“The Marilyn Levens Starlight Celebrity Show will be back next week. From Hollywood, California - where stars make dreams and dreams make stars.” – Announcer
This last week has been uneventful. University is finished for the moment and I’ve just been enjoying the good weather. A handful of reviews for you today, most of which are from the horror genre. I figure this constant fascination Max and I see to have for blood and scares might begin to bore you soon so I’m going to try and change it up a little over the coming weeks by looking at both new films I’ve seen and old films I’ve had to watch for classes etc.
Included on my list of films to watch this week are Gomorrah, Twilight Samurai, The Wackness, Sideways and a few others such as Martyrs. I won’t guarantee you’ll get any of those reviews but those are my plans for now.
This is hopefully going to be a shorter article this week because I have a few things I’m hoping to do in future blogs that look to be quite long. I just can’t resist doing a season review of Heroes when it ends in a month or so. Same with Lost.
I’ve also done away with rating films. Out of 5, Out of 10, none of that matters. If you read the review and it catches your attention and sounds like something you might like then I implore you to go watch it. I figure me saying something is worth 4 imaginary stars is meaningless.
I also need to clear up a mistake I made concerning Dead Snow last week in the part describing film references. One of the actors does in fact NOT do a great impression of Sloth from the Goonies. He does a slightly amusing impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger. How I got that wrong I don’t know, but I’m man enough to admit my mistakes.
So on to some reviews, starting with a David Lynch film.
This is a story that happened yesterday. But I know its tomorrow
Inland Empire
I was sitting in Castle Grey Skullz with Max the other week staring at the Inland Empire poster up on his wall (Ed, - Its the same as the one above, Max). As soon as I saw the poster I wanted to see it. I have no idea why. David Lynch is an odd one for me. I’ve seen most of his work and I never fail to come away conflicted. I just don’t know if he’s a genius or a complete twat. I had to write an essay comparing and contrasting Auteur theory and Genre theory last year and chose Lynch as an example of a modern ‘auteur’. There’s a rather compelling argument for Lynch as an auteur and it’s mostly right, you always know you’re watching a Lynch movie. He just has that way of setting up these seemingly normal stories and then dragging you kicking and screaming into the surreal worlds he creates within his films. Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway and so on. They all feature similar themes are all mostly weird as hell.
I had trouble sitting through all of them (Eraserhead made me surprisingly uncomfortable), but none of them made me feel as confused and at unease as Inland Empire. I’m not even going to try and explain the plot, or what happens. I’m not even sure I could tell you if it’s any good. The more I think about it the more confused I feel. I understood the events and when and how they happened.
The why? I’m not really sure I want to go that deep into Lynch’s head. It’s a long film, nearly 3 hours, and towards the last 20 minutes I was literally screaming at my TV for it to finish with my pillow in a death grip. As soon as it was over though, I just couldn’t stop thinking. I had the same feeling I get when I watch a fantastic film but the actual process of watching it was very difficult for me. If Lynch wanted to make something that is really quite terrifying then he succeeded.
I think for an in depth look at Lynch and any of his films I’m going to have to force Castle Grey Max to do an article. I’d be silly however to not tell you that both Laura Dern and Justin Theroux are fantastic in this. I have a strange feeling Laura Dern in particular was the reason I felt so uncomfortable throughout, she’s so flaky and scared the whole time I almost felt like I wanted to follow a character who actually knows what’s going on.
It’s an experience that you really should put yourself through, though you will probably hate me for recommending it. You have to be hardcore as it’s long and confusing but in its own little ways it’s fantastic, beautiful and always mesmerising. I’m going to try it again soon and see if anything changes.
"The problem is that I'm remembering something that never happened. Maybe something's wrong with me, you know?"
The Deaths of Ian Stone
I got 5 different horror films recently and decided to watch all of them starting with this and finishing with Martyrs. I’ve still got 3 to go so those reviews will probably be coming up at some point. The Deaths of Ian Stone is an odd movie. For the first 45 minutes it’s actually a really good film. It’s about this guy that keeps dying and waking up in a new life only to be killed again by shadowed pursuers.
The acting, CGI and story all work really well up until the second half. Much like Midnight Meat Train however, the ending just killed it for me. It turns into a boring monster’s and demons suck fest with unnecessary fight scenes complete with naff matrix style leather outfits and sunglasses.
Jamie Murray, who you may know from either BBC’s Hustle or Showtime’s Dexter in season 2, is really starting to grate on my nerves. She plays the same character all time and I’m not really interested in a stone faced pale English chick who talks like she’s trying to seduce you constantly. A real let down.
“Between 1954 to 1976, nearly 600 children were voluntarily submitted for participation in a number of behavioural studies. These experimental facilities were privately funded and tucked away in secluded regions of the south.”
Crazy Eights
Another let down, but this time I could tell it was going to be awful within 14 minutes of watching. This movie isn’t worth your time so I’ll be breaking out spoilers. The acting is subpar, there is no real SFX which I can highlight, the stories a little bit lame and it features some unforgiveable plot holes. According to IMDB the plot is as follows;
“Circumstance brings six childhood friends together to face their past, and a secret they share.”
The circumstance is the death of one of their friends. Crazy Eights is the name of their childhood baseball team. The secret they share is that when they were younger they killed the 8th member of their group and left her in a box, to be buried and forgotten about forever. All of the characters are having nightmares concerning a past they have no memory of. Their dead friend leaves them a map to the box containing the girl and the group have no recollection. As they drive away they keep passing a white house that they eventually enter.
It’s around here where I was just like what? Everything that happens from now on is completely stupid.
We find out that all of them were part of the experiments described in the quote above, living in the same white house they find themselves in now. They don’t remember living there together which begs the question how they could have been friends for so long. How can they not remember how they met?
They are trapped in this white house, which for no apparent reason is haunted. This was probably the most confusing thing for me. I get that this house was the facility they were raised and experimented it in but a lot of the dialogue and themes in this film centre around guilt and the amount they feel for killing their friend and leaving her. People start to die, but they aren’t committing suicide because they feel guilty, they are literally being taken out by the ghost/spirit/demon/whatever of the girl they killed. Haunted hospital and scornful soul out for revenge? It felt really out of place, especially as the characters all acknowledge her death was an accident before they are all picked off.
There’s lots of other stuff that didn’t make sense to me and the characters are criminally underdeveloped. The biggest problem here though is the fact that you are asked to believe in absolutely non-sensible things. This is usual for a horror movie, sure, but there’s no real connection. It sits on the fence between psychological murder mystery, and haunted house malarkey.
I wouldn’t bother really, there’s nothing for you here unless you’ve made it your mission in life to see every movie ever made.
Elsewhere...
Like I said I want to do some season ending reviews so I’ll keep the TV short and sweet again this week.
Heroes
This show is really starting to grind on me now. My latest issue? The fact that the writers have decided that some of their characters are too powerful and so have scaled back a few powers. That’s cool, I’ve been saying that since season one. It was the same issue I had with the Matrix trilogy; they made Neo too powerful at the end of the first one so why bother watching the sequels when you know he’s going to win.
However, as always with Heroes they’ve gone and done something stupid. They’ve scaled back both Peter and Hiros powers to the point of them being a bit rubbish (Peter can only store one power at a time and Hiro can only stop time now) but yet seem to be on giving Sylar as many powers as possible. Last episode he picked up the ability to shape shift. I mean come on; you can’t have double standards like that. It makes no sense to me.
I’ll be glad when this season is finished and hopefully the cast and story gets revised a little. I’m certain Heroes cannot live through another up and down season like this.
Lost
Still going strong and I love where the story is going right now. I also love the fact Sawyer is running things these days as Jack was starting to wear me down with his pessimism and general uncertainty about anything. I still think Benjamin Linus is one of the best bad guys on TV and that the final episodes of this penultimate season will be un-missable.
Diagnosis Murder
Dick Van Dyke is a personal hero of mine and I love this show like I love food. Whenever I’m in my house on a weekday at 14:15 I turn on BBC1 (just to make sure I miss Doctors) and get 45 minutes of pure fun. People die constantly in this show, hence the title, but there’s rarely an episode you won’t laugh or smile at the general silliness of Dr Mark Sloan and his crack team of detectives (only one of whom actually works for the police). Barry Van Dyke as Mark’s son Steve Sloan is great and Victoria Rowell is hot in pretty much every episode. There’s just something sexy about her. Whoever the sidekick is, be it Charlie Schlatter or Scott Baio (who played Bugsy Malone) it’s all love. There are tons of episodes and I think I’ve nearly seen all of them. In a world where daytime TV sucks to high heaven this is a rare gem and is well worth your time.
How I Met You’re Mother & Big Bang Theory
HIMYM was actually very funny last week with Barney trying to do everything on a list of things Ted believes he and his friends are too old to do. Legen-wait for it-dary.
Big Bang was not so funny, with Penny forced to stand up for her geeky friends when another hot blonde begins to take advantage of them. No real big laughs at all, watching the guys slobber over another blonde was just boring. I’m almost considering not watching after this season.
And finally...
A couple of random thoughts;
I was watching Ghostbusters 1 the other day and found it interesting that all four Ghostbusters smoke cigarettes. That’s crazy to me. In 1984 it was still okay to smoke cigarettes and be a role model. It would probably be banned now. I quit smoking cigarettes recently, so this isn’t a “Look how stupid the world has become” note. I just find it interesting that something I usually associate with the 50’s backwards when it was cool for everyone to smoke fags. I just sometimes forget that it’s only recently that smokers have become the outcasts of society.
I’ve been watching the Wire on BBC 2 at 23:20 every week night on BBC 2. Even though I’ve seen all 60 episodes like 3 times now. It sounds really snobby but I can’t help but get this disgusting feeling in my guts that there are people out there watching the Wire that really don’t deserve to. They don’t have the attention span or intelligence to comprehend what’s being shown to them. You can’t look at the Wire as a simple crime drama in the same way you can’t look at Watchmen as just a comic book. It’s deeper than that. If you’re not watching then I suggest you start tonight, BBC 2 at 23:20.
I think I’ll leave it here for now and come back to you next week. Have a good one and enjoy the Easter holidays.
JOE
This last week has been uneventful. University is finished for the moment and I’ve just been enjoying the good weather. A handful of reviews for you today, most of which are from the horror genre. I figure this constant fascination Max and I see to have for blood and scares might begin to bore you soon so I’m going to try and change it up a little over the coming weeks by looking at both new films I’ve seen and old films I’ve had to watch for classes etc.
Included on my list of films to watch this week are Gomorrah, Twilight Samurai, The Wackness, Sideways and a few others such as Martyrs. I won’t guarantee you’ll get any of those reviews but those are my plans for now.
This is hopefully going to be a shorter article this week because I have a few things I’m hoping to do in future blogs that look to be quite long. I just can’t resist doing a season review of Heroes when it ends in a month or so. Same with Lost.
I’ve also done away with rating films. Out of 5, Out of 10, none of that matters. If you read the review and it catches your attention and sounds like something you might like then I implore you to go watch it. I figure me saying something is worth 4 imaginary stars is meaningless.
I also need to clear up a mistake I made concerning Dead Snow last week in the part describing film references. One of the actors does in fact NOT do a great impression of Sloth from the Goonies. He does a slightly amusing impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger. How I got that wrong I don’t know, but I’m man enough to admit my mistakes.
So on to some reviews, starting with a David Lynch film.
This is a story that happened yesterday. But I know its tomorrow
Inland Empire
I was sitting in Castle Grey Skullz with Max the other week staring at the Inland Empire poster up on his wall (Ed, - Its the same as the one above, Max). As soon as I saw the poster I wanted to see it. I have no idea why. David Lynch is an odd one for me. I’ve seen most of his work and I never fail to come away conflicted. I just don’t know if he’s a genius or a complete twat. I had to write an essay comparing and contrasting Auteur theory and Genre theory last year and chose Lynch as an example of a modern ‘auteur’. There’s a rather compelling argument for Lynch as an auteur and it’s mostly right, you always know you’re watching a Lynch movie. He just has that way of setting up these seemingly normal stories and then dragging you kicking and screaming into the surreal worlds he creates within his films. Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway and so on. They all feature similar themes are all mostly weird as hell.
I had trouble sitting through all of them (Eraserhead made me surprisingly uncomfortable), but none of them made me feel as confused and at unease as Inland Empire. I’m not even going to try and explain the plot, or what happens. I’m not even sure I could tell you if it’s any good. The more I think about it the more confused I feel. I understood the events and when and how they happened.
The why? I’m not really sure I want to go that deep into Lynch’s head. It’s a long film, nearly 3 hours, and towards the last 20 minutes I was literally screaming at my TV for it to finish with my pillow in a death grip. As soon as it was over though, I just couldn’t stop thinking. I had the same feeling I get when I watch a fantastic film but the actual process of watching it was very difficult for me. If Lynch wanted to make something that is really quite terrifying then he succeeded.
I think for an in depth look at Lynch and any of his films I’m going to have to force Castle Grey Max to do an article. I’d be silly however to not tell you that both Laura Dern and Justin Theroux are fantastic in this. I have a strange feeling Laura Dern in particular was the reason I felt so uncomfortable throughout, she’s so flaky and scared the whole time I almost felt like I wanted to follow a character who actually knows what’s going on.
It’s an experience that you really should put yourself through, though you will probably hate me for recommending it. You have to be hardcore as it’s long and confusing but in its own little ways it’s fantastic, beautiful and always mesmerising. I’m going to try it again soon and see if anything changes.
"The problem is that I'm remembering something that never happened. Maybe something's wrong with me, you know?"
The Deaths of Ian Stone
I got 5 different horror films recently and decided to watch all of them starting with this and finishing with Martyrs. I’ve still got 3 to go so those reviews will probably be coming up at some point. The Deaths of Ian Stone is an odd movie. For the first 45 minutes it’s actually a really good film. It’s about this guy that keeps dying and waking up in a new life only to be killed again by shadowed pursuers.
The acting, CGI and story all work really well up until the second half. Much like Midnight Meat Train however, the ending just killed it for me. It turns into a boring monster’s and demons suck fest with unnecessary fight scenes complete with naff matrix style leather outfits and sunglasses.
Jamie Murray, who you may know from either BBC’s Hustle or Showtime’s Dexter in season 2, is really starting to grate on my nerves. She plays the same character all time and I’m not really interested in a stone faced pale English chick who talks like she’s trying to seduce you constantly. A real let down.
“Between 1954 to 1976, nearly 600 children were voluntarily submitted for participation in a number of behavioural studies. These experimental facilities were privately funded and tucked away in secluded regions of the south.”
Crazy Eights
Another let down, but this time I could tell it was going to be awful within 14 minutes of watching. This movie isn’t worth your time so I’ll be breaking out spoilers. The acting is subpar, there is no real SFX which I can highlight, the stories a little bit lame and it features some unforgiveable plot holes. According to IMDB the plot is as follows;
“Circumstance brings six childhood friends together to face their past, and a secret they share.”
The circumstance is the death of one of their friends. Crazy Eights is the name of their childhood baseball team. The secret they share is that when they were younger they killed the 8th member of their group and left her in a box, to be buried and forgotten about forever. All of the characters are having nightmares concerning a past they have no memory of. Their dead friend leaves them a map to the box containing the girl and the group have no recollection. As they drive away they keep passing a white house that they eventually enter.
It’s around here where I was just like what? Everything that happens from now on is completely stupid.
We find out that all of them were part of the experiments described in the quote above, living in the same white house they find themselves in now. They don’t remember living there together which begs the question how they could have been friends for so long. How can they not remember how they met?
They are trapped in this white house, which for no apparent reason is haunted. This was probably the most confusing thing for me. I get that this house was the facility they were raised and experimented it in but a lot of the dialogue and themes in this film centre around guilt and the amount they feel for killing their friend and leaving her. People start to die, but they aren’t committing suicide because they feel guilty, they are literally being taken out by the ghost/spirit/demon/whatever of the girl they killed. Haunted hospital and scornful soul out for revenge? It felt really out of place, especially as the characters all acknowledge her death was an accident before they are all picked off.
There’s lots of other stuff that didn’t make sense to me and the characters are criminally underdeveloped. The biggest problem here though is the fact that you are asked to believe in absolutely non-sensible things. This is usual for a horror movie, sure, but there’s no real connection. It sits on the fence between psychological murder mystery, and haunted house malarkey.
I wouldn’t bother really, there’s nothing for you here unless you’ve made it your mission in life to see every movie ever made.
Elsewhere...
Like I said I want to do some season ending reviews so I’ll keep the TV short and sweet again this week.
Heroes
This show is really starting to grind on me now. My latest issue? The fact that the writers have decided that some of their characters are too powerful and so have scaled back a few powers. That’s cool, I’ve been saying that since season one. It was the same issue I had with the Matrix trilogy; they made Neo too powerful at the end of the first one so why bother watching the sequels when you know he’s going to win.
However, as always with Heroes they’ve gone and done something stupid. They’ve scaled back both Peter and Hiros powers to the point of them being a bit rubbish (Peter can only store one power at a time and Hiro can only stop time now) but yet seem to be on giving Sylar as many powers as possible. Last episode he picked up the ability to shape shift. I mean come on; you can’t have double standards like that. It makes no sense to me.
I’ll be glad when this season is finished and hopefully the cast and story gets revised a little. I’m certain Heroes cannot live through another up and down season like this.
Lost
Still going strong and I love where the story is going right now. I also love the fact Sawyer is running things these days as Jack was starting to wear me down with his pessimism and general uncertainty about anything. I still think Benjamin Linus is one of the best bad guys on TV and that the final episodes of this penultimate season will be un-missable.
Diagnosis Murder
Dick Van Dyke is a personal hero of mine and I love this show like I love food. Whenever I’m in my house on a weekday at 14:15 I turn on BBC1 (just to make sure I miss Doctors) and get 45 minutes of pure fun. People die constantly in this show, hence the title, but there’s rarely an episode you won’t laugh or smile at the general silliness of Dr Mark Sloan and his crack team of detectives (only one of whom actually works for the police). Barry Van Dyke as Mark’s son Steve Sloan is great and Victoria Rowell is hot in pretty much every episode. There’s just something sexy about her. Whoever the sidekick is, be it Charlie Schlatter or Scott Baio (who played Bugsy Malone) it’s all love. There are tons of episodes and I think I’ve nearly seen all of them. In a world where daytime TV sucks to high heaven this is a rare gem and is well worth your time.
How I Met You’re Mother & Big Bang Theory
HIMYM was actually very funny last week with Barney trying to do everything on a list of things Ted believes he and his friends are too old to do. Legen-wait for it-dary.
Big Bang was not so funny, with Penny forced to stand up for her geeky friends when another hot blonde begins to take advantage of them. No real big laughs at all, watching the guys slobber over another blonde was just boring. I’m almost considering not watching after this season.
And finally...
A couple of random thoughts;
I was watching Ghostbusters 1 the other day and found it interesting that all four Ghostbusters smoke cigarettes. That’s crazy to me. In 1984 it was still okay to smoke cigarettes and be a role model. It would probably be banned now. I quit smoking cigarettes recently, so this isn’t a “Look how stupid the world has become” note. I just find it interesting that something I usually associate with the 50’s backwards when it was cool for everyone to smoke fags. I just sometimes forget that it’s only recently that smokers have become the outcasts of society.
I’ve been watching the Wire on BBC 2 at 23:20 every week night on BBC 2. Even though I’ve seen all 60 episodes like 3 times now. It sounds really snobby but I can’t help but get this disgusting feeling in my guts that there are people out there watching the Wire that really don’t deserve to. They don’t have the attention span or intelligence to comprehend what’s being shown to them. You can’t look at the Wire as a simple crime drama in the same way you can’t look at Watchmen as just a comic book. It’s deeper than that. If you’re not watching then I suggest you start tonight, BBC 2 at 23:20.
I think I’ll leave it here for now and come back to you next week. Have a good one and enjoy the Easter holidays.
JOE
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