Playlist

Predator Review

Predator *

Plot

A group of soldiers haul their asses to Guatemala to try and rescue guerilla-captured hostages. A tarzanic chunk of metal swings from tree to tree and peels the soldiers like ripe oranges. The Austrian beefcake that is the governer of California flexes his steroid lovechild biceps and fights the metallic piece of gunk. Cue a run of the mill wham-bam explosion and tear-shedding in modern day neanderthals.

You'll like this if you are:

A testosterone-fuelled butt scratcher who grazes on steroids and weeps out of emotion during Chuck Norris movies.

Gareth Bale

Gareth Bale

Sure, I was wailing like a banshee every time he whizzed one into the goal in the Inter Milan game, but I still hold the opinion that he bares a riduculousy uncanny resemblance to a space chimp in a polyester shirt.

Read My Lips Review

Sur Mes Lèvres

As you might have guessed by now, I'm not a sucker for stereotypical rom-coms with smooching conveyer belt casanovas reciting poetry and wafting red roses left, right and centre.

So under my radar, this gallic film noir-thriller slots into the big cheese role of the romance genre like a dime in a pinball machine.

So scooch over Casablanca. No amount of Humphrey Bogart scowling into his gin is going to budge this Hitchcock-esque number out of the ranking. It's got enough emotional porn between Emmanuelle Devos' lonely frumpy secretary and Vincent Cassel's flaky limp haired ex-con to induce a fallopian tube explosion.

A prophet

A Prophet

Jacques Audiard doesn't do fluffy tear gland itching prison dramas. Jacques Audiard doesn't do easy to disgest characters spurting out motivational one liners like a buffed-up broad in an exercise video. Jacques Audiard doesn't do Morgan Feeman. And most importantly, Jacques Audiard seemingly doesn't do crap films.

Top 5: Sergio Leone

1. Once Upon A Time In The West

Leone threw a curve ball from the poncho-wearing nameless-one to direct this showboat opera piece of violence and fading frontiers. Sure, it's not an airy light hearted horse-trotting western involving the sheriff and his merry men clonking off into the distant sunset like galloping herds of turd, but things of beauty rarely are.

Instead, the film plays out like the wise old man squinting at the world through the bottom of his whiskey glass, guarding his words like they're the only thing worth giving a damn over anymore.

So if the eye-gazing foreplay and the thick to thin length to dialogue ratio doesn't induce cold sweats in you, it's a must viewing.



2. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Elli Wallach's perfomance as the mother-cursing starpin sleazeball is the mantlepiece role of the trio. Fact.

3. For A Few Dollars More

4. Once Upon A Time In America

Leone took a break from slugging it out in the desert sand to throw his hat into the gangster genre ring. And my, did he throw it in with some force.

5. For A Fistful Of Dollars

Playlist

I'm having a K'Naan jamming session. So sue me.

Humpty Dumpty of the Field

Hercules vs Barcelona 2-0

After having his face gnauled on by wayward studded boots and being sterilised by a jabulani laying attack on his private ryan barracks, the official world cup cat scratching post has done it again.

Stirring up his pot of Mr Bean lady luck, the Barcelona centre back made a gruesome acquaintance with the keeper's jawline only to be left soaking like a dishevelled prune in the red stuff.

If ever there is a flying ninja kick, an outstretched elbow or a hovering football boot, Pique is more than likely to be itching his lothario chin against it.

 

Call it injury proneness. Call it sadomachism. Call it the 'special one' playing around with his hocus-pocus abacadbra voodoo.

But there's only one solution Pep, a bubble boy outfit with more padding than you can shake a stick at.

Clint Eastwood As Bond

After Clint Eastwood's revelation of turning down offers to play James Bond, I present you with the what-could-have-been scenario.

Oh, James Bond. I see you've caught me having an awkward fondling moment with the cigarette case.
Please don't file for sexual harrasment.

Scowl

James Bond, we have a smidgen of a problem.
A rich-off-his-clogs foreigner armed with a heavy accent and enough uranium to upturn the world entire wants global domination.

Scowl

This is a pocket sized explosive, Bond.
 Use it only when you're outclassed in a fist fight.
Which is pretty often for someone who has to rely on gadgets schamdgets to blast their euro-trash villains to high heaven.

 Scowl

Look into my eyes, look into my eyes, the eyes, the eyes, not around the eyes, don't look around my eyes, look into my eyes.

Scowl

Sleepover time, Bond.
And please remove the pocket sized explosive from your trousers before you give a new meaning to 'finishing with a bang'.

Scowl.

Gone With The Wind Review

Gone With the Wind

 My relationship with romantic epics can usually be summed up to a fine-tuned accuracy by solely one word; constipation, my friends, constipation.

That is to say that whenever I'm blessed with a hollywood romance to gaze over, it's close to a sure shot that it will be a long and painful affair involving a bucket load of groaning, moaning, sighing and clenched angry faces on both sides of the screen.

 So finding myself actually juicing some pleasure out of the mother all romance sagas was a surprise on an equal notch to the snooping children discovering Narnia where the back of their wardrobes ought to be.

 And after much grunting and pondering over as to why I actually liked it, I've come to a swift conclusion that there are exactly two things that glosses over the 'spare me the tears' falling south sentiment and the tangerine orange background that suggests that the set designers caused a global dulux colour shortage during filiming.

 And these two things come in the thespian form of Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh.

 Vivien Leigh for her unrelentness queen bitch act that's she carved down to a fine museum centrepiece and Vivien Leigh again for her pseudo-innocent smirk that makes you want to punch her in the ovaries to knock some sense into the curtain-wearing broad.

And Clark Gable for his athlete-mobility rubber moulded facial muscles.
No, seriously, if I had anything to say about the matter, his eyebrows would actually get top billing. And an oscar nomination. And a star on the hollywood walk of fame.
And obviously a restraining order from me.

Look at me, all dashing and shit. Call George Cukor. I feel like a stairway musical number is in the works.

Self Help Books Suck

The words 'self improvement' are gag-inducing. They instantly conjure up images of one-size-fits-all self-help books penned by the type of people who hold conversations with their garden plants and claim to communicate with your aura.

My theory on this paperback 'happy-trail' boom is that if you can't define happiness in one sentence, then whatever turd you're smearing across each page doesn't add up to squat.

Chick Flick Drinking Game

Knock one back every time:

1. The serial reluctant shirt wearer that is Matthew McConaughey, plays lead pied piper to the chest baring parade by draping his greased-like-a-BP-oil-slick torso gratuitously onto the screen like some five dime hooker.
2. You hear fluffy sugary bubblegum pop that has the combined musical merit of the drone of household appliances.
3. There's a makeover scene involving the hollywood equivalent of a buck toothed billy being pampered, plucked, pruned and preened to high sweet chick flick heaven.
4. Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez, Hugh Grant or Richard Gere stumble onto the screen.
5. There's a montage scene involving an intense jamming session set to songs that can best descrived as the love child of elevator music, screeching vibrattos and lyrics penned by a cheap trick optimist.
6. You witness aggressive capitalism propoganda with brands names up to the wazoo.
7. The lead female works as a paper-pusher for an all-gloss-and-high-cost magazine and spends most of her time grazing on a fluffy pink pen.
8. There's a schmutzy fairytale wedding with a bitch-fide stampede for the bouquet.
9. A hyperhomosexual man gives out advice and acts like a campy hand-flailing yoda.

Playlist

I've replayed this eargasmic song a psychotic amount of times.



It's a scientific fact that her eyes can rape your soul.

The Dim-Witted Adventures of the Microwave Meal Girl

Hunched over a cookbook, salivating like a Pavlov's Dog at the full spread gastronomical porn displayed before me, I came to the swift conclusion that my inner michelin star chef is one baking rampage away.

So I trodded my burnt-toast-speciality ass downstairs and began mashing, bashing and whiplashing a poor excuse of a dough.

Which was all hunky-dora until my inner-domesticated-self shriveled to a pulp when it discovered that the recipe called for use of a piping bag. A piping bag? The most sophisticated piece of cooking equipment present in my household being a cheese grater.

And after much huffing and puffing, I gave up my girl scout creativity skills and just spooned the dough onto the oil to form churros resembling floating pastry lumps of turds. Some mother-effin Delia Smith I am.

England vs Bulgaria

England vs Bulgaria             
4 - 0



Suck on that quartet Bulgaria



 



The Idiot's Guide To Pedro Almodovar

Who is he?

Straight-as-a-parabola Spanish director with horizontally generous hair caused by either a surge of high voltage electricity or a hedgehog permanantly residing on his head.

Directing style

• Alfred Hitchcock on acid.
• Bubble-gum pop scenery with hallucogenic colours every which way you look. It's like gawping at an animated Andy Warhol potrait.
• A restraining-order-level obsession with Penelope Cruz
• Soap opera-esque plots filled to the brim with drag queens, transvestites, psychopaths and menopausal crying women.

Talk to Her - Male nurse has his heart set aflutter by a comatose patient. Male nurse rapes said comatose patient. Male nurse plugs himself out as some grease-ball creep of a casanova burdened by unrequited love.
Shudder.

Tie Me Up Time Me Down - Ah, the age old love story dished out time and time again. Boy is released from mental institution. Girl is a drug snorting porn-star. Boy meets girl by breaking into her appartment and proclaiming his unrequited grease-ball creep love by tying her to her bed and keeping her hostage in her house until she gets all Stockhol Syndrome swoony.

Overall opinion: as empowering as watching an aproned housewife get anxiety attacks about chicken marination.

Trailer Breakdown - Eat Pray Love

Brimming, toothless guru talks in fortune cookie messages whilst getting in on some palm fondling action.

Said palm fondling action induces a come-hither look from the smiling loon.

"Me curly-haired lothario man. Me make fire to fry tofu burgers on."

"Me unstable and psychotic woman. Me think long and hard as to where curly haired lothario can ram-jam his tofu burgers."

"Me curly haired lothario man number two. Me part of rebound relationship while curly haired lothario man number one is crying into his barbeque out of misery."

"Me all sad and shit now. "

ME. ME. ME. BLAH. BLAH. BLAH. ME. ME. ME.

Repeat until the end of film.

Favourite Female Characters: Sarah Connor

Sarah Connor

Transformed from the hyper permed squealing bar wench of the first film, into a walking, gun toting pair of biceps in the sequel, Sarah Connor unleashed the one-woman-army without slumping into the pouting, backflipping pin-up of a stereotype.

Huffing and puffing like the Marlborough man and scowling bitterly about the apocalypse, she opened up a full can of whoop ass onto the metamorphosising blubber of an android and gets all self-help book optimistic about the future of the human race. Aw.

The Girl Who Played With Fire

The Girl Who Played With Fire

Plot: Computer-hacking, fist-throwing goth with bull attire nose ring gets framed like a family potrait for three murders and unleashes her vigilante inner Monte Cristo onto the sex trafficking world.

Watch out for: The gratuitous lesbian sex scene, the wall-of-a-man archetype blonde euro-trash villain and the entirity of Sweden seemingly having the same ringtone.

Overall opinion: All in all, this film ranks as enjoyable.There's plenty of room for improvement, but I'd still rather watch a chain-smoking taser-toting vigilante than Ingmar Bergman's cape-donning death move his bishop to B3 for a few hours.

Playlist

Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as raven claws

The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first. You can take away a man's political freedom and you won't hurt him - unless you take away his freedom to feel. That can destroy him. That kind of freedom can't be granted. Nobody can win it for you.
                                                                                                                                       Jim Morrison

In the Heat of the Night Review

The first time I saw In the Heat of the Night, I was in my playdough-and-sugary-toothpaste years. Bearing in mind that at that age, my primary interests in life were lego, crayola pencils and satisfying my next sugar high, my soul shrivelled out of boredom faster than Usain Bolt on crack.

But having watched it again as the walking tantrum-throwing hormone that I was as in my glorious teenage years, I rather liked it actually.

Plot: Ray Charles scowls the theme tune. The uniformed peeping tom discovers a dead one decorating the pavement. Rod Steiger appears, chewing his gum so enthusiastically it has probably been churned to liquid. The peeping tom sets his sights on Mr Tibbs to scratch his police order claws against. Mr Tibbs turns out to be a Philedelphian detective just trying to slug his ass home after visiting his mother. Gets his arms wrangled into working amongst the as-inviting-as-a-locked-door Southerners to bust out the Sherlock on the murder case and wrench his way through a plentiful supply of greaseball rednecks.

Twilight Drinking Game

If you manage to squeeze even a nanosecond of pleasure out of the viewing, develop a lusting for the pubescent teenagers or start hoarding enough twilight memorabilia to stock a shop,  drink bleach.

Favourite Russian Film: They Fought For Their Motherland

Sergei Bondarchuck is a director most associated with his butt-numbing, insomnia-curing beast that is 'War and Peace'. But to give the third fingered salute to the masses, I count the cream of his celluloid crop not to be the money-guzzling Tolstoy extravaganza but the underseen and underated world war two film: 'They Fought For Their Motherland'.

With it's star speckled cast, intelligent and witty script, powerful blood-curdling scenes and a show-stopping oscar-worthy peformance from Vasiliy Shukshin...this is one of the rare Bondarchuk film that I can actually watch without forcement by gunpoint.

Music Playlist

A one-album god of a band. Anyone else think that Miles Kane looks like a leaner, indie-fied less-follically generous version of Puyol?

Favourite Female Characters: Part 1

Jackie Brown - Quentin Tarantino blew a wet one to the blaxpoitation genre and created one mother-effin thick-skinned diva in the process. Acting out the tired and desperate stewardess who refuses to shrivel up and weep like a leaking damn, Jackie Brown toots the girl-power horn and manages to outwit everyone left, right and centre.

In an industry where strong female characters are defined by knuckle-busting, leather-donning senoritas blasting out high punches and kapows,  Jackie Brown is breath of fresh air in a sewer factory. Whilst not squeezing her generous ass into an animal print suit and brandishing out the automated weapons, she's got more cojones than the combined total of Michael Bay's pouting car-grinding broads.

Rear Window - Stella

Because her wise-ass bowfull of wisdom character trumps the frills and ribbon of Grace Kelly's beauty. James Stewart can keep his belle of the ball - the luckiest chump of the film is whoever that female-yoda nurse donned the veil for.

Stella: Intelligence! Nothing has caused the human race so much trouble as intelligence.

Music Reviews

Frank Sinatra - In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning **

I'm probably the only sucker treading this bit-for-nothing earth to find no pleasure in listening to ol' blue eyes Frankie boy's sandpapered-smooth vocals. Call it the tastleness of the youth, but I've always preferred Dean Martin's crooning.

Drug Dealer Beats - Illski *

The biggest bunch of turd to grace my ears since being harpooned by conservative speeches. Bound to be a smash hit amongst those who cite household appliances as their favourite instrument, drizzle ecstasy onto their cornflakes, inject themselves with alcohol, take their coffee with two spoons of cocaine and  have installed strobe lighting into their bedroom.

Favourite Russian Films: Watch Out for the Automobile

The masked soviet film avenger returns. This time with a gearhead film-noir comedy classic to chew over.

Characters: 

Yuri Detochkin

• A trenchcoat-donning car thief annoyed to the last degree by corruption and crooks. A soviet Travis Bickle without the trigger-happy mohawkness. A soviet Robin Hood without the fetching green tights. A soviet Zorro without the masquarade outfit and swash-buckling acrobatic. etc
• Swirls the moral compass by donating the car-pawning dosh to orphanages.
• Side tracks as an insurance agent and amateur Shakespeare-spewing thespian 

Maxim Podberyozovikov

• Lead sleuth on the case and fellow amatuer theatre actor.

Why I love it: Well filmed, well scripted, well acted, well scored and so goddamn quotable.

Theme Song: Waltz - Andrei Petrov