Be Excellent To Each Other

45 minutes into Discopath and I'm very close to turning it off. It's awful. Bad bad not good bad.

Dialogue, plot, acting: awful.

Disco: Terrible with generic disco sounds (it's the same track again and again) since I doubt they had the budget for real disco music.

Sexy lesbianism: Not even a side boob.

AE must have been high on meds when he posted in here about this garbage.

In all fairness I didn't make any promises besides it scoring a 1 on the scale of taking my mind off my FUCKING BOLLOCKS in the wake of a vasectomy gone wrong. (Where 0 is 'Oh fuck my bollocks hurt' and 1 is 'Blimey I actually forgot about my throbbing bollocks for a bit'.)

Did you finish watching it then?

He's just fell off the roof.

No, he's going down some scaffolding as the credits roll.

The best thing I could possibly say about that was that the American cop looked a bit like Nicholas Cage and was on par in terms of their acting ability. Cause Cage is garbage as well.

I liked the title sequence though.

0.0001 out of 10

Try The Toxic Avenger. It's awesome! You know, good bad. Or bad good. Or whatever. But good! Or bad.

Well, I enjoyed it tremendously, but I was very, very drunk.

So that's a tick for you in the 'ambivalent' column then?

Sorry AE, I hated it. It was really terrible.

I gave it a shot though.

Talking of terrible films, I've got one question:

Is Mark Wahlberg the Jason Statham of action/drama?

Yes, I watched Mark Walhberg play Mark Walhberg in The Gambler. Just like Statham he's occassionally loveable as Mark Walhberg no matter what setting you put Mark Walhberg in but The Gambler was too much Mark Walhberg as he attempts to be Matt Damon but ends up being Mark Walhberg. Again. I hated it.

In a similar vein, has Johnny Depp, in your heart of hearts, been in a good film in the oast 20 years?

The first Pirates of the Carribean, perhaps. I'm ignoring the existence of any of the other films until I die.

I haven't seen it myself but Public Enemies is supposed to be good and Depp is a lead in that.

Has he done more than one film in the last 20 years?

I'd been under the impression that he recorded the script for one role and they just CGI'd different hats on his head and cut the footage into various movie scripts, such is his scope of character acting.

In fact, has anyone actually seen him around outside of movies? I reckon he's probably long dead.

Watched Interstellar.

I didn't find TARS annoying as I think many did, though the I practicalities of his locomotion annoyed me. Character wise he fine, though.

The film could have lost over an hour of indecipherable mumbling though.

I have watched Rocky II.

Or I may have just watched the first Rocky again. Difficult to tell.

Four more to go.

Rocky IV is the best, where he solves the cold war WITH HIS FISTS and also a really inspiring speech. EVERYONE CAN CHANGE!

Totally skip Rocky V which is just awful, then Rocky Balboa (technically Rocky VI) is surprisingly watchable in a really cheesy sort of way.

Like the Rambo films, it's worth remembering that the first ones in each series are actually very good films.

Well, that was pretty terrible, yet weirdly entertaining at the same time.

Last night's film was 'A MOST VIOLENT YEAR', which unlike DISCOPATH, is actually a proper film with proper actors and a script and a point and stuff.

Very well regarded by them there critics, Rotten Tomatoes summarises it thusly:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/a_most_violent_year/



Now I should note that there really isn't much actual violence in the film at all, the principal character abhors violence and is determined to avoid it, so if you're expecting ACTION and EXPLOSIONS and ROBOTS this isn't the film for you.

This is an excellent character-driven film with a superb script and acting, it's by the same bloke who did the fantastic MARGIN CALL and it's got a similar sort of 'feeling' in some regards.

Unlike DISCOPATH which I didn't exactly 'recommend' as such, I definitely recommend this - 8.5/10.

I have deducted half a point for the main character having the most amazingly smooth and hairless chest, which I didn't think was very realistic.

Sounds like the plot summary of the next GTA.

There was far less bowling in this though.

Really, well I'm out.

Great title, but makes me wonder if the makers came up with the title first and then made up a film to fit.

I'm watching Taken 3 and I got bored half way through and stopped to do a spreadsheet comparing 6/12 month rental contracts.

They should release two Taken movies at a time. One with the family and relationship bollocks, one with None Stop Action.

I thought 3 was better than 2, but both were far worse than 1.

Reasonably interesting 'Cutting Edge' article at Melonfarmers about the shredding that Taken 2 and 3 got for a PG-13 in the States and then even more so for a 12A over here. (And a brief look at how the original Taken was cut down for a PG-13 in the States from an uncut European version. We got the cut version in the cinema but the uncut version on DVD/Blu-Ray.)

http://www.melonfarmers.co.uk/bbfc_cuts_taken_2.htm

I've just realised why that site is called that; very good.

Which led me to this relatively interesting page on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minced_oath



I like the fact that in stuff like Only Fools and Horses when someone is being called a 'berk' they're actually being called a cunt.

It's a great site, and it's been there almost forever. It was definitely there in the mid/late 90s.

I generally check the site every day, as it's a good place to find out which films are getting cut and in what territories, so you can make sure you get an uncut version. (Or in some cases, where no uncut version actually exists for various reasons.)

Yesterday I saw Cinderella but before it was Frozen Fever which was completely charming and superb. In fact the lovely cute, comical nature of Frozen Fever probably eclipsed Cinderella just a bit and possibly Frozen as well.

Cinderella - A very nice pleasant heartwarming traditional fairytale (reinforcing the idea of ruling by right of birth and who you marry, tsk). First 20-30 minutes struggled to really grab my attention but from the moment the fairy godmother appears it improves considerably. Helena Bonham Carter brings huge fun and live to the role and the films pace seems to pick up somewhat. The ballgown transformation sequence is utterly spectacular and the best setpiece in the entire film. Everything is obviously very predictable and it never verges at all on being nasty or clever with it (Though does contain scenes of emotional upset, the BBFC warns). I didn't expect to like it as much as I did but I found just going with it meant I got a huge amount of pleasure out of it.

Most obvious use of this is Frack instead of Fuck in the re-made BattleStar Galactica even in going so far as saying "Do you want to Frack me?" and "Frack off!" etc.

Red Dwarf managed to change every swear word to Smeg I think.

There's a companion article listing some of these here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minced_oaths_in_media

And then you have Porridge, which invented the expression "naff off" as a way to get past the swearing censors in the 70s

It didn't invent the expression, it just used it. No one seems to know for sure where it came from but it was certainly used before Porridge e.g. the book Billy Liar in 1959.

I invented the word munter. Trufax.

Furious 7 - Tremendous marvelous fun. Silly over the top action done right. Achieves what Michael Bay can only wish for. Despite being 2h20m it was paced perfectly and I loved it. Statham is still an amazing screen presence.

The Duff - A sub par teen rom com with overwrought (but still good and valid) message. Lacks the smarts of say Pitch Perfect or Mean Girls.

Gravity: I wish I had seen this at the 8 max and in 3D. Annoying physics aside it was a pretty good ride.

What We Did On Our Holiday is jolly entertaining.

Which, given that it's an Andy Hamilton and Guy Parker effort, is hardly surprising.

Also, blarting like a girl.

Also Rosamund Pike.

Ninja 2 - 95 minute martial arts film that gives you a good well shot fight about once every 10 minutes. Very good.

Wild Card: A Jason Stathem action movie with barely any action in it. I think 3 fight scenes. All quite good, but everything else in the film is pretty boring. He spend the rest of the time doing gambling and engaging in boring conversations with characters I never even slightly cared about.

I did have fun playing "Hey is that the dude from Heroes? He looks a bit different"

19 minutes 57 seconds.

That's when I finally turned off straight-to-DVD garbage that is The Man With The Iron Fists 2.

Yes, they made a sequel.

I wasn't convinced that The RZA's artist direction was the only reason why A Better Tomorrow was a terrible terrible send off for The Wu, but, actually, now I'm convinced that The RZA has utterly and totally lost his way, his edge and his relevance.

I'll try and finish this later on (probably in short sessions interspersed with breaks to come on here and moan about it) but it's obviously going to be heartbreaking watching this shit swirl around the bowl.

How'd you get a load of oriental fellows and don't let them speak their own language but rather some terrible English with terrible terrible dialogue? And then get a bunch of oriental folk that also do martial artists and have the least convincing martial arts since, well, The Man with the Iron Fists?

God this is terrible.

Finished.

Just cringe inducing final fight and "twist" at the end. Of course, no one cares though. Stupid movie is stupid.

Good point: Some nice scenery.

Bad points: The rest.

Gotta be up there with some of the worst films ever made.

How does it compare to Batman and Robin?

Ooh, I also watched Eli Roth's Clown, cause my brother said I should watch it.

I watched it. You shouldn't.

It's utterly terrible.

Incidentally Eli Roth's appeared on that Iron Fists shit. Has he ever done a decent film? I mean, I kinda "liked" (if it's possible to like it) Hostel, but as far as I can remember everything else is dogshit.

I'm also not much of an Eli Roth fan, but to be fair, he's not either the director or writer of Clown:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1780798/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

John Wick. Slick, minimal and action filled revenge flick. There are parts early on where the "Act, Gary (Keanu), act" alarm was going off for me, and it's at its worst more or less any time Keanu has a line, but they use his silence to good effect. Enjoyed it. I might even watch it again for the whizz bang crikey action scenes.

He is unbelievable wooden. And it's great.