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Dear readers,
I would like to apologise for my absence in the blogging world for the past few weeks. It’s astounding, time is fleeting, madness takes it’s toll.
The past month and a half feel like they were gone in 60 seconds!
Things have been hectic- a nightmare! Ten weeks before Christmas.
First, I had to go to my friend Muriel’s Wedding. It was a gorgeous occasion, and it would have gone flawlessly, if only she hadn't been marrying an American gangster. The day after, I needed a vacation!
And shortly after the holiday, I received a job offer for a post in a different town, involving frequent travel to the company’s headquarters in Rome. Of course, I couldn’t turn down the Italian job and so I gave two weeks notice to my old employer and upped sticks.
Obviously, I needed a place to live and luckily my estate agent, the talented Mr. Ripley, searched high and low and across the universe but eventually managed to find me a new abode. I have been busy moving in. Withnail and I have been unpacking boxes, cleaning the place (there was a lot of grease) and arranging my small treasures.
I understand that you may have been nervous about the lack of correspondence. You may have been sleepless in Seattle (and everywhere else in the world) and up before sunrise to check for new blog entries.
But I haven’t forgotten about you my dear readers. I’ve been carrying around the notebook, in case any inspiration came to me whilst I have been putting my life in order.
And I will be back soon with the full dose of bitchiness.
Until then, take care.
S1M0NE
P.S., I love you
According to an article on BBC.co.uk, 48-year old Colin Firth is criticising actors and actresses who are having plastic surgery.
Whilst I am no fan of plastic surgery myself, me thinks Mr. Firth should be taking a long, hard look at himself. Have you seen yourself in Mamma Mia, Colin???
It was easily the most disastrous movie I have seen in a long while. It was so bad, I had to stop half way through. Luckily, I was on a plane from Kuala Lumpur to Sydney when I saw the film. Well, the first half of it, anyway. Otherwise I would have had to walk out of the cinema and I have never done that! My friend did it once, during Benjamin Button. She was bored to death by the curiosities, or whatever his ailment was. I, however, have always put on a brave face and sat through whatever atrocity was presented to me. But not so with Mamma Mia!. It is the worst plot in modern movie history ever! Some slut gets it on with three different dudes in, what, a week? And get’s knocked up by one of them. So the offspring that results invites all three possible father figures to her wedding and one of them turns out to be gay (or so I’ve been told, I didn’t make it that far). Purr-lease!!! But not only that. Dear readers, Mamma Mia is a musical. AND NONE OF THE ACTORS IN IT CAN SING!!!! It is soul-destroying! Has it not occurred to anyone else that this must be someone’s idea of a cruel joke? Is everyone, apart from me, taking this movie semi-seriously??
I love musical films! They are deliciously cheesy; they give you that towering feeling, knowing you’re on the street where she lives. They make you go together, like rama lama lama ke ding a de dinga a dong. They make Seymour appear beside you. Rather suddenly. They’ll have you singin’ in the rain and they’ll have you jump to the left. Or jump in the line. And they’ll never ever put Baby in the corner.
Mamma Mia puts a great big ugly vomit-inducing mark on this otherwise delightful genre. And I am very saddened by that.
If you are after a watchable film, dear readers, that includes the music of ABBA, may I recommend Muriel’s Wedding.
And, dear Colin Firth, never you mind who’s getting plastic surgery. Just mind your own beeswax and be very careful which filims you sign up for! That’s all I’m saying.
Matrix Revolutions is a bit of a rubbish movie, wouldn’t you say, dear readers?
It’s the Wachowsky brothers remembering the ten-year old boys inside them wanting nothing more than blow shit up. And that’s all there is to this film, sadly. Yes, of course Neo saves the world and humanity and what not, but all that is drowned in the unnecessarily long battle scenes and the gory stuff (like sliced up faces and gauged out eyes, Resident Evil-style). It’s like Andy and Larry didn’t really have to put any effort into this one, because people were going to watch it regardless. Not least because Matrix Reloaded ended with the mother of all cliffhangers- the line ‘To Be Continued’ splashed menacingly across the screen in Matrix-green.
And fair play to the brothers Wachowsky, they captivated us and (if the movies are to be believed) our stunted imagination with parts one and two.
When The Matrix was first released, everyone who was anyone had the Nokia slide phone and wore long leather coats. The Matrix was a new fashion trend. And those bullet time effects were phenomenal (still are). One of my favourite movie scenes of all times is still the one where Trinity jumps backwards out of a window and falls, shooting bullets upwards at the agent. Luckily, that very scene appears twice in Matrix Reloaded. It’s not so lucky that she doesn’t actually die in it, because let’s face it, Trinity is rather annoying. That sulky face, the constant ‘Are you alright?’ and that superior air about her that is backed up by...well, a whole lotta nothing really.
Keanu Reeves, our hero Neo, on the other hand is a totally different story. Even though my favourite film critic over on www.mrcranky.com attributes the ‘acting skills of a carp’ to the lovely Keanu, I have the major hots for the guy (Reeves, not Cranky) and he adds a certain darkness to Neo, and well, a lot of his other roles really. Hands up who’s ever seen Keanu Reeves smile? Hmm, didn’t think so. Still, what is there to smile about if you think that we are all plugged into a computer program with absolutely no control over what we do, who we do and where. A computer program that has our entire existence planned out for us. Even Truman Burbank stopped being jovial once he realised it was all just a game. Or in his case, a TV show.
And is it so hard to imagine that the Matrix really does exist? That someone up there is holding all the strings? Of course, there’s a fair number of spiritualists, new age believers and teachers of esoterics who tell those who are prepared to hear it that our life is exactly that- an illusion created by a computer program, the Matrix.
And the first two installments of the trilogy are wonderfully intriguing, or dare I say convincing in that respect. Wouldn’t it be magic to tell someone to download Spanish Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced into our brains before we set off on our holiday to Benidorm? But then what about Cypher’s point in the first movie? He’s had enough of living in the ‘real world’ and wishes he had taken the blue pill. And he wants out. He misses the sensation of a nice steak and a glass of nice red (and trust me- I’m with him on this one!). Isn’t it a little depressing to think that ‘maybe they couldn't figure out what to make chicken taste like, which is why chicken tastes like everything’? Why don’t we just stay oblivious, stay in the Matrix and deal with whatever the programmers throw at us (and call it ‘life’) and as a reward get to enjoy things like purple sunrises, the smell of freshly cut grass and the taste of a fine New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc?
The ‘critical summary’ on Wikipedia says, the movie is meant for entertainment and not based on science. But what if all our science is rubbish anyway? We once thought, the earth was flat. Now we think it’s round. What if, in 500 years, we discover it’s a triangle with ears?
I wonder what the delectable Keanu thinks on the matter, seeing that he appears in a number of movies concerned with this subject of what’s real and who’s controlling our lives- A Scanner Darkly; Constantine; The Devil’s Advocate; The Day The Earth Stood Still....
And what are your thoughts, dear readers?
Today, dear readers, I bring you a fail-safe recipe for getting a positive film review out of me.
Here goes: take the simplest of plots, so I can understand it (no intricacies, no time travel and no nonsense in outer space). Add a cast of the finest British actors (perhaps Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans or Kenneth Brannagh). Throw in the mix a kick-arse soundtrack, et voilà, Fish on Film Headquarters is VERY happy indeed.
Setting the film on a boat is optional, of course, but undoubtedly adds to the charm.
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Today, dear readers, I am writing to you from aboard a plane. Where I have just had the pleasure of viewing ‘Star Trek’.
I was a little thrown at the beginning of the movie when Home & Away’s Kim Hyde (Chris Hemsworth) came charging across my screen. Don’t get me wrong- I LOVE Home & Away. Some people may even use the term ‘obsessed’, but seeing Kim on a space ship was a little weird, that’s all. They don’t usually have spaceships in Summer Bay you see.
Anyhoo, Chris, of course, wasn’t playing Kim Hyde, he was George Kirk, Captain of the starship Enterprise. For all of 12 minutes, anyway. As his wife gives birth to a screaming bundle, later known James Tiberius Kirk, George sacrifices himself to save the life of his crew, his wife and his newborn son, Armagedon-style.
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I finally got to see the long-awaited Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince today. Was it my favourite Potter movie? No. That accolade still belongs to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Was it worth the wait? Of course it was! It’s a new Harry Potter movie and I love all Harry Potter movies but this latest offering wasn’t without its flaws. I thought it was a little inconsistent. There were no ghosts at Hogwarts. Could John Cleese not be bothered, I wonder, or has the global financial crisis hit the famous school of Witchcraft and Wizardry and they’ve had to lay off staff?
Hagrid’s hut appears to have been moved to the Alps. For some undisclosed reason. Sure, there have always been hills behind Hogwarts and around the gamekeeper’s abode, but it’s never been THAT bloody mountainous before! But I think for me, the most scandalous thing of all was the fact that Harry Potter didn’t have a scar! And believe me, dear readers, from the moment I noticed the missing lightning bolt, I kept looking out for it in every scene. I am now intimately familiar with Daniel Radcliffe’s forehead and throughout the entire movie, the scar appears in two scenes only. TWO SCENES!!! But when it does make an appearance, it is very prominent so don’t try to tell me the scar has faded over the years and that’s why you can’t see it in the movie...I won’t buy it. I will remain of the opinion that through most of the film, Harry Potter did not have a scar. And that was mighty disappointing for me, an avid Potter fanatic. Also, I am not sure that the Weasley residence has always been located in a field? But I can overlook that, it’s not half as criminal as the missing scar.
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We all know the same old, predictable Hollywood plots. The ‘boy meets girl, some shit happens, they get together in the end’. The ‘wrongly accused dude or dudette fights to make the truth known to every man and his dog’. The ‘car chase in San Francisco that inevitably ruins a tram or four’. Hollywood makes gazillions of finest US Dollars out of the same plots, year in, year out.
Which is why I’m always up for an alternative storyline; something new, something quirky, something ingenius. Like ‘pregnant teenager is looking for a suitable couple to adopt her unborn child’. A lot of people have raved about ‘Juno’, so obviously I had to get in on the action and impart my opinion onto the world. (or at least you, my faithful readers).
And I have to say, I was a little disappointed. Maybe my expectations were too high or maybe I’m just too hard to please, but I really expected more.
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Yes, I admit, initially I was confused. First we’re telling Forest to run, then we’re telling Lola to run. Is there a bloody fire anywhere, because if there is, I’d rather you told me than dropping hints!
Mind you, the original film title ‘Lola Rennt’ translates simply as ‘Lola Runs’, so whoever got to translate this German treasure made good use of the old artistic licence.
So hands up if you’ve seen ‘Run Lola Run’ and didn’t like it? Thank you, you may now put your hand down and move away from this blog. And don’t come back.
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Hmm...now there’s two hours of my life I will never get back! ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’.
Rarely have I seen such a flat, misguided and unfunny string of random crap. And even rarer have I seen such shite then called a film.
Yes, I agree (and it’s probably been scientifically proven by someone who takes great pleasure in wasting tax payers money), sex sells. It does. But purrrrleeeaase! To the people behind the above-mentioned rubbish: How OLD are you? This is playground stuff!
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No dream is too big
I don’t know if it is pertinent for me to write about a film I actually liked. It’s not something I usually do, as you may have noticed. But I didn’t just like this film, I was touched by it.
Yes, Hollywood knows exactly what to do to extract a few sneaky tears from you in the dark cinema where no-on can see....Take ‘Marley & Me’- an hour of blah blah and average performances from Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson and then something totally unforeseen and unpredictable happens- the ‘clearance puppy’ has died. Everyone cry now! (rubbish movie, by the way)
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on A great grey dane
Fish on Film