Category: Review

Chatroom

There wasn’t a huge choice of far at the cinema – I don’t think there are too many new releases this time of year. We basically had a toss-up between Chatroom and The Way Back. Forget the third Fockers film (the first two were painful enough) and Jack Black stopped being funny after… erm… actually, he’s never been that funny. So that ruled out Gulliver’s Travels, even if the incessant irritation of those sodding Orange commercials hadn’t blacklisted it anyway.

We opted for the one that started an hour earlier.

Chatroom

Plot-in-a-nutshell: a group of teens meet in a chatroom online, one isn’t exactly what he seems, then online and offline lives collide. With hilarious consequences if you’re one of the f*ckwits sat near us who thought this was a new addition to the Final Destination franchise.

Chatroom is directed by Hideo Nakata who directed the original Ringu and its sequel (as well as the western version of The Ring 2). As such, he has a bit of a pedigree as a psychological horror director so something good should be expected of Chatroom. Sadly, it’s lacking.

The visualisation is excellent, though I gather not unique, in that the cyber world is portrayed as a real one. Chat rooms are doors in a dodgy looking flat, labelled with the group’s name. Password security is a door buzzer, and so forth. Even the token paedo who makes his way into one of the rooms is well “presented” in this format.

However, the story just isn’t up to much. It’s very apparent what will happen from far too early on in the film. The moment where it could all change for the better, but doesn’t is over far too quickly. The ending is a bit weak and too sudden.

There are some disturbing moments (mildly) as well as one or two genuinely funny ones (such as the sex room visits), but overall it’s a 30-minute TV show dragged out to ninety minutes and it feels it.

Gill reckons it would be better suited to a stage play and I can see where she’s coming from. The imagery used and the techniques to present it would work very well. It’s also a nice small cast so would make a decent theatre event.

For the silver screen, though, it’s just not got enough depth.

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Ginger (ex-Wildhearts), Glasgow Garage

Ginger (ex-Wildhearts)
Image by Iain Purdie via Flickr

[more photos in this Flick set]

“So, stop talking about Scottish people and just play some ******* music, yeah?”

This one took me back a few years. I wasn’t 100% sure about going as it was on a school night, and the weather was closing in. However, my lovely other half bought me a ticket for my birthday so I just had to drive through for it.

Oh, I am so glad I did.

Ginger is a legend. He fronted The Wildhearts for years, a band which broke up more often than a packet of cheap digestive biscuits. In fact, the last time I saw them was at Newcastle University a lot of years ago. He stormed off stage somewhere around halfway through the gig after arguing with the other guitarist.

He couldn’t have been any more different tonight. I honestly don’t think he stopped smiling the entire evening. Ginger’s first appearance was to guest guitar on Baby Chaos’ last song – a band themselves who only got back together to play support for the man himself.

After a short break, he took to the stage with his own band and launched into a set consisting predominantly of Wildhearts classics – of which there are many. The crowd were bouncing within two songs, and I have to confess I was pleasantly surprised by the turn-out. I’d honestly thought that the world would have forgotten about The Wildhearts, but it seems I was thankfully mistaken!

My Twitter feed became a slew of song titles, I was so excited. I’m glad to see I made so many people somewhat jealous! “I Wanna Go Where The People Go“, “If Love is Like a Love Bank”, “Vanilla Radio“… and after a short break the first encore song, “Geordie In Wonderland“. Oh ******* wow. As I said, the last time I saw Ginger live was in Newcastle itself. This performance was every bit as good. As the song kicked off, two girls behind me were talking to each other. “That guy in front’s going to love this one”. The fact I was wearing a Newcastle United shirt (which I began waving over my head!) may have given this away.

To break up the songs, Ginger had a great line in patter. Hell, I think he could have stood there and just shot the **** with the audience for ninety minutes and sent everyone home grinning. Quote of the night was probably the short exchange with someone in the middle of the crowd.

Ginger: All I heard was “something something something ****.”

Voice: Just get the **** on with it!!!

Ginger: Aye, reet. I heard that.

A great guy, with great rapport and a huge collection of material to wade through. So glad I went and for any old Wildhearts fans who missed it, do keep an eye out for further tours. I’m sure he’ll be back.

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Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Dragged against my will to see a kids’ film (with two nine year old girls), the only minor victory in my favour was managing to schedule a 2D viewing…

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

“This place just gets weirder and weirder!”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: precocious children return to mystical land where they’re apparently royalty, kick some monster butt and meet Jesus a lion.

It’s not usual for me to jump into a trilogy without seeing the first two, but I was effectively bullied by two little girls. And you don’t argue with women no matter how small they are. I’m familiar with the first tale in the series (of which there are seven books by C.S.Lewis – whether they’ll all make it to the screen is to be seen), but only from TV adaptations many years ago.

It’s still an easy story to get into if you have the very basic background – some children find a magical land via a wardrobe in part one, something else happens in part two and in part three they go back again via a painting on a wall. They also drag a very annoying relative with them. The scene is quickly set at this point, and I wasn’t left wondering too many things about the back-story as the plot kicked off.

The characters are easy to get to grips with, the story starts well and the action sequences are fantastical and exciting. This really is a children’s film, but is perfectly enjoyable by adults. Sure, the younger cast are a little gushy and the plot fairly thin (find seven swords and pop them on a table) but the settings are fantastic. It’s a real work of imagination and today’s special effects really do it justice.

There genuinely isn’t a dull moment. When the plot isn’t moving forward, there are some nice sequences about the characters. The annoying relative, of course, proves his worth and becomes a part of the team. Evil men give way to strange creatures which progress onto huge monsters as the challenges faced get bigger and more perilous.

I honestly can’t see the film being improved by 3D – very few films at all can be – so save your cash and catch this version. But do catch it, especially if you’ve seen the first two. I enjoyed it far more than I expected despite spending half the film on the lookout for the well known Christian allegory. Which, incidentally, is not very hard to spot towards the end of the movie.

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Taste of Chaos 2010

Disturbed
Disturbed’s excellent light show

[Full gallery within this Flickr set]

Saturday was a belter with a 4-band show at the Glasgow SECC. Wendi and I missed Halestorm due to public transport issues, but they were the only band we knew nothing about so it’s not the end of the world. Heard good things about them afterwards though.

Our opening band were therefore Buckcherry, who were allotted a dinky 6 tracks or so. They were fun, the sound was good and I would definitely like to see them do a full set sometime. Of course, they ended with Crazy Bitch.

Next up were Papa Roach who played a blinding set. Again, squished into a small time slot they managed to entertain a very enthusiastic crowd and crammed in pretty much everything you could want to hear from first album Infest right up to current single “Burn”. A simple light show behind the band added some nice touches to the affair and they left, sans encore, with a crowd baying for more.

Headlining were Disturbed, who took Papa Roach’s light show, multiplied it by about 20 and absolutely tore the place apart. I’m not a Disturbed “fan” as such, but I do like them and have to say I really enjoyed the set. There was a decent variety in the tracks, chief of which was their cover of Genesis’ “Land of Confusion“. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone slamming to a Phil Collins number before. First time for everything.

The sound was very good, light show staggering, crowd awesome (except for two dicks who got into a fight in the pit during Disturbed) and the security friendly and helpful. If I had a complaint it was the lack of free drinking water. £1.50 a bottle is ridiculous. If much smaller venues such as the O2 and Garage can manage it, you’d think the SECC could.

Certainly a great “taste” of the bands featured, and excellent value for money for fans of three or four of them.

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Monsters / The Tourist

Gill and I popped over for our hopefully-now-regular two-film shift in Glasgow on Friday night. The timings of the performances gave us the following as out best choices for the evening:

Monsters

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Boy meets girl and must travel through alien-infested jungle to get her safely home to dad. Only without many aliens.

Just to clarify something – Monsters is not actually a monster film as such. It’s a film that sets itself around an environment where monsters are present, but is very much a road movie – a film about the two main characters making a journey from A-B. So for those you you disappointed with the lack of disembowellings and big jumpy shocks, don’t say you weren’t warned.

This is cheap film-making at its best. Written and directed by Gareth Edwards, he made the entire thing for around £500,000. This is tiny compared to most Hollywood efforts, despite having a solid (if small) cast and excellent special effects. Every set used is a real building. Every outdoor scene is really outdoors. No special builds were used. The majority of people in the film are just locals who were kicking about. The film crew consisted of two people, as does the central cast.

Best of all, it a) works and b) doesn’t look like it cost so little.

Scoot McNairy and Whitley Able play Andrew and Samantha, thrown together when Andrew’s boss demand that he get his daughter back to the U.S. They’re both in Mexico, and the land between the two countries is classed as an “Infected Zone”, harbouring aliens brought back to earth by a crashed space probe.

On the way they encounter corrupt officials, thieves, friendly locals, guns for hire and – yes – some monsters/aliens. Rather than going for the “big jumpy out” type of creatures, Edwards has instead opted for a sense of “what’s happening next?” which is far better. Most people haven’t seen these aliens except on television, so the characters are torn between fear and curiosity in places.

I would not say this is the best road movie or alien movie ever made. However, I would recommend watching it as it’s fantastic proof that an entertaining and gripping film doesn’t need a budget well into the millions.

The Tourist

“”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: A case of mistaken identity leads an innocent tourist into being mistaken for an international fraudster. But he does get to snog Angelina Jolie, so that’s OK.

I wanted to see this for the humour in the trailer. Gill wanted to see it so she could drool over Johnny Depp. And Angelina Jolie. Strange girl. Anyway.

I saw enough of the trailer to think I wanted to see this, but I have a feeling a lot of the jokes and action are in there. However, it’s still a great ninety minutes or so of pure cinematic candy floss. Don’t take it too seriously and you’ll enjoy it.

Elise (Jolie) is the girlfriend of the accountant of a gangster who’s done a runner with a couple of billion dollars. She receives a note – jump on a train, find someone who kind of looks like me and make the police believe that is me. Said accountant has had $20m worth of plastic surgery so nobody knows what he looks like. The idea is to throw police (including Paul Bettany‘s tenacious Inspector) and gangsters (led by Reginald Shaw, played by Steven Berkoff) off the scent so that the two can meet properly and make their escape into obscurity.

But that would be too easy. Instead, Elise falls for Frank (the tourist) and worries about what could happen to him if the police or gangsters get hold of him. So we have Elise caught between trying to catch up with her man while trying to rescue the other chap she dragged into the situation.

It’s all very silly, but fun. Jolie is quite sexy (I’ll be honest – I’m not normally a huge fan), Depp is airheaded and panicky, Battany is tenacious and Berkoff is a bastard. With the lovely setting of Venice, it makes for an interesting little movie that’s a worthwhile way to spend part of your evening.

Don’t expect a classic, but do expect to enjoy it. The crowd in the cinema (a near sell-out) were laughing out loud at some of the dialogue. It’s not too often that happens these days.

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