I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this bunch of nutters before but they have a new video out. Steel Panther apparently started off as a parody act purely ripping the piss out of glam bands. They did a show on Broadway or in Vegas or something. Google them to find out. It’s not important.
What is important is the fact that they’re incredibly entertaining, rude and don’t take themselves at all seriously. Very rock’n’roll!
They have also gone down the standard metal road taken by their forebears – Queen, AC/DC, Spinal Tap and Hayseed Dixie amongst others – and released a song about fat birds. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you “Fat Girl [Thar She Blows]” (courtesy of Metal Injection)…
Well, after being out of the country for a couple of years and (happily) ignoring television, radio and the tabloids I find myself drowning in a sea of recently famous people. Now, whether they’ll be Beatles-famous or one-album-then-ditched famous, who knows.
One thing that’s getting me are the names they’re using. I know you have to make a name for yourself, and in some cases people take this literally. The stuff they’re coming up with these days is just pants, though.
I mean, who the hell is Lady Gaga? I don’t need to check out the radio stations to know I’d loathe her stuff. Assuming it’s a “she” and not a group?
Going through the charts we have Shakira – sounds like a dodgy bit of Manga; Dizzee Rascal – made that one up in the playground at school; Beyonce – I bet there are a million of those being born in council estates every day now; Mr Hudson – wasn’t that a character in Grange Hill?; Jeremih – inspired by Pearl Jam but unable to spell; Booty Luv – oh, come on…
What happened to the good old days when people had really ace nicknames? All the best ones being from the world of metal, of course. Come on – you can’t beat any of these lot with your namby-pamby radio-friendly claptrap:
King Diamond – you simply can’t get any harder than that (chemistry joke).
Dimebag Darrell – R.I.P. One of the coolest pseudonyms out there and one of the nicest guys.
Count Grishnackh – So tough he even killed a guy called Euronymous.
Tom Angelripper – 50 Cent wouldn’t dare share a room with this guy.
Qualcast “Koffee Perkulator” Mutilator, Concorde Faceripper, Baron Kev Von Thresh Meister Silo Stench Chisel Marbels KP, Mightymo Destructimo, Explodin’ Dr Jaggers Flymo, Schizo Rotary Sprintmaster – collectively known as Lawnmower Deth. Do aliases seriously get any better than that? No. They don’t.
Care to argue? Well don’t bother – you’re wrong. Metal has the best nicknames and pseudonyms. End of. I’m not narrow-minded. I’m just right.
As well as being overjoyed at getting a ticket to see them at Glasgow Barrowlands in November, I’m well impressed with the title track they’ve started streaming from the new album (World Painted Blood). It’s available from their MySpace page so you’ll have to put up with formatting that looks like it was dreamed up by a 6 year old with spatial awareness issues, but it’s worth it.
Much as I adored the ball-out utter thrashing heavyness of God Hates Us All, I was underwhelmed by Christ Illusion, it seeming like just more of the same. This new title track shows a lot more variety and a touch of the cleaner sound harking back to the likes of South of Heaven. If the rest of the album holds up then I’m very excited indeed.
One album I’m no longer waiting for is Hatebreed’s Hatebreed, their fifth album. It’s superb, and the first real change in tone I’ve heard from them in their history. Not quite as in-your-face heavy as… well, everything else they’ve ever released. There’s even an instrumental on it.
This will be on repeat play in the car along with…
Megadeth
Got ahold of the new Mustaine & Co album Endgame last week and that’s been looped to death already. Definitely their best release in a long time, though I still think The System Has Failed was pretty good.
And finally… a 4 year old on the drums
Yeah, this is rather cool. I can’t include the video as they’ve disabled embedding, but head over to YouTube and check out this immensely talented kid. The prime video to check is the one of him drumming to Harvester of Sorrow (check out around 5:20 for some real skill), though he’s got loads more on his YouTube channel.
Friday this week as it suited the workload a little better. The downside is that Friday was a holiday in Glasgow so the cinema was rammed more than it usually would be. Added to the fact that only two people were selling tickets when I got there, this meant that I was going to miss almost 15 minutes of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, so I skipped it for another time.
The Firm
First up, then, was this cinematic remake of an old made-for-tv movie by writer and director Nick Love. It’s low budget, rough’n’ready (like its subject matter) and hair-raising in places.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: Teenager Dominic decides that the local West Ham “firm” of football thugs is more interesting than his mates, so he decides to join up.
The film looks like it was made in the 80’s, let alone being set during the period – and I mean this as a compliment. It’s like a big, grown-up, violent episode of Grange Hill. Complete with mouthfuls of filth and more slang and colloquial language than an Irvine Welsh novel. Unless you were raised in London, you really just have to roll with it and make guesses at the dialogue at times.
The film is a complete story, and a fairly simple one. Most striking are the street fight scenes which do look pretty nasty although the sound effects are a pinch too overblown. Watching them is like seeing old news footage from the era, uncomfortably so at times.
In an interesting take, Love also takes the story into the home of one of the ringleaders showing a completely different side to the character. It’s still fairly shallow, though, and there are no real surprises as the story unfolds.
Worth a watch, and at least it’s not basically a stepping stone for The Firm 2 which would be the case with a US-made feature.
Surrogates
Bruce Willis is back in this quirky near-future thriller which relies more on plot than effects.
That plot-in-a-nutshell: In a world where nobody leaves their home any more, instead mentally controlling human-like “surrogates”, someone has found a way to kill the humans via this safety net.
Willis’ character is an FBI agent in this future world where crime has been reduced by 99% simply by people failing to leave their houses. How they don’t all turn into fat freaks isn’t adequately explained, but the surrogates to look a bit fitter than the real people – if a little more plasticcy.
There is, of course, a rebellious group of luddites who have issues with the whole surrogate thing so the finger of blame initially falls on them but the case isn’t quite so clear cut. There’s also the man who invented the surrogates who was sacked by the company who make them. And an FBI conspiracy.
It sounds impressive, but in honesty it’s all pretty much run-of-the-mill. The surrogate idea itself is a good one, but underneath it’s just another by-the-numbers whodunnit which you can piece together half an hour in.
Still, it’s better than Die Hard 4. But then, so is self-inflicted colonic irrigation.
Fame
It was a tossup between this and Creation as they both had similar start times, but I plumped for the dancey one as I would be seeing another drama next. In honesty, my hopes were moderately high after how much I enjoyed Bandslam recently. It also has a great pedigree… or a lot to live up to depending on your view of the original 80’s version.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: teenagers go through the audition process to get into the most prestigious Performing Arts school in New York, go through, and graduate. All in 137 minutes.
I’ll sum up at the start: Fame is awful. It could have been so much only it tries too hard and fails to cram a TV series’ worth of characters and storyline into 2 1/4 hours. It is, simply, a mess. To begin with, it’s promising as the lead characters go through their auditions with varying degrees of success.
Then *pow* we get the big musical number. It’s like showing the monster from the horror film in the second reel. After this, the whole film goes into one sloppy decline. Each “year in the life” is given what feels like 20 minutes of screen time which simply isn’t enough. What should be major events are breezed over and you’re left waiting for the repercussions… of which there are none.
Full credit must be given to the cast, from the older generation to the younger. There’s an incredible array of talent on show here. The direction and choreography are also lovely. Just such a shame that they’re all wasted on this dog’s dinner of a script.
The Soloist
Final film of the evening (I couldn’t be bothered staying till 23:30 to watch the re-release of John Carpenter‘s The Thing) was this adaptation of a book by one of the central characters.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr) is an LA journalist who writes little stories about life in the city. One day he encounters a down-and-out, Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), who turns out to be an incredibly talented musician. The story follows their journey together as Lopez tries to “help” Ayers make the most of his talents.
This is definitely the kind of film that wins OSCARs. However, I don’t think The Soloist is quite good enough to do it. Certainly, the performances are superb. Downey brings in the sarcastic wit and superb timing he employed in Iron Man while Foxx plays the “character with a disability” card in his aim for another award. They certainly both put on amazing performances, and the supporting actors can’t be criticised either.
However, the film just seems to lack something. For every moment of genius there’s something just a little too bland or stereotypical. There’s a beautiful scene during a musical performance where Ayers closes his eyes and we see a display of colour – visualising what he’s seeing. Amazing.
If only the rest of the film could have measured up.
Still definitely worth seeing, if only for a short dose of Downey Jr before Iron Man 2 hits the cinemas.
A bumper crop this week as I managed to cram in four films today. I’m certainly getting my moneys-worth out of this cinema pass! As I’m not a student (though still don’t have a flipping union card – it should be in the post shortly) I have to increase the number of films I catch each month to make the card pay for itself. What a shame!
First film of the day was this new coming-of-age teen drama comedy thing. Greg Mottolla wrote and directed Superbad which, for some reason, was a huge hit despite being rubbish. This is similarly themed, but thankfully much better.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: Boy wants to go on holiday and to college. Dad loses job. Boy must get dead-end summer job in amusement park. Boy “grows up” over summer.
The cast are really good and the comedy kept at a much lower tone than in Superbad, both factors that make this film far more watchable and believable. There is the inevitable character who you’d just want to punch in the face if you knew him in real life, but unlike the earlier movie he’s one of the supporting cast rather than a major piece.
It’s quite a gentle film, but you can generally see where it’s going from beginning to end so no major surprises. However, it’s good fun and has a few genuinely funny moments. It would actually make a good date movie.
From one easy-going comedy to a road trip bad-taste-a-thon. It’s not had great reviews, but if you can drop your mind down to gutter level I think you’ll enjoy it.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: Nice guy is ready to sleep with his girlfriend on prom night. Loser/idiot friend gets him drunk. Nice guy falls down stairs and is in coma for four years, wakes up and finds his other half is now a Playboy model. The guys go on a road trip to find her.
I don’t understand why so many films pair up a sensible character with one who’s such a moron. The aforementioned Superbad was guilty of it and the same relationship ruined Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. You just don’t get relationships like that in real life. If the smart guy’s so smart, he’d ditch the idiot after the first time he almost gets killed, maimed, loses a girl, has his house burned down or whatever.
Anyway.
I kinda of enjoyed this one. Maybe I was in the right frame of mind, but it had some decent silly scenes. The “idiot” guy (played by Trevor Moore) definitely seems to be trying to be a young Jim Carrey, though. Same floppy hair and Ace Ventura style Hawaiian shirts.
If you’re after something in pretty bad taste, with some grim visuals, silly story, cringe-making slapstick and a really bad cameo by Hugh Hefner then this is worth a watch.
Gamer
This was my big film of the day, one I’d been looking forward to since I saw the trailers full of amazing action sequences.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: Prisoners on death row get conscripted into a televised war game where they are controlled by remote “gamers”. If they survive 30 matches, they get freed. Only there’s something dodgy going on…
So far, so Death Race. It is a little different, but borrows heavily from the premise of the older film as well as utilising a high gore content like the remake. Gerard Butler is suitably buff as Kable, the central character while Michael C. Hall (from TV’s Dexter) is superb as Castle, the mega-rich madman behind everything.
Sadly, though, the plot’s a bit naff. The way the film’s cut is also very MTV with some sequences almost triggering epilepsy due to the speed with which cuts are performed. There are only a couple of action sequences and a lot of the best footage has been seen in the trailers already. I was really hoping for a massive amount of action and a bit of plot, but the balance isn’t quite right.
It’s also a little hard to follow, I found. Or maybe that was due to the (I forget how many) pints I had the night before. From the off, you’re dropped into this new world and it’s almost like you’re expected to know all about it already. Things are referred to as if they have already been explained.
A shame as Butler is good and the action sequences lovely and bloodthirsty. Like Quantum of Solace,though, spoiled by an over-zealous director and editor. Too many camera tricks and cuts.
Whiteout
Final film of the day and one based on a comic book (or graphic novel if you want to get all anal). I’d seen a trailer for it, but other than that I hadn’t heard much about it.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: Murders begin to occur at the international research station in the Antarctic. A US Marshall (with a troubled past, naturally) has to find out whodunnit while avoiding the killer’s ice axe herself.
The setting’s fairly original and the exterior shots are gorgeous. There is an opening sequence involving a plane crash which is obviously low-tech CGI, but other than that it’s visually well shot. If you like snow.
It’s not a bad film, but the plot is rather thing. The small number of characters who make any major appearance does mean it doesn’t take long to suss out who’s involved. The “troubled past” thing also flags up an obvious plot point which potentially ruins the “twist” ending. I also wasn’t too impressed with the leaps of logic the characters made when trying to piece things together. On more than one occasion I was let thinking “how did you know?”
One major highlight is the make-up and the like. The corpses and injuries are nicely gory!
Overall, not a bad way to spend ninety minutes but very much a run-of-the-mill thriller with no real surprises to offer.
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