Category: Entertainment

Red / Burke and Hare / Easy A

Assuming that M Law Solicitors don’t demand I take down this blog post for defaming a film for giving it bad reviews (as they did with my post regarding Parking Eye, which I still maintain wasn’t defamatory as it was in the public interest), please enjoy the following catch-up from the last 2 weeks’ abuse of my Cineworld pass.

Red

“Time to open up the pig”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: a group of retired secret agents take on the CIA to find out who’s put them on a “to be killed” list.

This is another in the current run of bigger-than-life action films that seem to be putting bums on seats at the moment. It’s also one of the best, mainly due to a novel idea and a superb cast. Come on – Helen Mirren with guns? How can that not be cool?

The rest of the eldsters are played by Bruce Willis, John Malkovich and Morgan Freeman. Freeman could be in the biggest cinematic turd in history and would still make his sequences worth watching, but fortunately Red is no such bum-dropping and is instead just good fun.

There’s plenty of action and it makes full use of the common trend of using CGI rather than stuntmen to a large degree. I still prefer more old-school effects (Raiders is the best Indy film by a mile for several reasons, this being one of them), but it doesn’t stop Red being any less enjoyable.

Definitely go see.

Burke and Hare

“That… would be an artery”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Two Irish guys stumble across a nice way of making money – selling corpses to a medical school. Only what happens when they run out of fresh meat?

Honestly, can Simon Pegg do know wrong? I honestly don’t think I’ve seen him in a film I’ve not enjoyed yet. When you add the likes of Andy Serkis and Tim Curry to the cast, then top it off with Ronnie Corbett it would take some kind of miracle to destroy it. Get John Landis to direct and you may as well buy your ticket without seeing a review.

Burke and Hare is perfect Halloween fodder. It’s set in the 19th century, it’s grisly, it’s tasteless and it’s funny. I’d not recommend it for younger kids due to some of the scenes being a little too “eeeeewww” but other than that it’s superb.

There are loads of little references in the background (Greyfriar’s Bobby makes an appearance) and the original historical tale does make for decent film material, even if the facts have been moulded somewhat.

Looking at the other horrors available this Halloween, this has to be the best of the bunch.

Easy A

“That’s the one thing that trumps religion… capitalism”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: shy teen pretends to nob schoolmates for cash/vouchers until it all goes too far

I didn’t expect to enjoy this, despite the trailer being “OK”. After all, it’s a teen-girl-at-a-school film, and they’re pretty formulaic. I just went as it was on at a good time for me to fill 90 minutes of an afternoon.

Oh, I love it when I’m proved wrong.

Easy A has a fantastic script, beautiful dialogue, an in credible wit and a decent story. Emma Stone is excellent as Olive, the girl who gets talked into pretending to sleep with a gay classmate to stop him being bullied for his sexuality. Who then recommends him to others, until she’s made out to be the school slut.

The supporting cast are all well-played from her hilarious family, to the wise-cracking English teacher and the bonkers Christian brigade. There genuinely is not a dull moment.

While Olive does bemoan the fact that her life story wasn’t directed by John Hughes, it could have been. It’s that good.

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Alter Bridge / Bowling For Soup

Alter Bridge - Glasgow 5
Alter Bridge – Glasgow

I’m a little short on time so I’m just going to cram these two reviews into the same blog post.

Alter Bridge – Glasgow O2 Academy, 16th Oct 2010

I just caught the tail end of Slaves To Gravity when I arrived and they had the crowd going, and seemed OK. The venue was pretty much packed, no surprise with it being a sell-out, but there was still a lot of room to walk around and find a good position.

The headliners hit the stage around 9:30 for a 90 minute set. They’re not a glamorous, special effects-heavy band instead relying on belting out some good songs to keep the crowd happy. The set list was quite heavy on new material from the album ABIII which had only been out for about a week at the time of the gig. Lunacy on the part of the record company, but – as Myles Kennedy stated towards the end – the crowd reacted well and enjoyed it nonetheless.

Of course, the most pleasing reaction was for the better known material and there was plenty of it. If I had to pick three highlights, they’d be “Blackbird“, “Ties That Bind” and the acoustic version of “Watch Over You“. The latter raised the hairs on the back of my neck, just like the first time I heard Linkin Park‘s Chester Bennington singing “Pushing Me Away” accompanied only by keyboards.

However, it did raise one issue I’ve had with the O2 cademy before – the acoustic track was the only one where I could easily make out the vocals. Machine Head suffered the same issue a few months ago.

It’s not that the sound’s too loud – the bass, drums and guitar solos were all clear. For some reason, though, the vocals had been set at a level around the same as the music and so became buried. A hell of a shame as Kennedy’s got a great voice and part of the appeal of Alter Bridge are the excellent lyrics.

Not the band’s fault, I suppose, and it only took the gloss off an excellent performance. The new album is easily on a par with the first two, as well.

Bowling For Soup – Glasgow O2 Academy, 17th Oct 2010

Bowling For Soup - Glasgow 3
Bowling For Soup – Glasgow

Next night, same venue, different band! I was too late to see the Dollyrots, and only caught the end of Forever The Sickest Kids‘ set, which is a shame as they seemed to have got the crowd jumping. “A” followed and had about 25 fans. They’re not bad… but that’s about it.

On a night when Guns ‘n’ Roses were keeping fans waiting 85 minutes longer than they should before coming on stage in Birmingham, Bowling For Soup bounded on a little after 21:30 and launched into a great set.

Silly backdrops, music videos, jokes, banter with the crowd, improvisation… never a dull moment. Hell, they even took a photo-op break mid-song at one point. Standing and posing at each end and the centre of the stage before continuing where they left off.

Mexican waves were done. A death/thrash metal band called Haggis Farts were formed on stage, a song written, and the band broken up… all within five crazy minutes. The crowd were encourage to chant that the bassist, Eric, liked penis… and then chastised and told to chant that they were sorry. Which they did.

Bowling For Soup are all about having fun and not taking life too seriously. I don’t think I’ve seen a crowd grin throughout a show the way the mob did tonight. OK, except for the last time I saw Lawnmower Deth – and that’s a hell of a long time ago.

The other point of note is that the sound was a hell of a lot better than for Alter Bridge. I could make out Jaret’s vocals far more clearly than Myles’ the night before. Still, it could have been better. Maybe it’s the sound system there.

BFS were great fun and picked a nice selection of tracks for the set, including a novel cover of the utterly awful “That’s Not My Name”. I would definitely recommend them to anyone with a sense of humour and can’t wait for them to come round again.

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Mr Nice / The Social Network

Just for a change, I headed into the Glasgow city centre Cineworld as I had most of Sunday to kill before Bowling For Soup came on stage.

By some bizarre coincidence, both films I saw today were “true stories” based on biographies.

Mr. Nice

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Smart Welsh boy goes to Oxford, figures out that dealing drugs is far more profitable than teaching and ends up living the life of crime.

I’ve seen the book Mr. Nice kicking around so much recently, mainly in hostels. It seems that pretty much every 20-something thinks Howards Marks was the coolest guy ever because he sold shitloads of dope and stood up for the whole “it’s a silly law so it doesn’t count” school of thought.

Either way, the story is well known. I even vaguely remember bits of it from when I was a kid and the story appearing on the news – but I won’t go into detail for those of you who are trying to avoid any spoilers!

It’s a good story, too, although given it’s based on Marks’ own viewpoint it’s obvious that there may be a little bit of embellishment somewhere along the lines. Rhys Ifans is perfectly cast and bears more than just a passing resemblance to Marks himself.

From his early beginnings as the school nerd right up to the current day, Marks is played by Ifans. It seems a bit unusual putting him into a school uniform, but it works given that those early years are just brushed over in about ten minutes.

Marks ran the rocky road from college boy to kingpin, dealt with the IRA, arms suppliers, and MI6. Regardless of your moral views on what he did, he led one hell of an interesting life. Shoehorned into 120 minutes, it never gets a chance to get boring.

The Social Network

“The internet’s not written in pencil, Mark. It’s written in ink.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Harvard Freshman comes up with an idea for a website (or steals it) called “The Facebook“. Legal action ensues.

What happens when you mix the verbal genius of The West Wing with the world of computer geekery? The answer is contained in this two-hour internet-driven legal office drama.

In short – Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) is a freshman at Harvard, one of the US “Ivy League” universities. That is, all the “best” students go there. Zuckerberg is, shall we say, a little socially awkward. He has a couple of friends, an immense intellect and really can’t handle other people at all. The view we get in the film is that he finds them of little consequence, perhaps not worthy of his time. Eisenberg plays this part perfectly.

After crashing the school’s network as part of a revenge plot against a recent girlfriend who just dumped him, he is invited to help program a website by two brothers and their business partner. He agrees, but instead spends his time on “The Facebook”. It may have escaped your attention, but the resulting website is slightly popular and was recently valued at around $25 billion.

Needless to say, as soon as money of those amounts is bandied around, people get lawyers involved.

The film is roughly split into three parts, all of which play over each other as the viewpoint jumps around. There are two legal cases plus the back story upon which they are both based. This can make it a little hard to follow in places, but not too much so.

Even if you don’t have an interest in the internet and computers, if you remotely enjoyed The West Wing for its dialogue – and let’s face it, that was a thing of utter beauty – you’ll love this film. Aaron Sorkin‘s work on the script shines as brightly as it did for 154 episodes of the TV show and there’s barely a minute or two without some gem or other being uttered.

The Social Network is a clever, witty, fast-paced legal drama which is hugely enjoyable. If David Fincher ever needed to redeem himself for Alien3, this wipes the slate clean. You know, just in case Se7en, Fight Club and Zodiac don’t prove that the studio execs who kicked him off the third Alien film didn’t have a clue what they were doing.

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Wall Street 2 / Made in Dagenham

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Two-film Saturday again. I popped over to the Cineworld in Edinburgh to chill out and forget the world for a few hours. First up on today’s list:

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

“Why don’t you start calling me Gordon?”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Young upstart financier finds himself engaged in corporate corruption, and engaged to Gordon Gekko’s daughter.

Oliver Stone returns, bringing the iconic character of Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) back for a second airing some 23 years after the original. Wall Street was, and still is, an iconic piece of film-making, exposing all that was wrong with the financial world at that time. This sequel attempts to do the same, focussing on events of the last couple of years.

The films kicks off with Gekko being released from prison while his estranged daughter Winnie (Carey Mulligan) is shacked up with a fledgling financier, Jake Moore (charisma vacuum Shia LaBeouf). The bank Jake works for starts to crumble, his mentor and boss Louis (superbly played by Frank Langella) tops himself and Jake finds himself “teaming up” with Gekko in a bid to find out what happened to start the whole mess.

LaBeouf is the odd one out in this film as he’s capable, but just not that great. Given his past roster has included being eye candy for girls in the awful fourth Indiana Jones film, and the teen-kid from both Transformers movies it does surprise me to see him in a “serious” role. He’s OK as far as it goes, but just doesn’t really carry it off that well.

Douglas is, of course, excellent. Slimey, sleezy… and you never quite know if he’s being genuine which does lend itself well to the plot. Langella, as I mentioned, was superb – probably the best actor in the film.

It’s a tad under two hours long, but manages not to flag right the way through and the story carries on right until the very end with little “fluff” hanging off the plot. Having said that, there are few major surprises as we go through other than the very end which is – in honesty – a little weak.

Perhaps not as powerful a film a the original, and mainly as we are now as a public somewhat more informed of what happens in the financial world. After the revelation that was Gekko’s first appearance we have discovered that sharks like that aren’t just movie characters and villains in books. On the flip side, it makes things all the more believable.

The reviews I heard on the radio yesterday weren’t all that favourable, but I enjoyed it. In fact, I think I’m going to try and find a copy of the original to watch. It’s been a long time and I’d like to compare them.

Made in Dagenham

“Unskilled, my arse!”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Company pays peanuts to women, they go on strike, **** hits fan, world is changed.

Based on the real events of 1968, Made in Dagenham follows the story of a couple of hundred female workers who downed tools and forced first the world’s largest motor manufacturer, and then the British government to change the law relating to sexual equality.

The film begins with the gears already in motion, the women threatening to turn off their sewing machines unless they are given a better pay grade. On their side is foreman Albert (Bob Hoskins) and he drafts Rita O’Grady (Sally Hawkins) in as a right-hand-woman. They also allegedly have the support of the union, characterised by the slothful Monty Taylor (Kenneth Cranham).

Meetings go from bad to worse, and the women walk out causing problems further down the production line as the new “Escort” has no seats to fit into it. As the situation blows out of proportion, men are laid off, factories close and Ford execs are shipped to the UK to try and deal with both the workers and our government.

Top two cast members for me have to be Richard Schiff (Toby from TV’s The West Wing, looking surprisingly young without a beard) as one of the execs, and Miranda Richardson as then First Secretary of State  Barbara Castle. She really does bossy and shouty very well, and I confess I can’t see her without thinking of her as the Queen in Blackadder II.

The story twists and turns with both high and low moments. The women’s demands increase from “a bit more cash” to “equal pay” back in the day when women were routinely paid a fraction of the amount that men were for the same work. Council estate hardship is compared to posh house luxury as Rita befriends the wife of one of the factory bosses (played by a damn hot Rosamund Pike), giving another facet to the story as women’s domestic suffering is also highlighted.

There’s a fair bit going on here and on the whole it’s played in a lighthearted way, but it’s a fantastic story boiled down to a little over ninety minutes. How close it is to the actual events is down to the historians to tell me, but it’s a very entertaining dramatisation and I’d highly recommend it. Another victory for British cinema.

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Vampires Rock

VAMPIRES ROCK
Vampires Rock

Thanks to the wonderful Nicola, I became the lucky owner of two tickets to see Vampires Rock when she couldn’t make it to the performance. I’d heard mention of the show, but wasn’t sure what to expect. Wendi was the first to shove her hand up to grab the extra ticket and we headed to the Edinburgh Playhouse last night to see it.

First up, £4.50 for a drink in the bar. Ow. Wish I’d spotted the Wetherspoons next door earlier! Secondly, if you’re getting tickets for the Playhouse and can do so, get them direct in person from the box office. I picked up three for Spamalot and they worked out at £3.50 per ticket less than using Ticket Master, plus they accepted my student ID, plus they were offering a wider range of seats than I seemed to be able to choose from on the website.

Anyway, the show. It’s a simple affair, much more of a musical show with little bits of performance than the other way around. The stage set is a simple, stationary one and the volume’s cranked way up.

The major downside to this is that the vocals and spoken voices are often very hard to make out. This is a hell of a shame, but at least the music’s spot on.

Ah, the music. Rock legends a-plenty are paid tribute to – Queen, AC/DC, Guns n Roses, Bon Jovi, Meatloaf, Bonnie Tyler… Erm, yes. Hey, who can complain at a bit of Total Eclipse of the Heart? Especially when the woman singing it is ridiculously hot?

Most of the band and some of the supporting cast get a go at leading the singing including an awesome rendition of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’. Yes, Journey. For those under 25 years old, this isn’t an original song by the cast of flipping Glee. In fairness, I’m from a generation that thought Ballroom Blitz was by Nuclear Assault instead of Sweet. It could be worse. I could have been convinced Tia Carrere wrote it.

The band and cast are great, although lead Steve Steinman’s accent seems to have got lost somewhere between Transylvania and Blackpool. The girls are gorgeous, and the men… well, let’s just say if I had any less testosterone in my body I’d be at risk of fancying the guitarists and bassist. I swear Wendi was calculating exactly how risky jumping from the balcony would be to get her hands on them.

Vampires Rock is, much as it claims it’s not right at the start, a pantomime of sorts. It craves audience reaction and it gets it. It’s silly, has stereotypical characters, the jokes are cheesier than the scruffy character’s bell end and you’ll enjoy it despite feeling a little guilty about it afterwards.

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