P.S. I didn’t watch you

I watched a ‘weepy‘ tonight. I say watched. I slept on and off for a good 45 minutes till my girlfriend got sick of my snoring at jabbed me in the small of my back with her finger nails. I then proceeded to face my girlfriend with my eyes closed trying to meditate my headache away, it didn’t work. It’s still on actually. I got the basic gist of the plot and i’m just not interested. From what I can make out though, boy and girl fall in love etc then he dies, so he leaves her loads of notes (maybe one per day, i’m not sure) which are meant to either enrich her life or remind her of him in some way and they always end with P.S. i love you. it’s better than the crap that either Matthew McConaughey or Kate Hudson usually stink up the screen in.

I love films, I love them so much that I can watch any film of any quality and of any genre and derive some form of pleasure from it cos i’m just that bloody daft about that stuff. I will go without sleep to watch something i’m really not that interested in. But this, which is one of my good lady’s favorite films, refuses to strike any form of chord with me. And I think its the inclusion of Ms Turbo-Shit-No-Personality herself Hilary Swank. Her boyfriend died in this and i think he did it to escape the lacklustre acting career she seems to be forging ahead with. Seriously i checked back on IMDB and her career is fucking awful, great cans but awful career. I never gave it any thought before but seriously her career should be in the toilet by now, which in a way it is, but no, she still gets offered premium roles in big budget affairs.

Amelia (2009)

Remember this ? No ? Nobody does, apart from her manager, he will never forget. I know what its about but it was rubbish wasn’t it. Oh right you either never saw it or refuse to recall any pathetic details from ham fisted script

Birds of America (2008)

You remember that movie she did back in 2008 with Matt Perry yeah ? No…

P.S. I Love You (2007)

The movie in question. Here we are led to believe she is 21 at one point, it doesn’t work. And it features some truly shocking Irish accents, one of them by Gerard Butler which is unforgivable.

The Reaping (2007)

Thousands of years ago there was a series of bizarre occurrences that many believed to have been the Ten Biblical Plagues. No one thought they could happen again. Until now.

That’s the actual tagline from the movie. It sounds great right ?

Freedom Writers (2007)

Sounds a bit like that film that Coolio did a song for but its got that guy from Meatballs III in it so you know it’s gonna be a touch of class.

The Black Dahlia (2006)

Remember How good LA Confidential was ? well this isn’t.

Million Dollar Baby (2004)

This is the only film i recall with any kind of fondness, but mainly because of the two really old folk in it who don’t act as any kind of personality vacuum .

Red Dust (2004)

I thought this was that movie with Don Cheadle on Mars, it isn’t, it’s worse.

11:14 (2003)

This is one of those crap movies where there are 5 different stories that all converge at the end and everything becomes clear. Those movies are absolute shit, this is no exception. She still accepted the role even after she learned she’d be called ‘Buzzy’ in it.

The Core (2003)

You know what disaster movies are missing ? yeah i hear ya, SCIENCE. Loads of science related talk, i bloody love that about this, I love how we learn all these facts and figures that are of no use whatsoever. Brilliant.

Insomnia (2002)

Now this is really fucking weird, it’s a film that has both Hilary Swank and Robin Williams in it and its actually really really good. Oh right it’s directed by that guy who did the Batman Films, okay I understand.

The Affair of the Necklace (2001)

Absolute period MEGA GARBAGE, Imagine a BBC period drama, but this time it’s even worse than you could ever possibly hope for.

The Gift (2000)

Big supernatural fuss about nothing, but i think Tom Cruise’s wife get her hooters out in it so everyone went fucking mental about it at the time.

Boys Don’t Cry (1999)

This may have been good. It was ‘inspired by a true story’ so they gave it some Oscars probably.

She still gets offered Huge budget stuff like Amelia, granted it was horse shit but still. It boggles my tiny mind that producers, directors, etc still have her in mind when casting for roles. I think that Scarlett Johansen is this generations Hilary Swank. She did Ghost World and everyone cooed about her, she never followed it up.

Out.

Sir Barnaby Krudge – Gentleman Detective

So onto yet another movie based entry. I saw Sherlock Holmes a couple of weeks ago now. It entertained me, nothing more than that though.

I love the Jeremy Brett portrayal of Sherlock Holmes as it’s pitch perfect, like Kevin Spacey as Sgt Jack Vincennes or Paul Danan in anything he’s ever flexed his mighty acting chops in. But this was quite literally fuck all like Sherlock Holmes. I mean apart from the names it had absolutely nothing to do with the books whatsoever.

I recall when it was announced Guy Ritchie had signed himself up for this bad boy i imagined some ridiculous tale where shit gets real for Holmes & Watson and fuck tons of ass needs to be kicked in the midst of massive action set piece’s. Well that happens. If there’s one thing I know about those two fucks is that they love to bust heads…no wait..sorry its all about eliminating all that is impossible and whats left, no matter how improbable, leads to the truth (or words to that effect). He’s a fucking detective you twat.

It’s not as big a shit storm as the Tim Burton Superman Could have turned out to be, cos that was truly mental (Superman teleporting cos Burton didn’t like him flying). It was entertaining but i felt that the use of the Sherlock Holmes name was a fruitless exercise, hence my title. I think it may have just served as a means to alienate fans of the books and taint the image of the books to folk who liked this version of him.

I understand the use of it to get the audience interested in the film but it, to me, was pointless. If it served as Mark Strong’s calling card to obtain the role of Sinestro in the Green Lantern movie then i applaud him, but even so it seems such a waste of the resources of a major studio to use it on this when fantastic Victorian detective drama’s like the Lucifer Box series are waiting in the wings to be adapted.

Sherlock Holmes was hard, that is fact. I seem to recall a passage in one of the books where he is recognised by a boxer who notes he once saw him beat someone in a boxing match and that he had promise as a fighter. with Holmes it wasn’t the fact that he could beat your head to peices, even though he probably could, it was that he outwitted you so completely. He out smarted you and then some. Hitchcock said “There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it”. He unpicked everything you set in place and defeated you so utterly. He didn’t throw a fucking hammer at a henchman’s face, then later leave Watson to sleeper hold the piss out of him.

I enjoyed it, but it was stupid bollocks.

If Guy Ritchie held the reigns on other literary heroes would they end up as distorted as this ? Probably. Hopefully more so.

I like to witness the differing paths that both Guy Ritchie and Matt Vaughn have taken. While Vaughn has produced really thoughtful movies and Ritchie just hasn’t. And he seems unable to change his stroke whatsoever, as Sherlock Holmes, at the very centre of its vanilla flavoured putty coloured heart, is a very pedestrian London based crime tale. Perfect for him it seems.

It also took a long while to unroll the wafer thin, but strange as it may seem, pointlessly convoluted plot. It ambled along until the very end where the crap twist was no twist at all if you know some basic Holmes facts. The explanation of his deductive work carried out throughout the film was terrible. The addition of Irene Adler to the plot was also turbo shit to the max.

But, as i stated earlier, i enjoyed it.

‘To do’ list

Right well I’ve seen Avatar, and now that I’ve pushed that aside I’ve got a few films I’m looking forward to this year. I’ll list them below and maybe include a little witticism for you folks out there.

Sherlock Holmes – yeah it looks and sounds mega wank but I’m willing to let it entertain me if it can. Once again can i state that this looks uber shit SEEN IT

Daybreakers – Interesting future twist on the vampire genre. Hopefully it’ll show people that vampire movies shouldn’t be badly written soppy romance bollocks.

IronMan 2 - It’s got WarMachine in it, shame Don Cheadle is inside.

Kickass - Awesome looking adaptation by an awesome director of an awesome comic. Really worth looking forward to.

Scott Pilgrim – Adaptation of a comic i know very little about. But its directed by Edgar Wright and It’s starring George Michael Bluth (No word if bland will be in it as yet)

The Road – Great great book looking to be a great great film. The tone looks right even if the trailer makes it look like a fucking family film.

Paul – Pegg & Frost are nerds traversing America on some unknown quest with an alien named Paul. Sounds great, and I truly mean that.

The Expendables – Mega 80′s action romp with Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny Trejo, Steve Austin, and Dolph Lundgren. Probably gonna be shit.

The A TEAM – Actually looks good. Genuinely.

Robin Hood – Directed by Ridley Scott starring Russell Crow. You know it’s not gonna be shit. It’s gonna at least be watchable.

Inception – Uber budget thriller from the director of Dark Knight. It looks awesome and nobody even knows what it’s about yet. It even stars Dicaprio and I still wanna see it.

There are loads more but I’m not getting into them right now.

Peace

Destroyer Max

Easy to please

So, Avatar, lets talk this through. One of the most anticipated films ever turned out to be boring.

Yeah I said it, I should be getting struck by lightning any time now, I’m due for it. Well it started off like a really poor TV movie, the government officials who basically let the main character have the opportunity to take control of one of their mega budget Avatar’s (like a genetically created version of one of those blue Cat/Native American things) with literally no training whatsoever, were terrible actors, i hesitate to use the term actor but if Keanu Reeves dares to have it on his passport then i think its ok.

There weren’t any huge gaping chasm-like plot holes but it was far from the tightest script I was expecting from ‘the greatest cinema experience ever’ that I’m sure I read some twat of a critic of Newsnightian proportions spouting somewhere or other. I’ll pick up a couple of points that were not sold to me in any way, shape, or form. Like i wrote earlier, the main character was given free reign to stroll around in a million dollar or billion dollar (I don’t recall and don’t care either) genetically created super-being with no training to speak of, the main chap even states this in the film to the cliched i-hate-the-military scientist. Now we are also told that his twin brother, who was initially lined up for this, had a PHD and had been training for years carry out whatever task they needed doing while dressed up like a basketball playing blue cat. We are also informed that to get to the thoughtlessly named Pandora you need to be in stasis for god knows how long, so why wouldn’t you use the time wasted in stasis to train the guy with the unexplained Australian accent ? Seriously why ? That’s just confusing.

Then there is the Navi themselves (Navi as in Natives ? wow way to go Cameron really knocking it out of the park there) they are just ‘Red Indians‘. I heard it was Dances with wolves – in space and it is, it really is. Shockingly shit concept, they even wore loin clothes, used bow’s and arrow’s, rode around on horse like steeds, and worshiped ‘mother earth’ but they called some other name i cant recall right now, it was no doubt so badly conceived my brain refused to copy and paste somewhere in there. To add insult to further insult on top of my shit smeared injuries they then used Wes Studi as the voice of the leader of the Blue Indian cat folk. He’s that guy with a really bad complexion who always plays a native in a loin cloth who happens to be in a position of responsibility, and he’s in Heat (If you’ve never seen Heat get the fuck off my blog). Fine enough casting that shows literally fuck all imagination. But seriously the Navi are so badly conceived my brain refused to cope and i went for a shit and sat on the toilet for a good 10 minutes playing pinball on my phone.

I really can’t be arsed to get any further in without spoiling it for anyone who wants to see it, but my endorsement is that its as worth seeing as any other big budget affair but its not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination. There are so many great things out there to waste my time on but this isn’t one of them.

Also, I saw it in 3D. It was the best use of the format I’ve seen so far but its still nothing worth getting excited about.

Regarding my thoughts on film making, I think it’s universally recognized that the script needs to be the strongest part of the movie. If you start with a poor script then no matter how much money you throw at a film it’s just not gonna get any better. And that’s the case with this. I’m in the minority on this I know, but if more people felt like me the movie business would cost less and the quality would be much higher.

Oh yeah and I mistook a girl for a guy this weekend and called her mate, and then told a woman who was trying to make small talk with me that I have never seen her before in my life. So on the old social graces front i scored low.

Peace out.

Destroyer Max

500 days..

Well I kicked off the day in style by finishing volume 1 of The Walking Dead TPB, it was ace, it little light on the dialogue but i saw it as a nice slow set up of the story as a whole. I didn’t kick the day off with it as i only started reading it at about 3:30 and polished it off within an hour. Like I said ‘light on the dialogue’.

Anyway, I really enjoyed it. So much so that i started on volume 2. Now I don’t wanna come across as a kid that was spoiled by 90′s comics with mega rich over the top visuals, replete with bulging muscle and very pointy noses (i’m looking at you Liefeld), but the art is lacking in these issues. I hoped against hope that the story had made up for its shortcomings in the art department and it did, the story and dialogue is flowing so much better and it feels more cinematic in its tone. I’m not sure whether or not this is due to the writing actually being better or whether it’s down to me personally not relying on the visuals as much.

So far its great stuff, as good as any end of the world fiction I’ve read, and I’ve read too much really.

The other thing worth a mention here is that i finally got round to watching (500) Days of Summer. I’d been hearing how it was the first true breakup film for guys and it really captures how it is to be a chap on the receiving end of a truly epic breakup, for me Swingers captures a breakup perfectly, although it all happens prior to the plot so it can’t lay claim to it I suppose. Throughout the film i was a bit meh about the whole thing but it gets to a point in the film where a heart is really broken, I mean really really fucking crushed to dust into the the dirt, yeah it’s that bad, and you can truly relate to the lead in the film (Joseph Gordon Levitt ?). From that point on the movie came together, for me anyway, my girlfriend enjoyed the whole show, from beginning to end.

There’s two kinds of successful films in my eyes. One is the kind where you are gripped with the premise instantly and are rocketed about throughout the course of the movie until eventually you have that wow that was awesome moment where you want to turn around and go back to the start and experience it all over again. the other is where it takes a certain moment where the film all falls into place and you have the oh yeah i see moment you understand it, you enjoyed it, but you don’t need to see it again, unless there’s nothing else on TV on a Sunday afternoon, and even then id rather rather watch Burt Ward and Adam West rock and roll in the batman movie (Shark Repellent Spray anyone ?)

Well that’s me for the day. Hope you enjoyed it. I’ve sorted out both the spelling and punctuation cos a pal asked me to, and I’m just that kind of guy.

If you haven’t read walking dead yet then do so.
If you haven’t seen (500) Days of Summer yet then its up to you, do what you like.
If you haven’t seen Swingers yet then sort yourself out, do yourself a favor, and go buy it.

Destroyer Max

regular day

nothing happened today, well nothing i’d consider a success. the usual get up and drop the wife and kid off then home for a shower followed by a meeting with the less than useless social services.

high point for me was a stop in town to pick up volume 1 and 2 of walking dead, a friend is reading through at pretty much the same rate as me so it’ll be nice to swap notes on it. me being the seasoned comic nerd though gives me instant advantage/disadvantage dependent on your viewpoint. i could either bring a lot of bad habits and expectations from other comic books or i could accept the story easier than a regular book reader maybe could. maybe not. maybe im rambling.

so far so good. the visuals are very art adams or like a less fantastical mike wieringo. it suits the style of book really well. the writing so far has a nice flow and has a few pleasant suprise’s. the foreword really gets you fired up for the comic as he echos my thoughts about zombie movies and end of the world movies in general, its not the threat of attack, its not the speed at which it happens, its not the triffids taking over the world, its the adaption to a whole new world. its theirs now, get used to it.

and as robert kirkman put it “the zombie movie that never ends” thats the dream right there.

i remember getting my dad to record dawn of the dead off of sky movies in the early 90s for me and my friends. and i loved it. loved every minute of it. loved the dialogue, characters, music, everything. every detail was spot on for me , even the shit kung fu at the very end.

it stayed with me and i collected up every zombie vhs i could, most were shit, only romero really shone through. it stuck like glue. eventually my generation came of age and the zombie survival guide was published, and i got mine within the week. i still have it somewhere, the white cover showing its age now. and soon after that the word went zombie crazy. and so it goes.

ive rambled on, and for that im sorry. ill try harder to string together something a bit more coherent for my next update.

tomorrow brings me back on the hunt for a job. and ill update no doubt with my success in the next few days.

DestroyerMax

Well it begins.

it has begun. i have been instructed to start a blog to maybe improve my life somewhat, which, apart from my career, is pretty good right now.

there is probably gonna be tons of poor grammar in here and very little punctuation, so hold on.

ill hopefully gonna be banging on about design, illustration, writing, as well as my musings on life.