Just to warm you up for Film Thursday tomorrow (or whenever I post the related blog article), here’s a quickie about In Bruges. This is a dark comedy. Think inky black. With quite a bit of bloodshed. And some weird bits. Including a dwarf in school uniform.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: Two Irish hitmen hide in the Belgian city of Bruges after an assassination goes a bit wrong.
Don’t watch if you’re offended by bad language, brutal shootings or people critical of beautiful Belgian cities. This is a very dark film as well as being very funny. Strangely, the last time I saw a film remotely like this, it was the Belgian movie Man Bites Dog – itself about a murderer.
The cast are superb. Colin Farrell deservedly won a Golden Globe for his part as the guilt-racked younger gunsmith. He’s also remarkably funny in his rants about how much he hates Bruges. For the record, I’ve been there – though I was about 12 – and I seem to recall it being pretty nice. Mind you, I didn’t have a psychotic Ralph Fiennes looming over my shoulder.
It’s unusual for a film to encompass to many emotions. Giggling till your sides hurt, revulsion at a gruesome scene, sadness at a poignant event. In Bruges manages it wonderfully.
There will be no film reviews today as there are precisely no films on at CineworldGlasgow that I want to see. I’m not big on horror any more, so Halloween 2 isn’t an option. I’ve never gone for Gilliam’s fantasy material so Imaginarium‘s off the list. There’s that thing with that utterly unfunny guy from The Office in – something to do with lying. Definitely not interested. And some rim-com with some woman from Friends in it.
Annoyingly, three films I really do want to see come out tomorrow: Vampire’s Assistant, Fantastic Mr Fox and The Goods. I may catch one or two over the weekend. Next week finally sees the British release of 9. I cannot wait!
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Tony Jaa is back, and this time you can watch him on the big screen in the UK! Ong Bak: The Beginning is the prequel to the original Ong Bak but aside from the fact that it centres around martial combat it vastly different.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: a young boy sees his parents killed and is spirited away to safety, being raised by a band of renegades. He develops impressive weaponry and fighting skills, then goes to seek revenge for his parents’ deaths.
As well as starring in this film, Jaa also wrote, directed and produced it as well as choreographing all the stunt scenes. This shows in the attention to detail and brutality. However, there the similarity ends between the earlier Ong Bak movie and the last film he did, Tom Yum Goong.
While they were both given a contemporary setting, this third outing for Jaa is set back in the early days of Thailand when most people lived in jungles and territory was fought over by several self-styled “kings”. As such it’s all straw huts, mud and rain rather than skyscrapers and motorways.
The comedy element present in both previous films has also all but vanished. The fight scenes are far more brutal and hard-hitting (in more ways than one) with CGI blood splashes emphasising knife strokes and the like. We’re verging more into Bruce Lee territory than Police Story era Jackie Chan that we’re used to from Jaa.
This has its good sides and down sides. The film isn’t what some people would be expecting, but on the other hand it might surprise a few people who’ve not bothered with the likes of Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger due to its more folk-tale storyline.
With the way the story flows – or rather doesn’t as it jumps back and forth in time – it can be a little hard to follow at times. However, once the backstory kicks in, you do get more of a feel for the character. The “twist” ending has been done a million times before in Hollywood, but the action sequences are simply superb. And very brutal.
Lots of bass-heavy thuds as torsos are pummelled and crunching sounds when arms are twisted. It’s not “gross” in its depiction of violence – certainly not compared to the likes of The Punisher – but you can almost feel each punch landing when the speakers in the cinema sound with the report.
There are a couple of fantasy elements with some very bizarre female (I think) combatants who seem to be half-animal. This really steps the film apart from its forebear which was definitely more real-world. If you can class two dozen tuk-tuks falling off a half-completed highway as “real-world”.
Overall, I enjoyed it. I did prefer the first film, mainly due to the humour, but there’s no denying that this is a great piece of martial arts movie-making. Apparently there’s a third Ong Bak due out which will somehow tie the first two together. I think I can see where they’re going after the speech at the end of this one, but I guess we’ll see.
I’ve not done much about books recently, and partly that’s down to the fact I’ve not had a lot of spare time to get through the huge pile of novels I want to read. Between (ab)using my cinema pass, studying and this collection of evil electrons called The Internet I’ve let my enjoyment of the written art slip slightly.
The last three books I’ve read have all been part of the same series – the Alex Rider novels by Anthony Horowitz. Yes, they’re “kids'” books but do note that the author has also worked on adult television screenplays and that there is a whole genre of books that didn’t exist when I was younger.
Way back then, shortly after the invention of the printing press, books went from “children’s” to “adult” with no real middle ground. Partly due to the maturity of the Harry Potter content, there is now an enormous collection of books filling that gap. With detailed plots, mature content, interweaving plot strands and characters you can really identify with these books are worth reading by anyone. Simply take a decent “adult” novel, strip out the sex and bad language and a lot of these books could be confused with something for a more mature audience.
The Alex Rider collection are consistently good quality. I’ve not read the Young James Bond novels, but I can’t see them being anywhere near as good as this series, simply as the protagonist doesn’t want to be a spy. The detailed background Horowitz has created means that the character develops as he learns a little more about his past as each book is released. And not all of it is good.
The research given to each title is superb, allowing Horowitz to throw facts at readers and educate them while entertaining at the same time. Everything from how to walk a tightrope to the effects of basic physics on maneuvering in zero gravity have come up in the (so far) seven books. I was surprised to see that Horowitz had met fellow author Stephen Leather (of whom I am also a huge fan) in Bangkok during his research for Snakehead. Leather writes what are, to all intents and purposes, adult Alex Rider books. These are the novels I would say kids would walk right into if they enjoy Alex’s stories.
The fact that I mentioned one of his books (The Long Shot) in a blog post several years ago and received a “thank you” email from him has no influence on how much I like his work. Honestly.
I just ordered another book, Gone by Michael Grant, after I saw it in the children’s section of Waterstones recently.
Don’t miss out on some great reading simply because it’s not in the grown-up’s section of the library or bookshop. See what the teenagers are reading these days and jump on their bandwagons.
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