imooredb

In which a man blethers about stuff he has seen.

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Depp Vs Bloom, round one.

Depp scores 9 for being in several rather good films, and acting quite well in them. Bloom scores 0 for ruining every scene he's in in Pirates 2. Depp scores 6 for being very watchable again in Pirates 2. Bloom scores -25m (that's m for million) for "skateboarding" down a walkway while decapiating Orks and still looking as gay as a window.

This could be a running feature, but Bloom would have to do alot to pull this back now.

This also seems like a good place to go all Popbitch and mention I have it on *very* good authority that Keira Knightly's fanny both smells, and tastes, of rancid old coleslaw. Has done since Love Actually, according to my source.

What to watch over the summer, part one

The summer is a terrible time for television. The film situation isn't too bad, altough the showy spectaculars require actual cinema visits, which is not ideal. Television -wise though, it's like a vacuum sucking in endless repeats of what we've just spent the 9 month season watching. Nothing new happens over the summer, so what do we do? Apart from (if you're like me) keeping up to date with what's going to be happening with all the good shows come September, it's a good time to catch up with stuff you never got round to watching last season. It might be because your viewing time is limited, or because stuff hasn't been picked up by UK channels yet, so you've never heard of it. So, I feel it is my duty to give you something to seek out over the next few weeks, and maybe you'll find something that suits you.




First up, President Palmer goes all Jack Bauer in The Unit. Basically it's another horribly gung-ho T.W.A.T* spin-off in which highly trained sweating men pull off hyper-(un)realistic anti-terrorist operations exactly once every seven days. Sometimes they take a break for 7 days in the middle if it's a particularly tricky situation. The action in this department is up to standard. The characters offer no big surprises, but there are no acting bombs going off either. What makes The Unit a bit different from the pack is the decision to bolt Desperate Housewives onto the side of it. Literally.

I know, it sounds god-awful. If someone wrote it down and showed it to me I'd kill them with it, no matter how long it took with a simple piece of paper. However as with all the best terrible ideas it works rather well. Basically the show is split between scenes of the special forces operatives sneaking onto planes, and scenes of their wives worrying about them sneaking onto planes. Don't worry, I know how shit this still sounds. The genius is the Stepford-esque wives. Season 1, episode 1 sees a new recruit being initiated by The Unit (yes, it makes me giggle too) whilst his wife is being initiated into the wives circle and moving into their on-base house. I know I've mentioned Stepford already, but the resemblance is uncanny. "Live off-base...? No, NOBODY lives off base...."

Add to this the satisfaction of seeing Dennis Haybert out of his suit and waving a gun around, high production values providing some convincing action, and a little bit of quirk, and this could be a winner for a few seasons. Try episode one, especially if you're a 24 or The Shield fan.


*The War Against Terrorism

Friday, August 04, 2006

Calling all sad cases

It's my intention to have links on the right to independent fan sites of quality shows. Preferably one for each show I think is good enough to warrant one. The problem is alot of the fansites I've seen are terrible. They're either infrequently updated, poorly designed, members only, or some unholy combination of those things. So, if you run a site you think is good enough, relating to a programme or unreleased film I think is good enough, I'd like to hear from you. Leave a comment or drop me an e-mail.

Oh, and no I don't want to use your bloody link gifs. They make websites look like a dog's breakfast.

Hatemail, and the burning thereof

If ever there was a film I wasn't going to like, "Clerks 2" was it. You lazy, lazy man Kevin Smith. All that shit about how Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was to "tie up all the characters" that had been sloshing about his films? Clearly bullshit. This film stank of cashing in, and a terrible fear that Jersey Girl had proved Smith to be a total one trick pony who couldn't live without his well worn New Jersey shoes. To be honest, the weight of evidence is pretty damning. A recap:

Clerks was ace. It's one of those films I can have on repeat on the DVD player as I potter about the house, knowing I can sit down for a fag and whatever scene I catch will entertain me. Visually there's not alot to say about it (unless you're a film student who wants to wank off about minimalism until dust comes out of your cock), but Clerks is all about dialogue. There are very few films with such a high word count that are so consistently sharp and funny. Smith continued this good work through his next two features, Chasing Amy and Mallrats. Alot of people dislike Chasing Amy on the grounds that alot of it is not funny, but then alot of it isn't supposed to be. It's a very well observed look at modern relationships, and the dialogue, handled remarkably well by the normally god-awful Ben Affleck et al, sparkles. Here's where it all goes a bit wrong though. Dogma was a very funny film in parts, and was certainly the cross-over film for Smith, but it's clear that to achieve this he'd sacrificed his clever and snappy writing style in favour of a large sack of scatological jokes. His previous films had had a "gross-out" element to them, but this was a new level. A shit demon? Come on. Whatever the case, Dogma was a massive success, which I guess gave Smith license to make the 2 hour dick and fart joke that is Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, a pretty poor film redeemed by a monkey. Then there was Jersey Girl, but we'll just be kind and pretend that never happened.

So after a massive turkey, what's a director to do? Well, if they're supremely lazy they can go back to their most respected and loved work and make a sequel to it. And how do we think that'll turn out?

Well, I'm staggered to say it's not actually *that* bad. We pick up Randall and Dante working in a Mooby Burger restaurant after the stores they worked at have burned down (Randall's fault, no surprise). To any other 30-something stuck in a dead end job this would have been a spur to do something with their lives, but not these two. They've basically just set up shop again further up the road, and brought Jay and Silent Bob, fresh from a court-enforced stint in rehab, along with them. Dante is again engaged to an overbearing and controlling woman, and Randall still shows scant regard for taste and decency when faced with the general public. So, much is the same here, but what's different?

Well, there's a couple of new characters thrown in. Rosario Dawson plays the guy's boss at Mooby Burger. It's a good part for her, and features prominently in all the film's most effective moments, more of which later. Relatively unknown Trevor Fehrman plays the geeky burger jocky who serves as a foil for Randalls wit. This turns out to be important in making the film watchable, again, see below.

Aside from the new faces, the main difference is in the tone and dialogue. None of the adverse developments in Smith's writing have been entirely reversed here. Most of the snap and crackle is in exchanges between Randall and various customers at the Mooby Burger. The god-like Jason Lee is great, but horribly wasted, as a successful high school contemporary of Randall's. A shame that his success on TV with My Name Is Earl meant such a small role. Generally the script doesn't bite as much as its older incarnation. There's plenty of abuse to be sure, but the volume and pace tends to crank up too quickly, missing the matter-of-fact dryness of the original. Some of this I'm sure is intentional, to show the characters becoming increasingly desperate and frustrated with their lot, but is also surely a result of commercial necessity by having to force in as much crudity as possible to get bums on seats. This is fairly well evidenced by the fact the resolving scene of the film is based around a large man in leathers having sex with a donkey.

That said, there's alot of genuine heart and clear affection for the characters. The keystone scene, of Rosario Dawson's Becky trying to teach Dante how to dance for his wedding day would have made me rage if you'd just described it to me, but the way it's executed is so warm I couldn't help but find myself smile a little.


So, did this film need making? No, not really. Clerks could have been left as it was and nobody would have dies regretting not finding out what happened to Randall and Dante. Am I entirely happy it did get made? Not 100%. It doesn't quite fit as a sequel to the brilliant lo-fi original. Is it a crime that it's been made? Does it ruin a fine legacy? No. Not quite. It's a watchable and amusing 90 minutes and takes nothing away from its source material. So Mr. Smith, the hate mail was written before the opening credits, but it's going in the "to burn" pile. For now.

The Problem With This Country Is...

English TV is bollocks. I'm going to save people alot of time now, and address all the "Why do you never cover English TV?" comments before they happen. It's simple. English TV is rubbish. God awful. Don't get me wrong (and nobody who knows me could ever think this) I'm no huge fan of American culture, but when it comes to TV production, we're not even in the game.

"But what about all those classic Sit-Coms?"

"What about all those BBC Dickens adaptions?"

"What about Dr. Who?*"

What about them? The problem with TV, as opposed to films, is that money really makes a difference. If you compare for example a British TV drama to the US equivalent, it's just embarrassing. Let's just do a little run-down.

Spooks Vs 24 US win (Huge margin)

ER Vs Holby City US win

Bad Girls Vs Prison Break US win (Embarrassing margin)

Dr. Who Vs Eureka US win

I could go on. And on. The fact is, we just don't make as much effort. The gap between LA-made TV and LA-made movies is much, much narrower than the gap between UK-made TV and LA-made movies. Don't chirp anything about British films, we all know all the good ones are paid for by LA, so they're in that catagory too. Curiously, the only genre in which the UK output slightly edges past the US is reality TV, and I hold such contempt for every instance of this concept that it will never again be discussed herein. It pains me to say this, but even The OC is probably better than it's equvalent (Hollyoaks), just by virtue of the token totty being better quality.

Anyway, no doubt there'll be some debate here. Just so as you know, you're all wrong.

Hello, good evening, and welcome.

Due to some recent chimping about by one of my (almost) contemprary internet clowns, I've been wanting to have a poke at this blogging game. I have written blogs before, and they've always suffered slightly from my piss-poor attention span. I wrote a blog about growing a beard once, in an attempt to stop a major war. The beard lasted longer than the blog, and the war outstripped both by a good 3 years and counting. Some say the war has killed more people than the beard and blog combined, but there are no reliable statistics. Inbetween times I wrote a blog about nothing inparticular. It was pleasingly well attended for a while, but then I saw something shiny, and that was the end of that.

Anyhow, I say to myself "What to write about?". I can, truth be told, bang on about anything you like for an indefinite period of time. It would be rather nice if it entertained or informed someone this time around though. "So", thinks I, "write about what you know". Good self advice though this is, the first two options went right out the window. The world has enough internet resources about boozing and masturbating (although I in no way promise not to mention them at some point). So it falls to me to talk about everything else in my life, that is films, TV, and on more occasions than you would probably like, comics.

Of course, there are more than enough blogs and websites devoted to this topic already, but I don't care. This one will be written by me. And if nothing else it will be a reference point for online arguments elsewhere so I can remind myself what my opinion is supposed to be.

So, onwards....

P.S. I am not really Screech, although he's a smashing chap and over on the right somwhere you can find out more about him.