Evangelism
Eight reasons why it’s OK to love Inception
WARNING: while my other articles and reviews mentioning Inception have remained spoiler free, this article contains massive spoilers, the size of buildings folding back on themselves. You have been warned.
It’s been two weeks now since we were all incepted. It appears the idea didn’t take for a few people, but by and large there’s a lot of love for this movie, especially evidenced by the fact that it’s currently third on the IMDb Top 250 Movies. No matter what you think of that chart or its methods, it shows that of the first 100,000 people to see and rate the movie, pretty much 2/3 of them thought it was a 10/10 movie on however they judge their scales.
Maybe because of this, or maybe because people felt they were being incepted with the idea that they should love this movie with all the pre-release hype. Part of that hype was generated because of the poor quality, apart from the odd gem such as Toy Story 3, of the competition in the summer movie market (and if anything, next summer is even worse).
McG’s Spot The Difference Game
Here’s a pitch for you: two spies wage special-ops war on each other when they fall for the same lady. Sound OK? That lady is Reece Witherspoon. Sounding better? Chris Pine is one of the two spies. Still on board? McG is the director. No, wait, come back…
Seems that McG has been playing spot the difference with the above two actors, who were the options for the remaining spy role. If you want to play McG’s Spot The Difference at home, the answer is after the jump below.
The Jeff Bridges Guide To Facial Expressions (new Tron Legacy trailer)
Surprised
Angry
Confused
Thirsty
Constipated
Sorry, that joke was neither big nor clever (and probably ripped off from Gary Larson), but despite clever advances in computer assisted de-aging, the top half of his face simply doesn’t move in the new trailer you can see here. I am still very excited by all the flashy bits, and expect to be watching this in IMAX come December. Maybe then the resolution will be high enough to detect movement somewhere above the lips.
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Why everyone who loves movies must see Inception, because next summer sucks
Seen Inception yet? Sorry, what do you mean it’s not really your kind of thing? It’s an intelligent action movie, at least by my reckoning. You may not agree on either or both of those counts, and that’s fine, but hopefully you won’t disagree that it’s a movie overflowing with ambition, not afraid to take a few risks and to try to stimulate the brain cells or the adrenal gland.
But you should see it, not only to have an opinion on one of the most talked about movies of the last couple of years, but also to show your support for movie-making of this kind? Why should I fork out my cash to see a movie I might not like, I hear you cry? Because, dear reader, if you don’t I may have to hold you and your kind accountable for what’s to come. Now not every movie is going to have that Inception level of ambition, but it would be nice if at least the odd one or two summer blockbusters did.
And not only do film-makers need ambition and courage, so do the studios. Inception took $62 million in the US at the weekend – that’s the second largest amount of money ever for a sci-fi movie that wasn’t a sequel, behind only Avatar. So to have the balls to believe you’re going to see that money again, with only the director and cast’s past histories to go on, requires leaps of faith.
To illustrate my point, consider the list of big summer releases currently lined up for next year. These are all due to land between May and August next year in both the States and the UK.
Thor
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
The Hangover 2
X Men: First Class
The Green Lantern
Zookeeper
Transformers 3
Winnie The Pooh
Rise of the Apes
Cars 2
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
Captain America: The First Avenger
Kung Fu Panda: The Kaboom of Doom
The Smurfs
Cowboys and Aliens
War Horse
Not the most inspiring list, is it? I am passingly interested in the majority but there are maybe two at most that genuinely excite me at this point. The thought that this might become the summer movie norm makes me weep for the souls of humanity. So see Inception – if you accept the mediocre and the derivative as standard, don’t come crying to me if that’s all you get in future.
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Where are all the intellectual pirates?
I’m a rubbish timekeeper. If they were to draw up a list of people likely to be late for their own funeral, I’d not be on it because I’d be late for the meeting where they pulled it together. It’s not that I’m disorganised; rather that I’m overly precise and can’t stand being early for things, which means if even the slightest thing goes wrong, then you’ll have to start without me.
Cinema in its current form is ideal for me, because the time stated is never the time the film actually starts. At least in most cases. Normally, anything between 15 and 25 minutes of adverts of increasingly diminishing quality and trailers that you’ve seen several times before if you have iTunes and the internet, before things actually get going. True to form, I normally arrive in my seat 14 to 24 minutes after the scheduled start time, but it’s rare that I actually miss the Orange advert which plays at most of the screenings I attend. (God, how I’d love to miss the Orange advert, not feel that it’s been burned onto my brain through over-repetition.)
Peter Pan and the Predators
When I was growing up, a trip to the cinema was a special treat. By that I mean that it didn’t happen that often – I feel almost every trip I make now is special, but for different reasons. Yet one thing was apparent – despite being the fourth tallest in my class at school at age 11 (and two of those taller than me were girls – yikes!), I was not going to be getting into anything other than U or PG films or the equivalent for some time to come.
The most gutting aspect of this came in the mid-eighties, when my friends and I came up with several sadly never followed through on plans to get into Gremlins, which looked ace but had picked up a dreaded 15 certificate, leaving us four years short. A gap like that can never be overcome, even by tying cans of paint to the bottom of your shoes to look taller. (Maybe it’s for the best we never got around to that.)
The Half Dozen: 6 Most Interesting Looking Movies for July
Blimey, month two of my trailer countdown already. You may remember last month I picked out six movies that looked interesting, although not necessarily good, and I’m pleased to say in the interests of my blog that I’ve done, oh… embarrassingly badly – from that selection, I saw two 8/10 movies, a 5/10, there’s one I’m intending to see next week (The Brothers Bloom), and two (Tetro and The Time That Remains) that just didn’t hang around for long enough for me to catch. Apologies if it feels I’ve not really put the effort in on that one – I can only hope that the rest of this blog isn’t as half-arsed.
Guess it helps this month that I have tickets for two of these already? Not making the cut this month are The A Team and The Karate Kid, both of which look kind of interesting, but not enough to make the list, and The Concert, which doesn’t open near me until August, although it might be near you sooner. Click on title for trailer, y’see?
I’m interested in this, primarily for trying to work out if the world really needed another Predator movie, or if this is just an attempt to undo the bad karma of the two AvP movies. If so, it would help to explain why Ridley Scott is also making more Alien movies.
Not sure if she still does, but Brenda Blethyn used to live in my home town. Other than that, she’s been in a few interesting movies, and maybe the time is ready for a 7/7 movie after all the 9/11 ones.
If excitement was a pie, then this would be one of those world record size pies with 100 chefs that you sometimes see on Guinness world record shows. It would also be made of that fancy steak that comes from cows fed on beer and filled with the finest wines known to humanity. Christopher Nolan made 3 of my 20 favourite movies of the last decade, including my number one (The Prestige – didn’t see that coming, did you?) and if he made a movie out of the phone book, I would watch it because I trust him implicitly. Also, it looks awesome.
This is in the top 10 movies of all time on IMDb, it’s the sequel to the two finest computer-animated movies of the nineties and early noughties, has already taken flipping great wodges of cash where it’s opened and frankly, if you’re not excited by this, I don’t want to play with you any more. In three weeks, I will be seeing this and Inception on the same day, in IMAX, if I don’t literally explode with excitement first, covering all around me in fragments of ginger movie blogger.
Interesting looking cast, including Alan Arkin? Check. First review on IMDb uses the word dysfunctional in its first line? Check. Will this get an airing anywhere near me if Shrek and the Twiglet saga are still sucking up all the spare screens not showing the above two movies? Er…
I still have nightmares to this day about Species, and how toe-curlingly awful it was. That anyone in it still has a career is testament to people’s exceptionally poor memories and willingness to give people a second chance. This looks a bit like it, and some people have enjoyed it. So what they heck, I’ll probably give it a go.
Right, that’s your lot for this month. If anyone’s looking to take bets on how many of these I manage to see, I’d think four would be a strong contender.
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Why I didn’t blog much last week, as described using the Scott Pilgrim trailer
Gah! All that work getting a blog set up, then it turns out you actually have to keep writing stuff and there are no magical elves, fairies or David Copperfields that will do it for you. So I’ve not managed to generate much in the way of new content in the past week. Here’s what I was up to.
(By the way, I am kind of odd looking and bordering on ginger. I think if he was slightly taller, Michael Cera could play me in The Movie Evangelist: The Movie. This would be very flattering on me, though.)
Monday
Started the working week. Worked hard. My wife had the car which meant I was stranded at home. Bummer.
Tuesday
Got a life, or at least what passes for one for me. Out rehearsing for a concert later in the week.
Wednesday
Had phone call from nice man at mobile phone network offering me new iPhone, couriered round to my house the next day. Thanked him very much indeed.
Took up residence by the front door waiting for the package to arrive.
Thursday
Still sat waiting by letterbox like small child for iPhone to arrive. (See previous image.)
iPhone courier arrived. Slightly less attractive than Mary Elizabeth Winstead, but hey, I’m working with what I’ve got here. (Also, it says “Dong” in that picture. Snigger.)
Fell in love with new iPhone, if you imagine that my phone is Ramona that’s pretty much what happened. Maybe good that you don’t see an actual picture of that. It wasn’t pretty. Especially when the forward camera took a photo of me in extreme close up half way through.
Friday
Did the concert. I sing in choirs (I’m a tenor, thanks for asking), but you must understand that any choir willing to draft me in as a last minute extra man can only be about as good as this. Had great time, though.
Saturday
Fulfilled a fifteen year ambition by going to see They Might Be Giants at the Royal Festival Hall in London. It was about ten kinds of awesome, which I felt washing over me during the evening. The highlight for me was the pirate / James Mason version of “Why Does the Sun Shine? (The Sun Is A Mass Of Incandescent Gas)”. Although maybe you had to be there. (And, as we all know, the sun is actually a miasma of incandescent plasma anyway. Lookee.)
Sunday
England played Germany at football. This happened to the England team, and most of us watching.
So sorry I’ve not posted much this past week, as you can see it’s been rather hectic. Right, now I’m off to fight seven evil exes.
Or possibly just have breakfast. That’ll be good too.
P.S. If you wondered what the heck this was all about, you’ve obviously not seen this, and beome as stupidly excited as me.
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My iPhone obsession, part 3: My experience of watching movies on my iPhone (and my tiny Nokia before that)
So now, an adventure into the land of hypocrisy, from where I am likely to emerge bruised and battered. For here I am, writing a blog whose primary function is to advocate that people go to cinemas to see movies, as that’s the best possible way to see them, talking about watching movies on a device with a screen that measures just 3.5 inches on the diagonal. Note to self, this better be good.
And it seems that the debate is raging as hard as it ever has over whether using a mobile is right for watching movies. Roger Ebert tweeted on the subject this very week, and then there’s some good blogs here and here arguing for both sides. So let me explain – I’m in the “it’s OK” camp, but that comes with a few heavy caveats.
25 Things I Want From A 24 Movie
WARNING: This article assumes that you have seen all eight seasons of 24, except for the last two episodes of season eight. If you haven’t, best turn back now. I WILL NOT TELL YOU AGAIN! TURN BACK NOW! I’m going to count backwards from three, and then I will kill you… sorry, got carried away there.
And now, the end is near… I have a three point plan which underpins my movie-going habits. Those are in order, so I must confess I’m a blockbuster whore. And that’s why my favourite TV series of the last 10 years is the closest that the small screen has ever come to producing a genuine big screen action blockbuster. Yes, it’s 24, and in the UK tonight it all comes to an end, on the small screen at least, but part of the reason it’s ending is so that it can make the jump to the big screen, no doubt shooting, torturing and shouting as it goes.
And what we’ve been left with is a legacy of eight days in the life of Jack Bauer. Over the course of nine years, or fifteen in the chronology of the show, Jack has been killed twice, stabbed, shot at, almost fatally irradiated, tortured by the Chinese for two years, tortured (sometimes naked) by someone else nearly every season, has had to kill or permit the death of several colleagues, tortured his brother, allowed his father to get blown up, seen his wife killed, his life partner practically lobotomised and his girlfriend gunned down by a sniper. Not forgetting that in that fifteen years, America has been through seven different presidents, of varying moral substance. And through it all, he’s retained the same unflinching commitment to truth, justice, the American way and to inflicting as much pain and suffering as possible in the process. What a guy.
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