Monday 15 June 2009

A short rant on the state of movies

Firstly, has anyone else noticed what a bullshit rating 12A is?
I mean this in all seriousness, a 12A rating is the stupidest thing ever. I SHOULD, by all rights, love it; it makes my job at the cinema much easier. Most of the conversations before 12A was introduced went along the lines of “Sorry, you’ll need ID.” Nowadays, it just goes “Oh, your dad’s with you? Not my problem anymore.” Even then, I think it’s a stupid rating.

You can tell, in fact, from the BBFC website. If ever there was an easy way to tell that a classification board has run out of ideas, it’s in the jargon they stick on the website in order to try and justify their decision. Listen to this one:
“Language: The use of strong language (e.g. ‘fuck’) must be infrequent.”
In all honesty, how do they see the conversation going at little Billy’s house?

TV: Holy fuck!
Billy: *shouts to kitchen* Daddy, what does that mean?
Dad: Hang on a second, son.
TV: Oh fuck me…
Billy: I SAID WHAT DOES IT FUCKING MEAN, YOU CUNT?!

But I digress…

I remember when I was at university, I read this review of this film in a magazine. It was given 5 stars, I believe it was by Q Magazine, and was said to be one of the best films of the year. I didn’t think anything of it until randomly, it appeared on the University of Kent’s independent cinema list, usually held in a lecture theatre with a projector in. I watched the movie and promptly went home to tell all my housemates how awesome I thought it was, without quite understanding why I enjoyed it so much. The second time it came around, around four or five months later, there was a significantly bigger turnout; word had obviously got around about how much awesome this movie exuded.

The movie, in case you were wondering, was Donnie Darko. Whatever your opinion of this movie, put yourself in my position. I had always had a sporadic interest in films. I only watched Alien for the first time when I was 17, a friend decided that his 18th birthday would consist of three of us watching the Alien Quadrilogy in one night. Now, as 18th birthday parties go, you don’t get much more awesome than that.



Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that it’s very rare nowadays that there is a film released that I get so excited about. So far this year, I have been excited about Watchmen and Terminator Salvation. While both were enjoyable movies in different ways, think about the two movies I got excited about so far this year. A comic book movie that everyone thought was going to suck but didn’t, and a sequel to a film which did suck. A lot. Mostly balls.


Remakes piss me off as well. At one point they were talking about doing a remake of John Carpenter's "The Thing." What the FUCK are they thinking? See, I said this to Brad, and his reply (rightly so) was "surely it would cut down on their overheads and the amount of work involved to just re-release the original movie (which was IN ITSELF a remake!)" That's a perfectly logical argument, isn't it? We can certainly see how that makes sense, but NO! Hollywood has spoken, and the word is that Michael Cera and Owen Wilson just don't get enough work.


All this summer is about seems to be “check out all the sequels to the movies you vaguely enjoyed over the last couple of years!” Transformers 2, Harry Potter 6, Night at the Museum 2, the list seems endless. Speaking of which, have you taken a good look at the Harry Potter poster recently? A REALLY good look?


Did you spot it? My friend Mr Rob Lindsay (not that one, THIS one) pointed it out to me at work. Now, this next paragraph contains spoilers. Having said that, if you haven’t read any of the Harry Potter books in the twelve years (Yep, you heard me) since the books started coming out, I’ve got no sympathy that you’re about to have some of it spoiled for you. Besides, they’re really good, you should read them. Anyway, in the books, it transpires that Dumbledore’s wand is the most powerful one in the wizarding universe. I don’t mean that as a double entendre, bearing in mind Dumbledore is gay. I mean his MAGIC wand.
So let me get this straight:



The most powerful wand in the wizarding world is made up of ANAL BEADS on a stick?!

Come to think of it, have you ever taken a good look at the other wands of the main characters? Harry’s seems to have a dong tip to it, and have you SEEN Voldemort’s?




Apparently “Cheat death” was number one on his priorities, only just ahead of “Get buttfucked by Skeletor”.



2 comments:

  1. It's so sad when wand envy strikes a young man in his prime.

    The 12A thing pisses me off too. When I first watched 'The Terminator' back in the '80s (via a dodgy pirate copy, but that was the only way to watch cool films you were too young to see at the cinema back then) I really could not have BELIEVED that two decades later I would be watching the third sequel to that AWESOME movie in the cinema... with a six-year-old kid in the seat in front of me.

    The world is on its arse, it really is.

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  2. Alien with Party Blower FTW.

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