That was excellent. I'm going to have to check if my DVD version has the different dubbed versions on it and learn how to quote Pulp Fiction in various different languages.
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I'm surprised no-one's mentioned Generation Kill yet - new mini series from David Simon and Ed Burns, The Wire blokes. It's based on a book written by a rolling stone writer about his time with some marines in Baghdad in 2003. It's extremely realistic, with brilliant dialogue and great characters. Main actors include Lee Tergesen (Beecher from Oz), James Ransone (Ziggy from The Wire) and a cool swedish guy called Alexander Skarsgård, aswell as a few of the marines playing themselves. We've watched the first 5 episodes and are gonna watch 6 tonight. Very highly recommended.
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I watched Clerks the other night, having never seen it before. It goes some way to explaining why it is that people like Kevin Smith so much. Watching Clerks 2 right after kinda shows how he's lost his way a bit though.
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H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
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I watched about 12 episodes of series 3 of Supernatural over the past 3 days or so, plus Charlie Wilson's War on DVD.
The latter was "alright".
I do really enjoy the former, not least because of the high pretty boy quotient, but my Sky+ seems to have not bothered the tape the last 4 episodes of the series, which is a bit annoying since it means I'll have to torrent it now.
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Death Race is a film with its priorities straight. Three people died a fiery death before the first line of dialogue is spoken. The first word of the film is 'Damage'. A couple of lines later 'Deploy the napalm'. Then a car gets scythed in half by a giant plate of steel armour. Then there's an explosion: the first of many.
I was kind of in two minds about this film. The trailer promised a movie that was largely about cars driving very fast into giant metal spikes. On the other hand Paul W.S. Anderson has a bad habit of overwriting simple premises until all promise of cheery ultraviolence has been wrung out of his films in place of nonsensical exposition and half baked ideas.
Not in Death Race, though! Here he finally keeps things pared down, has the good sense to give the simple set up - prisoners drive cars at each other - room to breathe. And the result is fucking marvellous. There's probably about three or four minutes of downtime here - mostly spent setting up Jason Statham's home life, before he's framed for murder, yanked off to prison and forced to compete in the Death Race.
From there the film is a cornucopia of sadism. Heads burst open like watermelons, bodies are perforated by machine gun fire, cars drive into - yes! - metal spikes, necks are snapped, men are burnt and faces are punched. By the time we're in the prison any scene that isn't people doing violence to each other is people threatening to do violence to each other. There's three races, but once the cars are off the track it's just an excuse for a brutal fist fight in the canteen, or in the pit area or in a kitchen, a dockyard, wherever Statham find himself the sweet sound of broken bones and smacking flesh is only seconds away.
For all its vapidity, the film results in some interesting philosophical questions. Like "Christ, do I really have a serious problem with sadism?" as I burst out laughing when Statham bounces a man face first into a vice. Or "If I'm not gay, then why is Statham making me feel like this?". Not since the eighties have I seen a film so adoringly in love with its star's mighty masculine body. At least I'm not alone - ever character in the film and the camera itself looks like they're on the verge of jumping Jason's bones and there's some spice to be had from the extent Joan Allen seems to be practicially licking her lips in every scene they share. Not to mention the weirdly bi-sexual family unit that comes together at the end of the film.
Still! The main attraction here is still the immesely gratifying violence. The action's not expertly directed, but it is relentless, loud and occasionally imaginative. Despite the 15 certificate, you don't feel like any punches have been pulled and the sound effects and speed of the whole enterprise give it a queasy edge. It even feels quite real in places. Whether CGI is just getting better, or whether many of the stunts were done for real, there's a sense of crunching weight that makes it thrilling in its own visceral way.
One final mention goes to the fact that this all takes place in 2012. This is a world where the economy has collapsed and society's bloodthirsty voyeursim has already outgrown fistfights to the death broadcast over the internet. {i]Four years from now![/i] Whoever wins the next election runs the world into the ground within one term of presidency! And, on this evidence, the London Olympics is going to have some pretty strong competition.
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quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: Death Race
Kick-ass!
That sounds like the perfect movie. I have to make time to see it.
A lot of the stunts are apparently 'real' and not CGId. And Statham did a lot of them himself! Props.
Statham has also been tipped to star as Daredevil in a reboot directed by Frank 'the Fascist' Miller. Also, while watching the execrable Stallone in Judge Dredd the other evening, the Masketeers and I decided that Statham would make a good Dredd in any future reboot of that title.
Finally, last night I watched The Orphanage. It was quite scary.
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I'm not sure I could believe Statham as a hot shot lawyer. Plus any mask that inhibits his ability to glower menacingly at people is going to reduce his acting ability by 100%.
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quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: Plus any mask that inhibits his ability to glower menacingly at people is going to reduce his acting ability by 100%.
Agreed. We nominated him on the length of his head, how he always seems to be either kicking asses (or taking names) and that turning one or other or both corners of his mouth down and 'grrrrr'-ing probably wouldn't be beyond him.
In a Dredd reboot the costumes wouldn't be gayed about with by Gianni Versace, too. Hopefully...
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Just been on Statham's IMDB page and his characters have got some of the best names outside of eighties action. I thought Jenson Ames - in Death Race - was good but check this out:
Sgt Jericho Butler Det Quentin Conners Chev Chelios Terry Leather
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Co-incidentally, I watched Daredevil with the Masketeers on Saturday. We all laughed at Bullseye and thought the first encounter with Elektra (on the see-saws) was balls. Given the playground setting, their martial arts looked more like a clapping game.
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Went to see Noises Off... at the Oxford Playhouse last night. Before the show somehow in my head I'd convinced myself that it was a kind of Grim Oop North thing like what Ken Loach or Mike Leigh might do.
So I was kind of unprepared for the blistering level of farce that the play actually is - presumably everyone else on the planet is already aware of this? Play within a play; a group of actors stage a production of a sex comedy called Nothing On, but between the dress rehearsal and the last leg of the tour the machinery starts to wobble, cogs come loose and the whole thing descends into craziness. Anyway, it was fantastic. I spent most of the time marvelling at the cleverness of the script. Gags are primed so smartly and covertly that I rarely clocked that a set up was taking place until the pay off; and the pay offs are glorious, with some jokes getting double or triple punchlines. It's massively satisfying in its pin sharp orchestration, not least because this kind of thing is so frequently painful to watch. It's like the difference between Adam Sandler slapstick and the Marx Brothers mirror scene in Duck Soup. Plus! one of the actresses spends most of her time running around in suspenders and basque, which adds quality to any play.
So on the one hand it's brilliant farce, embracing the conventions of the form, while simultaneously ridiculing it. On the other, it's utterly unsuccesful as a kitchen sink drama, with a bare minimum of realistic human behaviour and nothing remotely remarkable to say about the struggles of the British working class. Only one character represents an entire segment of British society - a deaf alcoholic - and if anything the play seeks to trivialise his problems rather than explore them.
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Yeah it had all those things, but loads of plays and films have that. It wasn't remarkable. Noises Off is literally the first time I've seen a blonde woman wearing lingerie.
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quote:Originally posted by Jimmy Big Nuts: alright, name another play or film that has a thing with a telephone and then maybe somebody falling through a window.
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I watched Lucky Number Slevin last night. I enjoyed it a lot. It would have been improved if they'd had a hardcore sex scene with Lucy Liu, but other than that I enjoyed it.
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I saw that was on, but decided against it. Seemed like it would be a bit slick and *****. Instead I watched Star Trek: TNG and played some duke nukem. I'm basically reverting to being 16 again.
[ 07.10.2008, 13:13: Message edited by: Jimmy Big Nuts ]
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It was quite slick. I'm guessing that the other word you were doing was c unty? It probably wasn't that. Not even any softcore porn. Although Lucy Liu did wear quite a short skirt.
I was searching for some short skirt shorts of Susie Dent the other day and it appears there are none on the internet. There was a video of her on the news wearing a knee length skirt and knee length boots and that got me going a little bit, but it wasn't quite satisfactory.
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