The trailer for the remake of the classic film Death Race 2000 is out and I’m struggling to find anything good to say about it. Um… how about the cars – the cars look excellent. I’m really digging the post-apocalyptic, Last of the V8 Interceptors¹ with added fuck-off-big machine guns aesthetic going on there. It all looks a bit Carmageddon which is not necessarily a bad thing. More than that, there’s very little to praise about the film from what’s to see so far.
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Just heard about the passing away of Stan Winston and I’m gutted.

Stan Winston was responsible for a lot of the iconic creatures of the last 30 years: he designed the aliens for Cameron’s Aliens, the Terminator, the Predator, the dinosaurs of Isla Nublar (Jurassic Park) and did the makeup effects for Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns and Alien Nation. More recently he designed the practical suit used in Iron Man and was did work on Indy IV as well as the forthcoming Terminator IV.

Stan Winston took over the mantle from Ray Harryhausen as a god amongst men when it comes to special effects. For a long time I was interested in special effects and makeup effects because of his work (as well as people like Rick Baker and Phil Tippet) and used to love fancy dress parties because of it (as you can see in the much younger picture of me after the jump). So here’s to you and your legacy, Mr Winston. I’m sorry you’re gone.
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I’ve had a bit of an M.R. James week. I started by watching Night of the Demon, the 1958 classic directed by Jacques Torneur and immortalized in the song “Science Fiction Double Feature” on the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack (you know the one - “Dana Andrews said prunes gave him the runes and passing them took lots of skill”. All very droll.) then tonight I watched the 1978 Yorkshire TV production of Casting the Runes which is the same story that Night of the Demon is based on. It’s only 50 minutes or so and extremely dated but despite a slightly weak ending, it’s still quite creepy.

Since then I’ve managed to download the first two M.R. James collections from Project Gutenburg which is all perfectly kosher as they are now out of copyright in the US and, I believe, in the UK as well. Shall I say that again? They’re out of copyright. Which means they can be adapted without having to pay anything.

Which is nice.

(This post was brought to you be the need to write a post without the desire or impetus to actually say anything useful and by the numbers 23 and 12.)

I have a guilty secret - well, one of many. This one regards my occassional habit of watching Eastenders - not compulsively but enough to know who’s who and what’s going on. I can’t call it a guilty pleasure like, for example, shooting up with crystal meth might be although it’s probably just as bad. It sometimes passes the time and sometimes distracts but more often than not in totally annoys me. The main cause of my frustration? Simple - why oh why oh why do characters in soap operas never change? Why are they so devoid of any character growth or any type of personal story arc?

This is largely a rhetorical question because the answer (I believe) is that the viewers like familiarity and need to have it clearly defined who the bad guys are, who the good guys are and who’s going to provide the comic relief. If Grant Mitchell came back to Walford having spent the intervening years in learning yoga in India under the tutelage of some Swami (which is not an entirely implausible story point for the character considering that he is a veteran of the Falklands War ) then the viewers are not going to be happy. They want the tough guy, the hard man, the thug, the lad and the bald headed brother of Phil Mitchell to be exactly that - no more, no less.
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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.

Yeah, it was pretty good. I enjoyed it which I’m glad about because I still had reservations about it going into the cinema but I came out happy.

Spoiler filled review when I can be bothered.

I started writing a fucking long-winded, pretentious post examining and dissecting the Alien films when the realisation that it was all a load of guff. What it boils down to is that Aliens are cool and the first two films in the franchise were fantastic. I mean, it’s 1979 and people are still reeling after the runaway success of Star Wars and its aliens, especially the lethal yet lovable Chewbacca when all of a sudden, Ridley Scott and Dan O’Bannon come along with the godking of biomechanical nightmares himself, H.R. Giger, in tow and say “You think that’s cool? Wait till you get a load of this!” and unleash a terrifying vision of extra-terrestial horror on us.
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Although it’s been on release in the States since Christmas Day, this weekend sees the UK release of Aliens vs Predator: Requiem, the sequel to the hit 2004 movie, Alien Vs Predator. Yes, that’s right, the hit movie - despite being slated by both critics and fans, the film made more money relatively in terms of box office takings than any of it’s predecessors, nearly doubling it’s $45m budget in the US alone.

Like the sad geek that I am, I was originally going to watch all 4 Alien films, both Predator films and the first AvP before the weekend but, after multiple discussions about the merits and qualities of both franchises on a few messageboards around the ‘net (none, I hasten to add, being fan sites), I figured it would make more sense for me to spout nonsensically about it all on the only site that counts - this one here.

Then, if you’re really, really lucky, I might even give you a review of the film after I go to see it on Saturday. (It has already been universally panned by most people so I’m not expecting it to good - but as you will find out, it’s not a concept that I think will ever be executed well.)

Despite watching loads of films lately, I haven’t reviewed any here because I seem to have committed myself to wittering on about 20 video games that I like rather than writing a couple of posts to summarise all of them like more sensible people have and so therefore tying myself up in a never fucking ending series that only two people are reading and that isn’t really that original anyway.

So here as a brief list of films that I’ve watched lately that I thought were pretty good and worth watching. Here’s a run down with an ever so brief synopsis of what they’re about:

Crash (2006 version): Racism is bad, mkay!
Requiem For A Dream: Drugs are bad, mkay!
21 Grams: Life is bad, mkay!
The Proposition: Australia is bad, mkay!
Stranger Than Fiction: Tax is bad but cookies are good, mkay!
John Carpenter’s The Thing: Shapeshifting creatures from another planet that disguise themselves as dogs or humans are bad, mkay!¹

Not the most cheery bunch of films but there we go. I’m sure I’ll try to discuss them individually soon.

¹Yeah, okay, I haven’t just seen this for the first time but I still think this film carries an important message that we ignore at our peril.