Great Scott! Is Back to the Future the best film trilogy ever?

I was watching the Back to the Future films recently, and it dawned on me that I'd forgotten just how brilliantly enjoyable the trilogy is. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I started to wonder if it just might be the best film trilogy ever made. I know it wouldn’t be first choice for a lot of people, but I thought that nevertheless, it might be worth comparing it to some of the other standard choices to see how it measures up. The major issue of course, is how you define “best”. I’m looking at the films as a collective whole, the overall story and effect of the films. I’m not judging it on solitary acting performances, or even the depth and development of the major characters, but rather how enjoyable and convincing the story is, and how easy the films make it for the viewer to enter and accept the premise of their world. For instance, the Back to the Future trilogy is about as unrealistic as any films could ever be. But so are Lord of the Rings, Terminator, Star Wars and The Matrix. The Bourne films and the Godfather films have a more realistic feel to them, although I’m not sure anyone would really defend them as being 100% true to life if placed under oath, so let’s remember that suspension of disbelief is an important part of any film experience. But what counts is that once you are inside that world, that the films stay true to it. This is a glaring error in the Matrix trilogy, which seems to make its own rules up as it goes along. The Indiana Jones trilogy seems to suffer the same problem, with Temple of Doom really never making up its mind as to what kind of film it wants to be, and consequently ending up as not much of a film at all.

I’m also judging the films as a trilogy, not as single films. Die Hard is an incredibly brilliant film, but the trilogy of which it is a part is not. Same goes for The Godfather, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Matrix. I’m also not counting “unofficial trilogies”, like Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge. Plenty to recommend in all those films, and they have been lumped together by Luhrmann, but as far as I’m concerned, it simply doesn’t count. Even Kevin Smith’s films in the View Askewniverse aren’t going to be counted in this, largely because there are more than 3 of them anyway, and second of all because the films are completely different stories linked tenuously together by supporting characters and locations, which doesn’t quite cut the mustard, and so they too, do not count.

The reason they don’t count is that unofficial trilogies aren’t telling the same story, and so you can’t have sly little references to the other movies therein. One of the many things that impress me about the BTTF trilogy is the self-referential nature of the films, which is common in a lot of sequels and trilogies, but rarely as subtle as it is here. Even the way Marty crosses the road when finding himself in a new time zone by the clock tower is consistent, not to mention the supporting characters such as the Statler family’s horse/car business, and the Texaco filling station, shown in the first two films and referenced in the third. This is one of the cleverest techniques in this trilogy and makes the films feel all the more familiar and makes repeat viewings all the more rewarding.

Now, obviously I realise that when it comes to epic genius in terms of acting and directing, the films may not be up there with The Godfather. That being said, Godfather III is notably poorer than the other two, and it could be argued that it's not thematically consistent, which I don't think you can say about BTTF. The first two films are undoubtedly cinematic masterpieces, but they certainly don’t have any of the feel-good factor of the Future films. You don’t just channel surf, spot Godfather II and decide to watch it for a laugh – like so many other classics, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, Gone with the Wind, to name but a few, you have to make a decision to sit down and watch it. This is all well and good, but it’s a solitary journey. It’s a rewarding one too, but you could never sit down with friends at a party and play those films and expect the humour levels in the room not to nose-dive. Al Pacino is incredible, in all three films, and Brando still sends shivers down the spine in the original, not to mention the more-than-able supporting cast who ply their trade with such style alongside them. But the story and cast of Godfather III seems completely out of kilter with the tone of the original two, and this was commented on heavily by critics. I personally think the third film has much in its corner, another fine performance by Pacino, a fitting conclusion to the epic story of Michael Corleone and Andy Garcia’s impressive turn as the young hot-headed Vincent. But there’s no denying that it stumbles through some very tenuous plot lines and is over-populated with characters that completely fail to enhance the story. Finally, Sofia Coppola, although she is not as bad as everyone says, is still bad. The Godfather is so hugely different from Back to the Future that it’s almost pointless to even hold them up under the same light, but for a trilogy that I would pick to watch when I was at a loose end and wanted cheering up, there is no doubt that I would dive for the Delorean every time.

I also know that in terms of Sci-Fi influence and impact, the films are not up there with the original Star Wars films. And the Star Wars films hold the aces in some areas too. For instance, Biff and the other Tannens are effective villains for their genre of film, but they’re more pantomime than would be allowed in a film that took itself seriously. Darth Vader, on the other hand, is a truly great villain, especially when his story is further revealed and his tragedy brought to the fore. As heroes go, Luke Skywalker certainly undergoes a more immense journey of personal development than Marty McFly, but he doesn’t have Marty’s quick wit and he’s a whiny little so-and-so for sure, a trait that he obviously picked up from his father, if the prequels are anything to go by. As for things that are wrong with the films, there’s very little – especially with the first two films, but by the time of Return of the Jedi, the Ewok storyline grates on even the most sympathetic fan. Once you compare the original three to the prequels, the originals look like genuine masterpieces, but then once you compare just about any film to the Star Wars prequels, you get the same result. And once you start to bring in the storylines of the prequels, the rule about staying true to the world that you have asked the viewer to enter goes flying out of the window like a drop-kicked Ewok. The prequels are truly three of cinema’s great horrors in my opinion, and sadly because they are prequels, their very existence adversely affects the original films. Incidentally, and strangely, even though the insinuations of incest are much greater in BTTF, and in fact both sets of films contain exactly the same amount of screen-time for blood relatives kissing each other, it’s much more unsettling in Star Wars than it is in Back to the Future.

It seems likely that Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan will join forces for a third Batman film before 2010 is out. Does this count as a trilogy? I’m not sure. Even if it does, is there any guarantee that it will outshine Back to the Future? Batman Begins is one of my favourite films of all time, with Christian Bale’s performance so impressive that I thought I’d never see a better turn in a Batman film, until Heath Ledger’s incredible Joker burned itself into all our minds. If the third Nolan/Bale film is even half as good as the two that precede it, I would find it almost impossible to pick holes in it – although Bat Bale’s growl whenever he speaks (which seemed like a good character move on Bale’s part in the first film) is irritating at best by the end of two hours plus of The Dark Knight. There are also plot holes so massive in TDK that you could quite easily drive a DeLorean through them. This is also true of the BTTF films, but since they never took themselves too seriously anyway, you could argue that the minutiae of time travel physics don’t matter as much as the overall effect of having a really good laugh.

The Back to the Future trilogy might not be considered as impressive, visually, as the Lord of the Rings films, but if you look at the standard of visual effects against the era in which the films were made, I think there’s a fine argument to be made that BTTF was hugely impressive. The LOTR films have been received incredibly well, and have plenty to recommend them, although they're all 16 hours long and if you don't like that particular genre, you'll be asleep before you see your first hobbit. And yes, I know they won a million Oscars, but that doesn’t always equal sheer enjoyment. Titanic won Best Picture because it looked nice, but was it really the best film of that year? Here are some films that didn’t win Best Picture at the Oscars, just for fun.

Citizen Kane, 12 Angry Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, Dr Strangelove, Bonnie & Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cabaret, The Exorcist, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, Taxi Driver, Star Wars, Apocalypse Now, Raging Bull, Raiders of the Lost Ark,
Goodfellas, Dangerous Liaisons, Born on the 4th of July, My Left Foot, JFK, A Few Good Men, The Fugitive, Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, LA Confidential, Saving Private Ryan, The Green Mile, The Sixth Sense, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,
Hudson Hawk.

For action and adventure, it's possible that the Back To The Future films don't compare with the Indiana Jones films; although they have more than their fair share, they admittedly are not as action-oriented as the Indy films. Sadly, following the below-average-but-probably-still-better-than-Temple-of-Doom “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, that trilogy has also been unnecessarily tampered with. Even if it hadn’t been, (or if Crystal Skull had been really good), the fact remains that Temple of Doom is pretty naff compared to the other two original movies. I’m not sure any adventure film will ever rival The Last Crusade, because that film pretty much has everything you could ever want from an action movie. Nazis being crap? Check. Exotic Locations? Check. Sean Connery? Check. Harrison Ford? Check. Biblical epic-ness? Check. And finally, Alison Doody...check. So, on its own, yes I would concede that Last Crusade is a better film than any of the BTTF flicks – but only just. As a trilogy, our survey says....X!

For Biblical allegory, although not for mind bending “ooh, makes you think”-ness (which isn’t really a thing, I just made it up) – the films don’t compare with the Matrix trilogy, but then unlike the Matrix trilogy, the second two BTTF films aren’t utter tripe. The first Matrix film is a really good (not great) film, with a really good (not great) idea behind it. As a standalone piece of cinema, it must rank as an important contribution to the art. However, the sequels are so mind-bendingly awful and lost in tracts of their own self-righteousness that really the whole concept is ruined and the brilliance of the first film is lost.

Pirates of the Caribbean is probably the closest set of films in terms of the general style, some wacky characters, good old fashioned escapade fun and some funky special effects and pretty far-out plot lines. BUT, the films are long, especially the completely directionless third one. This is nothing compared to the fact that Orlando Bloom AND Keira Knightley “act” in all three films. Now, Keira Knightley is a strangely alluring actress, despite her 12-year old boy’s figure and funny mouth, but her acting chops are not to my tastes, and for the schoolboy crush factor, she’s certainly no Lea Thompson. As for Orlando Bloom, well, I’m really not a fan. Yes, you could argue that Jack Sparrow is a better single character than any in the BTTF films, and Johnny Depp a more accomplished actor than any of the “Future” cast, but that on its own isn’t enough to rescue it.

For hard hitting pace and action and gritty realism with intrigue and espionage, it definitely doesn't come close to the Bourne trilogy, and I can't really think of anything bad to say about that one. It’s different, for sure, but the Bourne trilogy actually reminds me of the BTTF films in more than one way. For instance, there’s no single performance in any of the three films that truly stands out. Brian Cox is excellent, as always, as are Joan Allen and Matt Damon, but none of them put in an Oscar-winning turn. This is a good thing, in my opinion, because the films don’t demand it. The story and action is enough. Like BTTF, the cast are brilliant in their roles, but none of them dominate the screen and take away from the rest of the film, like Heath Ledger does in The Dark Knight. When he’s not on screen, all you can think is that you wish he was. This is not the case in the Bourne films, where no single character is so crucial that you can’t live without them. The films are not made for fun, and have little humour in them, and so there is no comparison there, but they stay thematically consistent and tell a story that stays completely true to the world it inhabits. If I had to pick a fault, it would be that the non-linear style of the end of the second film and start of the third is hugely confusing, but then I could hardly deny that certain parts of the third BTTF film could have been trimmed, so let’s not get too close into criticising brilliant trilogies.

Other notable trilogies could include:

Die Hard (except there's 4 of them now, and the second one is rubbish)
Home Alone (only joking. The first two are good though.)
Jurassic Park (maybe if the third one had had some effort put into it by anyone associated with it, director, actors, etc)
Evil Dead (first one, brilliant – other two, I’m not sure)
Spiderman (Hmmm, the first two are superb. But any trilogy that includes that pointless “Emo Spidey” section of Spiderman 3 doesn’t deserve a place at this table. I mean, seriously, what the HELL were they thinking? It’s a bad film without that, but that absolutely nails its coffin permanently shut.)
Terminator (third one rubbish, and there’s a fourth one now anyway)

There are also other film trilogies of course, like High School Musical, Matrix, X-Men, Mission: Impossible, Ace Ventura (yes, they made a third), Austin Powers, Mighty Ducks, Beverly Hills Cop, Blade, The Ocean’s films, Robocop, Rush Hour, Scream, Spy Kids, Transporter, Ice Age, I Know What You Did Last Summer, etc but all of these are discounted for either being a) completely terrible or b) let down by at least one entry in the set.

So, this is obviously a gigantically subjective theme, and a very subjective blog – and I’m fine with that, and I hope that everyone has different ideas about what constitutes the perfect film trilogy. After all, all of the above is only my opinion. But, fellow film lovers, let me ask you this - if someone sat you down and said "Right, you've got to watch an entire trilogy all the way through for pure enjoyment," is there a better choice than Back to the Future?

Why Cosmpolitan Magazine are morons.

Ok, first of all let me preface this entire article with the following two caveats to that title. Firstly, I don’t read Cosmopolitan regularly, however – I found a copy of it lying around today and I thought I’d have a look at it. It’s amazing what being at a loose end will do to you isn’t it? The second point is this – I don’t want people to read this title and think that I’m being a typical lad who says that all women’s magazines are lowest-common denominator trash with no imagination or depth that simply adhere to tired old stereotypes, while heading off to “read” the latest issue of Nuts. I don’t care much for women’s magazines per se, but I don’t have anything particularly against them either – partly because it would be stunningly hypocritical of me.

BUT – having flicked through this issue of Cosmo, I feel that the one article I did bother to read deserves a blog which properly exposes just how ashamed of themselves the writers and editors ought to be. Not only because I think it’s ludicrous, but because I actually feel that, much like the Sex and the City girls, they are doing far more harm than good to the image of women that they are trying so hard to project.

The article is called “46 Kick-Ass Women Who Have Changed YOUR Life.” Ok, that’s catchy enough, “although how could they have changed MY life?” I hear you cry. Well, they explain that...at the start of the article they say “Gutsy, inspiring women come in all ages, shapes and sizes. So, love them or loathe them, Cosmo celebrates these extraordinary women who’ve all influenced the way we think today.”

Fair enough – a cursory glance at the opening page shows that Michelle Obama, Madonna, Germaine Greer and Annie Liebowitz are all there, and I think they are fair shouts, Oprah Winfrey, Judi Dench, Rebecca Adlington and the Queen stare out from the page opposite, and fair enough there too. So, it’s all going well so far. And each person has a little bit of blurb underneath their name. Par example...

"Entrepreneur Michelle Mone, 37, has won several business awards since launching underwear brand Ultimo in 1996, aged 25. Her firm MUM is now worth over £45m. Not bad for someone who left school at 15 with no qualifications."

Good call. Here is a woman who is basically a self-made millionaire, breaking glass ceilings etc etc, blah blah, and has done really well for herself and I think she is a pretty good example for young women.

So, we have Aung San Suu Kyi, the Prime Minister of Burma, Angelina Jolie – nominated for her humanitarian efforts, Oprah for obvious reasons, Shami Chakrabarti, Kelly Holmes, Hilary Clinton, Queen Ramia of Jordan, and Clara Furse to name but a few. There are also women who were “the first woman to...” for example be prime minister, run a TV station, run MI5, chair the G8, edit the Sun (a dubious honour but I see the point) etc etc.

Good. I’m just a teacher from Leeds, so I’m well aware that my opinion is completely worthless, but nevertheless, I think it’s good that these women are being held up as good examples. Oh, but hold on...what’s this? Some of the other names on the list? But Paul, I thought you said this threatened to be a good article?

Well, it looks like it might be...but then Cosmo pull out the ace up their sleeve, which turns out to be the fact that certain entries read as though they were in fact put together by a bunch of giggly, stupid little girls who like shoes, chocolate, wine and “like” football because it’s “cute guys in shorts”. Uh-oh, STEREOTYPE ALERT! And why have I fallen back on this most tired and boring of generalisations? Well...

Michelle Obama – “Have you seen those toned biceps? We salute you!”
Nothing needs saying about this. She’s a Harvard educated lawyer and first lady of the US, not to mention a mother of two. But hey, well done on the biceps. Good arms will always surely outweigh how hard you worked and how far you've come. Well done Michelle!

Jennifer Aniston – “Since the end of her marriage to Brad, she’s encouraged an army of single women by keeping it real.”

Now hold on a second, but am I the only one who realises that “keeping it real” isn’t actually a thing? It’s perhaps the most vague and pointless thing to say about anyone. Fine, hold her up as an example to young women if you want, but for crying out loud, give her more credit than to invent an imaginary thing that she’s done.

Sarah Jessica Parker. Now, let me just interject here to say that there’s nothing they could say about "SJP" that would convince me that she was worth a place on this list, but let’s see what they can come up with...“Her outfits sparked 1,000 imitations and got us all drinking Cosmopolitans.”

I don’t know what that sound is, but I think – I think – it might just be Emmeline Pankhurst spinning at a rate of knots in her grave. Literally, she’s churning that ground right up. Oh, but wait...the worst is yet to come.

“Model of the moment Agyness Deyn, 26, is known for her super-cool style – and for bringing bleached white hair to the masses.”

Honestly, I didn’t just make that up. That's the whole entry. According to Cosmopolitan, ladies, Agyness Deyn has changed YOUR life by wearing things and having white hair. Now, I’ve got nothing against her personally, of course – she does what she does and good on her for it, but for CRYING OUT LOUD!!

I don’t mean or want to wade in on issues on which I am not fully versed, but at the same time what kind of indictment of women is it that Cosmopolitan put a list like this together and then go on to publish it for (presumably) intelligent, educated women to read? This the same magazine that has, every month, someone or other whinging on about just how terrible men are and how we’re all the same and how we treat women like idiots and complain that they’re one-dimensional shoe-shopping airheads. Good job you don’t practice mind-blowing hypocrisy and stereotype adherence in your magazine, eh?

I’d be particularly interested to know what women thought of this article, and whether or not I’m just being a bit of a man about it, because after all, men’s magazines tend to have lists like this that are pretty superficial, but I can’t honestly imagine Robert Pattinson being listed as a man who has changed my life merely because he played a vampire and has long hair that’s also short somehow.

Any thoughts would be welcome. A motto that perhaps the editors of Cosmo should have applied to that article.

Movie Review - Terminator Salvation

Where do you start when it comes to reviewing a film like Terminator Salvation? Well, let’s begin at the beginning. I love the Terminator films. The first two are absolutely fantastic films, probably both in my top 10 films of all time. Well, top 15 for sure. I even like T3, although it’s clearly rubbish – and it IS rubbish. I’m sick of these people saying “oh, you know it’s not actually all that bad”. You know who you are, and don’t worry about it, but you do it and the reason you do it is that you saw it at the cinema, you thought it was gash, which it is, but you wanted to love it and then a couple of years later you saw it on TV and thought “you know, this isn’t half bad, or certainly not as bad as I remember it being” because you want to love it, you do – you want to love it because the first two were brilliant and you can’t bear to be let down by another trilogy because the third part is lazy.

But, try as you might, Terminator 3 is rubbish. The two lead actors do a reasonable job, but Clare Danes, likeable though she is, seems as confused as the audience are as to just what she is doing in a Terminator film – Arnold looks like his mind was elsewhere (which it almost certainly was) and Kristanna Loken is relatively pleasant to look at but let’s be honest, is almost completely without charm or charisma.

This is the problem when you don’t have the same team working on the third film. Losing James Cameron was a big blow, evidently. And it’s not the first franchise that this problem has affected – the Batman series was the same, and in fact that franchise also reached its nadir with a film featuring a performance from Arnie that ranked, shall we say, outside his best? This is certainly a problem that doesn’t go away in Terminator Salvation.

So, Terminator Salvation – let’s do Heat magazine’s water-tight film-reviewing technique – and I mean that without as much sarcasm as you think. What’s right with it, and what’s wrong with it? So, what’s right with it? Well, it’s important to say this – a lot. There is a lot to like about this film. In fact, I can’t remember the last film I saw that had so many small things to like, and yet somehow was still garbage.

And this is really the problem with the film I think, and I’m abandoning Heat magazine’s technique already because it’s really much easier to talk about what’s wrong with the film, and just interject with the occasional plus point.

You all know the story of the Terminator films by now, and so you also know that the first two films created a perfect story arc that did not need messing with in any way, and so you also know that Hollywood cannot resist a chance to make some money, and furthermore you know, given the recent trends in cinema, that nobody is capable of original thought anymore and so every single new film is either a) a bad adaptation of a novel, b) a bad remake of a beloved movie/TV show from between approximately 1974 and 1994, or c) a “reboot” of a franchise. This is obviously option c, but to a further extent it is also option b, in that it is a re-make of several beloved films, including but not limited to Mad Max, The Dark Knight, the first Terminator film, Blade Runner and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. “Charlie’s Angels?” you say? Yes – I say.

The director of this film, is called McG. I don’t mind people having quirky nicknames, but they have to sound good. It’s the same reason I don’t like Lady GaGa – well, it’s not – I don’t like Lady GaGa because she strikes me as a vacuous moron, but the nickname thing still applies. Now then, McG gets a lot of stick from a lot of people for having directed the two Charlie’s Angels movies. Now as it happens, I think the first Charlie’s Angels is a really good film. It’s not an Oscar-winner by any means but it is unapologetically fun, it doesn’t take itself seriously for a second, and it’s crammed full of decent set pieces and just general enjoyment. The second one, yes – it’s terrible. Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. Absolutely awful. And why is it awful? Because it forgets to spend any time on the characters because it got that out of the way in an earlier film, it fills the screen-time with pointless explosions and action with absolutely no direction or point.

And this has to lay at the feet of McG, because he took a perfectly good franchise, and indeed a perfectly good opening gambit film, saw there was a huge budget and just said “Oooooh, budget!!!” and proceeded to spend it on absolutely nothing. And this, my friends, is why Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, is the same film as Terminator Salvation.

Yes, they are superficially different films, in the same way that you don’t immediately notice any similarities between say The Lion King and Hamlet. But at the end of the day, they’re both the story of a young prince whose father was murdered by his evil uncle who steals his kingdom. Terminator Salvation is set in a bleaker world, with considerably less emphasis on fun, and Cameron Diaz doesn’t dance in her pants at all, (not that I expected she would, but it was such a highlight of the first Charlie’s Angels film I thought they might put it in there, but life is full of little disappointments I suppose.) but the two films are basically the same, and the reason is that McG has looked at his budget, and decided to spend it all on blowing things up so much that he accidentally forgot to put a plot or any character development into the film. An easy mistake to make I suppose, but a pretty crucial one nonetheless. And, as a direct result, the first two-thirds of the film are unimaginably boring. I mean, not just for Terminator films, but for any film. The final act is pretty good, I think, but by that time I was so bored it took me too long to get myself involved in the action. For example, there is a point where John Connor kisses his pregnant wife before he heads off into battle. All I could think about was how stupid Christian Bale’s nose looked when it was squashed into Bryce Dallas Howard’s face.

So what else is there? I’ve heard Christian Bale get slagged off from pillar to post for his performance in this film, and I don’t think it’s all that terrible – by any means. First and foremost, I think he is a terrific actor and he doesn’t reach his potential here. That’s partly his fault, but it’s partly the fault of the people making, writing, and basically creating the film. He doesn’t help himself though by continuing to talk like Batman. Now, the Batman voice worked in Batman Begins, I think. The film is practically flawless and that voice doesn’t spoil it. That’s largely because Batman has next to nothing to say. In the Dark Knight, people commented on the Batman voice because a) it’s even more ridiculous, and b) it’s used for more lengthy dialogue. And it continues here. Bale’s opening lines sound like a man who is just learning to speak for the first time. Of course John Connor is not someone who’s relaxed, by any means, and he does and should take things very seriously – but there are times when it is just ridiculous.

Ok, enough about how much I didn’t like it. What’s good about it? Firstly, Bale has several good moments – and I quite liked him as John Connor. Two other characters have a lot of promise. Sam Worthington is particularly good as Marcus Wright. A character who would have stolen the show in the hands of a better director is still the most impressive character in the film, and Worthington is really good – putting in an almost Bale-esque performance in terms of the nuance he gives the character. But I still don’t think I was as impressed with him as I was with Anton Yelchin as a young Kyle Reese. He’s done his homework, and his performance absolutely nails the character as a young man to a T. And in fact, when those two characters are sharing the screen, the film does step up a notch, seeming to get some kind of injection from their charismatic portrayals of their characters.

The film makes quite a lot of reference back to the other films, which is something some people hate, but I love. I love films that do this, I don’t know what it is but so long as it is done well, I can hardly get enough of these little in-jokes – to the point that I’m almost sorry I’m not a trekkie because I missed all the references to the other films, of which I’m told there are many. This film does it well, for the most part. There is a point at which it goes horribly wrong, but 9 out of 10 references are well-placed and appropriately delivered. There is also an “Arnie” moment, and I won’t spoil what that is in case you haven’t seen it, but suffice to say, it will probably polarise opinion, but I really, really liked it.

It feels strange to say that a film lacks the kind of charisma that Arnold brings to the screen. After all, he has consistently been slagged off by “proper” film critics for his lack of personality, and it’s hard to deny that he was probably born to play a robot. Well, not a robot, sorry – a “cybernetic organism” – but I think a lot of critics are missing a trick with his acting ability. Yes, he probably wouldn’t be able to carry off the subtle anguish of Michael Corleone, but he is a massively charismatic actor. Think about it – he must be. He’s not good looking – chiselled maybe, but he’s no George Clooney, and you can’t really understand him half the time, but for a long time he was the world’s most bankable movie star and that doesn’t happen by accident. His performance as the Terminator is more subtle than people give him credit for – in the first film he is completely believable as a ruthless killing machine, and his presence electrifies the screen. In the second film, he has to play a protector, and the journey that the character undergoes is played brilliantly – as he slowly learns human characteristics, the confusion and dichotomy between machine and man is brilliant. In the scene in which Linda Hamilton threatens to destroy his CPU chip, the audience is genuinely conflicted as to who to root for, and a lot of the heart of the movie lies in Arnie’s brilliant performance. And this film misses him, gigantically. It doesn’t have a character that you completely buy into and it doesn’t have an actor capable of such a performance either, and that’s a great shame, because who knows? Maybe they could have rescued the film after all. Some other good things? Well, the supporting cast is fine, if unremarkable; in the final half hour the film remembers that it’s supposed to be a high-octane action movie and it suddenly acts the part well – the emotional climax to the film is believable and pleasant enough, and the earlier films evidently matter to the film-makers, because they go to great lengths to respectfully reference the previous films and not to tread on their toes.

Oh, the last thing that’s wrong with it by the way is the dialogue. It’s terrible. In the first film, Arnold only speaks 17 sentences. This is perhaps a trend that should have been continued here, because with the exception once again of Kyle Reese and Marcus Wright, who deliver their lines with enough passion and conviction to gloss over any troublesome moments, the dialogue is absolutely appallingly written and appallingly delivered. The nadir of this is undoubtedly a scene between Moon Bloodgood (seriously, that is her name) and Sam Worthington, but it isn’t fair to just pick this one scene as unusually bad. I mean, it is unusually bad by most films’ standards, but not this one. Christian Bale is given precious little to work with, and the stuff he is given, he tends to waste. Bryce Dallas Howard does even less in this film than Clare Danes did in T3, which is saying something, and the other characters do a lot of pained expressions and guttural choking but not an awful lot of communicating. If these people were the last outpost of human resistance against an advancing army of super-computer controlled killing machines, I wouldn’t put my money on the humans managing to outwit them since they can’t formulate sentences properly, and surely communication is a key aspect of an underground resistance against the aforementioned machine army, n’est pas?

Finally, there is the time-travel conundrum. As I said earlier, the first two films created a perfect story arc. And this is why I think that T3 and this film should never have been made. The single biggest problem with the entire franchise is that it is based on a completely impossible time-travel scenario. The entire “send back your own father before he becomes your father thus negating your entire existence” thing is just a horribly giant plot-hole, of epic proportions. To talk in Jim Cameron terms, you could sink the Titanic through it. And even if it wasn’t, T2 establishes that Skynet is created because of Miles Dyson’s work on the original computer chip from the first Terminator, except there can’t have been a Terminator for him to discover if it requires his input to invent it, etc etc, blah blah. But the thing is that the first two films are so brilliant, that you don’t care. You’re prepared to overlook it because the films are set in the present day, and you just kind of go with it. The films are incredibly good, and so you’re prepared to buy into the fact that under no circumstances does it even hold together as a premise. However, now that this film is set in that future, this future that people have been talking about, it brings front and centre a problem that did not need attention drawing to it. I found myself practically unable to stop thinking about it as I watched John Connor come face to face with Reese for the first time. The other thing I have an issue with is this idea of “no fate except what we make” blah blah. Ok, it’s fine – and in the first two films it works its way through and it does really well, and in fact sets up the second and third acts of T2 – and compliments the ending particularly well. Then the third film comes along and just blows that out of the water. Yes, there’s no fate – except the apocalypse and the war, that is fate, but other than that, there’s no fate. Except for the bits that are. Ok, that doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. Why do that? Why take two of the greatest films of all time, which are held together with a story and moral that I think are not only hugely interesting, but vitally important too, and just make them somewhat disappointing?

I think there is plenty more that you can get out of the Terminator story, and this film almost threatens to do it at several stages, but at the end of the two hours, you are left with an overall feeling that they have failed, and failed miserably. I suppose it should count for something that they tried, but with films like this, films that were so important to people – films that actually changed cinema and certainly the way that people thought about all kinds of issues – you cannot afford to get it this wrong.


Check out these excellent articles at Cracked.com for more Terminator time-travelling insanity.

http://www.cracked.com/funny-254-the-terminator/

http://www.cracked.com/article_17390_5-reasons-terminator-franchise-makes-no-goddamn-sense.html

And here's Christian Bale being a good colleague and generally spearing right through its heart the concept that actors are overpaid jumped-up primadonnas. Of course you've all heard it by now, but just in case you haven't, this is Bale reacting in a measured and mature manner to a lighting engineer who got into his eyeline during a scene with Bryce Dallas Howard. Since all the scenes between these two in the movie have all the tension and emotion of an omnibus of Family Affairs, I don't know why he was so bothered to be honest.



PS, some* of the language is quite unpleasant and so if you are in one of my classes, then don't listen to it, because you're young, and young people don't know swear words. Certainly I would be setting a bad example as a teacher to allow such easy access to words that are a bit rude, so I'm going to trust you not to listen in case you hear a rudie.

*actually, replace "some" with "all".

What about Elephants? The 7 most ridiculous Michael Jackson lyrics.

Michael Jackson died recently, I don’t know if you heard about it. His funeral has been postponed, presumably a luxury they can allow themselves since he isn’t particularly biodegradeable, and in the hiatus, people seem to have stopped writing about him. Well, I’m here to correct all that and point out that while I am a huge fan of his, sometimes his lyrics (cleverly hidden by the fact that you can’t usually make them out) were a few light years wide of the target marked “good” that all songwriters strive for. Not always though. Dirty Diana, Billie Jean, Beat It, Stranger In Moscow, all of these have pretty stand-up lyrics really. But then there are other moments...

I’ve only picked songs written by Jackson for this list, which isn’t a personal attack on him, but it isn’t really fair to knock him for having written bad lyrics if he didn’t write them, n’est pas? I’m also not picking one line wonders, such as “She came at me in sections” from Dangerous. Sure, it doesn’t make any sense and is a rubbish lyric, but it’s on its own and we’ll let him off, I suppose. The other big decision is whether or not I allow the endless bloody talking that seems to go on in Jackson songs. If I do, then the whole top 5 is surely bound to be made up of them. If I don’t, I have to miss out on writing about just how bad The Girl Is Mine is, therefore – talking bits are allowed. Oh, I’m also not putting anything from “Speechless” on here, mainly because the entire song is so morbidly offensive that I can’t pick out a single lyric that deserves particular ridicule. I also didn’t include the opening line of “Bad” – “your butt is mine”. It’s too funny really. I’ve said before about the stupidity of Michael Jackson trying to look hard – he’s about as threatening as a dishcloth and really ought to have known that.

Anyway, without further ado, and in no particular order (Girl is Mine is the worst) – here are the 7 most ridiculous Michael Jackson lyrics.

1. A Strange Metaphor.
Song: Wanna be Starting Something
Album: Thriller
Offending Lyrics:
You're A Vegetable, You're A Vegetable
Still They Hate You, You're A Vegetable
You're Just A Buffet, You're A Vegetable
They Eat Off Of You, You're A Vegetable

Comment: Ok, maybe this is just me failing to understand the situation, but at no point of this or any other song could this make sense. It honestly just sounds like he’s gone mental mid-song, and is blabbing some crazy idiocy. Although interestingly, the producer of this album was American legend Bob Carrot, and some have suggested...no, I’m just messing. Seriously, Thriller sold like 75 million copies. How? HOW?

2. Filler, anyone?
Song: The Girl Is Mine
Album: Thriller
Offending Lyrics:
The Girl Is Mine
The Doggone Girl Is Mine

Comment: Not the worst crime in history, nearly every artist has used a filler word here and there to pad out the lyrics, but Doggone? What are we now in the Old West ready to gunsling? Oh hang on a sec, the knives are about to come out for the most pathetic fight in history...

3. Talking to Paul
Song: The Girl Is Mine
Album: Thriller
Offending Lyrics: *incidentally, all of this is spoken except the last line. Yes, that’s right. Spoken. Like, as if they were having a conversation. Talking. I could vomit.
[Paul]
Michael, We're Not Going To Fight About This, Okay
[Michael]
Paul, I Think I Told You, I'm A Lover Not A Fighter
[Paul]
I've Heard It All Before, Michael
She Told Me That I'm Her Forever Lover, You Know, Don't You Remember
[Michael]
Well, After Loving Me, She Said She Couldn't Love Another
[Paul]
Is That What She Said
[Michael]
Yes, She Said It, You Keep Dreaming
[Paul]
I Don't Believe It

Comment: Does this even need a comment? Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney offering each other out is just about the most laughable thing I’ve ever heard. They literally must be the least threatening rock/pop stars in history. If it was Tommy Lee giving the finger to John Bonham, then we’d all be queuing for tickets, but not these two care bears. Talking in songs is rarely, if ever a good idea, and this is surely one of the most awful examples of it. On their own, these artists are two of the most important people ever to contribute to the world of music. In fact, if you had to make a list of the top 5 artists who have changed the face of music, they would both be on the list. And yet together, all they ever seemed to do was come up with flannel-esque paisley crap like this. And Girlfriend, and Say, Say, Say. Honestly, what the hell got into them?

4. Necessity is the mother of invention...
Song: Speed Demon
Album: Bad
Offending Lyrics:
Speedin' On The Freeway
Gotta Get A Leadway

Comment: Leadway isn’t a word. That’s my only major problem with this lyric, which is that in his hurry to find something that rhymes and kind of makes sense, Jackson has invented a word just to save himself a bit of effort. It’s like when MLS players call the halfway line “the midfield stripe”. We all know what they mean, but don’t go inventing words just for the hell of it. It’s hugely annoying. If you can’t find anything appropriate to rhyme with Freeway, then don’t use Freeway.

5. 2000 Whats.
Song: 2000 Watts
Album: Invincible
Offending Lyrics:
3D, high speed, feedback, Dolby
Release two or three, when I reach I can go ‘til I hit my peak
Compact steelo, chico, D-Lo, highpost lady
Shorty really wanna be there for me

Comment: Sorry, what?

6. As judgement calls go...
Song: The Lost Children
Album: Invincible
Offending Lyrics:
We pray for our fathers, pray for our mothers
Wishing our families well
We sing songs for the wishing, of those who are kissing
But not for the missing

[CHORUS]
So this one’s for all the lost children
This one’s for all the lost children
This one’s for all the lost children, wishing them well
And wishing them home

Comment: Awful. Get it off my stereo. Not only is it awful, but this song is monumentally mis-judged by everyone who allowed it to be on the album. Now I know that Jackson was never convicted of anything, and he always maintained his innocence, but there are two things worth keeping in mind before you allow a song about letting lost children into your home to look after them onto your album; a song that has a part at the end where Michael leads a young child into the forest, where it’s “so quiet” – a song that talks about how he can see young children snuggled up with their parents, but that the door is “simply wide open”. Thing number 1 – not many people believe he was innocent, and thing number 2, LYRICS LIKE THAT ARE WHY!! I mean honestly, I know that he lived in his own little world and was surrounded by people who said yes to everything and he was clearly completely mentally absent from the world that you and I inhabit, but how on earth did nobody listen to this song and just say “You know what Mike? I think we can leave this one off the album.”

7. John 11:35. (Look it up)
Song: Cry
Album: Invincible
Offending Lyrics:
You can change the world (I can't do it by myself)
You can touch the sky (Gonna take somebody's help)
You're the chosen one (I'm gonna need some kind of sign)
If we all cry at the same time tonight

Comment: Just to give you a rough idea of how this chorus goes, basically a choir of heavenly sounding voices sing the bits that aren’t in brackets, and Jackson replies to them by singing the bits that are in brackets. Sound familiar? Yes that’s right, it’s Jackson’s messianic streak coming to the fore yet again. First seen as early as the Can You Feel It Video back in the 80s with the Jacksons, it obviously had its zenith during the Brit Awards rendition of Earth Song, a moment that showed us just how far the King of Pop had descended. But it’s arguably always been there, and here it is again. The other reason this is terrible is that it doesn’t make sense. How is everyone crying at the same time going to help anyone do anything? Load of bilge.

I love Jackson’s music, and he was undoubtedly one of the great performers of our time, and I would argue one of the saddest stories too. But for every great dance move, there seems to have been a cringe-inducingly terrible lyric. Oh, it’s just Bad, the way they make me feel. As a performer, he was a Thriller, but some of his writing was dangerously off the wall.

I'm sorry, I will stop. Usually I don't stop till I get enough but...


Paulo

The 5 Worst Beatles Songs.

I’m always talking about how brilliant the Beatles were, and they were – for me the greatest band of all time and my ultimate childhood, teenage, and adulthood heroes. People think therefore that I am boring, and also have been brainwashed by the Beatles bandwagon that has been rolling since late 1962 and seems to place the band above all reproach. I take issue with this.

They weren’t infallible. Oh no. Whilst I don’t think that they ever consciously ripped their audiences off by putting out songs that they knew were crap, their efforts sometimes have to go down as a swing and a miss. With that in mind, I have constructed a shortlist of their 20 worst songs and picked the top 5 for an alternative look at their output.

EXCEPTIONS:
These songs are not counted in the list because it would make it far too predictable.

• That entire second side of the Yellow Submarine album. Not because they’re bad – as instrumental pieces, they’re alright – but because they’re not Beatles songs.
• Revolution 9. Is it a song? If it is, it’s terrible. But it isn’t, it’s an avant-garde project and therefore is probably quite good. Terrible to listen to though.
• Maggie Mae – doesn’t count. Why did they put this on the album? Why does it even exist?
• Dig It – Not a song, just a jam session, indicative of the lack of effort, enthusiasm and enjoyment that went on during these sessions, and sadly indicative of how little they cared about the band by this point.
• Any Tony Sheridan/Anthology/Live at the BBC songs. No – because they’re often out-takes, and un-released for a reason, so they’re collector’s items more than they are a part of the legacy that the band wanted to create for themselves.
• The German songs. They’re just great songs, but sung in German – I don’t think you can reasonably count them.
• You Know My Name (Look Up The Number) – Yes, it is terrible, but it’s also not a real song, quite hilarious, and has Brian Jones on sax, so I think it just about survives.
• Any of the individual songs on the Abbey Road medley. Several of these would qualify on their own, but as part of a greater entity they all hang together well enough to class as one whole great song, I think.

The Shortlist: (An asterisk * denotes that the song is a cover)

1. Wild Honey Pie (White Album, 1968)
2. What Goes On (Rubber Soul, 1965)
3. Run For Your Life (Rubber Soul, 1965)
4. PS I Love You (Please Please Me, 1962)
5. Mr Moonlight* (Beatles for Sale, 1964)
6. What You’re Doing (Beatles for Sale, 1964)
7. Another Girl (Help, 1965)
8. Yellow Submarine (Revolver, 1966)
9. Lovely Rita (Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967)
10. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da (White Album, 1968)
11. Cry Baby Cry (White Album, 1968)
12. All Together Now (Magical Mystery Tour, 1967)
13. Little Child (With The Beatles, 1963)
14. Words of Love* (Beatles for Sale, 1964)
15. Don’t Pass Me By (White Album, 1968)
16. Flying (Magical Mystery Tour, 1967)
17. Love Me Do (Please Please Me, 1962)
18. I’m Happy Just To Dance With You (A Hard Day’s Night, 1964)
19. I Need You (Help, 1965)
20. I’ll Get You (B-side, 1962)

The final 5, and why...

5. Wild Honey Pie
I’m all for McCartney in “experimental” mode, and I’m also all for him in “recording acoustic songs on his own” mode, after all, that method brought us Blackbird and pretty much every good song on McCartney too. That being said, he and the other Beatles ought really to have been able to spot a pointless song when they heard one. It’s only 53 seconds long I suppose, so even though it’s appalling it’s over relatively quickly, but even so – it really is appalling. Apparently the song was going to be left off the album, but Patti Boyd really liked it so they kept it on. Patti Boyd was not a musician by trade, and she certainly wasn’t an established rock and roll superstar who had been correctly judging what songs should and should not go on albums for the past 6 years. My basic point here is that they really should have listened to their instincts, told Patti to stick to being pretty, and kept this one for the vaults.

4. What Goes On
There are three things that count against this song. Well, there are 4 really, but the fourth is just the outcome of the equation formed by the other three. The three things are this. Firstly, The Beatles were at their absolute best when they loved what they were doing, and played/sang with enthusiasm. Examples of this include Long Tall Sally, I Saw Her Standing There and She Loves You from the early days, and Helter Skelter, I’ve Got a Feeling, and Come Together from the later days. They’re bad examples, because they’re all great songs – but even songs like I’m Happy Just To Dance With You, Little Child, Dig A Pony, and Octopus’ Garden are made considerably better than they actually are by a bit of enthusiasm and energy. This song is not only worse than all of those listed, but it sounds like the band were completely and utterly bored during the recording of the song. It’s telling that they also recorded “12 Bar Original” during this session, on November 4th, 1965 – and if I was allowing Anthology songs onto this list, that would also definitely be on there. It’s sluggish, tired, and completely without imagination or creativity. Secondly, Ringo sings it. I don’t mind Ringo’s singing, he does a good job on Boys and I Wanna Be Your Man, but this song requires just a little bit more than he has in his locker. Thirdly, the rest of the album is brilliant – and contains so much of what made the Beatles great. The songs are quirky, original, progressive, creative, bright and sparky – and all of that is missing from this wet flannel that dampens the middle and sucks all the momentum out of what should be one of the best albums ever made. The 4th thing then, is that this is just a terrible song. Lennon wrote the song way back in the Quarrymen days, and that is exactly where it should have stayed.

3. Yellow Submarine
Now, this one is relatively contentious, in so far as it’s quite a self-aware bad song. McCartney knew what he was doing with this one, and he achieved it to a T, and so I feel somewhat bad picking it out as one of the worst things the band did. However, it is dreadful, let’s be honest, and while it’s catchy and kids love it (McCartney’s goal) and it does conjure up a whimsical kind of childish fantasy world, it’s also a cartoon song of idiocy on Revolver, which was the band’s most mature and forward thinking album to date. You have to look at the songs they left off in order to make room for Yellow Submarine, and if you think that the album could have had Paperback Writer and Rain on instead, there really is no excuse for keeping it on the album – especially when it would be re-released on the soundtrack to the movie just two years later, although I suppose there’s no way they could have know that would happen. It’s worth noting though that the song is in much more comfortable surroundings on that album and doesn’t sound quite so horribly out of place. But placed inbetween Here, There and Everywhere (arguably McCartney’s most beautiful song thus far) and She Said, She Said, Lennon’s first real introspective acid trip, featuring the most beautiful interplay between Lennon and Harrison’s guitars...well, it just feels wrong. And it’s a terrible song, when all else is said and done. Maybe it could have worked for a lesser band on a lesser album...but not this band, and not this album.

2. Run For Your Life
Ah, John Lennon – how did we love thee? Let us count the ways. Well, people refer to him as a great rock star, a poet, a peace-inspiring, policitian-worrying freedom fighter, and in the years since his death (often telling referred to as an assassination), a saint. But people very rarely focus on the working-class, misogynistic, wife-beating side of him, and I can see why – it doesn’t make for good press and it does somewhat sully his public image as a loveable mop-top turned proper artist type person. But hold on there a second Paul, I hear you cry, isn’t there a song that Lennon wrote at the height of the band’s popularity which not only comes at the end of one of their most melodically, harmonically and musically beautiful albums but also reveals quite explicitly just how unpleasant Lennon could be when he set his mind to it? Yes, I reply, there is. And this is it. Now, Lennon isn’t the only Beatle to write a fairly self-satisfied song about basically being a misogynist – McCartney’s “Another Girl” on the Help album doesn’t sit comfortably and hasn’t aged at all well, but at least has some musical interest and decent moments. This one doesn’t. Now, in Lennon’s defence, he said plenty of times that this was the song he most regretted writing, and that it was his least favourite Beatles song – and the opening line was actually lifted from an Elvis song, but that doesn’t excuse its inclusion here, in my opinion. Let’s just have a look at a few of the lyrics...

Well I'd rather see you dead, little girl
Than to be with another man
You better keep your head, little girl
Or you won't know where I am

You better run for your life if you can, little girl
Hide your head in the sand little girl
Catch you with another man
That's the end, little girl

Well you know that I'm a wicked guy
And I was born with a jealous mind
And I can't spend my whole life
Trying just to make you toe the line

Let this be a sermon
I mean everything I've said
Baby, I'm determined
And I'd rather see you dead

People will say “yeah, but it was a different time...” and it was, but that doesn’t make it ok. They used to lynch people too, but I don’t think any of us would feel comfortable listening to songs about how much fun they thought it was. So, not only a pretty rubbish song, but actually offensive too? Definitely should have been left off. Incidentally, that’s two songs from Rubber Soul on this list. Although the Beatles didn’t put their singles on the albums, (at least not in 1965) I can’t help but feel that the inclusion of We Can Work It Out and Day Tripper instead of the two songs here would have improved this album considerably, and also reduced the number of songs about murdering cheating girlfriends in the Beatles catalogue to a more pleasing 0.

1. All Together Now.
The only good thing about this song happens in the first second. The song is in F, but McCartney slides into the opening chord from E, and it sounds quite good. And it gets worse from there. As with Yellow Submarine, it’s effectively nothing more than a children’s song, but that still begs the questions, why write it and why record it? They weren’t a comedy Disney band, this isn’t the title track to Pre-School Musical, so what’s it doing? It’s not even a proper song, it took 5 hours to record and Lennon played the banjo on it. Now, to re-iterate, I’m not against the Beatles ever having had a bit of fun, or writing and recording something for a laugh – but they had so much more in their locker than this. Good Morning Good Morning is pretty stupid, but at least it has interesting time-signatures. Hey Jude is simplicity itself but at least has some good lyrics at the start to offset the irritation of the stadium sing-a-long at the end. If they wanted to have a lark in the old days, they would record a cover of a childhood favourite, and it usually turned out pretty well, with the odd exception. So why come up with this garbage just to fill album space? They recorded their entire first album in just 12 hours, and every song on it is better than this. Now it was recorded in May 1967, so the band were presumably a) tired from recording Sgt Pepper, (which is immense) and b) off their faces. But neither of these things forgive the song a) being released or b) even existing in the first place. My feelings about why this song is so bad can be summed up by this part of its Wikipedia entry. “The song ends with an old fashioned hand-pumped car horn.” What is this, Carry on Beatling?

I could have written equally scathing things about the other songs on that shortlist, none of which are really anything special, though several of which are saved by at least one or two redeeming qualities – but if you ask me, these 5 could just drop off the face of the earth and nobody would be any worse off for it.

God bless the Beatles though, still the best band of all time.

Paulo.

Movie Review – Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

It’s incredibly easy, and in my opinion, somewhat lazy, to jump on the current favourite bandwagon that seems to be gathering momentum amongst “proper” film critics. In order to gain entry onto this bandwagon, all you have to do is slag off Michael Bay as a terrible director with no ability, variety, nuance or intelligence. I’m as happy to admit as anyone that he does have no variety or nuance. I sent a text to a friend of mine about having seen Transformers 2 and without having seen it, he said back to me “Let me guess, lots of 360 slow-mos, sunsets, men getting out of cars/helicopters and of course explosions a plenty - that about it?”

Yes, his work is formulaic – but that isn’t always a bad thing so long as the films have saving graces. This is a plus point for some of his work. The Rock is great. Fun, self-deprecating, high-octane, relatively short, has Ed Harris, Sean Connery and Nick Cage back when having Nick Cage in a movie was a good thing. Armageddon is pretty good. Schmaltzy, yes. I mean, it’s unbelievably schmaltzy, and the sheer emotion of it all nearly ruins all the good work put in by having Bruce Willis blow things up, which by the way is another movie formula that has proven particularly a) lucrative and b) mostly quite good. But still, on balance, I like Armageddon. Pearl Harbour is terrible, not only because it’s full of pointless, boring and completely unbelievable romance and coma-inducing emotion, but because it’s monumentally inaccurate and the things that people outside Hollywood despise about Hollywood literally seep out of the open wounds in its own decomposing carcass. So, cross that one off. As for Bad Boys II, it’s literally the blueprint for Michael Bay films, but again manages to survive not only because it doesn’t take itself very seriously, but the epic charisma of the leading actors makes it believable and enjoyable. You can’t really fail with Will Smith. I mean, you can, because look at Hancock, but theoretically, you shouldn’t be able to fail with Will Smith, even if you are Michael Bay.

In fact, perhaps that is the key to Michael Bay’s success or failure. His good films? The Rock and Bad Boys II, both pointless exercises in blowing as much stuff up as possible and destroying as much property in ridiculous car chases as possible, but both are made eminently watchable and enjoyable because a) they don’t take themselves too seriously – or even slightly seriously in fact and b) they have charisma leaking off the screen in the shape of the cast. Bad Boys II has Will Smith, who – let’s be honest – has enough charisma to carry an entire movie, see Hitch, The Pursuit of Happyness, Men in Black, I Robot, Hancock, I am Legend, et al. The Rock has Nick Cage, Sean Connery and Ed Harris, all of whom are excellent, and the supporting cast is excellent as well, including Michael Biehn and the late John Spencer. His bad films? Pearl Harbour is the worst for sure – and why? Well, it again is a pointless exercise in blowing stuff up, as well as practically spitting on the graves of a lot of brave men and women, and also, the cast has absolutely no charisma whatsoever. Watching Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale act together to quote Mark Kermode, is like watching chairs mate. Armageddon nearly fails because Ben Affleck is awful and Liv Tyler is fairly awful, but is rescued because Michael Clarke Duncan, Steve Buscemi and Bruce Willis are just about the safest bets you can make. I haven’t seen The Island, but from what I’ve heard, even Ewan McGregor couldn’t rescue it. So it must have been pretty awful.

Now, what does any of this have to do with Transformers 2? Well, let’s look at Transformers 1. I quite liked it. It’s very much a Michael Bay by numbers movie, but the actors are engaging enough and the effects are incredible and the film running time feels much quicker than the 144 minutes it actually is.

So, what about Transformers 2? Well, let me just say this right off the bat. It is terrible. I really wanted to like it, I really did. Every part of me wanted to like it. I knew that stuff would blow up, I knew that there would be sunsets and slow-motion 360s, and men getting out of helicopters looking rugged, and I presumed that the writers would have still forgotten that Megan Fox is actually supposed to be an actress, not an art exhibit, and given her something to do. But I still wanted to enjoy it.

Well, no. It’s awful. It suffers greatly from sequel-itis, and by that I mean that having set up the characters in the first film, however flimsily, the film-makers decide that there is absolutely no need to do anything with them whatsoever. There are too many plot points which makes the film difficult to follow, there are too many characters, or in the case of this film, robots, and the whole thing just feels far too crammed in and complicated. The Dark Knight suffers from having too many characters, but Heath Ledger is so brilliant that you don’t care. Spiderman 3 is the same – loads of plot points, loads of characters, absolutely bloody awful movie. So in this film, the title hints that the Decepticons that were defeated in the first movie – who had, you know, fallen – would be having their revenge. But no. That would apparently be too easy. So now we have a giant sort of “daddy” decepticon, who is called “The Fallen” who apparently first came to Earth two million years BC or something, and doesn’t like people, and then had to bugger off, and can’t come back to Earth, except he can, but he doesn’t until he does even though he still can’t. Confused? You will be! The first film set up a sequel very nicely, so why would you go about making it so damn complicated?

The robotic characters dominate this film as you would expect. Well, you maybe wouldn’t expect it, but it happens anyway. Optimus Prime is very impressive, as you definitely would expect, and Megatron is very scary, I suppose. Bumblebee’s habit of finding the exact quote on the radio that he requires for any particular moment is a bit annoying but acceptable, and by and large, there are plenty of good things to say about the robots. Except Mudflap and Skids. If Jar Jar Binks was annoying both as a character and disconcerting because he was so blatantly racist, just wait until you encounter these two.

What about the human characters then? Well, Frank LeBoeuf’s son Shia does nothing in the film at all. He’s rubbish, and that’s partly because he’s given nothing to do, and partly because he does so little with what he does have. Megan Fox is even worse. Now, I can’t really comment on her skills as an actress because I haven’t seen her really act yet. In this film she gets about 3 seconds at the start that revolve around just how massively gorgeous she looks, but at no stage does this film stop short of completely objectifying her – and every other woman in it – and I’m sorry, but when did that become acceptable? Or is it just that I’m getting old? Also – why does Frank LeBouef’s college only accept people who have been on the front cover of Maxim or FHM? I don’t recall that being the way university works – and the way I know this is, I got into one.

Oh yeah, and there appears to be an entire subplot between the two main characters in which neither of them will tell the other one that they love each other despite the fact that they both know that they do and they’ve also been dating for two years. Seriously, I don’t know how else to put this – I think I’ve literally summed up an entire plot point of this film. Wow. I think the severity of that just hit me. It’s desperately, desperately poor.

The entire film is just idle and completely lazy. Every single character, with the exception of John Tuturro, phones in their performance, at best. The direction is utterly directionless – left totally unguarded by a bloated budget and a seemingly endless running time, and the tone, soundtrack, dialogue, really everything that makes a film, is lazy, moronic, and pointless. Then there’s that running time. Whereas I was amazed to find that the first film was longer than 2 hours, I’m amazed to realise that while watching this film I didn’t age 2 whole years in the cinema. It’s long, and it feels it. It even feels longer than The Dark Knight, and that is a film that both feels, and is, really long.

Making a film like this should not be difficult. Yes, it IS lowest-common-denominator cinema, but there’s nothing wrong with that if it is done in the right way and at the right time. Bay has done it before, and several directors have done it well and it would appear that Judd Apatow is making a massive amount of money and an entire career out of it. And I don’t begrudge him that – entertaining people with pointless forget-your-troubles entertainment at the end of the day is both difficult and important. The first Transformers pretty much ticked every box for a decent action flick that could brighten a dull day. This tripe, this garbage on the other hand ticks nothing and leaves the viewer feeling nothing but short changed that they have been robbed of what feels like 64 hours of their life.

Michael Bay described the tone of the film as "Ben-Hur (1959) fused with Apocalypse Now (1979)." I don’t want to accuse him of false modesty but those two films won about 600 Oscars and are considered epic masterpieces of cinema. There is no dimension in which I can possibly imagine this film ever being considered in such lofty terms. At best I was hoping for a good old fashioned action flick that demands nothing from its viewer but delivers brainless entertainment that whiles away a couple of hours with pointless fun. And instead I got this.

Do days get any better?

I think that yesterday has got to go down as having been a pretty great day. It’s always a great day when you can fill an entire hand of fingers with individual things that have happened. And yesterday, I could do exactly that. And as an added bonus, not only was it physically a good day, it was symbolically and mentally a great day, and that always helps to make a difference.

Well, there’s no point writing four million words to sum it all up, so here are my bullet point reasons why yesterday was a great day.

1) We moved out of London.

2) I had a massively clear run up the M1 and drove 254 miles up to Middlesbrough in 240 minutes.

3) This meant I got to lie down and rest for an hour in Middlesbrough.

4) I then went to St James’ park, and bought a season ticket in the Gallowgate end.

5) Because my seat was taken for the match, the bloke at the ticket office put me in the Platinum Club Member’s seats for the game.

6) Newcastle won 1-0, thus continuing my streak of never having lost while I have been watching them. (I also shouted "Unbelievable Jeff!" at Chris Kamara and he smiled. Not really a point on its own, but worth mentioning.)

7) I had a Salt and Pepper.

I’m not saying there’s no way the day could have been any better, but I tell you what, I am pretty happy to take that.

Paulo

Even if there was no other reason...

....this would make me admire Ricky Gervais.

Movie Review – "The Ugly Truth"

Romantic Comedies are one of cinema’s more troubling genres. Why? Well, because the bar has been set high by classic films dating right back to films like His Girl Friday, Some Like It Hot (sort of a romantic comedy) and Bringing Up Baby. Also, they’re incredibly easy to do badly, and this is proved several times every year. Finally, they are monumentally formulaic and so it is difficult to really come up with an original one, since all suspense is completely absent, since whoever is playing the two lead roles will end up together. The fact that so many film-makers seem to try and make the two lead characters ostensibly polar opposites in spite of this simply makes my second point stronger. Why bother? They’re going to end up together, so the least we can do is a) like them and b) believe that they might at least like each other.

If you’re going to be a successful lead actress in a movie like this then you have to have the Ryan Magic. Meg Ryan is surely the prototype for the perfect rom-com female lead. Why? Because she has impeccable comic timing and she is literally leaking ‘girl-next-door’ charm and beauty all over the screen. Obviously she is far too attractive to live next door to anyone, but she manages to carry off being exceedingly pretty without being so beautiful that she out-prices herself from everyone but the stupidly handsome. In recent years Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Aniston have taken the torch, although despite Aniston’s comic timing (which is criminally under-rated in my opinion) and Diaz’s quirky hilarity and genuine willingness (sometimes determination) to not take herself too seriously – neither of them quite manage to match Meg Ryan in her prime. Anyway, now that my love of Meg Ryan is out in the open, let’s talk about why Katherine Heigl doesn’t have the magic.

I don’t have anything against Katherine Heigl by the way, but she isn’t right for this role. Firstly, she is stunningly beautiful. Normally, if I heard the kind of things I’d heard about Heigl in the press about anyone else, I would have trouble seeing through what a nightmare they apparently are in their personal lives to find them attractive. However, in her case I am prepared to make an exception. She’s so striking that she practically mugs you in your seat. That being the case, the idea that she would have any trouble finding a man is obviously ridiculous. But the film-makers have made this the basic premise of her character, and so to make up for her looks, they have had to find another way to make it believable that she might have trouble finding love. And they have chosen to do this by making her character absolutely a) mental, and b) annoying. Now, Meg Ryan did slightly mental in When Harry Met Sally, but that was Meg Ryan in the 80s playing off Billy Crystal and she didn’t seem to have any trouble finding blokes who fancied her, despite her being a bit off the boil upstairs.

However, Katherine Heigl’s character, Abby, is an absolute train wreck, and it’s played to the point where you actually cannot imagine a guy ever falling for her. Now, obviously as the movie goes along, we get to know her a bit better, and as per romantic comedy formula, there is a moment at which she breaks down and admits that she isn’t perfect. In this film, this plays out in a scene where she blurts out that she is in fact a control freak to her boyfriend. The example she uses is that she thinks the champagne should be chilled, when it wasn’t. She then says “that’s how much of a control freak I am,” and this is a silly point to make, because thinking that champagne should be chilled is so far from just how bad she is, (illustrated painfully in her first blind date) that it’s like her scooping up a handful of water and claiming to be a marine biologist. But still, you know the drill, she’s a sweet person really and blah blah blah, so by the end of the film we realise that she wasn’t all that bad really. I feel I should ask if we’re going to end up liking the character, why make her so completely unlikable in the first place?

This is why films like When Harry Met Sally work. You like the characters. They’re not perfect, but you like them. You’ve Got Mail is another example of this. It’s a really good romantic comedy because we like both characters, and they like each other, and the thing that gets in the way is an external problem that can be easily overcome, in this case, she owns a small bookshop and he opens a giant corporate bookstore which threatens to shut her down. But that’s all external and material – in The Ugly Truth, the difference between the characters is that they are fundamentally incompatible and they don’t like each other, and the audience doesn’t like them either. Why do that? Just give them some other obstacle to overcome, people like that. Seriously, if you’re going to make romantic comedies, watch more Meg Ryan movies.

As for Gerard Butler, I hadn’t seen him in anything else really, and so I don’t know if he was good in 300, but he comes across as a decent enough actor; even though he’s playing a misogynistic arsehole, he puts his back into it for the most part, although it does affect his performance somewhat that he never really seems happy inhabiting the character he’s been given. Katherine Heigl said that one of her problems with Knocked Up was that it was sexist – something I think she might have thought twice about saying since a) she was in it, which means they must have given her a script at some point, and b) it’s not actually true. Anyway, I think I see the point she was trying to make, and it is illustrated more by Butler’s character in this movie than it is by Knocked Up. Katherine Heigl’s character is a nightmare of epic proportions – it’s plausible that Wes Craven in his prime couldn’t have come up with a scarier character. Why? Because she basically adheres to every stereotypically “terrifying” female character trait. By the end of the movie, she has overcome them and is basically manageable. Butler, on the other hand, is a misogynistic “man-whore” (as Abby calls him) and yet with a crafty wink and a moment where he’s relatively nice to a kid, he comes across as just a bit of a jack-the-lad joker, carefree and doing his own thanng. So we end up liking him and yet he’s just as unpleasant as Abby. This is a trend that does turn up in the Apatow movies to a certain extent, and I suppose it’s there in Knocked Up between Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann, but not between Seth Rogen’s character and Heigl’s. Anyway, this movie isn’t as good as Knocked Up, so maybe films should try to be more like that one. I don’t know. Or maybe this movie should have Paul Rudd in it. Of course, if you ask me, maybe every movie should have Paul Rudd in it. He’s brilliant.

All that being said, it does plenty of things right. I wasn’t in stitches all the way through, but it’s pleasant enough with the occasional chuckle, and at least one genuinely laugh-out-loud moment. Cheryl Hines and John Michael Higgins are funny throughout, Nate Corddry is in it, which is a good thing because he’s a good actor so it’s nice to see him getting work, although he’s under-used. Overall, maybe because I was in the mood for a film that didn’t require too much brain energy from me, I liked it. It does get some things wrong, most notably in the restaurant scene, which is set up well and quite funny, but ruined by a line that should never have been in there (you’ll know what I mean when you see it). But overall, I liked it. I especially liked the part at the end (I don’t want to spoil it here, but they get together) when Butler admits that he is in love with Heigl. She asks him why, and at this point we expect a When Harry Met Sally kind of spiel, and we don’t get it. His answer is excellent, and for a film like this, quite a brave move on the part of the scriptwriters. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not Citizen Kane or anything but it’s an interesting moment and a relatively fresh twist on the old formula.

In the grand pantheon of romantic comedies, this is not the worst, but it certainly isn’t the best either. For starters, the part of the show that pleased and excited me the most was the trailer for 500 Days of Summer, which stars both Matthew Gray Gubler and Zooey Deschanel, and therefore I will be going to see it regardless of whether it looks good or not. But also, it looks good. Bonus! So my advice is, go and see that instead of The Ugly Truth; but if you do have to go and see The Ugly Truth, you probably won’t mind it.

Hello? Hello!?

My phone.

I don’t want it to surf the internet;
I have a computer.

I don’t want it to play mp3s;
I have an ipod.

I don’t want it to have TV;
I have a TV.

I don’t want it to be able to make my toast;
I have a toaster.

I don’t want it to do anything except TAKE AND MAKE CALLS, and SEND AND RECEIVE TEXTS without breaking down in a fit of overhyped technological incompetence.

Since I left University in 2004 and abandoned my Nokia 3310 for a "better" (not my words, but those of the spot-monster in carphone warehouse) phone, I have had nothing but a long series of disappointments in the phone department. I liked the 3310. It was basic, sure - but it did what mobile phones should do, and it did them simply and well.

I soon realised that phones were being designed to work for as long as your contract lasts. Once this time is up (roughly speaking, I'm not suggesting they're equipped with a timer of some kind that signals when they should stop working) the phones will suddenly lose signal, stop sending messages, etc etc. My SIM card would fall out, my phone would switch itself off, and generally I became more and more impatient with the whole thing.

When my contract was up with T-Mobile, they told me I could have a new handset, with touch-screen WAP something interface, instant picture messaging and the Internet. Now, I'm no fool - the Internet is rubbish on a phone. Everyone knows that. So, I picked the simplest looking handset. As already stated, I am a simple man of simple tastes in phone terms. A few days it arrived, and of course it came with all mod cons and actually went out of its way to be entirely unhelpful, clumsy and difficult to use. So I just sent it back. I'm not wasting my time with all of that nonsense.

Having moaned about it for a while, I decided the other day just to abandon my pretence that I was going to ever keep up with the times, and get myself on eBay to buy a Nokia 3310. And indeed, following a few unsuccessful bids (obviously I'm not the only one who feels cheated by more recent and "impressive" mobiles) I got myself one!

I feel jolly pleased with myself, and have realised that it also means I've gone genuinely retro, i.e. not just jumping a bandwagon but actually going back to something unfashionable just because I prefer how simple it is. I prefer the rubbish old clunky brick to the brand new slinky shiny machines. I have swapped a DVD recorder for a Betamax. I have, in short, taken a giant step towards becoming my father.

When they get a phone together that’s better than the 3310, give me a shout. Until then, I’m sticking to what I know, what I like, and - controversially - what works.

An opening...

I don't know for sure what this blog will compose of, but there will be some various bits and pieces on it for just about anyone who cares to peruse the offerings on...well, offer I suppose.

In my spare time, I'm also an English teacher, and a good friend of mine had a blog that his students could access, and I think that's a jolly good idea - so I imagine there might be some academia making its way onto here as well, but at the moment, I've no idea.

So - hello! I am Mr Staveley and this is my blog.