Yeah, I enjoyed it.

The first of the summers comic book/superhero films is here (we’ve got The Incredible Hulk, The Dark Knight, Hellboy 2, Hancock and The Punisher 2 to come) and standing tall astride the top of the Box Office charts. I thought it was pretty good but that’s mostly down to the actors involved: Robert Downey Jr. was great as was Jeff Bridges as his Nemesis and Gwyneth Paltrow as his erstwhile assistant-slash-unrequited love interest. Incidentally - am I the only person on the planet to not think less than fuzzy thoughts about her as an actress?

There’s been a lot of criticism of the films pacing, saying that the second half was much slower than the start but personally I couldn’t see it. Perhaps it’s because, unlike most superhero films, there was much more character exploration. Tony Stark’s transformation into Iron Man also represented a change in his character from amoral to moral coupled with an awareness that his life is actually rather empty, illustrated pretty well by the fact that he seems to be far friendlier with his robots than the people around him. Of course, being a comic book film, it’s not exactly going to be a character driven piece and I’m happy to say that the action scenes were pretty good too. It’s just a shame that we saw most of the good stuff in the trailers which left very little new stuff to see. What will be interesting to see in future sequels (already announced and pretty inevitable considering it’s one of Marvel’s biggest properties although I don’t think I’ve personally ever read any IM comics) is whether they explore the darker side of the character, his descent into alcholism and his sometimes dubious politics.

All in all, Iron Man is a good start to a summer that is chocka full of potential. If this turns out to be the worst film of the summer than I am going to be a very happy bunny.

Doomsday is a peculiar chimera of a movie which makes you wonder if writer-director Neil Marshall has been told he’s allowed to make one final film and no more after that (begrudging gratitude to Master Pedant Lyle for continuity checking) and has decided to make a zombie movie or perhaps a film set in a dystopian future Britain or, better still, a post-apocalyptic future Britain like the one in 28 Weeks Later with a virus killing everyone but perhaps we could, you know, wall them up in a city like they did in Resident Evil, better still, a whole country and there could be punks and cannibals and cannibal punks like in Escape From New York or Mad Max and we could have a chase with a cool car and a load of buses and trucks with spikes and razors on them just like in Mad Max 2 or maybe Mad Max 3 with the Thunderdome where two people fought in an arena, you know, “Two go in, one comes out” or was that Gladiator – yeah, Gladiator was a cool film with like, swords and armour and riding on horses and the horses could have laser beams coming out of their eyes that would go pachow! Pachow! and… wait, no, that would be silly. So many good ideas and I don’t know which one to choose because they’re all so great – hey, wait a minute -what if I did them ALL?

The film itself isn’t actually that good even so I found myself enjoying it. Then again, how can you not love a film that’s so blatantly ripping off classics that it even calls two characters Miller (after George, director of Mad Max) and Carpenter (after John, director of Escape from New York) Indeed, how can you not love a film that introduces the rowdy crowd of cannibal punks to the riffing beats of “Kings of the Wild Frontier” by Adam and the Ants, followed immediately by the head honcho strutting onto the stage accompanied by the melodic strains of “Good Thing” by the Fine Young Cannibals(!) before bringing on fat men in kilts dancing to the Bad Manners version of the Can-Can (I kid you not) all leading up to the spectacular spectacle of Sean “My Dad Was Doctor Who” Pertwee being burnt alive and eaten. Even the final showdown is set to splendid Frankie Goes To Hollywood cover of Two Tribes. Let’s face it, walling up Scotland is also a good idea so this film is not entirely without merit!¹

I’m not sure I’d recommend anyone to go and see this unless it’s with some mates and you had a couple of beers and have a laugh. I don’t even think it’s going to become a cult classic when it’s released on DVD because it’s just not quite cool enough, even though it does have an exploding bunny quite early on. I hope it does because in some ways it deserves to be a fondly-remembered film even if it’s just for Marshall’s sheer audacity in actually making it - it’s just a shame that the script is not quite as sharp or as funny as his debut feature, Dog Soldiers and that, in my honest opinion, is what’s going to consign this to the bottom of the DVD bargain bin in a years time.

¹I don’t mean it really. Some of my best friends are Scottish or at least they would be if I had any.

I do love me some short films although, I hasten to append, not in a sordid, tell-your-neighbours-and-check-in-with-your-probation-officer kind of way. Short films can be absolutely bloody brilliant. They are an overlooked art form (in so much that it’s next to impossible to actually make money from them unless you’re in the type of short film making that is commonly known as advertising) but still, they can provide much amusement. If I had copious amounts of cash I’d blow it all on blackjack and hookers but should I get bored of that, I’d make/produce short films. Long films too if I had loadsamoney but I’d like to fund short film production too.

Fortunately there are some people out there with more money than sense - like those crazy fools at Virgin Media who are holding the very first Virgin Media shorts competition (I say first but there’s no guarantee that there’ll be more). Submissions for films that are no longer than 2.5 minutes are eligible and need to be, um, submitted between now and the end of June. The first prize is £30,000. Yes, that’s right - thirty thousand quid. £30K. A three with four zeroes. The top ten or something will also get shown on telly and on the big screen. It’s a fantastic competiton with the only downside being that it’s being run by the incompetent twunts at Virgin Media but aside from that, if you’ve got a film that’s <= 150 seconds then you could do worse than enter it. I will be sorting out a hi-res version of Fairy Tale for the entry but I don’t hold out any hope for it but nothing ventured, nothing gained as Yoda didn’t say. I’ve also got it in mind to see if I can cut seven and a half minutes out of another script I’ve got and get it filmed before the closing date but that’s - what’s the word? Oh yeah, extremely fucking unlikely!

On a related note (and also related to the previous post) Nine Inch Nails (in association with YouTube) are holding the Ghosts film festival, introductory details of which can be seen here. Simple idea: listen to Ghosts I-IV then provide some visuals inspired by the fine tunes you’ve slooshyed with your extremely attractive and slightly furry ookos.

If neither of those appeal to you or if two is simply not enough for the three-in-one-go person that you are, perhaps you’d like to enter the Uwe Boll Movie Challenge which, allegedly, is to be judged by the pesky homunculus himself. Unfortunately the closing date for that is the 16th of May - but considering the nature of the competition, you could probably churn out at least 3 diminutive masterpieces between now and then! Sadly, I will definitely be skipping this one. Then again, the quality of video on my mobile phone isn’t too bad…

Although I’m signed up for RSS feeds, newsletters and carrier pigeon notification of all new news regarding everything Nine Inch Nails, I need to offer thanks, praise and burnt offerings to Lyle for letting me know about the recently released, freely downloadabubble album from Trent and the boys: The Slip. This is the second time this year that NIN have given away music for nothing, the first being the 36 track instrumental collection collectively collated together under the title “Ghosts I-IV” which I bought - yes bought - because a) I like having the physical media 2) I’ve been being entertained by NIN for most of my adult life and they deserve my money iii) I’m a completist and have just about everything they’ve officially released (Halos 1 through 26 with a couple of omissions) and d) because I can.

I’ve yet to listen to either so far as I’ve been assaulting my aural canals with lashings of Jim Thirlwell in the guise of Foetus (the album being Vein, the Love remix release) and his alter-ego creator of instrumental soundtracks for films that don’t exist, Manorexia (the album in question this time being the 2002 release, The Radiolarian Ooze). I’d heard a lot of negative things about Vein but so far I’m liking it quite a bit.

I only wish that people would stop saying that NIN are doing a Radiohead! While that bunch of miserable bar stewards certainly got all the attention-grabbing headlines when they released “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” or whatever the Hello Dolly! it was called, popular beat combo, “The The”, released their (his) last album, NakedSelf, on the internet, in Moving Picture Experts Group Audio Layer 3 encoding for free after falling out with Universal/Interscope (as evidenced by his library archive here) and avant-garde Teutonic Industrialists Einstuerzende Neubauten (who else) have been releasing stuff over the internet off their own back and without a distributor for, oh, quite some time now. Admittedly, it’s mostly for those who have paid to be a subscriber but considering the nature of their music and the tools required, that’s what it takes.

Anyway, the floor is open for anyone who has listened to either Ghosts or The Slip to discuss their thoughts on it’s quality and any other random musings their deranged minds might meander upon.

Not just a reference to the fact that I’m overeating again this week (for no other reason than I can) but also so that I can mention in passing that I picked up a copy of Bioshock for a mere 15 squid. It’s a stunning looking game and yes, does play very much like it’s “spiritual” predecessors, System Shock 1/2. So much so that I’m expecting an identical story twist half way through. It is extremely atmospheric and more than a little scary.

I don’t quite know how I’m managing to get the time to play it (couple of hours in the evening being with an extremely calm and undemanding 5 day old daughter probably) but I’m looking forward to exploring more of Rapture.