Films that are entertaining and take you away from the real world for a couple of hours?

Just going back a couple of decades, consider that these films got nominated for Best Picture: Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Fatal Attraction (!), The Fugitive, The Full Monty.

You can argue the toss about their individual merits, but at least they were films that were wildly popular and to this day are still loved. (if you’re interested they were beaten by: Annie Hall, Chariots of Fire, The Last Emperor, Unforgiven and Titanic…)

Titanic and Lord of the Rings are probably the only populist winners in the past thirty years. And both were wrong.Titanic is a superb spectacle wrapped inside a dreary costume drama, and LOTR: The Return of the King (the final part, the one that actually won the Oscar) was the worst of the three films.

Some classic films never even got nominated. Off the top of head there’s Seven and Heat which both qualified for the 1996 awards. Then there’s groundbreakers like The Matrix. Yes, now it’s become a bit of a cliched dud of a series, but the original film was like nothing that had been seen before. I remember reading an interview with William Friedkin saying he thought it should have won the Oscar for Best Picture. It wasn’t even nominated (and he should know having won for French Connection and being nominated for The Exorcist.. The Exorcist! Can you imagine a horror movie getting a Best Picture nomination these days, even if they DID make decent ones?)

At the end of the day, I shall not be popping Pro-plus with Red Bull chasers to watch it this year. There is no point.

I haven’t seen any of the main contenders, and frankly, bar Frost/Nixon, I couldn’t give a toss about any of them either. So how can I get excited about it?

I’d like to see Robert Downey Jnr win in Best Supporting Actor for Tropic Thunder, but that’s had heath Ledger’s name engraved on it since last March; I’d like In Bruges to win Best Original Screenplay just because it contains so much swearing, I’d love to know what clip they’re going show.

But, for the record, here’s what I think will happen:

Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire

Best Director: Danny Boyle

Best Actor: Frank Langella

Best Actress: Kate Winslet (finally)

Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger

Supporting Actress: Not a fucking scooby since Marisa Tomei is the only one I’ve heard of, and she’s already got one

Adapted Screenplay: Slumdog Millionaire

Original Screenplay: Happy-Go-Lucky

There… you don’t need to watch it now, either.

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 “You know, most of these movies that win
a lot of Oscars, I can’t stand them…All those assholes make are unwatchable movies from unreadable books.
Mad Max, that’s a movie. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, that’s a movie. Rio Bravo, that’s a movie.
And Coming Home in a Body Bag, that was a fuckin’ movie.”

Clarence in True Romance

 I thought on Clarence’s diatribe this past week as I had two experiences with those films that you are ‘suppossed’ to like but you actually find quite dull. When you explain to people that you don’t ‘get’ these films they launch into great pre-prepared speeches about ‘substance’, ‘subtext’ and ‘submarines’ (if you’re discussing Das Boot).

Now I like my fair share of movies that people wouldn’t be seen dead even looking up on their EPGs, but generally these are films that most right-thinking people don’t even know exist.

The films I’m talking about here, are those that are lauded by critica, film-makers and people with pointy beards you see nursing a coffee for four hours in the BFI coffee shop. (It is a rule that you only ever buy one coffee in there, and maybe a muffin to share, no matter how long you may be there for.)

Instance number one occurred on Wednesday, when a friend was very excited about seeing Blade Runner at the IMAX. This sounds like a great idea. Blade Runner is one of the most visually stunning films ever made, so seeing it projected on the moon-sized IMAX screen would surely be a sight to behold.

Then I remembered that Blade Runner is also very, very dull.

It’s a film I submit myself to about once a year, determined that this time I will ‘watch it properly’ and come to realise why it is so enthusiastically supported by just about everyone. I normally make it to Sean Young’s ‘replicant test’ before I’m asleep.

Only twice have I managed the whole thing: once as a wide-eyed 14 year old, keen to behold this cinematic masterpiece; and again when the Director’s Cut was released in 1992. I preferred the original, which is a kin to saying not only did I rape your disabled grandmother, but I really, really enjoyed it. In fact I might do it again this week.

This movie just makes people go insane. I would be tempted to put it down to sci-fi geekery, and Blade Runner attracts more of these conspiratorial types than most. In fact on finishing this, I fully expect to recieve death threats, be accussed of being an FBI stooge trying to dismantle the world economy and have my inbox stuffed with cryptic l33t speak which will leave me no closer to caring whether Harrison Ford is a robot or not. For the record I think he is, but I think there are far more important things to worry about. Like should I cut my toenails or give them another couple of days.

The group of friends I was with on Wednesday were stunned when I proclaimed myself less than a fan.

“It looks great”, I said, “and if there’s a DVD option to watch it with the just the soundtrack, I would love that. But I just find it incredibly dull.”

“Well, I can see what you’re saying , but you’re wrong.”

This from a friend, who I’d assumed was normal. No discussion, no exchange of ideas. I’m wrong.

But then he tripped himself up.

“Yeah, the story’s not great, but it’s about the visuals and the mood.”

Which sort of proved my point for me. Thanks mate.

The case for the prosecution next presents Exhibit #B: Vertigo.

One of the most celebrated thrillers of all time, held up as an example of Hitchcock’s genius, and regularly voted one of the greatest films of all time… it’s also incredibly dull.

Now I love Hitch. Without a doubt probably the finest film directors that has ever graced the planet. Rear Window, North by Northwest and Frenzy are three of my all-time favourites. So it really pains me to say that I find one of his films so tedious that I find myself wishing it would finish so I could watch something better, like Chucklevision. Or the testcard.

If you’ve never seen Vertigo I should warn you that what follows may spoil the film for you. But then if you ever had any intention of watching it, and haven’t by now, then you probably couldn’t care less anyway.

James Stewart is a detective who’s had to retire from the force because he suffers from vertigo (dum dum dum!). A college friend he hasn’t spoken to for years wants him to follow his wife who he thinks is possessed (!). Stewart and the wife fall in love, but she plummets to her death from a bell tower in a nunnery (!).

A year later, Stewart falls for a woman who reminds him of the dead wife, and starts an obsessive desire to mould her in the wife’s image. Wouldn’t you know it, it is in fact the same woman! She wasn’t actually the bloke’s wife at all. She was a in fact apaid to pretend she was bloke’s wife, while bloke knocked off the real wife. And she didn’t plummet to her death, it was a very unconvincing dummy. But since Stewart was paralysed with fear halfway up the bell tower he was a bit pre-occupied to notice (though quite how the nuns who rush to the body fail to notice is never explained).

It all ends with a happy confession and the imposter falling to her death from the same bell tower (why do they keep letting him take women up there?) when she mistakes a nun for a ghost. Easy mistake to make I suppose.

This takes 2 hours and 10 minutes, but feels like double that.

Vertigo was a bit of a flop at the time of its release, and I can understand why. Aside from its intermniable running time, Stewart is very unlikable. In fact, in the scenes where he is making over Kim Novak v2.0, far from being a ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ montage, it could in fact be scored quite easily with some of the more disturbing Mr Bungle or Nick Cave tracks. Stewart is downright violent in his desire to dress his new girlfriend exactly the same way as his dead ex.

But that’s not why I dislike the film (seeing someone like cuddly James Stewart playing an absolute bastard is always something of a joy). It’s the fact that it’s so loudly shouted from the rooftops that this is a classic is what really grates.

And the excuses given leave me cold too.

It was revolutionary. By this I assume the vertigo-vision shots. Yes, very clever, well done. They take up at most 10 seconds of the running time.

Jimmy’s dream sequence. Yes, done much better in Spellbound.

It’s Hitch’s most personal film. Yeeeeesss… Hitch had a thing for icy blondes. I would never have guessed that from watching his other films. Tippi Hedren had such an easy ride The Birds and Marnie, didn’t she.

And, as with Blade Runner, these feel like excuses and apologies rather than reasons.  It’s the old ‘never mind the quality, feel the width’ line. If I find a film boring then saying “oh, but check out that shot in the bell tower” isn’t going to convince me otherwise. A brief 2 seconds of genius do not make up for the other 2 hours, 9 minutes and 58 seconds being among the most disappointing of Hitch’s ouvre.

Vertigo is a film that has gained acclaim over the years, rather than achieving it instantly. Other films have done this in the past few decades, many of which are among my faves like Peeping Tom and The Wicker Man. Not to mention Hitch’s Frenzy.

But these films don’t need excuses made for them. Watching them is enough to realise that they are great films that were cruelly ignored, or worse, when they were released.

With Vertigo, there is this constant explanation for why it’s so highly regarded. This shouldn’t be neccessary. A film should live or die by itself.

As I said, Peeping Tom may have been ‘saved’ by people like Martin Scorcese, but he didn’t write long essays about why it’s so wonderful. he simply helped get it rereleased so people could judge for themselves.

If I want to know about Hitch’s OCD, or his obsession with blondes, I’ll read a book about it. If I want to watch an entertaining thriller I’ll watch Rear Window.

I should say, I’m not completely innocent of the whole ‘how can you not love this film’ scam. The thing is, the film’s I endorse, are not those that end up on the BFI list, or in Total Film’s 100 Greatest Movies of all Time.

Two of my favourite directors, the Davids Cronenberg and Lynch, regularly make films that leave audiences aghast in disbelief. For me, the difference is, films like Videodrome, Eraserhead, and more recently, Mulholland Drive, may be uncomfortable, obtuse viewing, but they are rarely, if ever, dull. (On finishing Mulholland Drive, Lady Scaramanga, no slave to dull films, turned to me and said “I really enjoyed that, but I’ve no idea why!”)

Anyone who has seen Eraserhead will never forget that experience. They may not have a clue what’s going, or what the whole thing’s is about, but it will be burned into your brain.

I can’t even remember if James Stewart already had vertigo, or if he developed it as a result of seeing the plod fall off the roof.

Everyone has their favourite films. And everyone has their favourite films when they are trying to impress someone. Don’t bother. Have the nerve to stand by your conviction and demand to be entertained rather than have your beard stroked.

 And I never even got started on The Deer Hunter…

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So what was the last decent Stephen King adaptation?

Most people, I imagine, would be inclined to say The Green Mile, but since I’ve no desire to see a three hour Jesus allegory with Tom Hanks discussing erectile disfunction, I’ve managed to find a spare day in which to watch it.

This was, of course, preceeded by the Greatest Film Ever Made (according to imdb users), The Shawshank Redemption. The problem with both of these is, they don’t feel like Stephen King films. It’s like saying the best Wes Craven film is Music of the Heart (Meryl Streep struggles to teach violin to inner-city Harlem kids… I’m not making this up).

Despite the occassional low-key triumph (Apt Pupil, Dolores Claiborne) there hasn’t been a great Stephen King film since 1990’s Misery. So one wonders why film studios still wet their pants over him, and even hunt out older stuff to adapt.

1408 was originally a short story in an audiobook collection first released in 1999, so why nearly ten years later it should be dredged up for a big-budget, high-profile movie is beyond me.

 Anyway… John Cusack is a writer (in a Stephen King story? You don’t say!) who is cynical, sarcastic and generally quite rude. His work consists of crappy tour guides of haunted places, of which his latest is a book on haunted hotels.

He lives a reclusive life and over the course of movie we discover ‘what made him this way’. I don’t think it’s giving anything away to say that he left his wife a year before following the death of their daughter.

One day he recives an unsigned postcard from the Dolphin Hotel in New York telling him NOT to stay in 1408. His interest peaked he decides to do the complete opposite.

The hotel manager, a superb cameo from Samuel L. Jackson (Note the word CAMEO, despite what the poster and credits may have you believe), tries his best to dissuade Cusack. he regales him with tales of suicides, accidental death and one guy who slit his own throat and then tried to sew it back with a darning needle. Oh, and the guy who drowned in his soup. Spooky…

Most people, he claims, never last longer than an hour. So there’s our ticking clock.

Undettered, Cusack checks in and within about ten minutes it’s all gone crazy-ape-shit-bonkers: a murderous woman appears, Cusack sees a reflection of an evil doppleganger, he sees his father and dead daughter, Sam Jackson appears in his minibar.

If this all sounds ridiculous, well, it is.

The first half an hour was excellent. The build up to Cusack checking in rachets up the tension superbly. Jackson’s hotel manager stays just the right side of knowing camp, and you feel he genuinely is scared of the room (it’s explained that no-one is allowed to use the room and Cusack only gets access after threatening legal action!).

The turning point comes with the first shock: yes, it’s that old staple the radio that turns itself on at an obscenely high volume… gets ’em everytime! But more terrifying than that is the fact that it’s playing The Carpenters. I shit myself. The clock radio then proceeds to inform us of how much longer Cusuack will have before he dies. So we now, literally, have a ticking clock.

Speaking of old staples we also get bleeding walls, paintings that change, mysterious voices and visions, and the classic crying baby noise (which I do find very unsettling).

Cusack is very good, basically carrying the film for 80% of it’s running time. It’s just him and the room. But there is a tendancy for his character to drift in and out of cynical mode. At one stage he is so traumatised by what he’s experiencing he tries to escape through the air vent only to be confronted by some zombie (looking oddly similar to the nazi zombies in Shock Waves). After dispatching the zombies jaw, he falls back into the room only to deliver a clunky one liner about how it’s good to be back.

You’re probably thinking, why doesn’t he just leave the room? Ah, well they’ve thought of that. You see, as Jackson explains, this room “is an evil fucking room”. When does try to leave he finds the door locked, and the key breaks off in the lock. OMG!

But it’s OK, cos he’s a modern guy, despite still using an old fashioned tape dictation machine. Hooray, he’s got a mobile phone! It only takes him half the film’s running time to finally decide to try and use it (the room’s phone, obviously, just connects to a cheery but sinister reception desk from hell), but he forgot that Jackson had already explained that “electronics don’t work so well in … 1408”. Surprising then that he manages to get his laptop to work and manages to have a slightly fuzzy video conference with his estranged wife, who seems more concerned with arguing with her clearly distressed husband, than helping him out.

The whole ‘Shining in a hotel room’ just doesn’t work. Whilst The Shining was never going make a satisfactory two hour film and be faithful to the book (personally, I love the film because it doesn’t try to make an authentic adaptation work), 1408 has barely enough going for it to cover a two hour film.

It’s a Twilight Zone episode, a Tales of the Unexpected story (particularly it’s drearily predictable and ridiculous last scene) at best. It’s impressive start is blown away in seconds and you then spend an hour being bombarded with noise and effects.

Hotel-based horror is better served recently by the low-rent (in budget, setting and cast) Vacancy.

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I fucking hate Michael Bay. The same way I hate Girls Aloud. Half the time they produce fast food shite that makes me want to stab my eyes (or ears) out with the bluntest instrument I can find.

Then the other half of the time they do stuff that I actually enjoy (guiltily) which makes me hate them even more.

Bay made a cracking start to his film career with two extremely, ridiculously enjoyable movies in Bad Boys and The Rock. Both showed promise, but also the guiding hand of super producer Jerry Brukheimer. In Bay it seemed Bruckheimer had found a natural successor to Tony Scott (Top Gun, Days of Thunder).

After this double whammy though, things took a downturn. Armageddon was more of the same, but showed a shift from ridiculously entertaining to just ridiculous. And then came Pearl Harbor (sic), a shameless attempt to recreate the ‘magic’ of Titanic. They succeeded only in the sense that it’s only worth watching for about twenty minutes when the SFX kick in.

So, when it turned out Mr Bay was to take the reigns of Transformers, one of the most anticipated films of all time for a certain generation of people, my heart sank lower than a certain cruise liner.

18 months on from its release, I finally caved in and in full cynic mode, I watched it. And bugger me if they didn’t do a fairly good job with it.

After a cracking opening sequence where the first Transformer is revealed (complete with the original ‘transform’ sound effect sadly lacking from the rest of the film) things settle down into a very cheesy, predictable story of Shia la Beouf playing a high school loser (yeah, right) and his attempts to buy his first car to get the girl of his dreams. (Surely, if she’s only interested in him because of his car, she’s a bit of a cow and not worth bothering with…?)

Anyhow, wouldn’t you know, the car he buys turns out to be Bumblebee, the Scrappy Doo of Cybertron, except here he’s a sexy, classic Camero, rather than a VW Beetle. This is the first of many ‘character’ changes, but on the whole they don’t really matter. Bumblebee’s new appearance is at least acknowledged, as the car next to him is a rusty old Beetle.

Many of the characters have changed since their cartoon incarnations, but for the most part it’s not a problem. I did spend the first 45 minutes thinking Bumblebee was Hotrod, and got very confused when one of the Decepticons appeared as a police car, since cars were all Autobots originally.

The transformation effects are simple stunning, with seemingly every gear and rachet seperately animated and a wonderful sense of wonder and awe when the robots true identities are revealed.

As is usual for films like this, the ‘human’ side is a bit of a let down. Le Beouf, a very likeable lad with good comic timing, is clearly on auto-pilot. Megan Fox is your typical sexy teenager, despite clearly being well into her twenties, whilst the far more attractive and talented Rachael Taylor is relegated to a supporting geek role and, along with half the cast, is completely forgotten about half an hour before the end of the film.

Then there’s the two heavyweight names in the cast: Jon Voight and John Tuturro. Voight is now an old hand at playing, well, the old hand in action adventures. Here he turns up as the defence secretary, recruiting a bunch of young trendy IT geek types to work out what’s going on… just like he did in Enemy of the State.

Tuturro is an odd one though. Clearly in it for the money, he turns up half way through as an FBI agent, clearly taking his cue from Jeffrey Coombs in The Frighteners. As if playing the paedophile, Jesus, in The Big Lebowski wasn’t an indignity enough, here he gets reduced to his underpants for no apparent reason.

There’s also a Michael Biehn-a-like soldier just back from the Middle East (and witness to the first Decepticon attack), and eventually, as usual, our rag-tag gang of characters find themselves pulled together, in this case in a secret bunker in the Hoover Dam, where the mighty Megatron has been kept in cold storage since he crash landed to Earth 100 years or so previously, searching for some cube thingy which has the ability to create new Transformers (or something… but for some unexplained reason the ones that we see it create are all evil).

After some further contrivances it’s decided the best thing to do is NOT to take the cube to the nearby Nevada desert, but a much better idea to take it into ‘The City’ where a balls to the wall CGI-fest finale can take place. And here’s where everything starts to fall apart.

One of the problems with the film is that when the Transformers are in robot form it’s nigh on impossible to tell them apart. This makes the climax a frustrating experience since you don’t know who’s winning each battle.

I won’t spoil thiongs by saying who does eventually triumph (if you can’t guess), but there are casualties on both side.

It’s a thoroughly enjoyable waste of a saturday night, but I won’t be first in the queue for the inevitable sequel later this year.

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This week should be a celebration. This week should have seen the 10th anniversary DVD release of one of the best loved, and most thrilling action adventure movies of recent times. In this perfect world, we’d be onto the third or fourth adventure for a crime fighting duo who do everything in style, and the series would be pushing Bond and Bourne for the title of biggest spy adventure franchise.

We don’t live in that world though. We live in the world where a movie adaptation of one of the best loved TV series of all time was handed over to a director with no experience of big budget summer movies, an enthusiastic producer shackled by the needs of the studio to demographically tailor a unique movie and the whims of test screenings.

Welcome to the world of The Avengers…

On its release in August 1998 The Avengers died a painful, but thankfully swift death. It was suppoosed to be Warner Bros. BIG summer movie, released in the middle of June. But following disastrous previews, the film was yanked back to the summer graveyard of late August, shorn of almost an hour (losing plot points, scenes, characters and any narrative coherence), and generally abandoned by the studio. Already stung by negative reports pre-release, Warners decided to ditch the film into cinemas without any previews.

What emerged was an interesting, but ultimately flawed attempt, to capture a fascinating piece of TV history: 60s style shot through with state of the art effects.

Ask people now about The Avengers and they’ll probably screw their faces up and say “it was crap”, “a travesty” or more likely “I never bothered to watch it”. Which is perhaps telling.

It lingers in the depths of imdb’s rankings (currently 3.4) but so few people have seen it in comparison to its big budget peers that it’s difficult to judge its worth. Now I know what you’re thinking “If so few people went to see it, then it must be rubbish” to which I have two words: Shawshank Redemption. That perennial ‘best film of all time’ contender took a mere $700,000 on it’s opening weekend, compared to The Avengers $10M, and barely scraped together it’s budget on it’s cinema run. So that argument is cobblers and I’ll here no more about it.

 Saying that, The Avengers is no ‘lost’ classic in the realm of Shawshank or The Thing. Films like this were criminally ignored on their initial release and later found a more appreciative audience. The Avengers is NOT like that.

Assessing The Avengers merits is difficult in its current form, since it’s clearly not the film that was intended to be released. In his excellent book, Blockbuster, Tom Shone talks at length about the tortuous process of bringing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s notorious flop Last Action Hero to the screen. He concludes by saying that the film didn’t need re-shoots, test screenings or market research, “it needed finishing“. The same is true of The Avengers.

The whole debacle warrants a study of its own, since it is indicative of all that’s wrong with Hollywood. Warners had a product, or a brand which they knew they could exploit. Rumours of an Avengers film had abounded for years. Names like Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant had been bandied around as potential stars. People, allegedly, wanted to see the film. The fans, of which there are millions, were not so keen. The Avengers is held in high regard of a kind probably only matched by that other iconic 60s series, The Prisoner.

So what Warners realised they had to do was make a movie which would have broad appeal, but also placate the fans baying for blood. It was at this point that Warners should have taken a look at one of the Avengers’ brothers in arms, the Bond series. Whilst the series had begun with clever, respectful adaptations of Flemings novels, it had quickly established an identity of its own, far removed from the source. Attempts to meld the two (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Licence to Kill) were met with critical aclaim but box office disaster (of course this was completely changed with the triumphant Casino Royale in 2006, but the movie landscape in 1998 was very different). Another good example is the disasterous attempt to reinvent Doctor Who for an American audience in 1996.

According to various internet sources, the movie that director Jeremiah Chechick delivered is actually a fairly good attempt at capturing this mythical combination of wildly different audiences. The problem was Warners decided to ‘test’ the film.

Test screenings are usually held for lowest common denominator audiences, since they make up the bulk of a film’s box office potential. Unfortunately, they are also the ones least likely to accept anything new, original or remotely different to what they’ve seen before.

As a result The Avengers became another generic action movie, where its intrinsic qualities (Britishness, style) became quirks. Remember the scene in Last Action Hero where the police department is pairing off its cops into wacky ‘buddy movie’ combinations? (You probably don’t since no one saw that misunderstyood film either.) Well, I suspect that’s how the suits viewed The Avengers.

As a huge fan of the TV series I’m suppossed to loathe the film, and I don’t. I feel sorry for it. There is potential there that is either squandered or misused.

For a start, Thurman is horribly miscast. I know they have to cast an American in one of the main roles, but surely not as Steed or Peel. Surely the villain would have been more appropriate asan American? Wouldn’t that have been more fitting for the piece? Thurman’s casting probably damaged the film even more as a result of her appearance in the dog of all dogs, Batman and Robin, the previous summer.

Ralph Fiennes seems an excellent choice on paper, but appears oddly out of place. For a start, I don’t think he’s got the right build for Steed. Yes, Steed is a debonair character, but he’s also imposing. Fiennes is not in anyway imposing.

Sean Connery, as the villain August DeWinter, is clearly thinking only of the paycheck, but has fun with his rare villainous role. Jim Broadbent is, as always, excellent as Mother. And the casting of Eddie Izzard and Shaun Ryder as henchmen is inspired, if only they’d given them (Izzard in particular) more to do.

One thing is certain though, Chechick was NOT the right man for the job. Much was made at the time of the enthsiasm he and producer Jerry Weintraub had for the original series. That’s all well and good, but for the movie you need a director who is comfortable with action and who’s idea of quirky isn’t ripping off old Charlie Chaplin skits.

Ideally the director should have been British. I don’t know who was approached, or who expressed an interest in it, but I can’t help feeling someone like Mike Newell or Mike Figgis might have been a good bet. If warners insisted on an American (which they probably did), Barry Sonnenfeld (Men In Black) would have been ideal.

The aftermath was not pretty. The critics mauled it. I recently read some of the user comments on imdb, and one person said ‘if you think the reaction here (USA) was bad, you should have seen how it was treated in Britain’. You wouldn’t wish the reaction on your worst enemy.

On opening day, the news was full of it. Normally if the mainstream media pick up on your film its a godsend. In the case of The Avengers, it was the final nail in the coffin full of bad publicity. Publicity, it should be added, of a film NO ONE had seen. It really was quite extraordinary. I remember Channel Four News reporting on it, interviewing people coming out of a West End screening. Obviously the three people they spoke to all hated it. They concluded their report by criticising the fact that Izzard only had one line (nay, one word). The press mocked the Independent newspaper for running a promotional tie-in, with the offer of free tickets to ‘judge for yourself’.

I myself went to the first showing at my local cinema, where I sat with just 3 other people, one of whom left about halfway through.

As I said right at the top, the whole thing is near forgotten now. The film is condemned to saturday afternoon screenings on Channel Five, the bargain bin in supermarkets and perrenial bad movie lists.

What it deserves is a chance. There are currently several online petitions to get the director’s cut released as a proper 10th anniversary DVD set. I suspect this is unlikely, as probably no one involved wants to talk about the movie again.

Chechik lost himself for a few years, returning to make a living in TV. Weintraub had is contract at Warners cancelled (as a result of both The Avengers and another big budget flop, Soldier), only to return a few years later with Oceans 11. He is allegedly behind remakes of Westworld and Oh God! (I suspect he may be the washed-up former producer ‘Jerry’ referred to in Art Linson’s excellent memoir What Just Happened?)

Uma Thurman also went AWOL for a while, and now only seems to able to give a good performance when Quentin Tarantino is behind the camera.

If you’ve never seen it, I implore you to give it a chance. It’s certainly no worse than most of the tripe served up as entertainment these days. It’s easily better than any of the Star Wars prequels, either of the Matrix sequels, Die Another Day, Spiderman 3…

Its the kind of film that doesn’t get made anymore. A genuine risk taker that the studio wasn’t prepared to take a chance on and ended up as generic pap with an intriguing coating.

If you’re interested, here’s the link to the online petition:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/theavengersmovie/

 This is one of the few supportive websites out there

http://www.theavengers-movie.com/

Unfortunately, due a certain similar sounding comic book movie which is apparently iminent, it’s quite hard to find decent Avengers movie websites now. But I did manage to stumble across Warners original website. Most fo the content is now dead, but it gives a fascinating insight into web marketing in 1998

 http://the-avengers.warnerbros.com/

Trailer

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Until the untimely death of Heath ledger, Indy IV was probably the most anticipated film of the year. The release two weeks ago of the well recieved Iron Man has also taken some edge of the release.

But let there be no doubt, this is still a film that the world has been waiting for. And whilst it is thoroughly entertaining, it falls way short of its predecessors, and even some of the more modern variants/imitators/usurpers.

The plot is convolution defined: Indy hooks up with a young kid to first rescue one of Indy’s old colleagues, and the boy’s mother with the suspiciously similar christian name of Marion (… hmmm). This then leads into an adventure to first find a crystal skull, and then return it to its rightful resting place, deep in a secret Incan temple. Throughout all this they are persued by evil Nazis… sorry… Russians who are hell bent on stopping them. They are led by a rather sexy looking Cate Blancett, a psychic who wants to harness the power of the skull for nefarious means.

If this all sounds a little familiar, that’s because that’s EXACTLY what it is. In fact at times, Indy IV resembles little more than a Greatest Hits package of Indy movies past. Some of these references work: the opening twenty minutes take place in a familiar looking warehouse, and is easily the best sequence in the movie, leading to an incredibly tense encounter on a nuclear testing site.

From here, the movie jumps from one action set piece to the next with little regard for logic, and even less regard for letting the audience know what’s going on.

The action is, in the main, well handled. An early motorbike chase is a good showcase for Harrison Ford’s stunt double (though unfortunately this time  it’s not the legendary Vic Armstrong, who was otherwise engaged on The Mummy 3), but an over long truck chase is too closely linked to its illustrious Raiders predecessor to be wholly effective. For a start it packs in too many elements, and too many characters in peril, to keep your attention focussed for its duration. Like so many modern action sequences, it flies by in a blur, whereas Indy’s more famous truck chase kept you on the edge of your seat the whole way through.

But the least said about the waterfall the better (it’s even more ridiculous than the waterfall scene in Temple of Doom… see? It’s just doing what was done before, but bigger).

On the subject of action sequences, it’s worth mentioning the modern movies greatest asset, and worst enemy: CGI.

In the build up to the film’s release, Lucas and Spielberg both portrayed themselves as martyrs to the cause of reclaiming movie making from the computers. Spielberg nixed digital film for old fashioned 70mm. The DP studied previous cinematographer Douglas Slocombe’s style to retain continuity, and it was announced that the effects work would be done using traditional methods (matte painting, wires, rear projection) and CGI would only be used where these methods were not possible… I’ll tell you now, that’s utter arse.

CGI gophers? CGI bats? Both used superfluously (with the exception of the hilarious first shot of the movie).

CGI lens flare???? Thirty years ago, lens flare would have been removed from a film. Now they are adding it in!!!!!

In the truck chase, most of the foilage was added in digitally, because it was too dangerous to shoot the chase in such a heavily overgrown area. Fair enough. But don’t then insert CGI foilage for the purposes of cheap gags!

The one exception I can buy, is a large scale giant ant attack, but it’s not very well done.

I’m not adverse to CGI when it’s used well (can you spot the CGI in Casino Royale for instance? And no it’s not the sinking house: that’s a model), it’s just don’t make a big deal about the fact that you’re not using it, and then use it extensively.

One thing the film does have going for it is a superb cast… who are thoroughly wasted. This is Harrison’s show, and no one is going to steal it from him, though Blancett gives it a fair go, hamming it up like Brian Blessed.

Shia LeBeof, playing the same character as Justin Long in Die Hard 4 but in a leather jacket, is enteratining enough. John Hurt gets  athankless role as a professor driven nuts by the power of the crystal skull, and Ray Winstone has fun as Indy’s sidekick, no wait he’s a baddie, no, hang on, he’s Indy’s mate again…

Nice to see Karen Allen back in the fold, giving Indy a love interest that’s believable, and her sassyness is very welcome at a time when the film begins to flag a little, but ultimately she’s there to deliver one line and that’s it.

A bright spot is Jim Broadbent as Denholm Elliot’s replacement. Given little to do, he adds a touch of class to proceedings, just like his predecessor (without the comdey buffoon rewrite).

Overall then, it’s a tad disappointing. It’s entertaining enough, with touches of brilliance, but the whole package feels like just that: a package. A demographically approved pick and mix shovelled into an Indiana Jones bag.

Nothing suprises me about Lucas anymore, but from Spielberg you expect more, considering how much affection he and the audience have for the films.

It’s far better than the Star Wars prequels, not as good as any of the original films, and, I fear, come the end of the summer, it may not be the most fondly remembered blockbuster of the year.

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OK, so I’m probably the last one to get the joke, but today I discovered this fine ensemble, Richard Cheese and the Lounge Against the Machine.

You remember the last ‘Friday Tunes’ post where I went off on one about how for five minutes everyone was into cheesy lounge music? Part of that was to do with an irritating little scroat called Mike Flowers Pops, who decided it would be an immense wheeze to make out Noel gallagher had stolen ‘Wonderwall’ from an old 60’s tune.

It was cobblers because it was too self-conciously twee and cheesy.

Mr Richard Cheese (geddit?) seems to have taken a cue from a certain Paul Anka, who a few years back released a dreadful album of ‘contemporary’ songs done in a Vegas stylee. He massacarred such classics as ‘Black Hole Sun’, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and… er… ‘Eye of the Tiger’. The album was made even worse by the fact that Mr Anka obviously thought this was a brilliant idea.

(EDIT: I’ve since discovered Mr Cheese has been doing this sort of thing for nearly a decade… so Anka must have copied him)

Mr Cheese and his (superb) band also think its a brilliant idea, but also are aware that it’s also fucking hilarious. These guys tread the path that Mike Flowers and Paul Anka would NEVER tread.

Here are some absolute stormers, and if you like ’em, then for christ’s sake buy the albums (click the pic below for a link).

Richard Cheese – Creep (Radiohead)

Richard Cheese – Me So Horny (2 Live Crew)

Richard Cheese – Closer (NIN)

Richard Cheese – Rape me (Nirvana)

Categories: Friday tunes
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