A Movie Buff's Random Ranting

Rest In Peace

2006-08-10T21:09:00.000+02:00

Two more songs:

You're not ready, for the world outside,
You keep pretending, but you just can't hide,
I know that I said that I'd be standing by your side,
But I...

The path's beaten, and it's all uphill,
And you can meet it, but you never will,
And I'm the reason that you're standing still,
But I...

I wish I could say the right words, to lead you through this land,
Wish I could play the father, And take yo by the hand,
Wish I could stay here,
But now I understand, I'm standing in the way.

The cried around you, you don't hear at all,
Cause you know I'm here to take that call,
So you just lie there, when you should be standing tall,
But I...

I wish I could lay your arms down, and let you rest at last,
Wish I could slay your demons, but now that time has passed,
Wish I could stay here, You stalwart, standing fast,
But I've been standing in the way.

One more:

I died, so many years ago,
But you can make me feel, like it isn't so,
You're scared, ashamed of what you feel,
And you can't tell the ones you love, You know they couldn't deal,
Whisper in a dead man's ear, it doesn't make it real,

That's great, but I don't wanna play,
Cos being with you touches me, more than I can say,
But since I'm only dead to you, I'm saying stay away,
And let me rest in peace,

Let me rest in peace, let me get some sleep,
Let me take my love and bury it in a hole that's six foot deep,
I can lay my body down, but I can't find my sweet release,
So let me rest in peace!

You know, you've got a willing slave,
And you just love to play the thought, that you might misbehave,
But till you do I'm telling you stop visiting my grave,
And let me rest in peace!

I know, that I should go, but I follow you like a man possessed,
There's a traiter here beneath my breast,
And it hurt me more than you've ever guessed,
If my heart could beat then it would break my chest,
But I can see that you're unimpressed, so leave me be,

And let me rest in peace, let me get some sleep,
Let me take my love and bury it in a hole six foot deep,
I can lay my body down, but I can't find my sweet release,
And let me rest in peace,

Why won't you let me rest in peace?

Good Riddance

2006-08-09T23:16:00.000+02:00

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road,
Time grabs you by the wrist directs you where to go,
So make the best of this test and don't ask why,
It's not a question but a lesson learnt in time,
It's something unpredictable but in the end it's right,
I hope you had the time of your life.

So take the photographs and still frames in your mind,
Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time,
Tattoes of memories and dead skin on trial,
For what it's worth, it was worth all the while,
It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right,
I hope you had the time of your life.

So make the best of this test and don't ask why,
It's not a question but a lesson learnt in time,
It's something unpredictable but in the end it's right,
I hope you had the time of your life.

It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right,
I hope you had the time of your life.

By the way, Casablanca is now the best film ever made, and has joined the list of "Films I watch when the world goes to hell - along with High Fidelity and The Rules of Attraction"

The list now goes - Casablanca, American Beauty, The Godfather, The Rules of Attraction, Chasing Amy.

Quote of the day - "Here's looking at you kid"
Song of the post - The Lover After Me - Savage Garden
Song of the moment - The Lover After Me - Savage Garden

50 Films you must see before you die....

2006-07-22T23:14:00.000+02:00

Apparantly.

Anyway I'm gonna go through the list, agreeing and disagreeing as we go:

50) Badlands

No idea, never seen it - looks good though. I'm sure they're playing the main theme of True Romance in the background.

49) Secrets and Lies

Know of it, but never seen it. I'm sure I've seen bits of it before - and the more I watch of these clips I think I have seen it - but I don't remember it.

48) Aguirre - The Wrath of God

Obviously I've lead a very sheltered life, because I don't recognise many of these. I think later on I may get on better, but I've never been good catching foreign films. Apparantly it's based on Heart of Darkness much alike Apocolypse Now and Peter Jackson's King Kong (apparantly).

47) Brazil

Know of it (obviously, being a Gilliam fan) but I've never seen it. I'm actually studying it next year and I'm waiting before I see it - just looking at this opening clip makes me want to see it. It actually reminds me of V For Vendetta (thought I understand that maybe blasphamy for those of you who may have seen it) and dear God! Michael Palin is the villian! Blimey.

46) This Sporting Life

Once again, no idea - Richard Harris - who is rightly compared to be "our Marlon Brando" quite so.

45) Cabaret

If this is here then Grease must be very high. "it changed musicals forever" - so Jesus Christ Superstar, Grease, Chicago didn't?

44) Raising Arizona

Please got put this on TV or show me where I can get it on DVD - cos I am busting a gut to see it! The Coen Brothers do an out and out dark comedy (not like Fargo) yes please!

43) Princess Mononoke

Who picks these films?

42) Dawn of the Dead

It's the original, which no I've never seen. Seen Night of the Living Dead and Day of the Dead but this one I ain't seen, and yet I've seen the re-make and I can't wait to see this one - Like Raising Arizona I'm desperate to see it! Once again, someone give me the DVD or show it on TV.

41) Manhunter

Once again, seen the re-make and seen the sequels and read the book. Haven't seen the film yet. Not doing very well here am I?

40) The King of Comedy

Scorcese and De Niro in one of their first films. Doesn't mean I've seen it. It's supposed to be very dark and very different. Doesn't mean I've seen it though.

39) The Ipcress File

Funny this should be on the list, but not Bond. It's another film I have to watch for my course this year, but it does seem truly brilliant, and I can't wait.

38) Mulholland Drive

See above a) haven't seen it b) want to see it

27) The Searchers

Holy Crap! I've seen this one! It is possibly the best western ever written - I love it to little pieces, even though its got bits that looses it completely and other bits that were it just blows me away. John Wayne is at his absolute best - as Rob and I said the other day if any western ever made John Wayne would damn well make a place for himself in the film. And the final shot when he's on the porch? Still unbeaten in the history of iconic shots.

36) Fight Club

Once again, seen it - but I don't really remember it that well. i really need to watch it again to re-appreciate it. Brad Pitt is just a force of nature - that much I remember. I deifnatly remember being underwhelmed by it - I still don't think it's as awesome as people say.

35) The Ladykillers

The original, not the re-make. Haven't seen either.

34) The Royal Tenabaums

Once again, see A and B above.

33) Three Colours Blue

Once again, See A and B above.

32) Terminator 2: Judgement Day

Now we're talking! Terminator 2 is one of the best follow ups ever made. It's quite possibly the best action films ever made with certainly the best set pieces and best cocking of a shotgun ever on film. Cameron really did show that he was a master of action - he would have made an amazing Spiderman. And even now with effects show as some of the best ever, every single effect is there for a reason. I saw it at 11 and certainly my kids won't!

31) Scarface

Tried to watch this one, and failed. Tried again and got about 25mins in and failed again. Then 3rd time I got over half way, and then failed. Still I think it's a fantastic film, and I'm sure I'll try again soon - and to think that John Travolta was the original choice for Scarface. The end is supposed to be amazing - I can't wait.

30) All About Eve

See A and B above

29) Pink Flamingo's

See A and B above

28) Fanny & Alexander

See only A above

27) The Breakfast Club

See A & B above

26) Hero

See A and B on every single level above

25) Trainspotting

Like Fight Club I've got to watch this again, because I remember watching it and being totally stunned by it - I think it's one of the best films I've ever seen, but as I said I need to re-examine it.

24) Erin Brokovich

How this is ahead of T2 and Trainspotting I'm not sure. Still absolutly awesome though.

23) A Night At The Opera

See A above

22) Heavenly Creatures

See A & B above

21) Come and See

See A and B above

20) The Player

See A and B above

19) Boyz In The Hood

Jimmy D tried to make me see this for ages, and I'm still kicking myself for not seeing it. See A and B above.

18) Black Narcissus

See A and B above. Star Wars should be in here somewhere.

17) Walkabout

See A above. Where's Apocolypse Now? (no.1?)

16) Touch of Evil

See A and B above

15) Pulp Fiction

Only at 15? What the hell? If Reservoir Dogs is higher, no problem - and obviously if I haven't seen the films above then I can't comment - but Fiction is just absolutly amazing. It is the film that made me want to make films myself - it just blew me away - and continues to do so whenever I see the film. Maybe not make films, but certainly write them, and just the Wolf Sequence is just amazing, and if something shite does better in the list then this:

"I ain't ever forgiving your ass for this shit"

14) Once Upon A Time In India

Dear God....Bollywood? This high? why?

13) The Shawshank Redemption

For the end sequence alone, this deserves to be higher. And to think it was beaten to Best Picture by Forrest Gump. Please.

12) Lost In Translation

I left half-way through at the cinema, I had just seen Scary Movie 3, and I had to get to a rehersal. When I see it all the way through tommorow then I'll comment more.

11) Alien

Now we're talking! The ultimate Haunted house story - a crew being attacked constantly with a creature they can barely see and cannot kill. The scariest thing of course about Alien is that you cannot see the beast really in the film until the very end. Aliens of course gave us hoards of them, and that makes it terrifying, but still nowhere near as scary as the original which preys upon our own fears of something we cannot understand and cannot compare to. Truly amazing.

10) Manhattan

See A and B above - I'm going to have to do some serious film buying after this.

9) Donnie Darko

Hmmm. This is a truly interesting film, it's about £2 in HMV right now, and I think I need to re-visit it again I think, becuase it's a truly amazing and involving film. What type of film is it? I go for Sci-Fi personally, and yet there is a sense of horror in the film, becuase the horror in it is truly terrifying (the rabbit 'Frank' I think) scares the hell out of me. The imagry in the film too is very creepy, the black and white skull is very gothic in a very suberban setting. Once again I don't remember it very clearly, but I remember enough to remember its brilliance.

8) Au Boc De La Souffe (or something like that)

See A above. I think

7) North By Northwest

See A and most certainly B above

6) 2001 A Space Odessey

I cannot stress enough how much I have to see this film. Film buying is definatly in order after this!

5) Sexy Beast

It's on tommrow. I'll have to watch it to see why it beats Pulp Fiction.

4) Chinatown

Sick of saying it but see A and B above. William Goldman worships it, and therefore so do I.

3) City of God

See A and B above - very much because I've heard so much about it.

2) The Apartment

Why this and not Some Like It Hot

1) Apocolypse Now

It's amazing, it's different and by God its long.

So there you go, 50 films to see before you die. I have my own lists to do that I may do later, but my muse has run off with a Brandon Routh lookalike with a red cape.

Quote of the day - "You know that article you wrote Lois?" "Why the world doesn't need Superman" "no the other one" "which other one, I was pratically his press agent" "When I 69'd Superman" - From the Superman outtakes.

Song of the moment - N/A

Song of the post - 18 Till I Die - Bryan Adams

MTV Movie Awards 2006

2006-06-23T00:18:00.000+02:00

It's on now, and like the Oscars I'd like to do a blow-by-blow analysis of what happens. First the intro, bloody wonderful piss-take of MI3, followed by the wonderful Google take, who is the guy who plays Google, i'm sure I know it - and I love Jessica Alba's feet.

Best Hero - can't remember the nominees but Christian Bale won for Batman - no problem with that - Batman gets presented by Superman, class. I think I know who'll win next year.

Breakthrough performance - Andre Benjamin (Four Brothers), Taraji something for Hustle & Flow, Isla Fisher from Wedding Crashers (fine by me, she's hot), Nelly in the Longest Yard, Romany Malco in the 40 year old virgin (once again fine) Jennifer Gardner in the Exorcism of Emily Rose (a film I'm desperate to see) and it goes to Isla Fisher for Wedding Crashers! Woo! She was damn good, and she's so damn cute! And she played herself in the film? Movie gossip traded for her number!

Best Fight next, Revenge of the Sith has gotta be up there somewhere - note the amount of people who wanna fight Jaime Foxx - nominees are Brad Vs Angelina in Mr. And Mrs. Smith, the one from Kung Fu Hustle, Kong Vs the planes (please don't let this get anything tonight) Revenge of the Sith (obviously) - and the winner is Mr. And Mrs. Smith - not sure about this one (stuck in traffic apparantly - aren't they shagging now?)

God I could kill for a piss, but I don't wanna miss a thing (see what I did there! did you see!)

Next, best kiss - no idea who will get this, but surely Team America has got to be up there; Clive Owen in Sin City - I'll go with that (best film ever!) something from Hustle & Flow, Anna Faris in Just Friends (major tongue action) the guys in Brockeback Mountain interesting choice and unsurprisingly Mr. And Mrs. Smith for the shagging kiss sequence - and the winner is Brockeback Mountain - interesting.

Apparantly Jim Carrey is honoured tonight - and the hornouring is done by a great comedian...Will Ferrell - something wrong there. And we have to listen to Justin Timberlake, why is this guy still around? I never hear anything about him anymore.

Not liking the hiding shadow joke - who is this annoying tosser. Hall of Hosts has Jack Black, I would have paid money to see that. And Ben Stiller? Will Smith? Piss take of the Di-Vinci code here, excellent stuff but he's an annoying bastard - love the "Mona Lyndsey" - soon as the annoying guy dies it actually gets funny - but the Di-Vinci Code is kinda easy to take the piss out of. Might wind up seeing it tommorow.

And we're back - some random guy who is making no sense and is not funny. WHAT THE HELL! it's guys dressed in Star Wars uniforms! Storm Troopers and Darth Vader! Rebel Piolets (spelt wrong I know) and a Boba Fett! Chewbacca playing the drums! Obi-Wan on the Keyboard! Imperial officers on strings! This is just an awful song, but I can forgive that cos they're in Star Wars uniforms! It's a wonderful idea - imagine some one really good doing this - Imagine Shayne Ward (no scrath that) ok, someone good (yes Ben isn't into current music - deal with it). Let's take this boring moment for me to say again please God don't let King Kong win anything tonight!

Oh and big up to anyone from Kaotica who's reading this! Have just done some blatant advertising on their site! How's it going lads? My Undead blog is going up soon!

Next is best villian, I'm thinking Vader - and yes Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers was a hero - first is Scarecrow in Batman Begins; The Ice Queen in Chronicles of Narnia; Toni Bell in some horror film, looks like Saw; and then there's Vader in Revenge of the Sith; Ralph Fiennes in Harry Potter (still hate the nose!) Have I ranted about that much? Oh and look! It's Vader in Revenge of the Sith - bit of a no-brainer that one wasn't it? He is the ultimate bad guy!

next sexiest performance - Jessica Alba in Sin City - or just anyone in Sin City - woman in Pink Panther - what the hell - the chinese girl in Memoirs of a Geisha - the guy in Deuce Bigalow Male Ghigalo - and then there's the girl from Dukes of Hazard - and it's Jessica Alba! Woo! Up to the pervs who voted for me! Class!

Next is Adam Sandler, this should be good. Click looks like a lot of fun, i'm looking forward to that (Sandler's new film) Best Performance is next, (and yes Kate Beckingsale is good in Underwear) Terrance Howard in Hustle & Flow; Reese Witherspoon in Walk The Line (didn't she get an Oscar) Steve Carralell in the 40 Year Old Virgin; Jake "I can't spell his name" in Brockback Mountain and Jocquin Phoenix in Walk The Line - and the winner is (I don't especially like any of them) and it's Jake for Brockback Mountain a film I did really love, but I thought Heath Ledger was better.

Another break, I can't believe Willis and Mickey Rourke should have been mentioned for Sin City - and hopefully it'll turn up in Best Film. I've never watched this show before, and it's certainly helping to pass the time. On another noteI can't believe it's the last House of the season - has it really been that long since this season started.

And on another totally random note, who is the girl in the Walker's Sensations advert who calls Gary Lineaker a muppet? Is it Charlotte Church? Not sure. And does anyone know what's going on in Smallville and ER at the moment? I haven't watched for so long, and I really miss it. I have been watching loads of Scrubs recently - the first 3 seasons in fact.

And the football? It's ace, really ace. Even I, a major anti-football guy am loving it. I see us getting to the semis, but after that I can't see us beating the likes of Italy and Brazil. But I can't believe in the next episode of House they shoot him!

Nice Kong piss take, but taken from a bad film, so it doesn't help. Have muted the Christiana Agulera song, becuase I'm really not interested. Half watching ER at the same time, which doesn't help. Will Ferrell is on now, actually being pretty funny. Its best comedic performance - with a technical screw up first - Steve Carralell 40 Year Old Virgin; Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers; Tyler Perry some Family Renion; Adam Sandler in the Longest Yard; Vince Vaughn The Wedding Crashers; and it's Steve Carrell - I loved 40 Year Old Virgin so I've got no problem with that. He's wonderfully dead pan - reminds me of Jack Dee a little. And I love Kelly Clarkson too.

Note, if you're not watching this, then some of the stuff may not make sense. Deal with it.

LL Cool J now, God help us. Silver Bucket of Excellence next - an award for a film from the past, and it's Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing in 1989. Looks like a good film - and next we have Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock - responsible for one of the best action films ever made (Speed of course) with best on screen team - the Wedding Crashers - the three of them from Harry Potter The Dukes of Hazard, The Guys from 40 Year Old Virgin; The Fantastic Four. And it goes to the Wedding Crashers - awesome - they did work so well together.

And Will Ferrell is back, now in a suit, to present an excellence award to Jim Carrey. Look he's deserved to have a recognistion award for both comedy and for the serious stuff, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one that comes to mind. A montage of Jim Carrey - has to have loads from Ace Ventura. Even though I prefer Liar Liar, Ace Ventura is still beyond brilliant. And let's not forget The Mask or Batman Forever and then there's always Bruce Almighty, and The Truman Show, and so many others I can't think of that I'm sure I will later. This speech should certainly be interesting. Yup, he rocks. He is still the name in comedy, there will never be another who could possibly beat him. Think of the manic stuff in Lemony Snickett's Series of Unfortunate Events and you wonder how he could do stuff like Ace Ventura When Nature Calls - but even that has great stuff (aaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllrrrrrrrrrighty then!) And even this is ignoring Dumb & Dumber which I still haven't seen - and I've heard it's his best film! And even with all this stuff, there's his early stuff, like his role in Peggy Sue Got Married with Nick Cage. And then there's The Majestic which is exactly that, Majestic.

But back to the MTV awards - Next we have best frightened performance (bitch you gonna die!) I love my horror films so here we go - Rachel Nichols The Amytiville Horror; Dakota Fanning War of the Worlds; Derek Something Hostel; Jessica Something; and House Of Wax which I believe was on my worst films of the year list. And the winner is The Exorcism of Emily Rose which I swear I will see next week.

Samuel L Jackson is coming up, but now we have JD himself Zach Braff with the best student film. And it's Beautiful Lie - and just looking at it I like it loads. I really wanna get myself a camera next year, and give this whole film lark a try - it look slike my sorta thing.

And now we have the bad motherfucker himself SLJ. He's is the biggest powerhouse in the business and he's doing Best Movie. A bit of a promotion for Snakes on a Plane - he's cocky but he and we don't give a damn. Best Movie this year, Batman Begins; Wedding Crashers; Sin City (come on!) The 40 Year Old Virgin; King Kong (NOOOOOOOOO) and it's Snakes on the Plane (nah) it's Wedding Crashers.

Ok fine, it's a great film, and it's absolute hilarious - it reminds me loads of There's Something About Mary but I don't think it's as good as the mighty Sin City.

Well that's it for me. I'm gonna go and think about Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz and wonder where I can get my own Mask.

Quote of the Day - "Snakes on a Plane" is gonna be the biggest film of next year. Casino Royal? No snakes there! Shrek the third? No snakes there! I'm gonna be winning the best film of next year, unless I decide to make a film called "More Motherfucking Snakes on More Motherfucking Planes"

Song of the moment- In the Midnight Hour - Wilson Pickett

Song of the post - 3am - Busted (cos it's 3am...geddit?)

No Angel

2006-06-17T02:21:00.000+02:00

Yep, that's me down to a tee isn't it :p

Back on nights now, so I'm working my way through a number of TV shows and films to pass the lonely hours. But like last time I had a long session of nights, I've got full intention of filling these lonely hours with posting here every now and then through the twelve hour shift. I actually had the idea of writing a film script based on this place - I think I could write a damn good script based around the sora random stuff that happens around here - all I need is a centeral character (maybe me? or maybe around a group of people) based around a bunch of old motown tunes (lean on me comes to mind) with a dose of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and maybe The Virgin Suicides - could be fun.

But onto the films! I watched My Kingdom the other night which is a fab recreation of King Lear - a fab play in itself but with the genius casting of Richard Harris in the lead makes the whole thing even better. I'm actually seeing Ian McKellen in the role later this year, which makes it all the better.

My latest DVD buy has been due mainly to the immenant return of the Man of Steel in 11 days - yup I finally got round to buying the Superman boxed set on DVD - £17.97 (i.e. about 2 hours pay for me) which is an absolute steal considering everywhere else it seems to be at least £30. So here we go, time for me to have a little rant about Superman related stuff.

Right, the first film - Superman The Movie - I've just entered the title sequence - even to this day the opening cords of John William's theme still sends a chill up my spine and makes me want to rip my shirt open. You have to remember that when the film was first released a lot of people did not see a Superman film being anything less than a very corny and over the top affair - certainly the type of role that Gene Hackman seems to play as Lex Luthor. There was a massive search for someone to play the pivotal role of Ka El and Clark Kent - the original idea being that they could cast a big star to play the man in question - however no actor would take the role - Warren Beatty put the suit on and wandered around his pool for about an hour then took it off because it was "too silly". Eventually they had the idea of casting Christophor Reeves as Superman and surrounding him with stars - Marlon Brando (in his infamous 15 minutes for 15 million) and Gene Hackman at the front.

Now the film for me works until about an hour in perfectly. The opening on Krypton is marvelous - setting things up perfectly for Superman II of course with the capture of the three villans (Terrance Stamp who played the marvelous General Zod actually wound up playing Jor El in Smallville a show I will come to later) and then of course Marlon Brando's speech about the future destruction of Krypton - it all folds in wonderfully and follows the comics. Richard Donner did what I'm hoping that Bryan Singer will do with Superman Returns and that's make a fun film that is full of the stuff that made the original stories so great. Remember that the TV show that was made in the 1960's was very much the sort of thing that was in the 1960's Batman show and that would never have worked as a Superman film.

After the destruction of Krypton then we reach Smallville. Now the young Clark Kent never works for me until Jonathen Kent repremands him and he shuffles in a wonderful "gee whizz pop" sorta way. And once we reach the Fortress of Solitude and then Metropolis the film kicks into overdrive - with us finally seeing the big blue boy scout in action. You've got to remember, this is before ILM and CGI ever really kicked in - and the concept of the special effects we saw in the Star Wars prequels being put to use with Superman is just a drool worthy concept.

Then about an hour into the film it just seems to enter an almost slapstick moment with the introduction of Otis. Now I've always wondered why in the name of God the "greatest criminal mind of an age" decides to a) associate with an idiot like Otis and b) has such a lame ass scheme. There's a great line in the trailer for Superman Returns when Lois says "but millions of people will die" and Lex replies "billions!" in an almost manic way. I still think that Kevin Spacey is truly perfect casting for Lex, and he seems the kind of totally mad genius that Lex is supposed to be, rather than the rather camp genius that Hackman was (I'm sure there's a better word to describe it, but that's all this tired mind can think up right now - remember I finish work in 4 hours)

Then we have the great stuff - with the exception of the "Can you read my mind" sequence which I've never entirely bought and the execution of Lex's plan - it's the bit of the film I never seem to be able to remember because I pay so much attention to the opening hour, then I loose it around then.

Let's talk about Christopher Reeves at this point - because you can't discuss Superman without talking about the man who made us believe a man could fly. The true tragedy of Christopher Reeves is that he of course had the tragic accident of being cripples at such an early age. But he did truly personify Clark Kent and Superman - and it' s been my biggest worry about the new film is that Brandon Routh would be able to fill those shoes, but from what I'm reading about early previews of the film is that he does anil it - but I'll believe that when I see it. That'll be the major thing with the film - whether they can find a sutible replacment for Christopher Reeves. And Reeves showed how he was truly Superman when he made an apperance on Smallville as a Doctor who fills Clark (Tom Welling) in on important Superman info conerning Krypton. When he tragically died just before he was to make another apperance then Margot Kigner who played Lois Layne filled in to tell Clark about his death - and the dedication to him when he died was truly moving.

Now the first film, except for the Otis related stuff (Otisberg I ask you?) is almost perfect - it's the superhero film that all directors who want to make other films should aspire to meet. Then of course came along Superman II which raised the bar. Now the problem with Superman is that he's so damn perfect that it's hard to give him a really good run for his money - but with the second film they gave him three opponents with his powers (and it has the best end sequence in any film with the Diner sequence)

I'll talk about parts III and IV tomorrow whenI've watched them again (it's been years) in the mean time some kids have turned up causing trouble so I have to do the whole Security Guard thing - post again later (I hope)

In memory of Christopher Reeves, he made us believe a man could fly

Quote of the Day - "So many of our dreams, at first they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable" - Christopher Reeves

Song of the moment - None

Song of the Post - I'm No Superman - Scrubs Theme

The Second Coming

2006-06-06T22:14:00.000+02:00

Is this thing alive?

*pokes*

No seriously is it?

And thus from the ashes of the old (written by a 1st yr student) rises the new musings of the Crazy Movie Buff. Though I must confess that I haven't been visiting the silver screen as much as I should (hell, I saw Final Destination 3 and didn't see Kiss Kiss Bang Bang & Walk The Line for Gods sake!) But I'm still on a quest for truth, peace and something to look forward to now that Revenge of the Sith has passed me by.

One part of the quest has certainly been found in Superman Returns. With all the media attention that X-Men: The Last Stand has been getting, most people seem to have forgotton that the new Superman film is coming - and contrary to popular belief it's not a remake (unlike most of the big films this summer, Posidon for one, The Omen another, and Casino Royale) but actually a follow up to Superman II - the basic idea being that after Superman realises there could be survivors of Krypton (for the uneducated that's his homeworld where...hold on? If you don't know that, then just skip down to when I start talking about X-Men and The Omen) and he finds it's how his father described, a devastated rock. So after this evilly long flight, he decides to return to Earth, so he builds a ship to do said job, and when he returns (hence Superman Returns) he finds the world a changed place, and his fortress of solitude has been discovered by none other than Lex Luthor (played utterly wonderfully by Kevin Spacey)

Speaking of returning we have X-Men The Last Stand. Now this ones interesting because Ain't It Cool News (which I have been going off more and more recently) has been absolutly slandering it, and yet with every bad review I read I seemed to get more and more excited - yet when I eventually saw it I was decidedly unimpressed. Then when I saw it again my view changed, because I suddenly wasn't expecting so much, and I saw it for what it was which was just a fun bit of film. I loved Wolverine and Magneto and Colossus, the Sentinal ESPECIALLY Magneto. I hated Jugganaught because they abused the character and I hated how the characters who did die (no name mentioned) died - it felt like they just wanted to be ejected from the series as quickly as possible.

I'd love to go into more detail about X3 and I suspect I will in a week or so when more people have seen the film, and I don't spoil it for more people. But speaking of resurrection (I'm stretching the joke I know, bear with me) I saw the return/re-make/whatever of The Omen tonight which was...interesting. Let's get the obvious out the way first, I'm not a huge fan of the first film - and those who claim it's a classic horror film - I think you have stuck the Omen in the wrong genre...and yet how can a film about the son of the Devil NOT be a horror film? When the film uses genuine suspense rather than gore and 'shock' tactics, something which the remake does not.

Now that we have the obvious stuff out the way (my not liking the original) then we can move onto the less obvious stuff. My main problems with the re-make were 3:

(1) The film didn't need to be re-made. Full stop

(2) The kid wasn't scary - and in a film where the story is set around the damn kid, when he's not scary you have got to wonder what the casting agents were thinking.

(3) The obsession with red/the attatchment to the original. Look if you're going to re-make a film like the Omen then change something! Sticking solidly to the original script just doesn't work nowerdays - give me one film which is made shot for shot like the original and I'll take that one back, but I certainly can't think of one. It was like the writer (who also wrote the original Omen trivia fans) just took his original script and wrote the whole thing down again, adding the word red to every other line. There is a serious obsession with red in this film, and since the directing and cinematography is so utterly poor then they seem to rely on stuff like this to try and pull this film together. They must have looked at American Beauty and thought "hey, they used red to make stuff stand out, let's try that" they tried, and failed.

Godammit now I'm getting angry.

And the acting; Mia Furrow was supposed to be utterly evil in this one - the saving grace of the film. The scene with her and Julia Styles in the hospital was supposed to shock us and make us believe this film could hold a candle to the original - I obviously missed something, because I saw was the most apalling murder sequence in a film I've seen in a long time AND IT WAS COVERED IN BLOODY RED! I'm sure in the original she jumped out a window.

Robert Thorn (can't be bothered to remember the name) was a shadow to Gregory Peck. The Kid doesn't act or show any kind of emotion - he just looks (he reminded me of Jake Lloyd actually) and as I have said, in a film that depends so much on the smallest of actors, then you cannot afford to not get the perfect little critter for it. The mother Julia Styles was ok to begin with, but then started phoning in the performance. Pete Postylwaite was ok, but then again he's playing a doomed character who even in the original was more interesting dead than alive. Micheal Gambon - well, he was an embarrasment to himself and film, by far the worst cameo you will see this year.

Is there any saving grace in the casting? Well, the dog looks sutibly creepy and then there is David Twyles. He plays the reporter who in the original has his head removed by a large sheet of glass courtesy of "Dad" - He truly is the saving grace of the film, for playing a really good "rough round the edges" character - I still only remember him for playing Lupin in Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban a role which he did hold very well, and I still maintain aside from Gary Oldman he was the best thing about the film - and here he really does bring everything together nicely.

So The Omen? 2/5

I've just watched Dracula AD 1972 which is actually surprisingly good. It's the first time that I've seen a) Hammer Horror and b) Christopher Lee as Dracula - funny that since I studied the original text in a module this semester - honest :)

Right, It's late and I'm tired, so I shall post again tomorrow when I'm my shift - till then, adiue.

Quote of the Day - "Honey! I'm home!" - The Flintstones
Song of the moment - "Sleeping With the Light On" - Busted
Song of the post - I'll Always Be Right Here - Bryan Adams

14th November 2005, 56 total posts

2005-12-19T14:31:00.000+02:00

Yep, the last time I posted (sometime at uni I think) and the amount of times I have posted. When I get my laptop back I'll actually be able to post the reviews for various films that I've written in the last month!

Well, I've finally seen Raiders of the Lost Ark on the big screen, which is the sort of thing I wait years for and when it finally comes around I can't actually get it out of my system. it was one of these original print things, with the crackling in the background, and all of the original sounds in it - thus minus the "digitally re-mastered surround sound" that we have come to love and take for granted! Next I want Star Wars, Back to the Future and Temple of Doom.

But anyway, what I came on tonight to talk about - my yearly tradition of going through the best and worst films of 2005, since the end is quickly approaching. So, beginning with the 15 best.

(1) Sin City
(2) The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy
(3) Constantine
(4) A History of Violence
(5) Ray
(6) Serenity
(7) Sideways
(8) The Aviator
(9) Mr. & Mrs. Smith
(10) Team America: World Police
(11) Land of the Dead
(12) Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
(13) War of the Worlds
(14) The 40 Year Old Virgin
(15) Bad Santa

There are probably more, but after thinking about this all morning, these were the best I could come up with. The only four films which didn't quite make it onto this list were Kingdom of Heaven, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Four & The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe.

The good news is that one the other end of the scale is that I have seen so few terrible films this year. Last year I had the same amount of horribly awful films that I did for good. This year I doubt I can make ten!

(1) King Kong
(2) Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire
(3) House of Wax
(4) DiG
(5) Million Dollar Baby
(6) Hitch

That's it! That's all I Can come up with. Over the next two weeks I'll probably catch more films, but off the top of my head that's all I can do. Out of my favourite films this year, the best has to be without a doubt Sin City which was a film I truly adored. The worst is without a doubt Hitch which was so horrendously bad that I felt like crying every time they cracked a joke. And "Cracked" is completely the right word, because every joke felt like it had been forcebly torn from a man with no sense of humour who still chuckles at fart jokes. And the dance sequences? Don't talk to me about the Dance Sequences, they actually excreted agonising pain. What gets me is, like Matrix Re-Loaded not only did eveyone seem to love it, the premise was so damn good! However, unlike King Kong at least I wasn't checking my watch every few minutes.

Merry Christmas everyone, if I don't post again soon.

Quote of the Day: "We all run on instinct" Rules of Attraction
Song of the moment - "Prepare Yes The Way of the Lord" from Godspell
Song of the post - "It was a very good year" Frank Sinatra

Best of Three

2005-09-01T01:11:00.000+02:00

Trilogies...well...it doesn't take a great mind to work out which is my favourite (read any of my posts with the words "Star" and "Wars" in the posts to work it out. But there are others you know, other trilogies which in many ways are just as majestic as Star Wars. Shall we have a look?

(9) The Matrix Trilogy

You know, the second film is mostly trash. The third film is ok-ish. The first one was groundbreaking. As a whole, I'm still not 100% sure to make of The Matrix. I still believe that the first one was great and worked fine alone, with what went on after best left to the imagination. Then when I read the first draft of Re-Loaded I don't believe I took my eyes from the screen for a moment - I still treasure the draft as one of the greatest scripts I ever read. It was so wonderfully different from the Matrix with lots of different ideas they explored. Simple things like, what happens when Neo drinks for the first time? How do Zion people spend their lives? What are Zion's outer defences? Can Neo manipulate everything? (In this draft when a tramp asks him for a quarter Neo instead makes a quarter of a million dollars in his bag) and is Neo human anymore? All of these questions were answered and it left me salavating for the film - then when I saw the second draft I wondered if it was Revolutions. It was horrible, horribly different. Like most re-writes things tend to die out. I love The Punisher but the first draft was far superior. I've read so many drafts like this, and I suspect that if I hadn't read that draft I would have loved Re-Loaded. But (back to the trilogy) I think the first one put so many ideas in the air - and they were never explored. The 2nd act of any play (I will come back to this) is almost always the best because things go to hell in many ways. Re-Loaded was too upbeat (btw talkbackers do NOT tell me things are bad at the end of this one - Neo's in a coma? who cares? Look at Empire Strikes Back or The Two Towers! Hell look at the 2nd act of King Lear if you want to see downbeat in a second act). I suppose if Neo showed he was a God more I might be happier. Or if they had made the first draft.

(8) The Terminator Trilogy

Not one most people would think of as a great trilogy. The first film is fabulous amazing independant filmaking (a film which made Cameron the "king of the world" which could be argued is good and bad) it was truly downbeat and evil - and for the first time since Darth Vader (I gotta stop talking about Star Wars) we were truly afraid of our villain. Arnie was perfect here, and he's never been this good in a film since. Actually he was, in Terminator 2 when Arnie became "our guy" and Cameron gave us "the biggest film ever made" (which held until 1997 when he did it again with Titanic) which gave us a very satisfying ending to his films. Let's face it, at the end of the day the franchise had been taken as far as it needed to go. It was suffering from "Re-Loaded syndrome" where a sequel was deemed "necessary". If Cameron had taken the reins I would have been more interested and when he didn't I didn't pay the film much attention. When I got my hands on an early draft I became more interested, but Re-Loaded killed any faith I had in any blockbuster. Bad Boys II changed that quickly, and it when I saw T3 I was pleasently surprised. Did you know that the only two actors who have been in all three films have been Arnie and the actor who played the shrink? Sarah Conner and Kyle Reese should not have been in this one, and I'm glad they weren't. It worked well on its own. But we don't want another one. Please?

(7) The Hannibal Lector Trilogy

Or rather the Anthony Hopkins Hannibal Lector trilogy. If we ignore Manhunter and concentrate on Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. Red Dragon is a thriller and a damn fine one. It's attention to detail in second to none - notice Edward Grahem's armpits coated in sweat when he finishes with Lector - and its involving to watch him work. The performances are second to none with each part playing its way through with no extra baggage to speak of. And the end moment leads perfectly into The Silence of the Lambs. Whereas Dragon is a superb thriller which makes us wonder how it will end, Lambs is a lesson in fear. I saw it for the first time many years ago, and like many films I saw then I mis-understood it. When I saw it again earlier this year I was terrified and stunned by the film - there is very little like it. The we made the jump from Jodie Foster who was simply cold as ice with hardly any emotion - if she had it if she had hidden it when her father died - Julianne Moore I feel nailed the Starling of the books far better (I'm aware I may be eaten alive for saying this - pun intended) As for Hannibal, well like many final acts it is flawed - but whereas Lambs is a object lesson in fear, then Hannibal is an object lesson in terror. I'm watching it as I write this post, and I'm openly terrified by many of the things I'm seeing and hearing. few films make me feel as enclosed and terrified like this - make me jump at shadows. But this, and the next film I'll talk about are two of them.

(6) The Alien Trilogy (1-3)

Resurrection I won't talk about - even though I like it. The original three Alien films are the original and best. Alien is not object-terror like Hannibal - it's true terror. There is not a moment of Alien where the audience is not on the edge of their seat, and they're in the air for most of the second act as the Alien slowly knocks off the entire crew. Then in Aliens Cameron took it where Scott did not, removed the fear of a single demon of the night, like a Vampire or Werewolf that acts alone, but made an army of them, which far from removed our fear of the Aliens and replaced it with the terror of many. Just because you were heavily armed did not make you safe - the guys with the big guns were cut down just as easily as the rest. The with Alien 3 we went back to the seclusion of Alien which in many ways was good. It was fabulous that there were no weapons, and Geiger's design of the Alien moved beyond the machine and animal hybrid mix that was Scott and Cameron's Alien into something far worse that only lives in the bottom of our nightmares. Like Michael Myers and Hannibal Lector something that is as dangerous as it looks. Lets just not talk about Aliens Vs Predator

(5) The Indiana Jones Trilogy

Perfect example of the darker second act. Technically these three films are not a trilogy, technically Temple of Doom comes before Raiders of the Lost Ark. But the films are simply fantastic, less so for cinematic geneius like Godfather or Aliens but simply for the same reason that "other sci-fi flick" is in this chart somewhere, for simple fun and excitement. Raiders is pure adrenaline, there is a frantic pace to the first film which has to be admired. Much alike many films of the time, much in the vein of Star Wars due to the feeling that it arose in the late 1970's and early 1980's, a feeling which gave birth to many other films like Die Hard or Beverly Hills Cop or Conan the Barbarian. Speilberg lost the plot slightly with The Temple of Doom which wanted to be a very dark Indiana Jones film, but with the material in question it is a little difficult to create this film. There is a ruggedness to Jones' character which demands that he be given somewhat lighter material, and yet still have his action edge, so to speak. So where Speilberg missed the mark somewhat with Temple of Doom he completely nailed what he was aiming for to begin with when he began work on the trilogy when he directed The Last Crusade. The genius here of course was the introduction of Indiana's father Henry Ford (Sean Connery) the chemistry on screen between them being completely perfect. The humour in the film is not intentional - Howard Kitchnar whilst filming The Empire Strikes Back always noted that "I needed humour, but not laugh out loud belly gags". The same is true with The Last Crusade. There is no moment when the audience feels that laughs are forced upon them, with the most humourous moment being when Ford throws a Nazi from the Balloon and says "No ticket". Much alike the shooting of the swordsman in Raiders of the Lost Ark the moments seem to fit into the whole flow of the film. Not like the humour in Batman Forever which is forced upon us, trying to make us laugh. Indiana Jones is an icon, and wheras I doubt Harrison Ford's portrayel of him will exceed that of Han Solo, but generations of children will still yell "It's Indiana Jones time!" whenever they go for a walk in the country. This and Star Wars will be the films that I raise my children on.

(4) The Lord of the Rings trilogy

There is little I can write about The Lord of the Rings that has not already been said. I've made a point of not talking about the trilogy on this blog for many reasons - the foremost of this is that I do not fancy myself as a great writer and its impossible to write in any matter of depth about Lord of the Rings without drawing comparion to the great books of Tolkein. I have only read the trilogy of books once, Fellowship of the Ring shortly after seeing the film (to my shame) which allowed me to paint a perfect image in my head. After reading it (I was in Russia at the time) I immediatly started reading The Two Towers which I had a specific image for, and strangely this didn't ruin the film for me, in fact I wanted to see what Jackson did with the text. I think that the decision to move Saruman's demise by Gandalf to Return of the King (extended cut) and Shelob really made the film a better. Return of the King is my favourite chapter, while everyone raves about the black gates and Minus Tirith but for me the best bit of the film is little interaction between Aragon and Merry when Pippin is taken off by Gandalf. And anything involving the Witch Queen was great in my book. The extended cut of Return of the King as with the rest makes the films complete. There is stuff in the extended cut of Fellowship of the Ring that should have been in the original release - the gift giving comes to mind - but the films, with or without the extras are the closest we will ever get to a Fantasy film perfection (I will rectify this when I reach "that film")

(3) The Evil Dead Trilogy

Like The Matrix trilogy this isn't really a trilogy - Evil Dead II - a film I rave about as being the greatest horror film ever made - is just a remake of The Evil Dead. But Evil Dead is as different to Evil Dead II as the original Spiderman is to Ramii's Spiderman. Watch the sequence when Octupus' tentacles take control - it is a massive tribute to Evil Dead. Bruce Campbell has taken a part in both of the Spiderman films, which shows that the ties that were made on the amking of The Evil Dead go very far. The first one is a fantastic horror film, which not only shows tribute to many other horror films, specifically The Hills Have Eyes, but was the beginning for low budget film makers. According to the commentory on the Evil Dead II disk Ramii was taken to see a drive in film by a friend (who would be a producer on the Evil Dead) and told Sam "this is the sort of thing we're trying to do". The film in question was Halloween - Ramii's comment was "Jesus, I didn't know it would have to be this good" - Well he did good - Evil Dead was inventive and different - the low budget showed but the film still had the driving force of a screwdriver through the skull. Evil Dead II took the same concept, but changed the body count from close friends to complete strangers. The whole visual style of the film is amazing - the camera work with the eye and the corpse dance are fantastic. The genius of ED2 was to turn Ash from this cool character into a cool ass kicker. And frankly without this major change we would never have had Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness and this had the Ash that we wanted to see, and until Bubba Ho-Tep last year it was the last time we got to see "The Bruce". And until/if we see Evil Dead IV I doubt we will again.

(2) The Godfather Trilogy

Like Lord of the Rings it is impossible to truly describe The Godfather. The first film is truly awe-inspiring with Pacino and the rest of the cast on top form. The restaurant hit is one of the greatest pieces of film ever made, equalled only by Brando's death amoung the orange trees and the final set of hits, set in time with the christening of Connie's child. It's equally impossible to talk about The Godfather without talking about the magnificent performance of Marlon Brando who was considered to be commercial suicide when he was cast as Don Coleone but he made the role his own. His reactions throughout the film are to be watched, my personnal favourite being when he hears that his son Sonny (Caan) has been killed and his only sign is leaning on the drinks cabinet for...just....a....second....and then he's back to his strength that he carries through the film. Duvall is the one who has to give him this news, and Duvall carries somewhat a nervous nature through the film, and yet he's one of the principle strong characters. Then in Part II he takes control, he becomes the Godfather while Michael (Pacino at his best) goes out to increase his empire. Part II also has the role of Robert De Niro who won his first best supporting actor award - an award which he should have won for Goodfellas, and though I find the film difficult at times its certainly well worthy of the only sequel ever to win an oscar award (until last year when The Return of the King bagged best picture). I have to admit I've never seen the third part, but I have asked for the DVD trilogy for my birthday (should be arriving anytime soon joy :D) and then I'm going to have an italian night with pasta, red wine and the Godfather truly the greatest crime film trilogy ever made and quite possibly the best "film" ever made.

(1) The Star Wars Trilogy

It had to be this didn't it? Tempted though I was to simply end the post here, I thought it might be time to re-write my infamous "post that vanished" on Star Wars which took me hours (so i'm getting comftable now).

Nah, sorry can't bring myself to write more about Star Wars. Needless to say, it's my favourite trilogy, and it's one of the few none-Disney films I can watch that makes me like a little kid.

Good night ladies & gents, the CrazyMovieBuff is back in bussiness!

Quote of the Day - "That's one damn fine coat you're wearing" - Sin City
Song of the moment - just switched to "Every Breath You Take" Sting and the Police
Song of the post - "Two Times" Ann Lee

Bad....so bad....

2005-08-09T12:47:00.000+02:00

Apologies for not posting for a while, I've been underground with work (both money work at the hospital and uni work which is drowning me at the mo) so I thought I'd make a return with a list of the worst films I've ever seen. This has been prompted by me watching Alexander last night, apparantly the worst film ever made, but I quite liked it. I've also seen The Fantastic Four recently which was supposed to be awful, but once again I quite liked it.

So without further ado, in no particular order:

(1) Troy

I'm talking about Troy first because I don't think it's as bad as I first thought. Yes there are no Gods but the film is from the mortals perspective, and as Gemma pointed out they wouldn't see them. Yes they didn't read the story and kept Paris alive and killed Menelaus but that was to keep the female fanbase happy. Yes they kept mis-pronouncing the names (a mistake Stone made a point of not doing in Alexander) but the battle scenes are good and Pitt and Bean are sound as Achillies and Odysseus. Still think Paris should have died though.

(2) Spiderman 2

Gods I really hate this film. "Raindrops are falling on my head" is a crime against humanity. The whole film is just rancid from start to finish. The one moment when it suprasses every other superhero film made is the fight on the train - then Rami screws it up when the people on the train try to protect Spiderman. I can only hope that the third one picks things up, because this one had so much potential. I still find it hard to believe that people give this hunk of rubbish 5 stars and piss all over The Punisher which is one of my favourite comic book adaptation. How could Empire give Spiderman 5 stars and Sin City only 4? It's a mystery...

(3) Sin City

Nah just kidding

(4) Batman & Robin

The mother of all bad films (followed by Plan 9 From Outer Space) but you can't blame this one dying on Cloony. You can blame it on Arnie's terrible Mr. Freeze, Uma Thurman's plant...thing, Chris "Give me a personality" O'Donnell and Alicia Silverstone's Batgirl. The only way WB saved the franchise by going back to the beginning.

(5) Blue Streak

Thankfully this has vanished from the world with the exception of 2nd hand shops who are overflowed with it. Complete cack

(6) Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets

Makes Blue Streak look like a classic. The first one was ok-ish it hit the mark of an early Potter film. But this one, based on the worst book, had no charm whatsoever. The only good thing about was the level of detail in Columbus' direction, and the fact it had Richard Harris. There is no other appealing feature, except maybe Hermonie...

(7) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Not the re-make, the original. I just don't like this film. At all. Nothing. There is nothing good about it, and I have severe problems with anyone whe finds it a good film, less one of the best horror films. It's clunky (I have no problem with low budget horror by the way, one of my favourite horror films is the Evil Dead) but this one isn't scary, and it feels like it has been throw together to make things as gory and shocking as possible, but not scary.

(8) Finding Nemo

Yuck. I watched this a second time lying on my girlfriend's bed and I didn't enjoy it anymore then when I watched it in the cinema. Visually it's stunning, much more stunning then the equally poor Shark Tale but this difference is that this one is full of sentimental shit that it gets bogged down in its own entrails. Please let it's critical praise be at an end, just like Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

(9) Legue of Gentleman Apocolypse

I must have been drunk to pay good money for this.

(10) Legue of Extraordinary Gentlemen

This could have been good. This could have been really good. It had the cast, and the budget and the story to draw on. And yet the director screwed it all to hell by making this a screw up of gigantic proportion. The fact the British are insulted so badly in the opening sequence doesn't help. The saving grace of the film is that Connery's Alan Quartamein is well done, but there is nothing else to reccomend this film.

(11) Hulk

I didn't think that this could be screwed up. I thought Ang Lee was a weird choice for something like this, and I didn't know enough about Eric Bana to make a comment. I loved Bana in Troy and I'll watch anything with him in now. But Hulk hurt to watch, from the confusing storyline involving Bana's father to the split screen sequences which were horrible and then the end fight with his father which was confusing and hard work. And then the biggest crime in the film which was the Hulk showing emotion when he saw a goddamn flower! Not really worth the time of day this.

(12) The Matrix Re-Loaded

You know what scares me the most about this? Joel Silver has said that Re-Loaded and Revolutions were one film. And this is the Matrix Trilogy so what scares me is that there maybe another one, even though Neo died in Revolutions which was a film that I actually liked. Re-Loaded however was pap from start to finish, they took the Matrix and made into a commercial film by adding big buck sequences like the fighting 100 agent Smith's and the unecesasary dance sequence in Zion. The car chase and the fist fights with Neo are good enough. But overall this was terrible.

So have I seen anything good recently? At the cinema I saw The Fantastic Four, War of the Worlds and Sin City again. On DVD I've seen Alexander, The Aviator, Ray, Million Dollar Baby and Sideways. Therefore with the exception of Closer I've seen all of the main Oscar films. I now firmly believed that Million Dollar Baby did not deserve best director (that should have gone to Scorcese for The Aviator) or best film (I don't think any of them truly deserved it, but out of all of them I'd have to go for Ray) and certainly didn't deserve best actress (I would go for Cate Blanchett in The Aviator) I'm glad Foxx got best actor for Ray. That was good.

Be back soon with the best Comic book films ever made. Guess Sin City will be on the top.

Quote of the day - "You know the problem with Hollywood? They make shit" John Travolta Swordfish
Song of the moment - "Accidentally In Love" - Counting Crows
Song of the post - Bad to the Bone

My films! Just mine! All mine! hehehehe

2005-06-12T01:27:00.000+02:00

Ok, yep, I've got my eye on 4 films at the moment.

(1) Alcoholics From The Bench
(2) Orpheus: Don't Look Back
(3) Hunter
(4) Life For Rent

It's generally because I'm writing them! Hunter is a horror film, slightly in the vein of Jeepers Creepers but not the samebecause I can't stand the film! It's going to be the first of a trilogy - I hope - I've even got storylines for all three films. Orpheus is based on the White Wolf Roleplaying game based around the game I'm playing at the moment (hopefully I'll be ST'ing a game soon enough). Life For Rent I concieved after watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and it's a drama about heartbreak and loss. Alcoholics is my attempt at wiritng a comedy about 6 students who are forced to put down the pints in order to save the world from being hypnoticed by a Sean Penn look-a-like who is brain washing them all - the students are only saved by their high intake of a previously unknown type of alcohol.

Life for Rent is the only one I've made any progress on - Alcoholics doesn't really have a title yet - I'm working on that. I was thinking of doing something like Shaun of the Dead with students and Vampires - but it would be more of a horror film than a comedy - it would of course help if I had a sense of humour - but at the end of the day, this is going to be a film written by students for the enjoyment of students (much alike Shaun of the Dead)

Oh, and if you're a fan of The League of Gentlemen then you will probably like The League of Gentlemen Apocolypse - I've never seen the series and with a couple of exceptions I absolutly hated the film with a horrible passion. I really should have watched Mr. & Mrs. Smith - Oh well, only a few more days until Batman Begins

Quote of the Day - Those were the best days of my life "Summer of '69"
Song of the moment - N/A
Song of the post - These Words - Natasha Bedingfield

Revenge of the Sith Part VIII

2005-06-07T03:48:00.000+02:00

Due to exams and other odds and ends (i.e. Gemma) I haven't posted in ages. Very sorry.

Well I've seen Revenge of the Sith three times. And it's everything I hoped it would be. The lightsabres are amazing, even if the Yoda/Sidious duel was not what I expected. I would talk about it for a lot longer than this, but a) I've been warned not to because of spoilors - and you can't really review it without doing that (i.e. saying who fights who) and b) I wanna talk about Sin City.

Sin City has replaced American Beauty as the best film that I have ever seen.

I can say no bad thing about Sin City. I advice that anyone who reads this should see the film at a late night showing like I did, it gives the film something else that I feel would be missing if you saw it during the day. I think that this is truly the best film that everyone involved, actors and production crew have ever put together.

What else on the film front? Well, I've heard that Pierce Brosnan will be back as James Bond, though I've heard so many rumours about who's being Bond that I've given up. Fantastic Four, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory and War of the Worlds are currently vying for the place that Sin City holds as the best film of the summer (though in the best film catagory none of them have a ice-cubes-chance-in-hell). Also this Russian one Night Watch looks like it could be interesting.

So the best films this year so far have been Sin City, Revenge of the Sith and Constantine. I do a top 5 films every year - and usually the best films of the year come out towards the end. We've got to remember that The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and the fourth Harry Potter film have yet to come out, so things could still be interesting. Then there is also Serenity the Firefly film which should rock heavily.

I've also heard that there is a new director on X3 the third X-Men film - Brett Shatner? Does this mean anything to you guys?

Oh, and I've seen Kingdom of Heaven which was good and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy which was extremely good. The use of Martin I thought was just right, as was Eddy, a character I had completely forgotton about. Zaphod Beeblebrox wasn't done right though, and I'm not sure why.

Tonight, on the night shift, I've watched The Punisher, Hollow Man, Freddy Vs Jason and I've just started Terminator 2 - I think this is the best way to pass the night.

Apologies for the lack of replies, but now I'm back at work I should be able to post more often.

Quote of the day - "You're not God Frank, I am" Hollow Man
Song of the moment - N/C
Song of the post - My Time of Day

Revenge of the Sith Part VII

2005-05-18T13:43:00.000+02:00

Less than a day to go. 13 Years of waiting, and it's finally here.

Quote of the day - "Consumed by the Dark Side young Skywalker has become"
Song of the moment - The Imperial March - from The Empire Strikes Back
Song of the post - If Tommorow Never Comes

Revenge of the Sith Part VI

2005-05-08T01:44:00.000+02:00

God it's going to be so good! So Good! Gemma looked fairly scared as we watched the trailer earlier - seeing it on the big screen is one of a adrenalline rush!

In other news, I've seen The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Kingdom of Heaven. Hitchhikers Guide is a terrible adaptation of the book, but a brilliant film. Kingdom of Heaven is a good film, but nothing special. Still loved it mind.

Quote of the Day - "Life, don't talk to me about life"
Song of the moment - "She's Like The Wind"
Song of the post - "I'm so excited!"

Ain't no paintbrush big enough....

2005-04-29T20:14:00.000+02:00

Right! That's Enough! No more bloody Zombies! I've been painting them constantly for tommorow, and I still have 40 to go! In a minute I've gotta go downstairs and paint constantly for the rest of the night. It would help if I didn't have Bucky O' Hare playing constantly on the TV - and if I wasn't horribly tired (which I can't explain for the life of me, given that I've had a really good nights sleep for two nights on the trot now).

Film wise, well I have my Episode III tickets now, and the date is getting closer. We're planning to do the whole lot on the release day, have Episodes I & II just before the film, then IV, V & VI afterwards! There will be drinking, quoting and ordering food for those of you in the Aber area who fancy coming down?

Ho-hum, I've been watching lots of Firefly again recently - we saw the new trailer on Tuesday night (the second it was released) and it does look rather good.

I also found a French made film with Ash against Leatherface (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and then against Conner McCloud (Highlander) who has just fought Blade. It's manic as hell, but it's also a damn good laugh! it features the return of "The Hand" (of course) and who do you think wins? Find out in Ben's next post! Oh, you can find it on Ain't It Cool News as usual!

Quote of the day - "All we have become is Echoes of the Great Song"
Song of the moment - "Torn" Natalie Imbruglia
Song of the post - Zombie - The Cranberries

Yes, I'm still alive

2005-04-24T18:40:00.000+02:00

People are starting to question this fact, considering the huge gaps between these posts. I do do them, whenever I have the chance. I'm still trying to find time to re-do that Star Wars post and talk about the script. Speaking of which, I haven't got the script for The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe though it's on its way I'm being told (on the phone) right now, I've also been begging for a look at the script for Serenity but that's under so many locks and keys that someone I knows friend got arrested at the Fox site for trying to sneak a look! And he works there! It's absolutly bonkers! Anyhow, he let us both know that he had seen Joss Whedon and Nathan whats-his-name watching the trailer and going crazy. The trailer is being released on Tuesday I believe - and I'll be posting then when I see it.

In other news, I've been able to get an Exclusive look at the trailer for The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe. It's very very very good - exactly how I imagined it. I'm trying to get a link up here - but this damn posting system won't let me do pictures or movie clips. Am working on that as best I can. I'm trying to track down a link as well - but it ain't going so well.

Oh, and I hate private school kids. Fact. And before anyone says it, yes I know I was at private school - but I'm not like them.

Quote of the Day - "You can't take the sky from me" - The theme song to Firefly
Song of the moment - Gimmie Some Lovin - Spencer Davis Group
Song of the post - Mr. Moneybags

Revenge of the Sith Part V

2005-04-19T17:30:00.000+02:00

Ladies and Gentlemen - there are only 30 days to go till Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith is released worldwide!!!!

Oh yes please!

Anyway, apart from my little private moment there, nothing much is happening on the Ben front. I'm working on essays a lot, playing some roleplay and watching some films. I finally got around to getting my hands on the DVD of Beetlejuice the other day, and had a mad time last night watching it. I've also got the Team America: World Police soundtrack, which is always good. Loud renditions of America, F**k Yeah! might be coming from my room later tonight.

I also just read two very interesting bits of Movie-related news. Firstly (and most worryingly) a group of geeks tried to highjack a large truck for a movie showing of Mad Max or perhaps the trilogy, I'm not quite sure. The arrets were apparantly "not fair". Yeah right.

Secondly they're releasing the Star Wars theme tune as a single! As one spokesperson said "Only Star Wars could do it" - Yes, correct.

Speaking of which, I've worked my way through the script and hardback of Episode III. It's going to be very good indeed if they stick to this copy of the script. Lots of lightsabres, lots of Yoda and lots of horrible murder. Hopefully this is going to be the first 12A Star Wars. Attack of the Clones was a PG if I recall.

I'm hearing good things about The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy as well (which should be very good) and Serenity which is the film of Firefly which is a series which was criminally cut short. The film should answer some questions which need answering. Like who the preacher is???

Quote of the day - "You'd hit a preacher?" "That ain't no preacher" - Firefly
Song of the moment - "She Will Be Loved" - Maroon 5
Song of the post - has to be the Star Wars main theme (number one here we go! :D)

Don't Wanna Miss A Thing

2005-04-14T18:52:00.000+02:00

Oh God! Revenge of the Sith trailer on the big screen! Oh My God!

Oh yes, and Doom has been pushed back to October. Halloween film methinks?

Quote of the Day - "I'd rather go sunbathing" A Gangral's response to an invite by Hunters to meet with the Camarilla

Song of the moment:

I could stay awake, just to hear you breathing,
Watch you smile while you are sleeping, while you're far away dreaming,
I could spend my life, in this sweet surrender,
I could stay lost in this moment forever,
Every moment spent with you is a moment I treasure,

Don't wanna close my eyes, Don't wanna fall asleep,
Cos I miss you baby, and I don't wanna miss a thing,
Cos even when I'm dreaming girl, the sweetest dream would never do,
I'd still miss you baby, and I don't wanna miss a thing,

I'm close to you, feeling your heart beating,
And I'm wondering what you're dreaming, wondering if it's me you're seeing,
And I kiss you're eyes and thank God yet again now,
I just wanna stay with you in this moment forever, for ever and ever,

Don't wanna close my eyes, I don't wanna fall asleep,
Cos I miss you baby, and I don't wanna miss a thing,
Cos even when I'm dreaming girl, the sweetest dream would never do,
I'd still miss you baby, and I don't wanna miss a thing,

I don't wanna miss one smile, I don't wanna miss one kiss,
I just wanna be with you right here, just like this,
I just wanna hold you close, and feel your heart so close to mine,
And just stay here in this moment for all the rest of time,

I don't wanna close my eyes, I don't wanna fall asleep,
Cos I'd miss you baby, and I don't wanna miss a thing,
Cos even when I'm dreaming girl, the sweetest dream would never do,
I'd still miss you baby, and I don't wanna miss a thing,

I don't wanna close my eyes - I don't wanna fall alseep,
Cos I'd miss you baby, and I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing,
Cos even when I'm dreaming girl! The sweetest dream would never do!
Cos I'd miss you babe, and I don't wanna miss a thing

Don't Wanna Close My Eyes!
Cos I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing

Song of the post - I'm Ready

The Kids Did Good (Revenge of the Sith Part IV)

2005-04-09T13:16:00.000+02:00

They certainly did. Because in about 45mins, I'm going off into *bleep* to meet *bleep* to pick up the shooting version of the script for Episode III, Revenge of the Sith.

Now, obviously the script is going to be very different to the final film, so I'm not expecting a blow-by-blow account of what happens in the film. I just know I asked for the Doom script, and I got this instead.

So now the gloves are off! I've asked for the Fantastic Four and War of the Worlds scripts as well. Most people like to wait until the film comes out so they're surprised. I like to know what's gonna happen.

I'll amend this post tommorow or sunday when I've worked my way through it, but right now I just wanna sink my teeth in.

There are some new trailers out as well - gimmie a coupla days and I'll track them down for you dear readers.

Quote of the Day - No idea - I'll do this later
Song of the moment - "Cold Metal" Iggy Pop
Song of the post - "I Gotcha"

Say hello to my little friend......

2005-04-08T17:14:00.000+02:00

Big guns, blood & Gore, monster from hell, hard as nails Space Marines, bigger guns, Mars, no plot, big bangs, bigger guns. Put them together, and what do you get?

Doom

Yep, it's official. The film is coming, the film is being made. Whether it will be any good (or have a plot!) is yet to be seen. I'm currently pulling every string I can find to get my hands upon the script (Yep Ben has contacts. He feels so grown up...)

Seriously though, Doom is going to blow us all away. Hopefully (since it's coming out in August of this year which stunned me!) Even if there is no story, there will still be explosions, blood and death.

Right, think I'll go and buy a good 3dFX card, so I can finally play Doom III

Quote of the Day - "The Devil exists, I built his cage" from the beginning of Doom III
Song of the moment - Radio GAGA - Queen
Song of the post - Don't Fear The Reaper

John Paul II

2005-04-08T17:11:00.000+02:00

Ben's future DVD collection!

2005-04-05T21:55:00.000+02:00

I know I've already done a short post on this (i.e. what I want for my future collection) and I've already written this post once, but this damn computer has a serious problem with me. I've also heard the superb news that it's not going to be any damn American but a Scot who's going to be the next James Bond.

YEP, THAT'S RIGHT! SEAN CONNERY IS RETURNING AS THE OLDER JAMES BOND!

(but I'm not happy or anything!)

Right, onto the list, to be bought on my new debit card on play.com (which I completely reccomend):

The Amytiville Horror

Assault On Princinct 13

Zulu

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Rio Bravo

The Shootist

Goodfellas

The Godfather

Beetlejuice

Jaws

Dracula (The Original and the Christopher Lee "Prince of Darkenss" series!)

The Terminator

Reservoir Dogs

Superman

Batman

Goldfinger

Frankenstein

Ghostbusters

Four Weddings & A Funeral

Streetfighter

Time Cop

Jason & The Argonaughts

A Streetcar Named Desire (currently top of the list, but currently unavailable in the UK)

Leon

Some Like It Hot

Star Trek 2: The Wraith of Kahn

Aladdin

The Shawshank Redemption

Natural Born Killers

Platoon

JFK

Blade Runner

Psycho

Dial M For Murder

The Birds

Vertigo

North By Northwest

THX-1138

Planet of the Apes

Easy Rider

On The Waterfront

Beauty & The Beast

Hamlet

Henry V

Romeo & Juliet

The Long Good Friday

The Adventures of Robin Hood

The Seven Samurai

Throne of Blood

The Graduate

Grease

Mary Poppins

Gone With The Wind

Titanic

The Great Escape

Ben Hur

The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

The Usual Suspects

Braveheart

Toy Story 1 & 2

Super-Size-Me

The Raiders of the Lost Ark

Constantine (the second it comes out! :D)

The Last Crusade

Highlander

Team America:World Police

South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut

Dragonheart

Jumanji

Hook

One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest

Dr. Strangelove (Or How I Decided To Stop Worrying And Love the Bomb)

Grosse Point Blank

The Searchers

Forrest Gump

Raging Bull

Singing In The Rain

Fargo

Lawrence of Arabia

Taxi Driver

The Big Lebowski

It's A Wonderful Life

Apcolypse Now

LA Confidential

Schindler's List

The Silence of the Lambs

Se7en

Casablanca

Breakfast At Tiffany's

Fight Club

12 Angry Men

Starship Troopers

The Thing

The Abyss

King Kong

Well, that's it. We'll be starting with Team America: World Police. And soundtrack :D

Quote of the day - "The last time I was inside a woman was on a visit to the Statue of Liberty" (From Manhatten) or "Don't knock Masturbation, it's sex with someone I love" from Annie Hall

Song of the moment - She Will Be Loved - Maroon Five

Song of the Post - You're the One That I Want

More Timberlake rumours?

2005-04-05T05:37:00.000+02:00

You know, I thought we'd heard the end of these damn "Justin Timberlake wants to act" stories. First it was him going to be the Iron Man and now he's rumoured to be in Die Hard 4. Firstly this is a film that should never be made. I mean it's Die Hard! If they screw up, then it's going to be "Yippie-Ki-Yay Motherf***kers" I'm afraid - and I doubt I'll be alone.

The good news is that Tony Jaa is supposodly going to be in the film. See him breaking Timerberlake into little pieces? Yes please.

Check the full story at www.aint-it-cool.com

Quote of the day - see previous post(s) - again

Song of the moment - I don't know what it is

Song of the post - Break Me, Shake Me (Savage Garden)

Did Pulp Fiction save Bruce Willis' career?

2005-04-05T05:31:00.000+02:00

This one is open to the comments. My opinion? Hell No! John Travolta's career was salvaged by his apperance in Pulp Fiction - but Willis was a star at this point. The only big films he had made were Die Hard and Look Who's Talking. Channel 4 Entertainment news has just told me that Willis' career was saved by the film.

Humph.

Also, on another dark note, Kyrstin Dunst is marrying the bloke from Donnie Darko. Humph

Quote of the Day - see previous post(s)
Song of the moment - Pulp Fiction theme
Song of the post - Dr. No!

There Can Be Only One!

2005-04-05T05:15:00.000+02:00

Notice, at the end of every film they say that. Yet in the next film, there's always a couple more! Not that I'm complaining!

Yep, I'm on about Highlander. You'll see it's in my favourite films list (and if they were in order then it would be very close, if not at, the top of the list). They are the true definition of a "Cult" film, and I truly love the films. The sword fights are always top-notch, the lines are always absolutly fantastic (with some wonderful dark comedy, see the quote!) The music (especially in the first film) blows you away (Queen did the soundtrack, the main track being Princes of the Universe) and the Villans are so completely evil ("What do you want?" "Your head!"). Sean Connery is in the first film (and the second I believe, which I've never seen) and he plays the Yoda character perfectly. The first film is a stereotypical 80's flim, with the cheesy directing and setting - it worked in Highlander and it worked in Lethal Weapon.

So why am I going on about Highlander? Because I just read a very interesting piece about how Highlander 5 is now on the cards. I'm interested in this - I know there are two immortals left, but Conner McCloud (Lambert) is no dead. And yet....I'd love to see him do Highlander again. He always came across as an immortal who was cursed rather than blessed. I believe he has a wonderful line (which I would look up, but it is 4.20am) something along the lines of "The forest is lovely, dark and deep, and I have many miles before I sleep". Yes, I know he's quoting a poem, but the line which strikes home is "miles to go before I sleep". In the case of an immortal it is so utterly true.

It's an interesting curse too. Increased strength and dexterity, an amazing skill with swords - and so the only way you can be killed is by the removal of your head. You notice that No-one in these films carries axes or projectile weapons which remove heads. Not that I'm complaining, it's a wonderful film(s)

Right, to a more serious note. The Pope has died, and I'll leave a blank post here on monday at 10am out of respect. I would appreciate people leaving blank comments on the page as well. I won't take kindly to people making fun of this - those who know me know what I'm like.

May you rest in peace for the remainder of time.

Quote of the day:
(Nazi Speaks in German to McCloud)
McCloud: (laughs) Whatever you say Jack, you're the master race (and shoots him!)

Song of the moment - No idea, some form of Rap song - it's awful!

Song of the Post - Who Wants To Live Forever? Queen

Death to McFly Part III

2005-04-05T02:12:00.000+02:00

Fine Steve, I know you like them. But this crime deserves for McFly to be taken into a public place and shot. The only reason that McFly are not suffering from a long Kate Bush style education is that they have made Obviously which is still one of my favourite songs.
The reason for this sudden hatred on Ben's behalf? McFly are currently working on their first film. May God help us all. This is a film that deserves to be destroyed now before it's too late!
It's a late shift again, so I'll be posting again later. What I post on is yet to be decided. I'm tempted to do the Star Wars post again. I'm about to ST a game of Call of Cthulu - so right now I'm swotting up on the rules - I'm so nervous! I feel like I need to know the rules better. So we'll see!
Quote of the Day - "There are five main human emotions that hold. Hate, Guilt, Love, Revenge and Fear" It's from Vanilla Sky but it fits into The Revenge of the Sith so well....
Song of the moment - The ER theme tune.
Song of the post - Livin' On A Prayer

Death to McFly Part II

2005-04-01T06:30:00.000+02:00

Gods. Not only are they not breaking up (more's the pity) but they're currently working on their new film. In the perfect world it will be forgotton, much alike SpiceWorld and the S Club 7 film Double Trouble or whatever it was called.

And If that's not bad enough, then Scary Movie IV is currently being filmed. Lord help us!

Our prayers and thoughts are with the Pope, praying to the Lord to give him strength when he needs it the most, and for his now inevitable passing to be peaceful.

Once again, apologies for the short post, I'm very tired.

Quote of the Day - "Cows!" - Let no-one say that this job is not interesting!
Song of the moment - "Sweet Child O Mine" Guns & Roses
Song of the post - "Leave Right Now" - Will Young

N.B. the "Song of the post" one is a new idea, a song which refers to what's going on in the post. For Example Leave Right Now is referring to McFly. Can they please Leave Right Now

Summer lovin (movies) had me a blast!

2005-03-31T06:12:00.000+02:00

Just a quick one guys (I'm very tired) just a quick list of the ten films you have to see this summer!

(1) Batman Begins

Oh come on! It's a new Batman film - true without Burton but even so!

(2) Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith

Need I say more?

(3) The Island

Michael Bay blowing things up - and the trailer looks good. What more do you want?

(4) Kingdom of Heaven

It's the Crusades, it's either going to be very good all very bad. This has Ridley Scott at the head, so I'm leaning towards very good.

(5) Night Watch

Don't know much about this one but it's more Good Vs Evil in the vein of Constantine which I loved!

(6) Sin City

More comic book fun, and with Quentin Tarantino in it somewhere - sounds good to me. And the latest trailer rocked my world!

(7) Charlie & The Chocolate Factory

Ben begins to salivate in a Homer Simpson fashion....

(8) The Fantastic Four

More superhero stuff - I love the new trailer and I've just gone and fetched the mop for my saliva!

(9) The War of the Worlds

I take back any bad things I said previously about this film. More saliva cometh, small bucket now required

(10) Mr & Mrs Smith

I don't remember there being a pool in here.....

Yep, that's it guys - it's going to be a good summer. Not long now till Revenge of the Sith (and now I've got my tickets! :D:D:D:D)

Song of the moment - California the theme from the OC

Let me tell you what "Like A Virgin" is all about....

2005-03-31T00:56:00.000+02:00

Normally, the annual Empire awards walk all over the Oscars for choice. This year however, instead of giving Best Actor to David Carridine and Best Film to Kill Bill Vol.2 - instead both awards went to The Bourne Supremecy a poor sequel to a very poor film. I feel pain like no other time - an award for The Incredibles perhaps? or Hellboy? I dunno....

But the ignorance of Vol.2 has made me go over the other great films of Mr. Taratino again, and I've even gone back to look at some of the older ones he did, starting with his best film Pulp Fiction. This is one of the few films where everytime I watch the film I want to make films myself. The way the film falls into place just works completely for me. The parts with Bruce Willis in (even though he's superb in the film) do go on a bit for me - for me the film is owned by every scene with John Travolta in it. Sam Jackson is also very impressive indeed - their little conversation on their way up to handle the guys at the beginning. And what do we think is in the briefcase (please add your comments at the end on this one).

I'm torn - part of me thinks that it's Bruce Willis's prize fighting belt. Part of me things it's just drugs. Part of me thinks that it's Marseillus Wallass' soul (notice he has a plaster on the back of his neck). But all of me knows what's inside - a lamp and a battery!

Right, Reservoir Dogs. I don't know this one so well - but I still think it's ace. Especially the final stand off.

(God's I'm tired)

Ok, next we have Jackie Brown which I have never seen. Also we should give him credit for Sin City (which I also haven't seen)

Then there's Kill Bill in all it's gory glory. The scene that everyone remembers is the massacre at the house of blue leaves, but my favourite scene is when Bill (David Carridine) finally dies at the hands of the bride (literally) and his five final steps. Extraordinary stuff!

Right, so that's Tarantino! I've always loved his films, but not in the same deity-worshipping way that everyone else does, and yet Pulp Fiction is one of the most complete films I've ever seen.

Yay! Hammer Horror on Channel 4 now! Probably scare me to death when I'm walking around the site (think I'll be taking the van round for the rest of the night!) I never knew that the original idea for the Mummy films (the originals) came from Bram Stroker! u learn something new everyday!

Quote of the moment -There are things that go "bump" in the night Agent Myers...we're the ones who bump back - it's, of course, from Hellboy

Another post later......

Revenge of the Sith Part III

2005-03-30T10:57:00.000+02:00

More pictures and spoilers coming through....not long to go now, just over a month!

check this link for details "http://www.millenniumfalcon.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=3638"

Once again, another post later, cos I'm working the late shift again.

Oooops!

2005-03-28T06:04:00.000+02:00

I forgot to put Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring in my favourite films, and Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King (both the extended edtions of course!) In the lists! Return of the King replacing Braveheart and Fellowship of the Ring in their somewhere....I don't know where!

Quote of the moment - "He hates and loves the Ring - as he hates and loves himself" - From The Fellowship of the Ring

Simply the Best!

2005-03-28T05:13:00.000+02:00

Ok, I'm working on getting the top 50 albums actually appear on my blog page. It's taking some time though. Right now I'm more concerned with writing this post, which could be quite a long one, so bare with me, because these are the best films that I've ever seen. Now I've always had a distinction between my favourite films and the best films I've ever seen. So, let's start with the best. Only the first five are in any particular order:

(1) American Beauty
(2) The Rules of Attraction
(3) Pulp Fiction
(4) Goodfellas
(5) The Shawshank Redemption
(6) The Godfather
(7) The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
(8) A Streetcar Named Desire
(9) Gangs of New York
(10) The Usual Suspects
(11) The Shining
(12) The Blues Brothers
(13) Braveheart
(14) Toy Story
(15) Leon
(16) Halloween
(17) Titanic
(18) Aliens
(19) Beauty & The Beast
(20) Super Size Me

Ok? I'm not going to go into any details on these, because I could literally write for hours on most of them, but I'll have to amend what I said earlier, and that all the top ten are in order (except I think The Usual Suspects should be higher, but I'm not sure where to put it - and come on! who in their right mind would put Braveheart above Beauty & The Beast). These are all top of their game. I have missed a couple of films, but these are all so good that it's hard to judge.

Now onto my favourite films. Most of these are not in the same league as the remainder of these, however they're all still very good. And yet, they're all good in their own way. These on the other hand are in absolutly no order whatsoever:

(1) The Return of the Jedi
(2) The Raiders of the Lost Ark
(3) Constantine
(4) Grease
(5) Batman
(6) The Empire Strikes Back
(7) The Last Crusade
(8) Superman
(9) Terminator 2: Judgement Day
(10) Beetlejuice
(11) Highlander
(12) Aladdin
(13) Dodgeball - A True Underdog Story
(14) The Blues Brothers
(15) The Great Escape
(16) Love, Actually
(17) The Nightmare Before Christmas
(18) Team America: World Police
(19) South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
(20) Dragonheart

There are a couple of others I would love to put in there, however these films are not in there for their quality (even though some of them are truly amazing films) but they are films which have given me the most amount of pleasure when I watch them. I would love to have Shaun of the Dead in their somewhere too, but it just wasn't to be. If I could squeeze in just...one...more than it would be Hook.

So there you go - comment away, but I'm gonna ignore them so why bother? (Just for this post, these views ain't gonna change :D)

Quote of the moment - "Judge all you want but (Ross) married a lesbian, (to Rachel) left a man at the alter (to Pheobe) fell in love with a gay ice dancer (to Joey) through a womans wooden leg on a fire (to Chandler) living in a box! - Probably one of the best ever lines from Friends. Followed closely by "So then I kissed her"
"Tongue?"
"Yeah"
"Cool".
Hehehehehehehe

Song of the moment - "Flashdance - What A Feeling"

Too.....many.....sequels!

2005-03-28T04:55:00.000+02:00

There's too many of them dammit! Where is the originality? (sigh)

Actually I'm not complaning too much, since two of them are sequels to two of my favourite films of last year, namely The Punisher and Hellboy. A sequel to The Punisher is fine in my book, since it has the potential to be far more violent and have the classic hero blow some more stuff up. Hopefully it will make the character far more alike to the character from the books, which is once again fine by me. And hopefully the sequel to Hellboy will be more of the same, expansion of characters and bigger budget (therefore bigger effects) so long as we see more of Hellboy's gun in the sequel, and less of him and Liz then I'll be happy.

The other major sequel noise is coming from Bean 2. This one I'm not so bothered about, since Atkinson has declined so much in recent years, Johnny English being the most obvious, being, frankly, crap. I'm not going to see this, I'm not paying to put in pain for two hours again.

More entries incoming, I need to do another round.

Quote of the moment - "This is not justice, It's Punishment" - The Punisher

Time On My Hands

2005-03-28T03:17:00.000+02:00

Right, so the Top 50 albums is done and dusted (even though I only did 25) And I'm back on the night shift. It dawned on me this morning that at the end of this shift, I've earnt £450. Given how many nights I've got to go (which I'm not commenting on since I know how much I'll be making, and I don't want to appear overly rich :D) I've decided to spend some before I go back to university in a couple of weeks, therefore I'm going shopping with £150 next week. It's time to do something I've dreamed about since I was about eleven. I'm walking into Games Workshop with a huge amount of money, and I'm going to buy myself an army. It'll be adding the final touched to my Vampire Counts army, as well as a number of extra bits, like getting myself some unit bases, which should be useful in the tournament, and some flock so that I can give a bit more decoration to the models - one of the major advantages to collecting the Undead, you can add some really nice extra touches, like bits of grass on the top of their heads so they look like they have literally just come out of the ground.

But Ben isn't just spending this entire amount of money on Warhammer? Hell No! I've got my eye on the Punisher game which has just come out on the PC, I've played the Demo, and even though it is certainly a complete rip-off of Max Payne it is also much more along the lines of the comic than the film was. Far more brutal, with Punisher feeding bad guys to the fishes and then using them as human shields (shooting them when done).

Next I've got my eyes on the 2-disk edition of Hellboy, then Dodgeball, A True Underdog Story and finally the special edition of The Incredibles which was faily invetible after I've stated (many times) how much I loved the film. If I have anything left over, then I'm very tempted to pick up Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as well.

Right, I've got other stuff I'm going to post about later, stuff I've wanted to post for ages, like my favourite films, and I'm very tempted to re-write the extended post that I wrote about Star Wars. God knows I've got enough time on my hands.

Quote of the moment - "You ever danced with the devil in the pale blue moonlight" - Jack Nicholson in Batman

Song of the moment - "Is This The Way To Amarillo?" - Tony Christie

Revenge of the Sith Part II

2005-03-27T06:55:00.000+02:00

I just wrote a post on this that cost we two hours of my life, and this bloody computer has just deleted it all. The upshot is that Episode III The Revenge of the Sith will be utterly fantastic, my history with Star Wars how I got into it and my views on the other two films were all there, about three pages long and now it's gone.

Well then, I'm afriad I'm not writing it up again. Maybe again in the future when I've seen the third film, but not at the moment my dear readers.

More posts to folow later, because I'm just about to finish work.

Quote of the Day - "There is not a more wretched hive of scum and villany, full of such money grabbing whores of the film industry in the whole galaxy. You're my kind of people" A line by a Darth Vader impersonator at the previews of Revenge of the Sith

Song of the moment - Immigration Song by Zed Leppilin

Death To McFly!

2005-03-27T03:43:00.000+02:00

Ok, don't quote me on this, but I've just seen (in my current "build up to 3am early morning TV session) I've just seen that "Harry" has left McFly! Huzzah! Yes! The torment of talent going horribly to waste is over! Yes they did a brilliant sang (Obviously) a mediorce song (I don't know the name) and lots of very bad songs (specifically Five Colours In Her Hair)

Yes, fine, they are little more than an imitation of Busted, even though I'm frequently reminded that I liked Busted, but that's beside the point, I despise McFly, despite Obviously.

Dear God, I just discovered that one of the most beautiful women in the world Lindsey Lohan, an actress who I'll just watch a film to see her face, has just made a single. She look very very very VERY VERY VERY VERY very hot in this video!

and, that aside, it's actually quite a good song, the song goes by the name of Over. At the moment the TV is telling me that the McFly Comic Relief song has been knocked off the top spot by of all people, Tony Christie and Peter Kay with their rendition of (Is This The Way To) Amarillo - which is a great song, well actually it's an alrite song, but it does have a great video.

It's depressing watching the top ten and not knowing any of the songs. I know the artists, Gwen what's her name, Will Smith, McFly (grrrrr), Mario, Elvis (of course) and Natalia Imbruglia. The number one spot is Amarillo (hell yes!) The video is fantastic. My problem with the charts now is that it's all death and pain and rejection - Amarillo is a (fairly) happy song.

It's changed to Entertainment Now ummm now? Currently doing a piece I saw last night on The Revenge of the Sith. My piece on Star Wars is coming in about an hour, I'm writing it now (when I finish my next round)

Song of the moment - Living On A Prayer - Jon Bon Jovi

Quote of the moment - See my next post

Early Morning TV......(Groan)

2005-03-26T03:48:00.000+02:00

God it's grim. Really grim. Though I've just caught a great Steve Martin film by the name of LA Story which was a wonderful little take on the American life-style during the late 80's. A really satrical look at the American Dream.

Right, I'm really sorry that I haven't posted in some time, but not only have I been doing stage management for a production of Oliver (I had a line! Natch!) But now I'm working as a night time security guard at Shelton Hospital. The 6pm - 6am shift is proving to be a pain (this little 2am-5am slot is proving taxing) hence I now come to my little rant of the night, concerning early morning TV. Tommorow it shouldn't be too bad, there's a fair amount of good stuff on, like the new Dr. Who. The other good news is that I'm going to be putting on a lot of posts on my blog, and there is a very big screen in here. Then tommorow night there is also Dracula Prince of Darkness which I've never seen, which does sound good. A bit of truly awful Hammer Horror to put me out of my early morning misery.

I also watched the rest of X-Men this afternoon, then watched the best of the Star Trek films, First Contact - the first film to take the best of the Star Trek baddies and put them on the big screen. Though I've always felt that they could have taken the episode of Star Trek when they turn Picard into a Borg and then he was rescued soon after.

Right, just to fufill a promise that I made two months ago, the last night of 12th Night went absolutly fantastically! The after show part(ies) also blew my mind (including the drunken speech I made oops!) and I'm very looking forward to seeing the extras on the DVD's - which include Jim Colin and I singing The Music of the Night as a group (a truly great moment).

My Top 50 albums is coming - it's just taking a long time. I've been buying more CD's recently, really trying to build up my collection, unfortunatly my attempts to build my DVD collection have gone slightly out the window, however I'm still trying to catch Jason and the Argonaughts on DVD. (Drools)

I've just seen a thing on TV about the Monty Python And The Holy Grail musical which is now on Broardway. Oh dear. And they've also done a short piece on The Revenge Of The Sith. However I'm refusing to comment at length about Episode III, despite Seb's request. I will write a blog (probably tommorow or later this morning) which will contain the following message (read this Seb, do not comment on this Dom) and that message is that Episode III, The Revenge of the Sith will rock big holy Star Wars style bells. If you don't agree with this simple statement, then I'm afraid that the next blog (named simply Star Wars) will not be for you.

Finally, has anyone else heard G4's album, called simply G4? I'm interested, just to hear their rendition of Jeruselem. Ho-hum.

Quote of the Day - "I couldn't be a woman, I'd spend all day looking at my breasts" - Steve Martin LA Story

Song of the moment - not listening to music at the mo. Last song I heard was Leave Right Now

Oscar

2005-03-10T04:29:00.000+02:00

I think the title of this entry says it all.

Ok, let's get the obvious out of the way, I love watching the Oscar ceremony but whatever my friends and I predict will win usually loses. I was hoping this year would be different, but unfortunatly I was wrong. My predictions was a complete win for The Avaitor with a couple for Ray, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind sweeping everything it was nominated for and finally The Incredibles also winning a pile of stuff.

So, let's go through the winners. Firstly can I say that Chris Rock ruled! He was the best presenter since Billy Christal and had the best line since Steve Martin suggested that "The Jack" was gay! Anyhow (the line about Toby Maguire being a boy in tights killed me) and then we move on:

Art Direction - Should have been Phantom of the Opera or Lemony Snickett's Series of Unfortunate Events - but it went to The Avaitor. Fair enough

Best Supporting Actor - Had to be Clive Owen for Closer - but it went to Morgan Freeman in Million Dollar Baby. Ok, let me say now that I don't mind Morgan winning this, I really don't - despite my obvious dislike for Million Dollar Baby which is a built Oscar win. I watched a 15 second clip of the film and I fell completely in love with his performance. But I still think that he was screwed over the year that he didn't even get a nomination for The Shawshank Redemption (neither did Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction) But yeah, fair enough. But if Clint wins for best actor.........heads will roll.

Best Animated Film - Robin Williams on top form, comparing Elmar Fudd to Marlon Brando! Genius! And then he announces that The Incredibles wins! Yes!

Best make-up - Lemony Snickett wins. Ok fine, great film. But Hellboy deserved a nomination and in the long run The Passion of the Christ should have won with the wonderful costumes and make-up. To be honest, it should have been in for best film - but i'll come back to this.

Best Costume Design - YES YES YES! The best award presentation of the night with Edna Mode of The Incredibles as the co-host alongside Pierce Brosnan - absolutly wonderful - walks all over Billy last year. Oh, and The Avaitor won. Now, I hate Troy but in the long run it should have won.

Best Supporting Actress - I'm not hugely bothered about this, because I don't know the films in question. But Cate Blanchette wins. She should have won for Elizabeth to be honest, but hey!

Best Documantary - Super Size Me didn't win, so I'm afraid I'm going to be bitter and not care.

Best Editing - Should be Ray, I hope it's Ray but it isn't Ray. Instead it goes to The Avaitor. Now, I'm starting to feel The Return of the King fever from last year, when they walked everything. Come on Marty!

Best Adapted Screenplay - A double bill of Adam Sandler and Chris Rock. I love both of these comedians, and this is another highlight of the night. Admittedly most of Chris' jokes are racial, but I'm not too bothered because they're so funny! Oh, Sideways won the gong!

Best Visual Effects - Went to my most hated film of last year Spiderman 2. Should have been anything but this film. It really should. The effects aren't good enough to kiss I, Robot's arse!

Best Live Action Short - Yes Jeremy Irons rules - but I really don't know any of these.

Yes I've skipped a couple which I don't know anything about!

Best Cinematography - It should have been The Passion of the Christ - it really should. This is the only award that The Aviator won which I felt kinda strained about.

Sound Mixing - I'm too busy looking at Selma Hyak and Penelope Cruz, but the winner is Ray - an announcement which gets my attention! Yes!

Sound Editing - I'm worried when Spiderman 2 gets another nomination - then gets it's arse kicked around the block by The Incredibles - I can't think of a more worthy winner (n.b. Ste, Leave no posts mate! You are the only one here who doesn't love this film!)

Sorry, but I don't know enough about Best Short to comment.

Best Score - Ok, John Travolta is cool as ever, then Finding Neverland wins. Hmmm, not sure about that. The Passion of the Christ and Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban two films I loved walked all over that. And The Incredibles should have won.

Best Actress - Million Dollar Baby. Why is that they do something like this EVERY SINGLE BLOODY YEAR! It should have been Kate Winslet for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - she owned that film!

Best Foreign Film - The Sea Inside - no comment, but I liked the trailer.

Best Original Screenplay - Let's get straight to it, it goes to the best film here. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I think there would have been a revolt in the theatre if it hadn't won. Still think that Jim Carrey deserved something for his role mind.

Best Actor - Don't be Clint, Don't be Clint. Yep, my prayers were answered. It's Jaime Foxx for Ray - couldn't be anyone else.

Best Director - If the Academy keeps working like this, then they will lose any appeal they have, and awards like the BAFTA's will take their place. Yep, Clint won best director for Million Dollar Baby. I'm sorry - but this was Scorcese's year.

Best Film - On simple principle I refuse to comment. See my previous post. All I can say is that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind should have had this. So should have any other film here. I'm sure it's a fine film, but this is a 100% political win.

I hate the Oscars sometimes, I truly do. Tonight they acknowledged true talent with Jaime Foxx and The Incredibles and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I hope that this is a spark. Maybe one day I'll forgive them for Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption & The Usual Suspects not having won any Oscars.

Quote of the Day - "Barbershop ain't the name of a movie - that's a location" or "Welcome to the 77th Academy Awards, now sit you're asses DOWN!" both genius of Chris Rock.

Song of the moment - I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing - Aerosmith

p.s. sorry I haven't posted in a while - will do another tommorow

Meet Thy DooM!

2005-03-05T01:28:00.000+02:00

Ok, let's admit it, all of us have experienced Doom at some point. I remember one morning before school playing for fun, then completing it on Xmas Day. Now they're making a film starring the Rock. God help us.

I'm sorry I haven't posted for a while. I've been very busy. I still owe you all a best 50 albums, and a commentory on the Oscars. I'm still working on both.

Meanwhile, concerning my best films of 2004, I'd like to add Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to the top of the list. It is, without a doubt the best film I've seen this year.

Quote of the day - "You used my wife against me! I'll kill you, you fucking reaper!" Last words of my character in Orpheus

Song of the moment - "Heaven" - DJ Sammy

.............

2005-02-28T10:12:00.000+02:00

Stupid Bloody Oscars! Million Dollar Baby did not deserve Best Film, nor did Clint deserve best director. I'm over the moon that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind won something, and I'm also glad that Ray got best actor.

I'll do a longer piece on this when I'm more awake. Now I'm kinda drained

Quote of the Day - "Don't f**k with the Nos! He can throw a lorry at you! Screw your Obten!"

Song of the Moment - "Thank You" - Dido

p.s. I've started writing my own Screenplay. More updates to follow.

I'm no superman.....

2005-02-21T18:40:00.000+02:00

And now we begin another week at university. And so much has happened in the last week, I'm starting to loose track. Camarilla is marrying Charles (not that anyone cares - try www.blog.electricquaker.co.uk) Some friends of mine found some cartoons of "Mr. T Vs Unicron" with Optimus Prime as his ally. Could be interesting I guess. Mr. T is an interesting character that everyone has heard of, be it from The A-Team or Rocky IV - or was it III? I dunno - either way he's a real icon. One of my favourite moments with him is in Not Another Teen Movie which overall is a very bad film, but it has Mr. T and the A-Team theme in it.

What else? Well I watched Jumanji and Dragonheart yesterday - great films from my childhood. I still have Hook to watch out of the three. I have fond memories of the first two, especially Dragonheart (You Will Believe!) and of the crazy monkeys in Jumanji - but I don't remember Hook that well. I do remember Robin Williams and the Lost Boys, and Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook? But does it have the crocodile with the alarm clock inside him? Lord above knows. Will watch that tonight.

I just got back from the union - saw the films were A Sharks Tale & Finding Nemo. My views on Nemo are well documented and Sharks Tale isn't hugly better. But it does have a Robert De Niro Shark (with his mole! natch!) But Renee Zelwegars fish was annoying - too much like Bridget Jones for my liking - another film I should really get round to seeing is The Edge Of Reason the new Bridget Jones film.

I also watched John Carpenter's Vampires on Saturday afternoon. It's a very flawed film - even though the intro sequence is fabulous - but it's still the most violent Vampire film out there. And if anyone knows any good Vampire films, I'm interested, Thanks.

Quote of the Day - "The first Vampire, created by the Catholic Church" "By Accident!" - John Carpenter's Vampires

Song of the moment - "Shout" - Lulu

Revenge of the Sith Part I

2005-02-18T03:20:00.001+02:00

Ok, Return Of The Jedi is great. Revenge Of The Sith is going to be great. I'm half way through working on a Star Wars post, for the purposes of Seb and Becki.

And yes Becki, David Bowie's Space Odyssy should have been in the best 50 songs.

I'm still working on the 50 best albums. As I am with a longer post than this. Just give me a few days.

Quote of the Day: "You don't know the power of the Dark Side"

Song of the moment - "Jedi Rocks" which is in the Return of the Jedi

The Room Is Spinning

2005-02-18T03:20:00.000+02:00

I think I Am Drunk

Ghosts

2005-02-14T21:26:00.000+02:00

Quick one today, because I'm off to see Wimbledon and Love, Actually at the union (very valentines day films) so only a few quick points.

First, BAFTA awards on saturday night were fairly accurate. Jaime Foxx won for Ray (best actor) Scorcese won for The Aviator and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind picked up a couple of awards - I really should get round to seeing that.

Second, Poltergeist is a very scary film - when the things come out of the pool at the end, I was nearly screaming. A very freaky film.

Thirdly - no more anonomous comments? please?

And yes, Sleeping With The Light On is still the best song I've ever heard.

Right, off to the union.

Quote of the day - "You took up the gravestones but you left the bodies! You left the bodies! You bastard!" or "They're here........." - Both from Poltergeist

Song of the Moment - "Evergreen" - Will Young

I'm.....So Wonwey

2005-02-08T20:28:00.000+02:00

Yep, I'm off to see Team America, World Police tonight in the perfect enviroment....a cinema full of students! It's how I imagined seeing the film, since Ste and I sat down to watch the trailer last November.

On a completely unrelated note - Rowling (I forget her first name) is truly taking the piss by taking an army magazine to court for doing a piss-take comic strip of Harry Potter. Now I like the Harry Potter books and films (well the third film) but this is taking it step too far. Read the story here (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/4243145.stm) - it's a bit much for the likes of me.

Sorry I haven't posted earlier - I'm working on my top 50 albums (and it's more difficult than I thought) and I will get round tommorow to writing about the Closing Night of Twelfth Night - but to let you know it was fantastic, everything went to plan (including Haley not whacking me in the balls)

Thanks to JTA for the Harry Potter story.

Quote of the Day - "Let us send in weapon inspectors" "Why should I?" "Because if you don't....we shall become very angry with you and ask you again" - Team America: World Police conversation between Hans Blix and Kim Young II

Song of the moment - Look leave me alone ok? It's 2 Become 1 by the Spice Girls

Another 50?

2005-02-05T21:32:00.000+02:00

I did promise that I'd do a follow up to my 50 favourite songs - 50 best albums. Now this one is going to be a bit longer than the other, due to I've got a lot more songs to talk about.

So, with no further adiu - in no particular order:

(1) Crossroads - Jon Bon Jovi: Ok, simply for Livin' On A Prayer this deserves to be in here. But Always is a great song as well. I don't know the rest as well, but it's all good listening.

(2) Affirmation - Savage Garden: Striking a middle ground between a CD full of ballads and a CD full of rock & dance songs is never easy, but there isn't a single song on this album I don't love. Affirmation is a song which I have loved since I first heard it. Hold Me is romantic and a great rock song. Crash & Burn and I Don't Know You Anymore are two of the most romantic songs I've ever heard. And The Lover After Me is the best song after a break up. Some versions of the CD have another album Declaration attatched, which is a live album. A load of the songs are transformed into dance numbers, which isn't as bad as you might think. This version of I Knew I Loved You is so amazingly different.

(3) The Very Best of The Beach Boys - The Beach Boys: Ok, for classic 60's you can't go wrong with the Beach Boys. I Get Around is a great summer song (in fact, most of them are) there are some fantastic ballads hidden on there. Sloop John B is a great driving song (I remember singing it when I was coming back from Russia). And Wouldn't It Be Nice is a wonderful song about a dream.

(4) Bookends - Simon & Garfunkel: I didn't put any songs by these two in the top 50 songs, but I was very tempted to put in The Boxer which has some of the best lyrics I've ever heard. This album doesn't have that song, but it does have Mrs. Robinson which is one of the all time great guitar songs. Besides it was in American Pie in one of the best uses of music in a film.

(5) My Way, The Best of Frank Sinatra: My Way alone means this song should be on this list. New York, New York makes it a classic. And I've Got You Under My Skin makes it one of my favourite CD's. Everyone will know at least one song on this album.

(6) Transformers OST: I Didn't want to put any complimations in here, but a couple of these songs are great. The music for the death of Optimus Prime still brings a little tear to my eye, when I see in my minds eye the matrix being dropped and Hot Rod picking it up for the first time. Then Prime's body going black as he dies. Then Stan Bush's The Touch is one of the songs that always makes me feel like a little kid again. And that's always a good thing.

(7) Unwritten - Natasha Bedingfield: Two words. These Words.

(8) Busted - Busted: Sleeping With The Light On is still my favourite song. What I Go To School For is criminally underated, and Dawson's Geek likewise. And Loser Kid is never played anywhere, but I think when it breaks into "you're what I go to school for, you are, you're what I go to school for" is one of my favourite lines of a ballad. Classic stuff.

(9) A Present For Everybody - Busted: Crashed The Wedding is great. 3am is great. Meet You There is amazing. Who's David?, well if you've been cheated on then you know how great that is. Basically this is the first album but with a bigger budget. Good stuff :D

(10) The Best Of Me - Bryan Adams: This album has it all. Summer of '69, Cloud Number 9, Everything I Do, Run To You, Best Of Me and When You're Gone. Most of Bryan's best hits and a few more, even if does have the abysmal Don't Give Up with Chicane. But the man's a legend, we can forgive him that.

(11) Elvis - The Greatest Hits: Say no more. My Nana would be be so proud that I loved The King! And this one has all the best.

(12) The Long Road - Nickleback: Once again, some great break up material on here. I'm not a huge fan of the band, but Someday is an instead classic and Learn The Hard Way is a good song (despite being in Daredevil) I would include Silver Side Up on this list, but basically I only like the album for How You Remind Me and I can get that on a single.

(13) The Best Of The Blues Brothers - The Blues Brothers: See my blog entry marked "Soul" for details on this one. Two CD's full of their best reditions of classic songs. What more do you want?

(14) Time Pieces, The Best Of Eric Clapton: For Layla alone this should be here. The fact that Promises, Cocaine, Lay Down Sally, Swing Low Sweet Chariot and Wonderful Tonight are also present makes it a classic. Clapton surely does know how to turn out a great solo - even if he isn't that good a singer.

(15) Bat Out Of Hell - 25th Anniversary Edition - Meat Loaf: Oh come on! Even if it doesn't have I'd Do Anything For Love on it - it has the previously unreleased twelve and a half minute version of Bat Out Of Hell and Great Bolerous of Fire. 'Nuff said. Plus this guy can sing - and the piano solos rock.

(16) Queen Greatest Hits - God, where do start with Queen? Of course Bohemian Rhapsody should be mentioned, as should Another One Bites The Dust, Killer Queen, Save Me, Seven Seas Of Rhye, We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions and that's less than half the CD! It's a truly "essential" album in that it can be put on at any party, and it will get people singing. The only song not there that should be is I Want To Break Free.

(17) Heaven - DJ Sammy - Dance albums don't get much better than this. DJ Sammy's masterful cover of Heaven is an amazing song on it's own, and the candlelight mix is very close to the Bryan Adams original. Then there's the cover of Boys Of Summer which is great stuff, and Sunlight shows that the DJ doesn't need to cover just to make a classic. Good stuff.

(18) No Angel - Dido - Only just got my hands on this, and I've been listening to it a lot whilst I'm writing, both work and my screenplay (more on this later) - Thank You is the bit from Stan and Here With Me is another one that is good to have as "background music". The rest is all very typical Dido, this album is like a raw version of Life For Rent - which is like comparing Busted to A Present For Everybody. In other words, both are great, but this album feels like experimenting.

(19) Mizundastood - Pink - Ok, I never really got into Pink when her first album was released. But I heard Like A Pill on the radio a lot when this album came out. Then I heard Don't Let Me Get Me on a Valentine CD a while back, and then when a friend played me the rest of the album, then I couldn't resist going straight out and buying the CD - there hasn't been many times when I've done that, the only other one in my memory is when I went out on the day that Room Service was released and bought it on the spot.

(20) Let Go - Avril Lavigne - Bit of a mixed bag this one. We've got the "middle ground" shot with Complicated which is both rock and a ballad and in many ways reminds me of Bon Jovi's Always. Then there is I'm With You which is a ballad without any shadow of a doubt, and finally we have Sk8r Boy which not only has a fantastic video, but also is quite a good rock song. Along with these "big three" there is always the "backtrack" Naked which is a really nice song. Not quite as ground breaking as the previously mentioned three, but it's still a good song. The rest on the CD are very good, but overly forgettable.
It's worth noting at this point that these albums are not in any order. Also that I am doing this over a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong period of time.
(21) Cuts Like A Knife - Bryan Adams - Not one of his best albums, but none the less still an amazing album. It doesn't have as many great tracks as Reckless, nor is it as inventive as Room Service but it does have the original version of I'm Ready (before MTV Unplugged gave us the slow version which everyone knows) and of course the great classic Cuts Like A Knife which is amazing in concert (and has the entire audiance singing "Na-na-na's" for about a minute!) All in all one for the big fans, but not for beginners, once you've seen him live then there's no turning back.
(22) Fallen - Evanescence - I remember hearing Bring Me To Life for the first time when I saw Daredevil and then My Immortal during the film. Then I started hearing them a lot on the radio, and the day the album came out I bought it straight away. I wasn't sure at first, but then I listened through the album a few times and I really got into it. It's one of the very few dark rock bands that I really like. Going Under and Tourniquet are brilliant songs - apparantly in concert these are best songs they do. Have these guys broken up now? I hope not - I want another album!
(23) Grease Soundtrack - Ok, I know that I wasn't planning to have any more complimations in this list, but it's proving somewhat difficult. Besides, this is Grease, one of my favourite all-time films. It has all the classics, from Greased Lightning to Summer Nights and You're The One That I Want. But it also has some of the lesser known tracks as well, that appeared in the show but not the film, like Mooning. There is also all of the tracks from the film that no-one remembers, like the numbers from the dance like Born To Hand Jive and the song no-one knows from the diner, Rock N Roll Party Queen. Classic stuff, and some versions of the soundtrack come a bonus disk, which admittedly is little more than a space filler, but it's still got some good stuff on it.
(24) Desireless - Eagle-Eye Cherry - Ok, most people only know this band for Save Tonight which is one of my favourite songs. However, the best song on the album is easily Falling In Love Again which is a song which I hold very close to my heart. I've never felt that in a bad way, in fact quite the opposite. This CD has a lot of memories for me, good and bad and that's why it's here.
(25) International Velvet - Catatonia - Like Desireless I have a lot of memories attatched to this CD. I've listened to every song that Catatonia and her lead singer (who's name I can't remember) and her very Welsh singing. Road Rage in particular is a great song to listen to driving, and I spent years being driven around by my best friends mum listening to that song. I'm pretty sure that I heard Mulder & Scully for the first time shortly after The X-Files The Movie came out - and the only thing I remember about that was the opening bomb sequence. Strange how you remember somethings and somethings you don't.
Sorry, But that's the lot. Doing a whole 50 is a bit much, since you have to write a fair amount for each entry on the list. I'm thinking about doing another 50 songs at some point, but now I'm just happy that I've finished this post, after working on it since 12th Night, so therefore about 3 months.
Phew!
I'll do another post in a little while. Happy Easter!

One down, one to go!

2005-02-01T01:55:00.000+02:00

I'm grinning hugely. God we're good!

One utterly-fantastic show down, one to go! And it shalt be better!

Quote of the day - "Come sir, away!" My line before being whacked in the balls by Haley.

Song of the Moment - "Without You" - Busted

50?

2005-01-31T01:02:00.000+02:00

Second entry of the night, and will slowly die off towards the end. I'll do my favourite fifty albums after Twelfth Night I suspect, but for now I'll stick with the songs, and a brief comment after. This is going to take bloody ages, so at least have a skim through.

In no particular order:

1) Sleeping With The Light On - Busted: I love this song because when it came out I was waving a girlfriend away as she left for Germany, only to hear that she was seeing someone else in England before she left. The lyrics are fabulous and the guitar playing at the beginning is so very moving as is the final chorus. My favourite song of all time

2) Layla - Eric Clapton: Followed very closely by this. Best guitar solo ever this, and some of the best lyrics. I currently have this as the ring-tone on my phone for incoming calls.

3) Summer of '69 - Bryan Adams: And this one is for text messages. Once again, a fantastic guitar riff which everyone knows. Wasn't a huge hit in the charts, but it's a cult classic.

4) The Power of Love - Huey Lewis & The News: If this list was in any order, this would be lower down. But it's still a great song with a great chorus. And it was used fantastically in Back to the Future.

5) Living On A Prayer - Jon Bon Jovi: Due to the chorus.

6) Always - Jon Bon Jovi: Bon Jovi does a good chorus. And because it's a moving rock song, just like:

7) Don't Wanna Miss A Thing - Aerosmith: See above concerning moving rock songs. This hit the note when they played it in Armageddon.

8) The Show Must Go On - Queen: The Nomadic Players theme tune.

9) Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen: Had to be in the list somewhere. The ultimate karaoke song.

10) Like A Pill - Pink: At V2004 this was one of the highlights (the other will come up later) and it was the moment when I felt the rush that everyone described and really started getting into it.

11) Good Riddance, The Time of Your Life - Green Day: The best break-up song ever, apparantly it's because the singer's ex-girlfriend cheated on him. Not sure about that, but has the best line ever in a song "For what it's worth, it was worth all the while".

12) Sweet Child 'O Mine - Guns & Roses: The best high you can get without illegal drugs.

13) Leave Right Now - Will Young: Once again, suited how I felt at the time. And he does have a very good voice, and this song allowed him to push that voice.

14) I Heard It Through The Grapevine - Marvin Gaye: Soul at it's best, with a wonderful guitar riff in the background all the way through, and some frankly impossible vocals.

15) I'd Do Anything For Love (But I won't do that) - Meat Loaf: Like Bohemian Rhapsody Meat Loaf has to be in the list somewhere. And I prefer this to Bat Out Of Hell, but I do love them dearly.

16) Bring Me To Life - Evenesence: A great song from a great film. I love that I was the one to discover this song at my school.

17) My Immortal - Evenesence: A truly moving love song, with a great guitar solo in the middle.

18) Karma Camelion - Culture Club: Very gay, but very fun.

19) Feel - Robbie Williams: The best Robbie song bar none.

20) Careless Whisper - George Michael: Pop at it's absolute best. He was seventeen when he wrote this, and there is so much emotion in the song. "Never gonna dance again, guilty feet ain't got no rhythm" is a great line.

21) Faith - George Michael: One again, a very gay song. But it's good fun.

22) I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues - Elton John: I only chooose one Elton song, and the piano entrance on this and the chorus stole it away for me.

23) These Words - Natasha Bedingfield: A song about not being able to write a good pop song. It's also a good song in itself.

24) Back For Good - Take That: Good chorus, good vocals, good verses, good guitar bit at the beginning. A very stereotypical view of a pop ballad.

25) Heaven - Bryan Adams: More good pop ballads. Much better then the dance version.

26) Unchained Melody - The Rightous Brothers: Possibly the most played song in the world.

27) Obviously - McFly: It's a good song. No really.

28) Dreaming Of You: The Coral: My Cambridge song. Used to play this everyday when I got back from the college.

29) Paranoid - Ozzy Osbourne: A very angry song.

30) Who Wants To Live Forever - Queen: The song I want played at my funeral

31) Everything I Do, I Do It For You - Bryan Adams: Bryan's "big hit". It's not one of his best, Somebody and It's Only Love are better, but this is the one that everyone knows. Plus it's got wicked lyrics.

32) Lola - The Kinks: Yes it's about a transvestite. But it's still a great song when we finally work out whats going on at the end.

33) To The Moon & Back - Savage Garden: They did loads of ace songs, but this is probably the best.

34) I've Got You Under My Skin - Frank Sinatra: The best that "old blue eyes" ever did after New York, New York.

35) Life For Rent - Dido: The highlight of V2004, after Like A Pill. It moved me in a way I didn't even think possible.

36) The Boys Are Back In Town - Thin Lizzy: The best song every written to drive your car listening to.

37) Stand By Me - Ben E King: When ever you start humming the "dum-dum, de-de-dum-dum" bit from the beginning of this song, soon everyone will join in.

38) Breakfast At Tiffanies - Deep Blue Something: A great song. Great lyrics. Great tribute.

39) Suspicious Minds - Elvis Presely: The King's best, and he did do some amazing songs. It was between this and Heartbreak Hotel.

40) My Love - West Life: The only high that this band has ever had.

41) My First, My Last, My Everything - Barry White: The love walrus had to be in here somewhere, with a great romantic song.

42) Don't You Want Me? - The Human League: Great 80's pop. Another highlight of V2004

43) The House of the Rising Sun - The song that got me into karaoke - it deserves thanking for that. Even so, it's still got some great lyrics. It's about a brothel right?

44) Believe - Cher: One of the few dance tracks I really like.

45) What I Got To School For - Busted: The first one they brought out. It's really catchy...

46) Walking On Sunshine - KC and the Sunshine Band: The mother of all feel good songs.

47) When You're Gone - Bryan Adams & Mel C: It's more Bryan. Ok?

48) Baker Street - Gerry Rafferty: If Layla has the best guitar riff, then this has the best sax solo ever. This guy went on to sing Stuck In The Middle With You.

49) It's Gonna Be (500 Miles) - The Proclaimers: Another great "singing loadly when with a bunch of mates" song.

50) Torn - Natalie Imbruglia: Another great ballad about a girl who's not sure of herself.

There you go, 50 of my favourite songs. I could do 100, but I'm very tired and I need to sleep.

"Hey babe, is this guy bothering you? I'm from another planet, come see my spaceship!"

2005-01-30T22:09:00.000+02:00

The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy is now coming to screens soon. Fabulous.

(I should write more? ok....)

Watched Return of the Jedi last night, then Nightmare Before Christmas (again) which my friend Lou is putting on as a show at some point late this year. Which could be great. Watching Jedi for the umpteenth time was equally fun, since I practically word for word and the lightsabre fight blows me away every time I watch it. I still think Luke's little moment of tossing away the lightsabre at the end is a wonderful little moment of defiance, he truly has no idea what is about to happen to him. Then Darth Vader "bringing balance to the force" is fantastic, as is his funeral. The only moment in the original trilogy that comes close to this is the wonderful "I am your Father" speech in The Empire Strikes Back which is well known to be the best twist ever.

Right, Twelfth Night tommorow night. In front of "real people" according to Paddy. Something very disconcerting since I've been given more lines today! Which doesn't seem quite right to me.

Dammit I wanna write a longer post, but I don't want to keep going on about Star Wars and it seems to be one of the few things my brain can process at the moment. I've got a 9am start tommorow which I doubt that I'll be ready for. I don't quite know how Lizzie can keep it together with almost unlimited energy. I seem to spend my time joking around with Jim & Owen. Though I'm getting on with the cast really well now, which is ace.

Quote of the Day - "Never, I'll never turn to the Dark Side. You've failed your highness, I am a Jedi like my father before me". From Return of the Jedi

Song of the moment - Sweet Child O' Mine - Gun's and Roses / Mr. Bojangles - Robbie Williams

Mission From God

2005-01-28T13:47:00.000+02:00

Dammit I want to say Ray now! Now dammit now! I should have kicked up a fuss in Shrewsbury and gone to see it! I wanna see it! It's about Ray Charles, one of the greatest of all soul artists! For those of you who don't know me, soul is a huge factor in my life - I saw The Blues Brothers at an early age and have never recovered (Jon Bona still takes responsibility for it) Every now and then I loose touch with this soul, and then I hear the opening cords of Can't Turn You Loose I feel that same old tingle, and it only takes about 20 seconds of the Peter Gunn Theme to bring me back from the dark.

The Blues Brothers do the songs of the greats for those who don't know. Elvis, Solomon Burke, Ray Charles, Booker T And The MG's, Percy Sledge, The Drifters, Al Green, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, Gladys Knight & The Pips, James Brown, Eddie Floyd, Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, The Rightous Brothers and Rare Earth. They bring life to these songs - the film being the perfect example of this. I love the Blues Brothers so much I even like The Blues Brothers 2000.

"Why is Ben talking about the Blues Brothers and soul" I can hear you wonder? Because Ben is (in the words of Elwood himself) "putting the band back together". That's right! If you can play an instrument, or fancy being a backing singer or playing Jake then please get in touch (note that the part of Elwood has been filled already :D) I can't imagine anything better then taking the band around Aber pubs and bars, and seeing people filled with the soul in the way I was all those years ago (see the quote of the day - or so he says as he scrabbles around online for it)

Oh and I watched some films. Rat Race when we got home last night (I don't remember very much - must stop doing that). I am scrabbling around everywhere for the DVD of A Streetcar Named Desire but it appears to disappeared off the face of the Earth (despite it being a classic/Oscar winner) And Twelth Night continues to trundle on - I think we're ready now. I think. Ah well, I guess we'll find out come Monday.

Quote of the Day - (I couldn't find the "When the band hits that groove" speech online) "Are you the police?" "No Ma'am, we're musicians"

Song of the moment - Under The Boardwalk (see! soul!) but by Bruce Willis. It ain't bad.....

The body maybe typing, but the mind is in bed....

2005-01-27T16:08:00.001+02:00

Honest that is the reason why I haven't been writing up regular posts. Plus I do have the severe feeling that no-one actually reads these posts anyway! However, I still write them thinking one day someone might pick up on it. Think I'll start sticking the URL onto the bottom of e-mails. Couldn't hurt.

Watched The Nightmare Before Christmas again this afternoon. I can't get enough of this film, it's so wondefully dark and nasty, yet at the same time it's still a kids film! I truly cannot wait until Charlie & The Chocolate Factory - that's going to be the kid in me coming to life again this year (after Star Wars)

I tend to restrain myself from talking about Star Wars too much on the site, becuase I know that I could write for days about it. Much alike the Oscar nominations that have just come out. I did write a very long post about the nominations, but couldn't bring myself to post it. Try www.oscar.com if you're really interested. I nearly cried at how many The Million Dollar Baby got, since it's obvious it's just people voting for Clint because he's...Clint! God help us - we all know that Jaime Foxx deserves the gong for Ray (and I haven't even seen it!)

As for films I've seen recently (once again, I'm purposly avoiding talking about the Oscars) I finally got round to seeing Team America: World Police a film that I screamed with laughter all the way through! It is a wonderfully brutal dark comedy about American life! The Matt Damon character (who can only say "Matt Damon") the anti Pearl Harbour song, Kim-Jong Il's ballad (I'm so Lonely) and the main theme song (Team America! F**k Yeah!). Very funny - and it's all puppets! I also saw White Noise which is creepy. Stars Micheal Keaton who is slowly turning into my favourite actor (still between Batman and Beetlejuice for his best role).

Another Twelth Night rehersal from 5pm till 9pm tonight. I'm slowly becoming a lumbering zombie, and even the more energetic members of the cast are getting drained (apart from Lizzie who is still bouncing around as always...where does she get the energy?) I've finally had a couple of good nights sleep, now the exams are over I'm only nervous about the play. It will be good, it will be good. Actually I had a look in the hall/cupboard we're doing it in this morning...it's not very big.

My copy of Sonic the Hedgehog arrived today as well. Unfortunatly the Mega Drive I'm supposed to play it on hasn't got here yet. Probably won't for a few days. Oh well. I still have my SNES, even though I'm terrible at every game on it. Stuck on World 4 of Mario World, the desert world of Mario World 3 and pretty much the whole of Mortal Kombat II.

Must post like this more often!

Quote of the Day - "Since I am dead I can take off my head, to recite Shakespearian quotation!" - The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Song of the moment - This Is Halloween - also from The Nightmare Before Christmas - the only song I have from the OST! Normally costs £22.95 - no chance!

One Became Evil....The other's...Fantastic!

2005-01-19T23:01:00.000+02:00

For the life of me, I cannot understand what all the problems are with this new trailer for the Fantastic Four - the latest of the movies of Marvel comics, and the trailer looks...kinda good! I love the look of Doctor Doom, The Thing isn't quite as I imagined him - but everything looks in pretty good shape. However this film is getting an absolute blasting online! I just don't get it.

What I also don't get is that Ray still hasn't surfaced here in Aber! I want to see this film sooooo badly I can taste it! I am sorely tempted to go down to Shrewsbury over the next couple of days to see this film (it's worth noting that I need to go anyway, this is just another reason) I also need £50 out of my bank account, money I can ill-afford to loose, but is needed so I can see Bryan Adams in May. I've seen him once before just after my A-Levels, and I'm dying to see him again. It won't be quite the same, and I think it would be better to see him outside than in (I think we're going to roast alive inside!)

I've also decided to go hunting for some "older" films, films considered "classic" to boost my DVD shelf. Namely Assault on Princinct 13, Zulu, The Good The Bad & The Ugly, Rio Bravo, The Shootist, Goodfellas, The Godfather, Beetlejuice, Jaws, Dracula (the good one, not the Gary Oldman one), The Terminator, Reservoir Dogs, Superman, Batman, Goldfinger, Frankenstein, Ghostbusters, Four Weddings & A Funeral, Streetfighter, Time Cop (look I like Jean-Claude Van-Damme ok?), Jason & The Argonaughts, A Streetcar Named Desire, Leon, Some Like It Hot, Star Trek 2: The Wraith of Kahn, Aladdin, The Shawshank Redemption, Natural Born Killers, Platoon, JFK (A film I have tried to watch once, and failed horribly, falls under the same catagory as the next film i.e. films which "you have to be in the right frame of mind for"), Blade Runner, Psycho, Dial M For Murder, The Birds, North By Northwest, THX-1138 (a film I'm buying for it's reputation alone I think, but I love Lucas, even the flawed prequels), Planet of the Apes, Easy Rider, On The Waterfront (once again, for it's reputation), a good version of Trainspotting (the version I've got is in a tiny box, but it is an amazing film), Beauty And The Beast, Hamlet, Henry V, The Long Good Friday, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Seven Samurai, Throne Of Blood, The Graduate, Grease, Mary Poppins, Gone With The Wind (I've never seen the second half, but I still wanna have this film - it is a momentous film, but I still think Titanic is better, speaking of which), Titanic, The Great Escape, Ben Hur and ET

Phew! That's quite a list - it's now pinned to my wall, and I'm gonna get a job and buy one (possibly two) a week until I have them all. I think i'll need a bigger shelf to put them on, and sell all my videos to get them all on though! I have missed a few "classic" films out on purpose. I haven't got Spartacus because though it's a great film, it's just not my thing. A Clockwork Orange also isn't there - though I have seen it, I think Kubrick was right to ban it, and that it should stay banned. There are also some new films on my list that I want in my grubby little hands, like Anchorman - The Ron Burgandy Story, Dodgeball - A True Underdog Story (since the only version I have at the moment is a French one!) and The Usual Suspects - but those aside this is the list!

If anyone wants to know what to get me for my birthday...I'm gonna keep putting below which I have, how close I am to my goal of the greatest DVD collection in the world!

I also want Buffy The Vampire Slayer Collection which is all 7 series for £250! I think I need an Amazon account for this lot! (Hint-Hint Father!)

Quote of the Day - STTTTTTTTTTTTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAA - Marlon Brando, A Streetcar Named Desire (top of my list!)

Song of the moment - What A Girl Needs - I'm pretty sure this is Christina Agulera!

So Long And Thanks For The Fish

2005-01-14T19:16:00.000+02:00

Apologies for no new posts for the last fews days, but I've been buried by revision - first exam being on monday - and I've been playing an unhealthy amount of Risk these last few nights, and I write my first post in ages with some terrible news. As you may have heard, Busted have decided to split up. You can read the full statement on www.busted.com - since so many people I know will be glad about this news, then I'll not go on about this too much. However, they have made some good songs (including my favourite song ever Sleeping with the Light On)

However, back to films. I finally got round to seeing The Phantom of the Opera before I left Shrewsbury, and it is an incredibly powerful and moving film. The "Phantom's Theme" is terrifying and creepy at the same time. I also watched Mean Girls the latest teen flick from Lindsey Lohan which is actually good fun.

I shall now go off to another play rehersal - think I'm the only member of the cast who isn't nervous yet?

Quote of the day - "Alcohol, the cause and the solution to all the world's problems" - Homer Simpson

Song of the moment:

Along she came, with her picture,
Put it in a frame, so I won't miss her,
Got on a plane, from London Heathrow,
Seemed such a shame, Yeah.

I feel her, slipping through my fingers,
Now she's gone, I'm sleeping with the light on,
And shock's ran through my veins now,
That she's gone, I'm sleeping with the light on.

Heard she's engaged, spoke to her best friend,
No-one wants to blame, here's where it all ends,
And I feel the pain, because I'm without her,
I feel the pain....

I feel her, slipping through my fingers,
Now she's gone I'm sleeping with the light on,
And shocks ran through my veins now,
That she's gone, I'm sleeping with the light on.

And she decides, she want's a different life,
Word's do not describe the ways I'm feeling,
'Cause I've been searching in my head, for the words I though she said,
For too long....

I feel her, slipping through my fingers,
Now she's gone, I'm sleeping with the light on,
And shocks run through my veins now,
That she's gone, I'm sleeping with the light on.

(Instrumental)

Oh yeahhhhhhh,
I feel her, Slipping through my fingers,
Now she's gone, I'm sleeping with the light on,
And shocks run through my veins now,
That she's gone, I'm sleeping with the light on,

I feel her slipping through my fingers,
Now she's gone, I'm sleeping with the light on,
And shocks run through my veins now,
That she's gone:

I'm sleeping with the light on.

Happy New Year!

2005-01-01T15:45:00.000+02:00

Happy new year all! Hope that you all had a fan-bloody-tastic evening! personally I feel like a train has run over me. Twice. And my method of recovery? Working my way through the first series of the OC.

Thinking about what is coming out in the cinemas next year, the big one is obviously Episode III, The Revenge of the Sith, though the year is beginnning well with Alexander and The Avaitor, Mr. and Mrs Smith certainly looks good. Willy Wonker & the Chocolate Factory is the other big one for me, War of the Worlds is another one which should make the year so much better.

Son of the Mask looks like it could be....bad. Nothing else. Ocean's 12 looks like a bit of a rip-off. Then of course there is the re-make of The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy. Miss Congeniality 2 is also coming in June (unfortunatly), it nearly looks as bad as The Ring 2 - sequal mania!

Then we have more superhero stuff in the form of Constantine (DC comics) Sin City (no idea, but fairly sure it's based on a comic) and Elektra (a film about a character who died in Daredevil), and of course Batman Begins which could indeed be a new beginning for Batman films. More fantasy with The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. (Am I wrong, or was the first book The Magician's Nephew which no-one liked?)

The re-make of Assault on Pricinct 13 could be interesting, as could the sequel to XXX, XXX2 - State of the Union. The adaptation of the short story A Sound of Thunder could be interesting, simply because I know the short story.

It could be a good year.

Quote of the day - "It Was A Very Good Year" - Frank Sinatra

Song of the Moment - These Words - Natasha Beddingfield

Top/Bottom films of the year!

2004-12-28T01:36:00.000+02:00

Yep, it's that time of year again! Time for the best (and worst) films of the year - I note that I've not put in The Return of the King even though it's technically 2004, and I have included Shaun of the Dead which was on the very line - I do love Return of the King but it would make things a tad unfair.

The Best (in no particular order)

(1) I, Robot
(2) Shaun of the Dead
(3) Hellboy
(4) The Incredibles
(5) Lemony Snickett's Tale of Unfortunate Events
(6) Anchorman, the Legend of Ron Burgundy
(7) Kill Bill Vol. 2
(8) Dodgeball - A True Underdog Story
(9) Super-Size Me!
(10) Open Range

There are some films that have narrowly missed out on this list. I loved Harry Potter & the prisoner of Azkaban, I don't know if Freddy Vs Jason was 2004 or 2005, Bubba Ho-Tep was a fantastic film, but lost out very closely to Kill Bill Vol. 2. Shrek 2 also lost out very closely - as did The Punisher. Punisher lost out to Hellboy in the end, and it was a tough choice, but I preferred Hellboy due to the guy with the knives! Finally the only other film that lost out horribly was The Passion of the Christ which is a film I love, but it wouldn'tbe fare to compare it to these other films - due to the fact it is so very different.

The Worst (I can't bring myself to put these into order)

(1) Spiderman 2
(2) School of Rock
(3) Troy
(4) Farenheit 9/11
(5) Blade Trinity
(6) A Shark's Tale
(7) The Bourne Supremecy
(8) Finding Nemo
(9) Catwoman
(10) Thunderbirds

Ugggg - All of these films either dispointed me in a way I can't express, or they simply bored me to tears. School of Rock did the later, Spiderman 2 completely destroyed any love I had of the comic. Shark's Tale wasn't truly awful - but they made me wonder what it could have been! And notice the "other fish film" Finding Nemo has also found it's way onto the list (something which I shall never admit to my lovely girlfriend) that I cannot stand this film. It physically hurts me to watch it. Blade Trinity was a case of a fim which could have also been so much better. And the less said about Catwoman the better. My "dislike" or "intense hatred" of Troy is well known to those who know me. Being a passionate lover of the original story by Homer, I found myself nearly in tears by the end of the film. The removal of the God's I could live with, the death of Menalaus I could deal with (with difficulty, more easily perhaps if they were able to pronounce his name correctly perhaps? Same with half the characters in the film!) but the fact that Paris is a traversity that I cannot ignore. Nor the fact that Sean Bean is woefully underused, or that the battles are awful. As for Thunderbirds all I can say is that it's nothing more than a complete rape of my childhood memories. Parker was completely abused, as was pretty much everything in the whole film that was associated with the original TV series. Uhhhhh......

You want me to pick one out of both lists? For the worst, I think it has to be Spiderman 2, and as for the best, I think that Dodgeball - A True Underdog Story has given me more pleasure than any other film this year. I'll probably think of something that was technically "better" than Dodgeball, but I loved every single frame.

There have obviously been films I haven't seen, for better or for worse. I haven't seen Phantom of the Opera which would probably find it's way onto one of the lists, as would Collateral (though a different list!) and I also missed Layer Cake which I was annoyed about. Same with Aliens Vs Predator, Bad Santa, Bridget Jones and the Edge of Reason, Collateral, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Saw. When I see these films, this list may change, keep checking it!

Quote of the day - There are just too many from Dodgeball to pick out just one, but the two that come to mind (probably the funniest lines of the year) are "If you can dodge a wrench/traffic, then you can dodge a ball" or the killer final line "Hey, I'm not a lesbian, I'm bisexual" :p

Song of the moment - "Maggie May" - Rod Stewart

Harry Potter and the Supremes! For One Night Only!

2004-12-23T21:24:00.000+02:00

For some God forsaken reason, I seem to be looking forward to the next Harry Potter book far more than I should. I waited an obscene amount of time for the 5th book to come out (having not heard of the previous 4 until about 2003?) Then found it to be little more than an account of how terrible Harry's life is after Voldermort's return, him turning into a right moody bastard and then going slightly crazy at the end when his Godfather (played fantastically in the film by Gary Oldman) is bumped off. A great shame, given that he is the best character in any of the books. Oh well.

I suppose the big question now is "who dies?" because it's fairly obvious at this point that one of them is going to go. I've got my money on Snape or McGoningall (probably spelt VERY wrong!) - I doubt it will any of the kids (since they're probably being saved for the last book) or Hagrid (since the book is named after him *oops!*) - and I doubly doubt that it will be Dumbledore, because he obviously will have at least one more stand off with Voldemort (surely the highlight of the 5th book this!)

Not yet feeling like it's Christmas yet - which is weird. Yet my New Year plans have been dashed by the arrival of the Girlfriend's parents - meaning I don't get to see her. :( - which means an expensive night in Shrewsbury. Oh the delight of it.

Quote of the day - "Increase the taxes, forget the scraps to the poor, and cancel Christmas" From Robin Wood, Prince Of Thieves

Song of the moment - Across 110th Street - Bobby Womack

Heaven or Hell?

2004-12-21T19:41:00.000+02:00

Did you ever see any of the Blade films? They are fantastic - along with Daredevil and The Punisher it is the best of the Marvel adaptations! (I know that X-Men is great, but I prefer the darker ones. Don't even talk to me about the cinematic atrocity that was Spiderman)

It was then with high spirits that yesterday I went to see Blade Trinity - the latest in the Blade series. Before it started we saw a bunch of horror trailers, one with Michael Keaton - and actor i have spoken about enough for his performances in Beetlejuice and Batman. Then there was the next Keanu Reeves "Let's try and out-do the Matrix (another film not worth mentioning to me)" - however it goes by the name of Constantine - and damn! it looks completely fantastic! Real Heaven Vs Hell stuff, looking dark as hell. And I'm sure I saw the DC comics logo at then end - is this a comic adaptation? Like Blade?

So I was in a pretty good mood when Blade Trinity started. The very beginning was fairly poor, then the first chase sequence was fantastic - very cool, very smooth. Then it started to go downhill, then it started to stink like a dead pig. Then it kinda stayed pretty poor for the rest of the film.

When I was watching the film, I was seething and making a long list of everything wrong with the film. This list has vanished since watching the film, but what I can remember is:

(1) I spent the whole film waiting 4 the annoying bitch who lead the Vampires to die
(2) Dracula was completely unecessary - can't we just bring back the first? Show some more of the damage that has been done to the Vampires? Council being wiped out? Blue Vampire...Thing? Being killed off in Blade II? Hmmm
(3) The Nightstalkers. Apart from Ryan Reynolds superb Hannibal King who owned the film!
(4) The fact that Jessical Beal listened to an iPod all the way through the final battle
(5) The fact that she spends so much time using it, showing off it's features.
(6) All of the computer's were Apple ones! Did they pay for the whole godammned film?
(7) The fact Blade cries
(8) The Vampire dogs
(9) The final duel between Blade and Dracula is intercut with some punch up with Hannibal King and a big Vampire
(10) That all Vampires die at the end because of a bloody arrow!
(11) That Blade lives, when it would have better for him to die with the Vampires

Was there anything good about the film? Kinda.

(1) Wesley Snipe's Blade character is still awesome to behold in the fight scenes, how slickly he moves, how cruel he is (shooting people down in the way for example, killing the guy in the factory)
(2) Ryan Reynolds owns every scene that he's in - his dialogue his fantastic! (Did i not mention how awful the rest of the dialogue!)
(3) The final duel is pretty impressive
(4) Loved the "stake on a wire" bit at the beginnnig.

So it's crap? Not really, just not like i had hoped. Reminded me of the horrible 3 hour nightmare called Matrix Re-Loaded where they tried to expand on a universe that worked just fine. In Matrix they brought in the war. In Blade they pull in humanity. Not needed nor necessary!

The other film I've seen recently is Lemony Snickett's Series of Unfortunate Events - which is dark, yet utterly fantastic! I had no idea that Billy Connelly was in the film, and he was fantastic! Same with Carrey, the kids, Meryl Streep, Everyone!!!! The humour, the little comments, the subtitles, the gifts, the costumes! Brilliant! Certainly one of my favourite films of the year! We even got to see a trailer for The Magic Roundabout - was it the characters or the writer who was (were) on acid? I can't remember. I also can't believe that Robbie Williams does a voice in it! Oh, and Robots looks like it could be interesting. Speaking of Robots, I'm off to watch probably the best film I saw this year I, Robot. Good stuff.

Quote of the day - "just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand" - The Simpsons

Song of the moment - "I'll always be right there" - Bryan Adams

Area of outstandingly bad mobile reception

2004-12-16T21:42:00.000+02:00

Wales' new advertising - we shall use humour to draw in the tourists! The title of this post is in referring to Snowdonia, which I think is brilliant. I can't wait for Aberyswyth's "This is the pub, next to the pub, over the road from the pub, round the corner from the pub" - Pub's are THE thing in Aber for those of you who don't live here! They're EVERYWHERE! I believe we have more pub's per square mile then anywhere else in the country!

On another subject, who here likes Karaoke? I love it, i've been called "The Karaoke King" more than once! It's ace! I always seem to end up doing Theme From Rawhide, Breakfast at Tiffanies and Greased Lightning. The last one is great, you can really have some fun with that one, bit of dancing about!

Last piece of "blog" tonight is about Willy Wonker and the Chocolate Factory - I've heard so much bad shit about this trailer! I think it personifies Willy Wonker himself, especially Johnny Depp! I think he's the perfect Willy Wonker - One of my friends mentioned "I hope they don't make this, I prefer the original" - Ok, fair enough - remakes have a tendancy to be terrible in comparison to the original (Dawn of the Dead re-make excluded) but Willy Wonker and the Chocolate Factory has the chance to be ace!

Quote of the day - Chewing gum is really grosse, chewing gum I hate the most - Willy Wonker and the Chocolate Factory

Song of the moment - Jack Dee Live - for some reason!

A city so great, it has two names

2004-12-13T20:30:00.000+02:00

I am of course referring to New York, New York the Sinatra song! Things seems to be winding down so much here now, I thought I'd take things down a notch and have some gentle swing! This however does not mean that I'll be listening to the Westlife versions of these classic songs! I won't stoop to that level!

I know this is supposed to be a "movie" blog - but the only films I've watched recently are The Mask, Liar Liar and Goldmember - all very funny films. It had been a long time since I (and the others) had watched The Mask but it didn't take us long to start quoting every other line! Liar Liar is good fun as well, but the best thing about all of these films is watching the outakes and the deleted scene. There's a great one in Goldmember with Scott taking over the family business when Dr. Evil is in prison. Good stuff

Song of the moment - "Mack the Knife" - Frank Sinatra

Quote of the day - "somebody stop me!" - The Mask

A Nightmare Before Christmas

2004-12-12T18:56:00.000+02:00

I don't know which is stranger, The Nightmare Before Christmas or the trailer for Tim Burton's film Willy Wonker and the Chocolate Factory. The Wonker trailer feels like an LSD trip (not that I'd know), Johnny Depp looks like he was born for the part of Willy Wonker (so do the rest of the children for that matter, especially the one that chews gum (I haven't read the book in years)) and the music and scenary certainly looks how I would have imagine it.

As for the Nightmare Before Christmas this is one of my all time favourite films. It is such a genuine joy to watch the film, it's very twisted and at the same time there is a slight sense of childness in Jack that makes him more than just "A skeleton in the closet".

I love Burton films, they are all so very similar, and yet all so different. They are all horribly dark, and carry such a twisted streak that makes them so much better than the average film that is spat out by Hollywood these days. Look Batman and Batman Returns compared to Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. The first two films stick more to the original comics (especially the first film) but the others aim towards a more family film. Bigggggggg mistake!

Though I love the idea of Burton doing Willy Wonker and the Chocolate Factory, I would much prefer to see him doing Batman Begins instead. He made the Batman films, and it seems only right that he should take the series back to where it should be. As usual, I point towards www.apple.com for the trailer - only a teaser mind, but it still has a shot of the suit.

But, Chocolate Factory aside, imagine what other projects Burton could warp? What stories? But it's worth remembering that it isn't just Burton's imagination which warps films, they usually carry a fairly dark streak anyway. Look at The Legend of the Headless Horseman (which later became Sleepy Hollow) or Planet of the Apes (the one black spot on Burton's record) or Batman? If Burton was given Superman or Spiderman then he would not make his usual film - these films don't carry a darkness that he can exploit.

Someone remind me what started me on Tim Burton? And (for no real reason) his best film is by far Beetlejuice. Will someone explain why in the film it's Beetlegeuse, and the title is Beetlejuice?

I also wound up watching Shaun of the Dead last night with the housemates and Rosie (her choice), despite complaints that people have made, I still think it's a fantastic take on Dawn of the Dead with so many fantastic set pieces and jabs at England that it's well worth anyone's time who hasn't seen it. I have a feeling it's only just come out in America (revenge for making us wait 6 weeks for X-Men and 8 months for Hellboy to be released). and it fits well with The Evil Dead 2, Halloween, Dawn of the Dead and The Shining for a fantastic horror night.

Finally, does anyone know when the extended edition of Return of the King come out? I'm sure my blog on that will be very long - it's about 4 and a half hours long! I'll be happy once I see the "Your staff is broken!" Scene.

Quote of the day - "I'm the ghost with the most" - Beetlejuice

Song of the moment - "I've got you under my skin" - Frank Sinatra

Thank the Lord!

2004-12-10T18:14:00.000+02:00

I've only had a blog for 2 days now, but already I'm issuing retractions. Thankfully, I recieved an e-mail moments after I got home last night stating the director of Iron Man has announced that Justin Timberlake has absolutly nothing to do with the project whatsoever. Which is excellent. Who will actually don the suit I doubt has been decided yet.

On another note, they've released the trailers for two re-makes, trailers you can catch at www.aint-it-cool.com - the trailers for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which looks very weird indeed and the re-make of The War of the Worlds which I haven't watched yet. But remaking War of the Worlds seems like Usual Suspects 2, something which worked first time, but doing it again doesn't seem to be the best idea.

I've watched several episodes of Family Guy this afternoon. I've never really got into it before, only really watching it when my housemates are. But I actually really started to get into it, specifically the highly intelligent baby Stewey - who lives to destroy his mother. Wonderful stuff. Last night (or actually this morning) I wound up watching Underworld and The Passion of the Christ. Underworld was some good clean fun, with bullets, swords, Vampires and Werewolves (Lycans?) - good fun. The Passion on the other hand is not fun in the slightest, in fact very far from it. I'm usually capable of watching it with no problem until the flogging scene, which usually...I dunno. But it's not easy going, and neither is the crucification. That's REALLY hard going.

Oh well, back to Family Guy, and maybe I'll do a bit more of that essay. The net's been down all day so I couldn't get to the websites. Oh well.

Quote of the day - I'm amazed that men like you could be so shallow thick and slow. There is not a man amoung you who knows or cares if I come or go - Jesus Christ, Superstar

Other Quote of the day - The Internet, where men are really men, where women are really men, and children are really FBI agents! - Jon Hazan

Song of the moment - "Colours of the Wind" - Pocohontas

Voice of Aslan

2004-12-09T21:22:00.000+02:00

Ok, I know that I said only one post a day - but I'm jazzed with this whole blog thing. Plus I just read online that they've chosen the voice of Aslan in the film of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - At one point it was James Earl Jones (of Star Wars fame) or Sean Connery (did some film called Goldfinger amoung others) but it turns out that it's going to be Brian Cox, who was Agamemnon in Troy and the General guy (Stryker I believe - can anyone correct me?) in X-Men 2. I think he should be pretty much perfect - but we'll see.

It's coming out next December which should be interesting. Quote of the day came from The Usual Suspects by the way in case you didn't guess.

Song of the moment - "saturday's night alrite for fighting" - still Nickleback

Men weep, skies darken, water turns to blood....

2004-12-09T19:52:00.000+02:00

I'm a man. I can admit when my heart has been broken and the tears are flowing. But it's not usually due to Marvel films (since X-Men) - But they've done it.

"Justin Timberlake is to play the Iron Man."

Huh?

For those who don't know, the Iron Man's real identity is Tony Stark, a 36 year old man with black hair and a black goattee NOT some little pompus tosser who's singing ability lies in that he was the "new thing" when he started. He is NOT an actor! He CANNOT be the Iron Man! I mean, Thomas Jane (or is it Tom? I can't remember) who played The Punisher would be better! Hell Tom Cruise would be better (or actually quite good - bold words from me, who dislikes Tom Cruise). I mean, come on?!?!? The Iron Man is a hero! He's actually got to look like he's worked his arse off to make a fortune, then (in a very Batman way) builds a suit of Iron armour to fight crime.

He's not the best hero in the Marvel arsenel by a long way, but even so he's better than Aquaman and The Silver Surfer. Does anyone not like Marvel films since X-Men? I know a lot of my friends didn't like Punisher
but I kinda liked it - even though it chickened out a bit.

And if this wasn't bad enough, there are currently plans for The Usual Suspects 2. If you haven't seen the film, then go and watch it. The fact that the last line of the film ties everything up completely (see quote of the day at the bottom) but all of the Usual Suspects are dead! (whoops, probably get yelled at in comments for writing that) besides that, neither Kevin Spacey (about to play Lex Luthor) and Brian Singer (about to direct either X3 or Superman) are going to be involved with this truly terrible idea for a film. *sigh*

That'll be my rants for the day. On an up note, I saw a trailer for Batman Begins which comes out next summer which looks surprisingly good. Also a trailer for Mr and Mrs Smith the new Brad Pitt film. Looks very good indeed - try www.apple.com and search for the film under Quicktime. I think.

Quote of the day (as promised) - "You think you can catch Keyser Soze? You think a guy like that comes this close to being caught, and sticks his head out? If he comes out for anything it will to be to get rid of me. After that...my guess is you'll never hear from him again."

I hope to God he's right.

Song of the moment - "belive it or not" - Nickleback

Greetings

2004-12-09T17:13:00.000+02:00

Define "blog" my house mate says. "My random rantings" I reply. "who would want to read that" he replies "God knows..." is my honest reply.

Yes, this is my blog. How many people will actually read it is a mystery to me, but one of these days I might try sorting out one of those "counter" things to actually find out.

As for what I'll be ranting about? I have no idea, I expect it will be one of those things that will change from day to day as things actually happen. Duh....

And what I'm ranting about today? Absolutly nothing - I'm fairly happy. Having said that I've got a 2000 word essay to write and I haven't a clue how to start, but I expect that I'll be able to whack something out. So long as I get over 40% I should be alrite (note to Steve, this is done by actually handing the sodding thing in) Oh well - here endeth the first entry.

These things should be updated daily, it just depends whether I can be arsed or not.